Women Members of a Monastic Jewish Community Outside

Abstract

Abstract author: The best known of ancient Jewish philosophers, Philo of Alexandria came from a prominent family with extensive ties to the ruling Roman elite in the first century c.e. His brother, Alexander, was the alabarch of Egypt, and his nephew Tiberius Julius Alexander was procurator of Judea, prefect of Egypt, and a staff general for Titus during the siege of Jerusalem. Another nephew, Marcus Julius Alexander, appears to have been briefly married to Berenice, a member of the Herodian royal family in Judea (who herself was later the lover of the Roman emperor Titus). Philo’s prolific writings include lengthy allegorical interpretations of Jewish Scriptures (which he read in his native Greek) and a small number of apologetic treatises with significant historical content. His Embassy to Gaius describes an embassy he undertook with other Jewish leaders to plead the cause of Alexandrian Jews before the emperor Gaius Caligula (37–41 c.e.), and several of his writings offer descriptions of contemporaneous ascetic communities, including the Essenes and a monastic group of philosophers usually known as the Therapeutae. Philo’s allegorical method was extremely attractive to later generations of Alexandrian Christian biblical exegetes, and his writings were ultimately preserved, not by Jews, but by Christians.