But there is even more to be said in favour of it. How-
ever little we may know with accuracy of the then
spiritual condition of Palestine, and in particular of
Galilee, stul we see that the Galilee of the Gentiles,
with its mixed population, with its half-Grecian towns of
Caesarea and Ptolemais on the neighbouring coasts, with
Greeks and inhabitants of Greek education in its principal
city, was open to foreign influences in a high degree ; and
in the Essenes we recognise a party which, having been.
f2



68 STRAUSS AND RENAN.
from its outset connected with Grecianism, was eminently
adapted to obtain a hearing among its Jewish countrymen
for ideas which it adopted out of it. It is especially this
last point to which I would attribute no small importance.
Jesus himself, indeed, was certainly not a member of the
society of the Essenes ; and what the pragmatism of the
period of enlightenment pretended to tell of the co-
operation of His brother members towards His beatific
plan, has been, and justly, long since forgotten. The
open cheerfulness of His character stands in too decided
an opposition to the recluse reserve, and the ascetic
severity of the Essenes — His lofty, spiritual freedom to
their party narrowness and pedantic secrecy ; and, on the
other hand, the Messianic idea, from which He starts at the
outset, appears to have had but little importance for them.
