Note 6 — THE ESSENES.

R. Nathan, the Babylonian as he is called, was Vice-President of the College in Palestine, under the Presidency of Simon III. b. Gamaliel II. A.D. 140. The above-quoted work of which he is the reputed author, as indicated by its title, ‏אבות דרבי נתן‎ i.e. the Aboth of R. Nathan, is a compilation of the apothegms and moral sayings of the Jewish fathers (‏אבות‎), interspersed with traditional explanations of divers texts of Scripture, consisting of forty-one chapters. Both the historian and moral philosopher will find this work an important contribution to the literary and philosophical history of antiquity. It is printed in the different editions of the Talmud, and has also been published separately with various commentaries, in Venice, 1622: Amsterdam, 1778, &c., &c.; and a Latin translation of it was published by our learned countryman, Francis Taylor, under the title of R. Nathanis Tractatus de Patribus, latine cum Notis. London, 1654, 4to. Comp. Zunz, Die gottesdienstlichen Vorträge der Juden. Berlin, 1832, p.p. 108, 109; Fürst, Kultur- und Literaturgeschichte der Juden in Asien. Leipzig, 1849, p. 16 ff; by the same author, Bibliotheca Judaica, volume iii. Leipzig, 1863, p. 19 ff; Steinschneider, Catalogus Libr. Hebr. in Bibliotheca Bodleiana col. 2,032 ff. ↑