Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria and What Did Jesus Look Like?

Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria

Name: Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria
Price: 58.3 GBP
Availability: InStock
Author: Joan E. Taylor
ISBN: 9780199291410

Philo's Therapeutae Reconsidered

by Joan E. Taylor

Paperback
440 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press
14.1 x 21.6 x 2.5 cm

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The first-century ascetic Jewish philosophers known as the 'Therapeutae', described in Philo's treatise De Vita Contemplativa, have often been considered in comparison with early Christians, the Essenes, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. This study, which includes a new translation of De Vita Contemplativa, focuses particularly on issues of historical method, rhetoric, women, and gender, and comes to new conclusions about the nature of the group and its relationship with the allegorical school of exegesis in Alexandria. Joan E. Taylor argues that the group represents the tip of an iceberg in terms of ascetic practices and allegorical exegesis, and that the women described point to the presence of other Jewish women philosophers in Alexandria in the first century CE. Members of the group were 'extreme allegorizers' in following a distinctive calendar, not maintaining usual Jewish praxis, and concentrating their focus on attaining a trance-like state in which a vision of God's light was experienced. Their special 'feast' was configured in terms of service at a Temple, in which both men and women were priestly attendants of God.