Philo About the Contemplative Life (De Vita Contemplativa)

In our own generation, however, a kindred view has been proposed by Professor Grätz, of Breslau, and by MM. Nicolas and Lucius, of Strassburg; and has been accepted by Professors A. Harnack, E. Schürer, Ad. Hilgenfeld, E. Zeller, A. Kuenen, Jost, T. K. Cheyne, Robertson-Smith, E. Hatch, Joseph Derenbourg, Dr. James Drummond, R. F. Littledale, and many other, less widely known scholars. The Therapeutae healers/servants of God are, according to this view, still Christians, as they were for Eusebius; but no longer of a primitive cast. For the ascription of the work to Philo is declared to be false, and the ascetics described therein to be in reality monks of about the year 300 A. D.; within a few years of which date the treatise is assumed to have been forged.

Any such hypothesis ignores the philological affinities of the piece, as well as all the circumstances of its transmission to us in the manuscripts and in ancient versions. It conflicts with chronology, rests upon wholesale misunderstanding of the text, and presupposes conditions of pseud-epigraphic falsely attributed authorship which never did and never could exist. That it should be rapidly stereotyping itself among scholars is indicative of a prevalent and regrettable ignorance of Philo’s writings; and it was in the hope of being able to correct an error which is the inversion of three centuries of religious history, that I undertook six years ago, at the instance of Professor L. Massebieau of Paris, the present edition. If he had kept his health and strength, he would have himself followed up his excellent monograph Le Traité de la Vie Contemplative The Treatise on the Contemplative Life, by L. Massebieau. Paris, Leroux, 1888. with a critical edition of the Greek text.