JESUS (YA'SHUA) AN ESSENE

'Let my prayer be directed before Thee as incense, the uplifting of my hands as the evening sacrifice,' say the Psalms." 1 In the Apostolical Constitutions, the authorship of which, as Bunsen remarks, places us unmistakably in the midst of the life of the Church of the second and third centuries, it is directed that in worship all the people "rise up with one consent, and, looking towards the east, pray to God eastward." 2 The outward respect paid to the sun by the Essenes or Therapeuts and the early Christians appears to have been an unconscious survival of the sun-worship of the ancient Israelites, derived, probably, in the first instance, from the Egyptians. The adoration of the sun, as the most prominent object in nature, and also the most potent, was general in all the countries bordering on Palestine.