one of the three great Jewish sects, of which the other two were the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The derivation of the name Essenes is by no means certain. Philo deduces it from ἅγιος, "holy;" others find its origin in the Chaldee word "to heal," while others give the preference to a Syriac word signifying "pious." These sects sprung up in the decline of the Jewish state, after the Babylonish captivity, and were influenced in their rise and spread not less by ascetic philosophy than by the national degradation and the decay of morality.

While the Pharisees gave their countenance to sustain the past indiscriminately, and the Sadducees rejected all that was traditionary and adventitious, the Essenes sought to originate a moral influence, a moral and religious order; while the Pharisees partook more of the character of a political party, and the Sadducees exhibited not a few of the features of a sect.

The Essenes were ascetics, and rejected marriage along with the ordinary social pleasures of life. To recruit their ranks they selected the most promising of the children of others. Riches, too, they held in contempt, and whatever they had they were ready to share with others. Every newcomer put his property, whatever it was, into the common stock; whence his wants were afterwards gratuitously supplied. When they entered any strange city, their brethren received and entertained them as if they had come to their own property; and, in order that travellers might not suffer want or disappointment, there was in every city one of the brethren, who was specially charged to provide them with food, clothing, and other necessaries. These duties of hospitality, however, could not have been onerous, if, as Josephus states, the Essenes did not change their shoes or garments till they were worn out and tattered.

The account which Josephus has given of their pious exercises, and of their daily engagements, is striking and characteristic. Rising before the sun, they abstained from all ordinary conversation, and put up their ancestral prayers, not forgetting to beg for a renewal of the light of day. Then, under the supervision of curators or foremen, they laboured diligently till eleven o'clock in the forenoon, when, assembling together, and being covered with white veils, they bathed in cold water. After thus entering their refectory with certain religious solemnities, they quietly seated themselves, each receiving a loaf of bread and a single plate of one sort of food, and a priest having invoked the divine blessing, they proceeded to take refreshment. When the repast was over, the same priest made an offering of thanks to the great Benefactor of the world, and the brethren all returned to their several employments. There being terminated, in the evening another meal with similar observances was partaken of by all in common.

Next to God, Moses was the object of their reverent homage; and to blaspheme his name was a capital offence. In their reverence for the sabbath they would neither cook their food on that day nor remove a vessel from its place, even for the most pressing wants of nature. At set times they frequented the sacred places called synagogues, where the young sat arranged in classes according to age, under the eye of their elders. Here one took and read, and another expounded, the sacred books. A system of allegorical interpretation prevailed. Among their instructions the virtues of holiness, justice, and economy, held a prominent place; nor did they omit the duties which men owe to the state. Their teachings were accompanied by definitions and rules, and were enforced by a regard to the love of virtue, the love of man, and the love of God.

According to Josephus, they regarded the body as frail and corruptible, but the soul as living for ever. Asceticism was the necessary result of their conviction that souls came out of the most subtle air, from the loftiest empyreum, and are lodged in bodies as in prisons, from which, when once set free, they rejoice and soar away to their native regions. Of the predictions which Josephus alleges the Essenes to have made, from the study of the sacred writings, and the frequent use of purifications, it would have been wonderful if some had not proved true; for the accomplishment of others, they had the machinery in their own hands.

Their pursuits, trades, and professions were such as conducive to human good. They tilled the ground; they made useful articles; they bred and pastured cattle; but in the fabrication of arms they took no part. Even peaceful pursuits which ministered to vice they carefully avoided. It must not be concealed, however, that some of their notions bordered on extravagance, and that some of their practices betrayed a fastidiousness which bordered on the ridiculous. In morals they seem to have attained no ordinary excellence. Over anger they kept a guard like just stewards. All the passions they knew how to restrain. They were eminent for fidelity, and ministers of peace. Their word was more to be trusted than some men's oaths. Swearing, indeed, they studiously avoided; alleging with no small reason, that the man is already condemned who cannot be believed without an oath.

Admission into their communities was obtained only after a noviciate of twelve months, when those who were approved were habited in white, and received a girdle and a sort of small hatchet, being made "partakers of the waters of purification"—that is, probably, baptized. A further probation of two years was then undergone. When admitted into the society, the neophyte bound himself by vows or oaths to exercise piety towards God and justice towards men; to hate the bad and assist the good; to harm no one, either of his own accord or by the command of others; to be faithful to all men, especially to such as are in authority; to love truth and reprove the liar; to keep his hands clean from theft, and his soul pure from unlawful gain; to conceal nothing from the brotherhood, and reveal to others none of their secrets, not even should life thereby be put in peril; to transmit the Essene doctrines unchanged to others; to preserve their books and the names of their officers (ἀγγέλοις, angels) in strict secrecy. The newly-admitted brethren were distributed among four classes; and the gradations of age were so rigidly observed, that if a senior touched a junior brother, the first had to undergo a purification by water, as if he had been in contact with a foreigner. The Essenes did not offer oblations in the Temple at Jerusalem, though they sometimes sent presents thither. A pure heart they held to be the best offering. Religious ablutions they considered acts of holiness. They did not admit logic among their studies, and metaphysics they avoided, as relating to subjects which are too high for man; yet they made an exception in favour of those branches which refer to the existence of God and the creation of the world. Morality—the morality which they by their own process learnt from Moses—was the chief object of their studious care.

Pain they disregarded; the miseries of life they held of small account; and they even preferred death to living always. The calm and unmoved firmness with which they endured at the hands of the Romans, during "the Jewish war," the cruellest tortures, and death itself, rather than be faithless to their convictions or forswear their order, serves to show that the ascetic spirit and the martyr spirit have no little in common, and exhibits within the limits of Palestine the very same results, from the very same discipline, as Sparta was proud to call her own.

Josephus mentions another kind of Essenes, who entertained less unfavourable opinions of female virtue and honour, and who, holding that marriage was a divine ordinance for the propagation of the human species, did not think themselves justified in condemning or avoiding it. They, however, used the precaution of giving those females whom they thought of marrying a trial for three years, at the expiration of which they actually married them, provided they were satisfied, merely as a duty, and accordingly did not neglect the same ascetic principles which characterize the whole of the Essene life.

In the account which has now been given we have followed in the main the authority of Josephus and Philo. The latter speaks of a species of Essenes under the name of Therapeutae, whom we shall notice under that head, contenting ourselves at present with remarking that, in regard to the institutions and practices of the Essenes generally, it is probable that a good deal of the warm colouring of the picture, if not some of its objects, may have been borrowed from the imagination of the artists by whom it was originally drawn. Besides Josephus and Philo, the reader may consult Stiäudlin, Sittenlehre Jesu, Gotting, 1799; De Wette, Sittenlehre, Berlin, 1833; De Wette, Archäologie, Leipzig, 1830.