isis unveiled, vol 2: chapter iii (religious sects)

“If we carefully trace the terms nazar, and nazaret, throughout the best-known works of ancient writers, we will meet them in connection with "Pagan" as well as Jewish adepts. Thus, Alexander Polyhistor says of Pythagoras that he was a disciple of the Assyrian Nazaret, whom some supposed to be Ezekiel. Diogenes Laertius states most positively [...]

isis unveiled, vol 2: chapter iii (religious sects)

"Our Nazarene sect is known to have existed some 150 years B.C., and to have lived on the banks of the Jordan, and on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea, according to Pliny and Josephus. But in King's Gnostics, we find quoted another statement by Josephus from verse 13, which says that the Essenes [...]

isis unveiled, vol 2: chapter iii (religious sects)

"At Byblos, the neophytes as well as the hierophants were, after participating in the Mysteries, obliged to fast and remain in solitude for some time. There was strict fasting and preparation before as well as after the Bacchic, Adonian, and Eleusinian orgies; and Herodotus hints, with fear and veneration about the LAKE of Bacchus, in [...]