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Editor's Note
donations of money. On occasions, they gave useful animals to the Temple in Jerusalem, but only with the condition that they would be allowed to live out their natural span of life.
They interpreted the Torah and other Hebrew scriptures in an almost exclusively spiritual, symbolic, and metaphysical manner (as did the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo). They also had esoteric writings of their own which they would not allow nonEssenes to see. But even more objectionable to the other Hebrews was their study and acceptance of "alien" scriptures-the holy books of other religions-so much so that an official condemnation was made of this practice. In contrast to all those around them, the Essenes held a universal, eclectic view of religion.
Celibacy was prized by them, being often observed even in marriage, and many of them led monastic lives of total renunciation. They considered their male and female members-all of who were literate-to be spiritual equals in and both sexes were prophets and teachers among them. This, too, was the practice in Hinduism at that time, women also wearing the sacred thread.
They refuted the doctrine of the physical resurrection of the dead at the end of time, which was held by some Pharisees-who usually believed in reincarnation-and later became a tenet of Mediterranean Christianity. They believed in reincarnation and the law of karma and the ultimate reunion of the soul with God. This is clearly indicated by the Apostles asking Jesus about a blind man: “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?"
They believed that the sun was a divine manifestation, imparting spiritual powers to both body and mind. They faced the rising and setting sun and recited prayers of worship, refusing, upon rising in the morning, to speak a single word until the conclusion of those prayers. They did not consider the sun was a god, but a symbol of the One God of Light and Life. It was, though,
