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Indiana University Studies 



Truly this is either because they make profession of an art of 

 medicine better than the one now in vogue in the cities ;3 for that, 

 to be sure, only cures men's bodies, while this cures souls also that 

 are overmastered by grievous and all-but-incurable maladies, with 

 which pleasures and passions and griefs and fears, and greed and 

 follies and injustice, and the countless multitude of all other lusts 

 (M. 472) and vices have visited them. Or, they are so called, because 

 they have been educated to this by nature, and by the holy laws to 

 worship the Supreme Being who is superior to the good and more 

 unmixed than the one, and more ancient than unity in origin. 



And who is there, out of all those who make profession of piety, 

 that we can compare with these? Can we compare with them, people 

 who worship the elements, earth, water, air, and fire? To these 

 elements different persons have given different names, as, for example, 

 those who call fire Hephaestus,^ presumably because of its power to 

 kindle; or the air Hera because of being raised up and lifted on high; 

 or water Poseidon, perhaps because it is potable; or earth Demeter 

 because it seems to be the mother of ah, both plants and animals. 

 But such names are the fabrications of the Sophists (shallow thinkers) 

 while the elements are soulless matter and cannot move of them- 

 selves, being subjected by the skilled artisans to all sorts of forms 

 and qualities. 



But what about those who worship the results of creative skill — 

 the sun, moon, or the other stars, planets or fixed stars, or the heaven 

 as a whole, or the universe? But even these did not arise of them- 

 selves, but by some creator most perfect in wisdom. Or shall we 

 compare them with those who worship the demigods? Really that 

 would be ridiculous for how can the same being be both immortal 

 and mortal?^ For apart from the fact that the very source of the 

 generation of these creatures is censurable, they are tainted with 



^ We find a similar disparagement of physicians in Mark 5, 25-26: "And 

 a certain woman [followed him] which had an issue of blood twelve years, 

 and had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she 

 had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse." The Therapeutae 

 excelled ordinary healers because they were physicians not of the body but 

 of the soul. 



* Such fanciful etymologies were common even in the Classical period as 

 is seen by many examples in Plato's Phaedrus. It is impossible to keep the puns 

 in English. Philo regards Hephaestus as derived from diTTo/uai, Hera from alpu, 

 Poseidon from Trhu, ttotov, and Demeter from f^v'^p. The last is the only cor- 

 rect one. 



^ Plato in the Symposium 202 E. says that ever}' spiritual being is between 

 God and mortals, but God himself has no direct dealings with men. In Jewish 

 and Christian literature, angels are mediators between man and God. 



