Essenism in A Sentence

1

Christianity was to some extent a popularization of Essenism, but there is little reason for believing that Jesus himself was an Essene.

2

Essenism from the standpoint of Judaism was heterodox in two respects, the abandonment of animal sacrifices and the adoration of the sun.

3

Granting then that some foreign influence was at work in Essenism, we have four theories offered to us - that this influence was Persian, Buddhist, Pythagorean, or lastly, as maintained by Lipsius, that of the surrounding Syrian heathenism.

4

The above evidence has left students in doubt as to whether Essenism is to be regarded as a pure product of the Jewish mind or as due in part to some foreign influence.

5

The Judaizing and the paganizing tendency were combined in Gnostic Ebionitism which was prepared for in Jewish Essenism.

6

Though there is insufficient justification for dividing the Ebionites into two separate and distinct communities, labelled respectively Ebionites and Nazarenes, we have good evidence, not only that there were grades of Christological thought among them, but that a considerable section, at the end of the 2nd century and the beginning of the 3rd, exchanged their simple Judaistic creed for a strange blend of Essenism and Christianity.