their own principles. Pleasure generally they rejected as evil.
They despised riches not less than pleasure; neither poverty nor
wealth was observable among them; at initiation every one gave
his property into the common stock; every member in receipt
of wages handed them over to the funds of the society. In
matters of dress the asceticism of the society was very pronounced.
They regarded oil as a defilement, even washing it off if anointed
with it against their will. They did not change their clothes or
their shoes till they were torn in pieces or worn completely
away. The colour of their garments was always white. Their
daily routine was prescribed for them in the strictest manner.
Before the rising of the sun they were to speak of nothing profane,
but offered to it certain traditional forms of prayer as if beseeching
it to rise. Thereafter they went about their daily tasks,
working continuously at whatever trade they knew till the fifth
hour, when they assembled, and, girding on a garment of linen,
bathed in cold water. They next seated themselves quietly
in the dining hall, where the baker set bread in order, and the
cook brought each a single dish of one kind of food. Before
meat and after it grace was said by a priest. After dinner they
resumed work till sunset. In the evening they had supper,
at which guests of the order joined them, if there happened to
be any such present. Withal there was no noise or confusion to
mar the tranquillity of their intercourse; no one usurped more
than his share of the conversation; the stillness of the place
oppressed a stranger with a feeling of mysterious awe. This
composure of spirit was owing to their perfect temperance in
eating and drinking. Not only in the daily routine of the society,
but generally, the activity of the members was controlled by
their presidents. In only two things could they take the initiative,
helpfulness and mercy; the deserving poor and the
destitute were to receive instant relief; but no member could
give anything to his relatives without consulting the heads of
the society. Their office-bearers were elected. They had also
their special courts of justice, which were composed of not less
than a hundred members, and their decisions, which were
arrived at with extreme care, were irreversible. Oaths were
strictly forbidden; their word was stronger than an oath. They
were just and temperate in anger, the guardians of good faith,
and the ministers of peace, obedient to their elders and to the
majority. But the moral characteristics which they most
earnestly cultivated and enjoined will best appear in their rules
of initiation. There was a novitiate of three years, during
which the intending member was tested as to his fitness for
entering the society. If the result was satisfactory, he was
admitted, but before partaking of the common meal he was
required to swear awful oaths, that he would reverence the
deity, do justice to men, hurt no man voluntarily or at the
command of another, hate the unjust and assist the just, and
that he would render fidelity to all men, but especially to the
rulers, seeing that no one rules but of God. He also vowed,
if he should bear rule himself, to make no violent use of his
power, nor outshine those set under him by superior display,
to make it his aim to cherish the truth and unmask liars, to be
pure from theft and unjust gain, to conceal nothing from his
fellow-members, nor to divulge any of their affairs to other men,
even at the risk of death, to transmit their doctrines unchanged,
and to keep secret the books of the society and the names of the
angels.
Within the limits of the society there were four grades so distinct that if any one touched a member of an inferior grade he required to cleanse himself by bathing in water; members who had been found guilty of serious crimes were expelled from the society, and could not be received again till reduced to the very last extremity of want or sickness. As the result of the ascetic training of the Essenes, and of their temperate diet, it is said that they lived to a great age, and were superior to pain and fear. During the Roman war they cheerfully underwent the most grievous tortures rather than break any of the principles of their faith. In fact, they had in many respects reached the very highest moral elevation attained by the ancient world; they were just, humane, benevolent, and spiritually-minded; the sick and aged were the objects of a special affectionate regard; and they condemned slavery, not only as an injustice, but as an impious violation of the natural brotherhood of men (Philo ii. 457). There were some of the Essenes who permitted marriage, but strictly with a view to the preservation of the race; in other respects they agreed with the main body of the society.
It will be apparent that the predominant tendency of the society was practical. Philo tells us expressly that they rejected logic as unnecessary to the acquisition of virtue, and speculation on nature as too lofty for the human intellect. Yet they had views of their own as to God, Providence, the soul, and a future state, which, while they had a practical use, were yet essentially speculative. On the one hand, indeed, they held tenaciously by the traditional Judaism: blasphemy against their lawgiver was punished with death, the sacred books were preserved and read with great reverence, though not without an allegorical interpretation, and the Sabbath was most scrupulously observed. But in many important points their deviation from the strait path of Judaic development was complete. They rejected animal sacrifice as well as marriage; the oil with which priests and kings were anointed they accounted unclean; and the condemnation of oaths and the community of goods were unmistakable innovations for which they found no hint or warrant in the old Hebrew writings. Their most singular feature, perhaps, was their reverence for the sun. In their speculative hints respecting the soul and a future state, we find another important deviation from Judaism, and the explanation of their asceticism. They held that the body is mortal, and its substance transitory; that the soul is immortal, but, coming from the subtlest ether, is lured as by a sorcery of nature into the prison-house of the body. At death it is released from its bonds, as from long slavery, and joyously soars aloft. To the souls of the good there is reserved a life beyond the ocean, and a country oppressed by neither rain, nor snow, nor heat, but refreshed by a gentle west wind blowing continually from the sea (cf. Hom. Od. iv. 566–568), but to the wicked a region of wintry darkness and of unceasing torment. Josephus tells us too that the Essenes believed in fate; but in what sense, and what relation it bore to Divine Providence, does not appear.
The above evidence has left students in doubt as to whether Essenism is to be regarded as a pure product of the Jewish mind or as due in part to some foreign influence. On the one hand it might be maintained that the Essenes out-Pharisee’d the Pharisees. They had in common with that sect their veneration for Moses and the Law, their Sabbatarianism, their striving after ceremonial purity, and their tendency towards fatalism. But if the Pharisees abstained from good works on the Sabbath, the Essenes abstained even from natural necessities (Jos. B.J. ii. 8, § 9); if the Pharisees washed, the Essenes bathed before dinner; if the Pharisees ascribed some things to Fate, the Essenes ascribed all (Jos. Ant. xiii. 5, § 9). But on the other hand the Essenes avoided marriage, which the Pharisees held in honour; they offered no animal-sacrifices in the Temple; they refrained from the use of oil, which was customary among the Pharisees (Luke vii. 46); above all, they offered prayers to the sun, after the manner denounced in Ezekiel (viii. 16). These and other points of divergences are not explained by Ritschl’s interesting theory that Essenism was an organized attempt to carry out the idea of “a kingdom of priests and an holy nation” (Ex. xix. 6).
Granting then that some foreign influence was at work in Essenism, we have four theories offered to us—that this influence was Persian, Buddhist, Pythagorean, or lastly, as maintained by Lipsius, that of the surrounding Syrian heathenism. Each of these views has had able advocates, but it must not be supposed that they are mutually exclusive. If we consider how Philo, while remaining a devout Jew in religion, yet managed to assimilate the whole Stoic philosophy, we can well believe that the Essenes might have been influenced, as Zeller maintained that they were, by Neo-Pythagoreanism. But as Pythagoras himself came from Samos, and his doctrines have a decidedly Oriental tinge, it may very well be that both he and the Essenes drew from a common source; for there is no need to reject, as
