Note 96 — THE ESSENES.

1857.—The learned historian Jost, who published the first volume of his History of Judaism in 1857, was also perfectly convinced by the results of Frankel’s researches, and made them the basis of his excellent description of the Essenes, in which he maintains that they grew out of Pharisaism or from the ancient Chassidim. “The Essenes,” he submits, “are exactly the same that the other Rabbis wished to be who endeavoured to practise the Levitical law of purity, as leading to higher consecration. They have neither another creed nor another law, but simply institutions peculiar to this brotherhood, and endeavour to reach the highest consecration by their manner of life, in defining the different stages, according to preliminary exercises and certain years of preparation. Their views and tenets are therefore also to be found in the utterances of the learned and the Rabbis who did not enter their order, so that they did not look upon the Essenes as opponents or apostates, but, on the contrary, as holding the same opinions with increased claims and some fewer enjoyments, whom many out of their own midst joined, and who were called Chassidim or Zenuim.”96