Philo's account of the Therapeutae, a Jewish ascetic community near Lake Mareotis in Egypt who renounced property for solitary study, allegorical Bible-reading, and an all-night hymn-vigil every fifty days.
On the Contemplative Life is a short treatise by the first-century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria describing the Therapeutae and Therapeutrides, a community of men and women living in individual huts above Lake Mareotis near Alexandria. Philo presents them as a companion piece to his earlier account of the Essenes: where the Essenes pursued the 'practical life,' the Therapeutae pursue the 'contemplative life.' They give away their property to relatives or friends before joining, live alone six days a week in single-room cells devoted to prayer, allegorical study of scripture, and hymn-composition, and eat only bread, salt, and water, some going three or six days between meals.
The treatise's centerpiece is an extended contrast between two kinds of banquet. Philo first savages the drunken, luxury-obsessed Greco-Roman symposium -- its violence, its ornamented slave-boys, its endless courses -- and singles out even Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium for indulging pederastic love. Against this he sets the Therapeutae's own sacred banquet, held every seventh sabbath (the 'fiftieth day'), where men and women sit separately, free members serve themselves without slaves, the eldest expounds scripture through allegory, and the night ends with two choruses -- one of men, one of women -- merging into a single chorus in imitation of Moses and Miriam's song after the crossing of the Red Sea.
The work matters for two reasons beyond its literary interest. It is one of the only detailed eyewitness-adjacent descriptions of a contemplative Jewish ascetic group from the Second Temple period, later cited (controversially) by Eusebius as evidence for early Christian monasticism. And it doubles as Philo's clearest statement of his allegorical method of scriptural interpretation, describing scripture's literal wording as a 'body' housing an invisible 'soul' of hidden meaning that the community exists to uncover.
“The very name reveals the purpose of these philosophers at once: they are rightly called Therapeutae and Therapeutrides”
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“life is short, but the art is long”
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“The expositions of the sacred writings are made through hidden meanings, in allegories”
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“an imitation of the chorus long ago formed at the Red Sea because of the wonders worked there”
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“wine is a drug of folly, and costly delicacies stir up the most insatiable of all creatures, desire”
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It is Philo of Alexandria's description of the Therapeutae, a community of Jewish ascetic men and women living near Lake Mareotis in Egypt. They renounce property, live alone six days a week studying scripture allegorically, and gather every fiftieth day for a sober communal banquet and all-night hymn-singing vigil.
According to Philo, they were philosophers devoted to healing the soul (hence the name, related to 'therapy') who lived in individual cells, prayed at dawn and dusk, ate minimally, and studied the sacred writings through allegory, gathering communally only on sabbaths.
Philo calls it 'almost entirely about love' of a pederastic kind, arguing it corrupts boys, wastes the lovers' bodies, souls, and property, and that even its praise of heavenly Aphrodite is merely urbane wit rather than substance -- he judges it inferior to the Therapeutae's own banquet.
At the community's all-night vigil, the men's and women's choruses merge into one singing chorus, which Philo says directly imitates the chorus Moses led among the men and Miriam led among the women after Israel crossed the Red Sea.
It is often cited (Eusebius notably claimed the Therapeutae were early Christians) as an early description of communal ascetic life, though Philo presents them explicitly as a pre-Christian Jewish group devoted to allegorical study of Mosaic scripture.
Allegorical Interpretation I · Allegorical Interpretation II · Allegorical Interpretation III · Every Good Man is Free · Flaccus · On Abraham · On Dreams · On Drunkenness · On Flight and Finding · On Husbandry · On Joseph · On Mating / Preliminary Studies