lived in scattered communities throughout Palestine and Syria. Both Philo and Josephus estimated them to be above four thousand in number. This must have been exclusive of women and children. We hear very little of them after this period (i.e. 40 A.D.); and there can hardly be any doubt that, owing to the great similarity which existed between their precepts and practices and those of the primitive Christians, the Essenes as a body must have embraced Christianity. Having ascertained the character of the Essenes, we shall be better prepared to investigate the origin of their name, which has been the cause of so much controversy, and which was not known even to Philo and Josephus. There is hardly an expression the etymology of which has called forth such a diversity of opinion as this name has elicited. The Greek and the Hebrew, the Syriac and the Chaldee, names of persons and names of places, have successively been tortured to confess the secret connected with this appellation, and there are no less, if not more, than twenty different explanations of it, which I shall give in chronological order. Philo tells us that some derived it from the Greek homonym ὁσιότης holiness, because the Essenes were above all others worshippers of God; but he rejects it as incorrect (vide infra, p. 32) without giving us another derivation. 2. Josephus does not expressly give any derivation of it, but simply says, “the third sect who really seem to practise holiness (ὁ δὴ καὶ δοκεῖ σεμνότητα ἀσκεῖν) are called Essenes.” (Vide infra p. 41). From the addition, however, “who really seem to practise holiness or piety,” Frankel [10] argues that the word must mean holiness or piety, because it appears to justify the name, and hence concludes that Josephus most probably took it to be the Hebrew ‏חסידים‎ or ‏צנועים‎. Whilst Jost [11] is of opinion that Josephus derived it from the Chaldee ‏חשא‎ to be silent, to be mysterious, because ‏חשן‎ the high priest’s breast-plate, for which the Septuagint has λογεῖον or λόγιον is translated by him ἐσσην, or that he might have deduced this idea from ‏חשן‎ itself, and traced it to λογεῖον or λόγιον as endowed with the gift of prophecy. [12] In Aboth of R. Nathan [13] it is written ‏עשאני‎ from ‏עשה‎ to do, to perform, and accordingly denotes the performers of the law. 4. Epiphanius again calls them Ὀσσαῖοι and Ὀσσηνοι and tells us that it etymologically signifies στιβαρὸν γένος the stout or strong race, evidently taking it for ‏חסין‎ or ‏עזים‎. 5. In another place Epiphanius affirms that the Essenes borrowed their name from Jesse the father of David, or from Jesus, whose doctrines he ascribes to them; explaining the name Jesus to signify in Hebrew a physician; and calls them Jesseans. [14] In this he is followed by Petitus who makes them so related to David that they were obliged to take the name of his father Jesus or Jesse; [15] although Jesus does not signify physician but God-help. 6. Suidas (Lex s.