Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Philo Judeaus, on the Contemplative Life: Translation, Notes and an Essay on Philo's Religious Ideas
Truly this is either because they make profession of an art of medicine better than the one now in vogue in the cities;3 for that, to be sure, only cures men's bodies, while this cures souls also that are overmastered by grievous and all-but-incurable maladies, with which pleasures and passions and, griefs and-fears, and greed and follies and injustice, and the countless multitude of all other lusts (m. 47 2) and Vices have visited them. Or, they are so called, because they have been educated to this by nature, and by the holy laws to worship the Supreme Being who is superior to the good and more unmixed than the one, and more ancient than unity in origin.
And who is there, out of all those who make profession of piety, that we can compare with these? Can we compare with them, people' who worship the elements, earth, water, air, and fire? To these elements different persons have given different names, as, for example, those who call fire Hephaestus,4 presumably because of its power to kindle; or the air Hera because of being raised up and lifted on high; or water Poseidon, perhaps because it is potable; or earth Demeter because it seems to be the mother of all, both plants and animals. But such names are the fabrications of the Sophists (shallow thinkers) while the elements are soulless matter and cannot move of them selves, being subjected by the skilled artisans to all sorts of forms and qualities.
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