THE ESSENES.
31
tlie fathers,"' altliongli, as he claims to have been liimself
successively a
Sadducee, and Essene, more precise information might have been expected from him.^
I'harisee,
It will be seen that all the preceding statements conform to the universal custom of
ascribing a time-honoured antiquity to every religious or pliilosophical system.
Their actual existence, however, under the name of Essenes, is
attested
ancient time of
by
sufficiently
2
Josephus (if his testimony can be relied on) as to render it quite clear that they were in being
at least two centuries before tlie Christian era, and that
they at first lived amongst the Jewish
community at large. Their residence at Jerusalem is also evident from the fact that there was
agate named after them. "When they ultimately withdrew," says Dr Ginsburg, "from the
rest of the Jewish nation, a majority of them settled on the north-west .shore of the Dead
Sea,
and the rest lived in scattered communities throughout Palestine and Syria. Both Philo and
Josephus estimated their number at above four tliousand.
women and
This must have been exclusive of
We
hear very little of them after tliis period [i.e., 40
A.D.) ;* and there
can hardly be any doubt that, owing to the great similarity which existed between their
children.
precepts and practices and those of the primitive Cliristians, the Essaics, as a
The derivation
hodij,
must
luivr,
"
enihraced Christianity
?
tlie name, Essenes, was not known to Philo and
Josephus, and there is
an expression the etymology of which has evoked such a diversity of opinion. The
hardly
Greek and the Hebrew, the Syriac and the Chaldee, names of persons and names of places,
of
have successively been tortured to confess the secret connected with this appellation. Twenty
different explanations of it are quoted by Dr Ginsburg, from which I extract the following:
Epiplianius calls the sect Osscnrs, the stout or strong race; Jesseans ; and Simseans, -pTohaAAj
from the Hebrew Shemcsh, San, i.e., Sim-ioorshippers. By De Eossi, Herzfeld, and BeUarman,
Salmasius derives the name from Essa, a
they are considered identical with the Baithusians.
A
town be3'ond the Jordan.
number
of writers adopt the description of the
very large
contemplative Essenes or Therapevicc, ascribed to Philo, which, Iiowever, has nothing whatever
to do with the real Palestinian Essenes.
The hrcast-plate of the Jewish High Priest {Essen) is
others as having furnished the etymon availed of by Josej^hus.
suggested by
But the difQculty which perplexed Christian
writers, arising
from the fact that the Essenes
New Testament, did not affect Jewish scholai'S. Assuming this
be a corruption of an Aramaic word, they searched tlie Talmud and Midrashim,
"
Eappaport, styled by Dr Ginsburg the
Corypheus of Jewisli
chiefly written in Aramaic.
are not mentioned in the
appellation to
*
^
Antiquities,
' '
When
sects are three
best, if I
I
Book
xviii., cliap.
was about
i.,
§2.
had a mind
si.xteen years old I
—the Pharisees,
to
make
were once acquainted with them
all
;
so I
trial of
the several sects that were amongst us.
These
thought that by this means I might choose the
contented myself with hard fare, and underwent gi'eat difficulties,
the Sadducees, and the Essenes
;
for I
and went through them all" (.Autobiography, Wliiston's Josephus, p. i. ).
'
Jewish War, Booki., chap, iii., § 5. Apart from the contr.adictions
Antiquities, Bookxiii., chaps, v., viii., xi., § 2
into which he stiimblcs witli regard to the Essenes, can any readerlay down the works of Josephus withont being painfully
reminded by the concluding sentence of his "Wars of the Jews" of a similar asseveration of veracity, by the famous
;
Baron Munchausen
?
This and the next following statement are hardly characterised by Dr Ginsburg's usual accuracy. The historian
His books of the Jewish War were published about
Josephus, upon whom he chiefly relies, was not born until 37 A.D.
*
A.D. 75, and the Antiquities aliout eighteen years later
presently discussed, though
A.D. 403.
it
may
—
viz., a.d. 93.
be here stated that they
still
The ultimate dispersion
of the Essenes will be
existed as a sect in the days of Epiplianius, wlio died