Again, the Essenes exhibited another very un-Jewish _trait_ in the position they took up on the question of marriage; the evidence of Josephus regarding this is as follows: “They neglect wedlock, but choose out other persons’ children while they are pliable and fit for learning, and esteem them to be their kindred, and form them according to their manner of life.”[50] This was quite against Jewish teaching and practice, though in agreement with Jewish Hellenism, which looked upon asceticism as the most efficacious, and indeed indispensable, means of attaining to the vision of God.[51] The asceticism of the Essenes, both in this and other respects, was an inevitable result of their dualism. According to their teaching, God and the world, which is wholly evil, stand opposed in irreconcilable antagonism; this accounts for their elaborate angelology, for as God cannot have any immediate intercourse with the evil world, angels act as His intermediaries. This part of Essene belief is largely due to Persian influence. Further, Josephus tells us that “the sect of Essenes affirms that fate governs all things, and that nothing befalls men but what is according to its determination.”[52] On this point the Essenes and the Sadducees were at opposite extremes, while the Pharisees occupied a middle position between the two. Of great importance was the teaching of the Essenes on the resurrection. “The opinion is strongly held among them,” says Josephus, “that bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are immortal, and continue for ever, and that they come out of the most subtle air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement; but that when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward. And their opinion is like that of the Greeks, that good souls have their habitation beyond the ocean, in a region that is neither oppressed with storms of rain or snow, nor with intense heat, but that this place is such as is refreshed by the gentle breathing of a west wind that is perpetually blowing from the ocean; while they allot to bad souls a dark and tempestuous den, full of never-ceasing punishments.”[53] This belief, which Josephus himself regards as due to Greek influence, is directly opposed to the doctrine of the resurrection of the body which was a tenet of orthodox Judaism. Un-Jewish, further, was the fact that the Essenes would never enter the Temple for fear of becoming contaminated with the crowds there; so that they did not offer sacrifices; though, on the other hand, they sent offerings to the Temple.