Essenes

• lived as brotherhood in monasteries

137:7.8The Es­senes were a true re­li­gious sect, orig­i­nat­ing dur­ing the Mac­cabean re­volt, whose re­quire­ments were in some re­spects more ex­act­ing than those of the Phar­isees. They had adopted many Per­sian be­liefs and prac­tices, lived as a broth­er­hood in monas­ter­ies, re­frained from mar­riage, and had all things in com­mon. They spe­cial­ized in teach­ings about an­gels.

• tolerated belief in reincarnation

164:3.4There was, through­out all these re­gions, a lin­ger­ing be­lief in rein­car­na­tion. The older Jew­ish teach­ers, to­gether with Plato, Philo, and many of the Es­senes, tol­er­ated the the­ory that men may reap in one in­car­na­tion what they have sown in a pre­vi­ous ex­is­tence; thus in one life they were be­lieved to be ex­pi­at­ing the sins com­mit­ted in pre­ced­ing lives. The Mas­ter found it dif­fi­cult to make men be­lieve that their souls had not had pre­vi­ous ex­is­tences.

• held possessions in common

165:4.5When Je­sus had fin­ished his story, an­other man rose up and asked him: “Mas­ter, I know that your apos­tles have sold all their earthly pos­ses­sions to fol­low you, and that they have all things in com­mon as do the Es­senes, but would you have all of us who are your dis­ci­ples do like­wise? Is it a sin to pos­sess hon­est wealth?” And Je­sus replied to this ques­tion: “My friend, it is not a sin to have hon­or­able wealth; but it is a sin if you con­vert the wealth of ma­te­rial pos­ses­sions into trea­sures which may ab­sorb your in­ter­ests and di­vert your af­fec­tions from de­vo­tion to the spir­i­tual pur­suits of the king­dom. There is no sin in hav­ing hon­est pos­ses­sions on earth pro­vided your trea­sure is in heaven, for where your trea­sure is there will your heart be also. There is a great dif­fer­ence be­tween wealth which leads to cov­etous­ness and self­ish­ness and that which is held and dis­pensed in the spirit of stew­ard­ship by those who have an abun­dance of this world’s goods, and who so boun­ti­fully con­tribute to the sup­port of those who de­vote all their en­er­gies to the work of the king­dom. Many of you who are here and with­out money are fed and lodged in yon­der tented city be­cause lib­eral men and women of means have given funds to your host, David Zeb­e­dee, for such pur­poses.