Sheshbazzar

Likely Philo was using them to present his own Utopian view of how a Jewish religious community ought to be laid out and function.

Honey for flies as it were, a weak attempt to draw other Jews into actually carrying out this vision.

Many religious people down through the ages have composed this type of religious Utopia literature, and sometimes it inspires others to act out on it.

Philo's benefit, if the inspiration were to bear fruit, would be that he was its generator and spiritual father.
A cult so formed, inspired by his description, would be his legacy. His mark on the world.


Posted this before I saw maryhelena's post. Just a sign that in thinking it through, people can arrive at very similar views.

aa5874

There is no evidence that Philo invented the Essenes.

The Essenes are multiple attested by multiple writers of antiquity.

Philo, Josephus, Pliny the Elder and Hippolytus identified the Essenes as Jews and living in Judea.

maryhelena

Yep, and how many writers can you name writing about Jesus crucified under Pilate??

Toto

This is anachronistic. There were no "pagans" until the Christians used that term for the backwards country folk who had not yet converted to Christianity.

The term applies to religions. Judaism was a religion, along with Isis worship, Mithraism, etc. Just as the words "priest" or "monk" can be used for a variety of religions, the term "therapeutae" could be used for a variety of religions, including Judaism.

It does not appear to me as if the Christian Church has been very successful in erasing the memory of pagans.

So if he had labeled them "hobbits" you would admit that they are Jewish and we could have avoided this thread?

Clivedurdle

Is that correct?

Yes, pagan means country bumpkin - an extremely rude term equivalent to the n word or the g word about disabled people, but it was used by xians as a propaganda term against the followers of the true gods, including highly educated sophisticated city people.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00791nv

Clivedurdle

Maybe a formal discussion of propaganda would help?

as someone commented about 380 in Constantinople!

mountainman

IMO no. Forgery was just as rife in antiquity as it is today.



From Josephus:

"Alexander protested that this letter was forged by Diophantus, the king's secretary, a man without scruples and very clever at imitating any hand" ..[later we learn he was].. . "executed for forgery” (JW, 4).

There was apparently a good trade in Pythagorean originals BCE:

etc

aa5874

I have no actual names of any person who was a contemporary of Jesus, the Son of a Ghost and a Virgin, and wrote that he was crucified under Pilate.

Philo, Josephus and Pliny the elder are real figures of history and wrote about the Essenes and identified where they lived and how they lived and even gave estimates of the number of Essenes.

Who was Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Saul/Paul, James, Peter, and Jude??

Jesus and the Jesus cult were 1st century fakes and the authors of the fiction were anonymous from the 2nd century or later.

Not one author of the NT claimed to have personally met Jesus and Not one author of the Canon has been identified by a non-Apologetic source.

Sheshbazzar

'Monks' these thereputae were 'monks'. Certainly the word is appropriately descriptive of their ascetic lifestyle with its enforced social isolation.

Which raises another question on which Philo is none to clear on in 'VC';
Did these wonderous 'Theraputae monks', who spent all of their daylight hours six days a week in total solitude studying and fasting, have wives and children? Were they even allowed to?
Or were they expected to remain a totally celibate, 'separated' priesthood, ....like Christian monks?

Given the severe strictures apparent on every other aspect of their daily lives, it seems very highly unlikely that they allowed, -or were allowed-, to engage in the pleasant intimacies of sex. (if they even could given that prescribed starvation diet.)

aa5874

There is no evidence whatsoever that JUDAISM used the term Therapeutae. There is NO 1st century Jewish writer who stated that the Therapeutae were Jews--NONE.

There is NO evidence that a Therapeutae sect was identified as living in Judea in the 1st century by any Jewish writer of that time--ZERO.

It was about 200 years after Philo that it was claimed the Therapeutae were traditionally considered Christians of the Jesus cult.

Essentially, Only Church writers used the term Therapeutae in Philo's 'VC' for their religion.

No other non-Christian source or religion in antiquity used the term Therapeutae in Philo's 'VC' or made references to Philo's Therapeutae.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Talmud do not use the term Therapeutae. ZERO Jewish writings make use of the term Therapeutae in the Jewish religion.