The important points to notice here are: that in the time of Philo,
these Christians were scattered all over the world; that the
commentaries they had, which Eusebius says were the Christian's gospels,
were the works of _ancient_ men, who founded the sect, so that the
founders were men who lived long before Philo's time; that they were
thoroughly organised, proving thereby that their sect was not a new one
in his day; that the "discipline," organised association, ranks of
priests, etc., implied a long existence of the sect before Philo studied
it, and that such existence was clearly not consistent with any
persecution being then directed against it. Philo writes of flourishing
and orderly communities, founded by men who had long since passed away,
and had bequeathed their writings to their followers for their
instruction and guidance. And what was the date of Philo? He himself
gives us a clear note of time; in A.D. 40 he was sent on an embassy to
the Emperor Caligula at Rome, to complain of a persecution to which the
Jews were being subjected by Flaccus; he describes himself as being, in
A.D. 40, "a grey-headed old man." The Rev. J.W. Lake puts him at
sixty-five or seventy years of age at that period, and consequently
would place his birth twenty-five or thirty years before the birth of
Jesus ("Plato, Philo, and Paul," by Rev. J.W. Lake, pp. 33, 34).
Gibbon, in a note to chap. 15, vol. ii. (p. 180), says that "by proving
it (the treatise on the Therapeuts) was composed as early as the time of
Augustus, Basnage has demonstrated, in spite of Eusebius, and a crowd of
modern Catholics, that the Therapeuts were neither Christians nor
monks." Or rather, he has proved that Christians existed before the time
of Christ, since Augustus died A.D. 14, and before that date Philo found
a long-established sect holding Christian doctrines and practising
"apostolic" customs. A man, who in A.D. 40 was grey-headed, spoke of the
Christian Gospels as writings of ancient men, founders of a
well-organised sect. Now we see why Christianity has so much in common