THE ESSENES.
34
He had a
Elxai joined tliem at the time of the Emperor Trajan, who was a false prophet.
did not live according to the Mosaic law, but introduced
brother named Jeeus who
.
quite different things,
of which
some remnants
towards Moabitis.
.
.
and misled his own
sect.
.
.
.
He
joined the sect of the Ossenes,
same regions of Nabatea and Perea,
Simseans"
are still to be found in the
These people are now called
In a footnote Dr Giusburg explains that " this name (Simseans) may be derived from the
Hebrew Shemesh (sun), and was most probably given to the Essenes because of tlie erroneous
notion that they worshipped the Sun."
3.
Conjectural
etymology
^
rarely attains
instance the very learned and
to
actual
demonstration.
sagacious derivations -which
In
the
present
Eappaport and Frenkel have
by internal evidence of a weighty character, are, nevertheless,
dependent upon so large an array of etymons, homonyms, and synonyms, as to
excite our admiration at their skilful arrangement, without entirely satisfying our judgment
that, in investigating backward through the corruptions of many thousand years, the primary
supplied, although supported
sufficiently
forms have been discerned wliich lay buried beneath them.^
Our doubts gain strength when
we consider that, in Eastern countries, the perfection of language outstripped the refinement
of manners and that " the speech of Arabia could diversify the fourscore names of honey,
;
the two hundred of a serpent, the five hundred of a lion, the thousand of a sword, at a time
when
this copious dictionary
Krause
finds in the
was entrusted
Masonic
to the
memory
of an illiterate people."
which he dates
^
926 (from being
year), evidence of customs "obviously taken from
the usages of the Roman Colleges and other sources, that individually agree with the customs
and doctrines of the Essenes, Stoics, and the Soofees of Persia." ^ This writer draws especial
earliest
ritual,
at
a.d.
mentioned in the "York Constitutions"* of that
attention to the "agreement of the brotherhood of the Essenes, with the chief doctrines
which the
Culdees associated with the three great lights of the Lodge."
He then observes "that though
coincidences, without any actual connection, are of little value, yet, if it can be historically
'^
constitutions,
knew of the other, the case is altered." Having, then, clearly
own satisfaction) that the Culdees were the authors of the 926
he next argues that they knew of and copied in many respects the Essenes and
Therapeutie
after
proved that the one society
established (at least to his
;
which he
cites Philo
in order to establish
that
the three fundamental
doctrines of the Essenes were Love of God, Love of Virtue,
and Love of Mankind.
These he compares with the phases of moral conduct, symbolised in our
lodges by the
"
Bible, square, and compasses; and, as he assumes, that the
Three Great Lights" have always
been the same, and argues all through his book that Freemasonry has inherited its tenets or
philosophy from the Culdees, the doctrinal parallel which he has drawn of the two religious
systems becomes, from his point of view, of the highest interest.
'
This suggestion— vii-tually accepting the/arf
deposed to by Epiphanius— is quite irreconcilable witb his previous
observation, implying that shortly after 40 A.D. the Essenes
must have embraced Christianity.
As a complete knowledge of Rabbinical Hebrew is possessed by
comparatively few, the conclusions of Rappaport
and Frenkel must be regarded as " the traditions of
experts, to be taken by the outside w:orld on faith," unless we go to
the other extreme, and
accept the dictum of Professor Seeley (History and Politics, Macmillan's Magazine, August 1879),
2
study of history, "we should hold very cheap these conjectural combinations, and steadfastly bear in
that we are concerned with facts, and not with
possibilities."
that, in the
'
Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol.
5
Krause, Die drei Aeltesten Kunsturknuden, Book
ix., p.
240.
*
i.,
part
i., p.
117.
«
mind
See next chapter (No. 51).
Ibid.,
Book
i.,
part
ii.,
p. 358.