On the Contemplative Life
Philo's account of the Therapeutae, an ascetic Jewish community near Alexandria identified by early Christians with the first Alexandrian Christians, who spent their entire days in Scripture reading.
Preface and Praise of Sacred Scripture
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Chapter IV: The Judgments and Examples of the Fathers
— Philo cited as eyewitness on how the Essenes/Therapeutae spent all day studying Scripture
"One may see in Philo the Jew, an eyewitness, in his book On the Contemplative Life... how diligently the Essenes — the first, I say, of those Alexandrian Christians — from dawn to night spent the entire day in reading"