ESSENES. The Essenes seem to have been a kind of monastic order among the Jews. As a well-defined body they do not seem to have arisen before the second century B.C. But there may have been small groups of them, resembling the bands of the prophets, at a much earlier date. It would be a quite natural development for disciples of men like Elijah to form themselves into societies like that of the Essenes. It would be equally natural for such societies, having cut themselves off to some extent from the common current of thought, to work out doctrines of their own. Essenism is not necessarily un-Jewish or due to foreign influence. As Mr. R. Travers Herford says (Pharisaiam, 1912), they were ascetics and recluses, and stood apart from the main body of the Jewish people. They were ascetics " of more than Pharisaic strictness (for asceticism was not a characteristic feature of Pharisaism either in practice or theory), and they combined with the re ligion of Torah certain mystical doctrines of their own." W. Fairweather thinks that apparently the religious ideas of the Essenes were essentially Jewish with cer tain decided exceptions or modifications. " In respect of their belief in Providence, which was more absolute than that of the Pharisees; in respect of their venera tion for Moses and the Law; and in respect of their sabbath observance, which was of the strictest possible type, they were Hebrews of the Hebrews. Apparently also, as a guarantee of ceremonial purity, their food was prepared and blessed by priests of Aaron's house, while the allegorical interpretation of Scripture had a place in their worship." The modifications, which he regards as alien elements, would arise from the fact of their standing apart from the main body of the Jewish people. The name Essenes might mean " the pious " or " the physicians." The former meaning is more likely. What we know about them is due to Philo, Josephus, the Jewish historian, and Pliny, the Roman historian. They preferred villages to towns, and lived chiefly in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea. " Admission to the order was solemnised by the threefold gift of an apron, a white robe, and a mattock (symbols, presum ably, of abstinence and purity), followed only upon a lengthened and double novitiate, and necessitated the taking of tremendous oaths of absolute obedience to the presidents, openness towards the members, and secrecy towards outsiders respecting the doctrines of the brother hood " (Fairweather). Serious offenders were expelled from the order. The brethren lived a communistic life. " All their belongings were common property, ad ministered by chosen stewards for behoof of the entire order. This applied to food, housing, and even clothing;
while in every town provision was made for sheaving hospitality to journeying brethren." They had many peculiar manners and customs. " While sending gifts to the Temple, they offered no animal sacrifices, deeming their own lustrations superior in point of purity. Theirs was a fellowship based not upon sacrifice, but apparently upon sacrament. Their midday common meal was at the same time a solemn diet of worship, a holy sacrament to which they came clad in white after having by a cold bath cleansed themselves on their re turn from the fields. A purifying bath had also to be taken in the event of contact with a foreigner, or even with an Essene of a lower grade. In bathing and in performing natural functions they behaved with extreme modesty." They probably abstained from flesh and wine. They abstained from all sexual intercourse, re fused to use oaths, and rejected the use of oil for anointing. " Slavery and war they abhorred. Re nouncing trade as tending to covetousness, they earned their livelihood by manual labour; the majority of them were engaged in agriculture. They were content with the same simple fare day by day; nor were their clothes and shoes replaced until utterly worn out." They were held in high repute as foretellers of the future. They held every object of sense to be ungodly, and sin to be a transgression of the law of nature. The soul of man really belongs to another world, the spiritual realm. " Having come out of the purest ether in order to be imprisoned in the body as the consequence of a fall into sin, souls, when freed at death from terrestrial bonds, soar again to the heights, happy to have escaped from their long servitude." It has been thought that the Essenes worshipped the sun. But it may be that their sun-worship was simply suggested by the reverence they paid to angels. A number of scholars and thinkers (including De Quincey, E. Planta Nesbit, and, more recently, Emil Berg) have urged that Jesus was educated among the Essenes, and that the religion of Jesus was a product of Essenism. But, as others have pointed out, there are radical differences between Essenism and the teaching of the gospels. The resemblances, as Fair weather says, extend only to minor details. See E. Planta Nesbit, Christ, Christians, and Christianity, 1899; the Drew'. Bibl.; W. Staerk, Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, 1907; W. Fairweather, The Background of the Gospels, 1908.