Duvduv

Maybe the moderators can comment on the fact of how discussions wander way off of the thread subject, and why discussions deteriorate into chat sessions.

outhouse

When one provides only imagination and out of context meanings interpreted as one unfounded opinion. The conversation stays in imagination. :constern01



The good thing is, those of us with open minds who want to learn, research these topics and learn more in detail about said subjects. So even in these inane threads. One has the possibility to gain knowledge.


MM asks about the Therapeutae, but he wasnt really asking anything. We was proselytizing his opinion with a closed mind. What it comes down to is there was a sect of Jewish Therapeutae described by a eyewitness MM discounts completely and provided no credible reason why.

Then he takes the word Therapeutae which was used as a greek word for "attendant" and tries to imply this to a sect based on a dream by Aristides who first states "it is a Phantazomai". Of coarse MM left that part out, as well as how differently the word was applied by Aristides and Galen as "attendant"





Does attendant mean sect?, does attendant mean that a eyewitnesses described a jewish sect in limited detail and is wrong?


All im stating and have from the beginning, is very little is known about the Jewish sect. And nothing can be known about MM claims with any credibility due to the limited resources we are trying to debate, within a dream and improper translation due to a personally implied translation not open to debate by MM.

mountainman

Did the physicians and therapeutae of Asclepius have a creed ?

mountainman

Was Big J or was Asclepius depicted by the Roman Emperors on the coins they minted?





What did Constantine think about Asclepius?

A Chi-Rho labarum impales a serpent.

mountainman

(1) Asclepius had temples and shrines everywhere unlike the Christian Healing God who appears to have had one house-church at Dura-Europos.

(2) These ubiquitous temples and shrines to Asclepius were hospitals and healing centers that were staffed by physicians and their attendants.

(3) The total number of such physicians and their attendants in all temples and shrines in the Roman Empire was therefore quite large.

(4) This class of temple attendants referred to themselves as the therapeutae of Asclepius.

(5) The pagan therapeutae of Asclepius around Alexandria in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and early 4th centuries were not an imaginary sect.

(6) We may also consider that all the temples to all the pagan gods were ATTENDED by a class of people. These non Asclepians may also have considered themselves to be "therapeutae". To the attendants of the god at the temples of Asclepius one can therefore add the attendants at the temples of Cybele, Osiris, Isis, Sarapis, Minerva, Jupiter, Venus, Bacchus, Hercules, Vesta, Sol Invictus and others. There may have therefore been many people who "worked at the local pagan temple" as attendants to the pagan gods around Alexandria, and not at the Christian "house-church" on the Persian border.



(7) As Shesh (post #10) has already mentioned, c.324/325 CE the Emperor Constantine utterly destroyed the larger hospitals (temples) and prohibited the use of all pagan temples, so this class of people had nowhere to go. Following Pachomius who had some sort of vision in Alexandria 324/325 CE (Constantine was destroying the ancient architecture), there was a mass movement to the desert and wilderness. The temple attendants of all types (not just Asclepius) had nowhere to go. They left the cities. The Christian Army had destroyed major temples (and hospitals!!!) and all temples were now OFF LIMITS to the populace. A despotic army-enforced prohibition era descended on ancient traditions c.324/325 CE.

A new Healing god - a dead jew on a stick - was being paraded by the new Emperor. The new god was hidden inside a codex with an encoded name until the new Boss starting constructing Christian basilicas over the foundations of the pagan temples which his army had torn down to the ground.

outhouse

No one doubts Hellenistic cultures worshipped Asclepius, so why do you waist time posting large amounts of drivel?



And yes this deity worshipped, had attendants in a temple, no one has doubted that.


But this is not a sect at all, nor described by a eyewitness as a sect of any kind.


And there is nothing at all about these people to make any claim they reffered to themselves as such.





You have a dream! and known temple attendants to a known deity.



We all know your using this to try and set something else up for your faith, and have no real intention of discussing the Jewish sect mentioned in the OP.

mountainman

If you find some evidence external to Philo for the existence of a Jewish sect called the therapeutae in antiquity you are welcome to cite it for discussion.


You have faith in the Apostle Paul's existence.

Please allow me to have faith in the evidence I cite.

Clivedurdle

I must repeat, the hospital/temple complex on Kos is huge.

mountainman

Asclepions



There is vast evidence to substantiate a class of people in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd centuries who were called and who knew themselves as the therapeutae (priests, attendants, physicians, assistants, librarians, etc) of Asclepius (and perhaps other "pagan" gods).

These massive network of temples did not run themselves. They were staffed with people just like hospitals are staffed with many people.

These massive temples and their smaller networks of temples and shrines were everywhere in the empire.

The early Christians probably went to them if they were sick.

If there is any evidence to substantiate a Jewish sect (or class of people) by that name I cant find it.

Could Philo have been describing a pagan sect?

outhouse

Lets fix these statements for you.

There is vast evidence to substantiate the Asclepius diety had followers.

Any evidence to substantiate a Jewish sect (or class of people). I would not discount all the credible evidence by people with educations far exceeding my own, to the point of being night and day. Who have studied eyewitness descriptions.