"The 4 B.C.E Shavuot rebellion & the Therapeutae"

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
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billd89
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Re: The Shavuot Rebellion & Therapeutae, Outcome?

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Philo provides us with our only knowledge of the Therapeutai and their practices. This picture of pious dedication was undoubtedly idealized, but the Therapeutai were almost certainly real Jews and not wholly imaginary;[20] they lived near Lake Mareotis, which was not far from Alexandria where Philo was writing.

The description provides us with evidence that in Egypt, two thousand years ago, at least some Jews celebrated Shavuot with prayers and study throughout the night in a fashion strikingly similar to Tikkun Leil Shavuot, the all-night study of Torah on Shavuot night, popular from the early modern period until today.

Philo's DVC is an apologetic, but perhaps also an apology for something the Therapeutae had (or: were suspected to have) done. If Philo Judaeus were then a (young) lawyer pleading to Roman authorities on behalf of pacifistic Therapeuts after this uprising (4 BC), I would reckon his Age ~25 and therefore born 30 BC. This defense of his former teachers would have been especially warranted if these Therapeuts were 'suspiciously' inhabiting ancestral (i.e. abandoned) military barracks at Plinthine.

I believe that as a child Philo had tutors who were Therapeuts; likewise, he would be recalling what he had seen at their compound at Age 10-15, or c.20-15 BC. Notwithstanding, his opinion of these increasingly renegade Jews also changed (negatively) in time. The Shavuot Rebellion might have been the pivotal event that ultimately anathematized this heterodox sect, begetting a fracturous, dizzying array of Gnostic offshoots in the mid-First C. AD.

Were they prophets of the Chrestiani, awaiting a Messiah: One anointed "after Melchizedek"? Or relic Melchizedekians, suspect after violent unrest in Palestine?

Image


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 [1935], p.33;
In spite of these defeats there was a steady and persistent infiltration of Libyan and Meshwesh immigrants into the Delta under the immediate successors of Ramses III., and by the end of the weak 21st Dynasty (945 BC) this peaceful penetration reached its climax. The 22nd (or Meshwesh) Dynasty {943-716 BC} was established as “rulers of what was still the most powerful empire in the Eastern Mediterranean.” 1 They reigned over Egypt for two hundred years, and Libyan influence remained for some time after.

1 Botti wrote that the Meshwesh mercenaries were used to defend the country between Lake Mareotis and the sea (i.e. the Taenia), and probably they garrisoned the frontier wall erected against the Barbarians at Abu Sir after their defeat by Ramses III. When the Meshwesh became Pharaohs they made their capital at Bubastis (close to the modern Zagazig).

It is curious to me that the Libyo-Berber Meshwesh tribe, originally settled in the western Delta, should move their capital to the eastern Delta, to Bubastis/Pi-Beseth (Hebrew: פי-בסת py-bst), Per-Sopdu and Tanis, towns within a larger proto-Jewish settlement area. From there, Shoshenq I would invade Judah; Shishak/Sousakim was also related to Biblical Jeroboam, first king of the northern Kingdom of Israel (c.910 BC).

I sense a Judeo-Meshwesh connection, here.

Proto-Jewish mercenaries are placed on this western border
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