The So-Called Therapeutae of De Vita Contemplativa : Identity and Character

It has become quite common in scholarship to consider the community described by Philo in De vita contemplativa as a specific Jewish group comprising contemplative Essenes or people somehow related to the Essenes. In this study, we shall explore the meaning of Philo's masculine and feminine designations, θεραπευταί and θεραπευτρίδες, and consider the possibility that these words referred not to the male and female members of one group that was part of a Therapeutae sect, but to individuals whom Philo understood as exemplary devotees of God. We shall also consider a few matters concerning the character of the group. Overall, this study seeks to call into question the assumption that, in his De vita contemplativa, Philo is describing an Essene community in Egypt.