Talk:Therapeutae

Buddhism?
I have some questions about that last paragraph. The speculation by Thundy regarding a connection between Theravada and Therapeutae seems terribly weak both in phoenetics and in meaning. How long have Therapeut and related words been in the Greek language? Do they occur, say, in Aeschyllus or other dramatists who were contemporaries or predecessors of Siddhartha Gautama? It seems that some qualification should be attached to all the airy speculation which attempts to link Buddhism to the order described by Philo. 19:20, 3 June 2010‎ User:Gnuwhirled (talk | contribs)‎. . (660 bytes) (+518)‎. . (undo)
 * That's because it's WP:OR and WP:fringe, removed here to Talk. In ictu oculi (talk) 22:08, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Removed Buddhist material as above
The similarities between the Therapeutae and Buddhist monasticism, a tradition earlier by several centuries, combined with Indian evidence of Buddhist missionary activity to the Mediterranean around 250 BCE (the Edicts of Ashoka), have been pointed out. Zen Living, Robert Linssen The linguist Zacharias P. Thundy also suggests that the word "Therapeutae" is only a Hellenisation of the Indian Pali word for traditional Buddhists, Theravada. cite book last = Thundy  Zacharias P. Buddha and Christ: Nativity Stories & Indian Traditions  Brill Publishers  1993  244–249 9004097414   In general, Egypt had intense trade and cultural contacts with India during the period, as described in the 1st century CE Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. It's also known that Ancient Roman rulers sent scholars to study at the Buddhist University in Nalanda. Read Amartya Sen's The Argumentative Indian for more about Buddhism's influence on Greco-Roman traditions }}
 * end of removed material In ictu oculi (talk)

Update Feb 4 2015
User:Piledhighandeep added Buddhist material on this edit: []. WP:AGF & fascinated by the possibility of Buddhist graves in Ptolemaic Egypt, I checked out the (incomplete) Tarn reference on Google books. I found nothing to back up the reference; so in the event of this not deemed to be WP:fringe, that reference at least needs replacing. I've notified User:Piledhighandeep. Ian McDonald (talk) 22:28, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Removed Buddhist material added
The pre-Christian monastic order of the Therapeutae is possibly a deformation of the Pāli word "Theravāda," ) a form of Buddhism, and the movement may have "almost entirely drawn (its) inspiration from the teaching and practices of Buddhist asceticism". They may even have been descendants of the Indian Emperor Asoka's Greco-Buddhist emissaries to the West. Buddhist gravestones from the Ptolemaic period have been found in Alexandria in Egypt, decorated with depictions of the Dharma wheel.
 * end of removed material Ian McDonald (talk) 22:28, 4 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Ian McDonald this reference is in Tarn, but hard to see, since it is a footnote.
 * See footnote 1 at the bottom of Tarn page 370 (linked below via Google books).
 * The Greeks in Bactria and India, Tarn, Cambridge University Press, 1966
 * Also, see Tarn's Antigonos Gonatas, p. 337 and note 1262 here for context. Piledhighandeep (talk) 07:15, 5 February 2015 (UTC)
 * User:Piledhighandeep Thanks for going into more detail. I can't follow up the Antigonos Gonatas, but I can find the original 1898 entry in the Royal Asiatic Society which suggests *one* gravestone with a wheel below a trident, in the context of prayer wheels in Egyptian temples. Our 1898 WP:RS William Simpson reports that the famous Victorian Egyptologist Flinders Petrie was "inclined to think" the grave belonged to an Asokan missionary, but Simpson thought that needed substantially more evidence; it could be trading links (as your other sources said); could be co-incidence; and doesn't necessarily support a link with the Therapeutae.


 * Unfortunately, the other references you include are simply to Thundy (not WP:V), to Robert Linssen's book (alas, I don't see how that is WP:RS for ancient Greece), and Holger Kersten (who believed that Jesus visited India so has to be treated as WP:Fringe). Thank you for providing references, because it means that unlike the earlier paragraph about this alleged link, it means we can actually have this conversation. Is there a WP:RS for this that I'm missing, because I'd (genuinely) love to read it? Ian McDonald (talk) 14:56, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm not really convinced myself, having gone through the references to Prof. Flinders Petrie's theories about his single find. The Tarn reference (The Greeks in Bactria and India, Tarn, Cambridge University Press, 1966) I had put in is correct, and I thought it was worth putting in at the time, but on closer investigation of Tarn's sources prompted by your query I am less convinced of this gravestone with a wheel than Tarn is. Since you can't follow-up on Tarn's Antigonos Gonatas, here is the relevant quote from p. 337, "A Ptolemaic gravestone, with the Buddhist wheel and trisula, found by Prof. Flinders Petrie." It all comes down to this find, which doesn't seem convincing to me either. The verifiable Thundy reference is here Buddha and Christ: Nativity Stories and Indian Traditions Zacharias P. Thundy p. 244. Thundy is an English professor, so I'm not sure how much authority you will want to give him. Piledhighandeep (talk) 20:30, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Is there any modern scholar who thinks that Buddhism had any influence on this Jewish group? As far as I can see the answer is no. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:07, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Having read the Thundy reference, it really just feels like speculation. Sometimes, if it's too good to be true, that's because it isn't. Oh well. I think we've got consensus. Piledhighandeep? Ian McDonald (talk) 02:07, 7 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. (As for 'any modern scholar,' Thundy is one. He is still alive, so I'd consider him to be modern. He is a professor, so that should qualify as a scholar. You can read his argument that this Jewish sect was influenced by Buddhism at the google books link I provided above. He is, however, perhaps not the best scholar for this topic, since it appears to fall a little outside his specialty and his argument is, as Ian McDonald pointed out, rather speculative.) Piledhighandeep (talk) 18:26, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

it's not about what you think
Whether you are convinced or not is beside the point. Your/our job as editors is to report and list the variety of opinions out there, rather than filter them according to our own opinions and, ignorance! The reader may find it interesting/important/etc. that some have suggested or spoken of a Buddhist connection. I shall say no more. 197.134.127.181 (talk) 18:42, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

What "some" suggest is only of value if there is some reasonably acceptable scholarship to back it up. Erich Von Daniken may well have suggested the Therapeutae were visitors from a distant star system. That and what keeps popping up here is a "fringe" viewpoint. The precursors of the word, "therapeutae" are found in Homer and Pericles. Philo writes of these folk as great celebrators of Passover and the Seventh Day Sabbath. Not a Buddhist trait as a rule. I see that Thundy must be chased down elsewhere. Wikipedia summarizes significant opinions, with representation in proportion to their prominence. A Wikipedia article should not make a fringe theory appear more notable or more widely accepted than it is. Claims must be based upon independent reliable sources. If discussed in an article about a mainstream idea, a theory that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight,[1] Gnuwhirled (talk) Gnuwhirled (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 05:05, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Early patristics
The primary source content about Eusebius identifying Therapeutae as Christians wasn't a great deal better, the box quote turned into a source ref. In ictu oculi (talk) 22:10, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

The Therapeutae of Asclepius
This does not appear to be mentioned and should be. There are ample testimonies to the existence of such a group in the early centuries, and they were associated with the temple network of Asclepius, the healing god of the Roman Empire before the 4th century. The physician Galen, personal attendant to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius considered himself to be one of the "Therapeutae of Asclepius".

The following is taken from a discussion and lists the classical sources that mention "therapeutae". One alternative might be to create a separate page for these "pagan" therapeutae. The verb θεραπεύω/therapeuo in some form appears in some 300 extant Greek documents from antiquity, sometimes dozens of usages in the same text, for a total of thousands of instances. It is therefore hardly an obscure term. Yet, the scholarship concerning the mysterious Therapeuts of Philo makes it seem as if this word is very unfamiliar to both us and the ancient readers of Greek. That misconception needs to be disabused, as does the notion that Philo's Therapeuts were the only such individuals by that name in the Mediterranean of the time.

Achilles Tatius Aelian Aeschines Antiphon Apollodorus Appian Aristides (numerous times) Aristophanes Arrian Athenaeus (numerous times) Cassius Dio Chariton Claudius Ptolemy Demosthenes Dio Chrysostom Diodorus Diogenes Dionysius of Halicarnassus Epictetus Euripides (numerous times) Galen Herodotus Hesiod Hippocrates Homer Hymn 3 to Apollo Hyperides Isaeus Isocrates Julian (many times) Lucian (numerous times) Lysias Marcus Aurelius Onasander Philostratus the Athenian Pindar Plato (especially popular in Plato) Plutarch (many, many times - MOST references are in Plutarch) Polybius Procopius Sophocles Strabo Theophrastus Thucydides (numerous times) Xenophon User:203.51.106.116 (talk)‎.
 * Hi 203.51.106.116 I've included a "name" section with the full 5x relevant LSJ entries as footnotes, and have wikilinked to the classical authors. It's worth noting that there were other therapeutae for Serapis and at Delos. However, in terms of weight, those are simply just random uses of a commonish Greek word for worshipper. This is about a Jewish sect. Beyond noting that the word isn't Philo's coinage, there's not much else needs doing. In ictu oculi (talk) 13:26, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

It is simple, Buddhists know the meaning : Thera = Elder monk Putae = Putra or son So Theraputae means a faith which was begotten from the Theras or the Buddhists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.96.202.73 (talk) 05:44, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Please look in a book. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:26, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Buddhist Connection: Fringe material removed AGAIN. Cognates of the word "therapeutae", "therapon" and "therapeuo", with similar meaning are used in the Iliad and by Pericles. This was long before the the birth of Siddartha Gautama, or any supposed influence exerted by Asoka. If on reads Philo, one discovers that the group he writes about were ardent keepers of the seventh day Sabbath and Passover. Not very common for Buddhists.

Wikipedia summarizes significant opinions, with representation in proportion to their prominence. A Wikipedia article should not make a fringe theory appear more notable or more widely accepted than it is. Claims must be based upon independent reliable sources. If discussed in an article about a mainstream idea, a theory that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight,[1] Gnuwhirled (talk)

Gnuwhirled (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:07, 28 January 2016 (UTC)