Revisiting Philo's Therapeutae and their Context/Timeline
Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2021 9:21 am
I'm starting a new thread off smthg DCHindley cut&pasted over two years ago, on what was there a minor point, the Therapeutae.
DCHindley wrote: ↑Fri May 18, 2018 11:32 amI'm inclined to agree w/ Mead [1903] on the approximate date 25 AD of the writing, but I have strong reservations about Conybeare (whose arguments/rhetorical ploys appear frankly sociopathic!) as I work through his text.G R S Mead, 'On the Tracks of the Earliest Christians', (Did Jesus Live 100 years BC, 1903, pp. 324-353) 2 of 4:
The "Therapeut = Christian" Controversy: ... I can only repeat what I have already written in my "Fragments" (pp. 64, 65), after reviewing the whole matter.
1 Conybeare (F. C.), "Philo about the Contemplative Life, or the Fourth Book of the Treatise concerning the Virtues," critically edited, with a Defence of its Genuineness (Oxford; 1895).
It is convincingly established against the "Pseudo-Philo" speculation of Grätz, Nicolas and Lucius, that the "De Vita Contemplativa" is a genuine Philonean tract. As to its date, we are confronted with some difficulties; but the expert opinion of Conybeare assures us that "every reperusal of the works of Philo confirms my feeling that the D. V. C. is one of his earliest works " (op. cit. p. 276). Now as Philo was born about the year 30 B.C., the date of the treatise may be roughly ascribed to the first quarter of the first century; Conybeare puts it conservatively "about the year 22 or 23" (op. cit., p. 290).
The Therapeut Dilemma: The question, then, naturally arises: At such a date can the Therapeuts of Philo be identified with the earliest Christian Church at Alexandria? If the accepted dates of the origins are correct, the answer must be emphatically, No. If, on the contrary, the accepted dates are incorrect, and Philo's Therapeuts were "Christians," then we shall be compelled to change the values of many things.
[338] But apart from the question of date, the contents of the "D. V. C." are of immense importance and interest as affording us a glimpse into those mysterious com munities in which Christians for so many centuries recognized not only their forerunners, but themselves. The Therapeuts, however, were clearly not Christians in any sense in which the term has been used by dogmatic Christianity; Philo knows absolutely nothing of Christianity in any sense in which the word is used to-day. Who, then, were those Christian non-Christian Essene Therapeuts? The answer to this question demands, in our opinion, an entire reformulation of the accepted history of the origins.
The dilemma is one that cannot be avoided. It is chief of all problems which confront the student of Christian origins. The Therapeuts have been recognized throughout the centuries as identical with the earliest Christian Church of Egypt. They were known to Philo at the very latest as early as 25 A.D., and they must have existed long before. If the canonical dates are correct, they could not have been Christians, in the sense of being followers of Jesus; and yet they were so like the Christians, that the Church Fathers regarded them as the model of a Christian Church. We are, therefore, confronted with this dilemma; either Christianity existed before Christ, or the canonical dates are wrong. From this dilemma there seems to me to be no escape.
...
DCH
Who, then, were those Christian non-Christian Essene Therapeuts? The answer to this question demands, in our opinion, an entire reformulation of the accepted history of the origins.
No. There's no identification w/ the Alexandian Christian Church (whch I presume appeared 2 generations later). The "Therapeutae" were philosophic Jews, intellectually-advanced from a Palestinian standpoint and thoroughly cosmopolitan (anachronistically: 'modern') in their orientation. Philo mentions their varied fellowships or conventicles, which then quite old. It isnt a single unified group, and while many were likely Alexandrian, it was an eclectic and 'international' community of Judaizers and prosletyes. I'll sketch out my own working thesis, here.
If one figure predominated in their assumed belief system, it was probably Melchizedek. Many of their forebearers had been Jewish mercenaries in Egypt for centuries, and the Warrior/Judge/Savior figure of c.300-200 BC had become identified w/ the Logos/Son of God before Philo's time (c.100 BC). Samaritans in Egypt were 'Old Jewish', and Melchizedek transcended many other local cultural distinctions in the Diaspora. More 'orthodox' Jews would have uneasily accomodated these primitive and sometimes radically syncretistic Jews from the margins; some 'Therapeutae' came from hinterland towns and faraway places, Philo says.
Later still, and of a different origin?, it is more likely the Christos Myth had appeared only a few generations before exploding c.40 AD. The Chrestiani were a social phenomenon in different areas of Roman Empire before the Jesus Disciples (organized cultic hijackers) arrived in most towns 55-110 AD - that takeover was significantly later than Philo's record of the Therapeutae (whose colony disappeared in his lifetime, I'd guess).
In his day, Apollos would have been familiar w/ some living Therapeutae; he might have been student at the colony. Cerinthus (c.25-90 AD?) might possibly have studied under one or more Therapeuts, but he probably read/sang their works a generation after. (I see no reason to doubt that a few Therapeuts became 'Judeo-Christian' but I won't overstate that case either.)
The works which 'Therapeuts' (Jewish writers) produced at the writers' colony at Lake Mareotis c.10 BC - 25 AD expressed a kind of advanced exegetical & allegorical Judaizing propaganda of their day. It was a golden age for their book product, tailored for itinerant preachers and unorthodox synogogues appealing to the Chrestiani in distant towns of the Empire.
Some other material - later still, not produced at this colony, by yet more radical exegetical & allegorical Judaizers - clearly troubles Philo in his later years. Insofar as this 'movement' was literary, it evolved fairly quickly - from 20-50 AD - into something more heretical. This would explain the seeming contradictory positions he takes towards such writers in his different works, in his increasingly conservative standpoint.
Another issue is conflation: Philo's 'Therapeutae' are also explicitly identified as healers, but those were specialists - he doesnt elaborate what those folks did exactly. I suspect the standard rigamarole of fortune-telling, dream interpretation, magic, etc. which typically embarassed or offended normative/institutional Judaism. De Vita Contemplativa reads like a sympathetic attorney's 1969 defense of hippies, a commune that's being socially-condemned as licentious, freaky and dangerous: some important bits are obviously left out. And that is what fascinates me...
I think that in the Diaspora, the older and widespread but weak Melchizedek folk 'cult' was subsumed by a Christos movement c.40-85 AD, then the post-Apostalic Jesus cult opportunistically seized that mantle last (battling various gnostic competitors, ripping off their ideas when useful, etc.) A breach must have occurred well before 70 AD, but the collapse of Second Temple Judaism created a void into which all sorts of mad ideas flowed freely, c.70-140 AD. Patristic Christianity gets sorted fairly soon thereafter.
So the widespread but especially Judeo-Egyptian Melchizedekian belief (a key component of the 'Therapeutae' cult) had pre-existed for several hundred years, and persisted awhile longer into Christian Church times, but that specific commune on Lake Mareotis probably disappeared c.40 AD.