(printed p. 199 — Book III)
There are chiefly two authors from whose monuments the ancient doctrines and institutions of the Essenes can be learned: Josephus Flavius and Philo. But because many have begun in this age to dispute about Philo, and not lightly or mildly, I shall for now bring forward nothing from him, or certainly very little, since he and the questions about him must be discussed separately later. For the present, then:
[margin: On the second and third syllables.]
(printed p. 200)
First, Josephus Flavius says in book 15, chapter 13, that those among us who are called Essenes use a way of life like that shown among the Greeks by Pythagoras. And in book 18, chapter 2, he says that they live not in a wholly different way, but in a way most like those who are spoken of most highly among the Dacians.
Because in these words there are almost Cimmerian shadows, Rufinus passed over them in silence. A new interpreter, however, part of whose first section one of my friends recently brought me to see and use, explained them as referring to the Plistae. But who, pray, are these Plistae? What did Josephus mean by them? What is the sense of his words? Surely none at all; none whatsoever.
Therefore some light must be poured upon such darkness from Herodotus, book 4; Strabo, books 7 and 16; Diogenes Laertius, book 8; and Josephus, book 1 Against Apion. These authors report the Getic or Dacian institutions which Zamolxis, their god, taught those peoples, and that he was the servant and disciple of the philosopher Pythagoras.
Josephus, from the excellent historian Hermippus, relates how Pythagoras associated with the Jews, learned many noble things from them, and transferred them to his own followers. In sense, Josephus says that Pythagoras of Samos, an ancient man held to surpass nearly all philosophers in wisdom and piety toward the divine, not only knew the things among us, but was an eager imitator of them. And afterward: “He did and said these things in imitation of the opinions of Jews and Thracians, and transferred them to himself.” The same is testified by the Pythagorean Numenius in the book On the Good,
[margin: Essenes resemble Pythagoreans.]
(printed p. 201)
and from him Origen in book 1 Against Celsus.
Thus, when in the earlier words Josephus had said that the race of the Essenes followed nearly the same path and way of life which the Pythagoreans held among the Greeks, in the later words he repeats the same thing and says that the Essenes are like very many of the things which are reported and celebrated among the Dacians or Getae. How true this is will become clear afterward from a comparison of opinions and customs.
This comparison would be still more illuminating if, instead of those Plistae, we restored Ctistae, concerning whom Strabo writes in book 7 that certain Thracians live apart from women and are called Ctistae, consecrated and living without fear because they are honored. The sense of Josephus would then be that the Essenes were like those who among the Dacians are called Ctistae, namely celibate and sacred men. Just as Octavius called Masgaba “ktistes” in Suetonius, chapter 98, because he was regarded as the founder of some island or other, so the name Ctistae was imposed on these men either because they were regarded as founders and leaders of some sacred sect and way of life, or because they taught the creation of things, “of the great and primal world,” as Ovid says in book 14 of the Metamorphoses.
Second, Josephus, book 13, chapter 9, says that the sect of the Essenes declares fate to be mistress of all things, and that nothing happens to men except according to its decree. Since this seems difficult, I brought forward two
[margin: Fate acknowledged by the Essenes.]
(printed p. 202)
explanations in book 1 of the Maccabees, chapter 9, folio 736. The later one, which I preferred, was that the name “fate” signifies the perpetual and constant law of God which governs all things, but according to the nature and condition which God has placed in each thing, so that no force is imposed on human free choice.
This same explanation can be confirmed, first, from the fact that in book 2 of The Jewish War, chapter 12, where Josephus most carefully surveys their whole institution, he makes no mention of fate, as I shall say a little later. Second, because in that same place certain things are called autexousia, things left free to them by their ancestors, and much more by God. Third, because in book 18, chapter 2, the same Josephus says that their teaching is to leave all things to God. That Josephus distinguishes between attributing something to fate and attributing it to God can be gathered from book 2 of The Jewish War, chapter 12, where he says that the Pharisees ascribe all things to fate and to God. Fourth, because the sixth book of the Apostolic Constitutions, chapter 6, after naming the Sadducees and Masbotheans and assigning fate to the Pharisees, as I also said above, says: “From all these the Essenes separated themselves, who keep the ancestral rites.” Fifth and finally, because the Pythagoreans established fate in this way, as can be understood from Laertius in the cited book. In this point some likeness between Essenes and Pythagoreans already shines out, and it will shine out in many others.
Third, because Josephus, when dealing with these three
[margin: Essenes concede free choice.]
(printed p. 203)
Jewish sects, often sends the reader to the second book of The Jewish War, chapter 12, which in Rufinus’s Latin is chapter 7, as in book 13, chapters 9 and 18, and book 18, chapter 2, and yet there he says only a few things about the other two sects but very many about the Essenes, it seems highly fitting and useful that this entire description be summoned here. I shall do it, however, in such a way that, for the sake of clearer light, I moderately interrupt, punctuate, and explain the context.
He speaks generally in this way: the race of the Essenes is considered to practice solemnity and reverence more than the other two kinds, namely the Sadducees and Pharisees. Although Rufinus the interpreter scarcely indicates this whole point, it is gathered from the Greek, where he says “the third kind.” Pythagoreans too were once especially credited with semnoprepeia, a solemn dignity of manner.
Fourth, they were Jews by race. Why is Josephus so serious about this? Since he is treating Jewish sects, was there danger that anyone would think the third kind was Romans, Greeks, Persians, or some other people? Or did he rather wish, since he was praising their most noble institution and life, to recall that this glory belonged to his own nation? In this Suidas imitates Josephus. By contrast, when Saint Epiphanius reproaches the Nazarenes in heresy 18, he says that they were Jews by race; he similarly says this of the Osseni in heresy 19.
Fifth, the Essenes embraced one another with mutual love and charity
[margin: From Josephus are reported the institutions of the Essenes. The race of the Essenes. Mutual love among the Essenes.]
(printed p. 204)
beyond even the other sects. For although we saw earlier that the Pharisees are also called lovers of one another by the same Josephus, the Essenes are here said to be lovers of one another beyond the rest; this is declared more fully below by their deeds themselves.
Sixth, they especially abhorred pleasure. They turned away from pleasures as vice. This too the Pythagorean discipline professed. Justin says of Pythagoras in book 20:
He daily praised virtue and scorned the vices of luxury; he recounted the collapses of cities destroyed by this plague. He stirred the multitude to such zeal for frugality that it seemed incredible that some of those who had been luxurious were changed into the best fruit.
In Cicero’s book On Old Age, Cato the Elder praises the very noble speech of the Pythagorean Archytas of Tarentum:
No plague more deadly than bodily pleasure has been given to men by nature; the passions of this pleasure are driven greedily, rashly, and without restraint to possession. From it arise betrayals of fatherland, from it overturnings of commonwealths, from it secret conversations with enemies. In short, there is no crime, no evil deed, to which the lust of pleasure does not impel; rapes, adulteries, and every shameful thing of that kind are aroused by no other enticements than pleasure. Since nature, or some god, has given to man nothing more excellent than mind, nothing is so hostile to this divine gift and endowment as pleasure. When lust rules, temperance has no place; nor can virtue stand at all in the kingdom
[margin: Avoidance of pleasure.]
(printed p. 205)
of pleasure. To make this better understood, he told them to imagine someone excited by as much bodily pleasure as possible. He thought no one would doubt that, so long as he enjoyed such pleasure, he could accomplish nothing with mind, nothing with reason, nothing with thought. Therefore nothing is so detestable and so destructive as pleasure, since, when it is greater and longer lasting, it extinguishes every light of the soul.
Seventh, they are especially devoted to continence and to victory over all disturbances of the passions. They regard self-control and not falling under the passions as virtue. This too is Pythagorean.
Eighth, there was no contracting of marriage among them, but a contempt of marriage. Yet, as Josephus himself will explain a little later, this was not because they despised marriages as evil in themselves, or the procreation and succession that comes from them, but because they preferred to live celibately for two reasons. One was that they thought they must beware of the wantonness and intemperance of women. The other was that they believed no woman kept faith with one husband, according to the common vice of that age, and, as people say, for the most part.
When Ausonius compares the single life with marriage in Pythagorean fashion, he pours out this little verse:
Vain custody is a heavier burden for cautious husbands.
A third reason is added in book 18, chapter 2, that marriage is a cause of dissension. Again, this is to be understood for the most part, and with respect to one
[margin: Continence and struggle against passions. Celibacy.]
(printed p. 206)
particular class of the Essenes themselves, about which Pliny also speaks in book 5, chapter 17: “The race of the Essenes, solitary and wonderful in all the world beyond the rest, without any woman, having renounced all sexual love.” Concerning the other class of them, more will be said later.
Josephus, book 18, chapter 2, and Strabo, book 7, note similar things among certain Getae and Thracians who lived without women. Posidonius reports that for this reason Homer praised them and called them the most just of men without life of luxury.
Strabo himself, however, does not enter into Posidonius’s opinion, being caught by a very small argument: that Menander says the Thracians are most devoted to women. As though virtue is not more admirable and precious where there is such a mass of vices, like a rose among thorns.
Laertius notes that women also followed the sect of Pythagoras, just as will later be said of the Essenes. Justin, in the cited book, says of Pythagoras:
He taught women chastity and obedience toward their husbands, and young men modesty and the study of letters. Among these things he pressed frugality upon all as the mother of virtues. By the persistence of his disputations he achieved that matrons laid aside golden garments and the other ornaments of their rank as instruments of luxury, brought them all into the temple of Juno, and consecrated them to the goddess, declaring that the true adornments of matrons are chastity, not clothes.
Ninth, but if there were no marriages among the Essenes, then there were no children either,
[margin: Certain women followed the Essene institution.]
(printed p. 207)
since they did not use forbidden intercourse, but virtue and the custody of the divine laws flourished among them. From where, then, was their company and multitude sustained? From where did new supplements come when others died? Pliny wonders at this in the place cited: “For thousands of ages, incredible to say, the race is eternal, though no one is born in it.”
But the supplements to them were twofold. One is indicated by Josephus himself. They received the children of other Jews while still tender for instruction, and, as if they were their own blood relatives, trained them in the best disciplines and conformed them to their own customs and institutions. Justin says of Pythagoras in book 20: “He often had separate instruction for matrons apart from men, and for boys apart from parents.”
The other supplement was shown by Pliny. Many adults, and older men, gave themselves voluntarily into their fellowship and life. Some were driven by repentance for their former life, others by the varied tossing of fortune. “Day by day,” says Pliny, “the race itself is reborn from a crowd of newcomers, as life-weary men, driven by the waves of fortune, throng in great numbers to their customs.” And a little later: “So fruitful for them is others’ repentance for life.”
Tenth, they are despisers of riches.
[margin: New births among celibates; children were trained to virtue and religion. Adults were received to better fruit. Contempt of wealth.]
(printed p. 208)
Eleventh, among them there is a marvelous community of goods. Not even one person can be found who surpasses the others in wealth. For it is a law that those who wish to enter that sect must give their property to the order itself, so that it may be common to all. Thus among them all there appears neither the humiliation of poverty nor the superiority of wealth; rather, since everyone’s goods and possessions are mixed together, there is one substance for all as for brothers. Hence the same Josephus says in book 18, chapter 2: “Money is common to them, and the one who was formerly rich does not enjoy his own things and goods more than the one who formerly possessed nothing.” Antiquity especially admired this in the Pythagoreans. Laertius says this once and again, and Justin says:
Three hundred young men, bound by the right of fellowship through a kind of oath, practiced a life separate from the other citizens.
Gellius also says in book 1, chapter 10:
Nor should this be passed over: all who had been received by Pythagoras into that cohort of disciplines gave into the common store whatever each had of household and money. An inseparable society was formed, as if that ancient consortium existed which was called in law, by a Roman word, coenobium.
Twelfth, from this also arises what the same Josephus adds in book 18, chapter 2: they have no possession of slaves, but serve and minister to one another themselves. The reason
[margin: Community of all goods. No slaves.]
(printed p. 209)
is added there, namely that servitude generally brings injustice with it, just as Rabban Gamaliel the Younger says in chapter 2 of Pirke Avoth: Marbeh abadim, marbeh gezel, that is, multiplying servants multiplies robbery.
Thirteenth, from this too it follows that they appoint treasurers and procurators over common things of this kind which pertain to clothing and food. In book 18, chapter 2, Josephus calls them receivers of revenues and providers of necessities; in book 2, chapter 12, overseers and guardians. In both places he indicates that they presided over all and had authority over all. He says also that they were chosen by vote, men of proved character and priests. More about them below.
Fourteenth, such was their austerity of life that they regarded oil as a stain and disgrace; if someone was anointed even unwillingly, he immediately wiped it off.
Fifteenth, they used white garments. Diogenes says of Pythagoras that his robe was white and clean, and later he commanded the same concerning garments and cleanliness. The reason seems to be added afterward: that white is of a good nature, black of an evil one. See also Strabo in the cited place.
But Josephus adds that the dress of the Essaeans was like that which boys under a pedagogue and in training are accustomed to have: modest and simple. Therefore there is a very obscure corruption in Rufinus; it must be corrected or clarified in this way:
[margin: Stewards of necessary goods. Not anointed with oil. Clothed in white. Their dress was modest and boylike.]
(printed p. 210)
the care of clothing and of the body was such among all as is fitting for boys living under the fear and care of a teacher.
Sixteenth, when they had begun to use clothes or shoes of the sort just described, they neither changed nor laid them aside until they had been thoroughly worn out by use or time.
Seventeenth, they lived not in one city or place only, but in several; indeed the same author says that many lived in every city. Perhaps there was such a great number of them at Jerusalem that one gate was named from them, the Gate of the Essenes, as Josephus narrates in The Jewish War, book 5, chapter 13. Pliny says in book 5, chapter 17: “On the western shore of Lake Asphaltites are the Essenes, who flee harmful things everywhere.” Josephus reports in book 18, chapter 2, that there were more than four thousand of them in Judea alone, and Philo agrees with him, as will be said below.
Eighteenth, hospitality among them was very great, when men of the same heresy or society came from one place to another. For as soon as strangers arrived at a dwelling, the things necessary for them immediately hastened to them as if they were their own; and they approached men whom they had never seen before as if they were most familiar friends. In every city one distinguished person from the order itself was chosen to have care of travelers and to bring out clothes and all necessities for them.
[margin: No changes of clothes. Where the Essenes lived. Hospitality.]
(printed p. 211)
Nineteenth, this is why they generally made journeys without provisions and carried absolutely nothing with them. They did, however, carry weapons because of robbers, whose great abundance in those regions is clear from the history of Herod and of certain governors.
Twentieth, there was no buying or selling among them. Each person receives without any price the things he needs from another, and they have unrestricted sharing without exchange from whomever they wish.
I shall quote once from Solinus, chapter 36, concerning them:
The Essenes hold the interior parts of Judea; endowed with a memorable discipline, they withdrew from the custom of all nations, appointed, as I think, by the providence of majesty for this way of life. There are no women there. They have utterly renounced sexual love. They do not know money. They live on palms. No one is born there, and yet the multitude of people there does not fail. The place itself has been added to chastity. Although many from every nation hurry there, no one is admitted unless faith in chastity and the merit of innocence accompany him. For anyone guilty of even the lightest fault, even if he wishes with utmost effort to gain entrance, is kept away by divine warning. Thus, over an immense span of ages, incredible to say, the race is eternal though births cease.
Twenty-first, toward the divinity they are religious or pious in a particular way. Since, as I said above, they took their name from piety, Josephus then proceeds
[margin: They travel without provisions. No buying and selling. Religious.]
(printed p. 212)
to explain this more fully, and indeed from their daily studies and works, as follows.
Twenty-second, before the sun rises, they dare to speak nothing profane. Instead, they recite certain ancestral prayers to the sun itself, as if supplicating it to rise.
When I say that these prayers were addressed to the sun, I take this from Josephus’s Greek, as I do certain other things from time to time; for when Josephus had meant the divinity, he added not “to it” but “to him,” that is, to the sun. But from this a doubt not undeservedly arises: what did these prayers to the sun mean? Was the sun a god for the Essenes? This certainly seems possible either from the opinion of Pythagoras, which Laertius says held that the sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies were gods, or even more clearly from the fact that Josephus afterward narrates that when they wished to relieve the body, they did it so secretly and carefully as not to violate the rays of God himself or treat them with injury. Rufinus translates this less clearly as “so that they might not injure the divine splendor.”
If some Gentile writer, not Josephus the Jew, had written this, I would join him with that satirist who wrote falsely and calumniously about the whole Jewish race:
Some, having happened upon a father who feared the Sabbath, worship nothing as deity except clouds and sky.
Now I say rather that these men did not truly and properly pray to the sun, but only to God, the author
[margin: Prayers before dawn.]
(printed p. 213)
and governor of the sun. They uttered certain hymns in which, by personification, they addressed the sun so that it might rise happily and favorably for all, in the way that those most holy youths say in Daniel 3, “Sun and moon, bless the Lord,” and David says in Psalm 148, “Praise him, sun and moon.” For this reason Josephus did not say “supplicating” but “as if supplicating.” Or, to say prayers to the sun is nothing other than to pray toward the east, that is, with the face turned toward the sun, as will be said below from Philo.
When Josephus speaks of the rays of God, he indeed means the rays of the sun, but rays which God gives; or else he calls the sun “God” improperly, just as some sometimes call a very excellent thing both divine and a god. It can also be that, from the material sun, they raised their mind higher to the true and eternal sun, who is God, the best and greatest. In this sense the Church also sings:
Light of light and source of light, day enlightening day, true sun, glide in, flashing with perpetual brightness.
And again:
Shine, you light, upon our senses, and shake sleep from the mind.
Why should I labor over Pythagoras, who mixed many false and evil things with the good and true? Saint Jerome says concerning those whom Ezekiel rebukes in chapter 8: “They adored the rising sun because, having despised the Lord, that is, the Creator, they adored the sun, that is, the Lord’s creature.”
Twenty-third, after the morning prayers, each man is dismissed by the overseers, or curators, mentioned above, to the crafts
[margin: Morning work nearly until midday.]
(printed p. 214)
which each knows. Since these crafts are not only agriculture, what Josephus also says in book 18, chapter 2, that the whole of their labor is directed to farming, seems to be taken with respect to the greater part of them. Thus divided, they work steadily until the fifth hour of the day, which today is our eleventh hour before noon.
Twenty-fourth, afterward they come together again into one place; girded with linen coverings, they wash their bodies in cold waters, so that there may be a kind of purification and lustration. Pythagoras also spoke of purifications and of washings in certain sprinkled places, and wished everyone to make themselves pure from funeral, bed, and every defilement, as Laertius writes.
Twenty-fifth, after that purification they go together into a particular dwelling, into which almost no one who belongs to another sect is permitted to enter. They themselves, pure and with pure garments, enter the dining room as though entering a certain sacred temple.
Twenty-sixth, in the dining room, once they had silently and quietly sat in order, the baker set loaves before them, and the cook set before each a dish of one kind of food.
[margin: They wash with water. They dine. They eat frugally.]
(printed p. 215)
Twenty-seventh, before the meal the priest poured forth prayers, and it was unlawful to taste the food before the prayer.
Twenty-eighth, after they had dined, the priest prayed again. Thus both beginning and ending the taking of food, they venerate God as the giver of nourishment.
Twenty-ninth, they then lay aside the pure or sacred garments and return again to their work until the evening twilight.
Thirtieth, having returned home from labor, they dine in the same manner as was said of lunch. If any traveling guests had meanwhile arrived, they sit together with them. Philastrius also writes about their frugal food and other matters, but his words will be brought forward together elsewhere. Laertius, Ovid in book 15 of the Metamorphoses, and Strabo, book 8, have many things about the temperance of the Pythagoreans, their spare diet, and their drinking of pure water.
Thirty-first, silence was of great concern among them. Noise never disturbs the house, never tumult. Who does not know the five-year silence of the Pythagoreans? So much so that the learned men trained in silence, whose name was echemythia, are called by Gellius, book 1, chapter 9, and by Ovid in book 15 of the Metamorphoses, a silent company.
Pythagoras said that, as one should not indulge grief, so neither should one indulge laughter; and he himself kept away from laughter,
[margin: They pray before eating and after eating. They return to manual work in the afternoon. They dine. Silence. Pythagoras restrained laughter.]
(printed p. 216)
from every act of pleasing others, from jokes, and from vulgar tales, as Laertius says. Hence in Ausonius’s idyll, by daily self-examination, that good and wise Pythagorean man examines:
Was anyone struck by your word, your final phrase, or even by your face?
The Essenes grant conversation to one another in order; and to those who come from elsewhere, the silence within appears like some venerable mystery. The cause of this is perpetual sobriety and the measured taking of food and drink, up to satisfaction.
Thirty-second, there is nothing they do except by command of the overseers or curators. Only these two things among them were free: to bring help to others and to pity them. For it is permitted to aid those who are worthy, when asked, and to offer food to the needy according to one’s strength.
Thirty-third, it is not permitted to give anything to relatives without the permission of the curators.
Thirty-fourth, they are just dispensers of anger, restrainers of the soul, guardians of faith, and ministers of peace. Whatever is said by them is stronger than an oath. Swearing is avoided by them, and they think it worse than perjury. For they say that the man who is not believed without God has already been condemned. This too was among the precepts of Pythagoras: not to swear by the gods, but to train oneself to be worthy of trust; and justice is an oath, and for that reason one should speak by justice rather than by an oath.
Thirty-fifth, they are intensely occupied with and study the commentaries of the ancients,
[margin: Obedience. No absolute ownership. Gentle and self-controlled. They do not swear. They read books.]
(printed p. 217)
applying selection to what pertains to the usefulness both of body and of soul. Hence they investigate healthful roots and the properties of stones for the curing of diseases. Concerning those books which benefit the soul, more will be said later.
Thirty-sixth, to those who desire to be joined to their society, who are called neosystatoi, as it were novices, access does not immediately lie open. Rather, they have a notable four-year probation.
In the first year they set before the man, while he remains outside, the way of life that has so far been described. They also give him, for the use to be explained later, a small axe, and, for the purifications mentioned earlier, a girdle and a white garment of the sort which they are accustomed to have.
When the one being tested has in this way given a specimen of continence for one year, he comes nearer to the customary way of life and becomes a participant in purer waters for purification. Yet even so he is not yet admitted to the common meal. He tests the institution for two further years, and when he has been found worthy, only then is he enrolled into the community. How, after much examination, men were admitted among the Pythagoreans either to discussion or to seeing Pythagoras can be learned either from what was already said from Gellius or from Laertius.
Thirty-seventh, before the same man touches the common food, he binds himself by terrifying oaths.
[margin: Novices are tested for four years.]
(printed p. 218)
These are as follows. First, he swears that he will worship the divinity piously and religiously.
Second, that he will guard what is just toward human beings and will harm them neither willingly and of his own mind nor by anyone else’s command.
Third, that he will always pursue the wicked with hatred and fight for the just.
Fourth, that he will always show what faith requires to all, especially to those who preside and possess authority, for it happens to no one to preside and command except by God.
Fifth, if it should happen that he himself presides and commands, he will never contrive any injustice against magistrates, nor will he display himself above his subjects more splendidly by broader clothing or any ornament.
Sixth, that he will always love truth and try to expose liars.
Seventh, that he will keep his hands pure from theft and his soul from every profane gain.
Eighth, that he will conceal nothing from the companions of the same sect.
Ninth, that he will reveal none of the things which are secret among them to anyone, even if force should be applied to him unto death.
Tenth, they also swear that they will hand down their doctrines to no one in any other way than each received them, lest those doctrines be gradually corrupted and polluted by various later commentaries.
Eleventh, that he will abstain from robbery.
Twelfth, that he will similarly preserve the books of those who belong to their sect, and also the names of the angels.
[margin: The twelve proper oaths of the sect.]
(printed p. 219)
By these oaths, then, they bind those who come to them so that they may be firm. I mentioned above from Justin the Pythagorean oath.
Thirty-eighth, if any men of that society should happen to sin and commit something worthy of a heavier penalty, they expel them from the order itself. The one expelled in this way is usually destroyed by a most wretched death. Bound by the oaths and institutions already mentioned, he cannot take any of the food which exists among those men; but feeding on herbs and wasting away in his whole body from hunger, he perishes. For this reason they have received many back almost at their last breath, judging that they had paid sufficient penalties for their sins up to death.
The Pythagoreans called those who had departed from the way of their discipline dead, and raised a cenotaph for them even though they were alive and breathing, as Origen teaches in book 2 Against Celsus, Clement of Alexandria in book 5 of the Stromata, and Theodorus Canterus, from both and from others, in book 1 of Various Readings, chapter 12. Thus a deserter of the Pythagorean family, speaking from such a grave, was rightly introduced recently by a certain friend of mine:
Pythagoras buried an immortal soul without mind, a body without breast, and a head enclosed by an empty brain; because I scorned being human, separated from the forces of wisdom, which alone gives mind, breast, and brain.
Thirty-ninth, they are most exact and just in judgments. They do not judge if fewer than one hundred
[margin: Those who offend are punished. Essenes are careful judges.]
(printed p. 220)
judges are present. What is once decided by them remains fixed and immovable.
Fortieth, after God, the name of the lawgiver is in great veneration among them. If anyone says anything insulting against him, he is punished with death.
Forty-first, they regard it as noble to obey elders and many others. Therefore if ten sat together, no one would speak when the other nine were unwilling. Pythagoras says in Laertius that one must honor one’s elders.
Forty-second, they avoid spitting among others or to the right side.
Forty-third, they take the greatest pains of all Jews not to do any work on Sabbaths. For they not only prepare foods on the preceding day, whence the day before the Sabbath is called Preparation, but on the Sabbath itself they do not dare even to kindle a fire, or transfer any vessel, or go to the privy.
Forty-fourth, since mention has been made of the privy, on other days they conduct themselves in this matter as follows. With that little axe which I mentioned above among the novices, they dig a hole one foot deep and cover themselves round about with the garment so that they do not injure the rays of God; and thus they sit over the hole. Then they draw the dug-out earth back into the pit. They do this in the most hidden places they can choose.
[margin: They venerate their lawgiver. Their excellent obedience. They love decorum. They observe the Sabbath. They serve bodily necessity with great modesty.]
(printed p. 221)
And although that ejection of bodily filth is natural, afterward they nevertheless wash themselves as though defiled.
They had taken up this modesty, even in natural and shameful necessities, from Deuteronomy 23:12, where the Lord commands:
You shall have a place outside the camp to which you may go out for the necessity of nature, carrying a little spade on your belt. When you sit down, you shall dig around and cover with earth what has been discharged, by which you have been relieved. For the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, to rescue you and hand your enemies over to you. Therefore your camp shall be holy, and no foulness shall appear in it, lest he abandon you.
From this it is clear, as I said above, that this reverence was shown to the sun’s rays not because they believed that animated sun to be God, but because God, the author and maker of it, pours those most pure and clear rays down to the earth.
And although there is room here for what one of the ancients said, that the sun contracts no uncleanness from latrines, Cicero nevertheless thought that even this matter should be treated among duties. He says:
The things which nature has hidden, all who are of sound mind remove from the eyes, and they labor to obey that necessity as secretly as possible. The parts whose uses are necessary, and their uses themselves, they do not call by their own names.
[margin: Deuteronomy 23:12 is cited to explain their bodily modesty.]
(printed p. 222)
From this the Moreh Nebuchim drew a conjecture why the Hebrew language is rightly called holy: because in it there are not found words which express the obscene male and female members, or coitus, urination, and evacuation of the belly, except by circumlocution. What shall I say of the symbol of Pythagoras, “do not wipe the seat with a torch”? Certainly in Horapollo, book 2, chapter 67, after a monkey urinates, it conceals its urine.
Forty-fifth, according to a longer time in the exercise or institution of that life, they are divided into four parts. Those who have come later to it are so much inferior to those before them that, if the earlier are touched by them, the earlier wash themselves as if they had run into someone from outside.
Forty-sixth, they are longer-lived; and, to keep the Greek word, macrobiotai, so much so that many extend their life beyond the hundredth year. This, in my judgment, is because of the simplicity of their diet and their good order.
Forty-seventh, they are despisers of things that seem bitter and conquer even pains by their souls.
Forty-eighth, they consider death, if it comes with honor and glory, better than immortality, as experience showed in the Jewish war against the Romans. In that war they were tortured, twisted and bent back like withes, burned, and broken; they went through every instrument of butchery, so that they would not either afflict the name of the lawgiver with any insult or eat foods contrary to their institution. Nor did they refuse to endure anything else;
[margin: Order among themselves. Long-lived. Brave in adversity. They meet death nobly. Source page 247 ends mid-sentence.]
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yet they did not wish to flatter even a little, or to weep before, those who were crucifying them. Rather, amid the torments they laughed, mocked those who inflicted the tortures, and cheerfully and gladly gave up their souls, as though they were about to receive them again.
Forty-ninth, for this opinion had been confirmed among them: that bodies are subject to decay, and that matter is not firm and constant, but that souls always remain immortal. When souls come from the most subtle ether, they are entangled in bodies as in certain prisons, drawn there by a wonderful natural love. But after they have been released from the bonds of flesh, as though freed from a long servitude, then they rejoice and are borne aloft.
For good souls, agreeing in this with certain Greeks, they affirm that life is laid up beyond the Ocean, in a place burdened neither by rains, nor snows, nor heats, but refreshed by the perpetual breathing of a gentle west wind. For wicked souls they appoint a dark and stormy cavern, overflowing with punishments that will never cease.
And these are the things the Essenes theologize about the soul, setting before those who have once tasted their wisdom an unavoidable bait. So Josephus, book 18, chapter 2: they affirm the souls to be immortal, judging the gain of justice to be a prize worth contending for. Pythagoras sings in the poet already praised: Souls lack death. And in Laertius:
[margin: They believe souls are immortal.]
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purified souls are led to the highest place; the impure neither approach them nor one another, but are bound by the Erinyes with unbreakable bonds. Hence, from the doctrine of Zalmoxis, the Thracians in Herodotus, in the passage already cited, called themselves athanatizontes, that is, those who make themselves immortal.
Fiftieth, there are among them men who promise to foreknow future events, since they are constantly occupied with sacred books, various purifications, and the sayings or apophthegms of the prophets. It is rare for any one of them to miss the mark in predictions. Illustrious examples of this are found in the same Josephus: Judas the Essene in book 13, chapter 19, and likewise Menahem the Essene in book 15, chapter 13.
Porphyry also mentions the Essenes who were in Judea. These are the words of Saint Cyril, book 5 against Julian; and Porphyry speaks of them in this way: from that manner of living and from their training in truth and piety, they deservedly, amid those books, various purifications, and the responses of the prophets, rarely erred in predictions.
Fifty-first, there is also another order of Essenes, which agrees with the former in manner of life, morals, and customs, but differs from them in one opinion concerning marriage. They think that celibates, who do not enter marriage, cut off the greatest part of life, namely the succession of children; and much more, that the human race would very quickly fail if everyone followed that opinion of omitting marriage.
[margin: Prophecy. Other Essenes marry.]
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Fifty-second, nevertheless these men test their brides for three years. When the women have been purified three times, in order to determine whether they are able to bear children, then they marry them.
Fifty-third, they do not have intercourse with pregnant women, thereby showing that they approach marriage not for pleasure but because children are necessary.
Fifty-fourth, just as it has been said that the men bathe wearing a linen covering, so also the women bathed wrapped in tunics.
Fifty-fifth, Josephus, book 18, chapter 2: They do send offerings into the temple, but they do not perform sacrifices, because of the excellence of the purifications which they have prescribed. For this reason they are kept away from the common temple and perform sacrifices apart, though in other respects they are men of the best morals. Laertius relates that Pythagoras’s sacrifices were bloodless, and finally says of him that he forbade the offering of slain victims to the gods and allowed reverence only at an unbloody altar.
Fifty-sixth, Philastrius says: Not expecting Christ the Lord, the Son of God, nor recognizing him as Lord announced in the Law and the Prophets, but expecting him as only some prophet or righteous man, they did not receive him. This, of course, must be understood of those who, after the coming of Christ the Lord, did not receive him, but persisted in their blind Judaism. We shall speak of them later.
[margin: Conjugal continence. Women’s modesty. Their relation to the temple. They did not receive Christ the Lord.]
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