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Two things must be explained here about the name of the Essenes: first, where it is derived from; second, how it is written. The first point
(printed p. 173)
must itself be explained in two ways: first by listing the opinions, then by making a judgment about some of them.
Several conjectures can therefore be offered about where the Essenes get their name.
First, they may have been named from the city Essa, mentioned by Josephus, book 13, chapter 23, and by Suidas, just as the Emissenes are named from Emissa and the Edessenes from Edessa.
Second, they may have been named from the oracle of the Jewish high priests which used to be before their chest, which our interpreter usually calls the Rational, Exodus 28:4 and following, and which Josephus, in Antiquities book 3, chapter 8, calls by a softened form from the Hebrew word chosen, since the rougher sound was lightened.
Third, they may be named from the Chaldaic noun chesin, if its roughness were removed in the same way. Perhaps it means “acrobuston.”
Fourth, they may be named from the Syriac asan, that is, to be shod, Mark 5. For their shoes will be discussed below, and even today some names of the Barefoot and the Discalced are taken from shoes. Or they may come from asana, that is, a bush, or from asna, that is, a palm or date tree. For Pliny says in book 5, chapter 27, that the race of the Essenes is companion to palms.
Fifth, they may be named from the Hebrew verb asa, which means to care for, heal, and cure. For Philo and Eusebius usually call them therapeutae.
Sixth, they may be named from the Hebrew עשה, hasah, which means “I do,” as though haseni, or, with the aspiration removed, Eseni.
Seventh, they may be named from Jesus, Savior and Lord.
Eighth, they may be named from Jesse, the author and father of the Davidic stock from which Jesus our Lord and Savior came. They are called
[margin: On the derivation of the Essene name: conjectures 1-8.]
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not only Essenes but also Essaei, as if the name meant Jesseans.
Ninth, one says that the Essaei are, as it were, contemplatives, but he does not indicate from what Hebrew word.
Tenth, they may be named from the Hebrew shanah, or more gently sanah, which means either to hold the second parts, or to withdraw from others, that is, to retire, as in Luke 5:16 and John 13:1, or finally to study by repeating something again and again, that is, to devote oneself zealously to knowledge and doctrine. Thus in the saying cited above Hillel said: “Do not say, When I have found leisure, I shall learn,” or “I shall devote myself to the study of doctrine”; in Hebrew it is eschneh, or more gently esneh.
The reason for this etymology is not only the easy application of these meanings to the Essenes, but also that Gorionides Josephus, book 5, chapter 23, near the end, in the Basel edition, twice takes the name in this way. Those who are called Essenes by Josephus Flavius, book 15, chapter 13, are there called haffchonim, or more gently haffonim, as Munster translates there and notes in book 4, chapter 6.
Eleventh, the name may come from the Greek for holy, as if the Essaei were hagioi, or rather hagioi or hosioi.
Twelfth, it may come from the Hebrew chasid, from which comes the Syriac חסי, chasi, and chosio, that is, holy. Thus, with the hardness of the word softened, it becomes Aseus or Esseus, especially since Hebrew names ending in yod with chireq are not rarely expressed with the same yod and a preceding patach, as mitsri becomes misrai, Yehudi becomes Yehudai, Perushi becomes Perushai, and Mini becomes Minai,
[margin: Conjectures 9-12.]
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and therefore from chasi, chasai, or chesai there comes, by an easy turn, Hessaeus, or more gently Essaeus, just as from the other words come Mitsraeus, Judaeus, Pharisaeus, and Minaeus.
Of these conjectures, the first and fourth have so far found no supporter whom I have been able to read. The second and third were only hinted at by me in my harmony of the Maccabees, book 1, chapter 7, and book 2, chapter 14. The fifth was advanced by Scaliger in book 6 On the Emendation of Time, and by my Drusius in chapter 3 of the appendix to his little book. How Eusebius and Philo call them therapeutae I shall say later.
Photius seems to follow the sixth conjecture when, in treating Philo, he calls the theoretic Essenes therapeutae and the practical ones simply Essenes. David Chytraeus indicates the same derivation in his theological onomasticon, as though these men had observed the law accurately and had fulfilled it not so much in word as in deed. He says: “The Essenes, or Essei, that is, doers of the law, were a Jewish sect resembling almost the pattern of monastic life.” The Syriac text of Romans 2 calls the doers of the law, in a half-Greek form, hoseie nomuso. Philip Melanchthon, in book 2 of his Chronicle, says: “The Essei, that is, workers, from asa, appear to have been so called because they showed that they wished to serve God by good works, not by quarrels.” Drusius, however, in his preface, while rejecting this etymology, seems to think that it arises from the fact that they used to procure their livelihood for themselves by the work of their hands.
The seventh and eighth conjectures belong to Saint Epiphanius, heresy 29, but in such a way that when he derives the Jesseans from Jesus,
[margin: On the authors of the conjectures. Conjectures 1-8. Folio 502.]
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he says this could have happened for two reasons: either because they were his disciples, or because the Hebrew etymology of the name Jesus was considered, from which he is understood to signify a healer, that is, a physician and savior. For iaschah and hoschiah, from which comes Jesus in Matthew 1:21, means to save or to give salvation. And just as a person can be safe in respect of both body and soul, so too there are both bodily and spiritual therapeutae. Jesus, however, was in both ways the most perfect Physician and Savior, but especially a spiritual one, since, as the angel says in Matthew 1, he would save his people from their sins.
In the same spiritual sense they are called therapeutae by Eusebius and Philo. Philo derives the name from healing and serving souls, in that they free and cure the souls of those who come to them from the diseases of vicious passions.
As Horace rightly says:
Does your breast burn with avarice and wretched desire? There are words and voices by which you can soothe this pain and put away a great part of the disease.
Likewise, in Diodorus, the library is called a healing-place of the soul, that is, a workshop of medicines for the soul.
And Philo himself, at the beginning of the book which Eusebius had in view, entitled On the Contemplative Life, says:
The Essenes profess a medicine more excellent than that common one found throughout all towns. The latter heals only bodies; the former frees souls from grave diseases that are stubborn against remedies,
[margin: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.16; Philo, On the Contemplative Life; Horace, Epistles 1.1; Diodorus, book 1.]
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diseases which pleasures, desires, griefs, fears, avarice, folly, injustice, and the other disturbances, with the countless troop of vices, have caused to invade.
But because therapeuein also means to care for divine things, or to undertake that care and solicitude which is applied to divine matters, Philo adds that the Essenes were so called because by nature and by the sacred laws they had been taught “to worship that Being which is better than the good itself, simpler than the one, and older and more primal than unity.”
Eusebius completely follows Philo’s path. From these two points one may clearly see the notable errors of Joseph Scaliger, book 6 On the Emendation of Time.
One error is when he says that Epiphanius says Jesus was named from the Greek verb meaning “to heal,” whether in the ordinary or Ionic form, and not from the Hebrew word for saving, as the angel had instructed Mary. Epiphanius nowhere says this; rather, he looks back to the etymology shown by the angel, as I explained above. For that reason he did not call him merely physician, but also added Savior.
The second error is when Scaliger says that Eusebius, without any author, declares that the Essaeans drove out diseases in the name of Christ. Eusebius nowhere wrote this, since, as I have said, he followed Philo, who made no mention of the name of Christ; and when he indicates the driving away of diseases, he uses words
[margin: The margin glosses Philo’s “grave and hard-to-heal diseases.”]
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which chiefly signify diseases not of the body but of the soul, as was clear a little earlier from the words of Philo which he explained here.
The ninth conjecture is not Eusebius’s, as Melanchthon carelessly wrote in the cited place, but Suidas’s. The word from which the Hessaei may be called contemplatives can be either שעה, schahah, to which the German schawen is very close, or חזה, chazah. Each means to look or see, but the latter especially does; from it comes the prophecy chazon or hazon, Isaiah 1:1, and prophets are called chozim or hozim, as in 2 Chronicles 9:24, Ezekiel 12:27, 2 Kings 24:13, and chapter 13, verse 16.
The tenth conjecture was proposed by me in the cited passage on the Maccabees. Drusius bites at it, as we shall hear a little later in chapter 2.
The eleventh is often attributed to Philo, in the book On Every Good Man’s Freedom and in the book On the Contemplative Life, and to Eusebius, book 8 of the Preparation for the Gospel, chapter 4. But in fact, in the book On the Contemplative Life, Philo only says that the Essaeans are called therapeutae. He does not state that this is rather the meaning of the Essene name than the name by which those men were then called in Greek in Egypt, without regard to the origin of Essaeus. In the other book, On Freedom, he indeed says that some Essaeans are named from holiness, but he expressly warns, in words almost omitted by the Latin translators, that this notation is not to be sought from the Greek word. These are his words:
[margin: Conjectures 9-11.]
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They are called Essaeans, in my opinion, not according to the exact form of the Greek dialect, but as named from holiness.
Why does Philo warn that he is not looking to this Greek word? Some think the reason is that between Essaeus and the Greek word for holiness there seems to be a great dissimilarity of letters and sound. But the reason is rather that among the Greeks, hosios was then used especially of the one who worshiped the divinity with as many victims and sacrifices as possible. Hence related words were used for one who sacrificed a victim, as Plutarch testifies in On the Failure of Oracles and at the beginning of the Greek Questions. The same is clear from the words which Philo immediately adds: they became especially servants of God, not by sacrificing animals, but by judging that they ought to consecrate their own minds in a sacred manner.
Therefore the twelfth derivation is Philo’s own, when he derives the Essaeans from holiness, not with respect to the Greek word, as has already been proved, but with respect to another. What could this other word be except the Hebrew chasid and the Syriac chesi or hesi? For this reason, elsewhere he simply asserts, according to his own judgment, that they were named from holiness. In his Apology for the Jews he says: “They are called Essaeans, having been judged worthy, it seems to me, of the name because of their surpassing holiness.”