Toto

Philo was a Hellenistic Jew, operating in a milieu where lots of Jews spoke and wrote in Greek.

They usually left some record - Jews, and later Christians, studied Jewish scripture.

That would make sense - those are sources of medical information. But Jewish scriptures??

Toto

You have not shown that there is any reason to question Philo's description of a Jewish sect. Perhaps he made it up, but he made up a Jewish sect.



You have not provided any reference that says that there were no Therapeutae in Judaism.



There was a large Jewish community in Alexandria. The main Temple was in Jerusalem, but there were synagogues IIRC.

This still doesn't show that there wasn't a comparable Jewish group that Philo referred to as Therapeutae.

The term priest was used for various religions.


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But they didn't hide the predominance of pagans :huh:

Ascepius was a rival to Christianity. You have shown no effort to steal his identity. :huh:

You own sources:
Such a ritual also has no significance for pagans.

tanya

How do you claim the Therapeutae as Jewish? Philo himself, acknowledges that they are Greek.

Am I missing something here?

Clivedurdle

As possibly were the Pharisees. I have quoted here before Encyclopaedia Britannica about the Pharisees actually not being as they were depicted in the Gospels, but they were anti slavery, humanitarian.

We are slowly becoming aware of how advanced the Greeks were in technology, arts, and politics, maybe they were far better at medicine and care, and other groups like Jews shared in this knowledge and experience.

Xianity for propaganda purposes had to show it was better than the existing, maybe the bits it is allegedly better at like caring are not actually the case, and a bit of misdirection by calling the theraputae a minor Jewish cult that is a fore runner of xianity makes a lot of sense.

The other vector is that the pure Jewish group arguably were the equivalent of Salafists, not necessarily Judaism tm, and yer syncretic Greek Jew were more important, one oriental group of which also taking on taliban type techniques in the fourth century.

stephan huller

Come on. You have to learn to read better than that. When I was in school we were taught about 'hamburger' paragraphs and the rule that the first line, the first paragraph is supposed to show you or introduce you to the author's POV, his thesis.

The first thing Philo does is references the Essenes who are unmistakably a Jewish sect known from countless other sources:

In other words Philo is differentiating between two groups of Jews - the first who live according to a 'practical' model (= the Essenes) and now another subgroup of the Jews the Therapeutae who are embody the 'contemplative' ideal. This is a consistent distinction in the writings of Philo. In another work he stattes 'the practical comes before the contemplative life' (Fug. 36). In Quaest. in Gn. 4.47 Philo states: 'There are three ways of life which are well known: the contemplative, the active, and the pleasurable. Great and excellent is the contemplative; slight and unbeautiful is the pleasurable; small and not small is the middle one, which adheres to, both of them. It is small by reason of the fact that it is a close neighbour to pleasure; but it is great because of its nearness and also its kinship to contemplation.' Philo undoubtedly approved of - and engaged in - contemplation (Abr. 22-3; Spec. Leg. 11. 44-5 etc.) but his ineradicable Jewishness also means that in his ethical teaching there is a powerful emphasis on the practical aspects of religion and morality - the practice of religion and the practice of morality in life. The sacred Passover meant for him the passage from the life of passions to the practice of virtue with one's loins girded for the life of service. In Leg. All. 3. 165 he refers to the need 'when making it thy study to cross over from the passions ... to make the forward step.'

In general terms, the contemplative life is one in which one's entire focus is on God, the pleasurable life is one in which one's entire focus is on one's pleasure and, beyond it, bodily concerns and the world. The active life, then, is one in which one's focus is partially on God and partially on one's pleasures, one's body and the world.

So, in his opening statement, Philo deems them to be two distinct groups, with the Essenes being spiritually advanced enough to be the best of those in the intermediate active life, but the Therapeutae being spiritually advanced enough to be the best of those in the supreme contemplative life. But both groups are necessarily related and specifically Jewish or else the analogy doesn't make any sense.

While it must be granted that Philo is absolutely correct in treating the Essenes and the Therapeutae as being two distinct groups, there yet remains the question as to whether they are, respectively, a Palestinian Jewish branch and an Alexandrian Jewish branch of a single movement. Or, to rephrase this proposition in light of the observation that the Essenes appear to have arisen earlier than the Therapeutae, there still remains the question as to whether Therapeutae are an Alexandrian Jewish offshoot of the Palestinian Jewish Essenes.

Karl Georg Kuhn thinks that this is the case. So, in "The Lord's Supper and the Communal Meal at Qumran" (in The Scrolls and the New Testament, ed. by Krister Stendahl, pp. 65-93), he states (p. 76), "These Egyptian Therapeutae had their settlement at the Mareotic Sea. Though they did not belong to the Essenes proper, and were an Order by themselves, they certainly had a close relationship to the Essenes. They were an Egyptian offshoot of the Palestinian Order of the Essenes, in this way their cult meal, and thereby also the meal in Joseph and Aseneth, is related to that of the Essenes."

mountainman

I don't know at the moment. However the hypothesis that Philo did not write VC needs to be explored and should not be dismissed out of hand. The possibility that Philo did not author VC - the source of the Christian-preserved description of the therapeutae - suggests that we should be wary of accepting the integrity of the text at face value.

mountainman

No matter who wrote "VC", it seems to be the case that Eusebius wanted us to believe that "VC" described proto-Christians of the LXX (proto-Christian) cult who sang songs to Moses and the Dead Sea Surfing Trip and knew themselves as "therapeutae".

stephan huller

Note Pete has nothing to contradict that fact that Philo is actually talking about a Jewish sect when the evidence is presented to him. Vampires and the light.

mountainman

They left no archaeological record, and every man and his dog should understand quite clearly by now that the literary record was corrupted by the early Christians and our earliest manuscripts (paleographical dating of papyri fragments temporarily set aside for a moment) come from the 4th century, when Eusebius (or his continuators) used "VC" to theorise that the therapeutae were proto-Christians and to record the historical fact (?) that its author Philo (who may NOT have written "VC") met Peter in Rome.

The drift here seems to be that whoever wrote the description of the therapeutae in "VC" wanted to present a different style of therapeutae than those who are described in scores of pagan sources until the 4th century, at which time the pagan therapeutae were cut-off by the Christian state.

stephan huller

I will be the man you can be the dog. No. No one accepts this but a lunatic fringe. If the texts were corrupted it happened before Nicaea. The point about dying and leaving an 'archaeological record' is silly. What trace is the mountainman going to leave in the real world? Does that mean you didn't exist? Even if one of your surfboards survived is that going to be enough to connect it and you with these crazy ideas? Not necessarily.