“Angels and powers are in heaven!” says Justin, thus bringing forth a purely kabalistic doctrine. The Christians adopted it from the _Sohar_ and the hæretical sects, and if Jesus mentioned them, it was not in the official synagogues that he learned the theory, but directly in the kabalistic teachings. In the Mosaic books, very little mention is made of them, and Moses, who holds direct communications with the “Lord God,” troubles himself very little about them. The doctrine was a secret one, and deemed by the orthodox synagogue heretical. Josephus calls the Essenes heretics, saying: “Those admitted among the Essenes must swear to communicate their doctrines to no one any otherwise _than as he received them himself_, and equally to preserve the books _belonging to their sect_, and the _names of the angels_.”[355] The Sadducees did not believe in angels, neither did the uninitiated Gentiles, who limited their Olympus to gods and demi-gods, or “spirits.” Alone, the kabalists and theurgists hold to that doctrine from time immemorial, and, as a consequence, Plato, and Philo Judæus after him, followed first by the Gnostics, and then by the Christians. Thus, if Josephus never wrote the famous interpolation forged by Eusebius, concerning Jesus, on the other hand, he has described in the Essenes all the principal features that we find prominent in the Nazarene. When praying, they sought solitude.[356] “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet ... and pray to thy Father which is in secret” (_Matthew_ vi. 6). “Everything spoken by them (Essenes) is stronger than an oath. Swearing is shunned by them” (_Josephus_ II., viii., 6). “But I say unto you, swear not at all ... but let your communication be yea, yea; nay, nay” (_Matthew_ v. 34-37). The Nazarenes, as well as the Essenes and the Therapeutæ, believed more in their own interpretations of the “hidden sense” of the more ancient Scriptures, than in the later laws of Moses. Jesus, as we have shown before, felt but little veneration for the commandments of his predecessor, with whom Irenæus is so anxious to connect him. The Essenes “enter into the houses of _those whom they never saw previously_, as if they were their intimate friends” (_Josephus_ II., viii., 4). Such was undeniably the custom of Jesus and his disciples. Epiphanius, who places the Ebionite “heresy” on one level with that of the Nazarenes, also remarks that the Nazaraioi come next to the Cerinthians,[357] so much vituperated against by Irenæus.[358]