Therapeutae
The Therapeutae (meaning "healers" to Philo, "servants" to the Pseudo-Dionysius) and Therapeutridae (the female members of the sect) were an early pre-Christian coenobitic order that the Hellenized Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria knew from personal experience were established on a low hill by the Lake Mareotis close to Alexandria, the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt. According to Philo, other communities of Therapeutae were widely established throughout the ancient world.
Philo's account
Philo described the Therapautae in the beginning of the 1st century AD in De vita contemplativa ("On the contemplative life"), written ca. 10 C.E. By that time, the origins of the Therapeutae were already lost in the past, and Philo was even unsure about the etymology of their name, which he explained as meaning either physicians of souls or servants of God. The opening phrases of his essay establish that it followed one that has been lost, on the active life. Philo was employing the familiar polarity in Hellenic philosophy between the active and the contemplative life, exemplifying the active life by the Essenes, another severely ascetic sect, and the contemplative life by the desert-dwelling Therapeutae.
Forerunners of early Christian monastic orders
According to Philo, the Therapeutae were widely distributed in the Ancient world, among the Greeks and beyond in the non-Greek world of the "Barbarians", with one of ther major gathering point being in Alexandria, in the area of the Lake Mareotis:
"Now this class of persons may be met with in many places, for it was fitting that both Greece and the country of the barbarians should partake of whatever is perfectly good; and there is the greatest number of such men in Egypt, in every one of the districts, or nomes, as they are called, and especially around Alexandria; and from all quarters those who are the best of these therapeutae proceed on their pilgrimage to some most suitable place as if it were their country, which is beyond the Maereotic lake."
Philo, Ascetics III[1]
They lived chastely with utter simplicity; they "first of all laid down temperance as a sort of foundation for the soul to rest upon, proceed to build up other virtues on this foundation" (Philo). They were dedicated to the contemplative life, and their activities for six days of the week consisted of ascetic practices, fasting, solitary prayers and the study of the scriptures in their isolated cells, each with its separate holy sanctuary, and enclosed courtyard:
"the entire interval from dawn to evening is given up by them to spiritual exercises. For they read the holy scriptures and draw out in thought and allegory their ancestral philosophy, since they regard the literal meanings as symbols of an inner and hidden nature revealing itself in covert ideas."
Philo, para. 28
In addition to the Pentateuch, the Prophets and Psalms they possessed arcane writings of their own tradition, including formulae for numerological and allegorical interpretations.
They renounced property and followed severe discipline:
"These men abandon their property without being influenced by any predominant attraction, and flee without even turning their heads back again."
Philo para. 18
They "professed an art of healing superior to that practiced in the cities" Philo notes, and the reader must be reminded of the reputation as a healer Saint Anthony possessed among his 4th-century contemporaries, who flocked out from Alexandria to reach him.
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.
The practices described by Philo were considered as early as Eusebius of Caesarea as one of the first models of Christian monastic life. Eusebius was so sure of his identification of Therapeutae with Christians that he deduced that Philo, who admired them so, must have been Christian himself, not knowing the date of Philo's essay, and Christian readers still believed that this must have been so until the end of the 18th century. Like the first Christian hermits of the Egyptian desert, they were hermits, or anchorites, rather than living communally, as later Christian monastic communities would do.
"The semianchoritic character of the Therapeutae community, the renunciation of property, the solitude during the six days of the week and the gathering together on Saturday for the common prayer and the common meal, the severe fasting, the keeping alive of the memory of God, the continuous prayer, the meditation and study of Holy Scripture were also practices of the Christian anchorites of the Alexandrian desert."[2]
Scouteris, The Therapeutae of Philo and the Monks as Therapeutae according to Pseudo-Dionysius
Formative influences
Hebrew tradition
Various formative influences on the Therapeutae have been conjectured. The Book of Enoch and Jubilees exemplify the Hebrew tradition for the mystic values of numbers and for allegorical interpretations, without having to reach to Zoroaster or Pythagoreans.
Buddhism
The similarities between the Therapeutae and Buddhist monasticism, a tradition earlier by several centuries, combined with Indian evidence of Buddhist missionary activity to the Mediterranean around 250 B.C.E. (the Edicts of Ashoka), have been pointed out.[3] The Therapeutae would have been the descendants of Ashoka's emissaries to the West, and would have influenced the early formation of Christianity.[4] The linguist Zacharias P. Thundy also suggests that the word "Therapeutae" is only a Hellenisation of the Indian Pali word for traditional Buddhists, Theravada. In general, Egypt had intense trade and cultural contacts with India during the period, as described in the 1st century CE Periplus of the Erythraean Sea.
See also
- Abbey
- Buddhist influences on Christianity
- Christian monasticism
- Monasticism
- Testament of Job
Further reading
- Taylor, Joan E. Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: Philo's "Therapeutae" Reconsidered
- Simon, Marcel and James H. Farley (tr.) (1967) 1980. Jewish Sects at the Time of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress Press)
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- ↑ Philo, Ascetics III
- ↑ http://www.omhros.gr/kat/history/Txt/Rl/Therapeutae.htm Dr Constantine Scouteris, "The Therapeutae of Philo and the Monks as Therapeutae according to Pseudo-Dionysius
- ↑ "Zen living", Robert Linssen
- ↑ "The Original Jesus" (Element Books, Shaftesbury, 1995), Elmar R Gruber, Holger Kersten
External links
- History sourcebook: Philo Judaeus, The Contemplative Life On Ascetics
- Philo Judaeus, The Contemplative Life excerpts (in English)
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