The Apostolic Age · c. AD 30–45
On the Contemplative Life
De Vita Contemplativa
Philo of Alexandria · c. 20 BC – c. AD 50
What it is
An account of the Therapeutae, a community of men and women outside Alexandria who lived in separate cells, ate once a day after sunset, studied allegory, and kept an all-night vigil of antiphonal singing every fiftieth day.
Why it lasted
Eusebius read this as a description of the first Christian monks in Egypt and said so, which is why the text survived at all — and why Western monasticism has an origin story that begins with Jews.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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