The historical investigation of the origins of Christianity began with the English deists, who, being philosophers and not professional historians, were for that very reason able to give the first forward impulse to the historical study of Jesus and of primitive Christianity. No purely historical interest could have induced Christian Europe to apply criticism to its sacred books, the facts of salvation, and the divine person of the Saviour. A new and philosophic conception of religion was required, directly opposed to the older view, if any serious effort was to be made to find in the writings of the New Testament and in the earliest Christian history the evidence for critically tested historical statements, and if these writings were to be read and the history studied from any other point of view than that of traditional dogmatism, Protestant or Catholic.

In the thirteenth book of his Ancient History of the Jews, Josephus relates (Ant. xiii. 1–5) the doings and fortunes of Jonathan, the brother of Judas Maccabaeus and after the death of Judas (161 B.C.) the leader of the rebellious Jews in their struggle with the Syrian rulers. In the sequel of Jonathan's embassies to Rome and Sparta, and not long before he fell into the hands of Tryphon and was put to death, we read (Ant. xiii. 5, 9):

About this time there were three philosophical schools (αἱρέσɛις) among the Jews, which entertained different opinions about human affairs. One of them was called that of the Pharisees, one of the Sadducees, and the third of the Essenes.

Among the parchment leaves which formed a large part of a purchase made by the late Professor Francis W. Kelsey early in 1927 I later found one of the missing leaves of the Freer Psalter, published in 1917. The bundle was made up of parchment and paper leaves, all, with this one exception, comparatively late and not of great value. Most of them are more or less damaged and have no connection with one another, evidently representing a variety of finds or purchases. They came from M. Nahman, an antiquity dealer of Cairo, and were bought by Mr. Kelsey without examination and on the chance that although the bundle looked like the rejected numbers from many sales, examination might reveal something of value.