Essenes – Ether

Essenes

To the student of NT times the Essenes present a problem of extreme difBculty. The very existence pf a mpnastic order within the pale of Judaism is an extraprdinary phenpmenpn. In India such things would have been a matter of course. But the deep racial consciousness and the tenacious national will of the Jews make it hard to account for. When, approaching the subject in this mopd, the student straightway finds as features pf the order the habit of worshipping towards the sun and the refusal to share in the public services of the Temple, he is tempted to explain Essenisra by foreign influences. Yet the Essenes were Jews in good standing. They were inside, npt outside, the pale of strictest Judaism. Hence they give the student a problem as interesting as it is difficult.

No small part of the difficulty is due to the character pf pur witnesses. Essenism was the first form of organized monasticism in the Mediterranean world. The Greeks whp fpllowed Alexander to India marvelled at the Ascetics or Gymnosophists. But not until Essenism took shape did the men of the Mediterranean world see monasticism at close quarters. Wonderment and the children of wonderment — fancy and legend — soon set to work pn the facts, cplpuring and distprting them. One pf pur spurces, Pliny (Nat. Hist. v. 17), is in part the prpduct of the imagination. Another, Philo (Quod omnis probus liber, 12f., and in Euseb. Prcep. Ev. viii. ii. 1), writes in the mood of the preacher to whom facts have no value except as texts for sermons. And even Josephus {Ant. xiii. v. 9, xv. x. 4, 6, xviii. i. 2, S; Vila, c. 2; BJ ir. viii. 2-13), our best source, is at times under suspicion. But a rough outline of the main tacts is discernible.

The foundations of Essenism were laid in the half-century preceding the MaccabEean War. The high priesthood was llisintegrating. In part this was due to the fact that the loose-jointed Persian Empire had been succeeded by the more coherent kingdom of the Seleucidae. With this closer political order, which made Jewish autonomy more difficult of attainment, went the appealing and compelling forces pf Hellenism, both as a mode of life and as a reaspned view pf the world. The combined pressure of the political, the social, and the intellectual elements pt the Greek pver-lprdship went far tpwards disprganizing and demoralizing the ruling class in Jerusalem.

But a deeper cause was at work, the genius of Judaism itself (see Pharisees). When the Hebrew monarchy fell, the political principle lost control. To popularize monotheism, to build up the OT Canon, organize and hold together the widely separated parts of the Jewish race — this work called for a new form of social order which mixed the ecclesiastical with the political. The man whom the times required in order to carry this work through was not the priest, but the Bible scholar. And he was necessarily an intense separatist. Taking Ezra’s words, ‘Separate ypurselves frpm the people of the land’ (Ezra 10:11) as the keynote of life, his aim was to free God’s people from all taint of heathenism. In the critical period of fifty years preceding the War this ■ class of men was coming more and more into prominence. They stood on the Torah as their platform ; the "Law of Moses was both their patrimony and their obligation. In them the genius of Judaism was beginning to sound the rally against both the good and the evil of Hellenism, against its illumining culture as well as against the corroding Grseco-Syrian morality. The priestly aristocracy of Palestine being in close touch with Hellenism, it naturally resulted that the high priesthood, and the Temple which was inseparable from the high priesthood, suffered a fall in sacramental value.

Into this situation came the llfe-and-death struggle against the attempt pf Antipchus tp Hellenize Judaism. In the life of a modern nation a great war has large results. Far greater were the effects of the Maccabsean War upon a small nation. It was a supreme point of precipitatioij wherein the genius of Judaism reached clear self-knowledge and definition. The Essenes appear as a party shortly after the war. It Is not necessary to suppose that at the outset they were a monastic order. It is more likely that they at first took form as small groups or brotherhoods of men intent on holiness, according to the Jewish model. This meant a kind pf hpliness that put an immense emphasis on Levitical precision. Tp keep the Tprah in its smallest details was part and parcel pf the very essence pf morality. The groups of men who devoted themselves to the realization of that ideal started with a bias against the Temple as a place made unclean by the heathenism of the priests. This bias was strengthened through the assumption oJ the high priesthood by the Hasmonaean house, an event which still further discounted the sacramental value of the Temple services. So these men, knit into closely coherent groups, mainly in Judsea, obtained by Haman, to the effect that all those of Jewish nationality in the king’s dominions were to be put to death. Esther’s action brought about an entire reversal of the decree. Haman was put to death, and Mordecai was honoured by the king, while Esther’s .position was still further strengthened; the Jews were found the satisfactions of life in deepening fellowship, Spermitted to take revenge on those who had sought and an ever more intense devotion to the ideal of Levitical perfection. In course of time, as the logic of lite carried them forward into positions of which they had not at first dreamed, the groups became more and more closely knit, and at the same time more fundamentally sepa^ ratistic regarding the common life of the Jews. So we find, possibly late in the 1st cent. B.C., the main group of Essenes colonizing near the Dead Sea, and.constituting a true monastic order.

The stricter Essenes abjured private property and marriage in order to secure entire attention to the Torah. The Levitical laws of holiness were observed with great zeal. An Essene of the higher class became unclean if a fellow-Essene of lower degree so much as touched his garment. They held the name of Moses next in honour to the name of God. And their Sabbatarianism went to such lengths that the bowels must not perform their wonted functions on the Seventh Day.

At the same time, there are reasons for thinking that foreign influences had a hand in their constitution. They worshipped towards the sun, not towards the Temple. This may have been due to the influence of Parsism. Their doctrine of immortality was Hellenic, not Pharisaic. Foreign influences in this period are quite possible, for it was not until the wars with Kome imposed on Judaism a hard-and-fast form that the doors were locked and bolted. Yet, when all is said, the foreign influence gave nothing more than small change to Essenism. Its innermost nature and its deepest motive were thoroughly Jewish.

It is probable that John the Baptist was affected by Essenism. It is possible that our Lord and the Apostolic Church may have been influenced to a certain extent. But influence of a primary sort is out of the question. The impassioned yet sane moral enthusiasm of early Christianity was too strong in its own kind to be deeply touched by a spirit so unlike its own.

Henry S. Nash.

Estate

‘State’ and ‘estate’ occur in AV almost an equal number of times, and with the same meaning. Ct. Colossians 4:7 ‘All my state shall Tychicus declare unto you,’ with the next verse, ‘that he might know your estate.’ In Acts 22:5 ‘all the estate of the elders’ (Gr."‘all the presbytery’) means all the members of the Sanhedrin. The pi. occurs in the Pref. to AV, and in Ezekiel 36:11 ‘I will settle you after your old estates,’ i.e. according to your former position in life. The heading of Psalms 37 is ‘David persuadeth to patience and confidence in God, by the different estate of the godly and the wicked.’ ..

Esther

(‘star’). The Jewish name, of which this is the Persian (or Babylonian) form, is Hadassah (cf. Esther 2:7). which means ‘myrtle.’ She was the daughter of Abihail, of the tribe of Benjamin, and was brought up, an orphan, in the house of her cousin Mordecai, in Shushan. Owing to her beauty she became an inmate of the king’s palace, and on Vashti the queen being disgraced, Esther was chosen by Xerxes, the Persian king, to succeed her. The combined wisdom of Mordecai and courage of Esther became the means of doing a great service to the very large number of Jews living under Persian rule; for, owing to the craft and hatred of Haman, the chief court favourite, the Jews were in danger of being massacred en Uoc; but Esther, instigated by Mordecai, revealed her Jewish nationality to the king, who realized thereby that she was in danger of losing her life, owing to the royal decree, their destruction. Mordecai and Esther put forth two decrees: first, that the 14th and 15th days of the month Adar were to be kept annually as ‘days of feasting and gladness, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor’ (Esther 9:22) and, second, that a day of mourning and fasting should be observed in memory of the sorrow which the king’s first decree had occasioned to the Jewish people (Q^‘-s’, cf. 4:1–3).

The attempt to identify Esther with Amestris, who, according to Herodotus, was one of the wives of Xerxes, has been made more than once in the past; but it is now universally recognized that this identification will not bear examination. All that is known of Amestris — her heathen practices, and the fact that her father, a Persian general named Otanes, is specifically mentioned by Herodotus — proves that she cannot possibly have been a Jewess; besides which, the two names are fundamentally distinct. As to whether Esther was really a historical personage, see the next article.

Esther, Book of

1. Place in the Canon.— ‘The Book of Esther belongs to the second group of the third division of the Hebrew Canon— the Kethubim, or’ Writings ‘— a group which comprises the Megilloth, or’ Rolls,’ of which there are five, — Song of Songs, Ruth, Lam., Eccles., Esther. It was not without much discussion that Esther was admitted into the Canon, for its right to be there was disputed both by the Jewish authorities and by the early Christian Church. As late as the 2nd cent. a.d. the greatest Jewish teacher of his day. Rabbi Jehudah, said, ‘The Book of Esther defileth not the hands’ [the expression ‘to defile the hands’ is the technical Jewish way of saying that a book is canonical; it means that the holiness of the sacred object referred to produces by contact with it a state of Levitical Impurity]. In some of the earlier lists of the Biblical books in the Christian Church that of Esther is omitted; Athanasius (d. 373) regarded it as uncanonlcal, so too Gregory Nazianzen (d. 391); Jacob of Edessa (c.700) reckons it among the apocryphal books. It is clear that Esther was not universally accepted as a book of the Bible until a late date.

2. Date and authorship — The language of Esther points unmistakably to a late date; it shows signs, among other things, of an attempt to assimilate itself to classical Hebrew; the artificiality herein betrayed stamps the writer as one who was more familiar with Aramaic than with Hebrew. Further, the Persian empire is spoken of as belonging to a period of history long since past (cf. ‘in those days,’ 1^); the words, ‘There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of thy kingdom’ (3’), show that the ‘Dispersion’ had already for long been an accomplished fact. Moreover, the spirit of the book points to the time when great bitterness and hatred had been engendered between Jew and Gentile. The probability, therefore, is that Esther . belongs to the earlier half of the 2nd cent. B.C. Of its authorship we know nothing further than that the writer was a Jew who must have been in some way connected with Persia; the book shows him to have been one whose racial prejudice was much stronger ihan his religious fervour; it is extraordinary that a book of the Bible should never once mention the sacred name of God; the secular spirit which is so characteristic of the book must have been the main reason of the disinclination to incorporate it into the Scriptures, which has been already referred to.

3. Contents. — The book purports to give the history

of how the Jewish feast of PurimX’ Lots ‘) first originated . Xerxes, king of the Medes and Persians, gives a great feast to the nobles and princes of the 127 provinces over which he rules; the description of the decorations in the palace garden on this occasion recalls the language of the Arabian Nights. Vashti, the queen, also gives a feast to her women. On the seventh day of the feast the king commands Vashti to appear before the princes in order that they may see her beauty. Upon her refusing to obey, the king is advised to divorce her. In her place, Esther, one of Vashti’s maidens, becomes queen. Esther is the adopted daughter of a Jew named Mordecal, who had been the means of saving the king from the hands of assassins. But Mordecai falls out with the court favourite, Haman, on account of hia refusing to bow down and do reverence to the latter. Haman resolves to avenge himself for this insult; he has lots cast in order to find out which is the most suitable day for presenting a petition to the king; the day being appointed, the petition is presented and granted, the promised payment of ten thousand talents of silver into the royal treasury {Est 3’) no doubt contributing towards this. The petition was that a royal decree should be put forth to the effect that all Jews were to be killed, and their belongings treated as spoil. On this becoming known, there is great grief amongthe Jews. Esther, instructed by Mordecai, undertakes to interpose for her people before the king. She invites both the king and Haman to a banquet, and repeats the invitation for the next day. Haman, believing himself to be in favour with the royal couple, determines to gratify hia hatred for Mordecai in a special way, and prepares a gallows on which to hang him (5"). In the night after the first banquet, Ahasuerus, being unable to sleep, commands that the book of records of the chronicles be brought; in these he finds the account of Mordecai’s former service, which has never been rewarded. Haman is sent for, and the king asks him what should be done to the man whom the king delights to honour; Haman thinking that it is he himself who is uppermost in the king’a mind, describes how such a man should be honoured. The king thereupon directs that all that Haman has said is to be done to Mordecai. Haman returns in grief to his house. While taking counsel there with his friends, the king’s chamberlains come to escort him to the queen’s second banquet (6"). During this Esther makes her petition to the king on behalf of her people, as well as for her own life, which is threatened, for the royal decree is directed against all Jews and Jewesses within his domains; she also discloses Haman’s plot against Mordecai. The king, as the result of this, orders Haman to be hanged on the gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai, the latter receiving the honours which had before belonged to Haman (ch. 7). Esther then has letters sent in all directions in order to avert the threatened destruction of her people; but the attempt is yet made by the enemies of the Jews to carry out Haman’s intentions. The Jews defend themselves with success, and a great feast is held on the 14th of Adar, on which the Jews ‘rested, and made it a day of feasting and gladness.’ Moreover, two days of feasting are appointed to be observed for all time; they are called Purim, because of the lot (pur) which Haman cast for the destruction of the Jews (chs. 8. 9). The book concludes with a further reference to the power of Ahasuerus and the greatness of his favourite, Mordecai (ch. 10).

4. Historicity of the book. — There are very few modern scholars who are able to regard this book as containing history; at the most it may be said that it is a historical romance, i.e. that a few historical data have been utilized for constructing the tale. The main reasons for this conclusion are, that the book is full of improbabilities; that it is so transparently written for specific purposes, namely, the glorification of the Jewish nation, and as a means of expressing Jewish hatred of and contempt for Gentiles (see also §5); that a ‘strictly historical interpretation of the narrative is beset with difficulties’ ; that the facts it purports to record receive no substantiation from such books as Chron., Ezr., Neh., Dan., Sirach, or Philo (cf. Hastings’ DB s.v.). Besides this, there is the artificial way in which the book is put together: the method of presenting the various scenes in the drama is in the style of the writer of fiction, not in that of the historian.

5. Furim. — The main purpose for which the book was written was ostensibly to explain the origin of, as well as to give the authority for, the continued observance of the Feast of Purim; though it must be confessed that the book does not really throw any light on the origin of this feast. Some scholars are in favour of a Persian origin, others, with perhaps greater justification, a Babylonian. The names of the chief characters in the book seem certainly to be corrupted forms of Babylonian and Elamite deities, namely, Haman = Hamman, Mordecai = Marduk, Esther = Ishtar; while Vashti is the name of an Elamite god or goddess (so Jensen). Thus we should have the Babylonian Marduk and Ishtar on the one hand, the Elamite Haman and Vashti, on the other. Purim may, in this case, have been, as Jensen suggests, a feast commemorating the victory of Babylonian over Elamite gods which was taken over and adapted by the Jews. In this case the origin of the name Purim would be sought in the Babylonian word puru, which means a ‘small round stone,’ i.e. a lot. But the connexion between the feast and its name is not clear; indeed, it must be confessed that the mystery attaching to the name Purim has not yet been unravelled. W. O. E. Oesteklet.

Esyelus

1 Es l»= Jehiel (2 Chronicles 35:8).

Etam

An altogether obscure place name, applied to a rock in a cleft of which Samson took refuge (Judges 15:8). whence he was dislodged by the Judahites (v. 11), and therefore presumably in Judahite territory (cf. 1 Chronicles 4:3). Also applied to a village in the tribe of Simeon (1 Chronicles 4:32), and a town fortified by Rehoboam (2 Chronicles 11:6). Whether there are here one or two or three places, and where it or they were, are unanswered questions.

R. A. S. Macalistek.

Etham

Exodus 13:20, Numbers 33:6; the next station to Succoth in the Exodus. The name is not known In Egyptian. It lay ‘in the edge of the wilderness,’ evidently at the E. end of the Wady Tumilat, and probably northward of the ‘Red Sea,’ whether that means the Bitter Lakes or the Gulf of Suez. F. Ll. Griffith.

Ethan

1. ‘The Ezrahlte’ of 1 Kings 4:31 and Psalms 89 (title). In the first of these passages he is mentioned along with other contemporaries (?) of Solomon, who were all surpassed in wisdom by the Jewish monarch. In 1 Chronicles 2:6 he is said to have been a Judtean of the family of Zerah, which is prob. another form of Eisrah (hence the patronymic Earahite). Instead of ‘the Ezrahite’ it has been proposed to render ‘ezrahl of 1 Kings 4:31’ the native,’ i.e. the Israelite, in opposition to some of the other wise men named, who were foreigners. 2. An ancestor of Asaph (1 Chronicles 6:42). In v. 21 he is called Joah. 3. The eponymous ancestor of a guild of Temple-singers (1 Chronicles 6:44 15:17, 19 etc).

Ethanim

Ethanim (1 Kings 8:2). See Time.

Ethanus

One of the ‘swift scribes’ who wrote to the dictation of Ezra (2 Esdras 14:24).

Ethbaal

Ethbaal (‘with Baal,’ i.e. enjoying his favour and protection). — King of the Sidonians, and father of Jezebel, wife of Ahab king of Israel (1 Kings 16:31).

Ether

Ether (Joshua 15:42 19:7). A town of Judah noticed with Libnah, apparently near the plain of Philistia, given to Simeon, and near Rimmon. The site is unknown.