Note 80 — THE ESSENES.

1643–1724.—We then come to Dean Prideaux, who has a lengthy description of the Essenes in The Old and New Testaments Connected, part ii. book v., which first appeared in London, 1717. The chief value of Prideaux’s work on this subject consists in the fact, that he has given in English Philo and Josephus on the Essenes, as well as the short notice from Pliny. In his own remarks, which follow these extracts, he, in common with his predecessors, mixes up the Therapeutae with the Essenes, and tries to repel the Romanists who adopted the assertion of Eusebius (Hist. Ecclesiast. lib. ii. c. 17), that these Therapeutae or contemplative Essenes were Christian monks instituted by St. Mark. He also endeavours to expose the folly of the Deists, who infer, from the agreement between the Christian religion and the documents of the Essenes, that Christ and his followers were no other than a sect branched out from that of the Essenes. Among the accusations which the Dean brings against the Essenes for violating the law of God, is the charge that they “absolutely condemned servitude which the holy Scriptures of the New Testament ( Philemon 9–21 ), as well as the Old, allow.”80 Instead of blaming them for repudiating slavery, we believe that the civilized world in the present day will be unanimous in pronouncing it to have been one of the glorious features of Essenism, anticipating the spirit of Christianity and the philanthropy of the nineteenth century.