Philo About the Contemplative Life (De Vita Contemplativa)

year 315, while the Armenian Version made as early as A. D. 400 reflects a Greek text which had undergone still more. Lastly, the divergences from one another of the archetypes themselves prevent us from supposing that even in them we are close to the original fountain-head of the text, although their bifurcation must have taken place long before 315, when Eusebius wrote.

To this essay succeeds the text itself, illustrated with parallel passages from the rest of Philo. My design in adding these testimonia evidence/witness passages is to furnish those, who have not time to read through Philo, with materials out of which they may form a judgement for themselves as to the Philonean character of the text. Striking parallelisms are accordingly picked out in larger type. In my Index Graecitatis Index of Greek Language some of the most characteristically Philonean phrases and words are also picked out in the same way; and I have completed what I may call the philological argument in the last sections of the Excursus digression/detailed discussion, where I show how this treatise not only exemplifies all the leading characteristics of Philo's style, but furnishes in its brief compass nearly a score of words for which we seek in vain in any other writer than Philo.

After the Greek text I print the Old Latin and Armenian Versions, and the Eusebian Excerpts. In the notes which follow I have illustrated the text of the treatise from authors more or less contemporary with Philo, and have added not a few confirmations, from writers of the first and second centuries, of Philo's descriptions of the luxury of the Pagan world and of the ascetic ordinances of the Therapeutae healers/servants of God. In my Excursus digression/detailed discussion I begin by showing how intimately the institutions described in the D. U. C. De Vita Contemplativa (On the Contemplative Life) cohere with the rest of Philo's writings, and with Judaism.