PhilosopherJay

Hi pinkvoy,

Ascetic Life?
Matthew 11: For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon!’ 19“The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

Fasting?
Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, "How is it that John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?"

Solitary Prayers?
“Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for
you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”

I guess Jesus did exactly the opposite of the Therapaeutae and that means his followers must have been the Therapaeutae. It is a little bit like an author describing Salt Lake City, and you argue that the author must be describing Las Vegas because people do the opposite of what people in Salt Lake City do. This is true in a world where fish fly and birds swim under water, dogs meow and cats bark.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

pinkvoy

Ascetic Life?
"they say," "Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” can you explain the true implied here?

Fasting?
the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke; Jesus spent 40 days fasting in the desert before the beginning of his public ministry, during which he endured temptation by Satan.

ergo Jesus fasted

Solitary Prayers?
“Jesus is describing a "spiritual truth" about holiness that Philo says is also what preoocupied the Therepeatue

On the seventh day the Therapeutae met in a meeting house, the men on one side of an open partition, the women modestly on the other, to hear discourses. Once in seven weeks they meet for a night-long vigil after a banquet where they served one another, for "they are not waited on by slaves, because they deem any possession of servants whatever to be contrary to nature. For she has begotten all men alike free" (Philo, para.70) and sing antiphonal hymns until dawn.

This is a description of Jesus' spiritual practice

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. = solitary prayer Luke 5:16 which is an exact match to what Philo said about his Jewish spiritual healers.

outhouse

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pinkvoy

I see you're still on stage 1.

Duvduv

Whatever is called the writings of Philo which was in the possession of the Church cannot possibly have been immune from cutting and pasting or composites. Whoever wrote all about the Logos was not a Jew. I don't necessarily fault ancient editors since in many cases they probably thought that scrolls or codices that resembled each other in style or subject were written by the same person, and they mistakenly combined them.

However it must have escaped them to notice that whoever wrote things under the name of Philo the Jew (whether an actual Philo or someone else) wrote nothing about a famous messianic figure in Judea called Jesus in the first century because this messianic figure did not exist in the first century.

pinkvoy

Philo wrote about the Therapeutae, whose beliefs and practices match Jesus teachings and his actions. Philo chose not to identify individuals of the Therapeutae by name but we can infer inductively he was discussing Jesus and his followers by his description of their beliefs and practices.

Toto

It is stretching things to say that the beliefs and practices of the Theraputae "matched" those of gospel Jesus.

You could say that there are enough vague similarities to be intriguing, but I don't see how you can go any further, without ignoring significant differences. One significant difference is that all the early Christians we know about revered the name of Jesus Christ.

The only reason for not rejecting this idea is that Christianity has never been the same from one generation to the next. If it could evolve from a movement dominated by gullible women and slaves in the second century, based around singing hymns to Christ and sharing wealth, into the backbone of the Roman Empire in the fourth, who knows what it could have been in the first century.

mountainman

According to truckloads of ancient historical evidence the therapeutae were the Therapeutae_of_Asclepius. It was the equivalent of the public hospital system in the Roman Empire until the 4th century. Its antiquity includes Hippocrates and the Hippocratic Oath "I swear by Apollo ....". There is a wealth of evidence for these claims. These people were not Christians until such time in the 4th century Constantine utterly destroyed the temple networks (i.e. the public hospital system), executed a few head priests (i.e. head physicians) and started conversions by the sword.


IMO the inference that the Therapeutae were christian is in error.

pinkvoy

Philo was an eyewitness to a Jewish sect of healers.

pinkvoy

I'll revisit this as I flesh out the details, good points.