ESDRAS

It is drained by the Klshon, and is, over nearly all its area, remarkably fertile. It was allotted to the tribe of Issachar.

Esdraelon has been the great battlefield of Palestine. Here Deborah and Barak routed the hosts of Jabin and Sisera (Jg 4), and here Gideon defeated the Midi-anltes (7). Saul here fought his last battle with the Philistines (1 S 28-31). Josiah here attacked Pharaoh-necho on his way to Mesopotamia and was slain (2 K 23'<i). It is the scene of the encampment of Holofernes (Jth 7'), in connexion with which appears the name by which the valley is generally known: it is a Greek corruption of Jezreel. Here Saladin encamped in 1186; and, Anally, here Napoleon encountered and defeated an army of Arabs in 1799. It is chosen by the Apoca-lyptic writer (Rev 16"") as the fitting scene for the final battle between the good and evil forces of the world. R- A. S. Macalistbe.

ESDRAS. — See Apockypha, and Apoc. Literature.

ESDEIS.— Mentioned only 2 Mac 12"«. The text is probably corrupt. AV has Gargias, and this is likely enough to be correct.

ESEK ('contention,' Gn 2&'<>).—A well dug by Isaac in the region near Rehoboth and Gerar. The site is unknown.

ESEBEBIASfAV Esebrias),lEs8". See Sherebiah.

ESHAN (Jos IS'^).— A town of Judah in the Hebron mountains, noticed with Arab and Dumah. The site is doubtful.

ESHBAAL. — See Ishbosheth.

ESHBAN.— An Edomite chief (Gn 36», 1 Ch 1«).

ESHCOL. — 1. The brother of Mamre and Aner, the Amorite confederates of Abraham, who assisted the patriarch in his pursuit and defeat of Chedorlaomer's forces (Gn 14"- "). He lived in the neighbourhood pf Hebron (Gn 13"); and possibly gave his name to the valley of Eshcol, which lay a little to the N. of Hebron (Nu 13«'). 2. A wady, with vineyards and pome-granates, apparently near Hebron (Nu IBM- " 32', Dt l*"). Esticol is usually rendered 'bunch of grapes.' The name has not been recovered.

ESHEK.— A descendant of Saul (1 Ch S'').

ESHTAOL.— A lowland city of Judah (Jos IS''^ on the borders of Dan (19"), near which Samson began to feel 'the spirit of the Lord' (Jg 13^), and was buried (16"); the home of some of the Danites who attacked Laish (182- "). It is supposed to be the same as Eshu'a, near 'Ain esh-Shems (Beth-shemesh). The Eshtaolites are enumerated among the Calebites (1 Ch 26").

R. A. S. Macalister.

ESHTEMOA.— In the tribe of Judah (Jos 15"— here called Eshtemoh), a Levitical city in the district pf Hebron (21"), to which David sent a share of the spoil of the Philistines (1 S SO^s). The name as es-Semu'a survives about 8 miles S. of Hebron; extensive remains of antiquity are here to be seen.

R. A. S. Macalistek.

ESHTON.— A Judahite (1 Ch 4"- »).

ESLI.— An ancestor of Jesus (Lk 3»).

ESSENES. — To the student of NT times the Essenes present a problem of extreme difBculty. The very existence pf a mpnastic order within the pale of Judaism is an extraprdinary phenpmenpn. In India such things would have been a matter of course. But the deep racial consciousness and the tenacious national will of the Jews make it hard to account for. When, approach-ing the subject in this mopd, the student straightway finds as features pf the order the habit of worshipping towards the sun and the refusal to share in the public services of the Temple, he is tempted to explain Essenisra by foreign influences. Yet the Essenes were Jews in good standing. They were inside, npt outside, the

ESSENES

pale of strictest Judaism. Hence they give the student a problem as interesting as it is difficult.

No small part of the difficulty is due to the character pf pur witnesses. Essenism was the first form of organized monasticism in the Mediterranean world. The Greeks whp fpllowed Alexander to India marvelled at the Ascetics or Gymnosophists. But not until Essenism took shape did the men of the Mediterranean world see monasticism at close quarters. Wonderment and the children of wonderment — fancy and legend — soon set to work pn the facts, cplpuring and distprting them. One pf pur spurces, Pliny (Nat. Hist. v. 17), is in part the prpduct of the imagination. Another, Philo (Quod omnis probus liber, 12f., and in Euseb. Prcep. Ev. viii. ii. 1), writes in the mood of the preacher to whom facts have no value except as texts for sermons. And even Josephus {Ant. xiii. v. 9, xv. x. 4, 6, xviii. i. 2, S; Vila, c. 2; BJ ir. viii. 2-13), our best source, is at times under suspicion. But a rough outline of the main tacts is discernible.

The foundations of Essenism were laid in the half- century preceding the MaccabEean War. The high priesthood was llisintegrating. In part this was due to the fact that the loose-jointed Persian Empire had been succeeded by the more coherent kingdom of the Seleucidae. With this closer political order, which made Jewish autonomy more difficult of attainment, went the appealing and compelling forces pf Hellenism, both as a mode of life and as a reaspned view pf the world. The combined pressure of the political, the social, and the intellectual elements pt the Greek pver-lprdship went far tpwards disprganizing and demoralizing the ruling class in Jerusalem.

But a deeper cause was at work, the genius of Judaism itself (see Pharisees). When the Hebrew monarchy fell, the political principle lost control. To popularize monotheism, to build up the OT Canon, organize and hold together the widely separated parts of the Jewish race — this work called for a new form of social order which mixed the ecclesiastical with the political. The man whom the times required in order to carry this work through was not the priest, but the Bible scholar. And he was necessarily an intense separatist. Taking Ezra's words, 'Separate ypurselves frpm the people of the land' (Ezr 10") as the keynote of Ufe, his aim was to free God's people from all taint of heathenism. In the critical period of fifty years preceding the War this ■ class of men was coming more and more into promi-nence. They stood on the Torah as their platform ; the "Law of Moses was both their patrimony and their obliga-tion. In them the genius of Judaism was beginning to sound the rally against both the good and the evil of Hellenism, against its illumining culture as well as against the corroding Grseco-Syrian morality. The priestly aristocracy of Palestine being in close touch with Hellenism, it naturally resulted that the high priesthood, and the Temple which was inseparable from the high priesthood, suffered a fall in sacramental value.

Into this situation came the llfe-and-death struggle against the attempt pf Antipchus tp Hellenize Judaism. In the life of a modern nation a great war has large results. Far greater were the effects of the Maccabsean War upon a small nation. It was a supreme point of precipitatioij wherein the genius of Judaism reached clear self-knowledge and definition. The Essenes appear as a party shortly after the war. It Is not necessary to suppose that at the outset they were a monastic order. It is more likely that they at first took form as small groups or brotherhoods of men intent on holiness, according to the Jewish model. This meant a kind pf hpliness that put an immense emphasis on Levitical precision. Tp keep the Tprah in its smallest details was part and parcel pf the very essence pf morality. The groups of men who devoted themselves to the realization of that ideal started with a bias against

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