THE BUILDER MAY 1927

THE ESSENES
BY BRO. L.F. STRAUSS, MASSACHUSETTS

THE attempt to make out a connection of the Essenes with
Freemasonry was a favorite one with the older writers on the
origins of the Craft. The majority of students have, however, now
abandoned it. A peculiar interest attaches to the present article,
in that it was written before Prof. Strauss became a Mason. It will
be followed by another written after that event. The fact that this
hypothesis occurred to him while still in ignorance that it had
ever been advanced before, shows at least its plausibility; and he
develops certain arguments that so far as we know have scarcely
been mentioned hitherto, so that even to those who have made up
their minds on the subject his presentation will not be without
interest.

WHO were the Essenes? The Encyclopedia Britannica gives us quite a
learned disquisition on the subject. We find here stated that the
Essenes were a monastic order among the Jews prior to Christianity,
that the first reference to them in history is in the time of
Jonathan the Maccabee, that how much older they were, we have no
means of knowing and that authorities agree in assigning to them a
dateless antiquity.

It is very surprising that the Essenes, whose exemplary virtues
elicited the admiration of even the Greeks and Romans and whose
doctrines contributed so materially to the spirit of Christianity,
should be so little known to intelligent Christians and still less
to modern Jews, although in more respects than one the Essenic
community constituted the choicest fruit grown on the pre-Christian
tree of Judaism.

The current information upon this remarkable sect, or order of
Judaism, is derived from the short notices of Philo, Josephus,
Pliny, Solinus, Porphyry, Eusebius, Epiphanius. But the combined
testimony of these seven witnesses is utterly inadequate, confusing
and misleading. Their testimonies are too much tainted with the
predilections of the respective witnesses to correspond to reality.
Even the testimonies of Philo and Josephus upon whose testimonies
those of the others are based, are misleading to those who fail to
recognize the peculiar position in which these two witnesses were
placed.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

Josephus wanted to please Roman ears, Philo the Greek mind. The
account of the Essenes given by Philo supplemented by his work De
vita Contemplativa was used by some church historians to claim
Philo as a Christian, while some Jewish historians throw out the
book as spurious, as a Christian interpolation to make Philo appear
as one of them.

The descriptions, dissertations and conclusions found in church
histories and encyclopedias are confusing indeed. The writers are
either afraid of, or specially pleased with the marked resemblance
between Christian and Essenic doctrines and practices. The
rationalists' tendency is to magnify the resemblance in order to
make Christianity an offshoot of Essenism. The Christian writers,
afraid of this very thing, are anxious to make the resemblance
appear as insignificant as possible. There was even a very learned
Englishman, De Quincy, who wrote on this subject and maintained
with logic unsurpassed that the Essenes were never anything else
but Christian missionaries.

The Encyclopedia Britannica arrives at this conclusion:

Christianity was to some extent a popularization of Essenism, but
there is little reason for believing that Jesus Himself was an
Essene.

while the final conclusion of the Catholic Encyclopedia is that our
present knowledge of the Essenes is slight and not all of it
trustworthy, its sources being scanty, colored and unreliable.

On the other hand, as might be expected, Freemasonry has shown a
predilection for Essenic forms and culture and if the archives of
the beginning of Freemasonry could be searched, some highly
interesting things would come to view.

The Jewish Encyclopedia gives us glimpses of the inside,
intelligible and valuable to him who has some previous knowledge of
this inside, and concludes thus:

The similarity in many respects between Christianity and Essenism
is striking. There were the same communions (Acts 60: 34, 35), the
same belief in baptism or bathing and in the power of prophecy, the
same aversion to marriage enhanced by firmer belief in the
Messianic advent, the same system of organization and the same
rules for the traveling brethren delegated to charity work and
above all the same love feasts or brotherly meals; also between the
ethical and apocalyptical teachings of the Essenes of the time as
given in Philo, in Hypolytus and in the Ethiopic and Slavonic Book
of Enoch as well as in the rabbinical literature, the resemblance
is such that the influence of the latter upon the former cannot be
denied. Nevertheless the attitude of Jesus and his disciples is
altogether anti-Essene, a denunciation and disavowal of Essene
rigor and asceticism: but singularly enough while the Roman war
appealed to men of action such as the Zealots, men of a more
powerful and visionary nature who had previously become Essenes
were more and more attracted by Christianity and thereby gave the
church its other-worldly character, while Judaism took a more
practical and worldly view of things and allowed Essenes to live
only in tradition and secret lore.

The history of the Essenes should be of deep interest to every
thoughtful Christian, for it gives him a glimpse of the forces
operating before and during the so-called Apostolic period, and as
this order of Essenes represents that section of Judaism from which
were drawn a large number of propagandists of the New-Jewish or
Christian faith, it furnished thousands of heroes who gave their
lives in spreading the message of the Messiah. It is to be hoped
that the memory of their glorious deeds may help to kindle a new
fire in the hearts of the Jews of today and bring a realization of
the fact that in accepting Joshua ben Joseph as their Messiah they
follow no strange gods, that they adopt no alien religion. Our
intention here is to give an impartial account and show something
of the inner life of the most marvelous organizations that ever
existed upon this our planet.

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ESSENES

In outward appearance the Essenic community closely resembled a
Christian monastic order. An applicant for membership had to pass
through a novitiate of three years. He had to put his belongings
into a common stock (he received his belongings back, if either he
or those in charge considered his enrollment as a member
inexpedient). He then was given a book in which were the rules and
regulations of the community. Before becoming a full-fledged
member, he had to bind himself by an oath or rather solemn pledge
to three things, love of God and man, charity and humility. The
community was divided into three sections and each of these three
sections was again subdivided into four distinct orders. There also
was an inner or spiritual division of eight degrees or stages or
spiritual unfoldment.

First stage:--Baptism--outward purity.
Second Stage :--Practice of celibacy. 
Third Stage :--Spiritual purity, freedom from carnal desires.
Fourth Stage :--Humility.
Fifth stage :--Communion with Shekinah, or Holy Spirit
Sixth stage :--The gift of prophecy.
Seventh stage:--Healing the sick, performing miracles raising the
dead.
Eighth stage:--Eliahship, which meant to become the forerunner of
the Messiah.

This constituted the final and highest aspiration of every member
of the Essenic Order. This hope of becoming the forerunner of the
Messiah was the magnet which had drawn the novice to the entrance
gate and remained ever after his star of hope. What a luminous ray
is here shed on some seemingly so mysterious statements in the New
Testament. Now we understand why Jesus speaks of John the Baptist
as Elias or an Elias. We are here given to understand that the
highest expectations of the Essenic Order had been realized, that
one of its members had reached the eighth stage of spirituality and
holiness and had been found worthy to become the forerunner of the
promised Messiah, of introducing him to a waiting world. The
traditional law of the Chasidim--rabbinical and popular name for
the Essenic Order--had the figure of Elias as a symbol connected
with its Messianic expectations, whence it entered traditional
lore. It may be of interest here to Christian readers and to the
"modern" American Jew that on the first and second night of the
Passover a special invitation is given to the prophet Elias, that
according to custom the door is opened for his entrance and that a
glass of wine is set aside and left over night for the delection of
"Elia Nabi."

EXPECTATIONS OF THE MESSIAH

There is another very important point of deep significance in
connection with the Essenic Order. Most Christians are under the
impression that all the Jews expected the coming Messiah to be a
great king, who was to free them from the dominion of Rome and
establish the political and religious supremacy of the Jewish
nation. A large majority of the Jews undoubtedly held this view. It
is so natural to identify the hope and aspirations of our own
nationality with the good of humanity and even with the honor and
glory of God. The recent war is a vivid illustration of this fact.
Here, as in many things, the Chasidim or Essenes were an exception.
They expected a suffering Messiah. Whence came that knowledge? From
the same source or power which had revealed to them the
heliocentric theory. The utter defeat, the ignominious death, the
cross, such a stumbling block to the great majority of the Jewish
people, was a luminous magnet to those initiated into the Essenic
mysteries.

It is amusing indeed to read some of the "learned" controversies of
the "higher critics" on the subject of the Essenes. Most of the
erudite linguists, philosophers and the theologians expend so much
of their energies over the etymology of the name Essene that they
seem to have exhausted their mental acumen when they arrive at the
work and mission of the Essenic Brotherhood. Some Christian
writers, seemingly in fear of a something which they themselves
could not explain, exhibit a good deal of ingenuity in their
efforts to prove the Essenes were in reality nothing but
Christians, and that the Therapeutae (next to the highest and best
known section of the Essenic Order) were nothing else than a
Christian community. Some Jewish writers on the other hand, wishing
to free the Essenes from blame and to rescue them from any
responsibility for Christian doctrines and ideals, deny all
connections between Essenism and Christianity. There was especially
a theologian and critic, Bishop Lightfoot, a recognized authority
whose mental acumen is marvelous indeed, but he reminds us of a man
in a dense wood looking for a forest. Listen to his words:

In the history of the infant church for the first quarter of a
century, Essenism is as though it was not, but the time came when
this was all changed. Even as early as the year fifty eight, when
St. Paul wrote to the Romans, we detect practices in the Christian
community of the metropolis which may possibly have been due to
Essenic influence. Four or six years later, the heretical teachings
which threatened the integrity of the Gospel at Collossa shows that
this type of Judaism was already strong enough within the church to
exert a dangerous influence on its doctrinal purity.


Lightfoot was indeed a great scholar and theologian. He was good in
deciphering and describing the outside, but the spiritual aspect of
life was to him a terra incognita.

JAMES THE APOSTLE AN ESSENE

The oldest document of the Christian church is the Epistle of
James, brother of Jesus--a remarkable document and from a
psychological and historical standpoint, the most instructive. Some
very strange controversies have arisen in connection with this
epistle. It may be of interest to Christian readers that this
Epistle of James is claimed by high Jewish authorities as a Hebrew
document, as a letter written by a Jew to fellow Jews, as an
admonition of an "Essenic abbot" or superintendent to Essenic
associations and that references in this epistle to Jesus or Christ
are a Christian interpolation. Says the Jewish Encyclopedia [Vol.
7, page 68]:

The writer is supposed to be James, the brother of Jesus, on which
account the epistle was accorded the first place among the general
epistles of the New Testament. As a matter of fact, aside from the
reference to Jesus Christ as quoted above and in II-I where the
word Jesus Christ are obviously an interpolation, the epistle
contains nothing to indicate a Christian origin. It comprises
loosely joined together, a number of moral sayings which have their
parallels in contemporary Jewish writings and there is no reason
for holding that the brethren addressed may not have been Jews of
a particular frame of mind, pious and humble as were the Essenes,
who formed a strong Brotherhood in Diaspora.

The writer then goes on to take great pains to show parallel points
in Jewish rabbinical or rather Essenic literature.

The most significant feature in this epistle from the historical
and psychological standpoint is the use of the word sunagogo in
place of the later ekklesia, and the figures of Job and Elias
quoted as patterns. These figures are the main two models of the
Essenic Brotherhood. Another point is here of interest: the word
sunagogo, quite often met with in the Acts, is always translated
synagogue, which term is supposed to mean a Jewish "Meetinghouse."
In this epistle the "Meetinghouse" of the brethren is called
sunagogo but most translators reject the usual rendering and use
the term assembly. This holds good in all German and French Bibles
I could find. What is the objection in the mind of the translator
to the word synagogue ? The significant feature here is this, that
the time when the Epistle of James was written, the term for a
Jewish and Christian meeting-house was still the same.

CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM NOT INCOMPATIBLE

The writer of the Jewish Encyclopedia is correct in pointing out
the distinctly Jewish-Essenic character of the Epistle of James,
but has absolutely no foundation and he gives no reason for making
the references to Jesus or Christ a Christian interpolation. What
could have been the purpose, the end sought by such a forgery?
Again, why so much erudition and keen analysis in proving that the
Epistle of James, the brother of Jesus, shows Jewish
characteristics? No one ever denied that James the brother of Jesus
was a Jew. The writer, however, in the Jewish Encyclopedia shows
this much, that here was no irreconcilable difference in the first
century of the Christian era between the aspirations of a pious Jew
and those of a Christian teacher. He shows furthermore that a Jew
could then and can now accept Joshua ben Joseph as the Messiah and
preserve the Jewish imprint of his personality. It is also correct
when it points out the Essenic strain in this epistle. But does
this indicate anything else than that the Essenic Order which
according to the Jewish Encyclopedia represented the highest type
of Judaism had become a vehicle, an agency for New Jewish, that is
Christian propaganda (Christians of the first century were called
New Jews by Greek and Roman writers) ?

THE EARLIEST CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS

The second oldest Christian document is a book usually called
Didache. This book is extensively quoted by the patristic writers
or church fathers. From it the so-called Apostolic Constitution,
the Didascalia and the entire so-called Clementine literature was
constructed. This book, the Didache, had been lost and was
rediscovered in Constantinople in 1873. The re-discovery created
quite a sensation among Christian theologians and made the pens of
the "higher critics" very busy. Professor Harnack, the great German
theologian, in the year 1883 wrote a very learned dissertation and
employed a wonderful logical acumen--"and still the wonder grew
that one small head could contain all he knew"--and proved
conclusively that the Didache had a Christian origin. In the year
1895, he wrote again; he gave to the world another dissertation, a
most wonderful erudite analysis of the composition and the
psychological aspects involved in the new discovery. He showed
again with logic unsurpassed that the Didache had a Jewish origin.
The great Harnack, without knowing it, was correct in both cases.
He was right when he said the Didache had a Christian origin. He
was right again when he said it had a Jewish origin; the writers of
the Didache were Essenes, Jews, who had accepted Joshua ben Joseph
as their Messiah.

The Jewish Encyclopedia on the other hand sees one side only. Here
we find, speaking of the Didache,

A manual of instruction for proselytes adopted from the synagogue
by early Christianity and transformed by alterations into a church
manual.

The writer lays great emphasis on the admission by Harnack, Charles
Taylor and other theological lights of the "higher critics"
fraternity that this Didache, the oldest and most important
Christian document, had a distinctly Jewish origin, and was later
converted into a Christian manual and ascribed to Jesus and the
Apostles.

The characteristic feature of this manual is as a matter of course
Essenic. One fact stands out clear and distinct that when and
wherever Jewish influence makes itself felt in the establishment of
Christianity in the foundations of its doctrines, we see the hands
and the minds of the brethren of the Order of ESSENES--an order,
the highest aim of whose members from its beginning was to reach
the stage of Eliaship, that is, to become the forerunner of the
Messiah.
