It was after the rebellion of Bar Cochba, that the Roman Emperor established the Mysteries of Adonis at the Sacred Cave in Bethlehem; and who knows but this was the _petra_ or rock-temple on which the church was built? The Boar of Adonis was placed above the gate of Jerusalem which looked toward Bethlehem. Munk says that the “Nazireate was an institution established before the laws of Musah.”[218] This is evident; as we find this sect not only mentioned but minutely described in _Numbers_ (chap. vi.). In the commandment given in this chapter to Moses by the “Lord,” it is easy to recognize the rites and laws of the Priests of Adonis.[219] The abstinence and purity strictly prescribed in both sects are identical. Both allowed their hair _to grow long_[220] as the Hindu cœnobites and fakirs do to this day, while other castes shave their hair and abstain on certain days from wine. The prophet Elijah, a Nazarene, is described in _2 Kings_, and by Josephus as “a hairy man girt with a girdle of leather.”[221] And John the Baptist and Jesus are both represented as wearing very long hair.[222] John is “clothed with camel’s hair” and wearing a girdle of hide, and Jesus in a long garment “without any seams” ... “and very white, like snow,” says Mark; the very dress worn by the Nazarene Priests and the Pythagorean and Buddhist Essenes, as described by Josephus. If we carefully trace the terms _nazar_, and _nazaret_, throughout the best known works of ancient writers, we will meet them in connection with “Pagan” as well as Jewish adepts. Thus, Alexander Polyhistor says of Pythagoras that he was a disciple of the Assyrian _Nazaret_, whom some suppose to be Ezekiel. Diogenes Laërtius states most positively that Pythagoras, after being initiated into all the Mysteries of the Greeks and barbarians, “went into Egypt and afterward visited the Chaldeans and Magi;” and Apuleius maintains that it was Zoroaster who instructed Pythagoras. Were we to suggest that the Hebrew _nazars_, the railing prophets of the “Lord,” had been initiated into the so-called Pagan mysteries, and belonged (or at least a majority of them) to the same Lodge or circle of adepts as those who were considered idolaters; that their “circle of prophets” was but a collateral branch of a secret association, which we may well term “international,” what a visitation of Christian wrath would we not incur! And still, the case looks strangely suspicious.