Note 97 — THE ESSENES.

1857.—The comparatively few and unessential deviations from Judaism to be found in Essenism were, however, more than Herzfeld could tolerate, without characterising the innovators as heretics and smugglers of contraband opinions. Dissatisfied with the modern researches of Frankel and Graetz on this subject, this learned historian, and chief Rabbi of Brunswick, returned to the old notion of De Rossi, that the Essenes of Josephus and Philo are identical with the Baithusians mentioned in the Talmud. Still he thinks that De Rossi’s opinion “must be better proved than he had done it,” and therefore remarks—“first of all, seeing that the prefixed ‏בית‎ denotes school or sect in the appellations Beth-Shammai, Beth-Hillel; that ‏בית הכותים‎ in Tosifta Helem ii. b, and ‏בי כותאי‎ in Chullin 6 a, denotes the sect or the land of Cuttim; and then that ‏בית סין‎ stands twice Tosifta Succa, cap. iii., and Tosifta Menachoth cap. x. for Baithusians, can it mean anything else than house or sect of Essenes? When ‏אסי‎ physician became the name of a sect, an Essene could not so well be called ‏אסי‎ without ambiguity; he was therefore described as one of ‏בית אסי‎.”97 Thus much for the origin of the name, and now let us hear Dr. Herzfeld’s theory about the brotherhood itself. It is simply this98—“A Jew, who became acquainted with the allegorical exegesis prevalent among the Alexandrian Jews, and with its mother the Greek wisdom, but who, like Pythagoras, Plato and Herodotus, had also found an opportunity to learn some things from Egyptian priests, conceived and carried out the plan, eclectically to form from it and from Judaism a speculative and ascetic system, as well as to organise, according to its model, a sect from the Jewish ascetics.”99 This Alexandrianized Palestinian Jew founded the order of the Essenes in Palestine about 230 B.C.