Philo and the Therapeutae

The story is told that Philo, in the reign of Claudius, came to Rome and talked with Peter, who was preaching to the people there at the time. That would not be unlikely, since the very treatise we are speaking of, which he composed later, some years afterward, clearly contains the rules of the Church that are still kept among us to this day. [a] And since he describes the life of our ascetics as accurately as anyone could, it will be plain that he not only knew but welcomed, revered, and honored the apostolic men of his day. They were of Hebrew descent, it seems, and so still kept most of the ancient customs in a rather Jewish way. In the work he entitled On the Contemplative Life, or the Suppliants, he first declares that he will add nothing beyond the truth, nothing of his own invention, to what he is about to relate. Then he says that these men are called Therapeutae, and the women with them Therapeutrides. He adds the reasons for the name: either that they cure and heal the souls of those who come to them, freeing them like doctors from the passions that come from vice, or because of the pure and sincere service and worship they give to the Divine. [b] Whether he gave them this name himself, fitting the title to the men’s way of life, or whether those who were first really called them this at the beginning, since the name of Christians had not yet been spread abroad everywhere, there is no need to argue now. [c]

In any case, he testifies first of all to their renunciation of property. He says that when they begin to practice philosophy they give up their possessions to their relatives; then, having renounced all the cares of life, they go outside the city walls and spend their days in lonely farms and gardens, knowing well that mixing with people unlike themselves is unprofitable and harmful. Those who did this at that time were, it seems, practicing with eager and ardent faith to imitate the life of the prophets. For in the Acts of the Apostles, which all acknowledge, it is recorded that all the apostles’ followers sold their property and possessions and divided them among all, as anyone had need, so that no one among them was in want. As the account says, “As many as were owners of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of what was sold, and laid them at the apostles’ feet, so that it was distributed to each as anyone had need.” [d]

Philo testifies to things very like these, and then adds, in these very words: “This race is found in many parts of the world, for both Greece and the barbarian world had to share in what is perfectly good. But it abounds in Egypt, in each of the districts called nomes, and especially around Alexandria. [e] The best men from every quarter send themselves out as a colony to the Therapeutae’s homeland, as it were, a most suitable place that lies above Lake Mareotis on a fairly low hill, very well placed both for safety and for its mild air.” Then, after describing what sort of houses they had, he says this about the churches scattered through the country: “In each house there is a sacred room, which is called a sanctuary and a monastery. In it, alone, they carry out the mysteries of the holy life. They bring nothing into it, no drink, no food, nor any of the other things the body needs, but laws, and oracles given through prophets, and hymns, and the other things by which knowledge and piety grow and are made complete.” [f] And after some other things he says: “The whole time from dawn to evening is for them a discipline. They read the sacred writings and draw out the philosophy of their fathers by allegory, since they regard the words of the plain sense as symbols of a hidden reality made known through underlying meanings. They also have writings of men of old who were the founders of their school and left many records of the allegorical method. These they use as models and imitate the pattern of their way of life.” This seems to have been said by a man who had listened to them expounding the sacred Scriptures. And it is quite likely that what he calls writings of the ancients among them were the Gospels and the writings of the apostles, and probably some interpretations of the ancient prophets, such as the letter to the Hebrews and several others of Paul’s letters contain. Then again he writes this about their composing new psalms: “So they not only contemplate but also compose songs and hymns to God in every kind of meter and melody, which of necessity they set to more solemn rhythms.”

He goes through many other things in the same book about these people, but it seemed necessary to pick out those that set forth the marks of the Church’s way of life. If anyone thinks that what has been said is not peculiar to the gospel way of life, but could also fit others besides those described, let him be convinced at least by Philo’s next words, in which, if he is fair-minded, he will find undisputed testimony on the point. He writes: “Having first laid down self-control as a kind of foundation in the soul, they build the other virtues on it. None of them would take food or drink before sunset, since they judge philosophy worthy of the light, but the needs of the body fit for darkness. So they have given the day to the one, and a small part of the night to the others. Some, in whom a greater longing for knowledge has taken root, think of food only once in three days. Others so delight and luxuriate in the feast of wisdom, which supplies her teachings richly and without stint, that they hold out for twice as long, and are used to tasting the food they need barely once in six days.” These words of Philo we take to refer clearly and indisputably to our own people. But if anyone still stubbornly objects after this, let him too give up his unbelief and yield to clearer proofs, which can be found nowhere except in the religion of the Christians according to the gospel. For he says that women also are with the people we are discussing, and that most of them are aged virgins. They kept their purity not under compulsion, like some of the priestesses among the Greeks, but by their own free choice, out of zeal and longing for wisdom. Eager to live with her, they took no account of the pleasures of the body, desiring not mortal offspring but immortal, which only the soul that is dear to God can bear by itself.

Then, a little further on, he sets this out still more vividly: “They interpret the sacred writings through hidden meanings, in allegories. For the whole body of the law seems to these men like a living creature: its spoken commands are the body, and its soul is the invisible meaning stored up in the words. This community began to study this meaning with special care, seeing in the words, as in a mirror, the extraordinary beauties of the thoughts reflected there.” Why should we add to this their gatherings in one place, the separate pursuits there of the men and of the women, and the disciplines that we still practice by custom even now, especially at the feast of the saving Passion, with fasting, all-night vigils, and attention to the divine words? [g] The writer we have mentioned recorded these in his own work, marking out more precisely the very manner of life that has been kept to this day by us alone. He tells of the all-night vigils of the great feast and the disciplines practiced in them, and of the hymns we usually recite. He describes how one person sings in rhythm and good order while the others listen in silence and join him in the endings of the hymns, and how on those days they sleep on the ground on beds of straw and, as he wrote in his own words, “taste no wine at all, nor anything with blood in it; water is their only drink, and the relish with their bread is salt and hyssop.” [h] Besides this, he describes the order of rank among those entrusted with the services of the Church, the diaconate and the presidency of the bishop’s office, which stands over all. Anyone who wishes to know these things exactly can learn them from the man’s account already named. [i] It is plain to everyone that when Philo wrote these things he had in view the first heralds of the gospel teaching and the customs handed down from the beginning by the apostles.