The so-called therapeutae of de vita contemplative: Identity and character

Harvard Theological Review

Volumn 91, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 3-24

  Taylor, Joan E ^a   Davies, Philip R ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO   (New Zealand)

^b UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950712487     PISSN: 00178160     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0017816000006416     Document Type: Article

References (27)

1. For example, Marcel Simon, Jewish Sects at the Time of Jesus (1960; J. H. Farley, trans.; reprinted Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967) 120-30;
2. Geza Vermes and Martin Goodman, eds., The Essenes according to the Classical Sources (Sheffield: JSOT, 1989) 76;
3. and Roland Bergmeier, Die Essener-Berichte des Flavius Josephus: Quellenstudien zu den Essenertexten im Werk des jüdischen Historiographen (Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1993) 41-47.
4. For a survey of those who link the Therapeutae with the Essenes, see Jean Riaud "Les Thérapeutes d'Alexandrie dans la tradition et dans la recherche critique jusqu'aux découvertes de Qumran," ANRW 2. 20.2 (1987) 1189-1295, esp. 1241-64. We will not address the old proposal that the group is purely an ideal, constructed by Philo for the purposes of his ongoing debate with the Greco-Roman philosophers, or otherwise fictive (ibid., 1202-10).
5. For an excellent argument for the historicity of the group on the basis of what is missing and included in Philo's rhetoric, see David M. Hay, "Things Philo Said and Did Not Say about the Therapeutae," SBL 1992 Seminar Papers (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992) 673-83.
6. Christian Habicht, ed., Die Inschriften des Asklepieions (Altertümer von Pergamon 8.3; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969) 108-9 (no. 71). LSJ Supp., s.v.
7. Ladislav Vidman, Sylloge inscriptionum religionis Isiacae et Sarapiacae (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1969) 161 (no. 314). The inscription is dated to the 1st or 2d c. CE. We are grateful to Professor Helmut Koester for this and the following four references.
8. Pierre Roussel, Les cultes égyptiens à Délos du IIIe au Ier siècle avant J.- C. (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1916) nos. 3, 21, 105, 115, 117, 151, 160, 164, 175; compare nos. 2, 41,42.
9. Richard A. Baer, Philo's Use of the Categories Male and Female (Arbeiten zur Literatur und Geschichte des hellenistischen Judentums 3; Leiden: Brill, 1979);
10. Judith Romney Wegner, "Philo's Portrayal of Women - Hebraic or Hellenic?" in Amy-Jill Levine, ed., Women Like This: New Perspectives on Women in the Greco-Roman World (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991) 41-66;
11. Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels (2d ed.; London: SCM, 1983) 59-63.
12. The word here is. This term is a common one, the diminutive form of and, which have agricultural or rural associations. The word applies to a small tract of land. See the discussion in Joan E. Taylor, Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) 198-99, where it is noted that is translated at times into Latin as villa or praedium.
13. See also William Smith and George Grove, An Atlas of Ancient Geography, Biblical and Classical (London: Murray, 1875) map 33.
14. François Daumas and P. Miquel, De vita contemplativa (Les œuvres de Philon d'Alexandrie; Paris: Cerf, 1963).
15. and Anthony de Cosson, Mareotis: Being a Short Account of the History and Ancient Monuments of the North-Western Desert of Egypt and of Lake Mareotis (London: Country Life, 1935) 106-113.
16. The suggestion by G. P. Richardson that the community may have been on the south shore of Lake Mareot relies on a reading of as "beyond Lake Mareot" or "farther inland" from it ("Philo and Eusebius on Monasteries and Monasticism: The Therapeutae and Kellia," in Bradley H. McLean, ed., Origins and Method: Toward a New Understanding of Judaism and Christianity [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993] 334-59). This suggestion has been rejected by Annewies van den Hoek, who notes that the first meaning of with the genitive in LSJ is "over," "above," or "on higher ground." The second meaning, favored by Richardson, is more common with an accusative, and indeed Philo uses it with the accusative when he wishes to indicate "beyond" (Leg. 1.2;
17. See Annewies van den Hoek, "The Catechetical School of Alexandria and Its Philonic Heritage," HTR 90 (1997) 59-97, esp. 84-85 n. 124.
18. See Dorothy Sly, Philo's Alexandria (London: Routledge, 1996) 37.
19. It is unlikely that Philo included women in his account here as an "idealizing" motif. Elsewhere, Philo does not exhibit a particularly high opinion of the philosophical capabilities of women; see Hay, "Things Philo Said and Did Not Say," 674.
20. For discussions of the education of women, see Susan Guettel Cole, "Could Greek Women Read and Write?" Women's Studies 8 (1981) 129-55;
21. Sarah B. Pomeroy, "Technikai kai Mousikai: The Education of Women in the Fourth Century and in the Hellenistic Period," American Journal of Ancient History 2 (1977) 51-68;
22. and Ross S. Kraemer, "Monastic Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Egypt: Philo Judaeus on the Therapeutrides," Signs 14 (1989) 342-70, esp. 350.
23. Robin Barrow, Greek and Roman Education (London: Macmillan, 1976) 76-77.
24. For discussion of women's literacy, in the context of literacy in general, see William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989) 142-43. The literacy of the men is significant itself. As Harris notes, in the Egyptian papyri "there are no revelations of lower-class literacy" (p. 142).
25. For this and the preceeding papyrus, see Harris, Literacy, 143.
26. Ross S. Kraemer, Her Share of the Bessings: Women's Religions Among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) 114.
27. H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (London: Sheed and Ward, 1956) 134-37. Marrou notes, however, that learning music had declined in value since classical antiquity (pp. 138-41).