Jewish Therapeutae

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Therapeutae

THERAPEUTAE (Gr. Oepair€ rrai, literally "attendants" or "physicians," hence "worshippers of God"), a monastic order among the Jews of Egypt, similar to the Essenes. Our sole authority for their existence is Philo in his treatise De Vita Contemplativa. He takes them as the type of the contemplative, in contrast with the Essenes, who represented rather the practical life. While the Essenes were confined to Palestine or its near neighbourhood, the Therapeutae, we are told, existed in many parts of the world, but especially in Egypt. Their headquarters there were on Lake Mareotis, which at that time debouched into the sea. This establishment near Alexandria was, as it were, the Grande Chartreuse of their order. Philo himself was uncertain as to the meaning of the name, whether it was given to them because they were "physicians" of souls or because they were "servants" of the One God. Their mode of life he in one place (ii. 473, line 14) calls OepaorEla, and his use of words generally accords better with the latter meaning. That the origin of the name of these ascetics was unknown in Philo's time goes to prove their antiquity.

A man on joining the order died to the world, and so voluntarily resigned his property to his heirs. How the order itself was supported does not appear. So far as we are informed, prayer and study were the sole occupations of the Therapeutae. The community at Alexandria lived in mean and scattered houses, near enough to afford protection, without depriving the members of the solitude which they prized. Each of these houses contained a chamber called o-Eµveiov or µovaa-r17Pcov (cf. Matt. vi. 6), which was devoted to prayer and study, and into which the inmate brought nothing but the Law and the Prophets, together with the Psalms and other works which tended to the promotion of piety. At sunrise the Therapeutae prayed and again at sunset. The whole interval was devoted to a study of the internal sense of the Scriptures. In addition to the Old Testament the Therapeutae had books by the founders of their sect on the allegorical method of interpreting Scripture. They also contributed to sacred literature themselves in the composition of new psalms. Attendance to the ordinary needs of nature was entirely relegated to the hours of darkness. Some of these recluses only ate every second day, while others succeeded in confining the necessity to a single week-day. But the Sabbath was a feast on which, after attending to their souls, they indulged their bodies, like yoke animals let out to graze. But their indulgence even then is not mentioned to have gone beyond the coarse bread, flavoured with salt and sometimes hyssop, while their drink was water from the spring. Thus during the six days of the week the Therapeutae "philosophized," each in his own cell, but on the Sabbath they met in a common assembly, where women also had places screened off from the men, and listened to a discourse from one who was the eldest and most skilled in their doctrines.

In contrast with the drunken revels of the Greeks, Philo describes the sober enjoyment by the Therapeutae of the feast of Pentecost, or rather of the eve of that festival. They assembled together with glad faces and in white garments, and the proceedings were begun with prayers, in which they stood and stretched their eyes and hands to heaven. Then they took their seats in the order of their admission, the men on the right and the women on the left. Slavery being against their principles, the younger members of the society waited on the elder. No flesh was served at table, and for drink only water either hot or cold. But first came "the feast of reason and the flow of soul." All listened devoutly to a discourse delivered with an emphatic slowness and penetrating beneath the letter of the Law to the spiritual truth that lay hidden within. When the president's address had been duly applauded, there followed the singing of hymns ancient and modern. Then came the meal of the simple kind already described. And after this a pervigilium, celebrated with antiphonal and joint singing on the part of men and women and with choral dancing in imitation of Moses and Miriam at the Red Sea. At sunrise, turning to the east, they prayed that the light of truth might illumine their minds, and then returned to their studies.

Such is the account of the Therapeutae given by Philo. It seems to have formed part of the Apology for the Jews (Eus Pr. Ev. viii. 10, § 12) - hence its highly rhetorical character - from which Eusebius gives the extract about the Essenes; while this in its turn may have constituted the fourth book of a large work entitled ("sarcastically," says Eusebius, H.E. ii. 18) ?repl 'Apercov, of which the Legatio ad Gaium formed the first. The De Vita Contemplativa thus owes its place next to the Quod Omnis Probus Liber, a place which it already occupied in the copy of Philo's works possessed by Eusebius (H.E. ii. 18), merely to the mention of the Essenes at the beginning of it.

To the modern reader the importance of the Therapeutae, as of the Essenes, lies in the evidence they afford of the existence of the monastic system long before the Christian era. We have no clue to the origin of the Therapeutae, but it is plain that they were already ancient when Philo described them. Eusebius was so much struck by the likeness of the Therapeutae to the Christian monks of his own day as to claim that they were Christians converted by the preaching of St Mark. He goes so far as to say that "the writings of ancient men, who were the founders of the sect" referred to by Philo, may very well have been the Gospels and Epistles (which were not yet written). This is a strong instance of how the wish may be father to the thought even in a fairly critical mind. Eusebius having gone wrong on this point, others of the Fathers followed suit, so that Philo is reckoned by Jerome among the ecclesiastical writers of the Christians.

Nothing is more likely than that Christianity gained adherents among the Therapeutae, and that their institutions were adapted to the new religion, just as they seem to have been borrowed by the Jews from the Egyptians. Strabo (xi. 29, p. 806) tells us how he saw at Heliopolis large buildings belonging to the priests, which had once been tenanted by men skilled in philosophy and astronomy, who had been consulted by Plato and Eudoxus, but that the o-uanjµa and iaicgats (the very words used by Philo in speaking of the Therapeutae) had then fallen into decay. The system, however, was not even then extinct, for it was described by Chaeremon the Stoic, a contemporary of Strabo's. Chaeremon's account has been preserved by Porphyry (De Abstinentia, iv. 6), and has curious resemblances to Philo's description of the Therapeutae, even down to such details as their posture and gait and the eating of hyssop with their bread.

After 1879 a theory became current in Germany (first stated in P. E. Lucius, Die Therapeuten and ihre Stellung), and accepted in England, to the effect that the De Vita Contemplativa is not a work of Philo's at all, but a forgery put forward about the end of the 3rd century and intended to procure the authority of Philo's name for the then rising monasticism of the Church. But this theory was signally refuted by F. C. Conybeare in his Philo about the Contemplative Life (Oxford, 1895).

See also works quoted by Conybeare (pp. 39 1 -399); Bousset, Religion des Judenthums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter (1903); A. Harnack, s.v. " Therapeuten" in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyk., xix. 677 (1907). (ST G. S.)

http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Therapeutae


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Philo's account

Philo described the Therapeutae in the beginning of the 1st century CE in De vita contemplativa ("On the contemplative life"), written ca. 10 CE. By that time, the origins of the Therapeutae were already lost in the past, and Philo was even unsure about the etymology of their name, which he explained as meaning either physicians of souls or servants of God. The opening phrases of his essay establish that it followed one that has been lost, on the active life. Philo was employing the familiar polarity in Hellenic philosophy between the active and the contemplative life, exemplifying the active life by the Essenes, another severely ascetic sect, and the contemplative life by the desert-dwelling Therapeutae.
[edit] Forerunners of early Christian monastic orders

According to Philo, the Therapeutae were widely distributed in the Ancient world, among the Greeks and beyond in the non-Greek world of the "Barbarians", with one of ther major gathering point being in Alexandria, in the area of the Lake Mareotis:

    "Now this class of persons may be met with in many places, for it was fitting that both Greece and the country of the barbarians should partake of whatever is perfectly good; and there is the greatest number of such men in Egypt, in every one of the districts, or nomes, as they are called, and especially around Alexandria; and from all quarters those who are the best of these therapeutae proceed on their pilgrimage to some most suitable place as if it were their country, which is beyond the Maereotic lake."
    —Philo, Ascetics III[1]

They lived chastely with utter simplicity; they "first of all laid down temperance as a sort of foundation for the soul to rest upon, proceed to build up other virtues on this foundation" (Philo). They were dedicated to the contemplative life, and their activities for six days of the week consisted of ascetic practices, fasting, solitary prayers and the study of the scriptures in their isolated cells, each with its separate holy sanctuary, and enclosed courtyard:

    "the entire interval from dawn to evening is given up by them to spiritual exercises. For they read the holy scriptures and draw out in thought and allegory their ancestral philosophy, since they regard the literal meanings as symbols of an inner and hidden nature revealing itself in covert ideas."
    —Philo, para. 28

In addition to the Pentateuch, the Prophets and Psalms they possessed arcane writings of their own tradition, including formulae for numerological and allegorical interpretations.

They renounced property and followed severe discipline:

    "These men abandon their property without being influenced by any predominant attraction, and flee without even turning their heads back again."
    —Philo para. 18

They "professed an art of healing superior to that practiced in the cities" Philo notes, and the reader must be reminded of the reputation as a healer Saint Anthony possessed among his 4th-century contemporaries, who flocked out from Alexandria to reach him.

On the seventh day the Therapeutae met in a meeting house, the men on one side of an open partition, the women modestly on the other, to hear discourses. Once in seven weeks they meet for a night-long vigil after a banquet where they served one another, for "they are not waited on by slaves, because they deem any possession of servants whatever to be contrary to nature. For she has begotten all men alike free" (Philo, para.70) and sing antiphonal hymns until dawn.

Eusebius of Caesarea

The 4th century Christian writer Eusebius of Caesarea, in his Ecclesiastical History, describes Philo's Therapeutae as the first Christian monks, identifying their renunciation of property, chastity, fasting, solitary lives with the cenobitic ideal of the Christian monks.[2]

Eusebius was so sure of his identification of Therapeutae with Christians that he deduced that Philo, who admired them so, must have been Christian himself, not knowing the date of Philo's essay, and Christian readers still believed that this must have been so until the end of the 18th century. Like the first Christian hermits of the Egyptian desert, they were hermits, or anchorites, rather than living communally, as later Christian monastic communities would do.

    "The semianchoritic character of the Therapeutae community, the renunciation of property, the solitude during the six days of the week and the gathering together on Saturday for the common prayer and the common meal, the severe fasting, the keeping alive of the memory of God, the continuous prayer, the meditation and study of Holy Scripture were also practices of the Christian anchorites of the Alexandrian desert."[3]
    —Scouteris, The Therapeutae of Philo and the Monks as Therapeutae according to Pseudo-Dionysius

 Pseudo-Dionysius

Secondary reference to the Therapeutae is known through the 5th century Pseudo-Dionysius, which mentions that "Some people gave to the ascetics the name 'Therapeutae' or servants while some others gave them the name monks". The Pseudo-Dionysius however already describes a highly organized Christian ascetic order.[4]


 Formative influences

Hebrew tradition

Various formative influences on the Therapeutae have been conjectured. The Book of Enoch and Jubilees exemplify the Hebrew tradition for the mystic values of numbers and for allegorical interpretations, without having to reach to Zoroaster or Pythagoreans.
[edit] Buddhism
Buddhist proselytism at the time of king Ashoka (260-218 BCE), according to the Edicts of Ashoka.

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.[5] The Therapeutae would have been the descendants of Ashoka's emissaries to the West, and would have influenced the early formation of Christianity.[6] The linguist Zacharias P. Thundy also suggests that the word "Therapeutae" is only a Hellenisation of the Indian Pali word for traditional Buddhists, Theravada.[7] 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.

From the standpoint of comparative religions, ascetism can be seen as a common point between Buddhism and Christianity, and is in contrast to the absence of asceticism in Judaism:

    "Asceticism is indigenous to the religions which posit as fundamental the wickedness of this life and the corruption under sin of the flesh. Buddhism, therefore, as well as Christianity, leads to ascetic practices. Monasteries are institutions of Buddhism no less than of Catholic Christianity. The assumption, found in the views of the Montanists and others, that concessions made to the natural appetites may be pardoned in those that are of a lower degree of holiness, while the perfectly holy will refuse to yield in the least to carnal needs and desires, is easily detected also in some of the teachings of Gautama Buddha. The ideal of holiness of both the Buddhist and the Christian saint culminates in poverty and chastity; i.e., celibacy. Fasting and other disciplinary methods are resorted to curb the flesh.
    —The Jewish Encyclopedia [8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutae


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Philo Judaeus: On Ascetics, c. 30 CE

As is evident from the writings of Seneca, Epictetus and others, philosophy in the West ceased to be purely speculative, and dealt with moral and religious questions. This tendency toward the moral and religious was strengthened by the spread of Jewish and Christian teachings, together with the development of the Neo-Platonists toward mysticism, and the consequent mingling of western and eastern thought. Philo Judaeus lived in Alexandria, Egypt, from 20 B.C. to 40 A.D. He was a Jew in religion but a Greek in philosophy, and did much to promote this fusion of thought. The selection below describes the pre-Christian ascetics of Egypt. lt is important because it shows that asceticism was common in the deserts of Egypt even before the Christian monks and thus by no means peculiarly Christian.

    [Pre-Christian] Ascetics.

    I. Having mentioned the Essenes, who in all respects selected for their admiration and for their especial adoption the practical course of life, and who excel in all, or what perhaps may be a less unpopular and invidious thing to say, in most of its parts, I will now proceed, in the regular order of my subject, to speak of those who have embraced the speculative life, and I will say what appears to me to be desirable to be said on the subject, not drawing any fictitious statements from my own head for the sake of improving the appearance of that side of the question which nearly all poets and essayists are much accustomed to do in the scarcity of good actions to extol, but with the greatest simplicity adhering strictly to the truth itself, to which I know well that even the most eloquent men do not keep close in their speeches.

    Nevertheless we must make the endeavor and labor to attain to this virtue; for it is not right that the greatness of the virtue of the men should be a cause of silence to those who do not think it right that anything which is creditable should be suppressed in silence; but the deliberate intention of the philosopher is at once displayed from the appellation given to them: for with strict regard to etymology, they are called therapeutae and therapeutrides, either because they profess an art of medicine more excellent than that in general use in cities (for that only heals bodies, but the other heals souls which are under the mastery of terrible and almost incurable diseases, which pleasures and appetites, fears and griefs, and covetousness, and follies, and injustice, and all the rest of the innumerable multitude of other passions and vices, have inflicted upon them), or else because they have been instructed by nature and the sacred laws to serve the living God, who is superior to the good, and more simple than the one, and more ancient than the unity with whom, however, who is there of those who profess piety that we can possibly compare? Can we compare those who honor the elements, earth, water, air, and fire? to whom different nations have given names, calling fire Hephaestus, I imagine because of its kindling, and the air Hera, I imagine because of its being raised up, and raised aloft to a great height, and water Poseidon, probably because of its being drinkable, and the earth Demeter because it appears to be the mother of all plants and of all animals.

    II. But since these men infect not only their fellow countrymen, but all that come near them with folly, let them remain uncovered, being mutilated in the most indispensable of all the outward senses, namely, sight. I am speaking here, not of the sight of the body, but of that of the soul, by which alone truth and falsehood are distinguished from one another. But the therapeutic sect of mankind, being continually taught to see without interruption, may well aim at obtaining a sight of the living God, and may pass by the sun, which is visible to the outward sense, and never leave this order which conducts to perfect happiness. But they who apply themselves to this kind of worship, not because they are influenced to do so by custom, nor by the advice or recommendation of any particular persons, but because they are carried away by a certain heavenly love, give way to enthusiasm, behaving like so many revelers in bacchanalian or corybantian mysteries, until they see the object which they have been earnestly desiring.

    Then, because of their anxious desire for an immortal and blessed existence, thinking that their mortal life has already come to an end, they leave their possessions to their sons or daughters, or perhaps to other relations, giving them up their inheritance with willing cheerfulness: and those who know no relations give their property to their companions or friends, for it followed of necessity that those who have acquired the wealth which sees, as if ready prepared for them, should be willing to surrender that wealth which is blind to those who themselves also are still blind in their minds.

    When, therefore, men abandon their property without being influenced by any predominant attraction, they flee without even turning their heads back again, deserting their brethren, their children, their wives, their parents, their numerous families, their affectionate bands of companions, their native lands in which they have been born and brought up, though long familiarity is a most attractive bond, and one very well able to allure any one. And they depart, not to another city as those do who entreat to be purchased from those who at present possess them, being either unfortunate or else worthless servants, and as such seeking a change of masters rather than endeavoring to procure freedom (for every city, even that which is under the happiest laws, is full of indescribable tumults, and disorders, and calamities, which no one would submit to who had been even for a moment under the influence of wisdom), but they take up their abode outside of walls, or gardens, or solitary lands, seeking for a desert place, not because of any ill-natured misanthropy to which they have learned to devote themselves, but because of the associations with people of wholly dissimilar dispositions to which they would otherwise be compelled, and which they know to be unprofitable and mischievous.

    III. Now this class of persons may be met with in many places, for it was fitting that both Greece and the country of the barbarians should partake of whatever is perfectly good; and there is the greatest number of such men in Egypt, in every one of the districts, or nomes, as they are called, and especially around Alexandria; and from all quarters those who are the best of these therapeutae proceed on their pilgrimage to some most suitable place as if it were their country, which is beyond the Maereotic lake, lying in a somewhat level plain a little raised above the rest, being suitable for their purpose by reason of its safety and also of the fine temperature of the air.

    For the houses built in the fields and the villages which surround it on all sides give it safety; and the admirable temperature of the air proceeds from the continual breezes which come from the lake which falls into the sea, and also from the sea itself in the neighborhood, the breezes from the sea being light, and those which proceed from the lake which falls into the sea being heavy, the mixture of which produces a most healthy atmosphere.

    But the houses of these men thus congregated together are very plain, just giving shelter in respect of the two things most important to be provided against, the heat of the sun, and the cold from the open air; and they did not live near to one another as men do in cities, for immediate neighborhood to others would be a troublesome and unpleasant thing to men who have conceived an admiration for, and have determined to devote themselves to, solitude; and, on the other hand, they did not live very far from one another on account of the fellowship which they desire to cultivate, and because of the desirableness of being able to assist one another if they should be attacked by robbers.

    And in every house there is a sacred shrine which is called the holy place, and the house in which they retire by themselves and perform all the mysteries of a holy life, bringing in nothing, neither meat, nor drink, nor anything else which is indispensable towards supplying the necessities of the body, but studying in that place the laws and the sacred oracles of God enunciated by the holy prophets, and hymns, and psalms, and all kinds of other things by reason of which knowledge and piety are increased and brought to perfection.

    Therefore they always retain an imperishable recollection of God, so that not even in their dreams is any other subject ever presented to their eyes except the beauty of the divine virtues and of the divine powers. Therefore many persons speak in their sleep, divulging and publishing the celebrated doctrines of the sacred philosophy. And they are accustomed to pray twice a day, at morning and at evening; when the sun is rising entreating God that the happiness of the coming day may be real happiness, so that their minds may be filled with heavenly light, and when the sun is setting they pray that their soul, being entirely lightened and relieved of the burden of the outward senses, and of the appropriate object of these outward senses, may be able to trace out trust existing in its own consistory and council chamber. And the interval between morning and evening is by them devoted wholly to meditation on and to practice virtue, for they take up the sacred scriptures and philosophy concerning them, investigating the allegories as symbols of some secret meaning of nature, intended to be conveyed in those figurative expressions.

    They have also writings of ancient men, who having been the founders of one sect or another, have left behind them many memorials of the allegorical system of writing and explanation, whom they take as a kind of model, and imitate the general fashion of their sect; so that they do not occupy themselves solely in contemplation, but they likewise compose psalms and hymns to God in every kind of meter and melody imaginable, which they of necessity arrange in more dignified rhythm. Therefore, during six days, each of these individuals, retiring into solitude by himself, philosophizes by himself in one of the places called monasteries, never going outside the threshold of the outer court, and indeed never even looking out.

    But on the seventh day they all come together as if to meet in a sacred assembly, and they sit down in order according to their ages with all becoming gravity, keeping their hands inside their garments, having their right hand between their chest and their dress, and the left hand down by their side, close to their flank; and then the eldest of them who has the most profound learning in their doctrines comes forward and speaks with steadfast look and with steadfast voice, with great powers of reasoning, and great prudence, not making an exhibition of his oratorical powers like the rhetoricians of old, or the sophists of the present day, but investigating with great pains, and explaining with minute accuracy the precise meaning of the laws, which sits, not indeed at the tips of their ears, but penetrates through their hearing into the soul, and remains there lastingly; and all the rest listen in silence to the praises which he bestows upon the law, showing their assent only by nods of the head, or the eager look of the eyes.

    And this common holy place to which they all come together on the seventh day is a twofold circuit, being separated partly into the apartment of the men, and partly into a chamber for the women, for women also, in accordance with the usual fashion there, form a part of the audience, having the same feelings of admiration as the men, and having adopted the same sect with equal deliberation and decision; and the wall which is between the houses rises from the ground three or four cubits upwards, like a battlement, and the upper portion rises upwards to the roof without any opening. on two accounts; first of all, in order that the modesty which is so becoming to the female sex may be preserved, and secondly, that the women may be easily able to comprehend what is said, being seated within earshot, since there is then nothing which can possibly intercept the voice of him who is speaking.

    IV. And these expounders of the law, having first of all laid down temperance as a sort of foundation for the soul to rest upon, proceed to build up other virtues on this foundation, and no one of them may take any meat or drink before the setting of the sun, since they judge that the work of philosophizing is one which is worthy of the light, but that the care of the necessities of the body is suitable only to darkness, on which account they appropriate the day to the one occupation, and a brief portion of the night to the other; and some men, in whom there is implanted a more fervent desire of knowledge, can endure to cherish a recollection of their food for three days without even tasting it, and some men are so delighted, and enjoy themselves so exceedingly when regaled by wisdom which supplies them with her doctrines in all possible wealth and abundance, that they can even hold out twice as great a length of time, and will scarcely at the end of six days taste even necessary food, being accustomed, as they say that grasshoppers are, to feed on air, their song as I imagine, making their scarcity tolerable to them.

    And they, looking upon the seventh day as one of perfect holiness and a most complete festival, have thought it worthy of a most especial honor, and on it, after taking due care of their soul, they tend their bodies also, giving them, just as they do to their cattle, a complete rest from their continual labors; and they eat nothing of a costly character, but plain bread and a seasoning of salt, which the more luxurious of them do further season with hyssop; and their drink is water from the spring; for they oppose those feelings which nature has made mistresses of the human race, namely, hunger and thirst, giving them nothing to flatter or humor them, but only such useful things as it is not possible to exist without. On this account they eat only so far as not to be hungry, and they drink just enough to escape from thirst, avoiding all satiety, as an enemy of and a plotter against both soul and body.

    And there are two kinds of covering, one raiment and the other a house: we have already spoken of their houses, that they are not decorated with any ornaments, but run up in a hurry, being only made to answer such purposes as are absolutely necessary; and in like manner their raiment is of the most ordinary description, just stout enough to ward off cold and heat, being a cloak of some shaggy hide for winter, and a thin mantle or linen shawl in the summer; for in short they practice entire simplicity, looking upon falsehood as the foundation of pride, but truth is the origin of simplicity, and upon truth and falsehood as standing in the light of fountains, for from falsehood proceeds every variety of evil and wickedness, and from truth there flows every imaginable abundance of good things both human and divine.

    Source:

    From: Oliver J. Thatcher, ed., The Library of Original Sources (Milwaukee: University Research Extension Co., 1907), Vol. III: The Roman World, pp. 355-369.

    Scanned by: J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton. Prof. Arkenberg has modernized the text.

    This text is part of the Internet Ancient History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts related to medieval and Byzantine history.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/ ... etics.html


Paradise now: essays on early Jewish and Christian mysticism
 By April D. De Conick

http://books.google.com/books?id=KUJ630 ... dcosCvYsjT

[Jenny Lake]

My first learning of the Therapeutae came from theologian, Dr. Barbara Thiering, in her book 'Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls'. Her premise of evidencing a new method of reading scriptural text, called the 'pesher' technique, has been roundly rejected http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2065 though I found it scrupulously elucidated in her book and very interesting. I read the book more than 15 years ago and remember clearly that she posits the Qumran community existing there c.150 BCE was likely a Theraputae sect and may have been the authors of significant 'community'-based (nonBiblical) scrolls, perhaps influencing the later inhabitants who are usually described as Essenes. Somehow, this association with Theraputae is omitted by Thiering's critics --I can't find one reference (easily), outside of Thiering's own work. She has strongly made the link between Therapeutae and early Christians, further removing Christians from Judaic roots, which is the reason for her general dismissal perhaps?  Even Thiering's own web resources marginalize this book in favor of a newer work "Jesus, the Man" which I haven't read.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Thanks Jenny,
I found this on Dr. Barbara Thiering:
http://www.peshertechnique.infinitesoulutions.com/

It looks like she has attracted a lot of critics. I'm not too familiar with her work.

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Pagan neighbors of the early Christians
Introduction
© 2005 Dr. Barbara Thiering (August, 2005)

Ever since their sojourn in Babylon in the 6th century BC, many Jews found it more congenial to live outside their homeland than in it. In the major cities of the world - Babylon, Alexandria, Ephesus, Rome - they formed large communities, meeting in their synagogues, but otherwise living side by side with non-Jews. By the 1st centuries BC and AD, Diaspora Jews were so numerous that Josephus could say that "myriads of our race" lived in these countries (Josephus, Against Apion 1,194). In Alexandria, the cultural capital of the world, two-fifths of the population were Jewish. The situation was parallel to the present one, with far more Jews living outside the homeland than in it, attracted especially to the large cities where they engage in commercial life.

Their culture had always valued learning, beginning with the records of their history on tablets which they carried round with them in nomad days. Knowledge kept them together, rather than location. In contact with advanced learning in the great cities, they eagerly absorbed that learning, seeing it as an extension of their belief that the world was governed by law. The book of Ezekiel, with its temple plan, illustrates how study of Babylonian astronomy, mathematics and architecture were absorbed into their religious thinking.

The hellenistic period brought a renaissance of learning throughout the western world following the conquests of Alexander the Great. In pursuit of their commercial aims, Jews living in the great cities met daily with non-Jews in the market-places, in business houses, and in related social activities where current theories about life in general were aired. Such theories were popularly focussed on philosophy - Platonism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and on the consequences of Pythagorean science.

The writings of Philo of Alexandria illustrate the extent to which hellenistic learning had become so much admired by Jews that they claimed it had really been revealed in the first place by Moses. Philo rewrites the creation story, reading between the lines of Genesis to find there an account of how God had created the world according to pure Platonism. In two treatises he goes through the books of Genesis and Exodus, showing how numbers used in them were especially significant for Pythagorean mathematics. Educated Jews of Philo's type continued to maintain Jewish identity strongly, while at the same time internally adjusting its content.

The process was sometimes reciprocal, with Gentiles admiring Jewish theology and ethical rigour to such an extent that they wanted to become proselytes. By the period of Jesus, there were many Gentiles attending the synagogues or informal meetings in houses. They merged to such an extent with Jews that the next step was taken, a new identity that covered both liberal Jews and Gentiles, using the name Christian. These, too, moved readily in Greco-Roman philosophical circles, as is shown in the Acts account of Paul's debates with philosophers in Athens (Acts 17:16-21).

In the Greco-Roman world, philosophy was by no means a socially separate occupation, but had filtered down to the lower classes, where it became mixed with the remains of pagan religion. Philosophers could act as cult figures do today, attracting attention and adulation by teaching strange and wonderful things, some of them factual and respected, others in the form of fantasies such as uneducated people wanted to hear. With knowledge of medicine , these gurus performed genuine healings, but as a form of advertisement they could arrange for "miracles" of healing.

The best known of these is Apollonius of Tyana, whose very close parallels to the life and miracles of Jesus have been underlined by some scholars, but explained away by others. Another philosopher and moralist was Plutarch, less spectacular and with a greater ethical content, whose writings provide a pagan parallel to the theory of religious writings containing a hidden meaning. In Lucius Apuleius' Golden Ass we have an extreme example of popular literature, at about the level of our "soapies", which at the same time endorses the theology of the pagan mystery religions.

We'll deal with each of these in turn in the following sub-entries.
Continue to next entry in Pagan neighbors of the early Christians: Apollonius of Tyana or select any entry on the menu to the left.
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http://www.peshertechnique.infinitesoul ... ndex5.html

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

This has connections between Plato and the Kabballah. Livingstone's "The Dying God" link to a Livingstone interview that /tab had posted yesterday is quite remarkable in showing these links.

http://www.jewishracism.com/David_Livin ... une_08.mp3
----------
The Kabbalah - Zionism

Zionism

The Temple of Jerusalem

In the sixth century BC, the Assyrians finally succeeded in the sacking Jerusalem, and taking the remaining Jewish population into captivity, this time to the city of Babylon, near what is now Baghdad in Iraq. The tragedy was of enormous psychological consequence for Jewish people. The presence of the Jewish people in the Holy Land was regarded by many as a core tenet of their faith. According to the Bible, God had ratified a covenant between Himself and Abraham, to grant the land of Palestine to his descendants. This promise, however, was contingent on the Jewish people adhering to the Commandments of the Law. Ultimately, their Exile was a punishment fulfilled for their repeated transgressions and occult leanings.

Nevertheless, there were some among the Jewish exiles, who chose not to regard their captivity as a punishment, but as a temporary trial. Instead, they interpreted their status as God's "Chosen" as a permanent relationship, and that the Promise to inhabit the land of Zion, or Palestine, was binding forever. Thus, this new Zionist interpretation was closely intertwined with the mystical directions of the Kabbalah. Therefore, this new Zionist interpretation was a bastardization of the real intent of the Jewish faith, and, as we shall see, was not an integral part of it, but was, through the centuries, increasingly imposed upon the rest of the Jewish community, by a minority committed to this diabolical scheme.

In Babylon, these heretical Jews, who refused to purge their religion of pagan influences, instead added to them the adopted practices of Babylonian magic. However, knowing that magic was forbidden in Judaism, they rejected the God of Israel, choosing instead to honor Lucifer, who they identified with the traditional enemy of the Hebrew faith, Baal. In order not to reveal their apostasy, they disguised their hidden faith as an "interpretation" of the religion, a cult now known as the Kabbalah.

This development is carefully described in the Koran, which explains that, though it was claimed the Kabbalah was derived originally from King Solomon, it was demons who taught such things, teaching them that which had been revealed to the angels Harut and Marut in Babylon. According to the Koran, chapter 2: 101-102:

    When a messenger was sent to them (the Jews) by God confirming the revelations they had already received some of them turned their backs (to God's message) as if they had no knowledge of it. They followed what the demons attributed to the reign of Solomon. But Solomon did not blaspheme, it was the demons who blasphemed, teaching men magic and such things as were revealed at Babylon to the angels Harut and Marut. But neither of these taught anyone (such things) without saying; "we are a trial, so do not blaspheme." They learned from them the means to sow discord between man and wife. But they could not harm anyone except by God' s permission. And they learned what harmed them, not what benefited them. And they knew that the purchasers of (magic) would have no share in the happiness of the hereafter. And vile was the price for which they sold their souls, if they but knew.

Borrowing from Jewish themes, therefore, these Kabbalists would seek world domination by arguing that they were preparing the world for the coming of the Messiah, and merely aiding God in bringing about His promise to institute them as rulers of the world. Having rejected the Jewish faith, however, they did not await the real Messiah, but would seek to establish their own ruler, who they would falsely claim as messiah, who would aid them in implementing the global acceptance of their occult creed.
The Chaldean Magi
"Adoration of the Magi" by Hieronymus Bosch

Adoration of the Magi
by Hieronymus Bosch

The ancient world of the sixth century BC was not yet familiar with the Jewish people and their religion. Therefore, when these Kabbalists emerged from Babylon to disseminate their ideas, particularly among the Greeks, they were confusedly identified with the traditional Babylonian priests, known as the Chaldean Magi. The broad dissemination of these ideas had followed the release of the Jews from captivity by the Persians, led by Cyrus the Great, who had conquered Babylon in 539 BC.[1]

The Magi, according to Herodotus, were a tribe of the Medes, within the Persian Empire. The rise of the Persian Empire began in 553 BC, when Cyrus the Great, king of the Persians, rebelled against his grandfather, the Mede King Astyages. Thus the Medes were subjected to their close kin, the Persians.

The Persians were Zoroastrians, the religion of the prophet Zoroaster, and the Magi were their priests. The Magi, according to Herodotus, were a tribe of the Medes, within the Persian Empire. The rise of the Persian Empire began in 553 BC, when Cyrus the Great, king of the Persians, rebelled against his grandfather, the Mede King Astyages. Thus the Medes were subjected to their close kin, the Persians.

According to tradition, in 588 BC, Zoroaster converted the king Hystaspes. The wife of Hystaspes, Rhodah, Princess of Persia, had first been married to Zorobabel, third Jewish Exilarch of Babylon.[2] Their son, Darius, , through a conspiracy on the part of the Magi, eventually became Emperor.

Cyrus the Great, and later his son and successor, Cambyses, initially curtailed the power of the Magi. As pointed out by Franz Cumont, perhaps the leading scholar of the last century, although Zoroastrianism was originally monotheistic, the Magi quickly corrupted their religion, infusing with Babylonian elements. This point has caused much confusion among scholars, who have failed to properly assess Cumont's studies. Because, they fail to see that when numerous ancient historians refer to the Magi, they do not refer to orthodox worshippers of Zoroaster, but these corrupting Magi.

Most interestingly, the ideas attributed to these "Magi" mirror those doctrines which later came to be acknowledged as the Kabbalah. It was they, in the sixth century BC, who developed the pseudo-science of astrology. Scholars have demonstrated that, though Babylonian religion was much concerned with astral themes, the cult of astrology could not have been invented until the sixth century BC, because of the lack of an accurate calendar system. In the Book of [3], Chapter 2:48, the prophet Daniel himself is made chief of the "wise men" of Babylon, that is of the Magi or Chaldeans, and yet remains faithful to the laws of his own religion.

Thus, this new cult of astrology and magic was incorporated into the rites of the dying-god. Mithras, the ancient god of the Persians, was assimilated to Baal, and occult mysteries and black arts were dedicated to him, which became the core of all later Ancient Mysteries.

In 522 BC, while Cambyses was in Egypt, a Magi named Gaumata seized power, claiming to be Smerdis, Cambyses' brother, knowing that Cambyses had secretly killed the real Smerdis. Though Cambyses tried to advance on the usurper, he somehow died, some say by suicide. According to Herodotus, Otanes, likely the same as "Osthanes", Cambyses' uncle, became suspicious of the false Smerdis. From his daughter, who was married to the imposter, he learned that Smerdis was in reality a Magi. A counter-coup by Osthanes and six other nobles was then planned, until Darius, the son of Hystaspes, arrived and sided with them. Darius and Otanes debated whether to strike at once, which Darius favored, or to wait, which seemed better to Otanes. Darius' strategy won out, the seven killed the false Smerdis, and Darius became Emperor.
The Phoenicians
"Procession of the Trojan Horse in Troy" by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

Procession of the Trojan Horse in Troy
by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo

As the Persian Empire expanded, Magian doctrines were exported to the rest of the known world, particularly to Greece. This is important towards understanding the central role that ancient Greece plays in the cult and history of the Illuminati. From the seventh century BC onward, Greece had been subject to a steady infusion of "Phoenician" immigrants, who gave Greece much of its culture, beginning with its alphabet, which is still the basis of the one we use today. Contrary to our modern perception of it, Ancient Greece was fundamentally a Middle Eastern civilization. The case for the foreign origin of Greek culture is such that, a little over fifty years ago, a German scholar had said:

    ...in view of this state of affairs it could not be called out of the way to ask what there was in Archaic Greece that did not come from the orient.

Numerous genealogies claim that Ilus, the grandfather of Priam, was descended from Zerah, the son of Judah from Tamar, and the brother of Peres, and that he married Electra, the daughter of Atlas the Titan.[4] According to Flavius Josephus, first century Jewish historian, Zerah' son Dara, or Darda, was also Dardanus, after whom the straight of the Dardanelles is named. From his sons, several nations have claimed descent, including the Goths, descended from his daughter Troanna. Priam's daughter Cassandra married Aeneas, who are the reputed ancestors of the Romans, Brutus and the kings of Scotland. And from Helenus King of Troy are descended the Sicambrians, later known as Franks.
Bacchants killing Orpheus

Bacchants killing Orpheus

According to Homer, in the Iliad, in his account of the war, the contingent of Greeks hidden within the Trojan Horse were Danaans. Purportedly, Greece had originally been colonized by remnants of the tribe of Dan, known to Greek historians as Danaans. The Danaans were a people regarded by the Greeks as being of Phoenician origin. The Greeks, however, had no knowledge of the Israelites until the fourth century BC. Therefore, they were confused with the Canaanites of Palestine, and referred to as Phoenicians. The conquests of Greece by the Dorians, also known as Heraklids, as well, has been equated with the Denyen Sea Peoples, or Danites of the Tribe of Dan, who devastated Mediterranean civilization in the twelfth century, coinciding with the penetration of the Israelites into the Promised Land.

Heccataeus of Abdera, a Greek historian of the fourth century BC, confirms the hypothesis when, referring to the Egyptians, he explained:

    The natives of the land surmised that unless they removed the foreigners [Israelites] their troubles would never be resolved. At once, therefore, the aliens were driven from the country and the most outstanding and active among them branded together and, as some say, were cast ashore in Greece and certain other regions; their teachers were notable men, among them being Danaus and Cadmus. But the greater number were driven into what is now called Judea, which is not far from Egypt and at that time was utterly uninhabited. The colony was headed by a man called Moses.[5]

Already as early as the sixth century BC, the influence of the Magi resulted in the emergence of the Mysteries of Dionysus among the Greeks. The legendary founder of the rites of Dionysus was known to have been Orpheus. Artapanus, a Jewish philosopher of the third century BC, declared of Moses that, "as a grown man he was called Musaeus by the Greeks.  This Musaeus was the teacher of Orpheus." Certainly, Moses was not the author of heretical doctrines developed in the sixth century BC, nearly a thousand years after his death. Still, these writers at least acknowledged the Jewish origin of the Greek mystical ideas.

The Magi would have adapted the Babylonian Bel to their own Mithras, who was then known as Dionysus among the Greeks, and their rites were as described by Clement of Alexandria:

    The raving Dionysus is worshipped by Bacchants with orgies, in which they celebrate their sacred frenzy by a feast of raw flesh. Wreathed with snakes, they perform the distribution of portions of their victims, shouting the name Eva (Eua), that Eva through whom error entered into the world; and a consecrated snake is the emblem of the Bacchic orgies.[6]

Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher of the sixth century BC, equated the rites of Dionysus/Bacchus with those of the Magi, and commented: "if it were for Dionysus that they hold processions and sing hymns to the shameful parts [phalli], it would be a most shameless act; but Hades and Dionysus are the same, in whose honor they go mad and celebrate the Bacchic rites,"[7] and of the "Nightwalkers, Magi, Bacchoi, Lenai, and the initiated," all these people he threatens with what happens after death: "for the secret rites practiced among humans are celebrated in an unholy manner."[8]

< p>R C Zaehner has pointed out that, though the worship evil spirits was strictly forbidden in the orthodox version of the faith, the accounts of Greek authors accord in many respects with the doctrines of those referred to in Zoroastrian literature, as "sorcerers" or "deava worshippers", or devil-worshippers. As these texts criticized, the Magi worshipped Ahriman, the Zoroastrian equivalent of the devil.

[9]
Plato
Plato

Plato

Essentially, while the Kabbalah can be traced back to Babylon, it was not there that its initial doctrines were expounded in literary form, but in ancient Greece. Though the Jews were allowed to return to Palestine by Cyrus the Great, no evidence of Jewish literature makes its appearance until the third century AD. Rather, the earliest elaboration of Kabbalistic doctrines takes place in Greece, among the so-called philosophers, and particularly Pythagoras, and later Plato, who has long been regarded as the godfather of this tradition.

The cult Orpheus, known as Orphism, became the basis of the philosophical cult developed by Pythagoras.[10] Accounts of Pythagoras having journeyed to Babylon for his learning are extensive. Through his influence, these ideas were then transmitted to Plato. Therefore, according to Momigliano, in Alien Wisdom, "it was Plato who made Persian wisdom thoroughly fashionable, though the exact place of Plato in the story is ambiguous and paradoxical."[11] Actually, Plato's position is not so ambiguous. A scholars and Momigliano are merely troubled that it evident that Plato, who is otherwise considered the example of Greek "rationality", was evidently immersed in occult thought.

Though Plato is regarded as the greatest philosopher of Western civilization, he is not deserving of that reputation, and only achieved notoriety over the last two hundred and fifty years, through the influence of the Illuminati press, who regard him as the founder of their doctrines. Throughout the centuries, occultists have regarded Plato as the great founder of their agenda, and even Jewish Kabbalists regarded him as an exponent of their ideas. Essentially, while the Kabbalah was incepted in Babylon, it was Plato who first elaborated upon the Zionist principle of world domination, by formulating its vision for a totalitarian state, to be governed by the "Chosen People", in this case, Kabbalists.

Scholars have entirely failed to recognize the presence of Kabbalistic doctrines in Plato because of their ignorance of the cult of the Magi. Scholars have generally dismissed any such influence, because, in their minds, there is no apparent influence of Zoroastrianism in Greek thought. This is correct. Rather, it was Franz Cumont, the greatest scholar of the twentieth century, and whose significance has yet to be recognized, who established that the Greeks did not come into contact with Zoroastrians, but heretical "Magi", called Magusseans, who were influenced by Babylonian doctrines.

"Discovering the Heavens", 16th century woodcult

In antiquity, the reputation of Plato's purported connection with the Magi was widespread. According to Aristobulus, a third century BC Jewish philosopher, Plato had access to translations of Jewish texts, and therefore, "it is evident that Plato imitated our legislation and that he had investigated thoroughly each of the elements in it... For he was very learned, as was Pythagoras, who transferred many of our doctrines and integrated them into his own beliefs.[12]

Eudoxus of Cnidus, who seems to have acted as head of the Academy during Plato's absence, traveled to Babylon and Egypt, studying at Heliopolis, where he learned the "priestly wisdom" and astrology. According to Pliny, Eudoxus "wished magic [the cult of the Magi] to be recognized as the most noble and useful of the schools of philosophy."[13]

In the Laws, Plato proposed astrological idea, about which E. R. Dodds, who is skeptical of the extent of Magian influence on Plato's thought, is willing to concede that:

    ...the proposals of the Laws do seem to give the heavenly bodies a religious importance which they lacked in ordinary Greek cult, though there may have been partial precedents in Pythagorean thought and usage. And in the Epinomis, which I am inclined to regard either as Plato's own work or as put together by his Nachlass (unpublished works), we meet with something that is certainly Oriental, and is frankly presented as such, the proposal for public worship of the planets.[14]

The Epinomis, which is either a work of Plato, or his pupil Philip of Opus, is clearly influenced by the Magi. According to the Epinomis, that science which makes men most wise, is astrology. Astrology, claims the author, proffers man with knowledge of numbers, in other words, numerology, without which man cannot attain to a knowledge of virtue. This knowledge, according to the author, belonged originally to the Egyptians and the Syrians, "from when the knowledge has reached to all countries, including our own, after having been tested by thousands of years and time without end."

However, the great treatise of Kabbalistic thought in the Greek language is the Timaeus. Like the Epinomis, the Timaeus categorizes the purpose of life as to study astrology. But, it is in the Republic that Plato articulates the need for a totalitarian state to be governed by philosopher-kings, who are to be instructed in this pseudo-science. When asked to provide details about this instruction, in last chapter of The Republic, Plato recounts what is called the Myth of Er. Er, the son of an Asian named Armenius, who died in a war but returned to life to act as a messenger from the other world.

Colotes, a philosopher of the third century BC, accused Plato of plagiarism, maintaining that he substituted Er's name for that of Zoroaster. Clement of Alexandria and Proclus quote from a work entitled On Nature, attributed to Zoroaster, in which he is equated with Er.[15] Quoting the opening of the work, Clement mentions:

    Zoroaster, then, writes: "These things I wrote, I Zoroaster, the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth: having died in battle, and been in Hades, I learned them of the gods." This Zoroaster, Plato says, having been placed on the funeral pyre, rose again to life in twelve days. He alludes perchance to the resurrection, or perchance to the fact that the path for souls to ascension lies through the twelve signs of the zodiac; and he himself says, that the descending pathway to birth is the same. In the same way we are to understand the twelve labours of Hercules, after which the soul obtains release from this entire world.[16]

The Republic provided the basis for all future Illuminati projects, including the elimination of marriage and the family, compulsory education, the use of eugenics by the state, and the employment of deceptive propaganda methods. According to Plato, "all these women shall be wives in common to all the men, and not one of them shall live privately with any man; the children too should be held in common so that no parent shall know which is his own offspring, and no child shall know his parent." This belief is associated with a need for eugenics, as "the best men must cohabit with the best women in as many cases as possible and the worst with the worst in the fewest, and that the offspring of the one must be reared and that of the other not, if the flock is to be as perfect as possible." More pernicious still is his prescription for infanticide: "The offspring of the inferior, and any of those of the other sort who are born defective, they will properly dispose of in secret, so that no one will know what has become of them. That is the condition of preserving the purity of the guardians' breed."[17]

Compulsory schooling is to be implemented in order to separate children from their parents, to have them indoctrinated in the ideals of the state:

    They [philosopher-kings] will begin by sending out into the country all the inhabitants of the city who are more than ten years old, and will take possession of their children, who will be unaffected by the habits of their parents; these they will train in their own habits and laws, I mean in the laws which we have given them: and in this way the State and constitution of which we were speaking will soonest and most easily attain happiness, and the nation which has such a constitution will gain most.[18]

As for propaganda, according to Plato, "Our rulers will find a considerable dose of falsehood and deceit necessary for the good of their subjects". He further explains, "Rhetoric ... is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong. And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe; since, I take it, he could not in a short while instruct such a mass of people in matters so important."
Alexander the Great
Alexander "the Great"

Alexander the Great

In the year 367 BC, at the age of seventeen, Aristotle had become a member of Plato's Academy, while Eudoxus of Cnidus was its head. And though Aristotle probably did not write the work On the Magi attributed to him, he was convinced that the planets and the fixed stars influenced life on earth. Aristotle, was then the teacher of Alexander the Great, whose conquests incepted what is known as the Hellenistic Age, a period that saw the penetration of Greaco-Kabbalistic culture throughout much of the Mediterranean world.

The Hellenistic Age was also the beginning of the first identifiable contacts between Greeks and Jews. Clearchus of Soli, a disciple of Aristotle, maintained that his master had conversed with a Jew, and that his master claimed that, "as he had lived with many learned men, he communicated to us more information than he received from us.[19]

As well, according to both the Talmud and Josephus' Antiquities, the High Priest of the Temple in Jerusalem, fearing that Alexander would destroy the city, went out to meet him. The narrative describes how Alexander, upon seeing the High Priest, dismounted and bowed to him. In Josephus' account, when asked by his general, to explain his actions, Alexander answered, "I did not bow before him, but before that God who has honored him with the high Priesthood; for I saw this very person in a dream, in this very apparel." Alexander interpreted the vision of the High Priest as a good omen and thus spared Jerusalem, peacefully absorbing the Land of Israel into his growing empire. As tribute to his benign conquest, the Sages decreed that the Jewish firstborn of that time be named Alexander, which remains a Jewish name to this very day.[20]

After his death, Alexander's generals broke up the empire, establishing realms of their own. Antigonus governed Macedonia and Greece. Seleucus became satrap of Babylonia, founding the Seleucid Empire, that at its greatest extent stretched from Bulgaria in Europe to the border of India. Phoenicia, fell to Ptolemy Sotor, who inaugurated the Ptolemaic dynasty that ruled Egypt.
Footnotes:

[1] Livingstone. The Dying God. p. 93.
[2] James Allen Dow, "Rhodah (Princess) of PERSIA",
[3] Luck. Arcana Mundi, p.311
[4] James Allen Down, "Zerah (Zehrah Zarah) ibn JUDAH",
[5] Diodorus Siculus. Universal History. XL: 3.2
[6] Clement of Alexandria.Exhortation to the Greeks, 2.12
[7] Clement. Protreptic, 34.5, quoted fr. A Presocratics Reader, p. 39
[8] Clement. Protreptic, 22.2, quoted fr. A Presocratics Reader, p. 39
[9] Greater Bundahishn, 182. 2. quoted form Zeahner, Zurvan, p. 15
[10] The Dying God. p. 130 – 145
[11] Alien Wisdom, p. 142
[12] Eusebius. 13.12.1f.
[13] Natural History, XXX: 3
[14] The Greeks and the Irrational, p. 233 n. 70
[15] Proclus, In Rem Publicam Platonis, quoted from Bidez & Cumont, Les Mages Hellenisees, t. II, p. 159.
[16] Stromata, Book V, Chap 14
[17] Plato and Totalitarianism.
[18] Plato's Royal Lies.
[19] In his first book concerning sleep, according to Josephus, Against Apion, I:22.
[20] Talmud (Yoma 69a) and Antiquities (XI, 321-47).

http://www.terrorism-illuminati.com/kabbalah

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Good quick summary of sources for modern mathematics
------

Some of the clay tablets discovered contain lists of triplets of numbers, starting with (3, 4, 5) and (5, 12, 13) which are the lengths of sides of right angled triangles, obeying Pythagoras' "sums of squares" formula. In particular, one tablet, now in a collection at Yale, shows a picture of a square with the diagonals marked, and the lengths of the lines are marked on the figure: the side is marked <<< meaning thirty (fingers?) long, the diagonal is marked:

<<<<11 <<11111 <<<11111.

This translates to 42, 25, 35, meaning 42 + 25/60 + 35/3600. Using these figures, the ratio of the length of the diagonal to the length of the side of the square works out to be 1.414213... Now, if we use Pythagoras' theorem, the diagonal of a square forms with two of the sides a right angled triangle, and if we take the sides to have length one, the length of the diagonal squared equals 1 + 1, so the length of the diagonal is the square root of 2. The figure on the clay tablet is incredibly accurate—the true value is 1.414214... Of course, this Babylonian value is far too accurate to have been found by measurement from an accurate drawing—it was clearly checked by arithmetic multiplication by itself, giving a number very close to two.
http://www.phys.virginia.edu/classes/10 ... bylon.html

To restate Anarch's comment in other words: the benefits you describe, D. Rabbit. come from the use of a Zero (and the positional numeral system) NOT the number ten. Everyone in SF geekdom has seen the joke "there are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary, and those who don't. The joke of course, being that the sentence only makes sense in binary: 10 is "two" in binary, just as any N is written "10" in base N. (In decimal, "10" means "one ten and no ones", in base 8, it would mean "one eight, and no ones", etc. for any base N)

The zero and positional numeral system used in the West until the 1300s or later -- and not used by non mathematicians for a century after the mathematicians accepted of it. It was successively known but derided as "theoretical nonsense" at every stage -- first by mathematicians, then my merchants, then by the common man. (We'll see several cases of this happening to now "common-sense" concepts in this story). Hindu numerals would have been completely unrecognizable to most people until the 14th century -- I call them "Hindu" and not "Hindo-arabic" because the arabs had nothing to do with it. They were just in the chain of transmission from India to Europe. Compare the Hindu numerals

Fibonacci (an Italian who grew up in Arab North Africa ) *promoted* the use of the "Hindu zero" in Europe in his book "Liber Abaci in 1202. He called it by the Algerian Arabic zephyrum. which became zefiro in Italian, then zero in Venetian. (ironically, this led to it being called the "Hindu-Arabic" system, even though the Arabs of the time acknowledged that hey took it from the Indians, and called it the "Hindu system" [Hindu meant "from the Indus valley empires, not a religion or language (Hindi)]) Today, many Arabs eagerly take credit where they once took none.

There were many well-documented examples of the concept zero being known "in the West" as early as the 6th century AD (just a century or so after it was accepted in India), but there is no question that it even the few mathematicians who mathematicians knew of it only considered it a useful notation, like the differing notations of differential calculus, not something fundamental to the counting system.

In other words, the Zero came to Europe too MUCH too late to have determined our 10-orientation (seen in the X, C, M of Roman numerals, for example). It wasn't even invented in India until much to late to explain a 10-preference (5th century AD) Heck, the numerals we know today didn't even enter the Latin symbol set until the 14th century.

I maintain that there were several different numerical systems in use, and that Roman numerals were mostly used for official purposes. In fact, I think I can show that most major cultures eventually used an "imperial number system" [usu based on 10] and a common or commercial number system. Further, I can show widespread evidence of the older high divisibility bases (especially 12) in modern life and language.

Christopher -- the lunar calendar used be throughout the world is based on 13 months. the 12-month calendar tends to arise in kingdoms and empires--that's where it is helpful (it's useless for farming, sailing or any other natural purpose, and anyone who ignores the 13-month year in those essential fields does so at their own peril). I maintain that 12 is preferred for it's *mathematical* properties, and would have been a preferred candidate, even if we had no moon.

Consider that the Sumerians, then Akkadians, then the Babylonians (as seen in cuneiform) all used a sexigesimal (base 60) starting in ~2000 BCE, and we independently derived (and still use) today (in time and arc measure) precisely because it is convenient. Consider that division was not widely taught, and was very difficult on the abaci of the era. Consider that fractions were not used in the middle east in that era *per se* but place shifting in a high divisibility base makes accurate integer approximation quite easy. In fact they Astrological charts of today are the remnant of a visual method of performing division. Where does "60" fit into your theory of "necessarily natural sources"?

Consider also that the calendars used by the above cultures had 13 months/year *in spite of* being based on the phase of the moon. a Variable intercalary month is unavoidable -- as I noted, the moons phases cycle every 29.5 days, so there would be 11-12 days left over each year -- almost a lunar month every 2 years, or a synodic month every three years. (actually, by ~5th cent BC, the Babylonian calendat had a 235 year cycle spanning 19 years -- but that was just to tell them which intercalary month, Adaru 2 or Ululu 2, to use in a given year -- somewhat like our leap year.)

Please remember: planting a couple of weeks off --sometimes too early and sometimes too late-- can starve a subsistence farmer in a bad year, and when if even a modest percentage of farmers starve (or eat some of their seed grain) the king and cities feel the effects for two or more years -- and bad years often come in groups.

Incidentally, don't make the mistake of the base of a number system with the number of numerals it had. That's a only requirement of the much later positional number systems (Roman numbers only had *7* numerals, after all: MDCLXVI).

The ancients were not cave men. They could see the advantages of a high divisibility system for commerce cattle -- pretty much everything they needed numbers for. We ourselves independently created sexigismal systems of arc measure and timekeeping after the "positional plus zero" decimal system was adopted, because a positional system makes division difficult.

I have found *substantial* evidence in common language, units and numerous professions, of the former nonpositional mathematical system. As noted, it is only *now* that we are fully decimalizing (largely because of the ease off calculating for the common man), until the 1970s one NEVER saw decimal prices in, say, English stores. One saw prices like 7/6 or £1 7/6 (7/6 = 7s 6d = £.375 = or three-eighths of a pound) right up to 1984. It's not just a quaint holdover, but only years later did I realize how ingenious and valuable it was for its time (which spanned from 5th cent BC in Lydia [now Anatolia] to 20th century AD) Americans, and others who grew up literate and with decimal money, have difficulty understanding the benefits of the old system for a less educated populace-- most people were illiterate until the 20th century.

http://www.exisle.net/mb/lofiversion/in ... 90-50.html

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Pythagoras's theorem in Babylonian mathematics

In this article we examine four Babylonian tablets which all have some connection with Pythagoras's theorem. Certainly the Babylonians were familiar with Pythagoras's theorem. A translation of a Babylonian tablet which is preserved in the British museum goes as follows:-

    4 is the length and 5 the diagonal. What is the breadth ?
    Its size is not known.
    4 times 4 is 16.
    5 times 5 is 25.
    You take 16 from 25 and there remains 9.
    What times what shall I take in order to get 9 ?
    3 times 3 is 9.
    3 is the breadth.

All the tablets we wish to consider in detail come from roughly the same period, namely that of the Old Babylonian Empire which flourished in Mesopotamia between 1900 BC and 1600 BC.

Here is a map of the region where the Babylonian civilisation flourished.

The article Babylonian mathematics gives some background to how the civilisation came about and the mathematical background which they inherited.

The four tablets which interest us here we will call the Yale tablet YBC 7289, Plimpton 322 (shown below), the Susa tablet, and the Tell Dhibayi tablet. Let us say a little about these tablets before describing the mathematics which they contain.

The Yale tablet YBC 7289 which we describe is one of a large collection of tablets held in the Yale Babylonian collection of Yale University. It consists of a tablet on which a diagram appears. The diagram is a square of side 30 with the diagonals drawn in. The tablet and its significance was first discussed in [5] and recently in [18].

Plimpton 322 is the tablet numbered 322 in the collection of G A Plimpton housed in Columbia University.



You can see from the picture that the top left hand corner of the tablet is damaged as and there is a large chip out of the tablet around the middle of the right hand side. Its date is not known accurately but it is put at between 1800 BC and 1650 BC. It is thought to be only part of a larger tablet, the remainder of which has been destroyed, and at first it was thought, as many such tablets are, to be a record of commercial transactions. However in [5] Neugebauer and Sachs gave a new interpretation and since then it has been the subject of a huge amount of interest.

The Susa tablet was discovered at the present town of Shush in the Khuzistan region of Iran. The town is about 350 km from the ancient city of Babylon. W K Loftus identified this as an important archaeological site as early as 1850 but excavations were not carried out until much later. The particular tablet which interests us here investigates how to calculate the radius of a circle through the vertices of an isosceles triangle.

Finally the Tell Dhibayi tablet was one of about 500 tablets found near Baghdad by archaeologists in 1962. Most relate to the administration of an ancient city which flourished in the time of Ibalpiel II of Eshunna and date from around 1750. The particular tablet which concerns us is not one relating to administration but one which presents a geometrical problem which asks for the dimensions of a rectangle whose area and diagonal are known.

Before looking at the mathematics contained in these four tablets we should say a little about their significance in understanding the scope of Babylonian mathematics. Firstly we should be careful not to read into early mathematics ideas which we can see clearly today yet which were never in the mind of the author. Conversely we must be careful not to underestimate the significance of the mathematics just because it has been produced by mathematicians who thought very differently from today's mathematicians. As a final comment on what these four tablets tell us of Babylonian mathematics we must be careful to realise that almost all of the mathematical achievements of the Babylonians, even if they were all recorded on clay tablets, will have been lost and even if these four may be seen as especially important among those surviving they may not represent the best of Babylonian mathematics.

There is no problem understanding what the Yale tablet YBC 7289 is about.


Here is a Diagram of Yale tablet



It has on it a diagram of a square with 30 on one side, the diagonals are drawn in and near the centre is written 1,24,51,10 and 42,25,35. Of course these numbers are written in Babylonian numerals to base 60. See our article on Babylonian numerals. Now the Babylonian numbers are always ambiguous and no indication occurs as to where the integer part ends and the fractional part begins. Assuming that the first number is 1; 24,51,10 then converting this to a decimal gives 1.414212963 while √2 = 1.414213562. Calculating 30 cross [ 1;24,51,10 ] gives 42;25,35 which is the second number. The diagonal of a square of side 30 is found by multiplying 30 by the approximation to √2.

This shows a nice understanding of Pythagoras's theorem. However, even more significant is the question how the Babylonians found this remarkably good approximation to √2. Several authors, for example see [2] and [4], conjecture that the Babylonians used a method equivalent to Heron's method. The suggestion is that they started with a guess, say x. They then found e = x2 - 2 which is the error. Then

    (x - e/2x)2 = x2 - e + (e/2x)2 = 2 + (e/2x)2

and they had a better approximation since if e is small then (e/2x)2 will be very small. Continuing the process with this better approximation to √2 yieds a still better approximation and so on. In fact as Joseph points out in [4], one needs only two steps of the algorithm if one starts with x = 1 to obtain the approximation 1;24,51,10.

This is certainly possible and the Babylonians' understanding of quadratics adds some weight to the claim. However there is no evidence of the algorithm being used in any other cases and its use here must remain no more than a fairly remote possibility. May I [EFR] suggest an alternative. The Babylonians produced tables of squares, in fact their whole understanding of multiplication was built round squares, so perhaps a more obvious approach for them would have been to make two guesses, one high and one low say a and b. Take their average (a + b)/2 and square it. If the square is greater than 2 then replace b by this better bound, while if the square is less than 2 then replace a by (a + b)/2. Continue with the algorithm.

Now this certainly takes many more steps to reach the sexagesimal approximation 1;24,51,10. In fact starting with a = 1 and b = 2 it takes 19 steps as the table below shows:



step        decimal           sexagesimal

1 1.500000000 1;29,59,59
2 1.250000000 1;14,59,59
3 1.375000000 1;22,29,59
4 1.437500000 1;26,14,59
5 1.406250000 1;24,22,29
6 1.421875000 1;25,18,44
7 1.414062500 1;24,50,37
8 1.417968750 1;25, 4,41
9 1.416015625 1;24,57,39
10 1.415039063 1;24,54, 8
11 1.414550781 1;24,52,22
12 1.414306641 1;24,51;30
13 1.414184570 1;24,51; 3
14 1.414245605 1;24,51;17
15 1.414215088 1;24,51;10
16 1.414199829 1;24,51; 7
17 1.414207458 1;24,51; 8
18 1.414211273 1;24,51; 9
19 1.414213181 1;24,51;10


However, the Babylonians were not frightened of computing and they may have been prepared to continue this straightforward calculation until the answer was correct to the third sexagesimal place.

Next we look again at Plimpton 322



The tablet has four columns with 15 rows. The last column is the simplest to understand for it gives the row number and so contains 1, 2, 3, ... , 15. The remarkable fact which Neugebauer and Sachs pointed out in [5] is that in every row the square of the number c in column 3 minus the square of the number b in column 2 is a perfect square, say h.

    c2 - b2 = h2

So the table is a list of Pythagorean integer triples. Now this is not quite true since Neugebauer and Sachs believe that the scribe made four transcription errors, two in each column and this interpretation is required to make the rule work. The errors are readily seen to be genuine errors, however, for example 8,1 has been copied by the scribe as 9,1.

The first column is harder to understand, particularly since damage to the tablet means that part of it is missing. However, using the above notation, it is seen that the first column is just (c/h)2. Now so far so good, but if one were writing down Pythagorean triples one would find much easier ones than those which appear in the table. For example the Pythagorean triple 3, 4 , 5 does not appear neither does 5, 12, 13 and in fact the smallest Pythagorean triple which does appear is 45, 60, 75 (15 times 3, 4 , 5). Also the rows do not appear in any logical order except that the numbers in column 1 decrease regularly. The puzzle then is how the numbers were found and why are these particular Pythagorean triples are given in the table.

Several historians (see for example [2]) have suggested that column 1 is connected with the secant function. However, as Joseph comments [4]:-

    This interpretation is a trifle fanciful.

Zeeman has made a fascinating observation. He has pointed out that if the Babylonians used the formulas h = 2mn, b = m2-n2, c = m2+n2 to generate Pythagorean triples then there are exactly 16 triples satisfying n ≤ 60, 30° ≤ t ≤ 45°, and tan2t = h2/b2 having a finite sexagesimal expansion (which is equivalent to m, n, b having 2, 3, and 5 as their only prime divisors). Now 15 of the 16 Pythagorean triples satisfying Zeeman's conditions appear in Plimpton 322. Is it the earliest known mathematical classification theorem? Although I cannot believe that Zeeman has it quite right, I do feel that his explanation must be on the right track.

To give a fair discussion of Plimpton 322 we should add that not all historians agree that this tablet concerns Pythagorean triples. For example Exarchakos, in [17], claims that the tablet is connected with the solution of quadratic equations and has nothing to do with Pythagorean triples:-

    ... we prove that in this tablet there is no evidence whatsoever that the Babylonians knew the Pythagorean theorem and the Pythagorean triads.

I feel that the arguments are weak, particularly since there are numerous tablets which show that the Babylonians of this period had a good understanding of Pythagoras's theorem. Other authors, although accepting that Plimpton 322 is a collection of Pythagorean triples, have argued that they had, as Viola writes in [31], a practical use in giving a:-

    ... general method for the approximate computation of areas of triangles.

The Susa tablet sets out a problem about an isosceles triangle with sides 50, 50 and 60. The problem is to find the radius of the circle through the three vertices.


Here is a Diagram of Susa tablet

Here we have labelled the triangle A, B, C and the centre of the circle is O. The perpendicular AD is drawn from A to meet the side BC. Now the triangle ABD is a right angled triangle so, using Pythagoras's theorem AD2 = AB2 - BD2, so AD = 40. Let the radius of the circle by x. Then AO = OB = x and OD = 40 - x. Using Pythagoras's theorem again on the triangle OBD we have

    x2 = OD2 + DB2.

So

    x2 = (40-x)2 + 302

giving x2 = 402 - 80x + x2 + 302

and so 80x = 2500 or, in sexagesimal, x = 31;15.

Finally consider the problem from the Tell Dhibayi tablet. It asks for the sides of a rectangle whose area is 0;45 and whose diagonal is 1;15. Now this to us is quite an easy exercise in solving equations. If the sides are x, y we have xy = 0.75 and x2 + y2 = (1.25)2. We would substitute y = 0.75/x into the second equation to obtain a quadratic in x2 which is easily solved. This however is not the method of solution given by the Babylonians and really that is not surprising since it rests heavily on our algebraic understanding of equations. The way the Tell Dhibayi tablet solves the problem is, I would suggest, actually much more interesting than the modern method.

Here is the method from the Tell Dhibayi tablet. We preserve the modern notation x and y as each step for clarity but we do the calculations in sexagesimal notation (as of course does the tablet).

    Compute 2xy = 1;30.

    Subtract from x2 + y2 = 1;33,45 to get x2 + y2 - 2xy = 0;3,45.

    Take the square root to obtain x - y = 0;15.

    Divide by 2 to get (x - y)/2 = 0;7,30.

    Divide x2 + y2 - 2xy = 0;3,45 by 4 to get x2/4 + y2/4 - xy/2 = 0;0,56,15.

    Add xy = 0;45 to get x2/4 + y2/4 + xy/2 = 0;45,56,15.

    Take the square root to obtain (x + y)/2 = 0;52,30.

    Add (x + y)/2 = 0;52,30 to (x - y)/2 = 0;7,30 to get x = 1.

    Subtract (x - y)/2 = 0;7,30 from (x + y)/2 = 0;52,30 to get y = 0;45.

    Hence the rectangle has sides x = 1 and y = 0;45.

Is this not a beautiful piece of mathematics! Remember that it is 3750 years old. We should be grateful to the Babylonians for recording this little masterpiece on tablets of clay for us to appreciate today.

References (31 books/articles)

Other Web sites:
Astroseti (A Spanish translation of this article)

Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson

http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Hist ... goras.html

http://www.gap-system.org/~history/Hist ... goras.html

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras (1920).
  English translation

THE LIFE OF PYTHAGORAS

[Translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie]

1. Many think that Pythagoras was the son of Mnesarchus, but they differ as to the latter's race; some thinking him a Samian, while Neanthes, in the fifth book of his Fables states he was a Syrian, from the city of Tyre. As a famine had arisen in Samos, Mnesarchus went thither to trade, and was naturalized there. There also was born his son Pythagoras, who early manifested studiousness, but was later taken to Tyre, and there entrusted to the Chaldeans, whose doctrines he imbibed. Thence he returned to Ionia, where he first studied under the Syrian Pherecydes, then also under Hermodamas the Creophylian who at that time was an old man residing in Samos.

2. Neanthes says that others hold that his father was a Tyrrhenian, of those who inhabit Lemnos, and that while on a trading trip to Samos was there naturalized. On sailing to Italy, Mnesarchus took the youth Pythagoras with him. Just at this time this country was greatly flourishing. Neanthes adds that Pythagoras had two older brothers, Eunostus and Tyrrhenus. But Apollonius, in his book about Pythagoras, affirms that his mother was Pythais, a descendant, of Ancaeus, the founder of Samos. Apollonius adds that he was said to be the off-spring of Apollo and Pythais, on the authority of Mnesarchus; and a Samian poet sings:

                    "Pythais, of all Samians the most fair;
                    Jove-loved Pythagoras to Phoebus bare!"

This poet says that Pythagoras studied not only under Pherecydes and Hermodamas, but also under Anaximander.

3. The Samian Duris, in the second book of his "Hours," writes that his son was named Arimnestus, that he was the teacher of Democritus, and that on returning from banishment, he suspended a brazen tablet in the temple of Hera, a tablet two feet square, bearing this inscription:

                    "Me, Arimnestus, who much learning traced,
                    Pythagoras's beloved son here placed."

This tablet was removed by Simus, a musician, who claimed the canon graven thereon, and published it as his own. Seven arts were engraved, but when Simus took away one, the others were destroyed.

4. It is said that by Theano, a Cretan, the daughter of Pythonax, he had a son, Thelauges and a daughter, Myia; to whom some add Arignota, whose Pythagorean writings are still extant. Timaeus relates that Pythagoras's daughter, while a maiden, took precedence among the maidens in Crotona, and when a wife, among married men. The Crotonians made her house a temple of Demeter, and the neighboring street they called a museum.

5. Lycus, in the fourth book of his Histories, noting different opinions about his country, says, "Unless you happen to know the country and the city which Pythagoras was a citizen, will remain a mere matter of conjecture. Some say he was a Samian, others, a Phliasian, others a Metapontine.

6. As to his knowledge, it is said that he learned the mathematical sciences from the Egyptians, Chaldeans and Phoenicians; for of' old the Egyptians excelled, in geometry, the Phoenicians in numbers and proportions, and the Chaldeans of astronomical theorems, divine rites, and worship of the Gods; other secrets concerning the course of life he received and learned from the Magi.

7. These accomplishments are the more generally known, but the rest are less celebrated. Moreover Eudoxus, in the second book of his Description of the Earth, writes that Pythagoras used the greatest purity, and was shocked at all bloodshed and killing; that he not only abstained from animal food, but never in any way approached butchers or hunters. Antiphon, in his book on illustrious Virtuous Men praises his perseverance while he was in Egypt, saying, "Pythagoras, desiring to become acquainted with the institutions of Egyptian priests, and diligently endeavoring to participate therein, requested the Tyrant Polycrates to write to Amasis, the King of Egypt, his friend and former host, to procure him initiation. Coming to Amasis, he was given letters to the priests; of Heliopolis, who sent him on to those of Memphis, on the pretense that the were the more ancient. On the same pretense, he was sent on from Memphis to Diospolis.

8. From fear of the King the latter priests dared not make excuses; but thinking that he would desist from his purpose as result of great difficulties, enjoined on him very hard precepts, entirely different from the institutions of the Greeks. These he performed so readily that he won their admiration, and they permitted him to sacrifice to the Gods, and to acquaint himself with all their sciences, a favor theretofore never granted to a foreigner.

9. Returning to Ionia, he opened in his own country, a school, which is even now called Pythagoras's Semicircles, in which the Samians meet to deliberate about matters of common interest. Outside the city he made a cave adapted to the study of his philosophy, in which he abode day and night, discoursing with a few of his associates. He was now forty years old, says Aristoxenus. Seeing that Polycrates's government was becoming so violent that soon a free man would become a victim of his tyranny, he journeyed towards Italy.

10. Diogenes, in his treatise about the Incredible Things Beyond Thule, has treated Pythagoras's affairs so carefully, that I think his account should not be omitted. He says that the Tyrrhenian Mnesarchus was of the race of the inhabitants of Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros and that he departed thence to visit many cities and various lands. During his journeys he found an infant lying under a large, tall poplar tree. On approaching, he observed it lay on its back, looking steadily without winking at the sun. In its mouth was a little slender reed, like a pipe; through which the child was being nourished by the dew-drops that distilled from the tree. This great wonder prevailed upon him to take the child, believing it to be of a divine origin. The child was fostered by a native of that country, named Androcles, who later on adopted him, and entrusted to him the management of affairs. On becoming wealthy, Mnesarchus educated the boy, naming him Astrasus, and rearing him with his own three sons, Eunestus, Tyrrhenus, and Pythagoras; which boy, as I have said, Androcles adopted.

11. He sent the boy to a lute-player, a wrestler and a painter. Later he sent him to Anaximander at Miletus, to learn geometry and astronomy. Then Pythagoras visited the Egyptians, the Arabians, the Chaldeans and the Hebrews, from whom he acquired expertery in the interpretation of dreams, and he was the first to use frankincense in the worship of divinities.

12. In Egypt he lived with the priests, and learned the language and wisdom of the Egyptians, and three kinds of letters, the epistolic, the hieroglyphic, and symbolic, whereof one imitates the common way of speaking, while the others express the sense by allegory and parable. In Arabia he conferred with the King. In Babylon he associated with the other Chaldeans, especially attaching himself to Zabratus, by whom he was purified from the pollutions of this past life, and taught the things which a virtuous man ought to be free. Likewise he heard lectures about Nature, and the principles of wholes. It was from his stay among these foreigners that Pythagoras acquired the greater part of his wisdom.

13. Astraeus was by Mnesarchus entrusted to Pythagoras, who received him, and after studying his physiognomy and the emotions of his body, instructed him. First he accurately investigated the science about the nature of man, discerning the disposition of everyone he met. None was allowed to become his friend or associate without being examined in facial expression and disposition.

14. Pythagoras had another youthful disciple from Thrace. Zamolxis was he named because he was born wrapped in a bear's skin, in Thracian called Zalmus. Pythagoras loved him, and instructed him in sublime speculations concerning sacred rites, and the nature of the Gods. Some say this youth was named Thales, and that the barbarians worshipped him as Hercules.

15. Dionysiphanes says that he was a servant of Pythagoras, who fell into the hands of thieves and by them was branded. Then when Pythagoras was persecuted and banished, (he followed him) binding up his forehead on account of the scars. Others say that, the name Zamolxis signifies a stranger or foreigner. Pherecydes, in Delos fell sick; and Pythagoras attended him until he died, and performed his funeral rites. Pythagoras then, longing to be with Hermodamas the Creophylian, returned to Samos. After enjoying his society, Pythagoras trained the Samian athlete Eurymenes, who though he was of small stature, conquered at Olympia through his surpassing knowledge of Pythagoras' wisdom. While according to ancient custom the other athletes fed on cheese and figs, Eurymenes, by the advice of Pythagoras, fed daily on flesh, which endued his body with great strength. Pythagoras imbued him with his wisdom, exhorting him to go into the struggle, not for the sake of victory, but the exercise; that he should gain by the training, avoiding the envy resulting from victory. For the victors, are not always pure, though decked with leafy crowns.

16. Later, when the Samians were oppressed with the tyranny of Polycrates, Pythagoras saw that life in such a state was unsuitable for a philosopher, and so planned to travel to Italy. At Delphi he inscribed an elegy on the tomb of Apollo, declaring that Apollo was the son of Silenus, but was slain by Pytho, and buried in the place called Triops, so named from the local mourning for Apollo by the three daughters of Triopas.

17. Going to Crete, Pythagoras besought initiation from the priests of Morgos, one of the Idaean Dactyli, by whom he was purified with the meteoritic thunder-stone. In the morning he lay stretched upon his face by the seaside; at night, he lay beside a river, crowned with a black lamb's woolen wreath. Descending into the Idaean cave, wrapped in black wool, he stayed there twenty-seven days, according to custom; he sacrificed to Zeus, and saw the throne which there is yearly made for him. On Zeus's tomb, Pythagoras inscribed an epigram, "Pythagoras to Zeus," which begins: "Zeus deceased here lies, whom men call Jove."

18. When he reached Italy he stopped at Crotona. His presence was that of a free man, tall, graceful in speech and gesture, and in all things else. Dicaearchus relates that the arrival of this great traveler, endowed with all the advantages of nature, and prosperously guided by fortune, produced on the Crotonians so great an impression, that he won the esteem of the elder magistrates, by his many and excellent discourses. They ordered him to exhort the young men, and then to the boys who flocked out of the school to hear him; and lastly to the women, who came together on purpose.

19. Through this he achieved great reputation, he drew great audiences from the city, not only of men, but also of women, among whom was a specially illustrious person named Theano. He also drew audiences from among the neighboring barbarians, among whom were magnates and kings. What he told his audiences cannot be said with certainty, for he enjoined silence upon his hearers. But the following is a matter of general information. He taught that the soul was immortal and that after death it transmigrated into other animated bodies. After certain specified periods, the same events occur again; that nothing was entirely new; that all animated beings were kin, and should be considered as belonging to one great family. Pythagoras was the first one to introduce these teachings into Greece.

20. His speech was so persuasive that, according to Nicomachus, in one address made on first landing in Italy he made more than two thousand adherents. Out of desire to live with him, [.........] , to which both women and built a large auditorium, to which both women and boys were admitted. (Foreign visitors were so many that) they built whole cities, settling that whole region of Italy now known as Magna Grecia. His ordinances and laws were by them received as divine precepts, and without them would do nothing. Indeed they ranked him among the divinities. They held all property in common. They ranked him among the divinities, and whenever they communicated to each other some choice bit of his philosophy, from which physical truths could always be deduced, they would swear by the Tetractys, adjuring Pythagoras as a divine witness, in the words.

                    "I call to witness him who to our souls expressed The Tetractys, eternal Nature's fountain-spring."

21. During his travels in Italy and Sicily he founded various cities subjected one to another, both of long standing, and recently. By his disciples, some of whom were found in every city, he infused into them an aspiration for liberty; thus restoring to freedom Crotona, Sybaris, Catana, Rhegium, Himera, Agrigentum, Tauromenium, and others, on whom he imposed laws through Charondas the Catanean, and Zaleucus the Locrian, which resulted in a long era of good government, emulated by all their neighbors. Simichus the tyrant of the Centorupini, on hearing Pythagoras's discourse, abdicated his rule and divided his property between his sister and the citizens.

22. According to Aristoxenus, some Lucanians, Messapians, Picentinians and Romans came to him. He rooted out all dissensions, not only among his disciples and their successors, for many ages, but among all the cities of Italy and Sicily, both internally and externally. He was continuously harping on the maxim, "We ought, to the best of our ability avoid, and even with fire and sword extirpate from the body, sickness; from the soul, ignorance; from the belly, luxury; from a city, sedition; from a family, discord; and from all things excess."

23. If we may credit what ancient and trustworthy writers have related of him, he exerted an influence even over irrational animals. The Daunian bear, who had committed extensive depredations in the neighborhood, he seized; and after having patted her for awhile, and given her barley and fruits, he made her swear never again to touch a living creature, and then released her. She immediately hid herself in the woods and the hills, and from that time on never attacked any irrational animal.

24. At Tarentum, in a pasture, seeing an ox [reaping] beans, he went to the herdsman, and advised him to tell the ox to abstain from beans. The countryman mocked him, proclaiming his ignorance of the ox-language. So Pythagoras himself went and whispered in the ox's ear. Not only did the bovine at once desist from his diet of beans, but would never touch any thenceforward, though he survived many years near Hera's temple at Tarentum, until very old; being called the sacred ox, and eating any food given him.

25. While at the Olympic games, he was discoursing with his friends about auguries, omens, and divine signs, and how men of true piety do receive messages from the Gods. Flying over his head was an eagle, who stopped, and came down to Pythagoras. After stroking her awhile, he released her. Meeting with some fishermen who were drawing in their nets heavily laden with fishes from the deep, he predicted the exact number of fish they had caught. The fishermen said that if his estimate was accurate they would do whatever he commanded. They counted them accurately, and found the number correct. He then bade them return the fish alive into the sea; and, what is more wonderful, not one of them died, although they had been out of the water a considerable time. He paid them and left.

26. Many of his associates he reminded of the lives lived by their souls before it was bound to the body, and by irrefutable arguments demonstrated that he had bean Euphorbus, the son of Panthus. He specially praised the following verses about himself, and sang them to the lyre most elegantly:

                    "The shining circlets of his golden hair;
                    Which even the Graces might be proud to wear,
                    Instarred with gems and gold, bestrew the shore,
                    With dust dishonored, and deformed with gore.
                    As the young olive, in some sylvan scene,
                    Crowned by fresh fountains with celestial green,
                    Lifts the gay head, in snowy flowerets fair,
                    And plays and dances to the gentle air,
                    When lo, a whirlwind from high heaven invades,
                    The tender plant, and withers all its shades;
                    It lies uprooted from its genial head,
                    A lovely ruin now defaced and dead.
                    Thus young, thus beautiful, Euphorbus lay,
                    While the fierce Spartan tore his arms away."

                            (Pope, Homer's Iliad, Book 17).

27. The stories about the shield of this Phrygian Euphorbus being at Mycenae dedicated to Argive Hera, along with other Trojan spoils, shall here be omitted as being of too popular a nature. It is said that the river Caicasus, while he with many of his associates was passing over it, spoke to him very clearly, "Hail, Pythagoras!" Almost unanimous is the report that on one and the same day he was present at Metapontum in Italy, and at Tauromenium in Sicily, in each place conversing with his friends, though the places are separated by many miles, both at sea and land, demanding many days' journey.

28. It is well known that he showed his golden thigh to Abaris the Hyperborean, to confirm him in the opinion that he was the Hyperborean Apollo, whose priest Abaris was. A ship was coming into the harbor, and his friends expressed the wish to own the goods it contained. "Then," said Pythagoras, "you would own a corpse!" On the ship's arrival, this was found to be the true state of affairs. Of Pythagoras many other more wonderful and divine things are persistently and unanimously related, so that we have no hesitation in saying never was more attributed to any man, nor was any more eminent.

29. Verified predictions of earthquakes are handed down, also that he immediately chased a pestilence, suppressed violent winds and hail, calmed storms both on rivers and on seas, for the comfort and safe passage of his friends. As their poems attest, the like was often performed by Empedocles, Epimenides and Abaris, who had learned the art of doing these things from him. Empedocles, indeed, was surnamed Alexanemos, as the chaser of winds; Epimenides, Cathartes, the lustrator. Abaris was called Aethrobates, the walker in air; for he was carried in the air on an arrow of the Hyperborean Apollo, over rivers, seas and inaccessible places. It is believed that this was the method employed by Pythagoras when on the same day he discoursed with his friends at Metapontum and Tauromenium.

30. He soothed the passions of the soul and body by rhythms, songs and incantations. These he adapted and applied to his friends. He himself could hear the harmony of the Universe, and understood the universal music of the spheres, and of the stars which move in concert with them, and which we cannot hear because of the limitations of our weak nature. This is testified to by these characteristic verses of Empedocles:

                    "Amongst these was one in things sublimest skilled,
                    His mind with all the wealth of learning filled,
                    Whatever sages did invent, he sought;
                    And whilst his thoughts were on this work intent,
                    All things existent, easily he viewed,
                    Through ten or twenty ages making search."

31. Indicating by sublimest things, and, he surveyed all existent things, and the wealth of the mind, and the like, Pythagoras 's constitution of body, mind, seeing, hearing and understanding, which was exquisite, and surpassingly accurate, Pythagoras affirmed that the nine Muses were constituted by the sounds made by the seven planets, the sphere of the fixed stars, and that which is opposed to our earth, called "anti-earth." He called Mnemosyne, or Memory, the composition, symphony and connexion of then all, which is eternal and unbegotten as being composed of all of them.

32. Diogenes, setting forth his daily routine of living, relates that he advised all men to avoid ambition and vain-glory, which chiefly excite envy, and to shun the presences of crowds. He himself held morning conferences at his residence, composing his soul with the music of the lute, and singing certain old paeans of Thales. He also sang verses of Homer and Hesiod, which seemed to soothe the mind. He danced certain dances which he conceived conferred on the body agility and health. Walks he took not promiscuously, but only in company of one or two companions, in temples or sacred groves, selecting the quietest and pleasantest places.

33. His friends he loved exceedingly, being the first to declare that the goods of friends are common, and that a friend was another self. While they were in good health he always conversed with them; if they were sick, he nursed them; if they were afflicted in mind, he solaced them, some by incantations and magic charms, others by music. He had prepared songs for the diseases of the body, by the singing of which he cured the sick. He had also some that caused oblivion of sorrow, mitigation of anger and destruction of lust.

34. As to food, his breakfast was chiefly of honey; at dinner he used bread made of millet, barley or herbs, raw and boiled. Only rarely did he eat the flesh of victims; nor did he take this from every part of the anatomy. When he intended to sojourn in the sanctuaries of the divinities, he would eat no more than was necessary to still hunger and thirst. To quiet hunger, he made a mixture of poppy seed and sesame, the skin of a sea-onion, well washed, till entirely drained of the outward juice; of the flower of the daffodil, and the leaves of mallows, of paste of barley and pea; taking an equal weight of which, and chopping it small, with Hymettian honey he made it into mass. Against thirst he took the seed of cucumbers, and the best dried raisins, extracting the seeds, and the flower of coriander, and the seeds of mallows, purselain, scraped cheese, meal and cream; these he made up with wild honey.

35. He claimed that this diet had, by Demeter, been taught to Hercules, when he was sent into the Libyan deserts. This preserved his body in an unchanging condition; not at one time well, and at another time sick, nor at one time fat, and at another lean. Pythagoras's countenance showed the same constancy was in his soul also. For he was neither more elated by pleasure, nor dejected by grief, and no one ever saw him either rejoicing or mourning.

36. When Pythagoras sacrificed to the Gods, he did not use offensive profusion, but offered no more than barley bread, cakes and myrrh; least of all, animals, unless perhaps cocks and pigs. When he discovered the proposition that the square on the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle was equal to the squares on the sides containing the right angle, he is said to have sacrificed an ox, although the more accurate say that this ox was made of flour.

37. His utterances were of two kinds, plain or symbolical. His teaching was twofold: of his disciples some were called Students, and others Hearers. The Students learned the fuller and more exactly elaborate reasons of science, while the Hearers heard only the chief heads of learning, without more detailed explanations.

38. He ordained that his disciples should speak well and think reverently of the Gods, muses and heroes, and likewise of parents and benefactors; that they should obey the laws; that they should not relegate the worship of the Gods to a secondary position, performing it eagerly, even at home; that to the celestial divinities they should sacrifice uncommon offerings; and ordinary ones to the inferior deities. (The world he Divided into) opposite powers; the "one" was a better monad, light, right, equal, stable and straight; while the "other" was an inferior duad, darkness, left, unequal, unstable and movable.

39. Moreover, he enjoined the following. A cultivated and fruit-bearing plant, harmless to man and beast, should be neither injured nor destroyed. A deposit of money or of teachings should be faithfully preserved by the trustee. There are three kinds of things that deserve to be pursued and acquired; honorable and virtuous things, those that conduce to the use of life, and those that bring pleasures of the blameless, solid and grave kind, of course not the vulgar intoxicating kinds. Of pleasures there were two kinds; one that indulges the bellies and lusts by a profusion of wealth, which he compared to the murderous songs of the Sirens; the other kind consists of things honest, just, and necessary to life, which are just as sweet as the first, without being followed by repentance; and these pleasures he compared to the harmony of the Muses.

40. He advised special regard to two times; that when we go to sleep, and that when we awake. At each of these we should consider our past actions, and those that are to come. We ought to require of ourselves an account of our past deeds, while of the future we should have a providential care. Therefore he advised everybody to repeat to himself the following verses before he fell asleep:

                    "Nor suffer sleep to close thine eyes
                    Till thrice thy acts that day thou hast run o'er;
                    How slipt? What deeds? What duty left undone?"

On rising:

                    "As soon as ere thou wakest, in order lay
                    The actions to be done that following day"

41. Such things taught he, though advising above all things to speak the truth, for this alone deifies men. For as he had learned from the Magi, who call God Oremasdes, God's body is light, and his soul is truth. He taught much else, which he claimed to have learned from Aristoclea at Delphi. Certain things he declared mystically, symbolically, most of which were collected by Aristotle, as when he called the sea a tear of Saturn; the two bear (constellations) the hand of Rhea; the Pleiades, the lyre of the Muses; the Planets, the dogs of Persephone; and he called be sound caused by striking on brass the voice of a genius enclosed in the brass.

42. He had also another kind of symbol, such as, pass not over a balance; that is, Shun avarice. Poke not the fire with a sword, that is, we ought not to excite a man full of fire and anger with sharp language. Pluck not a crown, meant not to violate the laws, which are the crowns of cities. Eat not the heart, signified not to afflict ourselves with sorrows. Do not sit upon a [pack]-measure, meant, do not live ignobly. On starting a journey, do not turn back, meant, that this life should not be regretted, when near the bourne of death. Do not walk in the public way, meant, to avoid the opinions of the multitude, adopting those of the learned and the few. Receive not swallows into your house, meant, not to admit under the same roof garrulous and intemperate men. Help a man to take up a burden, but not to lay it down, meant, to encourage no one to be indolent, but to apply oneself to labor and virtue. Do not carry the images of the Gods in rings, signified that one should not at once to the vulgar reveal one's opinions about the Gods, or discourse about them. Offer libations to the Gods, just to the ears of the cup, meant, that we ought to worship and celebrate the Gods with music, for that penetrates through the ears. Do not eat those things that are unlawful, sexual or increase, beginning nor end, nor the first basis of all things.

43. He taught abstention from the loins, testicle, pudenda, marrow, feet and heads of victims. The loins he called basis, because on them as foundations living beings are settled. Testicles and pudenda he called generation, for no one is engendered without the help of these. Marrow he called increase as it is the cause of growth in living beings. The beginning was the feet, and the head the end; which have the most power in the government of the body. He likewise advised abstention from beans, as from human flesh.

44. Beans were interdicted, it is said, because the particular plants grow and individualize only after (the earth) which is the principle and origin of things, is mixed together, so that many things underground are confused, and coalesce; after which everything rots together. Then living creatures were produced together with plants, so that both men and beans arose out of putrefaction whereof he alleged many manifest arguments. For if anyone should chew a bean, and having ground it to a pulp with his teeth, and should expose that pulp to the warm sun, for a short while, and then return to it, he will perceive the scent of human blood. Moreover, if at the time when beans bloom, one should take a little of the flower, which then is black, and should put it into an earthen vessel, and cover it closely, and bury in the ground for ninety days, and at the end thereof take it up, and uncover it, instead of the bean he will find either the head of an infant, or the pudenda of a woman.

45. He also wished men to abstain from other things, such as a swine's paunch, a mullet, and a sea-fish called a "nettle," and from nearly all other marine animals. He referred his origin to those of past ages, affirming that he was first Euphorbus, then Aethalides, then Hermotimus, then Pyrrhus, and last, Pythagoras. He showed to his disciples that the soul is immortal, and to those who were rightly purified he brought back the memory of the acts of their former lives.

46. He cultivated philosophy, the scope of which is to free the mind implanted within us from the impediments and fetters within which it is confined; without whose freedom none can learn anything sound or true, or perceive the unsoundedness in the operation of sense. Pythagoras thought that mind alone sees and hears, while all the rest are blind and deaf. The purified mind should be applied to the discovery of beneficial things, which can be effected by, certain artificial ways, which by degrees induce it to the contemplation of eternal and incorporeal things, which never vary. This orderliness of perception should begin from consideration of the most minute things, lest by any change the mind should be jarred and withdraw itself, through the failure of continuousness in its subject-matter.

47. That is the reason he made so much use of the mathematical disciplines and speculations, which are intermediate between the physical and the incorporeal realm, for the reason that like bodies they have a threefold dimension, and yet share the impassibility of incorporeals; as degrees of preparation to the contemplation of the really existent things; by an artificial reason diverting the eyes of the mind from corporeal things, whose manner and state never remain in the same condition, to a desire for true (spiritual) food. By means of these mathematical sciences therefore, Pythagoras rendered men truly happy, by this artistic introduction of truly [consistent] things.

48. Among others, Moderatus of Gades, who [learnedly] treated of the qualities of numbers in seven books, states that the Pythagoreans specialized in the study of numbers to explain their teachings symbolically, as do geometricians, inasmuch as the primary forms and principles are hard to understand and express, otherwise, in plain discourse. A similar case is the representation of sounds by letters, which are known by marks, which are called the first elements of learning; later, they inform us these are not the true elements, which they only signify.

49. As the geometricians cannot express incorporeal forms in words, and have recourse to the descriptions of figures, as that is a triangle, and yet do not mean that the actually seen lines are the triangle, but only what they represent, the knowledge in the mind, so the Pythagoreans used the same objective method in respect to first reasons and forms. As these incorporeal forms and first principles could not be expressed in words, they had recourse to demonstration by numbers. Number one denoted to them the reason of Unity, Identity, Equality, the purpose of friendship, sympathy, and conservation of the Universe, which results from persistence in Sameness. For unity in the details harmonizes all the parts of a whole, as by the participation of the First Cause. .

50. Number two, or Duad, signifies the two-fold reason of diversity and inequality, of everything that is divisible, or mutable, existing at one time in one way, and at another time in another way. After all these methods were not confined to the Pythagoreans, being used by other philosophers to denote unitive powers, which contain all things in the universe, among which are certain reasons of equality, dissimilitude and diversity. These reasons are what they meant by the terms Monad and Duad, or by the words uniform, biform, or diversiform.

51. The same reasons apply to their use of other numbers, which were ranked according to certain powers. Things that had a beginning, middle and end, they denoted by the number Three, saying that anything that has a middle is triform, which was applied to every perfect thing. They said that if anything was perfect it would make use of this principle and be adorned, according to it; and as they had no other name for it, they invented the form Triad; and whenever they tried to bring us to the knowledge of what is perfect they led us to that by the form of this Triad. So also with the other numbers, which were ranked according to the same reasons.

52. All other things were comprehended under a single form and power which they called Decad, explaining it by a pun as decad, meaning comprehension. That is why they called Ten a perfect number, the most perfect of all as comprehending all difference of numbers, reasons, species and proportions. For if the nature of the universe be defined according to the reasons and proportions of members, and if that which is produced, increased and perfected, proceed according to the reason of numbers; and since the Decad comprehends every reason of numbers, every proportion, and every species, why should Nature herself not be denoted by the most perfect number, Ten? Such was the use of numbers among the Pythagoreans.

53. This primary philosophy of the Pythagoreans finally died out first, because it was enigmatical, and then because their commentaries were written in Doric, which dialect itself is somewhat obscure, so that Doric teachings were not fully understood, and they became misapprehended, and finally spurious, and later, they who published them no longer were Pythagoreans. The Pythagoreans affirm that Plato, Aristotle, Speusippus, Aristoxenus and Xenocrates; appropriated the best of them, making but minor changes (to distract attention from this their theft), they later collected and delivered as characteristic Pythagorean doctrines whatever therein was most trivial, and vulgar, and whatever had been invented by envious and calumnious persons, to cast contempt on Pythagoreanism.

54. Pythagoras and his associates were long held in such admiration in Italy, that many cities invited them to undertake their administration. At last, however, they incurred envy, and a conspiracy was formed against them as follows. Cylon, a Crotonian, who in race, nobility and wealth was the most preeminent, was of a severe, violent and tyrannical disposition, and did not scruple to use the multitude of his followers to compass his ends. As he esteemed himself worthy of whatever was best, he considered it his right to be admitted to Pythagorean fellowship. He therefore went to Pythagoras extolled himself, and desired his conversation. Pythagoras, however, who was accustomed to read in human bodies' nature and manners the disposition of the man, bade him depart, and go about his business. Cylon, being of a rough and violent disposition, took it as a great affront, and became furious.

55. He therefore assembled his friends, began to accuse Pythagoras, and conspired against him and his disciples. Pythagoras then went to Delos, to visit the Syrian Pherecydes, formerly his teacher, who was dangerously sick, to nurse him. Pythagoras's friends then gathered together in the house of Milo the wrestler; and were all stoned and burned when Cylo's followers set the house on fire. Only two escaped, Archippus and Lysis, according to the account of Neanthes. Lysis took refuge in Greece, with Epaminondas, whose teacher he had formerly been.

56. But Dicaearchus and other more accurate historians relate that Pythagoras himself was present when this conspiracy bore fruit, for Pherecydes had died before he left Samos. Of his friends, forty who were gathered together in a house were attacked and slain; while others were gradually slain as they came to the city. As his friends were taken, Pythagoras himself first escaped to the Caulonian haven, and thence visited the Locrians. Hearing of his coming, the Locrians sent some old men to their frontiers to intercept him. They said, "Pythagoras, you are wise and of great worth; but as our laws retain nothing reprehensible, we will preserve them intact. Go to some other place, and we will furnish you with any needed necessaries of travel." Pythagoras turned back, and sailed to Tarentum, where, receiving the same treatment as at Crotona, he went to Metapontum. Everywhere arose great mobs against him, of which even now the inhabitants make mention, calling them the Pythagorean riots, as his followers were called Pythagoreans.

57. Pythagoras fled to the temple of the Muses, in Metapontum. There he abode forty days, and starving, died. Others however state that his death was due to grief at the loss of all his friends who, when the house in which they were gathered was burned, in order to make a way for their master, they threw themselves into the flames, to make a bridge of safety for him, whereby indeed he escaped. When died the Pythagoreans, with them also died their knowledge, which till then than they had kept secret, except for a few obscure things which were commonly repeated by those who did not understand them. Pythagoras himself left no book; but some little sparks of his philosophy, obscure and difficult, were preserved by the few who were preserved by being scattered, as were Lysis and Archippus.

58. The Pythagoreans now avoided human society, being lonely, saddened and dispersed. Fearing nevertheless that among men the name of philosophy would be entirely extinguished, and that therefore the Gods would be angry with them, they made abstracts and commentaries. Each man made his own collection of written authorities and his own memories, leaving them wherever he happened to die, charging their wives, sons and daughters to preserve them within their families. This mandate of transmission within each family was obeyed for a long time.

59. Nichomacus says that this was the reason why the Pythagoreans studiously avoided friendship with strangers, preserving a constant friendship among each other. Aristoxenus, in his book on the Life of Pythagoras, says he heard many things from Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, who, after his abdication, taught letters at Corinth. Among these were that they abstained from lamentations and grieving and tears; also from adulation, entreaty, supplication and the like.

60. It is said that Dionysius at one time wanted to test their mutual fidelity under imprisonment. He contrived this plan. Phintias was arrested, and taken before the tyrant, and charged with plotting against the tyrant, convicted, and condemned to death. Phintias, accepting the situation, asked to be given the rest of the day to arrange his own affairs, and those of Damon, his friend and associate, who now would have to assume the management. He therefore asked for a temporary release, leaving Damon as security for his appearance. Dionysius granted the request, and they sent for Damon, who agreed to remain until Phintias should return.

61. The novelty of this deed astonished Dionysius; but those who had first suggested the experiment, scoffed at Damon, saying he was in danger of losing his life. But to the general surprise, near sunset Phintias came to die. Dionysius then expressed his admiration, embraced them both, and asked to be received as a third in their friendship. Though he earnestly besought this, they refused this, though assigning no reason therefore. Aristoxenus states he heard this from Dionysius himself. [Hippobotus] and Neanthes relate about Myllia and Timycha........................

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This text was transcribed by Patrick Rousell as part of his upload of an edition of Guthrie's Pythagoras Sourcebook and Library (1920).  An expanded reprint of this rare volume (no copy is listed in COPAC and only 1 at LOC) is available as The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library (1987). I have included it here in order to gather together all the English translations of works by Porphyry, and slightly reformatted it.  All material on this page is in the public domain - copy freely.

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/porph ... 2_text.htm

[VoltaXebec]

I had posted the discussion between CJB and Livingstone but it got lost in the forum upgrade.

Christopher Jon Bjerknes Interviews David Livingstone on 12 June 2008

We discuss his theories that Cabalists have created a myth of "Western Civilization" which ignores the role of Cabalistic influence in European and World History.

http://www.jewishracism.com/David_Livin ... une_08.mp3

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Sorry VoltaXebec,
I was trying to go from memory on that one since the Forum upgrade. I got you confused with the article /tab posted.
 All I can say is "thank you" for posting the Livingstone interview... it is awesome in connecting these dots. I tried update the thread above but it was closed so sorry but many thanks for posting CJB and Livingstone..very interesting....

I had posted the discussion between CJB and Livingstone but it got lost in the forum upgrade.

Christopher Jon Bjerknes Interviews David Livingstone on 12 June 2008

We discuss his theories that Cabalists have created a myth of "Western Civilization" which ignores the role of Cabalistic influence in European and World History.

http://www.jewishracism.com/David_Livin ... une_08.mp3

[VoltaXebec]

Thank you CSR, I would never have found it without your Illuminati Terrorism link, and I thought I had heard every interview CJB had done.

Yes, this is a must listen discussion between too very informed and intelligent researchers who don't avoid the Jewish Question  

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Here's David Livingstone's book:

Terrorism and the Illuminati- A Three Thousand Year History
http://www.terrorism-illuminati.com/sit ... minati.pdf

DBS has also covered this with several people like James Dickie, Pidcock and Andrew Carrington Hitchcock. A lot of interesting connections back to "Theosophy" via this line.  I'm not too interested in most "illuminati" research because it is basically amateurish but this book is definitely a better cut and names names.

About the Book

Islam does not pose a threat to the West. Rather, Islamic terrorist organizations have been created to serve Western imperialistic objectives. These groups are intertwined with Western power through a network of occult secret societies. This is a relationship that dates back to the birth of the Kabbalah, in Babylon, in the sixth century BC, and a plot to seek world domination through the use of magic and deception.

The conspiracy coalesced under Herod the Great, who incepted a series of dynastic relationships, that would cooperate, first, to impose a corrupt version of Christianity upon the Roman Empire, Catholicism, with which they would struggle ever since for supremacy over Western civilization. During the Crusades, these families associated with their counterparts in the East, members of the heretical Ismaili Muslims of Egypt, known as the Assassins. The basis of this relationship became what is known as Scottish Rite Freemasonry.

With Napoleon's conquest of Egypt, these Freemasons reconnected with their brethren in Egypt, sparking a relationship that was pivotal to the development of the Occult Revival of the late nineteenth century. It produced the Salafi reform movement of Islam, since promoted by Saudi Arabia, and the Nazis of Europe. Together, they collaborated to found the Muslim Brotherhood, a collective of Islamic impostors, operated by the CIA, to foment a Clash of Civilizations, towards implementing a New World Order.

http://www.terrorism-illuminati.com/con ... ne-version

[VoltaXebec]

Good one on the pdf but I'll pass on Makow, unlike CJB who has a personality problem but good info, I just don't trust Makow at all  

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Good one on the pdf but I'll pass on Makow, unlike CJB who has a personality problem but good info, I just don't trust Makow at all  

I'm of the same opinion. I'm going to cut the Makow link. He tends to "muddle" things intentionally, or goes "A.J." with a Big Picture that has little actual detail.

[VoltaXebec]

I remember a while back he got caught on something that a schoolboy would have seen through. It was pathetic.

Also he has this stupid notion that a man without chest hair can't make a good leader, or some rubbish, I guess Geneghis Khan who as an Asian was probably barechested was a wimp :lol:

Oh and isn't he a full jew too? And me, I don't trust jews, period  

[VoltaXebec]

I remember now he didn't think Putin was a good leader cause he didn't have chest hair. Fucking pathetic!!

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Chest hair ohh yeah... that's it... and sooo very important too.  

Yeah... Makow is typical J-Team crap topics. I generally don't look at anything associated with him except for this one case with David Livingstone. People like Makow will toss out red-herrings and general crap to make it hard to follow real issues. I guess he's still attending some kind of synagogue -- where the rabbis have a lot chest hair.  :lol:

[VoltaXebec]

Well just go to his site now and what has he got up on the home page? http://www.henrymakow.com/

Opus Dei -- Catholic Church Embraces Satanic Cult

Like Rivero he can never pass on an opportunity to bash Christianity.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Hey VoltaXebec,

You might find this of interest as well. In fact this lecture's brief mention of the Therapeutae caught my ear... Allegro is a total atheist though and it definitely comes through.

Jesus and the Qumran - A lecture by John Allegro

http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com/enclosure/2009-08-17T00_40_59-07_00.mp3

Today I'll be playing a rare talk by the late John Marco Allegro. This is his last known talk in existence and was recorded by John himself while he was practicing for a lecture that was later presented at the American Atheist Society in Ann Arbor, on April 19, 1985.

John Allegro argues that the Christianity of the New Testament is a weave of many threads. It has little to do with historical circumstance, unless to recall the possible fate of the Essene Teacher of Righteousness. It has much to do with key elements of Essenism, hidden in names, titles and story motifs; and with Old Testament prophecy; and with Jewish cultic beliefs and practices which go back to ancient fertility religions. All these are woven with Hellenistic mystery cults and myths into the Pauline theology of Christos.

http://www.johnallegro.org

John M Allegro - Healers of the Dead Sea - post 1985
Produced by CBS Television, post 1985, with Douglas Edwards.

This is the soundtrack (recorded by John Allegro from his TV to cassette) of a film made by CBS and still in existence, though not screened since the 1980s. John Allegro discusses the importance of spiritual healing to the Essenes of Qumran: how their scrolls suggest they saw themselves as heirs to the secrets of healing brought to earth by the Fallen Angels. He argues that this Essene tradition of healing lay behind the early Christian preoccupation with faith healing, exorcism and miracles, and that both sects saw healing as a way to restore the soul to God.

http://www.johnallegro.org/audio/JohnMAllegro-HealersoftheDeadSea-CBS-48kbs.mp3

[VoltaXebec]

I looked at that site http://gnosticmedia.podomatic.com/ a while back and dismissed it but I'll give this a listen, cheers.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

I found Marconism interesting and related as well with Therapeuatae, Gnosticism, Mithraism as well as Hellenisticism. This is likely outgrowth of the Greek-Babylonian-Jewish mystery religions mixed with early Christianity:

Marcionism is an Early Christian dualist belief system that originates in the teachings of Marcion of Sinope at Rome around the year 144[1], see also Christianity in the 2nd century. Marcion believed Jesus Christ was the savior sent by God and Paul of Tarsus was his chief apostle, but he rejected the Hebrew Bible and Yahweh. Marcionists believed that the wrathful Hebrew God was a separate and lower entity than the all-forgiving God of the New Testament. This belief was in some ways similar to Gnostic Christian theology, notably, both are dualistic.

Marcionism, similar to Gnosticism, depicted the Hebrew God of the Old Testament as a tyrant or demiurge, see also God as the Devil. Marcion was labeled as gnostic by Eusebius.[2] Marcion's canon consisted of eleven books: A gospel consisting of ten chapters from the Gospel of Luke edited by Marcion (the current canonical Gospel of Luke has 24 chapters); and ten of Paul's epistles. All other epistles and gospels of the 27 book New Testament canon were rejected.[3] Paul's epistles enjoy a prominent position in the Marcionite canon, since Paul is credited with correctly transmitting the universality of Jesus' message. Other authors' epistles were rejected since they seemed to suggest that Jesus had simply come to found a new sect within broader Judaism. Religious tribalism of this sort seemed to echo Yahwehism, and was thus regarded as a corruption of the Heavenly Father's teaching.

Marcionism was denounced by its opponents as heresy, and written against, notably by Tertullian, in a five-book treatise Adversus Marcionem, written about 208. However, the strictures against Marcionism predate the authority, claimed by the First Council of Nicaea in 325, to declare what is heretical against the Church. Marcion's writings are lost, though they were widely read and numerous manuscripts must have existed. Even so, many scholars (including Henry Wace) claim it is possible to reconstruct and deduce a large part of ancient Marcionism through what later critics, especially Tertullian, said concerning Marcion.

Marcion declared that Christianity was distinct from and in opposition to Judaism, see also Anti-Judaism. He rejected the entire Hebrew Bible, and declared that the God of the Hebrew Bible was a lesser demiurge, who had created the earth, but was (de facto) the source of evil.

The premise of Marcionism is that many of the teachings of Christ are incompatible with the actions of Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament. Focusing on the Pauline traditions of the Gospel, Marcion felt that all other conceptions of the Gospel, and especially any association with the Old Testament religion, was opposed to, and a backsliding from, the truth. He further regarded the arguments of Paul regarding law and gospel, wrath and grace, works and faith, flesh and spirit, sin and righteousness, death and life, as the essence of religious truth. He ascribed these aspects and characteristics as two principles, the righteous and wrathful god of the Old Testament, who is at the same time identical with the creator of the world, and a second God of the Gospel, quite unknown before Christ, who is only love and mercy.[6]

Marcionites held maltheistic views of the god of the Hebrew Bible (known to some Gnostics as Yaltabaoth), that he was inconsistent, jealous, wrathful and genocidal, and that the material world he created was defective, a place of suffering; the god who made such a world is a bungling or malicious demiurge.
"    In the god of the [Old Testament] he saw a being whose character was stern justice, and therefore anger, contentiousness and unmercifulness. The law which rules nature and man appeared to him to accord with the characteristics of this god and the kind of law revealed by him, and therefore it seemed credible to him that this god is the creator and lord of the world (κοσμοκράτωρ[English transliteration: kosmokrator/cosmocrator]). As the law which governs the world is inflexible and yet, on the other hand, full of contradictions, just and again brutal, and as the law of the Old Testament exhibits the same features, so the god of creation was to Marcion a being who united in himself the whole gradations of attributes from justice to malevolence, from obstinacy to inconsistency."[7]    "

In Marcionite belief, Christ was not a Jewish Messiah, but a spiritual entity that was sent by the Monad to reveal the truth about existence, and thus allowing humanity to escape the earthly trap of the demiurge. Marcion called God, the Stranger God, or the Alien God, in some translations, as this deity had not had any previous interactions with the world, and was wholly unknown. See also the Unknown God of Hellenism.

In various popular sources, Marcion is often reckoned among the Gnostics, but as the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd ed.) puts it, "it is clear that he would have had little sympathy with their mythological speculations" (p. 1034). In 1911 Henry Wace stated:
"    A modern divine would turn away from the dreams of Valentinianism in silent contempt; but he could not refuse to discuss the question raised by Marcion, whether there is such opposition between different parts of what he regards as the word of God, that all cannot come from the same author.    "

A primary difference between Marcionites and Gnostics was that the Gnostics based their theology on secret wisdom (as, for example, Valentinius who claimed to receive the secret wisdom from Theudas who received it direct from Paul) of which they claimed to be in possession, whereas Marcion based his theology on the contents of the Letters of Paul and the recorded sayings of Jesus — in other words, an argument from scripture, with Marcion defining what was and was not scripture. Also, the Christology of the Marcionites is thought to have been primarily Docetic, denying the human nature of Christ. This may have been due to the unwillingness of Marcionites to believe that Jesus was the son of both God the Father and the demiurge. Classical Gnosticism, by contrast, held that Jesus was the son of both, even having a natural human father; that he was both the Messiah of Judaism and the world Savior.[citation needed] Scholars of Early Christianity disagree on whether to classify Marcion as a Gnostic: Adolf Von Harnack does not classify Marcion as a Gnostic[8], whereas G. R. S. Mead does.[citation needed] Von Harnack argued that Marcion was not a Gnostic in the strict sense because Marcion rejected elaborate creation myths, and did not claim to have special revelation or secret knowledge. Mead claimed Marcionism makes certain points of contact with Gnosticism in its view that the creator of the material world is not the true deity, rejection of materialism and affirmation of a transcedent, purely good spiritual realm in opposition to the evil physical realm, the belief Jesus was sent by the "True" God to save humanity, the central role of Jesus in revealing the requirements of salvation, the belief Paul had a special place in the transmission of this "wisdom", and its docetism. According to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article on Marcion:
"    It was no mere school for the learned, disclosed no mysteries for the privileged, but sought to lay the foundation of the Christian community on the pure gospel, the authentic institutes of Christ. The pure gospel, however, Marcion found to be everywhere more or less corrupted and mutilated in the Christian circles of his time. His undertaking thus resolved itself into a reformation of Christendom. This reformation was to deliver Christendom from false Jewish doctrines by restoring the Pauline conception of the gospel, Paul being, according to Marcion, the only apostle who had rightly understood the new message of salvation as delivered by Christ. In Marcion's own view, therefore, the founding of his church—to which he was first driven by opposition—amounts to a reformation of Christendom through a return to the gospel of Christ and to Paul; nothing was to be accepted beyond that. This of itself shows that it is a mistake to reckon Marcion among the Gnostics. A dualist he certainly was, but he was not a Gnostic.    "

Marcionism shows the influence of Hellenistic philosophy on Christianity, and presents a moral critique of the Old Testament from the standpoint of Platonism. According to Harnack, the sect may have led other Christians to introduce a formal statement of beliefs into their liturgy (see Creed) and to formulate a canon of authoritative Scripture of their own, thus eventually producing the current canon of the New Testament.
"    As for the main question, however, whether he knew of, or assumes the existence of, a written New Testament of the Church in any sense whatever, in this case an affirmatory answer is most improbable, because if this were so he would have been compelled to make a direct attack upon the New Testament of the Church, and if such an attack had been made we should have heard of it from Tertullian. Marcion, on the contrary, treats the Catholic Church as one that 'follows the Testament of the Creator-God,' and directs the full force of his attack against this Testament and against the falsification of the Gospel and of the Pauline Epistles. His polemic would necessarily have been much less simple if he had been opposed to a Church which, by possessing a New Testament side by side with the Old Testament, had ipso facto placed the latter under the shelter of the former. In fact Marcion's position towards the Catholic Church is intelligible, in the full force of its simplicity, only under the supposition that the Church had not yet in her hand any 'litera scripta Novi Testamenti.'[9]    "

Marcion is believed to have imposed a severe morality on his followers, some of whom suffered in the persecutions. In particular, he refused to re-admit those who recanted their faith under Roman persecution, see also Lapsi (Christian). Others of his followers, such as Apelles, created their own sects with variant teachings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Found a few connections back with this thread on Jewish Sabbateans:

viewtopic.php?t=9326&amp;p=35233#p35233

[VoltaXebec]

The Byzantine Solution:
Every pogrom in history has played into Talmudic hands, and has been cleverly instigated by them.
-Get the Jews out of banking and they cannot control the economic life of the community.
-Get the Jews out of education and they can not pervert the minds of the young.
-Get the Jews out of government and they cannot betray the nation.
-Get the Jews out of media and they cannot defile the culture.

What about medicine and justice? Just two that come to mind  :crazy:

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

It's been updated... thanks! (and thanks to Eustace Mullins and Ezra Pound!)

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

This is pretty interesting:

http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/e ... Ascent.pdf

-----------

Emanation and Ascent in Hermetic Kabbalah

This document consists of slides and notes for a public talk presented at the Spirit of Peace
Conference III on Saturday 20th September 2003 at the Friends Meetings House, St. Giles, Oxford.

The re-discovery of Greek culture that stimulated the Italian Renaissance led to a far-reaching
exploration of ideas, particularly in religion. The works of Plato, lost to the West for many
centuries, were translated into Latin. The Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of theosophical
documents that were believed to be the wisdom of ancient Egypt, were discovered and translated.
The realisation that Judaism contained esoteric traditions and practices relating to the Bible was of
intense interest to intellectuals all over Europe, particularly as the philosophy of Plato, the
theosophy of the Corpus Hermeticum, and Jewish Kabbalah seemed to connect at many points, to
the extent that they were thought to have derived from a common source.
It should come as no surprise that intellectuals, mystics and magicians should begin to take an
interest in Kabbalah. Christianity is essentially a Hellenistic gloss over esoteric aspects of Judaism
dating (obviously) from the time of Jesus. It embodies much that was current both within the Greekspeaking
cultures of the Middle East, and within esoteric Judaism. Even today, Bible scholars learn
Greek for the New Testament, and Hebrew for the Old Testament. After 1000 years of Christianity,
medieval Europe had a natural affinity for ideas whose outlines could be discerned in Christian
doctrine.
The person who did most to draw the attention of European intellectuals to the Kabbalah, with his
daring statement "no science can better convince us of the divinity of Jesus Christ than magic and
the Kabbalah", was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463 – 1494), who made that claim as part of
900 famous theses posted for public debate in Rome. He commissioned the translation of many
important Kabbalistic texts, and provided the stimulus for translations out of Hebrew into Latin that
continued through the 16th. century and into the 17th and 18th centuries.
Occult sciences were widely studied before and during the Renaissance. The cosmos was thought to
be hierarchical, with God at the highest level, and various hierarchies of angelic powers, with the
material world and the infernal regions at the outer limit of reality. It was believed that
circumstances in the mundane world were consequences of processes happening at more subtle
levels of reality. Physical things – plants, stones, perfumes, animals, parts of the body, and hours in
the day – were believed to connect to spiritual energies by virtue of their abstract properties and
associations. There was a widespread belief (even at the highest levels in society) in the reality of
spirits who mediated various kinds of influence – benign and malign - through the creation. The
goals of the occult sciences are familiar: knowledge, and the power to achieve ends that are today
achieved using natural sciences and technology.
The most influential summation of the Renaissance occult worldview is Agrippa's Three Books of
Occult Philosophy, a huge compendium of lore much of which can be traced back millennia. It
contains a considerable amount of practical Kabbalah, and connects theurgic/magical techniques
connected with Kabbalah to older pagan and Hermetic magic. Although Agrippa's ideas were
extremely influential, they eventually fell into disrepute because they seemed to value knowledge
(gained by dubious and perhaps diabolical means) over the Christian acceptance of humanity's
place in the divine scheme of things. Agrippa's magic was displaced by the beginnings of true
science and the Age of Reason (the first draft of the Three Books was written in 1510, Newton's
Principia was published in 1687).
The essence of Kabbalah is comprehension of the divine, both intellectually and experientially, and
as such it presupposes a God. The situation in Jewish Kabbalah is clear: the God of Kabbalah is the
God of Judaism, and as such Kabbalah is an extension and elaboration of Judaism. To a large extent
the same is true of Christian Kabbalah: Christian Kabbalah is an extension and elaboration of
Christianity.
The notion of divinity in Hermetic Kabbalah is very different, and derives from the philosophic
notions of the divine in Plato and Plotinus, and in the related theosophy of the Corpus Hermeticum.
It is less connected with religious dogma and more with open and individual exploration. It is a
continuation of the tradition of Neoplatonist priest-philosophers such as Iamblichus and Proclus,
filtered through the understanding of a generation of Renaissance mages, who integrated the
mysticism of the Hellenistic world with that of European Judaism.

--


The Study of Solomonic Magic in English

by  Don Karr

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to neatly circumscribe a canon of magic texts as being safely of the "Solomonic
cycle." By arbitrary and rather unscientific means, one might do so by simply including those works
which, by tradition or artifice, bear Solomon's name or derive from works which do. Even here, we
find at least two classes of material:

1. magical works from late antiquity through the early Middle Ages, such as The Testament of
Solomon*

2. medieval grimoires, such as The Key of Solomon.


http://www.digital-brilliance.com/kab/karr/tssmie.pdf

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Just a quick add to Solomon's Magic and Ring... we all know what happened to King Solomon:

1 Kings 11:9-13:
And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the LORD commanded. Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, "Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen.

Here's a quote from the Gnostics:

Apocryphal texts

Rabbinical tradition attributes the Wisdom of Solomon to Solomon although this book was probably written in the 2nd century BCE. In this work Solomon is portrayed as an astronomer. Other books of wisdom poetry such as the Odes of Solomon and the Psalms of Solomon also bear his name. The Jewish historian Eupolemus, who wrote about 157 BCE, included copies of apocryphal letters exchanged between Solomon and the kings of Egypt and Tyre.

The Gnostic Apocalypse of Adam, which may date to the 1st or 2nd century, refers to a legend in which Solomon sends out an army of demons to seek a virgin who had fled from him, perhaps the earliest surviving mention of the later common tale that Solomon controlled demons and made them his slaves. This tradition of Solomon's control over demons appears fully elaborated in the early Gnostic work called the "Testament of Solomon" with its elaborate and grotesque demonology.