PHILO'S

DE VITA CONTEMPLATIVA PHILOSOPHER'S DREAM by

AS A

TROELS

ENGBERG-PEDERSEN Universityof Copenhagen

The issue of genre I: the first possibility-a philosophical treatise (pragmateia) What

moral

is the genre of Philo's De hita Contemplativa?1 What kind of writing is it? Though the question may seem to lie behind much scholarship on the work during the last 100 years and more, to my knowledge it has not been addressed head-on. I shall initially sketch two possible answers, then suggest a method for choosing between them and then practise the method in a close reading of the whole work that is intended to bring out its comprehensive and coherent meaning. Finally, I shall indicate why it will be important to keep in mind the qucstion of genre, as I have construed and answered it, in any future scholarship that will address the work more than tangentially. The obvious place to look for an answer would be the title of the work. Unfortunately, it is not at all clear from the manuscript tradition what the title actually was. Nor can we be certain that any form of the title as we have them was Philo's own. Initially, therefore, the best place to look is the first and last paragraphs. The first third of the first paragraph (down to suggests the following, straightforward answer. Contempl. is to be understood as part of a larger work in 1I presuppose without discussion Philonic authorship of the treatise. 2 I am drawing here on the very helpful survey by J. Riaud, "Les Thrapeutes d'Alcxandrie dans la tradition et dans la recherche critique jusqu'aux dcouvertes de Qumran," ANRW II 20.2 (Berlin/New York 1987) 1189-1295. However, see J.-P. PAPM 29 (Paris Audet, Review of F. Daumas, P. Miquel (eds.), De vita contemplativa, Audet 1963), RB 72 (1965) 155-156. Asking about the "genre litteraire" of Contempl., commented: "Nous sommes ici en pleine description de mirabilia" (Review 156).He was right.

41 which Philo described at least two among the traditional "lives" (bioi) that people might choose between in their ethical reflection. In terms of genrc, Gontempl.would therefore be this: a moral philosophical treatise. This picture may be supported in the following wayk. (a) The theme of the lives was a well-established one in the ancient world, clearly presented, for instance, by Aristotle near the beginning of his Nicomachean Ethics (1.5). There Aristotle lists four lives as possible candidates for the practical life" and (the happy life. The two to which Philo refers-"the also life of) "those who have welcomed contemplation (theoria)"-are the two of foremost importance in Aristotle. Thus at thc end of the Ethics (10.7-8), he discusses precisely whether happiness consists in the life of theoria or a life of practical, moral virtue. With this compare Philo's claim in the conclusion of his work that a life of theoria leads to "the very summit of happiness". (b) Aristotle, furthermore, was the inventor of a distinct literary genre, the pragmateia or "systematic or scientific treatise".: In our text too, Philo presents his own work as part of a pragmateia. (c) In general terms of style, too, Aristotle might very easily himself have written something like the sentence with which Philo I will now proceed starts off "Having discussed the Essenes, who ..., at once in accordance with the sequence of this treatment (pragmateia) to say what is required about those too who have welcomed (the life of) contcmplation." Similarly, the beginning of Philo's last paragraph has a very Aristotelian ring: "So much then for the therapeutae, who...."1 The suggestion here is certainly not that Philo consciously modeled the genre of his work on Aristotle, but only that he presented it as belonging to a genre that had first been sharply configured by Aristotle. That is the straightforward answer.

3 The quotation is from Liddell/Scott/Jones s.v., who refer to Polybius (see The Histories 1.1.1),Dionysiusof Halicarnassus 1.1.4),Diodorus Siculus(see TheLibrary History of 1.74.4) and Lucian (see On How to WriteHistory13) for the (see The RomanAntiquities or historical treatise". That genre ultimatelyderivesfrom Aristotle, meaning "systematic scientific Ethics2.2, 1103b26. cf., e.g., Nicomachean 4 The claim is not that there are exact linguisticreplicas of this in Aristotle, but that 1 the general style is closely comparable. For Contempl. for instance this: backward reference-forward reference plus the idea of the next logical step in a sequence. Cf., e.g., 90 Aristotle'sNicomachean Ethics3.9-10, 1117b20-23,or 7.14, 1154b32-34.For Contempl. this: enough about that. Cf. Aristotle's Ethics 1.10, 1101a21, or 8.14, 1163b27-28.

42 The issue of genre Ik the second possibility-a fictional story (plasma)

Against this I wish to place an altogether different answer. Just now the aim is not to convince the reader, but only to articulate a comprethe work. The arguhensive, alternative framework for understanding ment will come later. We may begin from noting two puzzling features of Philo's text. (i) His reference to an earlier discussion of the Essenes cannot be taken to refer to either of the two treatments of them that we have from his hand, in Hypoth. and in Prob.5 For one thing, the Esscncs are not really described there as living a life that could properly qualify as practical as distinct from theoretical. But more importantly, the discussion of the Essenes to which Philo refers at the beginning of Contempl. must belong to the very same pragmateia on the lives of which Contempl. is itself a could part. But neither Hypoth. nor Prob. is about the lives. So Con temp l. not be merely "volume two" of either of them. Thus if we take what Philo says here in its literal sense, what we have in Contempl. is only a fragment of a longer treatise on the lives. In itself this is hardly puzzling. After all, we might merely say that something has been lost. Still, has Philo given a third description of the Essenes? Apparently, yes. (ii) However, to judge from Philo's last paragraph, something has been lost at the end too. That paragraph, which in terms of its content certainly summarizes and concludes the work as we have it, is introduced by a pEv 8rj ("now then"), which should have been followed in the paragraph, but that is by a 8e ("but"). There is another followed by a corresponding 8. There is no however, immediately to correspond with the introductory Ov That, then, will have followed after the end of thc work as we have it. In short, if we adopt the straightforward answer to the question of gcnre, we are forced to that Contempl. is only a fragment, with something missing at either say end. For all we know, that might of course be the case. But here another possibility opens up: that Philo only presented his work in the way suggested in the straightforward answer, whereas in fact it neither originated in a larger work nor belonged to the genre ostensibly suggested by Philo. It is this possibility that we should explore. Let us note another puzzling feature of Philo's introductory paraotK0gev), Philo contrasts the graph. In its second third ( 1 b, from usual practice of poets and speechwriters with his own aim of "quite 5

Hypoth.11.1-18, Prob. 75-91.

43 the irjS clinging to (7rEptEX6gEVO;) truth itself and in the last third ( 1 c, from 1tE ijv) Philo claims that even so he will not be able to do justice to his wonderful subject. lb obviously makes use of a well-known topos, also employed, for instance, by Socrates at the beginning of Plato's Apology (17a4-b6). Philo himself uses it elsewhere, c.g. at the beginning of Op f (4-5). There are rather close verbal correspondences between the two passages.b But there is also a striking difference. In Opif. there is not the emphatic contrast made in Contempl. between improving on one's subject and clinging to the truth alone. Why the difference? Why the emphatic truth-claim in C,ontempl.? Is Philo out to hide something? I suggest that we adopt an altogether different picture of the genre of Contempl. than the one given in the straightforward answer. The new genre is one that for want of a better term I shall call "utopian fantasy done for a serious purpose". In ancient terms, as we shall see in a momcnt, such a genre would fall under that of a plastheis mythos, a fabricated story or, for short, fiction ( plasma)-as opposed to an alithinos logos, that is, true history. Let us try to situate this genre as it may have appeared in Philo's time to a rcflective person like Philo himself. I begin from Philo's revered hero Plato and one of his dialogues most highly favoured by Philo, the Timaeus. From there we shall move down to Philo's own time and consider two passages, the first in Josephus and then one in Lucian. Independently of each other they are evidence that there was felt to be a genre of utopian fantasy and that it was seen to be problcmatic in a way that is directly relevant for the manner in which (on the present hypothesis) Philo constructed his own case of precisely that. First the Timaeus. It is well known how much time and care Plato spends over the many introductory pages of this dialogue on explaining the specific character of a certain story about prehistorical Athens that Kritias recounts. It derives, Kritias claims, from Solon, who had heard it from certain priests in Egypt when he travelled there. A number of points are relevant here. (a) Socrates intends to take "yesterday's" (that is, the Republic's) account of the ideal state and its citizens further by seeing how that state will act in practice (19b-c). But for that purpose both Socrates and Kritias simply 6 "neither poet nor speechwriter," "a venture must be made," E.g. this (from Opif.): "nothing from our own store" (I am grateful to David Runia for having drawn my attention to this passage).

44 feel the need to "find a suitable story on which to base" what they want to say (X6yov wva 1tp1tov-ca ioi5 [3ov?,?jpawv 1m08cr8at, 26a5-6). Kritias believes that he has found one in the Solonic story (25c4-5). And Socrates later confirms that that story will suit their purpose (26el-5). The point is that the best way to discuss abstract questions about the ideal state and its citizens is, so Plato suggests, by means of a story (a logos, 21 c5-6). (b) However, what makes Solon's story suitable is also the fact that it was actually true. That is how Kritias introduces it.' And that, he claims, is part of the reason why it may serve its purpose,s a claim with which Socrates again concurs. Here is Socrates on Solon's story as recalled by Kritias: "it is a great point in its favour that it is not fiction (a plastheis mythos) but true history (an alithinos logos)" (26c4-5). (c) In spite of this, Plato goes out of his way to signal to his reader that of coursc Solon's story is not "true history"- for instance, in Socrates' concluding remark (26e4-5, just quoted) and when he has Kritias say the following: "when you were describing your society and its inhabitants yesterday, I was rcminded of this story and noticed with astonishment how closely, by .somemiraculous chance (91C nvo your account coincided with Solon's" (25e4-5)! What we havc here are the following elements: (x) a story, jj designed for the purpose of describing an ideal state and its citizens as acting, that is, as "engaging in some of the activities for which they appear to be formed" ( 19b8-c 1-compare the actual content of Contempl.), (z) claimed (falsely) for that purpose to be historically but also as a piece of fiction, a plastheis mythos of thc implicitly acknowledged kind that Plato notoriously delighted in creating. Understood as under obvix, y and z, Kritias' story is a case of utopian fantasy-though in for serious purposes. The proposal I am exploring is ously engaged that Contempl. too should be understood as under x, y and z-but not under v. In contrast with Plato, I suggest, Philo did not intend to provide any implicit acknowledgement that he was himself a main factor behind his account. That requires some explanation, which we may obtain from Josephus. In a fascinating passage in Against Apion (2.220-224), Josephus argues that the Jewish people has put into practice what Greeks would only 7 Cf. 20d7-8: "very strange, but in all respects true;" and 21a4-5: "this unrecorded yet authentic achievement of our city." 8 Cf. 26c7-d1 :"we will transfer the imaginary citizens and city which you described yesterday to the real world," namely by means of that story.

45 consider distant ideals. I translate the vital sections. "Suppose our people (ethnos) and our voluntary obedience to our laws (nomoi) had not happened to be known to the whole world as a patent fact; suppose instead that someone delivered a lecture (&v(xytv6aKp-tv)to the Greeks which he admitted (stated, to having himself (alr6q) composed indeed kept saying (6vyypayrat)-or insisted) that somewhere outside the known world he had fallen in with certain people who held such sublime ideas about God and had for ages continued steadily faithful to such laws (as ours), they would all, I am sure, have marvelled at it (0avpGaai, that is, reacted Aith incredulity) ... In fact, people accuse those who have attempted to write up (yp6cxV(xt) something similar with a view to a constitution and a code of laws of having invented things that are beyond belief (9av?aaia: they arc just too marvellous !), and they insist (cpa6xetv) that such people have based their account on impossible premisses (8va-cot Other philosophers I pass over, who have treated such a theme in their writings (ypGppara, an alternative reading-compositions, or-with avyyp6ppara, cf. 6vybut Plato ..." yp6yai above), This passage gives us the following points: ( 1 ) For the purpose of discussing themes like those indicated by Josephus (constitutions, laws, a people's relationship with God), some people would themselves write a narrative whose fictitious character they would not attempt to conceal. Here belong a number of philosophers, including Plato. Other people would tell fanciful stories about their travels to far-away places. The first genre we already know from Plato, from the Timaeus but of course also from his Republic and elsewhere. But as Josephus states, Plato was not alone. Another example would be the utopian sketch of an ideal society made by Zeno, the founder of stoicism, in his own Republic.9 The second genre is that of the "marvellous tale" (paradoxologoumenon).'oIt had its roots far back in the Greek imagination (compare, e.g., the many fanciful tales in but flourished in the period after Alexander's conquest of Herodotus) the Orient. As an example one might cite the account given by the enigmatic lambulus (possibly 2nd century BC) of his stay in a far-away Stoa:PoliticalThought Action and analyses of this see A. Erskine, The Hellenistic (London 1990) 18-27, M. Schofield, The StoicIdea of the City (Cambridge 1991) 3-56, D. Dawson, Cities theGods: Communist in of Utopias Greek Thought (New York/Oxford 1992) 160-22. 10 Classical Compare the entry by J.R. Morgan on "fantastic literature" in the Oxford Dictionary (3rd ed. 1996). On Hellenistic "paradoxographies" in general see E. Gabba, "True History and False History in Classical Antiquity," JRS 71 (1981) 50-62. 9 For

46 1 place (somewhere like Sri-Lanka) and the strange people he met there." Modern interpreters have disagreed on whether such stories should be understood as having a character as ancient utopias with a serious, intent." Our passage in Josephus settles this quesquasi-philosophical tion. He, at least, took them to have that. The vital point here is that Josephus saw the two genres as being very closely connected in spite of the difference with regard to the truth-claim made in either. Both might serve for exploring an ideal, utopian state. Both are cases of utopian fantasy done for a scrious purpose. (2) Josephus also shows that the reaction to either genre would often be the same. Peoplc would say that the stories (whether ackowledged to be fictive or claimed to be true) were "beyond belief," as we should clearly translate 8au?acr-c here. People might even become quite technical and say that the stories were based on "impossible prcmisses"with a curious anticipation of modern arguments within the field off "possible world semantics." (3) However, so Josephus claims, all these problems may be put safely aside in the present case. For with the Jews it is not a matter of any fictive account (whether acknowledged to be so or not). Here it is sheer fact! Now supposc Philo wanted to tell a story (cf. x above) for the purpose of describing an ideal state and its citizens in action (cf. y). Suppose he also wanted to say that that ideal state was one to which only one actual people in the world, the Jewish onc, could be said to be aspiring. In that case, it would not be attractive for him to present it as his own creation in the manner of Plato (Josephus' first possibility). For people might thcn rcspond with the "impossible premisses" reaction and decline to accept that the ideal picture had anything to do with thc Jewish people in particular. Nor would it make sense for him to locate his ideal state beyond the boundaries of the known world. For what relationship would it then have with the Jews? The only choice he would be left with is this: to present his idcal state as a his-

11In Diodorus Siculus, The Libraryof History2.55-60. 12See, for instance, the discussion W.-W. Ehlers, "Mit dem Sdwestmonsunnach by Ceylon, Eine Interpretation der lambul-Exzerpte Diodors," Wrzburger Jahrbcher die fr N.F. Altertumswissenschaft, 11 (1985) 73-84. Ehlers rejects any kind of utopian interpretation of this text, taking it instead to be just a "literary account of a travel of discovery" comparable with those of Pytheas, Ctesias and Megasthenes ("Sudwestmonsun," 84). The way he gets around all the "marvellous" elements in lambulus' account ("Sudwestmonsun,"80-81) is not convincing.

47 torical fact (cf. z) without admitting its fictitious character (cf. to locate it within the confines of the known world. That, on the present hypothesis, is what Philo did in Contempl. An important premiss in this line of reasoning was the claim about a change in the likely reaction to utopian fantasy between Plato and Philo's day. A passage in Lucian supports this picture. In his treatise A True Story, Lucian refers (1.2) to the poets prose-writers (avyand philosophers of old who have written up (cyi)yyp6yp-tv) much that smacks of miracles and fables (icp&6iLa xai One is Ctesias of Cnidus (end of 5th century Bc) and another our well-known Iambulus (1.3). Lucian does not himself wish to criticize such people for having lied since he claims to have noticed that "this was already a common practice even among men who profess philosophy"-apparHe did wonently, as the scholiast takes it, a slap at Plato's Republic. 13 der, though, "if (Ei) they thought they could write untruths (OK r8fl) and not get caught at it" (1.4). Note how writers of far-away miracles and fables are here lumped together with philosophers engagcd in reflection on the ideal state. Note also how Lucian distances himself from what he merely sees as entertaining forms of lying and expresses his wonder if these authors (really) thought that they could go undetected when writing up plain untruths. As in Josephus, the basic issue had now become that of truth (fact) or falsity (fiction) instead of the actual content of the fantasy. If Philo was writing in a similar climate, it is entirely reasonable that he should have chosen to make his own case of utopian fantasy appear as close to historical fact as at all possible. No genial smile here of the Platonic Socrates. No covert acknowledgement that the story is not literally true. Still, on the present hypothesis Philo's account would in fact be just as much of a plastheis mythos as the one in the Timaeus that Plato had more or less overtly acknowledged to be just that. Seen in this light, the straightforward reading of the first paragraph of Contempl. appears altogether naive. A far more devious one is required. What Philo is up to will now be this: to make room for his own exercise of utopian fantasy and preferably without being detected. If he has in fact gone undetected, then, as one might say, he has been successful. But of course it is not necessarily the task of critical scholarship to let itself be duped by the material it intends to analyse.

13See the Loeb edition ad loc.

48 For clarity's sake, it should be pointed out here that when I set up the choice between the straightforward and the devious answer to the question of genre as one between fact and fiction, I include under fiction the position of those relatively many scholars who claim that although there may be some factual element to Philo's description, he has also "idealized" his own account fairly extensively.Methodologically, I cannot see that there is any possibility of choosing between that hypothesis and the one according to which it is all fiction. Nor do I think that we should deplore this. After all, whether there were people a little bit like Philo's therapeutai or not does not seem to matter much. Method: an argument from maximal coherence Which understanding of Contempl. should we choose? And does it really matter whether we understand it in one way or the other? The latter question I shall reserve for the end. As regards the former, if some form of the question of fact or fiction has actually been in the background of most discussions of the work during the last 100 years and more, is there any hope that it can at all be answered? Is there any chance of advancing on what has already been said? The only possible way must be via some form of methodological progress. Let it first be clear that there can of course be no proof in the matter. This means that any proposal will to some extent rely on intuitions as to what is more or less likely. This is notoriously frail ground. Can some methodological consideration improve on that situation? Here is the strategy I shall adopt. Based on the initial hypothesis that Contempl. is in all essentials a piece of fiction, I shall engage in as much close literary reading of the text as at all possible with the aim of unearthing some basic set of perspectives within which the text will come out as being maximally coherent and to the point. Any particular part or feature of the text that will not immediately fit into the picture that is being developed should be repeatedly turned around to see whether they can after all be seen to fit in. Of course, maximal coherence is always a valid goal of reading. But there is a special reason why this is particularly relevant here. The thought is that if the text is basically factual it is intrinsically likely that it will be less coherent, less sharply focused on a restricted set of basic points-than if it is fictional. If it turns out that some form of maximal coherence can in fact be achieved, then that will itself lend support to seeing the text as, in all essentials, fictional.

49 One might seek for coherence of two kinds: internally, that is, within the text itself taken as a more or less complete entity, and externally in relation to the rest of Philo's work. I have attempted to do both things, but will restrict myself here to internal coherence. If the operation proves successful, the fact that it is possible to achieve maximal coherence when one adopts the hypothesis from which I start will be taken as sufficient ground for issuing a challenge to fellow scholars to go on applying the fiction hypothesis in further work on the treatiseuntil it may turn out to break down. What the present strategy aims to do is basically to set up a research programme for future work on Contempl. The aim is to convince fellow scholars that the particular programme I advocate is the one most likely to succeed. The reason why it is necessary to adopt this rather elaborate approach is that one cannot merely rely in this case on a scholarly, unselfconscious reading of the text. For the basic underlying perspective (fact or fiction?) with which a scholar will initially approach the text will also to a very large extent determine how he or she will read the actual material. Here there really is the kind of radical shift in perspective that Wittgenstein illustrated with the famous drawing of a figure which may be seen as the head of either a duck or a hare. 14 But we precisely do not wish merely to be left with an unacknowledged initial predilection for either of two such strongly opposed perspectives. We also wish to maintain the possibility of a genuine conversation about which perspective is the more rational one to apply. The notion of maximal coherence provides the handle for settling this question, but only, as it were, tentatively. That is why the proposal has the character of a and not of a challenge to engage in a specific research programme, final truth-claim. We can never know. But we can hopefully do enough shared reading to make it clearly more likely that one or the other perspective will constitute the better approach. Structural puzzles There arc a number of puzzling features of structure in the way Philo's story unfolds. (a) The first major part of Contempl. runs as far as 21, where Philo's Mareotic therapeutai are finally introduced. Can we see some coherent point to the long stretch of text between the initial unspecified mention 14 2.xi. Philosophical Investigations

50 of the therapeutai (1-2) and the moment when Philo closes in on his own therapeutai? What strikes one at first is rather a number of puzzling features. It is noteworthy that 3-20 contains two cases of a phenomenon which plays a major structural role in the work: synkrisis (comparison, 3). In the first (3-9), Philo compares the therapeutai and therapeutrides who in various forms and constitute his theme with other people--Greeks (3 init.). These he ends up "profess piety (eusebeia)" Egyptians-who a nicc pun on declaring to be in fact "incurable" (atherapeutoi, I I)-with the double meaning he has already given (2) to the title of therapeulai and therapeutrides, who both worship (therapeuein) the true deity and are also able to provide a better cure (therapeuein) of all ills, psychic no less than bodily, than any art of healing in the cities. But what, then, is the point of this comparison with people who do not, after all, belong under Philo's topic? The second .rynkrisis (14-16) compares thc manner in which the true therapeutai and therapeutrideswill leave their property (13) with the manncr adopted by such venerated Greek sages as Anaxagoras and Dc:mocritus. The latter are criticized because they just left their property behind instead of doing the only proper thing of handing it over to their relatives. But why is that the proper thing to do if, as Philo immediately goes on to say (16), possessions are not at all beneficial since they need to be taken care of and that consumes timc? We should also note the peculiar way in which Philo closes in on his own therapeutai in 21. He has spoken earlier (1 1) of a therapeutikon genos, a certain general category of people, and he now states that this genos (21) is found all over the world, both in Greece and in barbarian lands, "but even more so in Egypt," "in each of the so-called nomes--and in particular around Alexandrian." If, as becomes increasingly clear, Philo's real topic is in fact only his own Mareotic therapeutai, why then does he introduce them in such a roundabout way? The best answer appears to be that Philo both wishes to connect his own therapeutai, who with increasing emphasis throughout the treatise turn out to be distinctly Jewish, with religious people and sages from other parts of the civilized world-and also to set them apart from them. The others are comparable to varying degrees, those who profess piety distinctly less so, sages like Anaxagoras and Democritus perhaps slightly more so. But they all fall short of the perfection that is only to be found in Philo's own therapeutai, the Jewish ones. In the light of this strategy, it does not really matter that Philo's criticism of

51 Anaxagoras and Democritus is inconsistent on his own premisses. What matters is not facts about Greeks and others, but making Philo's own Jewish therapeutai stand out as masters in a field in which the Greeks too had aspirations. The same pattern may be observed in another synkrisis later in the work (57-63). When Philo here compares the symposia described by Xenophon and Plato with "those of our people who embrace the contemplative life" (58), he notoriously grossly misrepresents Plato's Symposium in particular, using it among other things as a stepping-board for a violent attack on Greek pederasty. But first, Philo generally reveres Plato and the amount oC implicit Platonism in the work itself is very extensive.' And second, the particular criticism of sexual sterility that Philo advances against the pederasts-that their sexual life will lead to also apply to his own therapeutai, who certainly depopulation-would have no sexual lifc whatever. Once more, the point is the obvious one that Philo aimed to take, as he himself says, "two celebrated and highly notable examples of symposia held in Greece" that Xenophon and Plato had even described in order that thcy might "serve to posterity as models of the happily conducted symposium" (57)- and then show that the symposia held by his own therapeutai were in fact far better. Relative to such an aim, inconsistencies that were rhetorically not allowed to surface and even gross misrepresentations of Philo's revered did not really matter. The Greeks had something commaster, Plato, parable (and they of course had all the ideas that Philo relies on, cf. e.g. 16-17-and passim, see below), but what Philo was able to introduce was something better, in fact the genuine practice of those ideas. (b) Since we have already touched on the synkrisis sections of the treatise, we may as well emphasize here the huge importance of these sections in the flow and structure of the text. This comes out with overwhelming clarity in the very long set of synkriseis, which Philo himself also calls contrasts (cf. antitaxai in 40 and 64), that take up 4063 by way of introducing the account of the great feast held by the therapeutai every fiftieth day. Taking up almost half of that account, which is itself introduced at 40 init. and concluded in 89, they contain detailed descriptions of the repulsive symposia of Greeks, Romans and barbarians (cf. 48). Even the slightest acquaintance with literary theory (no matter of which branch) will immediately put a ban on 15Cf. David M. Hay, "Things Philo Said and Did Not Say About the Therapeutae," SBLSPS 31 (1992) 673-683, esp. 678.

52 neglecting the importance of these sections in the structural flow of the treatise. And the practice of translating only those portions of Contempl. which directly describe the therapeutai-e.g. in a comparison with the Essenes and Qumran-should be felt to be taboo.'? But what is the of these extended .synkrisis sections? purpose (c) Following on 21, the next major part, 22-39, describes the life of the therapeutai up to the point when Philo with much emphasis (cf. 40: "I wish also to ...") turns to describing their great fiftieth day feast. The account given in 22-39 is slightly awkward in one respect. It has two parts, 22-33 and 34-39, with the latter returning and even explicitly referring back to the former (38 to 24). The first part focuses on the study engaged in by the therapeutai. A description of the place where they live (22-23) and how their houses arc situated (24) gives rise to a description of the individual houses, focusing on the sanctuary (semneion) and holy cubicle (monastirion, 25) where the lonely inhabitants are engaged in various types of solitary study (25-29). This life of individual study occupies six days of the week. On the seventh the therapeutai "come together as for an assembly" (30) and listen, carefully and intently, to a further round of study in the form of a lecture given by an expert (31). This gives rise to a further description of a building, the shared sanctuary (semneion),and of how it is able to accommodatc both men and women (32-33). This is the first reference to women among the therapeutai, though it has been prepared for by the reference to therapeutai and therapeutrides in 2. The focus, however, remains on their study. For the specific detail of architecture on which Philo focuses (a wall that separates the two sexes) has to do with the possibility of shared, but unmixed study. We have now moved from the six days (stage 1 in the life of the therapeutai) to the seventh day (stage 2). But then comes the second part (34-39). Now Philo's theme is different: the attitude of the therapeutai to ordinary material goods, in particular food (34-37) and one form of shelter, clothing (38). That attitude is one of enkrateia (self-control), and Philo sums up his account here in a principled statement about the simplicity (atyphia) that they practise in all such matters (39). In this account he has gone back to the six days (stage 1) to describe when the therapeutai take food: if at all, then at least during the night, but 16I am to referring to G. Vermes, M. Goodman, The Essenes According the Classical Sources (Sheffield1989)75-99, who include only 1-2, 11-40 and 64-90 (though admittedly in an appendix).

53 some only after three days of study and others not before they all meet again on the seventh day (34-35). It is this change of theme and the return to stage 1 that together generate Philo's slightly concomitant awkward reference back to what he has already said some time ago about a second form of shelter: housing (38 and 24). The structural awkwardness can teach us something about the aims of the text. Clearly, what Philo wishes to emphasize most are the activities that constitute the whole point of the therapeutic form of life: the various forms of study (the6ria). Once that has been settled, he aims to focus on what was traditionally, and quite intelligibly, taken to constitute the foremost hindrance to those activities, namely material or bodily needs and the handling of the goods that would fulfil those needs. Here he brings in the enkrateia of the therapeutai as a sort of "foundation of their soul," on which they "build the other virtues" (34 init.). We may note for later use that Philo's account of the two sides to the life of the therapeutai (study and handling of material goods) involves an intriguing play between what they do during the day and during the night. On the six days, they study during the day and eat, if at all, during the night. On the seventh, they both study and eat during daytime. Philo goes out of his way to explain this: having provided for the soul, they also refresh the body by giving it some form of release from its continuous labour (36). And of course, what they do eat is nothing costly but only the barest necessaries of life (37): water, bread with salt and for some a bit of hyssop. Still, is there some rationale to the change from night to day-for instance, that they are alone during the six days but together on the seventh? (d) At 40 Philo turns to describe the "cheerful pastimes" of the 3 in their lives. With regard to therapeutai during their symposia-stage this second half of the treatise, we may note one more puzzling feature of a structural kind. For what we gct is to all intents and purposes an expanded repetition of what took place on the gathering on the seventh day, with only a few exceptions. One of these (the dancing) is admittedly a major one, on which see below. But otherwise it is basically expanded repetition. There is an account of the order in which they recline (67)-compare on the seventh day (30). There is a reference to the participation of women (68)-compare on the seventh day (32-33). There is an account of the way in which the President lectures to them on the seventh day (31); and how they listen to (76-77, 79)-compare the lecture (77, 79)-compare on the seventh day (31). Finally, the food that they eat is the same (73-74, 81-82-with 37).

54 The extent of expanded repetition should make us pause. We have daily study at stage 1, further shared study at stage 2 and even more shared study at stage 3. What does the specific element of expansion in these descriptions add to what might otherwise mercly be the same thing ovcr and over again? Conversely, to the cxtcnt that there are in fact also differences between what happens at the three stages, what light do these differences throw on the form of life of the therapeutai as a whole? For instance, at stage 1 there is no eating during the day. At stage 2 there is. At stage 3 there is also eating, in principle of the here too there is dancing. What do these same kind as at stage 2-but developments show us about the point of the therapeutic form of life? between (e) Finally, we should notice the structural relationship the long section of synkrisis and antitaxis that takes up 40-63 and the account of thc symposia of the therapeutai themselves in 64ff. The long list of specific negative features that Philo mentions in the former section sheds a great deal of light on the details of his account in the latter. Indeed, there are very close counterparts here. On the negative side there is a long and formidable section on the effects of immoderate drinking of unmixed wine (40-47). This is counterbalanced by the account of the therapeutai, who having "drunk in the Bacchic rites of the unmixed wine of God's love" (85) conclude their feast with a drunkenness that make them "more alert and wakeful than when they came to the banquet" (89). There is also a negative account of the outfit of different types of slaves at the new, trendy Italian-style symposia (5052). This is counterbalanced by the moving description of the servants at the great feast of the therapeutai, who are not even slaves (since the therapeutai consider the ownership of servants to be entirely against nature) but young free men who of their own free will have accepted to perform this task on their way towards reaching the summit of virtue (70-72). Finally, there is the violent critique that we notcd of Greek pederasty as contrasted with the chastity of the therapeutai that is explicitly mentioned for the women among them (68) and celebrated in a striking manner at the dancing that consummates the sacred vigil ( pannychis, 83-89) with which the great feast ends. Clearly, Philo has constructed his negative account of the non-Jewish symposiastic practices with a sharp eye on their positive counterpart at the great feast of the therapeutai. Or should we rather say the other way round? Has Philo constructed his account of the therapeutai as a utopianstyle comment on the devious practices of his own day? One thing is at least clear: there is a tight literary and structural construction here which no careful rcader can afford to neglect.

55 A structuralist solution: Pierre Bourdieu and Philo's basic scheme The literary analysis we have pursued so far has only scratched the surface. We have noted some more or less striking structural features of the treatise, but also becn somewhat puzzled by others. We have got nowhere near to a comprehensive grasp of its overall theme. To do that we need another approach. However, is that really necessary? Would it not suffice to bring in the whole set of abstract, Greek philosophical terms with which Philo spiccs his account of the therapeutai throughout the treatise'? There can be no doubt that Philo did see the life of the therapeutai in the light of this more or less coherent set of terms. They constitute a comprehensive framework that give meaning and shape to the therapeutic form of life. It will be enough to list the most important of these various concepts here in telegraphic style: practice and theory ( etc.); philosophers (2 etc.); passions and vices (2, 6); nature and laws (2); God as a technician (4) and a demiurge (5); sight of the soul (10, cf. 31); the role of the senses (10-1 1 , 27); happiness (11); habit or exhortation (12); to do something of one's own free will (13); the handling of wealth (14, 16, also 17: nature's wealth); inequality, injustice; equality, justice (1 7); the lures of habit (18); freedom (19); the perfect good (21); simplicity (24 etc.); fellowship (24); things necessary for the needs of the body (25, 34 etc.); knowledge and piety (25); growth and perfection (26); asksis (28); self-control (34); atyphia etc. (39); (25); dream-images courage (60); kalokagathia (72); anamnists (78, by implication); citizens of the kosmos (90); virtue, God's friendship etc. (90). This is all quite explicit and in fact rather overwhelming. Is it not enough to give full and adequate meaning to the form of life described by Philo in the treatise? Both yes and no. Yes, in the sense that Philo has certainly given his reader a full and comprehensive conceptual framework within which to see the life of the therapeutai. Anybody who knows this traditional set of concepts from its use within the ancient ethical tradition will immediately know what the life of the therapeutai is basically about. But also in an important sense no. For what will a life of theoria actually look like in concrete practice? Human beings are what they are. How then will a life of thed7ia,which certainly does not pay an equal and undivided attention to all sides of the human being, handle them all in concrete practice? The answer cannot be given by merely rehearsing the abstract set of concepts. First, they are precisely abstract and so cannot fulfil the need for a more concrete sense of what living the life of theoria

56 would actually be like-as it were the feel of it. Second, their abstract character does not allow the possible complexities to become clear that may arise when they are put into practice. Thus there is an important need to try to imagine the life of the6ria in concrete terms, to think about what theoria practised in a concrete form of life would actually look like. That, I suggest, is what Philo set out to do in Contempl. But that, then, also requires a different type of analysis of the treatise than the one that merely recalls the abstract philosophical system underlying it. To help us here I shall bring in a few ideas derived from the early structuralism of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. I am very far from aiming to adopt a "structuralist method" proper. Instead, I wish to draw on certain perspectives in Bourdieu that will be helpful in illuminating a number of features in Contempl. itself. At the beginning of his career in the late 1950's, Bourdieu did sociresearch in Algeria. This resulted in a ological and anthropological stream of publications in the 1960's on various aspects of Algerian culture and society. One particularly famous article is "La maison Kabyle ou le monde renvers6" ("The Kabyle house or the world reversed"), written in 1963, but only published in 1970. Here Bourdieu gives an exegesis of the cultural symbolism embodied in the domestic space of the traditional house of the Berber (or Kabyle) peasant. 17 Let us begin with a quote, which clearly shows Bourdieu's structuralist roots: "A vision of the world is a division of the world, based on a fundamental principle of division which distributes all the things of the world into classes. To bring order is to bring division, to two complementary divide the universe into opposing entities."" Reflec.ting this principle, in his analysis of the Kabyle house Bourdieu was looking for binary oppositions. But how were they to be organized? And were they in fact all of the same type? In his analysis of the Kabyle house Bourdieu claimed that there was one fundamental division that provided the sub-text, through processes of analogy and homology, for all the other binary classifications of the system: the gender division.19 He also distinguished between two types of opposition: concrete, material ones and abstract, conceptual ones. 17 Inthe next few paragraphs I pick up some sentencesfrom the analysisof Bourdieu's article given in R. Jenkins, PierreBourdieu (London/New York 1992) 30-44. 18Bourdieu, The Logicof Practice (Cambridge 1990) 210. 19Bourdieu, "La maison Kabyle ou le monde renvers", in J. Pouillon, P. Maranda et Lvi-Straussl'occasion son 60me de (eds.),changes communications: Mlanges offerts Claude anniversaire Studies in General AnthropologyV/2 (The Hague/Paris 1970) 739-758, II,

57 he argued that the oppositions that provided the basis for drawing the other ones were the concrete and real ones. Up and down, back and front, left and right, hot and cold, for example, are all sensible relations which presuppose the point of view of the embodied person: they are, or reflect, "bodily dispositions."2 But these real (or natural) features also become arbitrary (or cultural) since they mayand in fact invariably do-symbolize and refer to the whole abstract, cultural order of a society's values and interpretive morality, which is itself also organized in the form of binary oppositions. With this emphasis on the concrete, material oppositions and the point of view of the embodied participant in the cultural scene under investigation, Bourdicu clearly aimed to give a basically materialist reading of symbolism and classification, in which culture is rooted in the necessarily physical embodiments of its producers: men and women. We need not take over everything in this general approach of Bourdieu in order to see that it is highly relevant to analysing Contempl. As we saw, Philo had at his disposal a large number of received, abstract terms that together went into a logical, philosophical system. But what he wanted to do was to show these terms being put to use in practice, to show them being acted out-exactly in the way Plato aimed in the Timaeus to present his ideal state in "acting practice." Philo wanted to give a description of a concrete form of life in which those abstract terms were given flesh and blood. Of course, in Philo's case it looks vcry much as if the form of life was generated (whether historically or in Philo's description of it) by the system of abstract terms as an attempt to put that into practice. But if, as Bourdieu suggests, practice is always in some way primary, it is worth looking at Philo's description to scc whether, as Bourdieu also suggested, there are oppositions in the account of the practice which may be seen as a sub-text for all the others, both the other practical ones and also those abstract distinctions that make up the logical, philosophical system. It might be that there is an interesting relationship between the received philosophical system of terms and the story of a set of practices that Philo is giving in Contempl., possibly even a relationship of the kind Bourdieu envisaged where the Moreover,

9 Information (1970) 151-70; Mary esp. 748. English language versions in SocialScience (Harmondsworth 1973) 98-110 (abridged);Bourdieu, Douglas (ed.), Rulesand Meanings The Logic271-83. 20Cf. Bourdieu, "La maison," 756. This clearly prefigures Bourdieu's later concept of habitus.

58 primary role is allotted to the practices as reflecting embodied dispositions of embodied people. In Bourdieu's own case the material to be analysed was the groundplan and layout of the Kabyle housc. In Philo the material is partly too (where and how the therapeutai live and meet), but topographical we may generalize it to be the actual set of practices that go into Philo's description of what the therapeutai were doing when and where and together with whom. If we apply Bourdieu's structuralist strategy of looking for binary oppositions in this material, can we find either a single basic one or a small set of oppositions that will hold all the others together? I suggcst the following basic sets. There is first a framing set: City Then Outside the city

there is the following set, which of course falls under the framing category "outside the city:" Six days of the week The seventh day Study during day/ Study during day/ Study eating at night plus eating during day Solitude Fellowship but division between men and women Every fiftieth day during day/ plus eating during day/ plus dancing at night Fellowship and unification of men and women

Looking at this set, we can see that it is made up of the two binary oppositions between day and night and solitude and a ,fellowship that unites men and women. This identification follows Philo's own description fairly closely. He begins by telling about what the therapeutai do during the day and in solitude and only later recounts what they do during the night and when being together. To get the basic set of oppositions in the abstract, however, we must bring in also the framing contrast. Then the basic set becomes a contrast between night connected with life in the city and day connected with life outside the ciry. Seen in this light we can make striking sense of the developmentand dynamism represented by the three stages of the life of the therapeutai. For we must add one contrast to the two just given. With night and life in the city we also have what we may call non-solitude. The best example of this is contained in Philo's description of what takes place at the customary symposia in the city (40-47). They occur explicitly

59 during the night (42) and are obviously non-solitude events inasmuch as people will fight with one another in the ways so graphically described by Philo. What we have on the other side, then, is day and life outside the city which begins in distinct solitude (stage 1), but gradually develops (stage 2) into a unified fcllowship (stage 3) in such a way that the solitude is overcome.In other words, the solitude of stage 1, which at first appeared as constituting the contrast with nightly life in the city, is only to be understood as an intermediate step which leads on to, and via its incipient removal at stage 2 makes altogether possible, the unified fellowship of stage 3. Basically, then, we move from non-solitude via solitude to a kind of fellowship at stage 3 which is as far as could be from life in the city.

Details in support The picture I have given of the basic, comprehensive point of Contempl. explains a whole range of additional features in Philo's description adding up to twenty in all. In spite of their difference in character and importance, I shall list them consecutively. (i) The picture explains the step from the separation of men and women on the seventh day to their unification at the great feast. Right at the beginning (stage 1) men and women are entirely separated, inasmuch as each is occupied in his or her own house. Then they come together (stage 2) but are separated by a wall. At the end, however (stage 3), they sing and dance together, first in two separate choirs, one for men and one for women (83-84), and then (85-89) in a single choir-when "having drunk as in the Bacchic rites of the unmixed wine of God's love they mix and become a single choir out of the two" (85). (ii) It also explains the fact that the singing at the great feast begins in the form of individual singing with the others listening and merely joining in for the closing lines or refrains (80). Here the move from the solitude of stage 1 is somehow recapitulated. (iii) The basic picture also explains a point that puzzled us, that at stages 2 and 3 the therapeutai turn to eating during the day, whereas at stage 1 eating took place, if at all, during the night. What all this seems to be about is overcomingthe dangers connected with food and of gender, dangers that to begin with required that the consumption food be relegated to the night (stage 1) and that fellowship between men and women be regulated by a wall (stage 2). Gradually the dangers arc eliminated, overcomc, indeed sublimated. And the result is that

60 food may now be taken during the day and men and women may even dance together in a single choir. This comprehensive picture is supported by a number of details, some more central than others. (iv) A central one is that the final unification of men and women takes place at night during the sacred vigil. Night and all that it stands for has now been finally conquered. (v) Note also that Philo specifically refers to the alternative Bacchic drunkenness in the quotation given above. Here all the characteristics of an ordinary Bacchic state as described in 40-47 in the nightly rcvelries of the customary city symposia have been overcome. (vi) One may also notice the specific manner in which the therapeutai end their vigil the next morning. They stand with their faces and whole body turned to the east (89). This again shows that all dangers connected with the body have now been overcome. The whole body is now ready to receive the first rays of the sun. (vii) Here too one may fit in the rather striking and extensive account Philo gives (86-87) of the single choir that was formed at the Red Sea when the Israelites had been saved from the Egyptians. As commentators note, in Philo Egyptians often stand for the passions. Thus victory over the passions is part of what the therapeutai celebrate at the great feast. Howcver, Philo's symbolism scems somewhat more specific. In his account of the event at the Red Sea he stresses first the separation of the waves and next their coming together again. It is the latter event that gives rise to the formation of a single choir that sang hymns of thanksgiving to God their Saviour (87). It seems difficult not to connect this with the dangers inherent in sexual discourse. The separation of the waves (and the two sexes) help to eliminate those dangers and the coming together again of the waves (and the two sexes) celebrates that the dangers are overcome in a meeting of the two sexes that has by now been sublimated to take place at an altogether different level. Other details that fit in with the comprehensive picture belong to the description of the therapeutai at stage 1. As we should expect, these details bring out the intermediary character of that stage. We may note some of them very briefly. (viii) There is, the placement of their houses: in solitude, but also so closely together that they point to some form of fellowship (24). (ix) There is the point that the purpose of their daily study is that their knowledge and piety be enhanced and perfected (25). Indeed, their activity during the day is explicitly said to be a form of training (asksis, 28). (x) And there is the striking fact that even the dreams of at least some of them-and dreams of course occur during

61 the night-are that they also need to pray for such holy (26)-but dreams (27). Other details that fit in concern the basic framing set, the opposition between life in and outside the city. (xi) The description of how the therapeutai leave the city and all that it stands for (18-20) of course serves to make this opposition explicit. (xii) The vivid descriptions of the contrast in style between lecturing and listening among the therapeutai and in the cities serves to keep this opposition alive (31, 76-77, 79). (xiii) Also, the willingness of the therapeutai to give up their possessionsthe first practical step that they take-is developed by Philo (16-20) in a manner that contrasts it explicitly with life in the city. That willingness gives them a freedom (1 9) which explains why they leave the cities altogether instead of merely exchanging one master for another. (xiv) Furthermore, neglect of all anxious thought for the means of life and for money-making-activities that precisely belong in the cities-- -means that they value equality, as opposed to the inequality of trying to get more material goods for oneself, and consequently also justice rather than injustice (17). This explains features that are only developed much later when they come to full fruition during the great feast: (xv) the practical equality of women and men as celebrated during the sacred vigil and (xvi) the abolishment of slavery that Philo also mentions in connection with the great feast (70-72). The contrast here with the description of slaves, even various types of slaves, at the dainty city symposia (50-52) could hardly be starker. Two more, connected details may be seen to fit in with the comprehensive picture. (xvii) There is first the description in 12 of how the therapeutai come to take the first important step in their exodus. They do not merely "follow custom or the advice and admonition of others, but are carried away by a heaven-sent passion of love" and so remain "rapt and possessed like Bacchic worshippers or corybants until they see the object of their yearning." What Philo is describing here is clearly a conversion. But it contains the special feature that it ends in a vision of the (final) object of their yearning, probably God. The idea seems to be that at the beginning of the process that is being initiated, they somehow already experience what they will end up experiencingin practice and for good. This ties together everything in the text between this initial individual experience (12) and their final, shared greeting of the sun after the sacred vigil (89). 1 he developmentalor dynamic feature of Philo's account is very strong. (xviii) Connected with this is Philo's description of how they move from their conversion to taking

62 the first practical step of giving up their possessions: since they "long for the deathless and blessed life", they believe they have "already ended their mortal life" (13 init.). Once more Philo has sketched in a single phrase the gradual, practical development that is described in the rest of the trcatise. The therapeutic life as consummated at the feast is thc deathless and blessed life so far as human beings can great attain to this. It is a life that is no longer mortal. Till now I have presented a whole range of oppositions that all fit into the basic set of oppositions that we formulated by drawing on Pierre Bourdieu. There are also other binary oppositions, which are not directly generated by the basic set, but stand out as independent ones. These too may be fittcd into the basic set. One example is Philo's handling of the binary opposition between Greek, barbarian and Roman on the one side and Jewish on the other. We already saw how Philo partly uses this contrast to suggest that the Greek (and barbarian and Roman) side belongs on the negative side of the basic contrast he is operating with, partly that some Greeks may aftcr all be said to belong on the positive side, but without having gone far enough. Thus it is not quite clear in the end where they do belong. (xix) It fits well with this that Philo should begin by presenting the therapeutai as a general but then gradually draw genos and not just a specific, Jewish group the lines together in such a way that only Philo's own therapeutai come out as really qualifying for the title. (xx) In the light of this one can also understand why Philo only gradually discloses that the therapeutai he has in mind are in fact distinctly Jewish. The initial determination of the God they worship is fairly non-committal (2 fin.). So is the reference to their holy scriptures (28) and the writings of men of old (29) that they study. But when Philo introduces his comments on Xenophon and Plato as aiming to contrast the symposia described by these writers with those "of our people who have embraced the contemplative life" (58) and concludes his account by stating that "the disciples of Moses" have been trained to look down with disdain upon the mythical stories (ta ton mythn plasmata)z' that go into Plato's Symposium (63), then he is of course being far more definite. And the same is true when he states that the therapeutai follow "the truly sacred instructions 21 Instead, Philo says, the disciples of Moses have been trained from their earliest years to love the truth (eranaltheias)-in the way Philo himself does this in Contempl.?! At the very least, Philo's contrast here between mythn is plasmataand erosaltheias a quite clear reference back to the Plato whose use of the same contrast we encountered in the Timaeus. Note then how Philo is out to conceal the element of fiction in his own story whereas Plato employed the same contrast to reveal it (if only implicitly)in his.

63 of the prophet Moses" (64). Finally, the reference to the (Jerusalem) temple (81-82) and the substantial, explicit references to the Red Sea incident (85-89) merely serve to clinch the case. What matters here is not so much Philo's complex attitude to the "Greeks" as the fact that his comments on this particular topic, which constitutes a theme of its own, may be seen to fit in closely with the basic drive that runs through the treatise. When the description of the therapeutai reaches its apogee at the end of the account of the great fcast, then such themes as the relationship with Greek culture and the specifically Jewish identity of Philo's therapeutai also receive their most explicit treatment. Enough has been said to substantiate the claim that Contempl. has a degree of literary coherence that is so developed that it may reasonably be called maximal. This will then also be cnough to vindicate my proposal that the treatise is, in all essentials, fiction (a plastheis mythos)at least with the extent of vindication that makes it reasonable to challenge fellow scholars to pursue this hypothesis instead of the opposite one.

Conclusion: Philo and his therapeutai, not "the" therapeutai Then the final question: does it really matter whether we understand the work in one way or the other? Indeed it does. If we take Philo to be writing what is, to some degree at least, an historical account, we will take the feature of describing, that is, conveying information about, the therapeutai to be one important part of the meaning of the textcertainly not the whole meaning, but still an important part. Conversely, if we take him to be writing what is basically a piece of fiction, thc meaning will lie wholly in other areas than that of describing and conveying information. The text will now have to be taken as if it were conveying information. And that situates what it does do in other types of speech act." Now this will have very important consequences for how interpreters may go about studying the text. If it is taken to be basically factual, there is a large number of interesting qucstions about the position of the therapeutai within Judaism that one may raise and attempt to answer in the light of our broader historical knowledge of ancient Judaism. This has been the general direction in which scholarship on the therapeutai has been going over the last more than hundred years once

22 I refrain from trying to specify here what these may be.

64 Philo's authorship had been settled .2' But if the text is, in all essenmust not-go on asking these questials, fictional, scholars cannot-and tions in just that form. It is the aim of this essay to argue that a block should be put on all further scholarly attempts to push on along such historically orientated lines.24 It will remain very important historically that Philo could conceiveof a Jewish community like the one he describes. And that supposed fact may be used in a number of ways. But the most basic questions to be raised will now be about the relationship between Contempl. and the rest of Philo's work, more specifically what particular point or points about the life of a Jew in Philo's own time and place he is trying to express. Basically, the good scholarly questions will be about Philo and "his" therapeutai, not about "the" therapeutai. They will not ask what more we may learn about lhem. I began work on Contempl. with the aim of analysing the treatise in literary terms, viewing it, methodologically, as a "philosopher's dream. 1115 I gradually became convinced that the question of its genre is a central one. Thinking about this, I came across certain passages in Josephus and Lucian that revealed their sense of a genre of fiction which included both utopian tracts of philosophers and paradoxical accounts of farhistorians. As a result of this and away countries by mythographical of my internal analysis of the work itself, I came to the conclusion that we should remove the methodological brackets and affirm that Contempl.. is, in the ways I have explained here, a philosopher's dream. The aim of this essay has been to present this result as a challenge to future scholarship on the work. 16

23 Riaud, "Les Thrapeutes," bears this out with overwhelmingforce. 24As an example of this approach one might mention the paper David M. Hay referred to in note 15. 25The notion of a "philosopher's (utopian) dream" is derived from Plutarch, On the Fortune the virtueof Alexander. or Having summarized the content of the famous Republic of Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, Plutarch adds (329B):"This Zeno wrote, as it were of or sketching a dream (onar) shadowy picture (eidlon) a philosopher's (conception of) and but good, lawful order (eunomia) (the proper) political constitution ( politeia); it was Alexander who added practice (ergon) the idea (logos)." the same way, Philo's to In describes the practices of a philosopher's dream: the life of theria. Contempl. 26I would like to acknowledgehere my immense debt to Professor JohnnyChristensen of Copenhagen Universityfor a range of insights over the last decades on a large number of topics within the field of classicsand ancient philosophy. Long time ago, he first He sowed the seeds of doubt in my mind concerning Contempl. also graciouslyread an earlier version of this essay, pointing me, among other things, in the direction of Plato's Timaeus. would probably not agree with everything in the essay in its present form. He But whatever it may contain of value is no doubt partly due to him.