The Early Church

Bücher

Angebote / Angebote:

Excerpt from The Early Church: Its History and LiteratureParty at all, but simply a political or aristocratic clique, into whose possession the honours of the high priesthood and other in¿uential o¿ices hereditarily passed. They represent the worldly-wise, diplomatic, time-serving party in the state, men of sceptical, rationalistic temper, and epicurean in their view Of life. Of much greater importance for the history of the Church, though not mentioned in the Gospels, is the third of these parties - the essenes. These had their chief settlement in the desert of Engedi, on the north-west shore of the Dead Sea, but were found also in the towns and villages throughout Palestine. Their total number was about At Engedi they lived as a sort of brotherhood with customs of their own. They Offered no animal sacrifices, contenting them selves with sending to the temple gifts of incense. They abounded in lustrations, and wore white gar ments. They rejected marriage, and practised com munity of goods. Their employments were chie¿y agricultural, but in the towns they exercised trades. They had the peculiar custom (perhaps Oriental) of greeting the sunrise with prayers. They forbade slavery, war, and oaths, were given to occult studies, had secret doctrines and books, etc. The superficial resemblances have led some to trace Christianity itself to Essene sources, but in fundamental ideas no systems could be more Opposed. We shall see that Essenism probably became ultimately merged in a form Of Christianity.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.