Note 71 — THE ESSENES.

“There were three sorts of philosophers among the Jews, the first were headed by the Pharisees, the second by the Sadducees, and the third, who seemed the most honourable (σεμνοτάτη), by the Essenes. The latter formed such a society as Josephus has described it in different parts of his works, as well as in the second book of the Jewish History, which he composed in seven books, as in the eighteenth book of his Antiquities, which he composed in twenty books, and in the second part to the Greeks.71