Test Post Novel in Progress

(Previously referred to as The Elect or The Skeleton Key)

Egyptian Alexandria in the first century CE was the consummate “melting pot” in which brewed much of the world’s intellectual and religious foundation for the next two millennia. Founded by Alexander the Great and built out to be the queen of the Mediterranean by his successors, the Ptolemies, it then saw the tragic demise of its last dynastic ruler, Cleopatra, and the loss of its independence to Caesar Augustus and Rome. Nevertheless, its wealth of intellectual and religious institutions allowed it to remain the empire’s cultural center during and well beyond the advent of Christianity.

About a third of Alexandria’s population then were Jews, whose monotheism sometimes mixed but more often clashed with other elements of the city’s religious makeup. Among them was a wealthy family, aptly surnamed Alexander, that provided the secular state with civic, political, military and religious leaders well into the Romans era. One of its members was the eminent philosopher and theologian, Philo, called Judaeus (the Jew), whose voluminous writings have survived largely intact. Philo’s life span (c. 20 BCE-50 CE) includes the years during which Jesus of Nazareth supposedly lived in Palestine.

In a short treatise called On the Contemplative Life, Philo describes and applauds a spiritual community of men and women, called Therapeutae (healers or suppliants), that built a community on a narrow strip of land between Lake Mareotis and the Mediterranean Sea, just west of the Alexandrian city walls in a location that can still be pinpointed from Philo’s indications.