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Updated: April 30, 2025
Pliny the elder, who lived A.D. 23-79, made the following reference to the Essenes, which is especially interesting because of the tone of sadness and weariness with the world suggested in its praise of this Jewish sect.
There were what we Romans called the thaumaturgi. They worked miracles to prove doctrine. Ever has it seemed to me a witless thing to prove the multiplication table by turning a staff into a serpent, or even into two serpents. Yet these things the thaumaturgi did, and always to the excitement of the common people. Heavens, what sects and sects! Pharisees, Essenes, Sadducees a legion of them!
But in process of time, persons of this description at first retired into deserts, and afterwards formed themselves into associations, after the manner of the Essenes and Therapeutae. "The causes of this institution are at hand.
Yes, he had said, we must look upon all sacrifice as naught if we would obtain our ancient kingdom and language. But the Essenes have never spoken like that, Nicodemus urged: he is not an Essene, nor Moses, nor Elijah, nor Jeremiah. He is none of these: he is Judas Maccabeus come to life again: and henceforth I shall look upon myself as his disciple.
Thus the Ineffable Name itself, of which we have been discoursing, is said to have been preserved in its true pronunciation by the Essenes, who, in their secret rites, communicated it to each other only in a whisper, and in such form, that while its component parts were known, they were so separated as to make the whole word a mystery.
It was no doubt the bell for morning prayer: and only half awake he repaired with the other proselytes to the part of the village open to the sunrise. All the Essenes were assembled there, and he learnt that they looked upon this prayer of thanksgiving for the return of light as the important event of the day. He joined in it, though he suspected a certain idolatry in the prayer.
If the law was true once, it was true always, for the law was the mind and spirit and essence of God. That is, he continued, the law spiritually understood; for there are those among us Essenes who have gone beyond the letter.
"Before ever they could burst the door the stone trap beneath can be closed and the roof of the stair that leads to it let down by knocking away the props and flooded in such a fashion that a week of labour would not clear it out again. Oh! have no fear, the Essenes know and have guarded against this danger." Miriam threw her arms about the neck of Nehushta and kissed her.
Then, having pledged him to be faithful to her trust, not by oath, which the Essenes held unlawful, but in accordance with their secret custom which was known to her, she took from her hand the ring that Marcus had sent her, bidding him find out the Essenes, and, if their Roman prisoner was yet alive, and among them, to deliver it to him with a message telling him of her fate and whither she had gone.
The most remarkable and enduring effect of Hellenic influence in Palestine was the rise of the sect of Essenes, Jewish mystics, who eschewed private property and the general social life, and forming themselves into communistic congregations which were a sort of social Utopia, devoted their lives to the cult of piety and saintliness.
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