Part 119 (1/2)
The similarity of the sentiments of the Essenes, or Therapeutae, to those of the Church of Rome, induced the learned Jesuit, Nicolaus Serarius, to seek for them an honorable origin. He contended therefore, that they were Asideans, and derived them from the Rechabites, described so circ.u.mstantially in the thirty-fifth chapter of Jeremiah; at the same time, he a.s.serted that the first Christian monks were Essenes.[422:2]
Mr. King, speaking of the _Christian_ sect called Gnostics, says:
”Their chief doctrines had been held for centuries before (their time) in many of the cities of Asia Minor. There, it is probable, they first came into existence as 'Mystae,' _upon the establishment of a direct intercourse with India under the Seleucidae and the Ptolemies_. The colleges of _Essenes_ and Megabyzae at Ephesus, the Orphics of Thrace, the Curetes of Crete, _are all merely branches of one antique and common religion, and that originally Asiatic_.”[422:3]
Again:
”The introduction of _Buddhism_ into Egypt and Palestine _affords the only true solution of innumerable difficulties in the history of religion_.”[422:4]
Again:
”That Buddhism had actually been planted in the dominions of the Seleucidae and Ptolemies (Palestine belonging to the former) before the beginning of the third century B. C., is _proved to demonstration_ by a pa.s.sage in the Edicts of Asoka, grandson of the famous Chandragupta, the Sandracottus of the Greeks. These edicts are engraven on a rock at Girnur, in Guzerat.”[422:5]
Eusebius, in quoting from Philo concerning the Essenes, seems to take it for granted that _they and the Christians were one and the same_, and from the manner in which he writes, it would appear that it was generally understood so. He says that Philo called them ”Wors.h.i.+pers,”
and concludes by saying:
”But whether he himself gave them this name, or whether at the _beginning_ they were so called, _when as yet the name of Christians was not everywhere published_, I think it not needful curiosity to sift out.”[422:6]
This celebrated ecclesiastical historian considered it very probable that the writings of the Essenic Therapeuts in Egypt had been incorporated into the gospels of the New Testament, and into some Pauline epistles. His words are:
”It is very likely that the commentaries (Scriptures) which were among them (the Essenes) were the Gospels, and the works of the apostles, and certain expositions of the ancient prophets, such as partly that epistle unto the Hebrews, and also the other epistles of Paul do contain.”[423:1]
The princ.i.p.al doctrines and rites of the Essenes can be connected with the _East_, with Parsism, and especially with _Buddhism_. Among the doctrines which Essenes and Buddhists had in common was that of the _Angel-Messiah_.[423:2]
G.o.dfrey Higgins says:
”The _Essenes_ were called physicians of the soul, or _Therapeutae_; being resident both in Judea and Egypt, they probably spoke or had their sacred books in Chaldee. They were _Pythagoreans_, as is proved by all their forms, ceremonies, and doctrines, and they called themselves sons of Jesse. If the Pythagoreans or Con.o.bitae, as they are called by Jamblicus, were Buddhists, the Essenes were Buddhists. The Essenes lived in Egypt, on the lake of Parembole or Maria, in _monasteries_.
These are the very places in which we formerly found the _Gymnosophists_, or _Samaneans_, or _Buddhist_ priests to have lived; which Gymnosophistae are placed also by Ptolemy in north-eastern India.”
”Their (the Essenes) parishes, churches, bishops, priests, deacons, festivals are all identically the same (as the Christians). They had apostolic founders; the manners which distinguished the immediate apostles of Christ; scriptures divinely inspired; the same allegorical mode of interpreting them, which has since obtained among Christians, and the same order of performing public wors.h.i.+p. They had missionary stations or colonies of their community established in Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Phillippi, Colosse, and Thessalonica, precisely such, and in the same circ.u.mstances, as were those to whom St. Paul addressed his letters in those places. All the fine moral doctrines which are attributed to the Samaritan Nazarite, and I doubt not justly attributed to him, are to be found among the doctrines of these ascetics.”[423:3]
And Arthur Lillie says:
”It is a.s.serted by calm thinkers like Dean Mansel that within two generations of the time of Alexander the Great, the missionaries of Buddha made their appearance at _Alexandria_.[423:4] This theory is confirmed--in the east by the Asoka monuments--in the west by Philo. He expressly maintains the ident.i.ty in creed of the higher Judaism and that of the _Gymnosophists_ of India who abstained from the 'sacrifice of living animals'--in a word, the BUDDHISTS. It would follow from this that the priestly religion of Babylonia, Palestine, Egypt, and Greece were undermined by certain kindred mystical societies organized by Buddha's missionaries under the various names of Therapeutes, Essenes, Neo-Pythagoreans, Neo-Zoroastrians, &c. _Thus Buddhism prepared the way for Christianity._”[424:1]
The Buddhists have the ”eight-fold holy path” (Dhammapada), eight spiritual states leading up to Buddhahood. The first state of the Essenes resulted from baptism, and it seems to correspond with the first Buddhistic state, those who have entered the (mystic) stream. Patience, purity, and the mastery of pa.s.sion were aimed at by both devotees in the other stages. In the last, magical powers, healing the sick, casting out evil spirits, etc., were supposed to be gained. Buddhists and Essenes seem to have doubled up this eight-fold path into four, for some reason or other. Buddhists and Essenes had three orders of ascetics or monks, but this cla.s.sification is distinct from the spiritual cla.s.sifications.[424:2]
The doctrine of the ”_Anointed Angel_,” of the man from heaven, the Creator of the world, the doctrine of the atoning sacrificial death of Jesus by the blood of his cross, the doctrine of the Messianic antetype of the Paschal lamb of the Paschal omer, and thus of the resurrection of Christ Jesus, the third day, according to the Scriptures, these doctrines of Paul can, with more or less certainty, be connected with the Essenes. It becomes almost a certainty that Eusebius was right in surmising that _Essenic writings have been used by Paul and the evangelists_. Not Jesus, but Paul, is the cause of the separation of the Jews from the Christians.[424:3]
The probability, then, that that sect of vagrant quack-doctors, the Therapeutae, who were established in Egypt and its neighborhood many ages before the period a.s.signed by later theologians as that of the birth of Christ Jesus, were the original fabricators of the writings contained in the New Testament, becomes a certainty on the basis of evidence, than which history has nothing more certain, furnished by the unguarded, but explicit, unwary, but most unqualified and positive statement of the historian Eusebius, that ”_those ancient Therapeutae were Christians, and that their ancient writings were our gospels and epistles_.”
The Essenes, the Therapeuts, the Ascetics, the Monks, the Ecclesiastics, and the Eclectics, are but different names for one and the self-same sect.
The word ”_Essene_” is nothing more than the Egyptian word for that of which Therapeut is the Greek, each of them signifying ”healer” or ”doctor,” and designating the character of the sect as professing to be endued with the miraculous gift of healing; and more especially so with respect to diseases of the mind.
Their name of ”_Ascetics_” indicated the severe discipline and exercise of self-mortification, long fastings, prayers, contemplation, and even making of themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake, as did Origen, Melito, and others who derived their Christianity from the same school; Jesus himself is represented to have recognized and approved their practice.
Their name of ”_Monks_” indicated their delight in solitude, their contemplative life, and their entire segregation and abstraction from the world, which Jesus, in the Gospel, is in like manner represented as describing, as characteristic of the community of which he was a member.
Their name of ”_Ecclesiastics_” was of the same sense, and indicated their being called out, elected, separated from the general fraternity of mankind, and set apart to the more immediate service and honor of G.o.d.