Note 8 — THE ESSENES.

It is now impossible to ascertain the precise date when this order of Judaism first developed itself. According to Philo, Moses himself instituted this order; Josephus contents himself with saying that they existed “ever since the ancient time of the fathers;” whilst Pliny assures us that, without any one being born among them, the Essenes, incredible to relate, “have prolonged their existence for thousands of ages.”8 Bating, however, these assertions, which are quite in harmony with the well known ancient custom of ascribing some pre-Adamite period to every religious or philosophical system, it must already have become apparent, from the description of it, that the very nature of the Essenes precludes the possibility of tracing its date. The fact that the Essenes developed themselves gradually, and at first imperceptibly, through intensifying the prevalent religious notions, renders it impossible to say with exactness at what degree of intensity they are to be considered as detached from the general body. The first mention we have of their existence is in the days of Jonathan the Maccabæan, B.C. 166. (Joseph. Antiq. xiii. 5, 8). We then hear of them again in the reign of Aristobulus I., B.C. 106, in connection with a prophecy about the death of Antigonus, uttered by Judas an Essene, of which Josephus gives the following account. “Judas, an Essene, whose predictions had up to this time never deceived, caused great astonishment on this occasion. When he saw at that time Antigonus pass through the temple, he called out to his disciples, of whom he had no small number—‘Oh! it would be better for me to die now, since truth died before me, and one of my prophecies has proved false. Antigonus, who ought to have died this day, is alive; Strato’s Tower, which is six hundred furlongs distance from here, is fixed for his murder, and it is already the fourth hour of the day [ten o’clock]; time condemns the prophecy as a falsehood.’ Having uttered these words, the aged man sunk into a long, dejected, and sorrowing silence. Soon after, the report came that Antigonus was murdered in the subterranean passage which, like Cesarea on the sea side, was also called Strato’s Tower. It was this circumstance that misled the prophet.” (Jewish War, i. 3, § 5; Antiq. xiii. 11, § 2). The third mention of their existence we find in the well known prophecy of the Essene Manahem, uttered to Herod when a boy.9 Now these accounts most unquestionably show that the Essenes existed at least two centuries before the Christian era, and that they at first lived amongst the Jewish community at large. Their residence at Jerusalem is also evident from the fact that there was a gate named after them (Ἐσσηνῶν πύλη Joseph. Jewish War, v. 4, § 2). When they ultimately withdrew themselves from the rest of the Jewish nation, the majority of them settled on the north-west shore of the Dead Sea, sufficiently distant to escape its noxious exhalations, and the rest lived in scattered communities throughout Palestine and Syria. Both Philo and Josephus estimated them to be above four thousand in number. This must have been exclusive of women and children. We hear very little of them after this period (i.e. 40 A.D.); and there can hardly be any doubt that, owing to the great similarity which existed between their precepts and practices and those of the primitive Christians, the Essenes as a body must have embraced Christianity.