Note 37 — THE ESSENES.

The Mosaic law regards conjugal intercourse as polluting, and enjoins bathing after it ( Levit. xv. 18 .) Hence, when the children of Israel had to sanctify themselves in the highest degree, so as to be fit to receive the law from Mount Sinai, they were commanded not to approach their wives ( Exod. xix. 15 ). Hence, also, those who had the charge of the shew-bread polluted the sacred loaves by going to their wives ( 1 Sam. xxi. 4 ). And hence the remark of the Apostle Paul, that in order to give themselves to fasting and prayer, man and wife may keep aloof from each other by mutual consent ( 1 Cor. vii. 5 ). The same laws obtained among all nations of antiquity. Thus, among the Egyptians, Babylonians, Arabians, Greeks and Romans, both man and wife had to bathe after connubial intercourse (Herod., i. 198). No one was allowed to go after it to the temple without bathing (Herod., ii. 64; Suet. Aug. xciv. 5; Pers. ii. 50, &c.); and the priests had to abstain from approaching their wives when they were ministering in holy things (Porphyrius, de Abstinentia, lib. ii. 50; iv. 7; Plutarch. Sympos. iii. 6; Tibul. lib. ii. Eleg. 1, 11, &c.; Ovid. Metam. x. 434, &c.) Now, as the Essenes strove to be in a perpetual state of sanctification, regarded their refectory as a sanctuary and their meals as sacraments, and most anxiously avoided contact with every thing that defiled, they had of necessity to extend these Mosaic laws, which enjoin abstinence from connubial intercourse as a means of sanctification, and which regard those who indulged in it as defiled, to the whole course of their life; and they had therefore to be celibates. This extension of the Mosaic law was moreover deemed desirable in consequence of the general conviction which the Jews entertained, in common with other nations, that no woman remains faithful to her husband, and that they all defile the bed of marriage. Philo, in the passage before us, and Josephus, as we shall see afterwards (vide infra p. 41, § 2), only give the latter reason, to suit their Greek readers who could both understand it better and sympathise with it more than with the former. ↑