sb. pl. Also 9 in anglicized form therapeuts. [eccl. L., a. Gr. θεραπευταί servants, attendants, ministers.] A sect of Jewish mystics residing in Egypt in the first century A.D., described in a book attributed to Philo.
1681. S. Parker, Demonstr. Law Nat., II. xviii. 247. These Therapeutæ read the ancient Writings of the Authours of their Sect.
1856. R. A. Vaughan, Mystics (1860), I. 53. The Therapeutæ, a sect similar to the Essenes, number many among them whose lives are truly exemplary.
1865. trans. Strauss’s New Life Jesus, I. I. xxix. 235. He took the Egyptian branch of the Essenes, the so-called Therapeuts, for regular Christians.
