Zeller has no sufficient evidence that the Essenes avoided the flesh of animals as food, and Diogenes Laertius expressly says that Pythagoras ate fish, though rarely VIII, 18.
No one amongst them is in the habit of swearing.
He has to take solemn oaths to worship God, to be just, not to hate anyone who injures him, but to pray for him compare.
It seems probable that the name signifies seer, or the silent, the mysterious.
We have seen contradictory features assigned to the Essenes by different authorities; but even in the case of those features concerning which there is least dubiety the new difficulty emerges as to how it appeared as a characteristic of a Jewish sect.
The Jewish exorcists in Ephesus, in whom Bishop Lightfoot Col, 93 recognizes Essenes, were the sons of one Sceva, a high priest archiereus,.