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Monastery theory

Scholars:  I apologize for the former salutation.  The information I wanted
to share was that a least one author described Essens as "almost monastic
etc." prior to the discovery of the DSS.  This is not intended to endorse his
choice of words, scholarship or the accuracy of his statements.  Nor did I
mean to imply that Essens occupied Qumran or that it is rational to conclude
that the archeology of the site suggests a monestary.  It may, however,
suggest that those studying the newly found DSS in the early 1950s had
preconceived ideas (or a basis for such ideas) as illustrated by one author
of the mid 1940s

I did have the opportunity to retrieve Satron's bood from a universtiy
library.  In G. Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, Vol. I From
Homer to Omar Khayyam (1927) at p. 346 he writes:  "Monasticism is not a
Christian invention.  That type of organization satisfies too well two
fundamental needs of the human heart - asceticism and myticism - not to have
been discovered wherever those needs, normally latent, asserted themselves.
 Thus Buddhist monasticism can be traced back to the very time of the Buddha.
 Another form of the same institution existed also among the Jews.  The
Essens led a full monastic life in Judea before the time of Christ; the
monastic habits of the Therapeutae established near Alexandria were already
described in Philon (first half of first century).  The Christian form of
monasticism appeared first in Egypt not before the second half of the third
century.  It is not necessary to admit that it was influenced by Buddhist or
Jewish examples, for similar causes must needs produce everywhere similar
fruits."  So, another example of Essens - in 1927 - being referred to as
monastic and an even more interesting discussion of the notion itself.

According to Durrant's short biography he was educated in a Catholic parocial
school in Kearny, New Jersey, thereafter in St. Peter's (Jesuit) College,
Jersey City, New Jersey.  He entered the seminary at Seaton Hall in 1909,
withdrew in 1911, later married one of his students [a man ahead of his time]
while teaching at the Ferrer Modern School and obtained a PhD in philosophy
from Columbia University in 1917.

Finally, I think the footnote I cited from Durant may have been incorrect.
 He has a complicated system.  I think the proper footnote reads: "27. Philo,
Quod omnis homo, 86; Hypothetica, 11.4 and 12; Josephus, Antiquities, xviii,
1."

With respect I will now fade into the night.  Mark Dunn