St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon A...

(iii) On the subject of marriage again, talmudical and rabbinical notices contribute nothing towards elucidating the practices of this sect. Least of all do they point to any affinity between the Essenes and the Pharisees. The nearest resemblance, which Frankel can produce, to any approximation in this respect is an injunction in Mishna Kethuboth v. 8 respecting the duties of the husband in providing for the wife in case of his separating from her, and this he ascribes to Essene influences[404]; but this mishna does not express any approval of such a separation. The direction seems to be framed entirely in the interests of the wife: nor can I see that it is at all inconsistent, as Frankel urges, with Mishna Kethuboth vii. 1 which allows her to claim a divorce under such circumstances. But however this may be, Essene and Pharisaic opinion stand generally in the sharpest contrast to each other with respect to marriage. The talmudic writings teem with passages implying not only the superior sanctity, but even the imperative duty, of marriage. The words ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ (Gen. i. 28) were regarded not merely as a promise, but as a command, which was binding on all. It is a maxim of the Talmud that ‘Any Jew who has not a wife is no man’ (אינו אדם,) Yebamoth 63a. The fact indeed is so patent, that any accumulation of examples would be superfluous, and I shall content myself with referring to Pesachim 113a, b, as fairly illustrating the doctrine of orthodox Judaism on this point[405].

(iv) Nor again is it probable that the magical rites and incantations which are so prominent in the practice of the Essenes would, as a rule, have been received with any favour by the Pharisaic Jew. In Mishna Pesachim iv. 9 (comp. Berakhoth 10b) it is mentioned with approval that Hezekiah put away a ‘book of healings’; where doubtless the author of the tradition had in view some volume of charms ascribed to Solomon, like those which apparently formed part of the esoteric literature of the Essenes[406]. In the same spirit in Mishna Sanhedrin xi. 1 R. Akiba shuts out from the hope of eternal life any ‘who read profane or foreign (i.e. perhaps, apocryphal) books, and who mutter over a wound’ the words of Exod. xv. 26. On this point of difference however no great stress can be laid. Though the nobler teachers among the orthodox Jews set themselves steadfastly against the introduction of magic, they were unable to resist the inpouring tide of superstition. In the middle of the second century Justin Martyr alludes to exorcists and magicians among the Jews, as though they were neither few nor obscure[407]. Whether these were a remnant of Essene Judaism, or whether such practices had by this time spread throughout the whole body, it is impossible to say; but the fact of their existence prevents us from founding an argument on the use of magic, as an absolutely distinctive feature of Essenism.

Other divergences also have been enumerated[408]; but, as these do not for the most part involve any great principles, and refer only to practical details in which much fluctuation was possible, they cannot under any circumstances be taken as crucial tests, and I have not thought it worth while to discuss them. But the antagonisms on which I have dwelt will tell their own tale. In three respects more especially, in the avoidance of marriage, in the abstention from the temple sacrifices, and (if the view which I have adopted be correct) in the outward reverence paid to the sun, we have seen that there is an impassable gulf between the Essenes and the Pharisees. No known influences within the sphere of Judaism proper will serve to account for the position of the Essenes in these respects; and we are obliged to look elsewhere for an explanation.

It was shown above that the investigations of Frankel and others failed to discover in the talmudical writings a single reference to the Essenes, which is at once direct and indisputable. It has now appeared that they have also failed (and this is the really important point) in showing that the ideas and practices generally considered characteristic of the Essenes are recognised and incorporated in these representative books of Jewish orthodoxy; and thus the hypothesis that Essenism was merely a type, though an exaggerated type, of pure Judaism falls to the ground.

Some affinities indeed have been made out by Frankel and by those who have anticipated or followed him. But these are exactly such as we might have expected. Two distinct features combine to make up the portrait of the Essene. The Judaic element is quite as prominent in this sect as the non-Judaic. It could not be more strongly emphasized than in the description given by Josephus himself. In everything therefore which relates to the strictly Judaic side of their tenets and practices, we should expect to discover not only affinities, but even close affinities, in talmudic and rabbinic authorities. And this is exactly what, as a matter of fact, we do find. The Essene rules respecting the observance of the sabbath, the rites of lustration, and the like, have often very exact parallels in the writings of more orthodox Judaism. But I have not thought it necessary to dwell on these coincidences, because they may well be taken for granted and my immediate purpose did not require me to emphasize them.

And again; it must be remembered that the separation between Pharisee and Essene cannot always have been so great as it appears in the Apostolic age. Both sects apparently arose out of one great movement, of which the motive was the avoidance of pollution[409]. The divergence therefore must have been gradual. At the same time, it does not seem a very profitable task to write a hypothetical history of the growth of Essenism, where the data are wanting; and I shall therefore abstain from the attempt. Frankel indeed has not been deterred by this difficulty; but he has been obliged to assume his data by postulating that such and such a person, of whom notices are preserved, was an Essene, and thence inferring the character of Essenism at the period in question from his recorded sayings or doings. But without attempting any such reconstruction of history, we may fairly allow that there must have been a gradual development; and consequently in the earlier stages of its growth we should not expect to find that sharp antagonism between the two sects, which the principles of the Essenes when fully matured would involve. |Hence the possibility of their appearing in the records of orthodox Judaism.| If therefore it should be shown that the talmudical and rabbinical writings here and there preserve with approval the sayings of certain Essenes, this fact would present no difficulty.

At present however no decisive example has been produced; and the discoveries of Jellinek for instance[410], who traces the influence of this sect in almost every page of Pirke Aboth, can only be regarded as another illustration of the extravagance with which the whole subject has been treated by a large section of modern Jewish writers. More to the point is a notice of an earlier Essene preserved in Josephus himself. We learn from this historian that one Judas, a member of the sect, who had prophesied the death of Antigonus, saw this prince ‘passing by through the temple[411],’ when his prophecy was on the point of fulfilment (about B.C. 110). At this moment Judas is represented as sitting in the midst of his disciples, instructing them in the science of prediction. The expression quoted would seem to imply that he was actually teaching within the temple area. Thus he would appear not only as mixing in the ordinary life of the Jews, but also as frequenting the national sanctuary. But even supposing this to be the right explanation of the passage, it will not present any serious difficulty. Even at a later date, when (as we may suppose) the principles of the sect had stiffened, the scruples of the Essene were directed, if I have rightly interpreted the account of Josephus, rather against the sacrifices than against the locality[412]. The temple itself, independently of its accompaniments, would not suggest any offence to his conscience.

Nor again, is it any obstacle to the view which is here maintained, that the Essenes are regarded with so much sympathy by Philo and Josephus themselves. Even though the purity of Judaism might have been somewhat sullied in this sect by the admixture of foreign elements, this fact would attract rather than repel an eclectic like Philo, and a latitudinarian like Josephus. The former, as an Alexandrian, absorbed into his system many and diverse elements of heathen philosophy, Platonic, Stoic, and Pythagorean. The latter, though professedly a Pharisee, lost no opportunity of ingratiating himself with his heathen conquerors, and would not be unwilling to gratify their curiosity respecting a society with whose fame, as we infer from the notice of Pliny, they were already acquainted.

But if Essenism owed the features which distinguished it from Pharisaic Judaism to an alien admixture, whence were these foreign influences derived? From the philosophers of Greece or from the religious mystics of the East? On this point recent writers are divided.

Those who trace the distinctive characteristics of the sect to Greece, regard it as an offshoot of the Neopythagorean School grafted on the stem of Judaism. This solution is suggested by the statement of Josephus, that ‘they practise the mode of life which among the Greeks was introduced (καταδεδειγμένῃ) by Pythagoras[413].’ It is thought to be confirmed by the strong resemblances which as a matter of fact are found to exist between the institutions and practices of the two.

This theory, which is maintained also by other writers, as for instance by Baur and Herzfeld, has found its ablest and most persistent advocate in Zeller, who draws out the parallels with great force and precision. ‘The Essenes,’ he writes, ‘like the Pythagoreans, desire to attain a higher sanctity by an ascetic life; and the abstentions, which they impose on themselves for this end, are the same with both. They reject animal food and bloody sacrifices; they avoid wine, warm baths, and oil for anointing; they set a high value on celibate life: or, so far as they allow marriage, they require that it be restricted to the one object of procreating children. Both wear only white garments and consider linen purer than wool. Washings and purifications are prescribed by both, though for the Essenes they have a yet higher significance as religious acts. Both prohibit oaths and (what is more) on the same grounds. Both find their social ideal in those institutions, which indeed the Essenes alone set themselves to realise—in a corporate life with entire community of goods, in sharply defined orders of rank, in the unconditional submission of all the members to their superiors, in a society carefully barred from without, into which new members are received only after a severe probation of several years, and from which the unworthy are inexorably excluded.

Both require a strict initiation, both desire |Zeller’s theory.| to maintain a traditional doctrine inviolable; both pay the highest respect to the men from whom it was derived, as instruments of the deity: yet both also love figurative clothing for their doctrines, and treat the old traditions as symbols of deeper truths, which they must extract from them by means of allegorical explanation. In order to prove the later form of teaching original, newly-composed writings were unhesitatingly forged by the one as by the other, and fathered upon illustrious names of the past. Both parties pay honour to divine powers in the elements, both invoke the rising sun, both seek to withdraw everything unclean from his sight, and with this view give special directions, in which they agree as well with each other as with older Greek superstition, in a remarkable way. For both the belief in intermediate beings between God and the world has an importance which is higher in proportion as their own conception of God is purer; both appear not to have disdained magic; yet both regard the gift of prophecy as the highest fruit of wisdom and piety, which they pique themselves on possessing in their most distinguished members. Finally, both agree (along with the dualistic character of their whole conception of the world ...) in their tenets respecting the origin of the soul, its relation to the body, and the life after death[414]....’

This array of coincidences is formidable, and thus skilfully marshalled might appear at first sight invincible. But a closer examination detracts from its value. In the first place the two distinctive characteristics of the Pythagorean philosophy are wanting to the Essenes. The Jewish sect did not believe in the transmigration of souls; and the doctrine of numbers, at least so far as our information goes, had no place in their system. Yet these constitute the very essence of the Pythagorean teaching. In the next place several of the coincidences are more apparent than real. Thus |The coincidences are in some cases only apparent,| for instance the demons who in the Pythagorean system held an intermediate place between the Supreme God and man, and were the result of a compromise between polytheism and philosophy, have no near relation to the angelology of the Essenes, which arose out of a wholly different motive. Nor again can we find distinct traces among the Pythagoreans of any such reverence for the sun as is ascribed to the Essenes, the only notice which is adduced having no prominence whatever in its own context, and referring to a rule which would be dictated by natural decency and certainly was not peculiar to the Pythagoreans[415]. When these imperfect and (for the purpose) valueless resemblances have been subtracted, the only basis on which the theory of a direct affiliation can rest is withdrawn. All the remaining coincidences are unimportant. Thus the respect paid to founders is not confined to any one sect or any one age.

The reverence of the Essenes for Moses, and the reverence of the Pythagoreans for Pythagoras, are indications of a common humanity, but not of a common philosophy. And again the forgery of supposititious documents is unhappily not the badge of any one school. The Solomonian books of the Essenes, so far as we can judge from the extant notices, were about as unlike the tracts ascribed to Pythagoras and his disciples by the Neopythagoreans as two such forgeries could well be. All or nearly all that remains in common to the Greek school and the Jewish sect after these deductions is |and in others do not suggest any historical connexion.| a certain similarity in the type of life. But granted that two bodies of men each held an esoteric teaching of their own, they would secure it independently in a similar way, by a recognised process of initiation, by a solemn form of oath, by a rigid distinction of orders. Granted also, that they both maintained the excellence of an ascetic life, their asceticism would naturally take the same form; they would avoid wine and flesh; they would abstain from anointing themselves with oil; they would depreciate, and perhaps altogether prohibit, marriage. Unless therefore the historical conditions are themselves favourable to a direct and immediate connexion between the Pythagoreans and the Essenes, this theory of affiliation has little to recommend it.

(i) The priority of time, if it can be pleaded on either side, must be urged in favour of the Essenes. The Pythagoreans as a philosophical school entirely disappear from history before the middle of the fourth century before Christ. The last Pythagoreans were scholars of Philolaus and Eurytus, the contemporaries of Socrates and Plato[416]. For nearly two centuries after their extinction we hear |Disappearance of the Pythagoreans.| nothing of them. Here and there persons like Diodorus of Aspendus are satirised by the Attic poets of the middle comedy as ‘pythagorizers,’ in other words, as total abstainers and vegetarians[417]; but the philosophy had wholly died or was fast dying out. This is the universal testimony of ancient writers. It is not till the first century before Christ, that we meet with any distinct traces of a revival. In Alexander Polyhistor[418], a younger contemporary of Sulla, for the first time we find references to certain writings, which would seem to have emanated from this incipient Neopythagoreanism, rather than from the elder school of Pythagoreans. And a little later Cicero commends his friend Nigidius Figulus as one specially raised up to revive the extinct philosophy[419]. But so slow or so chequered was its progress, that a whole century after Seneca can still speak of the |Priority of Essenism to Neopythagoreanism.| school as practically defunct[420]. Yet long before this the Essenes formed a compact, well-organized, numerous society with a peculiar system of doctrine and a definite rule of life.

We have seen that Pliny the elder speaks of this celibate society as having existed ‘through thousands of ages[421].’ This is a gross exaggeration, but it must at least be taken to imply that in Pliny’s time the origin of the Essenes was lost in the obscurity of the past, or at least seemed so to those who had not access to special sources of information. If, as I have given reasons for supposing[422], Pliny’s authority in this passage is the same Alexander Polyhistor to whom I have just referred, and if this particular statement, however exaggerated in expression, is derived from him, the fact becomes still more significant. But on any showing the priority in time is distinctly in favour of the Essenes as against the Neopythagoreans.

And accordingly we find that what is only a tendency in the Neopythagoreans is with the Essenes an avowed principle and a definite rule of life. Such for instance is the case with celibacy, of which Pliny says that it has existed as an institution among the Essenes per sæculorum millia, and which is a chief corner-stone of their practical system. The Pythagorean notices (whether truly or not, it is unimportant for my purpose to enquire) speak of Pythagoras as having a wife and a daughter[423]. Only at a late date do we find the attempt to represent their founder in another light; and if virginity is ascribed to Apollonius of Tyana, the great Pythagorean of the first Christian century, in the fictitious biography of Philostratus[424], this representation is plainly due to the general plan of the novelist, whose hero is intended to rival the Founder of Christianity, and whose work is saturated with Christian ideas. In fact virginity can never be said to have been a Pythagorean principle, though it may have been an exalted ideal of some not very early adherents of the school. And the same remark applies to other resemblances between the Essene and Neopythagorean teaching. The clearness of conception and the definiteness of practice are in almost every instance on the side of the Essenes; so that, looking to the comparative chronology of the two, it will appear almost inconceivable that they can have derived their principles from the Neopythagoreans.

(ii) But the geographical difficulty also, which this theory of affiliation involves, must be added to the chronological. The home of the Essene sect is allowed on all hands to have been on the eastern borders of Palestine, the shores of the Dead Sea, a region least of all exposed to the influences of Greek philosophy. It is true that we find near Alexandria a closely allied school of Jewish recluses, the Therapeutes; and, as Alexandria may have been the home of Neopythagoreanism, a possible link of connexion is here disclosed. But, as Zeller himself has pointed out, it is not among the Therapeutes, but among the Essenes, that the principles in question appear fully developed and consistently carried out[425]; and therefore, if there be a relation of paternity between Essene and Therapeute, the latter must be derived from the former and not conversely. How then can we suppose this influence of Neopythagoreanism brought to bear on a Jewish community in the south-eastern border of Palestine? Zeller’s answer is as follows[426]. Judæa was for more than a hundred and fifty years before the Maccabean period under the sovereignty first of the Egyptian and then of the Syrian Greeks. We know that at this time Hellenizing influences did infuse themselves largely into Judaism: and what more natural than that among these the Pythagorean philosophy and discipline should have recommended itself to a section of the Jewish people?

It may be said in reply, that at all events the special locality of the Essenes is the least favourable to such a solution: but, without pressing this fact, Zeller’s hypothesis is open to two serious objections which combined seem fatal to it, unsupported as it is by any historical notice. First, this influence of Pythagoreanism is assumed to have taken place at the very time when the Pythagorean school was practically extinct: and secondly, it is supposed to have acted upon that very section of the Jewish community, which was the most vigorous advocate of national exclusiveness and the most averse to Hellenizing influences.

It is not therefore to Greek but to Oriental influences that considerations of time and place, as well as of internal character, lead us to look for an explanation of the alien elements in Essene Judaism. And have we not here also the account of any real coincidences which may exist between Essenism and Neopythagoreanism? We should perhaps be hardly more justified in tracing Neopythagoreanism directly to Essenism than conversely (though, if we had no other alternative, this would appear to be the more probable solution of the two): but were not both alike due to substantially the same influences acting in different degrees? |to which also Pythagoreanism may have been indebted.|I think it will hardly be denied that the characteristic features of Pythagoreanism, and especially of Neopythagoreanism, which distinguish it from other schools of Greek philosophy, are much more Oriental in type, than Hellenic. The asceticism, the magic, the mysticism, of the sect all point in the same direction. And history moreover contains indications that such was the case. There seems to be sufficient ground for the statement that Pythagoras himself was indebted to intercourse with the Egyptians, if not with more strictly Oriental nations, for some leading ideas of his system.

But, however this may be, the fact that in the legendary accounts, which the Neopythagoreans invented to do honour to the founder of the school, he is represented as taking lessons from the Chaldeans, Persians, Brahmins, and others, may be taken as an evidence that their own philosophy at all events was partially derived from eastern sources[427].

But, if the alien elements of Essenism were borrowed not so much from Greek philosophy as from Oriental mysticism, to what nation or what religion was it chiefly indebted? To this question it is difficult, with our very imperfect knowledge of the East at the Christian era, to reply with any confidence. |Resemblances to Parsism.|Yet there is one system to which we naturally look, as furnishing the most probable answer. The Medo-Persian religion supplies just those elements which distinguish the tenets and practices of the Essenes from the normal type of Judaism. |(i) Dualism.|

(1) First; we have here a very definite form of dualism, which exercised the greatest influence on subsequent Gnostic sects, and of which Manicheism, the most mature development of dualistic doctrine in connexion with Christianity, was the ultimate fruit. For though dualism may not represent the oldest theology of the Zend-Avesta in its unadulterated form, yet long before the era of which we are speaking it had become the fundamental principle of the Persian religion. |(ii) Sun-worship.|