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Indiana University Studies 



the simplest and the least mixed (or purest) things should be 

 allotted to the highest class of the priests as a prize for their service, 

 while the rest should aspire to similar things to be sure, but not to 

 the same things that their betters may retain their privilege.^^ 



XI 



But after the dinner they celebrate the sacred all-night festival. 

 This night festival is celebrated in the following manner. They all 

 stand up in a body, and in the midst of the banquet at first two 

 (M. 485) choruses are formed, one of men, the other of women. 

 A guide and leader of each chorus is chosen, a man who is 

 both most highly esteemed and most suitable for the place. Then 

 they sing hymns^^ composed in honor of God in many meters and 

 melodies, now singing in concert, now moving their hands and 

 dancing to the time of antiphonal harmonies, and crying out the name 

 of God, now moving in procession, now standing still, like the strophes 

 and antistrophes in a chorus. 



Then when each chorus has had its fill singing and dancing 

 separately, then as if it were in the Bacchic revels, having drunk 

 deep of the pure wine of diidne love, they join forces and one chorus 



*9This banquet of the Therapeiitae which Philo has been describing 

 must have been celebrated on the eve of the Da}^ of Pentecost. In the next 

 chapter he refers to this greatest day, but he does not say explicitly that 

 they met together a second time. The Feast of Pentecost commemorated 

 Moses' receiving of the Law on Mt. Sinai, and as it was the season of harvest 

 and vintage it was a feast of rejoicing when, as was natural, some may have 

 overindulged. So the Therapeutae were careful to avoid all excesses, but as 

 Philo says in 481, 30 they were not long-faced or lugubrious but of cheerful 

 countenance ((patSpoi). The Therapeutae also observed the Feast of 

 Tabernacles. Some have thought Philo was describing the Passover, but the 

 Passover was not a koiv/) al'vofiog (common assembly) but was celebrated pri- 

 vately at home. Nor was Philo describing the Easter festival, as others have 

 thought, following Eusebius, who regarded the Therapeutae as early Chris- 

 tians. 



^"Conybeare's note explains the passage thus: ''The hymns which the 

 Therapeutae sang after their meal, in many measures and strains, included 

 the great Hallel (i.e. Psalms 113-118). This Hallel was sung, so we learn 

 from the Talmud, on the first day of Pentecost. The dance of the Therapeutae 

 was intended to celebrate the deliverance of Israel out of the land of Egypt. 

 So in Deuteronomy 16, 12, in connection with Pentecost, we read "And thoushalt 

 remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt; and thou shalt 

 observe and do these statutes." In Matthew 26, 30, the Last Supper closed 

 with the singing of a hymn. Dancing had to be restricted and even forbidden 

 among Christians in the fourth century. The Jews always danced at festivals, 

 and during the first night of the Feast of Tabernacles men and women danced 

 in the court of the temple (Conybeare). 



