¹⁷² person whom the third evangelist describes as his cousin, and who seems, from his mode of life, to have been in some way connected with or influenced by the Hellenizing sect¹²¹ of Essenes. Here we obtain our first clew to guide us in forming a consecutive¹⁷³ theory of the development of Jesus’ opinions. The sect of Essenes took its rise in the time of the Maccabees, about B. C. 170. Upon the fundamental doctrines of Judaism it had engrafted many Pythagorean notions, and was doubtless in the time of Jesus instrumental in spreading Greek ideas among the people of Galilee, where Judaism was far from being so narrow and rigid as at Jerusalem. The Essenes attached but little importance to the Messianic expectations of the Pharisees, and mingled¹⁷⁴ scarcely at all in national politics. They lived for the most part a strictly¹⁷⁵ ascetic¹⁷⁶ life, being indeed the legitimate¹⁷⁷ predecessors¹⁷⁸ of the early Christian hermits¹⁷⁹ and monks. But while pre-eminent for sanctity of life, they heaped ridicule¹⁸⁰ upon the entire sacrificial service of the Temple, despised the Pharisees as hypocrites, and insisted upon charity toward all men instead of the old Jewish exclusiveness.

It was once a favourite theory that both John the Baptist and Jesus were members of the Essenian brotherhood¹⁸¹; but that theory is now generally abandoned. Whatever may have been the case with John, who is said to have lived like an anchorite in the desert, there seems to have been but little practical Essenism in Jesus, who is almost uniformly represented as cheerful and social in demeanour, and against whom it was expressly urged that he came eating and drinking, making no presence of

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