TiLDEN: Philo Judaeus 



19 



report that has been spread abroad regarding them as being most 

 successful affairs^ — I shall now set in array against them the banquets 

 of those who have devoted their own lives and their very selves to the 

 knowledge and contemplation of the realities of nature according 

 to the most holy precepts of the prophet Moses. 



In the first place these gather every seven weeks, revering not 

 only the simple week of seven days but also its power as well. For 

 they know that it is holy and ever- virgin. And this is a preliminary 

 to the greatest festival which by lot is assigned to the fiftieth day, 

 because the number fifty is the most holy and natural of numbers, 

 because it is composed of the power of the right-angled triangle, 

 which is the source of the origin of the whole universe.^^ 



Therefore, when they have met together, clad in white garments 

 and beaming with joy, yet with the highest dignity, when the signal 

 is given by the one who is to perform the service for the day (for it 

 is customary to designate as Ephemereutae those who engage in 

 such service), before they recline they take their places in rows in 

 well-ordered fashion, and raise both their eyes and their hands to 

 heaven — their eyes because they have been taught to see what is 

 right to look at, and their hands because they are clean of all unjust 

 gains, being polluted by no pretense of things that make for their 

 own private advantage — they then pray God that the banquet may 

 be well-pleasing in his sight and acceptable. And after the prayers, 

 the elders lie down following the order of their election. For they 

 regard as elders not those of many years and those who are merely 

 old, but, on the other hand, count these still more as infants who 

 have been late to attach themselves to this sect. But they call those 

 elders who from early youth have grown up and reached their acme 

 (M. 482) in the contemplative branch of philosophy, which is indeed 

 the most beautiful and the most divine part of it. 



The women also banquet with the men, the most of whom, tho 

 old, are still virgins, having kept their purity not from necessity 

 like some of the priestesses among the Greeks, but rather thru 



"^^Conybeare thus explains the whole passage: "Let the sides of a right- 

 angled triangle be in length respectively 3, 4, and 5; then the square of the 

 sides which contain the right angle equal the square on the hypothenuse, 

 that is to say, 9 + 16 = 25. Also the sum of the three squares, 9 + 16 + 25 = 50. 

 This sum of the squares Philo calls the (^vra^uig -ov bpdoyurviov rpiyuvov." 



*iThis is true of the priestess of the Pythian Apollo, and of certain 

 ones in the service of Heracles. Chastity was considered essential in the 

 progress toward perfection both among the Therapeutae and the early 

 Christians. Among some even lawful marriage was condemned. Athenagoras, 

 Apology, chap. 33, speaks of old men and women, unmarried, living in the hope 

 of closer communion with God. The custom was doubtless common among 

 certain sects of the Jews before the days of Christianity. 



