PHILO'S CONTRIBUTION TO
RELIGION
PHILO'S CONTRIBUTION
TO RELIGION
BY
H. A. A. KENNEDY, D.D., D.Sc.
PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS,
NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH
AUTHOR OF
"ST. PAUL AND THE MYSTERY RELIGIONS"
"ST. PAUL'S CONCEPTIONS OF THE LAST THINGS," ETC.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
MCMXIX
INSCRIBED WITH GRATITUDE
TO THE MEMORY OF
MY TWO GREAT TEACHERS
S. H. BUTCHER
AND
A. B. DAVIDSON
M605478
PREFACE
NO ancient writer of such primary im-
portance for the environment and
presuppositions of early Christianity has
suffered the neglect which has fallen to the
lot of Philo. This is true both of British and
continental scholarship. I do not mean for
a moment to underrate such comprehensive
and valuable works as the late Principal
Drummond's Philo Judaeus, 2 vols. (London :
Williams & Norgate, 1888), and Dr.
Emile Br^hier's Les Idtes Philosophiques et
Religieuses de Philon d'Alexandrie (Paris :
A. Picard et Fils, 1908).
But Philo deserves to be made the subject
of many special monographs. Possibly the
sheer profusion of material has scared some
competent investigators. No one, it seems
viii PREFACE
to me, can attempt to penetrate the back-
ground of early Christian thought without
realising the unique significance of Philo of
Alexandria. And this is just as true of the
practical as of the theoretical aspects of his
many-sided achievement. Indeed, the chief
impression made upon one by a careful
reading and re-reading of his works is the
extraordinary vitality of his religious interest,
the depth of his religious experience. This
seems to be of central value for under-
standing the man himself, and for estimating
his bearing on Christianity.
The only attempt to examine the facts
from this definite point of view, of which I
am aware, is Windisch's essay, Die From-
migkeit P kilos (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs,
1909). Apart from the fact of its not being
translated, the looseness and vagueness of
the plan according to which the material is
arranged, appeared to me likely rather to
suppress than to arouse interest in one of
the most remarkable figures in the history
of religion. So I was emboldened to
traverse the ground for myself, and to
PREFACE ix
attempt to state the conclusions I had
reached with as little technicality as possible.
Accordingly my study is a completely in-
dependent piece of work, intended to
illuminate an unusually fascinating epoch in
the story of man's struggle to grasp and
understand God. I have made full use
of the work which has been done on Philo,
but I have refrained from loading my pages
either with discussions of minute details or
with references to the opinions and utterances
of other writers. One of my main objects
has been to let Philo speak for himself.
Several of these chapters have appeared
in the pages of the Expositor. These I
have carefully revised and, where it seemed
necessary, supplemented. I have cordially
to thank the Editor and the Publishers of
that journal for their kind permission to use
them. I am also under special obligation to
two friends: to Rev. J. H. Leckie, D.D.,
who kindly read the MS., placing at my
disposal the fruits of his accurate knowledge
of Philo, and to my colleague, Professor
H. R. Mackintosh, D.D., D.Phil., who has
x PREFACE
helped me to correct the proofs and favoured
me with valuable suggestions both as to form
and contents.
H. A. A. KENNEDY.
NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH,
1 2th September 1919.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ..... i
CHAPTER II
PHILO'S RELATION TO THE OLD TESTAMENT . 29
CHAPTER III
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS . . . .60
CHAPTER IV
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD ..* . .96
CHAPTER V
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN . . . 142
CHAPTER VI
UNION WITH GOD . . . .178
CHAPTER VII
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO . . .211
INDEX ...... 239
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
THE contribution which Philo of Alex-
andria made to spiritual religion has
been largely overlooked, because attention
has been focused on the philosophical sig-
nificance of his thought. This was the
aspect of his writings which won for him the
interest of the Christian Fathers. At a time
when they were eagerly seeking to bridge the
gulf between the new religion and the old
philosophy, which for many of them formed
the chief content of their intellectual life,
they found in Philo, the Jew, a thinker who
had already attempted to reconcile the claims
of reason and revelation. His attitude to the
psychology, metaphysics and ethics of his
Hellenistic environment corresponded in
many respects to their own. He had not
shown himself a slavish adherent of any
INTRODUCTION
single system. Probably he would have
called " the most sacred Plato," as he names
him, his supreme master, but he freely used
what attracted him in the Pythagorean tradi-
tion, in Aristotle, in the Earlier and Middle
Stoics, and in the popular Compendia, which
must have taken a prominent place in the
academic instruction of Alexandria. Philo's
eclecticism naturally appealed to the Christian
thinkers of the earlier centuries, for it was
characteristic of the milieu in which they
moved. They found his arguments apt for
their own task of refuting Paganism. 1
Equally acceptable in their eyes was his
chosen allegorical method. No doubt this
method had established itself in the Graeco-
Roman world apart altogether from Philo.
But he had employed it for a purpose parallel
to that which had engrossed the Christian
theologians. In his exposition of the great
text-book of Judaism, the Mosaic Law, taken
in its widest sense as including the patriarchal
history, he had set himself as a rule to show
that the details of ritual and biography were
1 Cf. Geffcken, Zwei Griechische Apologeten, pp. xxv-xxxii,
2
INTRODUCTION
but a rich symbolism veiling the story of the
soul's progress from the sense- bound life of
earth to the vision of perfect reality in God.
He was thus able to establish lines of com-
munication between that ancestral religion
which he reverenced so profoundly and the
spiritual strivings of those Greek thinkers
who had meant so much for his inner life.
The great legislator of the Hebrew people
had, in Philo's view, larger ends in prospect
than the moral discipline of a single race.
He was concerned with the elemental prin-
ciples of the education of the soul for its
attainment of the highest wisdom, which
was nothing less than fellowship with the
Existent, the fountain of all being. But that
was also the goal of Hellenic philosophy.
The Jewish people, therefore, had a mission
to humanity. Moses was fitted to be the
teacher of all aspirants after truth. The
intellectual or moral difficulties of the Old
Testament vanished when the proper stand-
ard of interpretation was applied to them.
No material was left for the contemptuous
criticism of pagan philosophers.
3
INTRODUCTION
The Fathers of the Church availed them-
selves of Philo's method for their own pur-
poses. The Old Testament had already
proved one of the most powerful instruments
in the Christian mission. It had to a large
extent provided the new faith with a religious
vocabulary. It formed the background of
those conceptions which, in writings like the
Epistles of St. Paul and the Fourth Gospel,
created the basis of a Christian theology.
The religious experience it recorded was
truly felt to be consummated in Jesus Christ.
But the inevitable controversy with Judaism
demanded something more. For the cham-
pions of the older religion also found their
weapons in the sacred book. From the
beginning, the early Church had searched
the Old Testament for anticipations of its
fundamental truths. By the use of Philo's
principles of interpretation, it became possible
to demonstrate that from Genesis to Malachi,
through history and ceremonial, the Scrip-
tures had exclusive reference to " the good
things to come."
For such reasons as these the study of
4
INTRODUCTION
Philo has suffered from a lack of proportion.
He has been treated either as the most
important representative of a curious blend
of Jewish monotheism with later Greek
eclecticism, that is, as an interesting link in
the long chain of speculation on the philo-
sophy of religion in its widest sense, or as
the chief exponent of a fantastic method of
interpreting documents which can scarcely
excite even the archaeological interest of the
modern world. Abnormal attention has been
directed to his fluid and confused conceptions
of the Divine Logos and the Divine Powers.
His ethical positions have been mainly esti-
mated in the light of their relation to con-
temporary Stoicism. Serious attempts have
been made to force his often vague and
contradictory speculations into the rigid
framework of a system of metaphysics.
Ridicule has been poured upon his quaint
handling of patriarchal names and grammat-
ical details of the Greek Old Testament.
But these are not the things that count in
Philo. He is only to a slight extent import-
ant as the architect of a structure of doctrine,
5
INTRODUCTION
philosophical or religious, if he ever aimed at
such an achievement. His speculative effort
to bring God into touch with the world of
men through \6yo$ or 8wd/j,et,s or dyye\oi is
no more successful than that of his revered
master, Plato, so vastly his superior in con-
structive intellecual power, to relate his Ideas
to the realm of actual experience. Many
of his dicta on the Divine essence, the con-
stitution of the cosmos, the soul of man and
its origin, the processes of life, and the nature
of society have become hopelessly antiquated.
Nevertheless Philo stands out as one of
the landmarks in the history of religion.
His career lies on the boundaries between
the old world and the new. Born not later,
in all probability, than 20 B.C., and dying
some time after 41 A.D., possibly not until
the fifth decade of our era, he was a con-
temporary both of Jesus and of Paul. These
facts alone mark his significance for students
of early Christianity. On the nature of that
significance we must briefly dwell.
Needless to say, there is no trace of
acquaintance on his part with Jesus or His
6
INTRODUCTION
foremost apostle. We cannot tell whether
he ever came into contact with the Christian
faith. The tradition of his meeting Peter at
Rome (Eus. H.E. n. 17. i ; Photius, Biblioth.
Cod. 105 ; Suidas, s.v. $t\(0v) seems to be
purely legendary, based apparently on the
notion that the Therapeutae, whom he de-
scribes in the De Vita Contemplativa^ were
followers of Mark, the disciple of Peter. But
for the life and thought of that Graeco-
Roman world to which Christianity made its
appeal, he is in many respects a witness of
the first importance. The sidelights thrown
by his writings upon his Hellenistic environ-
ment have never been adequately estimated.
His references to mystery-religion, to pagan
festivals, to the widespread influence of
astrology, to the dominant ideas of fate, to
the current practices of " man tic" ; his com-
ments on Greek education, on the function
of rhetoric and dialectic, on current political
thought and existing scientific beliefs, are
invaluable for the reconstruction of an all-
important period. But far above this more
or less incidental interest is his position as a
7
INTRODUCTION
Hellenistic Jewish thinker, whose life was
spent at Alexandria, probably at that time
the most remarkable centre of religious fer-
ment in the Eastern world. It has been
customary for scholars (e.g. Bousset) to treat
Philo as a completely isolated phenomenon.
This seems to us an abuse of the argument
from silence. Unquestionably his individu-
ality is unique. But, as Bousset himself
admits, Philo gives many hints that he stands
in a line of religious philosophers of Jewish
birth, who combined devotion to the sacred
tradition of their race with the wider outlook
opened to them by contemporary Hellenistic
speculation. 1 We naturally think in this
connection of the author or (as it is probably
a composite work) authors of the Wisdom of
Solomon, which most scholars assign to the
milieu of Alexandria. But this document is
a genuine product of the developed Wisdom-
literature of the Jews. It is philosophical
^ Jiidisch'Christliche Schul-betrieb, pp. 153, 154. It seems
to us that Bousset's source-criticism of Leg. Alleg. ii. and iii.
(op. cit. p. 82 f.), and of De Congress. Erud. Gr. (p. 109 f.),
governed by this standpoint, is far too subjective to be
relied on.
8
INTRODUCTION
only to a very limited degree. No doubt its
conception of Wisdom often coincides with
the Reason of the Stoics as the all-pervading
TTvev/jua of the universe. And the famous
description in chap. vii. 22 ff. would at many
points cohere with Philo's doctrine of the
Logos. But the thought of the book has
not been steeped in Greek metaphysics, as
Philo's has been, and what is perhaps the
most noteworthy element in it, the remark-
able stress laid on the hope of immortality,
belongs to a province not specially cultivated
by the later thinker. Hence it would be
illegitimate to group these authors, at any
rate, in a -single school. A large amount
of the material embodied in Philo's volumi-
nous writings is quite obviously inherited
tradition. 1 It appears often in the same
form, occasionally with slight variations, in
the compilers who abounded after the creative
epoch of Greek philosophy had spent its
force. 2 As incorporated in Compendia, it
was probably familiar to many of his fellow-
1 See Bousset, op. cit., e.g. pp. 14 ff., 23, 153.
2 See, e.g.) Schmekel, Die Mittlere Stoa> pp. 409-428.
9
INTRODUCTION
countrymen who, like himself, had passed
through a curriculum of Greek education.
But in Philo's case the search for truth was
a consuming passion. His facile pen was
not daunted by any nice feeling for style.
His cumbrous and careless paragraphs are
indeed often left threadbare with repetition.
But when his spirit kindles, his language
takes fire, and the tedium of fine-spun
speculation is overshadowed by the glimpse
of a soul rapt up to the vision of God.
It may help us to a truer estimate of
Philo's thought and experience if we take a
brief glance at the personality of the man.
That is made comparatively easy by his self-
revealing tendency. There is a frankness
and artlessness about his attitude towards
men and things which give careful readers
of his books a sense of real acquaintance
with their author. This intimacy does not
mean the mere satisfying of curiosity as to
his tastes and pursuits, his prejudices or his
enthusiasms. It creates a feeling of affec-
tionate friendliness. Here is a man of lofty
ideals, of unwearying zeal in the quest for
10
INTRODUCTION
goodness and truth : one who can turn his
back on the lower aspects of the life of
sense and keep himself " unspotted from the
world." Yet he assumes no airs. He takes
his readers into his confidence. If they are
willing to overlook a diffuseness which often
irritates, both in thought and style, and a
frequent cumbrousness of expression which
lays a burden on the attention, they may
dwell in a quiet, homely atmosphere with a
mind that is wholesome and refined, a spirit
which sends forth ennobling influences, and
leaves on sympathetic listeners the impression
that they have been in pure and stimulating
company.
In one of those notable glimpses which
Philo gives us of his own experience, he
describes with pathos his unmixed delight in
the contemplation of the world and God, a
condition in which he felt himself lifted high
above the worries of mortal life. But an evil
fate, jealous of his felicity, was lying in wait
to plunge him into the sea of turbulent
political anxieties. This hard lot was in-
evitable. All he can now do is to thank
ii
INTRODUCTION
God that he is not completely engulfed in
the billows ; that he can still open the eyes
of his soul to the light of wisdom (De Spec.
Leg. iii. i ff.). The fervour of his utter-
ance is sufficient evidence of its sincerity.
Yet no responsive reader can think of Philo
as a recluse. A life of self-control and self-
dedication to the claims of religious contem-
plation is certainly his ideal. But no man
was ever more alive to the varied play and
colour of the world about him, and the society
of which he formed a part. His temperament
is keenly sensitive. He has followed with
absorbing interest the coming forth of bud
and leaf in spring (Quod Deus sit immut.
38 f.). He is fascinated by the beauty of
light (e.g. De Abr. 156 ff. ; De Ebriet. 44),
in which he finds a continual source of illus-
trations of spiritual processes. He has care-
fully watched the vicissitudes of ships both
in calm and stormy seas, and can make
effective use of his observations to delineate
the fortunes of the soul (e.g. De Cherub. 37 f. ;
De Migr. Abr. 6 ; De Post. Cain. 22). Music
appeals to him, and he has some knowledge
12
INTRODUCTION
of harmony (e.g. De Post. Cain. 105 f. ; De
Cherub, no). He has an intimate acquaint-
ance with the athletic festivals of the Graeco-
Roman world, and has studied the efforts
and aims of the competitors (e.g. De Agric.
n iff.; De Cherub. 81 ff.). He has fre-
quented the theatre, and carried away clear,
shrewd impressions (De Ebriet. 49 ff.). He
is a man of general cultivation, who has felt
the charm of the great art of Pheidias (De
Ebriet. 89), and can make apt quotations
from Homer and Euripides when occasion
calls. He shows a thorough knowledge of
the ordinary curriculum of Greek education,
and is able to discuss its details with insight
(e.g. De Ebriet. 49 ff. ; De Congress. Erud.
I5ff; De Somn. i. 205). He reveals a
quite definite interest in medicine (e.g. Quod
Deus sit immut. 65 f. ; De Sacrif. Ab. 123),
and Breliier believes that he had taken a
medical course (Les Iddes phil. et relig. de
Philon, p. 286 and n. 6).
His outlook upon ordinary life is sane and
penetrating. He has reflected much on
politics, and his remarks on the statesman
13
INTRODUCTION
(e.g. De Joseph. 32 ff., 54 ff.) are the well-
weighed product of ripe observation. He
gives vivid, caustic estimates of the familiar
figure of the sophist (e.g. De Congr. Erud.
67 f. ; Quod det. pot. 72 f. ; De Agric. 136).
He is aware of the vulgar extravagances of
the wealthy (De Fuga, 28 ff.), and of the
follies of reckless luxury (De Somn. ii.
48 ff.). And the pointed appeal which he
makes to money-lenders as a class lifts the
veil from a corner of the social life of the
time. But he is an observer also of the
more elusive aspects of human intercourse,
a fact indicated, for example, by the illumi-
nating things he has to say on the reflection
of a man's moods in his eyes (De Abr. 151).
It would take too long even barely to outline
his wide knowledge of the natural sciences
of his day, as exemplified, to mention only
one department, by his frequent references to
the laws which govern the movements of the
heavenly bodies. But perhaps enough has
been said to emphasise the mental alertness,
the moral balance, and the real lovableness
of this remarkable Jewish Hellenist who
H
INTRODUCTION
stood on the threshold of a new and
wonderful epoch.
Yet before we leave this phase of our
subject, we feel compelled to illustrate by
one or two passages the poetic aspect of
Philo's temperament, so fundamental for his
thinking, and so strangely overlooked.
In the first which we shall quote, he is
making an impassioned protest against the
evil fortune which suddenly plunged him, in
the midst of his meditation on the highest
things, into the whirlpool of political life.
He has not been completely swept away.
" There are moments when I raise my head,
and with spiritual eyesight bedimmed (for
the keen glance of the soul has been clouded
by the haze of alien interests), gaze around,
with ardent yearning for a pure and untroubled
life. And then, if there be granted me, with-
out looking for it, a brief calm and respite
from political turmoil, I soar aloft in winged
flight, well-nigh treading the air, breathing
the breath of Knowledge, which ever urges
me to flee to her converse as from harsh
taskmasters, not men alone, but the torrent
15
INTRODUCTION
of affairs that surges in upon me from every
side. Nevertheless it is meet to give thanks
to God that, despite my struggle with the
flood, I am not engulfed in its depths, but
may open the eyes of my soul which, in
despair of all bright hope, I deemed to be
fast closed, and am illumined by the radiance
of wisdom, not delivered over for ever to the
sway of darkness " (De Spec. Leg. iii. 46).
For Philo the heights of wisdom and know-
ledge are only to be attained in communion
with God. And it is when the sense of God
and His goodness to the soul breaks upon
him that his utterance is exalted to a poetic
strain, the expression of a high passion. " If
a yearning come upon thee, O soul, to possess
the good, which is Divine, forsake not only
thy 'country,' the body, and thy ' kindred,'
the sense-life, and thy * father's house,' the
reason, but flee from thyself, and depart out
of thyself, in a Divine madness of prophetic
inspiration, as those possessed with Corybantic
frenzy. For that high lot becomes thine
when the understanding is rapt in ecstasy,
feverishly agitated with a heavenly passion,
16
INTRODUCTION
beside itself, driven by the power of him who
is True Being, drawn upwards towards him,
while truth leads the way " (Quis Rer. Div.
H. 69, 70). Notably does his wonder in pres-
ence of the Divine grace break out in hymns
of praise. " Bounteous, O Lover of giving,
are thy kindnesses, without limit or boundary
or end, as fountains which pour forth streams
too plentiful to be carried away " (op. cit. 3 1 ).
And again : " O mighty Lord, how shall we
praise thee, with what lips, with what tongue,
with what speech, with what governing power
of the spirit ? Can the stars, blended in single
chorus, chant thee a worthy anthem ? Can
the whole heaven, melted into sound, declare
even a portion of thine excellences?" (De
Vita Mas. ii. (iii.) 239). At times the rapture
of his spirit imparts a fresh glow to Nature.
" The soul anticipates its expectation of God,"
he says, " with an early joy. We may liken
it to that which happens with plants. For
these, when they are to bear fruit, first bud
and blossom and put forth shoots. Look at
the vine, how wondrously Nature has decked
it out with slender twigs and tendrils, with
B 17
INTRODUCTION
suckers and leaves, which all but utter in
living accent the joy of the tree over the fruit
that is to come. The day, too, laughs at
early dawn, as it waits for the sun-rising.
For there is a first heralding of the sun's
beams, and a dimmer radiance proclaims the
fuller blaze" (De Mut. Norn. 161 f.). This
poetic feeling gives us a truer clue to the
soul of the man than most of his favourite
speculations. It reveals his profound kinship,
on the one hand with the Psalmists of his race,
on the other with his Greek master, Plato, in
the deepest reaches of the inner life. It be-
longs indissolubly to that mystic "enthusiasm"
which was so dominant a force in all his aspira-
tions, and which pervades his religion at its
highest. His search for God glows with a
radiant ardour, the reflection of a spirit that
thrills to the finest issues.
Here, then, is a devout Jewish thinker, the
groundwork of whose spiritual life is the
religion of the Old Testament. Never for
a moment does he swerve from his allegiance
to that sacred tradition. Never does he grow
weary of extolling the Divine legislation of
18
INTRODUCTION
which Moses has been the mouthpiece.
But he is a genuine product of the Diaspora.
We know that Egypt was not only one of the
earliest countries to admit Jews to its hospi-
tality, but that there special privileges were
accorded to them. That must have counted
for much in their attitude to the Hellenistic
environment created by Alexander's con-
quests, and the movements that followed
them. It was probably customary at Alex-
andria, with its famous schools of learning,
for Jews of intellectual bent to avail them-
selves of " the general education " (fj cy/cvicXux:
7rcuSeia) current in Greek society. In any
case Philo valued both the introductory
course, and the profounder study of philo-
sophy which came later. We have few data
from which to reconstruct his actual curri-
culum. Part of it he probably received within
his own community. But it is difficult to
avoid the conclusion that he had come into
personal touch with the philosophical schools
of the great " University " of the city in
which his life was spent.
What is of paramount interest for us is to
19
INTRODUCTION
observe carefully the effect of the impact of
Greek ideas upon this sensitive religious
mind. Did they produce serious modifica-
tions in his inherited conceptions of God, of
God's relations to men, of human nature, of
the purpose of life ? How far could a loyal
Jew be affected by contemporary notions of
the fundamental elements of experience, such
as matter and spirit, reason, moral obligation
and the like ? To what extent were the
spiritual values of the Old Testament replaced
by others ? Does the process reveal a prepar-
ation for or approximation to the Christian
view of God and the world ? Such questions
form one aspect of our inquiry. And they
must come up again and again in our exami-
nation of the main subject before us, the con-
tribution of Philo to religion. But through-
out the discussion we wish deliberately to
reckon with the phenomena of the New
Testament. There we are confronted by
what is, in some important respects, a parallel
situation. The Letters of Paul, the Epistle to
the Hebrews, and the Fourth Gospel are also
the products of devout Jewish minds. They
20
INTRODUCTION
all spring from an Old Testament soil. But
they all presuppose a Hellenistic environment.
Their authors have been more or less in touch
with the currents of contemporary thought,
and they have to meet the needs of Jews like
themselves who have burst the bonds of a rigid
Judaism, as well as of Gentiles, whom pagan
religion, even in its highest forms, has failed
to satisfy. How far has there been a reaction
to Greek thought on their part ? Has that
thought penetrated their central categories ?
Has it reshaped to any degree their working
conceptions of God and His contact with
human life ? Or, has their experience of
Jesus Christ so completely overshadowed
every other force in their religion as practi-
cally to neutralise the power of environment ?
We know that conflicting answers are being
given to these questions at the present time.
Perhaps a comparison at salient points with
the positions of Philo will help to illuminate
the situation. At least, it may clear away
some misconceptions and suggest a more
accurate perspective.
What has been said serves roughly to
21
INTRODUCTION
determine the nature of our proposed investi-
gation. The works of Philo form a sort of
encyclopaedia of ancient philosophical ideas,
of results, often naive enough, attained by the
science of his day, of traditional lore, Hellen-
istic and Jewish, of spiritual experiences of
his own which have the perennial fascination
of real life. Much of this material we delib-
erately ignore. We have no intention of
examining the bearings of his philosophical
standpoint as a whole. Nor does it lie
within our scope to discuss systematically
even such central conceptions as that of God
or the Universe or the Logos or vow or the
Moral Ideal. Our chief aim is to sketch, how-
ever fragmentary, making constant use of his
own words, the contribution which this loyal,
earnest and highly cultivated Jewish thinker
made to religion at the very time when Jesus
appeared with His Gospel of the Fatherhood
of God and a Divine Kingdom not of this
world, won through suffering and death :
when the followers of Jesus Christ carried
through the Diaspora the message of a new
relation to God, made possible through
22
INTRODUCTION
Christ crucified and risen. As has been in-
dicated, we desire to relate our discussion at
one point and another to the New Testament
material. That does not mean the endeavour
to search out groups of parallel ideas or
formulas in Philo and the great New Testa-
ment writers. 1 Such a task has frequently
been attempted in one form or other, and it is
doubtful whether it has led to important
results. So much depends on the contexts
of the passages singled out and the back-
ground against which they stand. And these
are features of the situation which have
usually been ignored. It would seem more
profitable to examine carefully certain in-
tegral elements in the fabric of Philo's religion
for their own sake, endeavouring with caution
to estimate the forces which have shaped
them, and then to try to discover in what
relation they stand to corresponding New
Testament conceptions. If the material be
properly selected, each ought to shed light
on its parallel. And there is the advantage
1 Cf. Jowett's essay on " St. Paul and Philo," in his Com-
mentary on ThessalonianS) Galatians and Romans^ vol. i.
23
INTRODUCTION
in both cases that the Old Testament contri-
butes a common background.
The masterly edition of Philo's works by
Cohn, Wendland and Reiter (of which six
volumes have appeared, Berlin, 1896-1915),
one of the finest achievements of modern
scholarship, provides a thoroughly trust-
worthy basis of investigation, with the ad-
dition of the Quaestiones in Genesim and in
Exodum, translated from the Armenian into
Latin by J. B. Aucher. 1 The only treatise
in Cohn's edition of whose genuineness we
are not convinced is the De Aeternitate
Mundi y which has far more the appearance
of a somewhat superficial compilation than
any of the other documents. A vigorous
attack on its authenticity may be found in the
Quellenstudien zu Philo von Alexandria of so
highly equipped a scholar as H. von Arnim
(Philologische Untersuchungen,z&. by Kiessling
u. Wilamowitz, Berlin, 1888), pp. 1-52. But
this is not the place either to embark on source-
criticism or to investigate the development of
1 In the Quaestiones we have used the Leipzig ed. of Philo
(1829-30), vols. vi.-vii.
2 4
INTRODUCTION
Philo's ideas by attempting a chronological
arrangement of his works. The most inter-
esting essay in that direction is Cohn's article,
" Einleitung u. Chronologic der Schriften
Philo's," in Philologus, Supplem. Bd. vii., 1899.
It seems advisable to begin by emphasising
the more characteristic features of Philo's re-
lation to the Old Testament. We do not
propose to spend time on the details of his
allegorical method, except in so far as these
may illuminate various corresponding features
in the Pauline Epistles and the Fourth Gospel
But his general attitude to the Law and the
Prophets is important for the entire discus-
sion, and his doctrine of verbal inspiration not
only raises some curious problem for his own
writings, but has a bearing on certain re-
markable phenomena in the New Testament.
Every large-minded religious thinker is
bound to relate his positions to various philo-
sophical assumptions more or less consciously
recognised. This is especially true of one like
Philo, for whom philosophy had opened up a
new universe. Contradictions may often be
traced among such assumptions, contradic-
2 5
INTRODUCTION
tions which have scarcely been realised by
the philosophical theologian himself. In
ancient thought, moreover, which preserved
survivals of primitive religion and primitive
science, these discrepancies were bound to
remain for long undetected. The risk was in-
tensified in the case of a devout Jew, whose
enthusiasm for the efforts of Greek speculation
concealed from him the fact that he was con-
stantly attempting to fuse together incom-
patible magnitudes. But granting all this, it
ought to repay us to examine his attitude to
such fundamental problems as the relation
of God and the world and the constitution of
human nature, not merely for the purpose of
discovering how far Hellenistic thought influ-
enced his ultimate postulates, but also for the
purpose of ascertaining what points of contact,
if any, may emerge between him and his
Hellenistic- Jewish contemporary, Paul of
Tarsus, who had also seriously reflected on
these very questions.
Our supreme interest, however, attaches to
Philo's religion. That presupposes man's
yearning for God and God's approach to
26
INTRODUCTION
man. Here it is above all else important to
investigate, on the one hand, his conception
of the Divine grace in the wide range of its
activities, and on the other, the obstacles
which thwart the human soul and deaden its
sensitiveness to higher influences, in a word,
the many-sided phenomena of the inner life
which may be grouped under such categories
as sin, conscience, repentance and faith. This,
further, is the sphere to which would belong
a consideration, however fragmentary, of
Philo's doctrine of the Logos. That doctrine,
as we have hinted, is riddled with contradic-
tions. But the idea of mediators between God
and the world is so central for Philo (as it
was for his pagan and Jewish contemporaries)
in one form or other, that we must briefly
touch upon a few of its salient aspects, keep-
ing in view at the same time the New
Testament parallels, and especially the all-
important Biblical conception of the Spirit of
God.
We shall then be in a position to deal with
the crowning-point of Philo's religious aspira-
tion, union with God. A wide vista is here
27
INTRODUCTION
opened up. The content embraced in it is
far from being co-ordinated. It consists of
sudden flashes of insight and exaltation. In
these Philo reveals the depths of his religious
consciousness as nowhere else. But intuitions
defy analysis. The most sacred type of feel-
ing cannot be dissected. We must be content
with examining some presuppositions of this
high attainment. The pathway will thus be
prepared for approaching the author's crown-
ing doctrine of the Vision of God. Our
investigation will be rounded off by a brief
discussion of Philo's mysticism and the in-
spiration and ecstasy which are its conditions.
28
CHAPTER II
PHILO'S RELATION TO THE OLD
TESTAMENT
NO more instructive summary could be
given of Philo's general attitude
towards the Old Testament than that which
appears in his own remarkable statement of
Moses' various functions as leader of Israel.
"We have already argued," he says, "that
the perfectly-equipped leader must have four
functions assigned to him, the kingly, the
legislative, the priestly, and the prophetic,
that as legislator he may enjoin what ought
to be done and forbid what ought not, that
as priest he may deal not only with human
but also with Divine matters, that as prophet
he may reveal what cannot be grasped by
reason. As I have discussed the first three
of these, and proved that Moses excelled as
king and legislator and high priest, I come
finally to show that he was also the most
29
PHILO'S RELATION TO
notable of prophets. I thus recognise that
all that stands written in the sacred books
are Divine oracles, declared through him,
and I will go on to details, after making this
observation : of these sacred utterances some
were spoken by God in person, using His
marvellous prophet as interpreter, some were
revealed as the result of question and answer,
and some were announced by Moses in person,
in a state of inspiration and possession " (De
Vita Mas. ii. (iii.) 187 f.).
Various features here are significant.
Moses is the supreme figure in the history of
the chosen people. He has been used as
the special medium of the Divine revelation
to Israel. What he has written in the sacred
books possesses Divine authority. The
statement makes it clear that for Philo the
Pentateuch is the kernel of the Old Testa-
ment, and that it is in the most literal sense
inspired. We shall not discuss at this stage
Philo's conception of inspiration. But in
order to realise its scope, it must be observed
that he assigns the same infallibility to the
Septuagint translation as that which belongs
30
THE OLD TESTAMENT
to the original. He accepts the Jewish legend
as to the miraculous agreement of all the
translators, working separately, in their
renderings, and observes that these men
must be called " not translators but hiero-
phants and prophets, inasmuch as it was
granted to them by unalloyed reasonings to
coincide with the wholly pure spirit of Moses "
(pp. cit. ii. 40). We may note in passing
that it is the translation of the laws which is
especially before his mind (op. cit. ii. 36).
Philo's chief aim in all his works, it need
scarcely be said, is to demonstrate the universal
validity of Jewish religion as enshrined in the
Old Testament, and, par excellence, in the
Pentateuch. Probably he devotes himself to
this task for his own sake, for that of his co-
religionists, and to win the attention of his
Hellenistic contemporaries. In his own case
the extraordinary fascination of Greek philo-
sophy for his mind perhaps compelled him to
adjust the powerful claims of reason to the
authority of what he regarded as a Divine
revelation. A similar adjustment would be
needful for many of his fellow-countrymen who
3 1
PHILO'S RELATION TO
had passed through experiences like his own.
And it was natural for him to appeal along
these lines to fair-minded pagans, in whose
rich heritage of wisdom he shared, but who, he
felt, had lessons of incalculable value to learn
from the Divinely-taught philosophy of Moses.
But the work was beset by difficulties.
Although he never challenged the assumption
of verbal inspiration, he could no longer
approach the sacred text with the artlessness
of unquestioning submission. Thus when
he reads in Gen. ii. 8 that " God planted a
garden in Eden," he remarks : "To suppose
that vines and olive-trees or apple-trees . . .
were planted by God is utter and incurable
stupidity. . . . We must therefore have re-
course to allegory, the favourite method of
men of vision ". (De Plant. 32 ff.). There
can be little question that Philo stood in a
long succession of allegorical interpreters of
the Old Testament. The practice had been
reduced to a kind of science. 1 This he
1 At the same time, Siegfried's list of allegorical canons
(Philo von Alexandria als Ausleger d. A.T., pp. 168-197)
assumes a rigidity of practice for which we have no
adequate evidence.
32
THE OLD TESTAMENT
assumes. " Do not be surprised," he says,
quite incidentally, " if, according to the rules
(Kavovas) of allegory, the sun is identified
[in Gen. xxviii. n] with the Father and
Governor of the universe " (De Somn. i. 73).
Numerous references of the same character
occur in his writings. A large variety of
competing interpretations is current and
familiar to Philo. In discussing, e.g., the
phrase used of Abraham (Gen. xv. 15),
"Thou shalt depart to thy fathers" he
mentions three differing explanations of
" thy fathers " : " Some say, the sun and
moon and the other stars. . . . Some think
of the archetypal Ideas. . . . Some have con-
jectured that the four elements are meant of
which the universe is composed " (Quis Rer.
Div. H. 280 ff.). Occasionally he speaks of
his predecessors in this art. as <f>vaiicol ai/fyes
(e.g. De Abr. 99; De Vita Mas. ii. (iii.)
103), sometimes, as in the quotation above,
as opaTiKol. Apparently, therefore, he was
in possession of an elaborately articulated
system of allegorical exegesis, although he
does not hesitate again and again to suggest
c 33
PHILO'S RELATION TO
interpretations of his own (see esp. the
remarkable passage, De Cherub. 27 ff.).
Hence we need not be surprised to come
upon the statement : " Practically every-
thing, or at least most things, in our legisla-
tion must be taken allegorically " (De Joseph.
28). Philo acts consistently upon this
principle, and his theory of allegory is
worthy of a brief notice. It is essentially
esoteric in character, and this presupposes
a certain initiation, if its application is to
be grasped. In introducing a complicated
allegorical explanation of the sacrifice of
Isaac which Abraham was ready to carry
out, he says : " The story as a matter of fact
does not rest upon the literal and obvious
version, so that to the average reader its
nature seems rather obscure, but those who
have an understanding for the invisible things
of the mind rather than for the perceptions
of the senses and who possess the power of
vision, recognise it" (De Abr. 200). That
is the reason why once and again he appeals
to his readers in the language of the
Mysteries, e.g. Leg. All. iii. 209 : " Open
34
THE OLD TESTAMENT
your ears, O ye initiates, and receive the
mystic ritual."
Plainly, his method enables Philo to remove
innumerable stumbling-blocks from the sacred
narratives : e.g. to take literally the statement
of Gen. xi. 5, that "the Lord came down to
view the city and the tower," is " monstrous
impiety." For " who is not aware that one
who comes down must leave one part of
space and occupy another. But the whole
universe is rilled by God " (De Con/us. Ling.
135 f. ). The startling character of the phrase
can only be explained, as in other cases, by
the legislator's need of using human speech
about a God who is not anthropomorphic, to
assist men's spiritual education (op. cit. 134 f.).
The real explanation lies beneath the sur-
face. An obstacle of a less serious type is
found in Jacob's command to Joseph to visit
his brethren in Sychem (Gen. xxxvii. 13).
" How could any one in his senses accept
such a situation ? Is it likely that a man
with such kingly resources as Jacob should
have such a scarcity of slaves or servants that
he must send his son abroad " on errands
35
PHILO'S RELATION TO
of this kind? (Quod det. pot. insid. 13).
Here also trained insight is necessary. Yet
Philo's practice is by no means uniform.
Thus to a very large extent he treats the
story of Abraham's obedience in the sacrifice
of Isaac as a historical narrative, and gives an
elaborate exposition of it on that basis (De
Abr. 167-199). The early life of Joseph
is similarly handled as actual history (De
Joseph. 1-27), although its allegorical exegesis
follows. Indeed, in De Migr. Abr. 89, he
goes the length of saying : " There have
been some who, regarding the literal laws as
symbols of ideal realities, were excessively
scrupulous in some points, while in others
they were lazily negligent. For my own
part I must blame such people for their
laxity. For both elements demand attention,
the most diligent search for hidden meanings,
and the preservation of those on the surface
which cannot be challenged." The literal
sense he compares in this passage to the
body, the symbolic to the soul (op. cit. 93).
The comparison explains the well-known
statement of Clement of Alexandria regard-
36
THE OLD TESTAMENT
ing the Fourth Gospel (Eus. H.E. vi. 14):
" John, last of all, having perceived that the
bodily things had been set forth in the
Gospels, being urged by his friends, inspired
by the Spirit, produced a spiritual Gospel " ;
and indirectly supplies the clue to much that
is enigmatic and baffling throughout that
book. In agreement with this frequently
close adherence to the literal narrative is the
emphasis Philo lays on minute verbal points.
He finds, e.g., in Ex. xxi. 12 the law: "If
a man strike another and he die, he must
certainly be put to death" (Oavdrw Oavarovo-Qat,).
" Being clearly aware," he proceeds, " that he
[Moses] never uses a superfluous word. . . .
I was puzzled by his saying of the volun-
tary slayer not Only BavarovaQat, but Qavdra
6avarova-6ai. . . . But when I consulted that
wise woman whose name is Enquiry, I was
relieved from my search : for she taught me
that some living people are really dead, while
some who have died are truly alive " (De Fuga,
54 f.). Similarly, in the opening paragraphs
of De Agricult. he urges the minute accuracy
of Moses in his use of terms, and presses the
37
PHILO'S RELATION TO
distinction between yewpyta, husbandry, and
7/79 epyao-la, the working of land. 1
Yet there are other features of his usage
which seem directly to conflict with this
microscopic attention to detail. An extra-
ordinary example is his manner of quoting
from the LXX. We have seen that he held
the translation to be verbally inspired. Never-
theless he handles the infallible text with the
utmost freedom. Often, in citing a passage,
he gives part of it in his own words : e.g.
in Gen. xv. 6, for the clause, "it was
counted to him for righteousness," he sub-
stitutes, "he was considered righteous."
More daringly still, he sometimes without
warning replaces the very words he is
supposed to be interpreting by his own
allegorical explanation : e.g. in Num. v. 2 :
" Let them send away out of the camp
every leper," he substitutes for rf)$
1 In the light of these and many parallel phenomena, it
seems by no means legitimate to draw the sharp distinction
which Bousset does between the Palestinian Rabbinic
exegesis and that of Alexandria, and to say that the one is
of the letter, while the other is of the spirit (Die Religion d.
Judenfums*, p. 185). The Rabbinic scrupulousness about
verbal minutiae has unquestionably influenced Philo.
38 '
THE OLD TESTAMENT
the phrase, rfy ayiov ^#779, "the consecrated
soul." Repeatedly he exchanges a less for
a more familiar word, and often omits un-
important expressions altogether. 1 Equally
remarkable, in view of his standpoint, are such
statements as that which he makes regarding
the creation of Eve. In expounding Gen.
ii. 21, " And he took a rib," etc., he remarks :
" The literal narrative in this case is mythical,
for, could anybody accept the story that
woman was made out of the rib of a man ? "
(Leg. Alleg. ii. 19). So also, in speaking
of Moses 1 fiery serpents, which call up the
story of the serpent's deception of Eve, he
describes them as prodigies, and adds : " But
in explanations based on the hidden sense,
the mythical element disappears, and the
truth is made evident" (De Agricult. 96 f.).
Here is a definite recognition of myth in the
patriarchal narratives.
How are we to relate these features of his
attitude towards the text to his doctrine of
verbal inspiration ? As a matter of fact, they
1 These instances are taken from Bishop Kyle's most useful
discussion, Philo and Holy Scripture^ pp. xxxv-xxxviii.
39
PHILO'S RELATION TO
are wholly irreconcilable. Without realising
what had happened, Philo, by his adoption
of the allegorical method, had emptied his
basal doctrine of all genuine value. By
continuing to emphasise verbal details, he
presented, indeed, the appearance of loyalty
to his fundamental assumption, and probably
he concealed from himself the implications
of his normative system. Hence, whatever
language he might still use, in reality he
accepted as much of the literal text as suited
his scheme of thought, and had no hesitation
in explaining away what proved incompatible
with that.
A comparison with St. Paul's standpoint
at once presses itself on our attention. For
the same kind of difficulty confronts him in
a parallel situation. Very rarely, indeed,
does the Apostle have recourse to the alle-
gorical method, which was evidently familiar
to him. The most notable instance is, of
course, the allegory of the two Covenants,
under the names of Sarah and her handmaid,
Hagar (Gal. iv. 21-31), the mistress sym-
bolising the heavenly Jerusalem, the free
40
THE OLD TESTAMENT
community of Christians, the slave repre-
senting the earthly centre of Judaism, which
remains in the bondage of legalism. Philo
more than once allegorises the same story,
but, as we should expect, on totally different
lines (De Congress. Erud. Grat., esp. 11-24).
Thus for him, Sarah stands for complete
virtue, with whom Abraham, the " learner,"
cannot at first be fruitfully united. He must
first wed Hagar, i.e. preliminary instruction.
Later on, his marriage with virtue will bring
forth fruit. A precisely similar use of the
story is made by him in Quaestt. in Gen. iii.
pp. 190-191. So far as historical sense is
concerned, there is little difference between
the two writers. To say, as Lightfoot does
(Galatians, p. 199), that " Philo is, as usual,
wholly unhistorical," while with " St. Paul,
on the other hand, Hagar's career is an
allegory, because it is a history," is to
ignore the fact that Hagar's " history" has
no connection of any kind with existing
Judaism, and Paul's use of it is as arbitrary
on its own lines as Philo's. A remarkably
close correspondence of standpoint is ex-
PHILO'S RELATION TO
hibited by a comparison of Paul's position
in i Cor. ix. 9-10 with that of Philo in
De Sacrific. 260. The Apostle, in defending
the right of missionaries to be supported by
the communities in which they labour, not
only refers to the words of Jesus (Luke x. 7),
but also quotes the precept of Deut. xxv.
4, " Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that
treads the corn," and applies it by asking :
" Does God care about oxen ? Or does he
speak thus with us exclusively in view ? Of
course it was written on our account." Simi-
larly, Philo, in discussing the regulations
regarding sacrificial animals, proceeds : " You
will discover that all this minuteness in
reference to the animal shadows forth by
means of symbols the improvement of your
character. For the law does not exist for
irrational creatures, but for those possessing
mind and reason, so that its concern is not
for sacrificial animals, to provide that they
be without blemish, but for those who offer
the sacrifices, that they be not disquieted by
reason of any passion." Philo also misses
the significance of one of those humane laws
42
THE OLD TESTAMENT
which characterise the Old Testament code.
In Ex. xxii. 26 f. it is said : "If thou take
thy neighbour's upper garment as a pledge,
thou shalt give it back to him before sunset :
for it is his only covering. ... In what shall
he sleep? If he cry to me, I will listen to
him, for I am merciful." Philo's comment
runs thus : " Is it not meet, if not to reproach,
at least to suggest to, those who suppose that
the legislator has all this concern about a piece
of clothing, What do you mean, my friend,
does the Creator and Ruler of the universe
call himself merciful in connection with so
trifling a matter as the failure of a creditor
to return his upper garment to a debtor ? '
(De Somn. i. 92 f.). Strangely enough,
Philo expresses his delight in the injunc-
tion about oxen, which Paul explains
symbolically, and speaks of it as " that
tender and gracious ordinance" (De Virtut.
145 f.)-
The Apostle, however, is extraordinarily
sparing in turning history into symbolism.
In his treatment of the Old Testament, he
often approaches a philosophy of history, as
43
PHILO'S RELATION TO
in Gal. iii. 17 ff. But in his doctrine of
verbal inspiration he is confronted by the
same kind of problem as Philo. For Paul
also regards the text of the Old Testament
as the literal utterance of God. Like Philo,
nevertheless, he does not hesitate, when
quoting from the LXX, to omit or supply
words for the advantage of his argument : and
often, as in his case, Paul's quotations have
the inaccuracy which comes from trusting to
memory. But his crucial difficulty arises
from his attitude towards the Law. A
priori, the Law, as the revelation of the
Divine will, is " holy and righteous and
good." It presents an unassailable moral
standard. Why, then, has it not satisfied
Paul's religious aspirations? At one stage
in his career, represented by such passages
as Gal. iii. 19, Rom. vii. 13, and
Rom. v. 20, he adopts as a working
hypothesis the idea that the function of
the Law in the purpose of God was to
intensify the consciousness of sin, to make
the conscience more sensitive to all breaches
of the Divine order, and thus to humble
44
THE OLD TESTAMENT
man as a sinner in presence of the All-holy.
But he could not rest there. And in the
light of his Christian experience, he feels
after a further explanation. Already in
Rom. viii. 2 f. he speaks of the Law as
baffled by the influence of sinful flesh, human
nature as Paul knows it in ordinary experi-
ence. Sin, therefore, is to blame for the
Law's failure. Yet the admission that
human sin so completely foiled what was a
Divine method that a new way of salvation
had to be brought in, makes clear that Paul
was occupying ground which he could not
permanently hold. Even in " Galatians,"
under the pressure of controversy with
Judaising Christians, he had ventured to
detract from the dignity of the Law, as
contrasted with the revelation of grace in
Jesus Christ (iii. 19). In the same context,
the necessity of a human medium for the
legal dispensation, even Moses, constituted
for Paul's mind, in diametrical opposition, we
may note in passing, to Philo's standpoint,
a ground of disparagement. In Gal. iv. 4
and iv. 8-13, he had gone the length of
45
PHILO'S RELATION TO
comparing Jewish legalism with pagan ritual-
ism. But in " Colossians," one of his latest
Epistles, he takes a more daring step. His
growing appreciation of Christ more com-
pletely overshadows everything in religion
that appears to compete with Him for
men's allegiance. And so, in Col. ii. 14
he sternly sweeps away the entire principle
of Legalism as something inherently value-
less, something whose existence is incom-
patible with the forgiveness of sin. Thus,
as in Philo's case, Paul is driven by the
inexorable logic of experience, probably
without any formal recognition of what was
happening, far away from his original
position. He still finds in the Old Testa-
ment the revelation of God's will and purpose,
but he finds it in such elements as the Divine
grace towards Abraham, and the faith of
Abraham which responded to it. The later
legal aspect of religion stood on a lower
plane. It was an ''interpolation " (Gal. iii.
19) in the true development.
Before leaving the subject of Philo's re-
lation to the Old Testament as history, let us
46
THE OLD TESTAMENT
note one or two directions in which his
method sheds some light on the Fourth
Gospel. It is necessary, on the whole, to
distinguish between Philo's allegorising and
that symbolic element in the Fourth Gospel
which comes the more fully to light the
more exhaustively its material is investigated.
The Evangelist's descriptions of the typical
miracles which he selects as "signs," his
deliberate association of these with elaborate
discussions which aim at a spiritual inter-
pretation of them, his predilection for mys-
terious sayings which admit of divergent
explanations (e.g. ii. 19-21, iii. 14-15, iii. 29,
iv. 1 8, iv. 35, vi. 53 f., vii. 38, xii. 24, xiii.
8-10), his use of expressions which have a
twofold meaning (i. 30, iii. 3, 8, iii. 14, iv. 10,
v. 25, xi. u, xii. 32, etc.), his symbolic
explanations of localities (ix. 7), the inner
allusiveness of such passages as i. 46-51,
iv. 15-26, etc., his reticence regarding "the
disciple whom Jesus loved " all these phe-
nomena and others of the same kind impart
a certain esoteric flavour to the Gospel
throughout. That forms an essential element
47
PHILO'S RELATION TO
in the author's symbolism. And it involves
an elusiveness which marks the contrast
with Philo. For in strict allegory, as Mr.
J. M. Thompson points out, "a particular"
stands for a " particular," whereas " in
symbolism proper it stands for something
more general than itself." * But, of course,
the vaguer method often passes into the
more detailed correspondence, and vice
versa. Hence, various points for com-
parison are obvious. Beside Philo's constant
emphasis on the significance of . numbers,
e.g., on the number 4 (De Opif. M. 45-52),
on 7 (ibid. 89-106), on io(De Decal. 18-31),
may be placed, with some reservation, the
six water-pots at Cana, the five husbands of
the Samaritan woman, and the five porches
at Bethesda. What may be called the
" esoteric" element in the vocabulary of the
Fourth Gospel, embracing such terms as
copa, dvorfev, vtlrcoOijvcu, vvfA^ios, vS&p wi>, ol
veicpoi, /C.T.X., has parallels in Philo's mystic
use of TO?? (De Somn. ii. 61-68), afavis
1 Proceedings of Oxford Society of Historical Theology,
Dec. 4, 1913, p. 25.
4 8
THE OLD TESTAMENT
(De Migr. Abr. 32), and 71-17777 (De Fuga,
177 f.). Only, Philo expounds the meaning
of these words, while the Evangelist seems
to count upon an understanding of his terms
in the circle for which he writes. Specially
noteworthy in Philo is his elaborate symbol-
ism of names. Names and their component
parts, he says (De Mutat. Nom. 65), are
really " distinctive marks of capacities "
(xapa/crfpes wdpea)v), and, on this principle,
such proper names as Egypt, Joseph, Leah,
Rachel, etc., designate certain definite quali-
ties or characters. The interpretation of
Siloam by the Evangelist suggests an allied
standpoint, and possibly, if we had a clue to
the usage of his circle, the same might be
said of such names as Nathanael and Nico-
demus. Curiously enough, Philo shows the
same kind of reticence about Jacob's son,
Judah, whom he usually describes as "the
fourth in age" (e.g. De Joseph. 15, 189)
without mentioning him by name, as the
Fourth Evangelist with regard to "the
disciple whom Jesus loved."
We enter a less obscure region when we
D 49
PHILO'S RELATION TO
try to estimate the discourses of the Fourth
Gospel in the light of Philo's practice.
Indeed, the latter gives us a most arresting
clue to the attitude of ancient thinkers
towards that which they reckoned to be
history. We know that for him the Penta-
teuch was inspired in every detail. Yet in
narrating, e.g., God's instructions to Moses
to warn Pharaoh, as reported in Ex. iv.
ii f., he expands the discourse on lines of his
own, simply making the original his starting-
point (De Vita M. i. 84). Even more
remarkable is his recasting and elaboration
of Moses' injunctions to the spies before
they left on their errand (ibid. 222-226).
Taking Num. xiii. 17-20 as his basis, he
constructs upon it a composition which em-
bodies some of its leading ideas, but supple-
ments them in every direction. 1 This process
illustrates the usage of the Fourth Evan-
gelist, for whom some saying or thought of
Jesus forms the text of a carefully articulated
1 Perhaps Philo was here indebted to the tradition of the
poi : see Vita M. i. 4, referred to by Schiirer,
.) Div. ii. vol. iii. p. 365.
50
THE OLD TESTAMENT
discourse. It appears to him in no sense
arbitrary to draw out on these lines the
significance of a message which he regarded
as wholly Divine.
We have still to deal with Philo's relation
to the Law, as such, a subject which can only
be sketched in outline. The main task he
prescribed for himself was to expound the
Pentateuch in its most universal bearings.
For he regards Moses as the incomparable
legislator for humanity. "His laws alone,
stable, unshaken, undisturbed, bearing the
impress of the seal of Nature herself, remain
firm from the day when they were written
until now, and, we trust, will abide for all
time coming, endowed with immortality, as
long as sun and moon and the entire heavens
and universe endure " (De Vita M. ii. 14).
For this reason their scope reaches far
beyond national limits. And Philo's aim is
to show that they enshrine all that is of value
in pagan philosophy. His method, of course,
supplies the instrument for that purpose.
But over and above the results reached by
the use of allegory, Philo deliberately em-
PHILO'S RELATION TO
phasises the complete harmony of the Mosaic
Law with the Law of Nature. He was deeply
imbued with that Stoic doctrine, and at the
very opening of his great allegorical com-
mentary on the Pentateuch he strikes this
note : " This beginning (i.e. this book of
Genesis) is ... worthy of the highest
admiration, as it contains a description of
the creation of the world, to show that the
world is in harmony with the law, as the law
is with the world, and that the man who
obeys the law is for that reason a citizen
of the world, since he guides his activities
according to the will of Nature (TT/JO? TO
povXrjpa T?}? ^vo-eo)?), by which the entire
universe is directed" (De Opif. Mund. 3).
Here is the famous Stoic maxim, "to live in
harmony with Nature," set in the forefront
of his enterprise. We are therefore not sur-
prised to find in his more detailed account
of the Mosaic legislation that Moses " began
with the creation of the universe, in order to
set forth his most necessary doctrines, first,
that the Father and Creator of the world is the
same as the real legislator ; and second, that
52
THE OLD TESTAMENT
he who is willing to live by these laws will
gladly strive after harmony with Nature, and
will live in accordance with the ordinances of
the universe, bringing his words into agree-
ment with his deeds, and his deeds with his
words" (De Vita Mos. ii. 48). 1 But a
position like this has far-reaching implica-
tions. Hence Drummond is probably justi-
fied in saying that for Philo "the Pentateuch
was simply the Divine Logos resolved into
Logoi, statements of philosophical truth, and
precepts of the moral code" (Philo Judaeus,
ii. p. 308).
When such a point is reached, we are
prepared for the conception of Conscience,
the legislative Reason within us, which is
one of Philo's most remarkable contributions
to the content of ancient ethics. Also, we
1 Bre'hier points out an interesting affinity in this con-
nection between Philo and Cicero (De Republica and
De Legibus) : " They show a similar anxiety to champion
their respective laws by placing them under the aegis of
Natural Law" (Les Idtcs Philosophiques et Religieuses de
Philon^ p. 12). He does not mention that these works of
Cicero have as their main source the Stoic teacher Panaetius
(see Schmekel, Die Mittlere Stoa, pp. 47-63, 67-85). Philo
constantly reveals the influence of Posidonius, the pupil
of Panaetius.
53
PHILO'S RELATION TO
are in no way surprised to find that Philo
transfers the emphasis from the ritual of the
Law to the condition of the soul before God.
" Let me tell you, my friend," he declares,
''that God feels no joy when we bring him
hecatombs, for all things are his posses-
sion. . . . But he delights in pious disposi-
tions and in men who practise holiness, and
from them he gladly receives sacrificial cakes
and grains of barley and the most frugal
offerings as of highest worth. . . . And even
though they bring nothing else, in bringing
themselves, the most perfect completion of
noble character, they present the best sacri-
fice, honouring God their Benefactor and
Saviour with hymns and thanksgivings " (De
Spec. Leg. i. 271 f.). But, as Brdhier points
out, "this inward morality is not purely and
simply morality, it is morality accompanied by
the consciousness of its superhuman, Divine
origin " (op. cit. p. 228). Plainly, such a pro-
cess throws the door wide open for that
universal validity of the Law so dear to the
mind of Philo. He appears to be conscious of
occupying a unique position. " We instruct
54
THE OLD TESTAMENT
in the Divine mysteries those initiates who
are worthy of the most sacred ritual : these
are the people who, without arrogance,
practise true and genuinely unadorned piety,
but we shall never be hierophants for those
in the grasp of an incurable disease, the
stupidity of set phrases, the paltry trifling
with names, the clap-trap of appointed cus-
toms" (De Cherub. 42). The statement
quoted earlier from De Migr. Abr. 89 as
emphasising adherence to the strict letter of
the law, though apparently a direct contra-
diction of this, is really modified by what
immediately follows it. " As it is," he says,
"like people living alone in isolation or
bodiless souls, having no communication
with city or village or family or any human
company, they look down upon the opinion
of the multitude, and search for bare truth
in itself: and yet the sacred word teaches
them to pay respect to estimable public
opinion and to abolish none of those usages
established by inspired men who surpassed
any of our time. . . . It is the part of the
mature soul to share both in being and in
55
PHILO'S RELATION TO
seeming to be : it must aim not only at gaining
esteem in the men's quarters, but also at being
praised at the hearth where the women sit "
(ibid. 90, 96). Thus, one element, at least,
in Philo's concern for observance of the letter
of the law springs from the fear of wounding
the consciences of others, although in certain
moods he can speak of such " weak " brethren
in a tone of disparagement.
It is worth observing how, along a very
divergent line of development, Philo arrives
at a position regarding the Law which ap-
proximates to that of Paul. His religious
instinct, as well as the spiritual atmosphere in
which he moves, leads him away from the
region of ceremonial into that of obedience to
the Divine will, whose appeal he hears with-
in. The Christian Apostle, with surer spir-
itual vision, discovers through his crucial
experience of Christ a Divine Love which
seeks him out and to which his soul can make
answer with adoring gratitude. This heart-
felt devotion takes the place of legal obedi-
ence. But each, in his own manner, has
come to realise the accomplishment of Jere-
56
THE OLD TESTAMENT
miah's epoch-making utterance : " I will put
my law in their inward parts, and write it in
their hearts " (xxxi. 33).
This quotation suggests a reference to
Philo's attitude towards the Prophets. We
have already seen that for him Moses stands
supreme above all the rest. And that is
borne out by the solitary level on which he
places the Pentateuch. Indeed, if we were
content to apply the rough and ready test of
quotation, this subject might be dismissed
without more ado. For in Dr. Ryle's classi-
fication of the material, six pages of extracts
represent the Old Testament prophets as
against two hundred and eighty-eight for the
Pentateuch. Windisch goes the length of say-
ing that Philo was scarcely influenced by them
at all (Die Frommigkeit P kilos, p. 93). We
are rather inclined to apply to them what
Windisch himself says, in the same connection,
of the Psalms, that they affected Philo more
powerfully than he acknowledges (op. cit. p.
94). It is true and surprising that he has not
attempted to allegorise the prophetic writings,
when we remember how current this practice
57
PHILO'S RELATION TO
was among the Fathers of the early Church. 1
Possibly one reason may have been that his
interest did not lie in history, not even in the
historical experiences of his own nation. And
it would have been difficult to offer any kind
of exposition of these glowing utterances,
apart from an earnest participation in the
Hope which pervaded them, or at least in
the expectation of those great eschatological
events which loomed before their minds. We
know that Paul, as a Christian, rediscovered
the prophets, as Jesus had done, and carried
their lofty spiritual intuitions into the life and
thought of the new community. Philo, in
his own special environment, and on the path
of his own religious development, at least
reflects some of the most vital of the prophetic
achievements. The primacy which he assigns
to the inward worship of the spirit over all
sacrificial rites places us at the heart of the
religion of the prophets. It is quite possible,
as Br&iier suggests (pp. cit. p. 227), that his
distance from Jerusalem and its Temple, and
1 See, e.g.) Hatch, Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity ',
PP. 72, 73-
58
THE OLD TESTAMENT
his association of worship with the Syna-
gogue, in part account for this affinity. To
us it appears that the clue lies deeper. We
are not even inclined to lay strong emphasis
on his familiarity with an idealistic type of
philosophy which discountenanced anthro-
pomorphism. Must not his receptiveness
towards the spiritual have been one of the
main factors in creating his philosophic
interest ? Is it not rather his view of God,
and of the grace of God, and of God's
interest in man, which reminds us over and
over again of Hosea and Isaiah ? And does
not this go back to a personal religious ex-
perience, similar in kind to that in which the
prophets became profoundly aware of God ?
59
CHAPTER III
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
P*HE career of Philo belongs to a period
-L notable'for its philosophical syncretism,
and his own position in philosophy is one
of the most characteristic products of his
age. It is, as we shall have occasion to
note, a blending of theories belonging to
various schools, and probably for that reason
he found it easier to insert within its frame-
work much of his inherited Judaism. The
outcome of such a process could never take
shape as a coherent system, and Philo's
scheme of thought reveals ragged edges
on every side.
The question has been keenly discussed
whether Philo himself is directly responsible
for this remarkable synthesis of Platonic and
Stoic doctrine, powerfully coloured by Pytha-
gorean tradition, or whether, as Schmekel
60
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
(Die Mittlere Stoa, pp. 409 ff., 428 ff.) and
others believe, he was predominantly influ-
enced by Posidonius, and especially by the
famous commentary of the latter on Plato's
Timaeus, an exposition which left its mark
on numerous writers of that epoch. The
question is really secondary. For it is
universally admitted that Posidonius, to a
unique extent, summed up in himself the
eclectic tendencies of the time. There can
be little doubt that Philo was acquainted with
his works, but he must also have come into
contact with similar currents of thought
throughout his environment, and in all likeli-
hood he himself contributed more or less to
the syncretistic process. 1
At every turn his allegorical exposition of
the Law contains discussions of problems
which did not present themselves even to
serious Jewish thinkers. Yet in his attempts
to solve these problems, moulded as they
are by Platonic-Stoic speculations, we can
1 Cf. the important evidence for Philo's affinities with the
Hermetic documents in J. Kroll's Die Lehren d. Hermes
TrismegistoS) Minister i. W., 1914.
61
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
frequently discern, from the points where he
places the emphasis or the directions in which
he leads the argument, the effect of his train-
ing in the Old Testament and the pressure of
certain inviolable religious postulates.
(a) God and the World
No more searching criterion can be applied
to the structure of Philo's philosophy, with a
view to discovering the relation of his adopted
metaphysics to his ancestral and still living
faith, than an examination of his attitude
towards the perennial crux for ancient thought,
the connection between Spirit and Matter,
between God and the World. This, it need
scarcely be said, was not a problem for Old
Testament religion. Even in the Wisdom-
sections of Proverbs there is no more than a
suggestion of the metaphysical. The precise
relations of the personified Wisdom to God
and the World are in no sense investigated.
We find little cogency in Siegfried's argu-
ments (Philo von Alexandria, p. 230 f.) for
his assertion that Philo's cosmogony was based
on current Jewish expositions of the work of
62
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
creation. Its main source, whether used
directly or through such a medium as Posi-
donius* commentary, seems to be Plato's
Timaeus? modified by an adaptation of the
Stoic conception of God and considerably
affected by Jewish presuppositions.
Let us briefly consider the facts. " Moses,"
says Philo (De Opif. Mundi, 8 f.), " who had
reached the summit of philosophy and had
received instruction by Divine revelation
concerning the most important aspects of
Nature, recognised that among existing things
there must be, on the one hand, an active
Cause (Spao-riipiov amoz/), on the other a
passive (iraO^Tov), and that the active is the
mind (vofc) of the universe, perfectly pure and
unmixed, better than knowledge, better than
the good in itself and the beautiful in itself,
while the passive has no life (a^v^ov) and is
motionless of itself, but when moved and
shaped and quickened by mind becomes
transformed into the most perfect product, this
1 Mr. Barker points out (Greek Political Theory, p. 352,
note 2) that the Mediaeval period "drew its cosmology
largely" from the Timaeus^ "which . . . was practically
the only work of Plato known directly to the Middle Ages."
63
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
universe of ours." Here we are on familiar
Stoic ground, 1 and perhaps this group of ideas
has influenced Philo more powerfully than
scholars have usually imagined. Some pas-
sages which follow point in another direction.
" The great Moses," he proceeds, " regarding
that which had no becoming as alien to the
visible, ascribed to the invisible which can
only be conceived (vorjrov), as its most appro-
priate attribute, eternity, but to that which was
perceivable by the senses, as its befitting name
genesis " (becoming). This is, of course, the
Platonic distinction between the real and the
phenomenal. But how are these contrasted
magnitudes, the Active and the Passive, the
Eternal and that which comes into being,
related ? Philo grapples with the question as
follows : " Since God in virtue of his Deity
realised beforehand that a beautiful copy
(fiifjLtjfjLa) could not come into being apart from a
beautiful pattern (TrapaSe^aro?), and that none
of the things perceived by sense could be
flawless which was not made after the image
O'T)) of an Archetype and a spiritual
1 See esp. Diog. Laert. vii. 134 ; Seneca, Ep. Ixv. 2.
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
Idea, when he designed to create this
visible world, he first formed the ideal world,
so that he might produce the bodily by the use
of an incorporeal and most Godlike pattern, the
later modelled on the earlier, and intended to
contain as many classes of things (yevrj) ap-
prehensible by the senses as there were ideas
in the archetypal world" (op. cit. 16). This
is perhaps his clearest description of the
Divine plan in creation, and it reflects Plato's
argument in Timaeus, 28 A, B, 29 A. But
there is no mention in it of Matter. We
mainly gather from it the high value Philo
assigned to the notion of an archetypal world
in the process of creation.
Similarly, his conception of the motive of
creation closely follows Timaeus^ 29 E, 30 A,
B. " If any one should desire to investigate
the reason why this universe was created, I
should think he would not be far from the
mark in saying, as indeed one of the ancients
(i.e. Plato) has said, that the Father and
Maker of all things is gracious. On this
account he did not grudge his perfect nature
to matter (oiWa), which possesses nothing
E 65
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
beautiful of itself but has the capacity of be-
coming all things" (pp. cit. 21). In taking up
what is for the Plato of the Timaeus a semi-
mythical standpoint, Philo was really true to
his inherited and most real faith in a good and
gracious God, who was the Source of all
being and the Giver of nothing but benefits
to His creatures, and whose peculiar charac-
teristic is, he affirms, to create (Leg. All. \. 5).
But how did this plan, the outcome of a ben-
eficent purpose, actually work ? Did God
create out of nothing? What place and
meaning does Philo assign to the Matter
(ov<ria) of which he speaks ? "It was un-
ordered of itself, devoid of qualities, without
life, 1 abounding in difference, disagreement,
discord. But it received a change and trans-
formation into what was opposite and best,
order, quality, vitality, likeness, identity, con-
cord, harmony, all the attributes of the higher
Idea " (pp. cit. 22). Again, in commenting
on Gen. i. 31, "God saw all that he had
created, and behold it was very good," he ob-
serves: " God did not praise the matter (v\r)v)
1 Omitting dvcycotof, conjectured by Markland.
66
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
which he had used for creation, lifeless and
discordant and dissoluble and, moreover, per-
ishable of itself and irregular and unequal, but
he praised the products of his own skill,
finished according to a single equal and
regular power" (Quis Rer. Div. H. 160).
And once more : " That opinion which does
away with Ideas confuses everything and
refers it to the ultimate matter (ovaLa) of the
elements which is without form and quality.
But what could be more absurd ? for it was
out of that that God produced all things, not
touching it himself for it was not fitting that
the happy and blessed One should touch un-
defined and confused matter (v\^) but he
used those incorporeal forms, whose proper
name is the Ideas, in order that each class of
things should receive its suitable shape " (De
Spec. Leg. i. 328 f.).
In these passages he seems to use ova La
or v\rj without distinction for Matter, and to
regard it as in some sense existing indepen-
dently of God. It is there in its passivity,
awaiting the action of the Divine Artificer. It
is lifeless and without qualities, confused and
67
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
chaotic. It has to receive the impress of the
ideal Forms, which Philo seems to identify
with the Xoyot of the Stoics, and which proceed
from the Divine mind and are its expressed
thoughts, operating upon this undefined
material. Thus it becomes Cosmos, the
ordered universe.
Did Philo, then, regard Matter as eternally
there ? Such a position would, of course, be
in absolute conflict with Jewish conceptions.
And it is possible to quote a statement which
appears to contradict what has been said
above, De Somn. i. 76 : " As the sun, when
it has risen, reveals the hidden parts of bodies,
so also God, who begat all things, not only
brought them to light, but also created what
before was not in existence, since he was not
only artificer (fy/juovpyos) but also creator
(/trio-n^)." It is true that Matter is not dis-
tinctly mentioned, but surely the sharp
antithesis between bqiuavpyos, the word he
regularly uses for the shaping of chaos into
cosmos, and /c-uVn;?, Creator in the strict
sense, suggests that here he occupies the
position which appealed to a devout Jew,
68
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
that nothing came into being without God.
Further, his description of Matter in Quis
Rer. Div. H. 160, already quoted, as
" perishable of itself" seems to preclude a
distinct hypothesis of pre-existence. 1 The
discrepancy 2 between this and the statements
cited above is not surprising in so eclectic a
thin ker. We_jriaj^eyen_j^
whether Philo ever faced the problem of the
eternity of matter. There is no direct hint
of it in his writings. What concerned him
was God's creative efficacy, and probably he
was content to assume a formles^, lifeless
substratum of things, somehow available to
receive the Divine impress. Possibly, in his
1 Drummond's attempt (Philo Judaeus, i. p. 301 f.) to
prove that here " it is not matter , but ' fabricated matter,'
which is said to be thus corruptible," seems to us to be based
on a misinterpretation of Philo's language, for the adjectives
he attaches to V\T)V, which are of precisely the same type as
he applies to v\rj or ova-la in the other quotations given
plainly qualify vXyv itself, and not the compound expression
dr)fjuovpyr)0iarav vXrjv. After it has been used for creation
(dTjfuovpyrjOf'io-a), i.e. according to Philo, " changed into what
was best " under the operation of the Divine Ideas, Matter
can no longer be called "lifeless, discordant, dissoluble
perishable of itself," as here.
2 Heinze, in his learned treatise, Die Lehre vom Logos
p. 210, note, takes the same view.
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
descriptions of v\rj or ovata he is influenced
by such statements as that of Timaeus, 5 1 A :
" The mother and recipient (VTTO^O^J) of
created things which are visible and by any
sense perceptible we must call neither earth
nor air nor fire nor water . . . but we shall
not err in affirming it to be a kind of invisible
and formless being (eZSo? ), all-receiving, in
some manner most bewildering and hard to
understand, partaking of the intelligible." This
vTroBo^ Plato identifies in Tim. 52 A, B with
empty Space (see Zeller, Plato, p. 304 ff.).
It is not a " substance" posited beside the
Ideas and the phenomenal world. It is for
him non-being. This modification of an
absolute Dualism is, we think, confirmed by
Philo's view of the character of Matter. We
have referred more than once to the epithets
he applies to it. These are practically all of
a negative kind, " unordered, devoid of
qualities, without life, abounding in differ-
ence," and the like. In other words, he
regards it as the formless substratum of cre-
ated things, in itself wholly " passive." Yet
it has " the capacity of becoming all things.' 1
70
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
Is it legitimate to say, as Siegfried (pp.
cit. p. 232) and other scholars do, that for
Philo Matter is evil ? Siegfried's argument
is quite unconvincing. It is derived from
the comment on Gen. i. 31, quoted above,
that " God did not praise the matter used by
him in creation . . . but praised the products
of his skill." The inference goes far beyond
the data. Matter as " devoid of qualities"
lies outside the realm of approval or dis-
approval. It is necessarily something in-
different, a mere potentiality, which attains
positive value only when it is transformed
through the influence of "the higher Idea"
into " quality, vitality, identity," i.e. into
"a product of the Divine skill." We can
find no trace in Philo of any active function
being ascribed to Matter, not even resistance
to the transforming energy of the Artificer as
mediated by His "powers." For the notion
of a restriction of God's creative operations
he does not associate with Matter, as
Drummond relevantly notes (pp. cit. i. p. 31 1),
but with that which has come into being
(761/60-45) in the strict sense. " Not according
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
to the magnitude of his gracious thoughts
for that is without limit or end does he
show forth his benefits, but according to the
capacities of those who are benefited. For
not according to God's power of conferring
good is that of the created thing (TO ^evo^evov)
to receive it. For God's capacities cannot be
measured ; but the created thing, being too
weak to receive the magnitude of them, would
have failed, had not God calculated and
fittingly measured out to each that which was
its portion" (Zte Op. M. 23). The concep-
tion appears in various passages, perhaps most
strikingly in Zte Vita Mos. ii. (iii.) 147,
where, in speaking of the calf offered as a
sin-offering, he finds in this a symbol that
" sin is innate in every one born (iravrl yevrjrw),
even if he be virtuous, by reason of his coming
to birth " (et<? yevea-w). Nothing like this is
ever said about Matter. Plato, we know,
regards the phenomenal as imperfect because
there belongs to it not only the existence im-
parted by the Idea, but that also which makes
it a phenomenon and to that extent limits the
Idea. Philo follows his master in recognising
72
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
that the phenomenon is separated by a vast
chasm from the Creator. One important
passage recalls Plato's belief that " the genera-
tion (yevevw) of this universe was a mixed
creation by a combination of necessity
(avayKtj) and reason "( Ti 'm. 48 A). 1 " God
alone," Philo says, " is most true and genuine
peace, but all matter (ov<ria) t as having come
into being (yevrjrrj) and perishable (<f)0apTi]), is
constant warfare. For God is free activity,
while matter is necessity. Whosoever, there-
fore, is able to leave behind warfare and
necessity and becoming and decay, and to
take refuge with that which has no becoming
or decay, free activity, peace, might rightly
be called the dwelling-place and city of God "
(Z?* Somn. ii. 353). Here he recognises,
without discussion, the fact of an inner
necessity in created things, which sets them
in contrast with the freedom of God. But
this necessity is not the mark of an absolute
dualism. It is inseparable, as in Plato, from
1 Archer Hind here interprets avaymr] as " the laws which
govern the existence of vovs in the form of plurality." This
exposition opens up a peculiarly fascinating vista of
speculation.
73
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
the entrance of Eternal Being, however
mediated, into the realm of the visible. Thus
the stamp of imperfection, from the nature of
the case, lies upon the phenomenon. But that
is far from the position that Matter is evil,
a position which to a thinker who conceived
God as Philo did would have seemed profane.
It may be said, then, that we find no
perfectly clear conception of Matter in Philo.
Sometimes he seems to approach Plato's
notion of Non- Being ; at others we are re-
minded of the Stoic conception of Active
and Passive as expressing modes of a single
substance, which can be separated in thought,
though not in fact, denoting at the one
extreme the highest Divine mind, at the
other the most indeterminate form of Matter :
while some passages cannot be fairly inter-
preted without ascribing Matter to the creative
energy of God. But there is nothing to show
that Philo regarded Matter per se as evil.
This fact is important for its bearing on the
significance of the Pauline antithesis between
Flesh and Spirit, which meets us in the next
phase of our discussion.
74
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
(b) The Constitution of Human Nature
Man is for Philo the crowning example of
the entrance of Spirit or Mind into a material
environment. And he describes both the
process and its consequences in an endless
variety of ways. Fundamentally, man con-
sists of soul (^1^77) and body (ar&fia). "There
are two elements," he says (Leg. Alleg.
iii. 161), "of which we are composed,
namely, soul and body : the body has been
fashioned of earth, but the soul belongs to
the ether, a fragment of the Divine : for
1 God breathed into his face the breath
(Trvevpa) of life, so that man became a living
soul' 15 (Gen. ii. 7). Or, stated more philo-
sophically : " Man is the noblest of animals,
by reason of the higher element among his
component parts, the soul, closely akin to
heaven, which is most pure in its essence,
and to the Father of the universe, as having
received mind (vow), of all things on earth
the most faithful image and copy of the
eternal and blessed Idea" (De Decal. 134).
Equally important for Philo is this religious
75
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
definition : "It is written in the book of
God that man alone is full of good hope. . . .
Hence the definition of us men as a compound
is a rational, mortal animal. But that of
man according to Moses is a condition of
soul which sets its hope on the truly existent
God" (Quod det. pot. 139).
Repeatedly Philo indulges in a speculation
which must have fascinated him, dealing
with a twofold creation of man, based upon
(i) Gen. i. 27 : "God made (eVow/o-ey) man,
after the image (ec<W) of God he made
him," and (2) Gen. ii. 7: " God formed
(eirXaa-ev) man of dust from the earth, and
breathed," etc. We refer to it here as a re-
markable instance of his attempt to combine
the influence of Greek metaphysics with that
of Hebrew tradition. Having quoted Gen.
ii. 7, he continues (De Op. Mund. 134 f.) :
" Most clearly does he show by this that
there is an immense difference between the
man now formed (TrXaa-Qevros) and him who
had earlier come into being (76701/0x05) accord-
ing to the image of God. For the man now
formed was perceptible by sense (a
76
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
already participating in quality, composed of
body and soul, man or woman, mortal by
nature ; while he who was made after the
Divine image was a sort of idea (ISea n<s) or
class or soul, apprehensible only by thought,
incorporeal, neither male nor female, immortal
by nature. Moreover, he says that the con-
stitution of the individual man, perceptible
by sense, was composed of earthly substance
and the Divine breath (irvev^aTo^). For what
he breathed into him was nothing else than a
Divine breath (or, spirit) which took its
departure hither from that blessed and
happy nature for the good of our race. So
that if it is mortal so far as its visible part is
concerned, as regards its invisible part at
least it possesses immortality." l
Bousset and others have tried to link on
1 Bre'hier (op. tit. p. 121 f.) seems to us completely mis-
taken in his interpretation of De Op. M. 69, in which he tries
to show that that passage refers to the Divine Man, but
contradicts the view in De Op. M. 134 f., and Leg. Alleg.
i. 31 ff. For in the first passage, although Philo refers to
Gen. i. 26, he has not before his mind the contrast between
the ideal and the earth-born man at all. He is thinking only
of the latter, as the statement, "for nothing earth-born is
more like to God than man," clearly indicates. And so he
explains the fl<a>v Oeov as referring to man's vovs,
77
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
Philo's ideal man to the early myth of an
Ur-Anthropos, of which they find traces in
various Gnostic documents. The hypothesis
is unnecessary, for the Ideal Man is postulated
by Philo's Platonic theory already described,
of God's method in the creation of the
visible world, according to which things
perceived by sense require a perfect pattern
of which they are copies. The slightest
examination of the data suffices to show the
irrelevance of the attempt made by some
scholars to explain from this notion of a
twofold creation Paul's statement as to the
"first man Adam " and the "last Adam," the
"earthly" (xot/eo?) and the "heavenly"
(Zirovpdvw). The very fact that Paul calls
the "earthly" the "first man," and the
"heavenly" the "second man," while the
whole point of Philo's argument turns on the
priority of the ideal man, is decisive. It is
true that the Apostle describes Christ as " the
image of the invisible God, the first-begotten
of all creation " (Col. i. 15) ; but the remark-
able words which follow : "for in him were
created all things in heaven and on earth, the
78
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
visible and the invisible, . . . and he is
before all things and in him all things
cohere " (i. 16 f.), have an immensely wider
scope than Philo's conception of the ideal
man. If we wish, therefore, to compare St.
Paul's cosmological doctrines with those of
Philo, this famous passage points in the
direction of the Logos, the central principle
which unifies the cosmos : e.g. De Somn.
ii. 45 : " God . . . sealed the universe with
an image and idea, his own Logos."
The speculation to which we have just
referred is, in a sense, typical of Philo's
views on the origin and constitution of
human nature. These often consist of an
attempted blend of Platonic, Stoic, and
Aristotelian conceptions. Often they re-
present Philo's theological bias, to a large
extent moulded by Old Testament ideas.
In the latter case, he does not hesitate to
assume an unmediated influence of God on
human nature, a position at variance with
his philosophical theories, which demand the
employment of mediating forces to bring
together the Infinite and the finite. The
79
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
influence of the Timaeus accounts for one
of his most discordant hypotheses, that of
the pre-existence of souls in the air. In
the semi-mythical tone characteristic of that
dialogue, Plato describes (Tim. 41 D-43 A,
69 A-7O A) how the Creator entrusted to
the " young gods " the confining of souls
who had previously formed part of the
universal Soul in mortal bodies. Philo
(esp. De Gig. 6-15) depicts in his fanciful
narrative the fortunes of these souls, who,
somehow, stooped from their pure dwelling
in the air to incarnation in mortal bodies,
leaving behind them an incorruptible group
of fellow-souls, whom God used as His
ministers for the supervision of mortals,
and whom Moses called " angels." Of those
incarnate, some were able to resist the current
of sensuous life and to return to their original
abode ; the others, surrendering themselves
to restless activities, were engulfed in the
illusory world of wealth, fame and similar
unreal things. Some scholars, e.g. Zeller
(Phil. d. Griechen\ 3te Theil, 2te Halfte,
p. 450 f.), refer Philo's entire conception
80
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
of human sin to this hypothesis. In
our judgment it seems to be largely a
side-issue. And it is far more rewarding
to follow the main trend of his ideas, re-
cognising throughout that these cannot be
adjusted in a coherent system.
No more comprehensive passage could be
selected for our purpose than Quod det. pot.
insid. sol. 82-90. "It follows," he says,
"from our recent analysis, that each of us
is numerically two, an animal and a man : to
each of these has been assigned its proper
spiritual potency, to the one that vital prin-
ciple (fj ZCOTIKT}) by which we live, to the other
the rational (n \oyiKij) in virtue of which we
are rational. In the vital principle mate-
rial things also share, but in the rational
God does not share : he is its source, the
fountain of the primal reason (\6yos). To
that potency, then, which we share with
irrational things, blood was assigned as its
substance (ozWa), but that derived from the
rational principle had for its essence spirit
(or, breath, 7n/e{5/*a), not air set in motion, but
a sort of stamp and impress of the Divine
F 81
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
power, which Moses calls by its proper name,
image (eitcwv), showing that God is the arche-
type of the rational nature, and man its copy
and facsimile, not the animal of twofold nature,
but the noblest aspect (eZSo?) 1 of the soul, which
is called mind (vofa) and reason (Xcfyos). On
this account he makes blood the soul of the
flesh, recognising that the fleshly nature
(17 <rapKos <u<n9) has no part in mind, but
partakes of life just like our whole body.
But the soul of man he names spirit (Trvevfta),
designating as man not the compound, as I
said, but that Godlike product of creation
by which we reason, whose roots he stretched
to heaven. . . . For alone of earthly creatures,
God made man a heavenly plant, bending the
head of the others towards the ground . . .
but making man look upwards. . . . Let us
therefore, who are disciples of Moses, be in
no doubt as to how man received his con-
ception (ewoiav) of the unseen God. . . .
Here are his (i.e. Moses') words : * The
1 It is impossible to find a thoroughly satisfactory render-
ing of eldos here. It means something more fundamental
than "aspect" in its ordinary sense. Perhaps "quality"
might serve.
82
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
Maker prepared for the body no soul suffi-
cient of itself to see its maker, but, considering
the great benefit of the creation, if it might
receive a conception of its Creator ... he
breathed into it from above of his own
divinity.' . . . How, then, is it likely that
so restricted a thing as the human mind . . .
should have room for the vastness of heaven
and the world if it were not an undivided
portion of that divine and blessed Spirit
C^xW? F r no P art f tne Divine is
separated by detachment, it is only an
extension of it."
Perhaps this statement may reflect the
theological more than the philosophical
aspect of Philo's thought, but that accords
with his bent, and reminds us that his Old
Testament training remained fundamental
for his entire speculation. The passage
reveals his essential view of human nature,
the supreme distinction between the rational
and the irrational in man. Before we ex-
amine these two elements more closely, let
us make clear a point which has only been
hinted at in the quotation. "For the con-
83
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
stituting of the soul," he observes, " God
seems to have used as pattern no created
thing, but only ... his own Logos. Of
this, therefore, . . . man was made the fac-
simile and copy, for his face was breathed
into, that part which is the seat of the senses
with which the Creator vitalised (tyvx&o-ev)
the body : but having implanted the reason
as ruler, he handed over the senses to this
governing element, so as to have them at
its service for the apprehension of colours,
sounds, tastes, odours and the like, which,
by itself alone, apart from sense-perception,
it would have been unable to grasp" (Zte
Op. M. 139). To realise the fluidity of
Philo's conceptions, we may compare with
this Leg. Alleg. i. 37 : God is the in-
breathing force, that which receives his
breath is the reason (or, mind, vovsi), that
which is inbreathed is the spirit (irvev^a).
. . . God breathes into this (i.e. vov<i) alone,
but the other parts he does not think worthy
of such action, I mean, the senses and the
faculties of speech and reproduction, for they
are secondary in their capacity. By what,
84
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
then, did these receive (vital) breath?
Plainly by reason (vovs), for that in which
God enabled reason to share, it imparted to
the irrational element of the soul, so that
reason was vitalised by God, and the
material element by reason." Here he pre-
supposes a human reason, which receives
Divine influence, and transmits it for the
establishing of sense-life ; whereas, in the
former passage, sense-life had already been
constituted by God, and awaited the in-
breaking of a higher energy, reason itself.
A similar oscillation of ideas is found re-
garding the function of the Logos in creation.
Commenting, as so frequently, on Gen. i.
26, he says : " The Father of the universe
converses with his own powers, to whom he
assigned the fashioning of the mortal part of
the soul, who copied his skill when he shaped
the rational element in us, judging it right
that the dominating principle in the soul
should be created by the Ruler, but the
subordinate by his subordinates " (De Fnga,
69 f.). The latter creation he calls in the
next sentence rrjv KdK&v yeveo-iv, the former,
85
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
T&V dyaOwv. Here is a curious parallel
to the " young gods" of the Timaeus ; but
the idea, of course, tallies both with Stoic
and even Jewish conceptions of mediation
between the Infinite and the finite.
In the passages quoted above we have a
rough summary of Philo's conception of the
Constitution of Human Nature. The body
(<rw/*a), which has been moulded by the
Divine power, 1 is animated by the soul
(^Xn\ which, however, has to be viewed
under two contrasted aspects. To it belongs
the vital energy (f) om*^ &W/u?, where f. =
Paul's adjective, ^/ru^/co?), the principle of life
in matter, irrational and common to us with
1 Curiously enough, there are exceeding few references
n Philo to the formation of the <ro5/ia by God, and these
are incidental : e.g. Quis Rer. Div. ff. 73 : #f<i> TG> KOI ri
o-co/ia <ra>fiaro{)im KOI irrjyvvvri ; Leg. Alleg. iii. 73 : iva eidys
on Kal ra afyvxa OVK (ov(riq irfrroirjKCv, aXX' dyaGorrjTi, i? KOI
ra f^vxa. Probably this is due to his fundamental notion
of the transiency of the body, and the inferiority which thus
characterises it. In a striking passage he represents the
elements, earth and water, as saying : " We are the matter
of your body : Nature having mixed us, shaped us by her
divine art into the semblance of the human form " (De Spec.
Leg. i. 266). The moulding of the body is here ascribed
to Qvais, almost as if he wished to avoid connecting the
process with God.
86
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
other animals. The essence of this vital
principle is blood. Here he is strictly loyal
to Hebrew ideas; e.g. Lev. xvii. n
(LXX): "for the soul (^i^) of all flesh
(a-apKos) is its blood." On the other hand,
it possesses a rational capacity which links it
to God, that being the image or impress of
the Divine reason. Pictorially, this higher
element is described as breathed into man
by God. As such it is called " spirit" or
" breath" (-Tri/eO^a). 1 But it may also be
named vow or \6yos, for it is really an un-
divided part of the Divine Reason (\6yo$).
As such it is the medium by which we reach
a conception of the unseen God. No doubt
Philo found it easier to conceive this ultimate
relation between the finite and the Infinite,
because he had already posited the Divine
Logos as God's instrument in creation, God's
reason operating in the cosmos almost as a
personal mediator. Occasionally he seems
to presuppose a human vovs, whose origin
he does not explain, which is the receptacle
1 See esp. De Spec. Leg. iv. 123, where blood = ova-la
-, while Divine Spirit = over/a tyvxrjs vofpa?,
87
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
of higher Divine influence, and in which the
senses, elsewhere ascribed to the direct action
of the Creator upon the body, find their vitality.
In any case, the life of sense (alo-^o-*?), accord-
ing to the Divine intention, is subordinated
to the dominant power (TO faqtofu**), a
synonym for reason in its highest capacity,
and is sometimes attributed to the action of
the subordinate " powers" (SiW/iet?) of God.
Let us briefly examine the chief elements
into which Philo analyses human nature,
keeping in view their relation to parallel
phenomena in the New Testament. The
body (o-/-ia) is regularly described as fashioned
from earth (e.g. Leg. Alleg. iii. 161), and as
such is, of course, inferior to the reason which
informs it. It is peculiarly the basis of the
sense-life (e.g. Quod det. pot. 109) and of the
passions (e.g. Quis Rer. Div. D. 268 : " Alien
to the understanding are the passions, which
belong truly to the body, springing out of the
flesh in which they have their roots "). Since
the desires which are fostered by the senses
and the force of the passions, as a matter of
experience, war against the higher aspirations
88
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
of the rational element in the soul, Philo con-
stantly identifies himself with the Neo-Pytha-
gorean position that the body is the source
of evil. " Away, my friend/' he exclaims,
" from that earthly vesture of yours, escape
from that accursed prison, the body, and from
its pleasures and lusts, which are your jailors "
(De. Migr. Abr. 9). The passage gives a
clue to Philo's standpoint. It is not the
body which is inherently bad. But the life
of the senses, which finds its material, so to
speak, in the physical organisation, is irra-
tional, and nothing but its subordination to
the Divine element of reason can preserve the
soul from going astray. Accordingly, Philo
anticipates St. Paul in using o-dpi;, " flesh,"
to denote the lower side of human nature as
realised and felt in an ordinary experience. 1
Only here we come upon an important differ-
ence. In De Gigant. 40 this noteworthy
1 Lietzmann, Rbmerbrief^ p. 37, seems to us completely
astray when, in discussing the use of <ra/> by Philo and Paul,
he asserts that " in Philo it is viewed entirely from the intel-
lectual standpoint, in Paul from that of pure religion." In
our judgment Philo is here far more directly influenced by
religious experience than by any philosophical theory.
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
utterance occurs : " Contrast the good of the
flesh with that of the soul (^ux%) and that of
the whole. That of the flesh is irrational
pleasure, but that of the soul and of the
whole is the reason of the universe, even God."
Here <m/>f and ^x 7 ? are set in antithesis,
a usage never found in Paul. But in the
same treatise ( 29) he says : " The supreme
cause of lack of knowledge is the flesh and
intimate association with the flesh. Indeed
God himself acknowledges this when he
affirms that ' because they are flesh' (Gen.
vi. 3) the Divine Spirit (TTVCV^O) cannot abide
with them." This is a usage extraordinarily
akin to Paul's regular contrast between <ra/>f
and TTvev/jua. It seems highly probable that
Philo in using irvev^a for the Divine influence
or action upon men, a usage foreign to earlier
Greek thought, followed the LXX, which
regularly translates ruach, " spirit" (generally
of God), by irvev^a. We have little doubt
that Paul's employment of it in the same
sense also originated there. But Philo differs
from Paul in employing a-upa far more fre-
quently than crdpj; for the irrational part of
90
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
human nature, which is liable to temptations
to sin through its sense-life ; and Philo does
not seem to individualise irvevpa in Paul's
sense of man's higher, rational element (vow)
inspired by the Spirit of God.
From what has been said it is, further,
clear that Philo uses ^vyy in a sense for-
eign to Paul. That is to say, for him -^i^'
is often equivalent \ to vov? or -m/ei^a, the
highest element in human nature, an element
which can be distinguished from mere animal
life. Examples have been given above. Paul
rarely uses ^v^n except in the vague sense of
" person " or "personality," * for which nephesh
constantly stands in the Old Testament, and
is generally rendered in this connection by
i/rv%?7 in the LXX. Three or four times he
employs it, also following a usage of the
LXX, in the popular sense of "heart" or
"mind," with no emphasis on any psycho-
logical nuance. Probably the phrase, " your
spirit, soul, and body " (i Thess. v. 23), is
more colloquial than anything else, and
certainly it is quite unfit to prop up the
1 About eight instances.
91
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
theory of a trichotomy of human nature
which has been based upon it. There only
remains i Cor. xv. 45, where he care-
fully follows the LXX of Gen. ii. 7, which
translates n;n && by et<? \frvxnv waav. Here
he deliberately contrasts ^v^ with Trvevpa, and
it becomes clear that in his view ^vyy stands
for the life of man as untouched by the Holy
Spirit. Of course, this "life" for Paul as for
Philo was due to Divine operation, but under
the influence of his central conception of the
Trvevpa as God's special gift to the Christian
believer, it lay close to Paul's hand to em-
phasise ^v^r) as the " natural" element
common to every human being, as contrasted
with the " supernatural," which stood supreme.
Plainly the adjective ^V^LKO^ which he uses
in i Cor. xv., in direct connection with the
quotation from the LXX just discussed,
and once in i Cor. ii., where it also stands
in sharp antithesis to irvevfiaTLKo^ has its
meaning determined by this contrast with
TTvevpa. In this case, again, we note the
divergence in Philo. He employs i/ri^/w?
repeatedly, in all sorts of connections. In a
92
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
few instances it applies to the ordinary inner
life of men, whether viewed as physical, or as
the sphere of feeling and other forms of con-
sciousness. 1 More often it occurs in the
higher sense of " spiritual," which is, of course,
totally alien to Paul. 2 But it is easy to see
how readily his use of the term might glide
into that of Paul if he had occasion to employ
it in contrasting the irrational with the rational
part of the soul.
In Philo, vow is often interchangeable with
^ V X^ although, of course, it usually stands
for the higher aspect of the soul. Here Paul
approximates to his older contemporary. For
he regards vow as an important element in the
natural equipment of man, his highest capacity
apart from the Divine gift of the
1 E.g. (a) De Op. M. 66 : (T(op.ariKfjs j) ^VXIKTJS ova-ias ; (b)
Leg. Alleg. ii. 85 : TOV ^vx^ov o^Xoi/ <TKe8d<ravTos 6cov, of the
tumult of the sense-life, but with no necessary suggestion
of evil ; (c) ibid. ii. 22, where the powers of the vovs are
described as exriK^i/, tfrvriKrjv, V/O^IKT;!/, \oyiKTjv, d(-avoijriKrjv.
2 E.g. Leg. Alleg. i. 97 : rpo<pijs ^VX<-KTJS ; ibid. iii. 171 :
({KOTOS KOiva)VTJ(rai \^v^tKoi) ; ibid. 145 '. TO>V -v^u^tKcoi/ ayaOvv ;
Quod .det. pot. : rbv ^VXIKOV Bavarov ; De Spec. Leg. iv. 75 :
K\r]pov6p.ovs rov -^VXIKOV irXovTov. With this use agrees the
only example in the LXX, 4 Mace. i. 32, where desires are
divided into higher, ^UXIKCU, and lower, <ra>/*cmKat.
93
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
Thus in Rom. vii. 25 he contrasts i>o{5s with
o-apf, an antithesis in which from his stand-
point ^v^ could not have replaced it. On
the other hand, except in a quotation from
Isa. xl. 13 (LXX), he clearly distinguishes
voits from Trvevpa. For while vovs is the most
spiritual element in the " natural " man, it
has to be renewed (Rom. xii. 2). It still
belongs to the life of the <ra/>f (Col. ii. 18).
When renewed, it exercises a most important
function. It becomes the rational faculty in
the new life of the Spirit, and as such regu-
lates the exuberant enthusiasm of the pneu-
matic life ( i Cor. xiv. 14 f., 19). As passages
which we have quoted show, Philo uses
TTvevfjia in a much larger range of meanings
than Paul. In the former it is sometimes
equivalent to reason, e.g. Quod del. pot. 84,
where he describes it as the energy of the ^u^,
" that Godlike product by which we reason."
It also represents the activity of the senses
(e.g. De Fuga y 182), where it is associated
with sight, hearing, smell, etc. Finally, it
denotes the Divine Spirit in a unique sense,
manifested in men of notable wisdom (e.g.
94
FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS
De Gig. 23) or prophetic power (e.g. Quis Rer.
Div.H. 255). This last usage, directly based
on the Old Testament, is closely akin to that
of Paul in the Christian sphere, which is
mainly the result of personal religious experi-
ence, and so irvev^a becomes the terminus
technicus for the Divine life in the believer.
95
CHAPTER IV
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
THE earnest longing of men for God is
recognised by Philo from various
standpoints. Sometimes it is viewed under a
more abstract aspect, rather as the satisfaction
of the intellect than of the whole nature.
"There is nothing better," he says, "than
to search after the true God, even if the
finding of him should escape human capacity,
seeing that even eagerness of desire to un-
derstand him in itself produces unspeakable
pleasures and delights" (De Spec. Leg. i.
36). Similarly, in De Con/us. Ling. 97 :
"It befits those who would company with
knowledge to strive after a vision of the
Existent, and if they cannot attain this, at
least of his image, the most sacred Logos,
and next in order of that most perfect of his
works, this universe of ours." But in other
96
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
passages we find a far more personal note.
"To what soul," he asks, "was it given to
put evil out of sight, save to that to which
God was revealed, the soul which he deemed
worthy of his unspeakable mysteries? For
he says, Shall I hide from Abraham, my
servant, the things I do ? True, O Saviour,
for thine own works thou dost show to the
soul that yearns for goodness, and hidest
none of them from her. For this reason she
is able to flee from evil . . . and unceasingly
to extirpate hurtful passions " (Leg. Alleg. iii.
27). Again, commenting on God's word
(Gen. xlvi. 4), " I will go down with thee,"
he expands as follows : "This I do because
of my pity for thy rational nature, so that
by my guidance thou mayest be brought up
out of the Hades of passion to the Olympian
abode of virtue, for to all suppliant souls I
have made known the way that leads to
heaven, preparing for them a thoroughfare
that they might not grow weary of their
journey " (De Post. Cain. 31). Let us inquire
what he means by "the Hades of passion,"
and how souls are to flee from evil.
G 97
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
(a) The Meaning of Sin
Philo's conception of sin is indissolubly
associated with his view of men's bodily
nature which we have just examined. Here,
as in the case of all his positions, we must
not be influenced by isolated passages, but by
the trend of his thought as a whole. Thus,
a statement like Leg. Alleg. iii. 71 : "The
body is evil by nature and plots against the
soul," is a bare summary which in no way
exhibits the processes of Philo's reflection.
Nor do we get upon the right track either by
pointing decisively to his theory of the descent
of souls into human bodies or by emphasising
the frequent descriptions of the Fall of man
in Paradise. The former, as already noted,
appears to us a side-issue for Philo. In
the latter he probably uses the figure of
Adam as a sort of inclusive personification
of humanity, much as Paul did in Rom.
v. 12 ff. Philo really starts from his ex-
perience of human nature in himself and
from his observation of his fellow-men, the
precise standpoint of Paul in all that [he
98 !.,i
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
affirms regarding "the flesh." Of course
Philo, from the texture of his mind, is com-
pelled to theorise on the subject. But that
is subsequent to his acquaintance with the
conflicts of the moral life. The personal
note, so poignant in some of his utterances,
gives the real key to his starting-point : e.g.
Leg. Alleg. iii. 211: " There is another kind of
groaning found in those who repent and are
distressed because of their past waywardness,
who exclaim, Wretched men that we are,
who have for so long been stricken, without
knowing it, by the disease of senselessness,
folly and wrong pursuits." We naturally
compare Paul's famous ejaculation (Rom.
vii. 24) : " Wretched man that I am, who shall
deliver me from the body of this death ? "
Bearing in mind, then, the point from
which he starts, we must further note that
there are certain presuppositions about which
he never argues. The body is, as we have
seen, for Philo as for Paul, a clog upon the
higher nature. He would have identified
himself whole-heartedly with the Apostle's
self-revelation : " I beat my body black and
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MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
blue and make it my slave" (i Cor. ix. 27).
This is not because its material is evil, but
because it is indissolubly bound up with the
life of sense. That life is largely at the
mercy of pleasure (f)ovrj), an irrational and
seductive passion. Pleasure is the serpent,
"an abominable thing in itself" (Leg. Alleg.
iii. 68), which " beguiles and leads astray
the reason" (ibid. 64). The "love of
pleasure" is "ungodly" (ibid. iii. 211).
So that when Philo speaks of sinning as
"innate in every man who has come into
being" (De Vita Mas. ii. (iii.) 147), when
he describes as "without limit" "the things
that stain the soul " (De Mut. Nom. 49), he
has above all else in view the appeal of
passion to man's nature. " Passion," he de-
clares, "is the fountain of sins" (Quod Deus
sit immut. 72). But there is nothing me-
chanical in the working of this appeal. The
allurements of passion present themselves
before the will. Philo assumes man's power
of choice. "Moses," he observes, "does
not follow the opinion of some impious men
who say that God is the cause of evils, but
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MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
he attributes them to our own hands, mean-
ing by that our own efforts and the voluntary
turning of the mind toward the worse "
(Quod det. pot. 122). Involuntary sin occu-
pies a position between right and wrong
(Quaestt. in Gen. iv. 64). Philo describes
his view of such sin with perfect clearness.
"As long," he says, "as we only form un-
worthy conceptions by mere imagination, we
are not responsible for our thoughts, for the
soul can have a direction given to it involun-
tarily. But when action follows deliberation
that deliberation may be put to our account, for
in this way especially voluntary error is re-
vealed " (Quod det. pot. 97). Accordingly he
can allege that "mind and reason are, as it were,
the home of vice and virtue, in which it is their
nature todwell" (De Op. M. 73). Man deliber-
ately subordinates the higher rational life
of the soul to the sway of irrational desire,
instead of following the counsel of Moses
that we "ought to cut out and root up
passion from the soul" (Leg. Alleg. iii. 129).
What is the bearing of this upon God ?
It is true, as Windisch (Die Frommrgkeit
ICI
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
Philos, p. 98) observes, that in Philo guilt
before God is overshadowed by the sense of
man's nothingness as a creature in the Divine
presence. Yet there are hints of something
more positive. " God was justly angry at
them," he says, speaking of the generation
described in Gen. vi., "seeing that the living
creature which seemed to be the noblest and
had been judged worthy of kinship with him-
self, because of sharing with him in reason,
eagerly followed evil and every kind of evil,
when it ought to have practised goodness "
(De Abr. 41). Man, that is to say, knew the
ideal and deliberately ignored it. God en-
trusted to him the gifts of soul, speech and
the sense-life. But by far the majority of
of men, under the influence of self-love
(<t>t,\avTia), appropriated these for themselves.
They had their just reward in souls defiled
by irrational passions and held in the grasp
of innumerable vices : in speech whetted
against the truth, hurtful to those who heard
it, disgraceful to those who uttered it : in a
sense-life insatiable, heedless of all control-
ling influence (Quis Rer. Div. H. 106 ff.).
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MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
This self-love, which prompts to the abuse
of men's God-given powers, reveals itself
flagrantly in the form of riJ<o9, overweening
vanity, which is again and again emphasised
by Philo. He asserts that " TV$O<; is the
artificer of many other evils, of false preten-
sion, of arrogance, of inequality. ... By
reason of rO^o? even Divine things are
utterly scorned " (De Decal. 5 ff.). This en-
tire attitude means defiance of God, and it
may become so hardened that doom is in-
evitable. Commenting on the subject of
vows and pledges by which maidens, wives,
widows, or divorced wives bind their souls, as
discussed in Num. xxx., he makes a psycho-
logical application of the law's prescriptions.
The understanding can bind itself down to
courses which are for ever incurable. It
will thus not only be widowed of knowledge
but divorced from it. " That is to say : the
soul which is bereft of good, but not yet
divorced from it, can by steadfastness find
terms of reconciliation with right reason, her
lawful husband ; but that which has been
once divorced and made to live apart as un-
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MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
faithful has lost her chance for ever and can
no more return to her old home" (Quod del.
pot. 148 f. Cf. the stern utterance of Qu.
in Gen. i. 70). Yet, though the only fitting
punishment for the human race was "that it
should be extirpated on account of its in-
gratitude towards God, its benefactor and
Saviour, God in his mercy took pity upon
men, and moderated their penalty " (De Op.
M. 169). Necessarily, however, the Divine
grace presupposes minds and hearts which
through repentance and humility can respond
to its workings.
In theory, Philo may at times be disposed
to associate wrong action with man's constitu-
tion as a transient being, just as there are
passages in St. Paul which appear, on the
surface, to connect sin with man's physical
heritage. But in reality, for both, sin means
an assent of the will to the lower, selfish
impulses, in opposition to those which point
God-wards. The actual human experience
which they both know presents the spectacle
of a practical rather than a theoretical dualism.
Wrong-doing in the strict sense is not in-
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MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
voluntary, the result of ignorance. It is the
turning away from God in favour of self,
which Philo calls T/OOTTT?. The situation is
that of a being akin to God, participating in
the Divine Logos or Thought, and yet ex-
posed to the assaults of pleasurable cravings,
with which his reason identifies itself and
makes them the ends of living. Men's inner
life, that is to say, is, " mingled of opposing
qualities, right and wrong, base and honour-
able, good and evil " (Qu. in. Gen. iv. 203).
Philo quotes with approval the saying of
Epicharmus : " Whosoever yields but slightly
to evil is a very good man : for no one is/
guiltless, no one is exempt from reproach."/
Hence the main task, if any spiritual progress)
is to be made, must be the attainment of
self-knowledge. " Hither, you who are
stuffed full of vanity and indiscipline and
braggart boasting, you pretenders to wisdom,
who claim not only to know clearly every-
thing that is, but also, in your hardihood,
venture to declare their causes, as if you had
been present at the creation of the world. . . .
Once for all, let alone these other concerns :
105
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
know yourselves, and declare plainly of what
nature you are" (De Migr. Abr. 136 f.).
(b) Conscience
At this point in his reflection Philo enunci-
ates with spiritual insight and power a truth
of the inner life which up till now had been
but dimly foreshadowed, viz. the existence of
the moral consciousness, a criterion of action
placed at men's disposal, with boundless
possibilities for the building up of human
character in accordance with the Divine
purpose. He has, indeed, no formal dis-
cussion of Conscience and its functions, but
his frequent references to its commanding
position within the soul reveal its importance
for his thought. Here, as invariably, his
utterances are found to fluctuate, but their
general drift is easy to grasp.
There are several important passages in
which his view of Conscience closely ap-
proaches Paul's conception of vovs, the higher
element in human nature which approves of
the good (e.g. Rom. vii. 23, 25). This Paul
occasionally designates o e<rw avdpwiros, "the
106
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
man within." It assents to the Divine
order (Rom. vii. 22); it is renewed in the
Christian (2 Cor. iv. 16); it is the recipient
of the power of the Spirit (Eph. iii. 16). In
other words, it is the connecting link between
the " natural " and the " supernatural." Now,
in De Agricult. 9, Philo asks: "What can
be the man in each of us but the vow which
is wont to reap the benefits of those things
which have been sown and planted ? " A
further stage in the working out of the idea
appears in De Fuga, 131 : "These are the
utterances of the genuine man, who is (read-
ing with Cohn, 09 eVrt) the testing power
(eXey^o?) of the soul, who, when he sees the
soul in perplexity making inquiry and search,
takes care that she may not go astray and
miss the right path." It should be noted
that eXey^o? is for Philo an almost technical
description of the function of Conscience.
The full-fledged conception is found in Quod
del. pot. 22 f . : "If the vision of their soul
had not been defective, they would have
recognised that the precise and characteristic
name of the genuine man is just ' man '
107
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
, the proper designation of the well-
knit and rational understanding (Siavoias).
This man who dwells in the soul of each is
found to be, on the one hand, ruler and king,
on the other, judge and umpire in the contests
of life, and at times taking the place of
witness or accuser he tests us invisibly
within, not allowing us to open our mouth,
but laying hold of and bridling with the
reins of conscience the stubborn and rebellious
course of the tongue, and thus brings it to a
halt." Here Philo assigns to the rational
understanding the function of moral judg-
ment, regarding it no doubt in its unsullied
character as the commanding element in the
inner world of the soul. Hence it is not a
mere accommodation to popular usage, as
Breliier supposes (pp. cit. p. 302), when, in
De DecaL 87, Philo describes as innate
(</A7re(v/tft)9) to every soul the " testing
power" (o 6X67x09) that dwells with us, that
is always true to its character of hating evil
and loving good, that, as accuser, blames,
accuses, frowns upon us, and again as judge,
teaches, warns, exhorts us to change our
108
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
ways. That is surely one permanent aspect
of the situation. It entirely accords with the
well-known statement of De Op. M. 146 :
" Every man, so far as his understanding
(Sidvoia) is concerned, is intimately related to
the Divine Logos, an impress or particle or
effulgence of the blessed nature, while as
regards his bodily status he is closely akin
to the whole cosmos." This is what Paul
means when he speaks of man as the
"image" and " reflection" of God (i Cor.
xi. 7). Were this not true, man would be
in the position of the irrational creatures,
having no spiritual affinity to the Divine,
and finally excluded from fellowship with God.
But Philo, like Paul, recognises the
irrational tendency in human nature to follow
the worse, although it knows the better.
Therefore man's mind has to be reinforced
in its moral aspirations by the Divine energy
itself. And so, repeatedly, Philo identifies
Conscience with the Logos. Perhaps the
most notable passage is Quod Deus sit immut.
134 ff. : " So long as the Divine Logos has
not come into our soul as into its abode, the
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MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
deeds of the soul are blameless : for its
guardian or father or teacher or whatever we
ought to call that Priest by whom alone it
can be warned and controlled remains far
away from it : and those who sin through
ignorance, without knowledge of what things
they ought to do, receive pardon. For they
do not even apprehend their actions as sins.
Indeed they even suppose that they are
acting rightly in cases where they commit
great errors. But when the Priest who
genuinely tests us enters into us like a
perfectly pure ray of light, then we recognise
the unrighteous designs harboured in our
soul and our culpable . . . deeds. All these
the consecrated testing Power, having shown
their defilement, bids us pack away and
strip off, that he may behold the house
of the soul clean, and if any diseases have
arisen in it, may heal them." And later, in
the same context, having compared the Logos
to a prophet, on the basis of i Kings xvii. 18,
he continues : " For this inspired being, in
the grasp of an Olympian love, and goaded
by the irrestisible stings of his Divine frenzy,
no
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
entering into the soul, creates there the
remembrance of her old wrong-doings and
sins, not that she may again yield to them,
but that with loud lamentations and weeping
she may come back from her former wander-
ing, hating its issue, and may follow the
promptings of the Logos-prophet, who is the
interpreter of God."
Here the clearest emphasis is laid upon
Conscience as the Divine agent in the soul,
so illuminating its actions that their real
character cannot escape detection. Philo
never inquires whether this is a gradual
process, accompanying or constituting the
moral growth of the individual, or a sudden
experience, which might be compared to
Paul's remarkable account (Rom. vii. 7 ff.)
of his awakening to the real meaning of sin.
The opening sentences of the passage in-
evitably remind us, up to a certain point, of
what the Apostle says about sin not being
reckoned to a man so long as no moral
standard like the law confronts him. But
for Philo the activity of conscience is wholly
and permanently salutary, while by Paul the
1 1 1
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
religion of law comes to be regarded merely
as a makeshift.
Bre*hier (op. cit. p. 301) observes that the
function ascribed by the Stoics to the Wise
Man as a consultant on the subject of moral
health and progress is by Philo entrusted to
Conscience. This marks a real epoch in the
history of ethics. The Greek schools had
been chiefly concerned with the question of
the highest good for man. When, in their
later phases, they came to discuss the source
of moral obligation, the Stoics, who led the
way, found the authoritative norm in reason.
That doctrine is, as we have seen, recognised
by Philo, but in a very real sense he trans-
forms it on lines akin to, although not
immediately derived from, Old Testament
religion. For we may at least say that
Jeremiah's great conception of the Divine
law or teaching written in men's hearts
approximates to Philo's position. Essentially,
for Philo, Conscience involves the impact of
God upon the soul. It is the assessor in the
nature of the inner life (De Jos. 47 f.). It is
an angel who, while it questions the soul in
112
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
order to reveal to it the truth, has full know-
ledge of the situation (De Fuga, 203 f.). It
is identified with the vision of the good which
often hovers suddenly over the most worth-
less, but which they are unable to grasp or to
retain. And this vision is nothing else than
a visitation of the Spirit of God (De Gig.
210 f.). This last passage brings out clearly
what is suggested by Philo's entire conception
of conscience, its remarkable affinity to the
idea of the "advocate" (Tra/oa/cX^ro?) in such
places as John xvi. 8 : " When he has come,
he will convict (e'X<fyf) the world as regards
sin and righteousness and judgment " : and
xix. 17 : " He will give you another advocate
to be with you for ever, the spirit of truth."
There is a remarkable passage in Philo which
gives an almost startling corroboration of
this. When dealing (De Spec. Leg. i. 235 ff.)
with legal enactments bearing on the case of
those who have defrauded their neighbour
and afterwards confessed their sin, he says :
" After making atonement to the person he
has wronged, Moses enjoins that he should
go to the holy place, to ask for remission of
H 113
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
his sins, bringing with him an irreproachable
advocate (Trapd/cXrjTos), the power which has
searched his soul, 1 which delivered him from
a hopeless calamity, ridding him of a mortal
disease and transforming him into a condition
of perfect health."
We have seen that the main function of
Conscience in Philo is e'Xey^os, testing or
convicting. And for him its witness is in-
corruptible and absolutely true (De Post.
Cain. 59). Its activity at least points in the
direction of Paul's great doctrine of the Spirit
as the Divine life in the Christian, although,
of course, that presupposes a background of
experience which Philo would scarcely have
understood. Indeed, Philo seems to identify
Conscience with God himself. " If the
understanding, supposing that it can do
wrong without the knowledge of the Deity,
as if he were not able to see everything,
commits sin stealthily and in secret places,
and afterwards, whether of itself or at the
suggestion of some one, perceives that it is
impossible for anything to be concealed from
1 TOP Kara ^VXT
114
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
God, and thus unfolds itself and all its habits,
and bringing them forth as to the sunlight
shows them to the Overseer of all things,
asserting its penitence for these wrong
opinions which formerly it cherished through
lack of knowledge ... it is purified and
benefited and assuages the just wrath of
that testing, punitive Power which stands
over it " (De Somn. i. 9 1 )
Reviewing, then, all the evidence we have
examined, it may be truly affirmed that Philo
regards Conscience as a real factor in
awakening man's aspirations after God. An
indispensable condition, therefore, of reaching
God is the lowliness of the man who is able
justly to estimate himself as in the Divine
presence. " I have learnt to measure my
own nothingness and to admire the exceeding
excellence of thy benefits. And when I
perceive myself to be but ' dust and ashes '
and whatever can be more despicable, then I
have the courage to meet thee, having become
humble, cast down to the ground" (Quis
Rer. Div. H. 29).
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
(c) Repentance
If Conscience stimulates the soul to moral
progress, the fundamental step in such
progress is Repentance. Philo definitely
associates this change of mental and moral
direction with the action of conscience.
When discussing, on the basis of Lev.
vi. 2 ff, the case of a man who has sworn
falsely regarding a wrong he has done his
neighbour, he remarks that the man, having
imagined that he has escaped the charge
brought against him, " becomes his own
accuser, being convicted inwardly by con-
science, and reproaches himself for his false-
hood, and making open confession of his
wrong-doing, asks pardon." In such a case
he is bidden to prove the genuineness of his
repentance, not by words but by deeds. And
Philo points out that the sin-offering he has
to present is the same in kind as the peace-
offering (rov <ra)TrjpLov Ovvlcu), "for in a sense
the man who repents is saved, turning aside
from that disease of the soul which is more
serious than bodily passions " (De Spec. Leg.
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MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
i. 235 ff.). This instance shows his view of
the direct effect of conscience upon the will
in the matter of repentance. Probably that
remains a presupposition. But his delicate
moral observation plays on the subject from
varying standpoints, which suggests that he
is influenced not by theory but by practical
experience.
The main root of Repentance is the dis-
covery of the soul that it has been turning
aside from God after lower aims, such as
pleasure. At this discovery, "the man,
beholding God, laments over his own de-
sertion . . . and his soul cries out, imploring
the Almighty to save him from further
deviation and to accomplish his perfecting "
(Leg. All. iii. 211 ff.). Repentance therefore
begins in grief of spirit. " Those whogenuinely
repent are afflicted by reason of their former
course of life, and in their grief at its wretched-
ness they weep, they groan, they sigh " (Qu.
in Exod. i. 15). Sometimes the emphasis is
laid on the causality of the Divine Mercy,
which is no doubt assumed by Philo in all
the operations of conscience. " He resolved
117
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
on confession and pardon at an earlier time :
now ... he appoints repentance, not scoffing
at nor reproaching in any way those who are
thought to have sinned, making possible the
ascent of the soul from vice to goodness"
(Qu. in Gen. i. 82). Whatever be the
immediate stimulus, a primary stage in the
process of repenting consists in confession of
sins. "If ... in shame they turn with
their whole soul, reproaching themselves for
their waywardness, declaring and confessing
all their sins, in the first place with purified
mind before conscience . . . and then with
their lips . . . they shall obtain the favour
of the gracious God, the Saviour, who has
imparted to the race of men his choice and
chiefest gift, intimate kinship with his own
Logos" (De Exsecr. 163). But besides the
negative element of penitence, repentance
involves the positive longing for goodness.
11 Following upon the victory gained by hope,
there is a second contest in which the repent-
ing soul is the competitor, for though it has
not participated in the unchanging nature
. . . which always remains the same, yet
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MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
suddenly possessed by a passion ... for
the nobler, it hastens to abandon its habitual
greed and wrong-doing, and to make its abode
with self-control and righteousness and the
other virtues" (De Praem. et Poen. 15).
In the passage just quoted Repentance is
made to follow Hope. This is a favourite
position of Philo's. Hope he regards as the
supreme characteristic of the human soul
(De Abr. 8), in the sense of the expectation
of good things. Its precise relation to re-
pentance is described in a passage where
Philo groups them both with complete attain-
ment (reXeio-n;?). But to understand the
significance of this, we must turn to an
earlier statement. "It must be noted," he
says, "that repentance is ranked second to
complete attainment, as a change from sick-
ness to health ranks second to a perfectly
sound body. Thus uninterrupted complete-
ness in virtue stands closest to Divine power,
while the improvement that has gone on for
some time is the special blessing of a well-
ordered soul, refusing to continue among
childish things, but with full-grown and
119
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
manly bent, seeking a condition of poise,
and following the vision of the good " (De
Abr. 26). In the light of these words we
can appreciate the later utterance: "The
perfect man is complete from the beginning :
he who has repented is half-made, having
devoted the former period of his life to evil,
and the later to virtue, to which he ...
transformed his abode ; while he that hopes
... is defective, aiming always at the good,
but having not yet been able to reach it,
resembling sailors who, though eager to put
into port, are still at sea, unable to get to
anchorage " (ibid. 47). Probably, as in the
case of the Wise Man of the Stoics, the
position of the T&ejo? is for Philo an ideal
rather than an attainment. For, in another
important passage where again he assigns to
Repentance the second rank, he remarks :
" To commit no sin at all is peculiar to God,
possibly also to a Divine man, but to turn
from sin to a blameless life is the part of a
discerning man who recognises what is wholly
profitable" (De Virtut. 177). In drawing
an ingenious distinction between the first
120
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
and the second return of the dove to TNJoah,
he uses the legend to emphasise the gradual
process of repentance. " To find repentance
is not easy, but an excessively difficult and
toilsome business " : and he proceeds to
illustrate the stages in the process by the
olive-leaf and the dry twig (LXX of Gen.
viii. n) in the dove's mouth (Qu. in Gen. ii.
42 f.). We do not touch on an interesting
feature of his longest discussion of repentance
(De Virtut. 175 ff.), in which he deals pri-
marily with the turning of idol-worshippers
to the one God, and shows that this involves
the exchange of folly for insight and of wrong-
doing for righteousness. The final result of
Repentance, which unifies the life of the soul,
is that its subject becomes at one and the
same time beloved of God and a lover of Him.
(d) Faith
If we were attempting to discuss the
genetic development of the Christian soul
on New Testament lines, it would be natural,
after estimating the significance of Repent-
ance, to deal with the fundamental religious
121
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
relationship of Faith. In a sense this is also
legitimate for the student of Philo. But that
sense must be made clear. Repentance, as
we have seen, means that conscience has
been at work, unveiling to the soul its own
unworthiness, and urging it on to a nobler
course. Faith, in Philo, seems to presuppose
this background. Whatever else it .may be,
it is at least "an amelioration of the soul at
all points," but "of the soul resting and
established on the Cause of all things, who
is able for anything, but who wills the best "
(De Abr. 268). The latter part of this de-
scription embodies much of Philo's doctrine
of Faith.
It is important to notice that he is largely
guided in his conception by the Old Testa-
ment report of Abraham's faith, and especi-
ally by Gen. xv. 6 : " Abraham believed
(eVwTTevae) God, and it was counted to him
for righteousness, "a passage which is equally
prominent in Paul, and seems to have taken
an outstanding place in Synagogue theology
(see, e.g., Mechilta, ed. Winter u. Wtinsche,
p. no). That fact, which has numerous
122
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
parallels throughout his works, reminds us
that some of his observations on Faith are
not necessarily typical of his thought, but due
rather to the details which happen to make
up some passage in the story of Abraham. 1
But in the main his own view accords with
the Old Testament account of the patriarch's
faith. And his description of it is most
significant for his entire outlook. " He first
is said to have believed God, since he was
the first to possess an unwavering and stable
notion (inroK^iv) that the sole Cause is the
highest, and that his providence is over the
universe and all that belongs to it. So
having come to possess faith, the most stable
of the virtues, he entered into possession of
all the others along with it" (De Virtut.
216). This, although expressed in different
terminology, is in remarkable agreement with
Paul's interpretation of the same story, that
1 This consideration takes from the force of Dr. Bigg's
remark (Christian Platonists of Alexandria, p. 26) that
in Quis Rer. Div. H. 21, Philo associates Faith with a
lower stage of spiritual life. Philo is attempting to do full
justice to all the details of the special passage he is
expounding (Gen. xv. 8).
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MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
Abraham staked everything on his Conviction
of the grace and truth and power of God
(Rom. iv. 1 6 ff. ; Gal. iii. 7 ff., 18). In both
cases there is far more than the mere un-
faltering expectation of good things to come.
The very foundation of religion is implied in
this relation of absolute trust in the unseen
God. The same may be said of the writer
to the Hebrews, who stands in line with Philo
at so many points. For him faith is "the
assurance of the things hoped for, the proof
(or, conviction, \eyx o< *) of the things not
seen" (xi. i). It means the realisation in
this present of that invisible realm in which
God can be fully known, or rather, the reali-
sation of the unseen God himself. " For
Moses . . . endured as seeing him who is
invisible " (xi. 27). The assurance of God is
primary for the writer to the Hebrews as for
Philo. All fulfilment of hopes and expecta-
tions is for both bound up with that. Indeed,
the New Testament teacher uses language
which might have been Philo's own, when
he declares : "He that draws near to God
must believe that he exists, and that he
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MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
rewards those who earnestly seek him "
(xi. 6). This conviction transforms life from
illusion into reality.
In emphasising the profoundly religious
significance of faith in Philo, as contrasted
with a more superficial aspect of it, namely,
belief in the fulfilment of God's promises
before there is any sign of its approach,
Brehier (op. cit. p. 222 f.) suggests that the
deeper view is due to the influence of Stoic
mysticism. 1 And he attempts to find a con-
firmation of this in such statements as Quis
Rer. Div. H. 101 : "That it would come to
pass, he of course firmly grasped in accord-
ance with the Divine promises," where he
associates the " firm grasp " with the Stoic
idea of faith as " powerful apprehension."
It is possible that some of his terms may have
been suggested by Stoic usage, although they
are such as might naturally present them-
selves. But Brevier's own admission (loc. cit.}
that, in distinction from the Stoics, who use
the conception in reference to all true repre-
sentations, Philo never applies the idea of
1 So also W. H. P. Hatch, The Pauline Idea of Faith, p. 47.
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MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
faith except to God, makes it far more
probable that he speaks fundamentally on
the ground of his own religious experience.
When we try to analyse Philo's view of
Faith more clearly, we are at once impressed
by its intellectual side. That has come out
above in the important passage where he
describes it as a stable V7r6\rj^ t and is corro-
borated by the quotations from Hebrews
which have so markedly Philonic a colour.
" To clear away each of these [earthly in-
fluences] and to distrust the world of
becoming which is of itself wholly unworthy
of confidence, and to have faith in God alone,
who alone is in truth trustworthy, requires a
large and Olympian understanding, one
which is no longer enticed by our worldly
interests " (Quis Rer. Div. H. 93). Hence
Schlatter is so far justified in saying that for
Philo, Faith is "the fruit of knowledge, and
the incompleteness of the latter is directly
transferred to it " (Der Glaube im NT.
p. 92). But obviously all Faith involves
intellectual elements. The question is
whether it gets beyond this intellectual
126
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
starting-point. And it is not difficult to
answer that question in Philo's case.
In one of his numerous comments on
Gen. xv. 6 he asks : " In what else can
we put our faith [save in God] ? Can we
put it in leadership or reputations and dis-
tinctions, or in abundance of riches and high
birth, or in health and quick sensibility, or in
vigour and bodily beauty ? " After estimating
these at their proper worth, which at best
is utterly transient, he concludes : " Faith
towards God alone is a true and stable good,
a consolation of life, a fulfilment of bright
hopes, a famine of evils, and a full crop of
blessings. . . . For, as those who walk by a
slippery path stumble and fall, while they
who tread the dry high road go forward
without tripping, so those who engross their
soul with bodily and external interests
accustom it to nothing but falls . . . while
they who through the contemplation of
virtue hasten towards God, follow a straight
course. ... So that one may truly say that
he who has put his faith in the former objects
refuses to trust God, while he who refuses to
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MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
trust them has put his faith in God " (De Abr.
263, 268 f.). It is plain that by genuine
Faith, Philo means that liberation of the soul
from the dominion of earthly good which has
as its obverse side the great venture of cast-
ing one's self upon God. This he describes
as a straining, testing experience. Referring
to Gen. xv. 6 as a eulogy of the trusting
soul, he meets a possible objection : " Perhaps
some one might say, Do you judge this
worthy of praise ? Who would refuse to
heed the word and promise of God, even if
he were the most lawless and impious of
men ? Our reply would be : Dear friend, do
not without careful inquiry deprive the wise
man of the eulogy which is his due, or ascribe
to the worthless the most perfect of virtues,
faith, or find fault with our discernment in
such matters. For if you choose to make a
profounder search and not merely a superficial
one, you will clearly discover that it is not
easy to put faith in God alone without drag-
ging in something else, on account of the close
kinship which binds us to mortal things, a
kinship which persuades us to confide in
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MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
money and fame, and power and friends and
vigour of body and many similar things. . . .
To fix our moorings firmly ... in the Existent
alone is a surprising thing among men, who
do not possess unadulterated good, but not
strange when truth is in control, rather the
pure product of righteousness " (Quis Rer.
Div. H. 90 ff.). Here he deliberately ex-
cludes everything but the immediate relation
of the soul to God. God fills the entire
spiritual horizon : and there is no other.
This is the true paradox of religious experi-
ence : to distrust and detach one's self from
all the forces that press in upon human life,
as deceptive and unreal, and to hazard every-
thing upon the Invisible, which cannot be
apprehended by the ordinary process of
knowledge. This implies a tremendous act
and perseverance of will. Philo is true to his
Old Testament lineage. There is nothing
to correspond to it in his Greek masters.
Knowledge could not achieve such a result.
And the issue is a glad fearlessness of bear-
ing (irappTja-ia). Philo delights to dwell upon
this. " The noble man " he is describing
I 129
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
Moses and his attitude towards God "can
behave with such glad fearlessness as not
merely to speak and shout, but he will
actually dare as the result of pure trust and
genuine feeling to cry out" (Quis Rer.
Div. H. 19). But such an attitude, the
high product of faith, is devoid of presump-
tion. It never crosses the boundary which
separates confidence in God from self-
confidence. " What am I " Philo represents
Abraham as saying "that thou shouldest
impart to me of thy speech ? Am not I an
exile from my country ? . . . Am not I an
alien from my father's house ? ... But thou,
O Lord, art to me my country, thou art my
kinsfolk, . . . thou art my reward, my glad
fearlessness. . . . Why then should not I dare
to utter my thoughts ? . . . Yet I who speak
of daring confess my awe and terror. . . .
Without ceasing, therefore, I find delight in
this blending, which has moved me neither
to speak boldly without godly fear, nor to
tremble before God without glad fearlessness "
(ibid. 26 ff.). Philo's descriptions of irapp^La
at once recall the prominence of the idea in
130
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
Hebrews and / John. In the former it
belongs distinctly, as in Philo, to the sphere
of faith. Indeed, chap. iii. 6 might have
come from the older author : " whose house
are we, if we keep our glad fearlessness and
our exultant hope stable unto the end." But
not less remarkable is the Johannine usage.
True, it is based on love rather than faith,
but it would be hard to distinguish in i John
between the two. At any rate, for the
writer, love is that which unites with God,
the very function which faith discharges,
according to Philo.
This reference to the New Testament
suggests a further one, which will serve to
bring out an additional element in Philo's
conception of Faith. We have mentioned
points in which St. Paul and Philo coincide.
And our last paragraph emphasises another,
faith's office of linking the soul to God.
From the nature of the case, Paul's con-
ception is far more concrete and personal,
for its medium is the living person of the
living Lord. But besides, for Paul, faith
marks especially the initiation of the Chris-
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
tian career. Undoubtedly he presupposes
faith at every stage, as so crucial a passage
as Gal. ii. 20 demonstrates. But above
all, in Paul's view, faith is that movement of
the whole being which, in response to the
revelation of the Divine love in Jesus Christ,
crucified and risen, carries it into union
with the living Lord, so that henceforth it
shares His attitude to sin and to God.
Some of the passages already cited hint
that at times Faith is viewed by Philo not
so much in relation to the beginning of a
higher life as to its consummation : not so
much as a starting-point, but rather as a
goal. Commenting on the expression, " which
I will show you " (Gen. xii. i), he observes
that here God " has carefully defined before-
hand for his promise, not the present but the
future, as a testimony to the faith which the
soul placed in God, not showing forth its
gratitude as the result of something accom-
plished for it, but as springing from its
expectation of what was to come. In
depending on and clinging to a bright hope,
and regarding as indubitably present that
132
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
which was not present, on account of the
steadfastness of him who had made the
promise, it has won as its prize, faith, a
perfect good" (De Migr. Abr. 43 f.) This
accords with his statement, quoted above, as
to the difficulty of attaining to faith. But
Philo's attitude is most clearly disclosed in
several estimates of Abraham, the typical
believer. " He who was the first to forsake
empty pride for truth, who used for his per-
fecting the virtue which could teach 1 him,
wins faith towards God as his prize. . . .
He to whom it has been granted to despise
and overstep all that is corporeal and all that
is not, and to rest and establish himself on
God alone with steadfast reason and un-
wavering . . . faith, he is truly fortunate
and thrice-blessed. We must also inquire
into the fact that each of the three [patriarchs]
had assigned to him the prize most befitting.
For to him who was perfected by instruction
[Abraham] faith was awarded, since the
learner must believe his teacher in the
lessons he has given : for it is difficult,
Reading didao-KaXiKfj, with Mangey.
133
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
nay, impossible, to train one who refuses
to trust you" (De Praem. et Poen. 27,
30, 49). In these passages, emphasis is
certainly laid upon faith as the climax of a
period of spiritual discipline. But perhaps
faith must always be viewed under these
two aspects : as the clue to spiritual progress
as well as its crown. That is implied in the
famous words of Heb. xii. if.: " Let us
by endurance run the race that is set before
us, looking away to Jesus, the leader and
the perfecter of our faith." And no less so
in Paul's ardent aspiration (Phil. iii. 8 f.) :
" Nay, I count all things as loss compared
to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ
Jesus my Lord . . . that I may win Christ,
and be found at the end in him." Faith, and
still more faith, is the goal of Paul's striving
to the close. It is the supreme issue for all
believers.
(e) Immortality
For Philo, the soul which is linked to God
by a real faith must possess eternal life.
From various passages it might be inferred
that Philo presupposed the immortality of
134
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
the soul. And this is possibly a necessary
corollary of his view of its nature, even
though we come upon such a passage as
De Abr. 55: "The nature of man is
mortal." This, in all likelihood, refers to
his nature as compound, although perhaps
our author has fundamentally in view rather
the immortality of the soul than that of
human beings as such. But it was not a
mere abstract conception which interested
Philo. It was the craving for life. His
attitude towards this perfection of being con-
^tinually reminds us of the New Testament,
and he agrees with writers like St. Paul and
the author of the Fourth Gospel in regard-
ing the possession of Divine life as a present
possibility, and not something to be reached
only in a new order of being, though he fails
to reach their splendid vision of life eternal.
Nothing is more remarkable in this con-
nection than his descriptions of what he
conceives to be real death and real life,
for he employs similar phraseology to that
of St. Paul in similar discussions. " Natural
death," he says, " is that in which the soul
135
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
is separated from the body. But the death
which is penal is constituted when the soul
dies to the life of virtue, and lives only to
that of vice " (Leg. AIL i. 107). Cain's
punishment he describes as " living in a
continuous death, enduring, in a sense, a
death which is immortal and endless. For
there are two kinds of death. The one is the
state of being dead, which may be good, or
neither good nor bad (aSidfopov) ; the other
is the state of dying, which is altogether bad,
and the more grievous to bear the longer
it lasts " (De Praem. et Poen. 70). This
passage shows that Philo draws a sharper
distinction between physical and spiritual
death than Paul does. When the Apostle
speaks of death, he seems to regard the term
synthetically, ignoring the common analysis
into physical and spiritual, and regarding the
dissolution of an existence which is out of
touch with God as a single experience of
ruin. In Philo's case the lot of mortality is
overshadowed by the doom of the evil soul,
which appears to him independent of time
and space. An illuminating example of his
136
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
position is found in De Fuga, 55. There he
tells how reflection has taught him " that
the worthless, although they reach extreme
old age, are dead, for they are cut off from
the life of goodness ; while the good, even if
parted from their union with the body, live
for ever, sharing in a lot which is immortal."
Here he stands in line with the Pauline view,
that severance from the earthly body can
never quench the life that is rooted in God.
Hence, Philo emphasises the endowment
of the soul with eternal life, apart from the
division of experience into present and future.
" When the immortal type of being arises in
the soul, the mortal forthwith suffers destruc-
tion. For the origination of worthy pursuits
means the death of those that are base ; since,
when the light has once shone, the darkness
disappears" (Quod Deus sit immut. 123). This
is the counterpart in Philo of St. Paul's great
antithesis between " dying to sin " and " living
to righteousness," the first condition invari-
ably leading on to the second. It is worthy
of note that Philo attempts to define immor-
tality from this precise standpoint. "This,"
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
he declares, "is the finest definition of
immortal life to be possessed with a [flesh-
less and bodiless] l passion and friendship for
God" (De Fuga, 58). Evidently it is such
a relationship which purifies the soul. For
in commenting on Gen. xv. 15, where it is
said of Abraham, " Thou shalt depart to thy
fathers in peace," he speaks of Scripture as
here indicating " that the good man does not
die, but departs, that it might declare the
inextinguishable and immortal nature of the
fully purified soul, which shall experience a
departure from this world to heaven, not
that dissolution and destruction which death
appears to bring" (Quis Rer. Div. H. 276).
This passage prepares us for a more
popular picture of immortality, again re-
minding us vividly of St. Paul, who also
combines the more pictorial with the pro-
founder idea, "When Abraham," he says,
"left the mortal state, ' he was gathered to the
people of God ' (Gen. xxv. 8 : Philo's own
adaptation of the text), reaping immortality,
made like unto the angels" (De Sacrif. Ab.
1 Omitted by Cohn.
138
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
et C. 5). It is almost needless to recall the
startling parallel to the last clause in Luke's
account of Jesus' answer to the Sadducees
(Luke xx. 36). Similarly , having described
the path of the soul towards goodness as
ending in life and immortality, while that
towards evil issues in the shunning of these
blessings and in death, he remarks that "the
God who loves to give, plants in the soul a
kind of paradise of virtues and of the deeds
which accord with them, which brings it to
perfect bliss " (De Plant. 37). Occasionally,
it is not easy to determine whether Philo's
language on the destinies of souls is to be
taken literally or metaphorically. Thus, in
a fine passage (De Somn. i. 151 f.), he tells
how "the wise have received an abode in
the Olympian and heavenly region, having
learned ever to sojourn above, while the
wicked dwell in the recesses of Hades,
having from first to last made it their aim
to die, and from childhood to old age being
accustomed to destruction." Possibly, how-
ever, the clause that follows regarding lives
of laborious effort (ao-KTjrai), " which go fre-
139
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
quently upwards and downwards as on a
ladder, either drawn upward by the worthier
lot, or pulled in the contrary direction by the
less worthy," indicates that the metaphorical
sense is uppermost in his mind. It is, how-
ever, noteworthy that Philo can deliberately
speak of the ideal (VOIJTOS) or spiritual world in
remarkably concrete terms terms which his
master, Plato, would have shrunk from using.
In conceiving it as the abode of immortality,
he sets it in sharp contrast with the visible
order as "a veritable world of intelligent
beings" (Bre*hier, op. cit. p. 240). Thus, in
a classification of men, the highest place is
taken by "men of God, priests and prophets,
who had no ambition ... to become citizens
of the world, but reaching beyond the entire
sensible universe, removed into the spiritual
and dwelt there, enrolled in the common-
wealth of immortal and incorporeal ideas"
(De Gig. 61). The closing words remind
us of his unfailing effort to fuse Hellenism
with Jewish conceptions.
We have in the foregoing paragraph sug-
gested various interesting comparisons with
140
MAN'S YEARNING FOR GOD
St. Paul. Yet the fact cannot be ignored
that Philo's conception of immortality is far
less rich in content than that of the Apostle.
This is partly due to his failure to connect
the Hope in any definite fashion with the
consummation of the Kingdom of God and
those spacious moral processes of the Divine
government of the world which find their
climax there. It is surrounded by too rare-
fied an atmosphere, philosophical rather than
religious. And thus, while it strives to ex-
press, as we have seen, a genuine religious
need, its undue intellectualism narrows it
down to something less impressive even than
the Apocalyptic conception of immortality. 1
1 In these paragraphs I am specially indebted for valuable
hints to my friend Dr. J. H. Leckie.
141
i
CHAPTER V
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
(a) The Grace of God
N our discussion of Philo's view of Faith,
we found that it meant a complete
turning away from the life of sense and the
fixing of the soul's gaze upon God alone.
This he regards as a supreme achievement
of the spiritual life. But it presupposes an
experience of the Divine working which is
really the basis of its existence. Side by
side with those abstract descriptions of God,
which lay the emphasis on His incomprehen-
sibility, and deny to Him as pure Being the
possession of any qualities (a-Troio?), Philo
reveals his place in the true succession of
Old Testament piety by the prominence he
assigns in the history of the soul's progress
to the energies of the Divine Grace. Such
142
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
prominence is in no sense accidental. From
the readiness with which his conviction of
Grace is introduced as something self-evident
to the religious mind, and the feelings of
wonder and joy which it calls forth, it
obviously belongs to the inmost texture of his
devout experience. And it forms one of the
many testimonies which his works supply
that, in spite of his zeal for cosmological and
psychological speculations after the model of
his Greek masters, the crucial elements in
his view of God and man belong to the
spiritual heritage of his race. He does not
attempt in any theoretical fashion, not even
to the extent that Paul did, to divide the
ground in this mysterious realm between
God and man. He is content to accept as
one of the most inspiring factors in the
relation of God to His creatures the unceas-
ing outflow of a Divine purpose of mercy,
initiating all that is good in human life
and opening up the highest possibilities to
those who are conscious of nothing but
imperfection.
This fundamental idea comes out in one of
MS
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
those ingenious verbal distinctions to which
he is so strongly addicted. Again and again
he refers the difference between the two
leading names given in the Old Testament
to the Existent (TO oi>), namely, " God " (0eos)
and " Lord " (KU/HO?), to that between His two
chief powers, the power of showing grace
ii, e.g. De Somn. i. 163) or benefiting
fe, e.g. De Spec. Leg. i. 307), and that
of exercising rule, which includes punishing
(ftao-i\iKij t De Somn., loc. cit. : Ko\a<rnqpios, De
Spec. Leg., loc. cit.), often summed up in the
contrasted terms " beneficent goodness " and
"authority" (ayaOorw and efoiWa, e.g. De
Cherub. 27). The details in these discussions
are often far-fetched, but his essential view
emerges quite clearly. Each of these
aspects of the Divine Being, which are
combined in the Logos (De Cherub. 27), is
to be acknowledged with reverence, but the
"older" is that of beneficence. In speak-
ing of the sinners of the Patriarchal age,
he observes that, while many individuals
perished, God, " in order that the human race
might continue, mingles mercy [with judg-
144
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
ment], using it to benefit even the unworthy ;
and not only does he show mercy after
judging, but before judging he has mercy ;
for mercy is older with him [i.e. prior in his
thought] than penalty " (Quod Deus sit
immut. 76). How firmly rooted this concep-
tion is, appears from a fine passage (De Plant.
89), where he interprets the phrase "ever-
lasting God " (Gen. xxi. 33) as " him who does
not bestow grace at one time and withhold
it at another, but is always and continuously
the doer of kindness without interruption , . .
who omits no opportunity of benefiting, while
at the same time he is Lord, with the power
also to hurt." So inherent to God is the
bestowing of kindness, that even in the case
of those who have committed intolerable
wrongs, He desires to have intercession
made to Him on their behalf (De Mut.
Norn. 129).
The Divine Grace is conceived by our
author on the most spacious lines. Expand-
ing the words, " as for me, behold my covenant
is with them " (Gen. xvii. 4), he says : " There
are many different kinds of covenant which
K 145
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
bestow gracious benefits and gifts on those
worthy of them, but I myself am the highest
kind. ... I my self am the source and fountain
of all experiences of grace. For to some God
is wont to extend his benefits by means of
other channels, Dearth, water, air, sun, moon,
heaven, and other incorporeal powers, but
to others through himself alone, declaring
himself the portion of those who receive
him " (De Mut. Nom. 58 f.). All that exists,
in so far as it can benefit, is an expression of
the loving-kindness of God, imparted freely
to all His creatures. And so if one were to
ask, What is the principle (apxn) of the created
universe, the most accurate answer would be,
the kindness (ayaBorrj^ and grace of God
(Leg. Alleg. iii. 78).
But of supreme importance for human
beings is the recognition that their own highest
faculties are Divine gifts. Philo, as we
know, regards man's spiritual nature in its
supreme aspects as the in-breathing of the
breath of God, and, in a very real sense,
Conscience is, in his view, the energy of the
Divine Logos actually present in the soul.
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GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
" God," he declares, in a passage highly
relevant to our present discussion, " because
of his gentleness and love for men, desiring
to establish a shrine amongst us, found none
on earth more fitting than our reason " (De
Virtut. 1 88). But he is always sensitive to
the actual situation. Man, with his power of
self-determination, has misused his capacities.
In his shallowness of judgment he has been
allured by the superficial attractions of the
sense-life, especially by pleasure, which has
directed his strivings towards unworthy aims.
In this situation the grace of God shines forth
in all its splendour. " God, who is a lover of
giving ((/>tXo8o)/309, one of his favourite epithets
for God), bestows his blessings freely on all,
even on the imperfect, summoning them to
follow eagerly after virtue " (Leg. AIL i. 34).
Men's condition puts the loving-kindness of
God to a severe test. But God's grace and
mercy go far beyond the standard of mere
justice. His beneficent power is all-pervasive
(De Vita Mos. ii. (iii.) 238). The fitting
penalty for the human race, because of its
ingratitude towards Him, its Saviour and
147
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
Benefactor, would have been annihilation ;
but He, by reason of His gracious nature,
took pity and moderated their punishment
(De Op. M. 169). His purpose for men is
wholly good. He can, indeed, visit with
calamity, but it is His special property to
hold out blessings and to be beforehand with
His gifts. Nay, even when penalty is
deserved, God does not straightway visit it
upon the sinner, but gives time for repent-
ance and for the healing and amendment of
his fault (Leg. AIL iii. 105 f.). In a word,
His aim is nothing less than the redemption
of men. The Father, who has begotten the
soul, does not desire to leave it for ever
imprisoned, but, in His pity, to loose its
bonds and conduct it safely in its freedom
even to its mother-city, and not to cease until
the promises of His words are ratified by
actual deeds (De Somn. i. 181).
But at this point we are inevitably con-
fronted by the perennial problem of the
relation of the Divine Grace to human effort.
Philo has no systematic treatment of the
question, yet it is important to examine his
148
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
general attitude towards the facts. To begin
with, he is clear that all goodness in the soul
is due to the Divine operation. " It befits
God to plant and build up the virtues in the
soul : egoistic and impious is the mind which
imagines itself equal to God, and presumes
to be acting while it is really acted upon "
(Leg. All. i. 48 f.) ; "what soul ever suc-
ceeded in putting out of sight and annihilating
evil, save that to which God was revealed,
which he deemed worthy of his ineffable
mysteries?" (ibid. iii. 27). The progress of
the soul, from its beginnings, depends on
God's self-manifestation. In this whole
province there is a remarkable parallelism
between Philo and St. Paul. A most notable
example of the position which they may
almost be said to occupy in common appears
in De Migr. Abr. 30 ff. : "The fountain
from which blessings stream is our communion
(o-woSo?) with God who loves to give : this is
why he puts the seal upon his benefits by
saying, I will be with thee. What good
thing, then, could be lacking, when God who
never fails of achievement is present, with
149
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
the virgin-powers of his grace ? In that case
effort and toil and hard exertion are stilled,
and all that can benefit is imparted in abund-
ance. . . . The mind lets go its hold of those
energies which are at the command of its own
designs, and is, as it were, liberated from its
purposes by reason of the gifts rained upon
it in unceasing showers." The context, in-
deed, suggests that this description applies
primarily to the inward wrestling of the soul
with truth. But since in Philo no valid
distinction can be drawn between this search
and the personal yearning after God, it seems
legitimate to emphasise the striking resem-
blance to Paul as regards the cessation of
human effort and the complete dependence
of the soul on Divine aid. The position is
confirmed by such statements as De Mut.
Nom. 138: "There are few whose ears are
open to receive these sacred words which
teach that it belongs to God alone to sow and
to create (yewav) what is good."
Sufficient evidence has been adduced to
show that Paul's great watchword : " By
grace are ye saved, through faith, and that
150
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
not of yourselves, God's is the gift" (Eph.
ii. 8), can be rendered directly in terms of
Philo's thought, if we discount the Apostle's
definitely Christian background. Precisely
as in Paul's view, Philo regards man as hav-
ing nothing in which he can glory in God's
presence. Even anything good which he
achieves and Philo, like Paul, recognises
the importance of such achievement must
ultimately be ascribed to Divine influence.
For it is impossible for a human creature to
rid himself of his defilement. " What period
would suffice to wash away these stains ?
I cannot tell. . . . What eternity could
transform the impurity of a soul into a well-
ordered life ? Not even an eternity, but God
alone, to whom are possible the things which
with us are impossible " (De Spec. Leg. i.
281 f.). The words have an extraordinary
affinity with New Testament positions. If
we may regard them as expressing an under-
tone of religious feeling beginning to appear in
the more enlightened Judaism of the Diaspora,
we are indeed moving in an atmosphere in
which the way of the Lord is being prepared.
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
Now, the clause, "through faith," in Paul's
famous utterance, states the human condition
of the saving process. God's gift of grace
must not be mechanically conceived. The
manner of the Divine activity is not to force
an entrance into any heart. Apart from a
free and glad assent of the soul, that which
Paul calls Faith, there can be no real contact
between the grace of God and human need.
Philo, from his own standpoint, frankly
acknowledges this. He has various ways of
describing the condition of receptiveness to
which the Divine generosity can make its
appeal. Once and again he finds the condi-
tion fulfilled in the suppliant attitude of the
soul. " When pleasure," he says, "loses its
power, and the cause of our shocking and
wanton life has in a sense died, we weep
over and deplore our former career, because
we preferred pleasure to virtue and linked a
mortal to an immortal life. Then the only
Gracious, taking pity on our unbroken con-
fusion, draws near to our suppliant souls "
(Quod del. pot. 95). Similarly, "God will
perform the work which belongs to him,
152
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
having proclaimed release and freedom to the
souls which supplicate him " (Quis Rer. Div.
H. 273). Often, in this connection, it is the
reaction from an unworthy life, the recoil of
the soul, which affords its opportunity to the
grace of God. " When God is gracious,"
says Philo, " he makes all things easy [read-
ing efevpapi&i with Cohn]. Now he becomes
gracious to those who feel shame and exchange
dissoluteness for self-control and reproach a
culpable life and loathe the base phantoms
which they impressed upon their souls, who
are eager for the quieting of passions and
haste after calm and peace of life " (De Praem.
et Poen. 116). So, too, in an important
passage (De Somn. i. 9), which we quoted
in discussing Repentance, he emphasises the
grace of Him, who alone is gracious, to
those who lay bare their hidden thoughts and
deeds, which are already exposed to the
glance of the Father of all.
There are certain aspects of the Divine
Grace which are singled out by Philo. That
which we first note has an arresting kinship
with the New Testament outlook. "Very
153
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
aptly [Moses says that] their supplication
reached God. Now it would not have
reached, if he who invited it had not been
gracious. But some souls he goes out to
meet : ' I will come to thee and will bless
thee ' (Ex. xx. 24). You see how large is the
grace of the Cause, who anticipates our hesita-
tion and goes out to bestow the completest
benefits upon the soul " (Leg. Alleg. iii. 215).
Here we are not merely reminded of Paul
but of Jesus Himself, and especially of the
marvellous delineation of the Father in the
parable of the Lost Son. Indeed, Philo
shows himself of the lineage of the great
prophet Hosea in his emphasis on the un-
wearying ardour of the Divine pity. God is
the Shepherd of the Soul. His " watchful
oversight is ... the first and only reason why
the parts of the soul are never left without
attendance but find a blameless and unfailing
good Shepherd " (De Agric. 49 f.). There
is, in short, in the nature of God no limit to
the outflow of His generosity towards men.
More than once this affluence of the Divine
bounty provokes in Philo an outburst of
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GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
praise. " O thou Lover of giving," he ex-
claims, " without stint are the gifts of thy
grace, having no limits or boundaries or end,
like fountains which pour forth streams too
plentiful to be borne away " (Quis Rer.
Div. H. 31). The only limit to the grace of
God lies in the narrowness of men's capacity
to receive it. Thus Philo lays down as the
normative principle for human beneficence
that which God imposes upon Himself
because of human limitations : " Freely give
not all that thou canst, but all that the needy
is able to receive " (De Post. Cain. 142).
"For that which has come into being," he
observes in the same passage (ibid. 145),
" is never without a share of God's gracious
gifts . . . but is unable to bear their abundant
and lavish current. Wherefore, desiring us
to be profited by his bounties, he measures
them according to the capacity of the
recipients." Philo enlarges on the theme in
dealing with Moses' prayer (Ex. xxxiii.
13 f.) for a vision of God, and the Divine
answer to his request. " I freely bestow that
which befits him who is to receive : for not
155
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
all that I might easily give is it possible for
man to take. Therefore I hold forth to him
who is worthy of my grace all the gifts he is
able to receive. But for a complete appre-
hension of me there is no room, not only
in human nature, but even in all earth and
heaven. Know thyself, then, and be not
carried away by impulses and desires be-
yond thy powers ... for in all attainable
good thou shalt have a share " (De Spec. Leg.
i. 43 f.). One further aspect of Philo's view
of Divine Grace may be pointed out before
we leave this phase of our discussion. It js
important, because it reminds us that Philo, so
far from being absorbed merely in theoretical
inquiries, has his gaze firmly fixed on the
higher claims of practical life. He is laying
stress on the proper use of the gifts, often
unexpected, which men receive from God.
"For," he says, "the generous bounties of
the Supreme Ruler, which he bestows on
individuals, are for the general well-being :
not that when they have received them they
may hide them or misuse them to the hurt of
others, but that, putting them into the
156
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
common stock, as at a public feast, they may
invite as many as they can to their use and
enjoyment" (De Virtut. 169).
(6) Mediation
The statments we have collected from
Philo to illustrate his conception of the Grace
of God are remarkable for their directness,
simplicity, and freedom from technical phrase-
ology. That is thoroughly characteristic of
the man. When he discloses the profoundest
realities of his religion, he usually lays aside
metaphysical and psychological arguments.
But recognising, as we must, the constant
emphasis he places upon the transcendence
of God, and his invariable assumption that
the Existent cannot come into direct contact
with the world of created things, we are not
surprised to find the idea of Mediation be-
tween God and man at the heart of his
thought.
The philosophical drift of his age, which
affected most of the serious thinkers on re-
ligion in the centuries immediately preceding
and following the birth of Jesus, favoured this
157
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
doctrine. The Ideas of Plato, and the \6yoi
o-TTepfjLarLKoi (generative rational forces) of the
Stoics, both of which played so prominent a
part in the later philosophy, were already con-
ceived, especially in the more popular philo-
sophical theology, as powers in a sense
mediating between the Absolute God or the
First Cause and the universe. Parallel move-
ments may be traced in every direction. The
Stoics themselves had, by means of allegory,
used the popular mythology to establish the
idea of subordinate spiritual powers which
were manifestations to men of the Divine.
The Hellenised theology of Egypt had, on
similar allegorical lines, attempted to com-
bine the myth of a creative Word with the
Divine Reason pervading all things. And
the Hermetic literature, also of Egyptian
origin, makes Hermes, who represents the
Egyptian Thoth the amanuensis of the gods,
the god of all wisdom, who has invented " the
words of God " (i.e. the written characters)
the bearer of a Divine revelation which he
communicates to disciples that they may
diffuse it abroad.
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GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
It may be said without undue rashness
that Philo must have come into touch
with all these various currents of thought.
But he was exposed to others at least as
important proceeding from his ancestral
Jewish faith. The Alexandrian Wisdom
of Solomon, written not long before his time,
reveals the place given in cultivated Jewish
minds to Wisdom, conceived almost as a
Divine personality, subordinate to God, but
"a breath of the power of God/' "an image
of his goodness," which "has power to do all
things/' " renews all things," and " entering
consecrated souls makes them friends of God
and prophets, for God loves none but him who
isjn fellowship with wisdom" ( Wisd. vii. 256".).
But while we know this conception to have
been influential in Philo's immediate environ-
ment, the idea of mediation between God and
the world had taken further shape in Jewish
religion. A prominent figure in Old Testa-
ment tradition was that of the "angel" or
"messenger" of Jahweh, through whom the
Divine mind and purpose was disclosed to
men. Angelology had been developed to an
159
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
extraordinary extent within Judaism between
the Exile and Philo's time, perhaps chiefly
under the influence of Babylon and Persia ;
and the stress laid upon the Holiness of
God in the post-exilic community gave an
impetus to a large number of personifications
of the Divine. The actual evidence for some
of these belongs to a period later than Philo.
But when we take into account their Old
Testament basis, and remember that by his
time the transcendence of God was a dominat-
ing idea both in Palestinian and Alexandrian
Judaism, it is in no way improbable that he
was acquainted with them at some stage in
their evolution. Thus, the Rabbinic hypo-
stasis of Memra, the Creative Word of God,
has its roots in passages of Genesis (e.g. i. 3,
6, 9) and Psalms (e.g. cxlvii. 15) which de-
scribe the efficacy of the Divine utterance.
The Shekinah, which is a sort of concrete
embodiment of the Divine Presence, repre-
sents, of course, the " glory " of Jahweh,
described in the Old Testament as filling the
Tabernacle and the Temple. Ezekiel's com-
plex vision (chap, i.) became a favourite subject
1 60
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
of speculation in various circles of Judaism,
and the winged creatures which bore the
moving throne of the Almighty were ex-
plained as the powers of God. But from the
description of the vision, the living creatures
might be viewed as a unity, as well as in
their individuality. When so regarded, the
unified appearance, of which the several faces
were aspects, was named in esoteric Judaism
"the charioteer." It is impossible to avoid
the supposition that Philo was directly influ-
enced by this group of speculations, when he
designates the Logos "charioteer of the Divine
powers" (De Fuga, 101). Further, asSiegfried
has cogently pointed out (Philo von Alex-
andria, p. 221 f.), the dignity of the High
Priest had been immensely enhanced in the
post-exilic community, so that to a degree
never before conceived he stood as mediator
between God and the people. The efficacy
of his suppliant prayers is emphasised in
several Rabbinic treatises, and also his
intimacy with the All- Holy. A striking
comment on the fact is Philo's ascription of
the title "High Priest " to the Logos (e.g. De
L 161
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
Fuga, 108 ff. ; De Migr. Abr. 102). And
it is probably legitimate to regard this as one
of the factors which set the Priesthood of
Christ in the centre of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, a document whose Alexandrian
and Philonic associations are evident through-
out.
Philo's attempts to bridge the gulf which
he assumes between a God who is pure Being
and the world of Becoming circle round the
conception of the Logos, who is God's
Thought or Reason ; the powers (Svm/*a?) of
God, which are manifestations of His energy,
operating in the universe ; and angels, a
considerably vaguer category. It lies outside
our purpose to discuss these categories in
their metaphysical bearings. The Logos-
hypothesis itself, as it appears in Philo, is full
of confusion. This is no doubt partly due to
its composition from heterogeneous elements,
Platonic dualism, Stoic monism, and Jewish
monotheism, modified by the later belief in
hypostases of God, of which the most notable
was Wisdom. In part, it depends on the
fluctuating boundary in ancient thought
162
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
between personality and personification, and
on Philo's own tendency to glide from what
he conceived as truth to symbols of truth.
To some extent it results from his failure in
constructive power.
A few words on the cosmic significance of
these Divine energies will serve as an intro-
duction to their religious functions as sug-
gested by Philo. Probably his most inclusive
description of the Logos in this realm is that
of " the ideal world," " the image of God," the
pattern according to which the perceptible
universe has been fashioned (e.g. De Op. M.
24 f.). As the Logos is the " image " of God,
so par excellence is human reason the " image "
of the Logos (e.g. Leg. Alleg. iii. 96). Not
only has the Logos been God's instrument
(opyavov) in creation, but he is, so to speak,
the "helm" (omf) by which the Almighty
Steersman pilots the universe (De Migr. Abr.
6). A metaphor which he is fond of apply-
ing to the Logos is that of the Divine seal,
by which each created thing is stamped and
receives its permanent quality (De Fuga, 1 2 f.).
Varying the details of the comparison, he
163
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
speaks of the rational soul as stamped
by the seal of God, whose impression is
the eternal Logos (De Plant. 18). Roughly
speaking, these descriptions tally with the
conception of the Thought of God, more or
less abstracted from His pure Being, and
placed beside Him in a semi-personified form.
Philo usually conceives the powers as sub-
ordinate to the Logos. Thus he speaks of
God as having completely filled His Divine
Logos with incorporeal powers (De Somn. i.
62). But perhaps the clearest instance is
Qu. in Exod. ii. 68 (p. 515, Aucher), where in
discussing the relation of the two primary
Divine " powers," the gracious creative power
(#09) and the regal (/cu/no?), to the Logos, he
speaks of these as " flowing out from the
Logos as from a spring," and then proceeds
to show how other powers emanate from
them. These Powers, which he classifies
variously (e.g. Legal, ad Gaium, 6, 7), and of
which we have just mentioned the most rep-
resentative, he describes as stretched from
the roots of the earth to the confines of
heaven, holding together the entire universe
164
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
(De Migr. Abr. 181). As in the case of the
Logos, he so objectifies the Powers as over
against God, that their inferiority is clearly
manifest. Thus God uses them for the
punishment of sin, a function unseemly for
Himself. They were His instruments in
creating the mortal elements of the soul, as
contrasted with the rational. In some sense,
also, they are responsible for the presence of
conceptions of evil as well as of good in the
human soul (De Fiiga, 66 ff.).
Let us now turn to the more practical
aspects of these mediating agencies, which
give them an important place in the religious
and moral experiences of the soul. Br^hier
(op. cit. p. 100) is true to the facts when he
observes that in order to understand the real
position of the Logos in Philo, we must leave
on one side philosophical and cosmological
theories and consider God and the Logos as
objects of worship. In the progress of the
soul towards the Highest, the apprehension
of the Logos is an intermediate stage which
must be passed through. " It is a boon," Philo
says, " for perishable mortals to have medi-
165
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
ating and arbitrating Logoi (i.e. rational Divine
powers), because of their own awe and shrink-
ing before the Lord of all " (De Somn. i. 142).
This is no mere dread of punishment. It
means their incapacity to receive God's over-
powering and unmixed blessings, when these
are given by His own hand (ibid. 143). In
these paragraphs we are face to face with a
characteristic standpoint of post-exilic Juda-
ism. " God can only be grasped by means
of the powers which accompany and follow
him. For these do not present his essence
but only his existence, to be gathered from
what is accomplished by him " (De Post. Cain.
169). In distinguishing between the two
instances of the word " place " in Gen. xxii.
3 f., Philo remarks that "the man who is
under the guidance of wisdom arrives at the
first two places mentioned, having found the
Divine Logos who is the crown and goal of
satisfaction " (De Somn. \. 66), and a few sen-
tences later he speaks of the Logos as sent
forth to heal and completely cure the ailments
of the soul. Perhaps the most fundamental
passage for his general working conception is
166
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
Quis Rer. Div. H. 205: " The Father, who
has begotten all things, granted as his
choicest privilege to his chief messenger and
most august Logos, that he should stand in
the midst between the Creator and the created.
Now he is, on the one hand, always the sup-
pliant for transient mortals in presence of the
Immortal, and the ambassador of the Ruler
to his subject. Thus he rejoices because of
the privilege, and prides himself on it ...
being neither uncreated like God nor created
like you, but standing between the two ex-
tremes as a pledge to both, to him who
created as an assurance that created beings
will never wholly rebel or revolt, choosing
confusion rather than order, and in the case
of the creature to give him the bright hope
that the gracious God will never ignore his
own work." This remarkable utterance
reaches the heart of Philo's conception of
the Logos. What has further to be said is
simply an expansion of its ideas in various
directions.
It will not help us much to discuss, in the
light of such statements, how far Philo regards
167
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
the Logos as in some sense, a " personality,"
distinct from God, whose Thought or Reason
or Utterance he is. We have already referred
to the vagueness of the boundary in ancient
thought between personality and personifica-
tion. In the New Testament precisely the
same problem arises ; as, e.g., in the Pauline
Epistles with reference to the relation
between the Spirit and the exalted Lord.
And it is needless to recall the numerous
controversies in the early Church which
sprang directly out of this region. Philo-
sophical or religious thinkers, in attempting
to make any affirmations at all within the
realm of spirit, are compelled to formulate
such distinctions, although reflection at once
reminds them that they are working with
anthropomorphic categories, and that this
picture-language must be recognised for
what it is, an inadequate effort to express the
inexpressible. Philo is no more and no less
successful in his efforts than Christian
theologies or idealistic philosophies. But it
can scarcely be doubted that his particular
differentiation of the Logos from the Supreme
168
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
God had an exceptional influence on the
subsequent Christology of the Church.
Philo gives prominence to the idea that
those mediators, whether Logos, 8iW/*et9, or
ayyeXoi, come to the soul's assistance in all its
higher aspirations. "He who follows after
God," he says, "has . . . as companions on
his journey those rational powers (\6yoi,) who
accompany God, who are commonly called
angels. . . . For as long as he is not per-
fected, he has the Divine Logos to show him
the way. . . . But when he has reached the
summit of knowledge, having run eagerly he
will equal in swiftness him who formerly led
the way. For both will become attendants
of the omnipotent God " (De Migr. Abr.
173 ff.). Indeed he implies that their very
function is to consider and aid the spiritual
needs of man, " For help," he observes, "a
succouring power waits in readiness in God's
presence, and the Ruler himself draws nearer
for the benefit of such as are worthy of
receiving benefits " (ibid. 57). In the passage
already quoted as specially typical, the Logos
is described as "a suppliant for transient
169
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
mortals." This is an aspect which occurs
more than once. 1 And we cannot help find-
ing traces of its influence in the primary
place assigned in " Hebrews " to the work of
intercession in the priesthood of Christ.
In one important place (De Con/us. Ling.
146) God's " first-born Logos " is described as
"a being of many names." We shall glance
at some of these, from the point of view
of religious significance. Commenting on
Gen. xliii. n (LXX). Philo asks: "How
could you hesitate, my friends, to hate war
and love peace, you who are called by the
name of the same father, not a mortal but an
immortal, a Divine man, who, being the
Logos of the Eternal, is himself necessarily
imperishable?" (De. Con/. Ling. 41). Now,
whatever shade of meaning may have been
here attached to the term Logos in Philo's
1 We entirely disagree with Drummond's position, that
" in all these passages we are concerned only with certain
functions of human reason and speech," and that the term
iKfTTis excludes any idea of intercession (Philo Judaeus, ii.
236, 235). The latter statement seems quite arbitrary when
viewed in the light of the context of these passages. And
to us it appears that no statements in Philo more clearly
suggest the idea of personality than those in question.
170
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
mind : whether the idea of the Divine
Reason in man predominates, or that of a
vicegerent of the Eternal, who bridges the
chasm between the seen and the unseen, it is
plain that such a usage must lead even
unconsciously to the personalising of the
conception. We can never determine what
point in the process has been reached, but
the more powerfully the notion of religious
value is present, the more concrete will be
the shape which the Logos idea assumes.
An illuminating instance of how the various
nuances of the term shade off into each other
appears in De Somn. i. 103 ff. Philo begins
by observing that Logos, obviously in the
sense of " reason," but sometimes gliding into
that of " speech," is God's choicest gift to
man, his "bulwark," his "bodyguard," his
"protagonist," the power that "furthers his
aspirations." He is the "saving remedy for
the passions of the soul," a "counsellor and
champion " whose presence gives joy and
rest. But at the close of the passage, all
that has been affirmed is merged in the
figure of the " Divine Logos," whom the
171
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
ascetic soul, renouncing itself, " awaits as a
visitant coming invisibly from without." All
through the paragraph we are inevitably
reminded of the New Testament conception
of the indwelling Spirit, which often can
scarcely be distinguished from the renewed
nature of the Christian, but at other times is
viewed quite separately. Such a distinction
appears plainly in De Somn. i. 86 : " The
Logos of God when he visits our earthly
system of things helps and succours those
who have kinship with goodness and tend
in that direction (cf. John iii. 21), so as to
provide for them a complete refuge and
salvation, but on the enemies of good he
launches ruin and incurable destruction.^
Here the Logos is set over against God and
men as the representative of the Eternal,
acting for men's highest well-being. Once,
in a discussion of the incomprehensibility of
the Divine Nature, the " Logos-interpreter"
(cf. John i. 1 8) receives the remarkable appel-
lation " God of the imperfect," as opposed
to the Eternal, who is God " of the wise and
perfect " (Leg. Alleg. iii. 207), a class which,
172
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
probably for Philo as for the Stoics, remained
no more than an ideal. Perhaps nowhere is
the religious colour of the Logos-conception
more visible than when he describes it, quite
incidentally, as " the heavenly, incorruptible
food of the soul that longs for the vision of
God " (Quis Rer. Div. H. 79), or when he
compares it to a river. " As from the fountain
of wisdom, the Divine Logos flows down to
refresh and water the Olympian and heavenly
plants of souls that love goodness, a kind of
Paradise." This is " the river of God, full
of water," referred to in Ps. Ixv. 9, "a
stream of wisdom, which makes glad the
city of God " (Ps. xlvi. 5), "the soul of the
wise, in which God is said to walk to and fro
as in a city" (De Somn. ii. 242 ff.).
We have barely mentioned the important
fact that Philo sometimes identifies the Logos
with Wisdom. Referring, e.g., to " goodness "
as the genuine virtue, he declares that its
source is the wisdom of God. "That," he
adds, " is the Logos of God " (Leg. Alleg. i.
65). This identification cannot surprise us,
as Philo was, of course, familiar with the
173
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
commanding place occupied by the hypostasis
of " Wisdom" in the deeper thought of his
Jewish contemporaries. It is possibly true
that Greek influence accounts for the over-
shadowing of the latter conception by the
former in his writings. But this influence
may have been indirect rather than im-
mediate in his case, inasmuch as the term
Logos, as a mediating idea, covered a far
wider range of relations than Sophia, and
thus more adequately met the needs of his
thinking. So far as their range is the same,
the parallelism could scarcely be closer, and
we cannot help believing that Philo's own
extension of the application of Logos in
certain directions was made possible by his
acquaintance with the mediating function of
Sophia in the Wisdom-literature of the Jews.
One special use of Logos, although possess-
ing affinities with that of Wisdom, may per-
haps be traced more directly to his Egyptian
environment, in which Divine " words " were
endowed with unique potency. In a few
passages he uses it to describe the all-effica-
cious utterance of God. Thus, in referring
J74
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
to the account of Moses' death in Deut.
xxxiv., where it is ascribed (ver. 5) to
the "word of the Lord," he says by that
4 'word the whole universe was created, that
you may learn that God counts the wise man
of equal value with the world, by the same
Logos both producing the totality of things,
and leading the perfect man from his earthly
environment to himself" (De Sacr. Ab. et C.
8). This and other instances are, however,
isolated from the main trend of his usage,
and he goes out of his way to assert that the
Divine utterance has no point of comparison
with the human (Quod Deus sit immut. 82 f.),
thus preserving for it its fundamental signifi-
cance of the ideal form which brings coherence
into the universe. Yet we can easily under-
stand how, in spite of this, a Jewish mind,
accustomed from the Old Testament to the
idea of God's all-powerful Word, might find in
Philo's usage a significance which the author
himself had barely suggested. That would
be all the more likely if he were already
sensitive to those personifications of the
Divine Wisdom which represented her as
175
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
pleading with men and offering them instruc-
tion in the name of God (e.g. Prov. viii.
and ix.).
We must bear all these considerations in
mind when we place beside Philo's conception
of the Logos that which belongs to the Pro-
logue of the Fourth Gospel Dr. Rendel
Harris, with remarkable skill and contagious
enthusiasm, has tried to prove that the writer
is entirely dependent on the Sophia of the
Wisdom-literature, and he works out the
influence of this conception through one and
another of the Early Christian Fathers, as
well as in St. Paul. No doubt he has suc-
ceeded in unravelling one strand of a varie-
gated pattern. But the other threads must
not be ignored. The demonstration of many
remarkable parallels to Sophia in the famous
Prologue by no means excludes Alexandrian
features, for these parallels certainly came
within Philo's horizon. No conclusive argu-
ment has been as yet produced to account
for the Fourth Evangelist's choice of Logos
in preference to Sophia. And that choice, in
the light of Philo's employment of the term,
176
GOD'S APPROACH TO MAN
affords a strong presumption in favour of
Alexandrian affinities. The progress of
research in Hellenistic thought, whether
Jewish, Pagan, or Christian, continually puts
us on our guard against the tendency to
trace kinship along a single line. Syn-
cretism is the sign-manual of the period.
And Ephesus, the home of Heraclitus, with
his conception of Logos as the "compre-
hensive principle of order in the unified
world-process," was not likely to remain in-
different to the far-reaching developments
of the idea, whether among the Stoics or in
Philo. But one aspect of the question is not
open to dispute. To Philo, as to any of his
pagan contemporaries, it would have ap-
peared an inversion of all values, whether
religious or metaphysical, that the Evan-
gelist should have dared the tremendous
assertion: "The Logos became flesh, and
dwelt among us."
M 177
CHAPTER VI
UNION WITH GOD
ALL careful readers of Philo must agree
with the statement of Windisch, that
11 Religion is for him an inward impetus of
the soul, a quest for and delight in Divine
revelations, a craving after fellowship with
God, an experience of God" (Die Frommig-
keit P kilos, p. 80). How to attain com-
munion with the Unseen is the question
which absorbs his spirit. Now the very
presuppositions of his thinking about human
nature encourage him to press towards his
goal. For if anything can be called funda-
mental in his view of the constitution of
things, it is the conviction which he assigns
to " those who have gone deep into the
meaning of the laws" that "God gave man
as the best of his gifts a share with himself
in his rational nature" (De Op. M. 77).
178
UNION WITH GOD
Man starts, therefore, with a real kinship
to God. It is inevitable that, in proportion
as the Divine element asserts itself, he will
strive after more complete union with the
Fount of his being.
(a) Fatherhood and Sonship
In this connection it is worth while briefly
to examine Philo's application of the cate-
gories of Fatherhood and Sonship to the
relation between God and men, as that may
shed some light on the background of the
New Testament. He is fond of ascribing
to God the name of " Father," and this
under various aspects. By far the most
fundamental of these is that of Creator.
"The mind of the unseen," he says, "has
begotten the whole : but the Creator is
superior to the created. Hence he cannot
be borne along in the inferior, apart from
the unfitness of a father being contained in
his son : rather must the son grow through
the care of his father" (De Migr. Abr. 193).
Similarly, in De Cherub. 49, God is named
" Father of all" as " having begotten them."
UNION WITH GOD
We do not need to look for the origin of this
conception, as some scholars have done, to
the Platonic notion of "God" as Father of
the universe. It is, of course, familiar from
the Old Testament, e.g., Deut. xxxii. 6 :
" Do ye thus requite the Lord. ... Is not
he thy father that formed thee ? Hath
he not made thee and established thee " ;
Mai. ii. 10 : " Have we not all one father ?
Hath not God created us ? " Isa. Ixiv. 8 :
" But now, O Lord, thou art our father ;
we are the clay, and thou our potter ; and
we are all the work of thy hand."
We do not clearly understand what
Principal Drummond means by saying that
when Philo represents man as a " son " of
God, he gives it an explanation " which
reduces it to an ordinary figure of speech,"
and that "the term is used as a designation
of spiritual worth, and is not connected with
the ontological relations of man" (Philo
Judaeus, ii. 281-282). Can it ever be fruit-
fully used in the province of religious thought
except as "a designation of spiritual worth " ?
If we attempt to regard it under the category
1 80
UNION WITH GOD
of "ontological relations," can we arrive any-
where ? Even Jesus, for whom the conception
is so central, has no interest in " ontological
relations." " Love your enemies," He enjoins
upon His followers, "and pray for them that
persecute you, that you may become sons
of your Father who is in heaven " (Matt,
v. 44 f.). This, surely, must be called "a
designation of spiritual worth." Indeed,
one of the most interesting passages in
Philo bearing upon the subject has some
affinities with that famous utterance.
"Those," he says, "who act upon their
knowledge of the One," a phrase explained
in what follows as "estimating the noble
alone to be good," "are fittingly called sons
of God, as Moses also acknowledges in the
words, ' ye are sons of the Lord God '
(Deut. xiv. i), and 'God who begat them'
(Deut. xxxii. 18), and 'Is not this thy
Father'" (ibid.) (De Conf. Ling. 145). But
this he regards as a difficult achievement,
to be reached by stages. Therefore he adds :
" But even if a man be not yet actually worthy
of being called a son of God, let him aim at
181
UNION WITH GOD
being ranked in that relation to the Logos,
God's first-born son, the oldest of angelic
beings" (ibid. 146). Like Jesus, Philo seeks
to raise the mind from earthly to heavenly
relationships. "Why should we remember
only our human father? We have the un-
created, immortal, Eternal " (De Jos. 265).
" The law," he says, "confirms my sugges-
tion when it declares that those who do what
is acceptable . . . and noble are sons of God,
for it declares, Ye are sons of the Lord your
God, obviously indicating that they are to be
deemed worthy of such providence and solici-
tude as a father bestows. Now this care will
differ as greatly from human care, I believe,
as he who cares differs [from a human father]"
(De Spec. Leg. i. 318). A very illuminating
utterance, in view of the matter we have been
discussing, is Quaest. in Gen. i. 92 (p. 66,
Aucher): "Sometimes, indeed, he[Moses] calls
the angels sons of God, seeing that they were
not made incorporeal by any mortal man, for
they are spirits without bodies. But with
preference that great teacher names sons of
God the noblest of men, those endowed with
182
UNION WITH GOD
virtue." Here Philo makes his position plain,
and it certainly approaches the standpoint of
the New Testament. Recognising, then,
that we can only interpret such a relation-
ship ethically and spiritually, we find real
religious significance in his comment on the
well-known words of Gen. xviii. 17, " Shall
I hide from Abraham my friend (TOO QiXov pov,
not in known MSS of LXX) ?" " He who
possesses this portion has passed beyond the
limits of human well-being : for he alone is
high-born who can inscribe God as his
Father and has become his only adopted
son" (De Sobr. 56). It would be easy to
trace the parallel between such an utterance
and some of those in which St. Paul sets
forth the unique privileges which belong to
" adoption" in the Christian sense. We
cannot describe a relation of this kind by
any other term than " personal," and so,
mainly in virtue of his Old Testament con-
ception of God, Philo has something more
intimate in view than the Stoics when they
designated the " wise man " as a son of God.
It is from this standpoint that he can speak
183
UNION WITH GOD
of "the Father and Saviour" as " having
pity" on the soul that yearns to behold Him
(De Praem. et Poen. 39). But while we have
pointed out affinities in this realm of thought
between Philo and the New Testament, we
fully recognise that his tendency to resolve
God into hypostases has detracted from the
unity and power of an otherwise most impres-
sive Theistic conception. 1
(b) The Spirit of God
It comes natural to those who approach
the great Jewish thinker from a New Testa-
ment point of view to ask what place he assigns
to the Spirit of God in his analysis of the
process by which the human soul strives to
attain fellowship with the Divine. We have
seen that he does recognise, although far less
prominently than the New Testament writers
who have caught the inspiration of Jesus, the
possibility of a filial relation between man
and God. Is this in any way associated, as
in the New Testament, with a doctrine of
1 See Windisch, op. cit. pp. 97, 98. On the background of
in Philo, see esp. J. Kroll, op. cit. pp. 30-32.
184
UNION WITH GOD
the Spirit ? Or, does the conception of the
Spirit exercise any important influence on
Philo's idea of communion between the finite
and the Infinite ? We certainly cannot accept
off-hand Dr. Bigg's unqualified statement that
" the doc trine of the Holy Spirit . . . has no
place in his system" (Christian Platonists of
Alexandria, p. 25). The evidence fails to
justify it. But an examination of the facts
may bring out some interesting features of
Philo's view.
One of his fundamental positions is that
man could have formed no conception of
God, had God not breathed into that part of
his nature which was endowed with higher
potentialities His own " breath "or " spirit"
(rrvevpa). Thus, he says, " there comes about
a union (ei/ox?) of the three," i.e. of God, the
human vow, and the Divine Trvevpa (Leg.
Alleg. i. 37 f.). This, of course, represents
man's highest capacity, whether or not it
be afterwards developed. It cannot be
compared with the specifically Pauline use
of TTvevpa, but seems closely akin to what the
Apostle calls vow or o eW avOp^iro^. Its pre-
\
UNION WITH GOD
dominant characteristics appear to be rational.
It is the essence of the " governing element"
in human nature, and he identifies it with
\oyiar/ji6<}, reason (Quis Rer. Div. //. 55 ff.).
In another place he speaks in notable terms
of the " rational soul " of man as " the
genuine coinage of that Divine and invisible
spirit, marked and stamped by the seal of
God, whose impress is the eternal Logos "
(De Plant. 18). That is to say, the rational
element in the soul is the stamp on human
nature of the Divine Spirit, the impress of
the Logos, which cannot here be distinguished
from the Trvev^a of God. On the same lines,
the Divine part of man, " the noblest aspect
of the soul which is called vovs and XOYO?,
mind and reason," he designates by the
general description of TO irvev^a (Quod del.
pot. 83). In these instances we are not
dealing with an attainment in the religious
life, but with an original endowment. But
in the most interesting and elaborate of all
the passages in which he discusses the
Divine Spirit, he reveals a wider outlook.
Discussing the statement of Gen. vi. 3
186
UNION WITH GOD
(LXX) : " My spirit shall not dwell with
men for ever, because they are flesh," he
comments : " He does remain sometimes, but
he does not dwell always with most of us.
Who indeed is so irrational ... as never
either voluntarily or involuntarily to receive
a notion (evvoiav) of the Highest ? Nay, even
over the reprobate there often hovers the
impression (<f>avTacria) of the good, but they
cannot grasp it and keep it by them. For
it vanishes at once, turning away from
those . . . who have abandoned law and
right. Indeed, it would never have visited
them, except to convict them sharply of
preferring the base to the noble. Now,
according to one usage, the air that rises
from the earth is called Divine irvev^a . . .
but according to another it means that pure
(a/cr)pa,Tos) knowledge in which every wise
man fully shares." He proceeds to illustrate
this aspect of the Divine Spirit by the special
equipment of wisdom and understanding
bestowed upon Bezaleel for the construction
of the Tabernacle, and by the imparting to
the seventy elders of the spirit of Moses,
187
UNION WITH GOD
which he describes as " wise, Divine, in-
divisible, noble, without any defect " (De
Gig. 20 ffi).
Here he recognises a physical sense of
rn/eO/Lta, equivalent to "air," which recalls
Stoic descriptions of God as the " aery
essence " (ovaia ae/joetSrfc) which permeates all
existence (e.g. Diog. L. vii. 148). Indeed,
his language throughout this paragraph has
various echoes of Stoicism, as when he
speaks of " receiving a notion " (evvoiav
\a/3e2v) of God, and refers to the " impres-
sion " (<f>avTaa-La) of the good. And the
influence of Platonic terminology is evident
when he calls the Divine Spirit in its highest
aspect "that pure knowledge in which every
wise man shares." 1 But the passage shows
that he is fully sensitive to the Old
Testament conception of the Spirit as a
Divine equipment, a Divine gift, an experi-
ence not to be identified with that natural
endowment which he also calls the inbreathing
of the irvevfia. Obviously it will be as a rule
1 See Phaedrus, 247 D : didvoia v& re KOI eiricrrfjfjirj
(so Bekker)
188
UNION WITH GOD
impossible to distinguish the Divine Spirit in
this sense from the Logos. And in all
likelihood the reason why the conception is
not more prominent is just that the Logos
absorbs its functions. But it is straining the
evidence to say, as Zeller (followed by
Drummond) does, that Philo only speaks of
the Divine Spirit when the idea is presented
to him by some text of Scripture (Phil. d.
Griechen^, iii. 2. 2, p. 432, note 2). There
is nothing artificial or awkward in his em-
ployment of the category. His most arresting
references occur quite incidentally, and their
basis is not theory but experience. " The
invisible Spirit which is wont to commune
with me unseen whispers to me and says "
(De Somn. ii. 252). Here is an instance
from his own life of fellowship with God.
In another place he appears to include
himself when he recounts what happens to
" prophetic " natures : " The mind (1/01)9) in
us departs at the coming of the Divine Spirit,
and when it leaves, returns to its abode.
For it is not fitting that mortal should dwell
with immortal. Thus the sinking of reason
189
UNION WITH GOD
and the darkness which encompasses it beget
ecstasy and God-inspired frenzy " (Quis Rer.
Div. H. 265). In these passages, in which
he speaks most intimately of the Divine
Spirit, he is in no sense influenced by some
direct reference in Scripture.
Further light is shed upon his conception
by the references he makes to the conditions
of the Spirit's indwelling. " Let us keep
still from wrong-doing," he says, "in order
that the Divine Spirit of wisdom may not
easily remove and depart, but may abide
with us for a long, long time, as with Moses
the wise man" (De Gig. 47). It may be
noted that in the context the " Spirit " is
identified with 6p0o$ Xtfyo?, an identification
common in Philo. In the same treatise (53)
he declares that " among the majority," i.e.
those who set before them many ends in life,
the Divine Spirit does not abide, even if for
a short time he may sojourn, but only with
one type of men does he dwell, that which
has stripped off all that belongs to the world
of becoming, " and the inmost veil and curtain
of opinion, and with unrestricted and open
190
UNION WITH GOD
mind reaches God." Moses is adduced as
an example of this type, one "who enters
into the darkness, the unseen place, and
abides there while he is initiated into the
most sacred mysteries. Indeed, not only
does he become an initiate, but also a
hierophant of mystic rites, a teacher of
Divine things, in which he gives instruction
to those whose ears have been purified.
With such a man the Divine Spirit is ever
present, showing him the way in every straight
path " (ibid. 54 f.).
But while there is a real approximation in
Philo's use of the conception of the Spirit of
God to that in the New Testament, we not
only feel that in his thought it is secondary,
but also that as an energising power it is
grasped with far less vigour and discerned in
a dimmer light than, e.g., by St. Paul. We
have no doubt that for Philo also it represents
the formulation of an experience, but that
experience lacks the sureness and depth and
permanence which characterise the Apostle's
endowment. And the reason surely is that
in Philo the Divine Spirit is one special de-
191
UNION WITH GOD
scription of a fluctuating and elusive category
like the Logos, while St. * Paul indissolubly
associates it with that which has the most
concrete reality for his spiritual life, the
person and activity of the living Lord.
(c) The Vision of God
For Philo, the crowning achievement of the
pious spirit is the Vision of God. " What
lovelier or more fitting garland could be
woven for the victorious soul than the power,
with clear vision, to gaze upon Him who is ?
Truly splendid is the prize held out to the
wrestling soul to be equipped with eyesight
so as to perceive without dimness Him who
is alone worthy of contemplation " (De Mut.
Nom. 82). That man has reached the heights
of blessedness to whom it is granted not
merely by knowledge to apprehend all that
belongs to the natural order, but to behold
the Father and Maker of the universe. For
there is nothing higher than God : he that
has succeeded in stretching his soul's vision
as far as Him may well pray to abide there
without change (De A dr. 58). For such
192
UNION WITH GOD
vision is no mere passing rapture. It must
prove a singular aid in the good life. "If
the sight of elders or instructors or rulers or
parents move the beholders to reverence and
orderly conduct and the desire for a self-
controlled life, how great a bulwark of virtue
and honourable living may we expect to find
in souls which, reaching beyond all that is
created, have been trained to behold the
Uncreated and Divine " (Leg. ad Gaium, 5).
This fundamental conviction lets us see into
the heart of Philo's religious aspiration.
It is a good thing, he holds, for the soul to
seek God. For even the striving after good-
ness brings a sort of preliminary satisfaction.
But it is a matter of uncertainty whether the
search will reach its goal. Many failed
to attain. God did not reveal Himself to
them (Leg. All. iii. 47). Here is the crux.
The highest stage of religion, the only
fully satisfying attainment, means revelation.
Philo does not so much discuss the idea of
revelation in itself as presuppose it in what
he affirms concerning the spiritual vision of
God. But in speaking of some whose
N 193
UNION WITH GOD
search is not fruitless, he describes God as
" Himself, by reason of his gracious nature,
going forth to meet them with his virgin-
graces, and revealing himself to those who
crave to behold him, not as he is for that is
impossible . . . but in so far as it was
possible for a created nature to approach his
incomprehensible power " (De Fuga, 141).
What, then, are the conditions in which the
spirit can attain the Vision of God ? Philo
has much to say on this problem. We shall
try to select some crucial examples of the
position which he occupies. In a set of
reflections on Gen. xv. 5, where he takes
the words, " He [God] led him [Abraham]
forth," in a spiritual sense, he proceeds :
" The mind that is to be led forth and set at
liberty must withdraw from all things, from
bodily necessities, from the instruments of the
senses, from sophistical reasonings, from
plausible arguments, finally from itself. . . .
For it is not possible for one who dwells in
the body and among mortal men to have
communion with God, but only for him whom
God delivers out of his prison " (Leg. All.
UNION WITH GOD
iii. 41 f.). This conception appears in a
specially impressive form in Quod del. pot.
158 f . : "Will you then assert, O senseless
man, that if you are deprived of bodily and
external advantages you cannot reach the
vision of God ? I tell you that in that event
you will surely attain to it : for you must be
released from the iron fetters of the body and
from bodily concerns if you are to receive the
vision of the Uncreated. . . . For it was when
[Abraham] left his whole house that the Law
says, ' God appeared to him ' (Gen. xii. 7),
showing that God distinctly appears to him
who escapes from material things and retires
into the incorporeal soul of this body of ours."
Philo sheds light upon his position in distin-
guishing between God's manner of revealing
Himself to corporeal souls and those which
are bodiless. " To these souls which are
incorporeal and worship him it is natural that
he should appear as he is, talking as a friend
with friends. But to those still in the body
he resembles angels, not indeed altering his
proper nature, for he cannot suffer change,
but impressing upon them who behold him
195
UNION WITH GOD
the notion of a different shape, so that they
suppose that this image is not a copy, but
that what they see is the original itself."
(De Somn. i. 232). Philo goes on to say
that for the benefit of dull natures God has
to be represented in Scripture by anthropo-
morphic descriptions, for in this way alone can
they be disciplined. But the more accurate
statement is that of Num. xxiii. 17 : "God
is not as a man." Hence, to mortals, He
must reveal Himself in angelic guise. And
His angel, as found in Scripture, is really
His "image," the Logos (ibid. 236 ff.). But
while life in the thraldom of the body is an
insuperable barrier to the undimmed vision
of God, he does regard it as possible, as
passages quoted above plainly indicate, for
a soul which has completely detached itself
from the hampering conditions of mortal
existence (and this he also assumes as a
possibility) even now to attain the goal of its
yearnings. He can speak of minds so
M completely purified " that the Lord of all,
"silently, unseen, alone, sojourns with them,"
while " with the spirits of those who are still
196
UNION WITH GOD
being cleansed and have not yet completely
washed away the stained and defiled life they
have lived in burdensome bodies, angels may
dwell, Divine Logoi, making them bright
and pure by the doctrines of high virtue "
(ibid. 148). Abraham, the wise man, the stable
soul, is the true pattern for those who would
commune with God. " For in very deed
only the unchanging soul can draw near to
the unchanging God, and the soul in such a
condition veritably stands beside the Divine
power" (De Post. Cain. 27).
Now the purified soul has a certain dlan or
urge towards the beatific vision. " When the
eyes formed of corruptible material reach so
far as from the region of earth to scan remote
heaven and touch its limits, how spacious
must we suppose to be the sweep of the eyes
of the soul ! For these, winged by an eager
longing to behold the Existent in his radiance,
not only stretch to the utmost ether, but, pass-
ing beyond the bounds of the entire universe,
hasten to the Uncreated." These are the
souls which cannot be satiated with wisdom
and knowledge. They are said to be "sum-
197
UNION WITH GOD
moned up" to God. " For it is meet that
these should be called up to the Divine, who
have been inspired by him." Thus it is by
the Divine Spirit that the vow is lightened
and lifted up to the highest heights (De
Plant. 22 ff. : cf. the fine description of a
similar experience in De Spec. Leg. i. 207).
Let us try to ascertain how Philo conceives
the Vision of God to be attained. We have
seen that a presupposition of the achieve-
ment is the liberation of the mind or spirit
from bodily entanglements and all material
complications. It has, in a sense, to with-
draw from the body in order to reach the
Uncreated. Further, as a matter of experi-
ence it is only a few who reach the goal.
But this small number are "so mighty in
energy that not even the whole round of
earth can contain them, and they reach
heaven ; for, possessed by an unquenchable
longing to behold and to be ever in fellow-
ship with the Divine, when they have closely
investigated and scrutinised the whole of
visible nature, they go at once in quest of
the incorporeal, ideal world, taking none of
198
UNION WITH GOD
the senses with them, but leaving behind all
that is irrational in the soul, and only making
use of that which is called mind and reason "
(De Praem. et Poen. 26). It is important
to note that in all that Philo says of what
is plainly an "ecstatic" experience, he makes
the "rational" capacity of man the chief
human factor. But even the purified human
spirit is unfit to pursue this arduous quest
alone. " There is danger for the soul in
ascending to the vision of the Existent by
itself, for it knows not the way, and may be
puffed up by ignorance and rashness. ...
Wherefore Moses prays that he may have
the guidance of God himself for the path
that leads to him, for he says, Unless Thou
go with me, take me not up hence " (De
Migr. Abr. 170 f.). God Himself, there-
fore, comes to the aid of the yearning soul.
He will assist its pursuit of Him. This is
exemplified in the experience of Abraham.
When his understanding had dispelled the
mists of sense which confused it, he was
scarcely able to grasp, as in clear air, the
impression of the Unseen. But God, "by
199
UNION WITH GOD
reason of his philanthropy, did not turn away
from the soul as it came to him, but going
forth to meet it, revealed his own nature, in
so far as it was possible for the beholder to
see it. Hence it is said, not that the wise
man saw God, but that God appeared to the
wise man. For it was impossible that any
one should grasp by himself the truly Existent,
unless he had manifested and revealed him-
self " (De Abr. 79 f.).
What, then, is Philo's conception of the
Vision ? It need scarcely be said, in view
of statements already discussed, that contra-
dictory utterances are to be found. " When
the soul that loves God searches into the
nature of the Existent, according to his
essence, it enters into an unseen and in-
visible search, from which the chief benefit
that accrues to it is to comprehend that God
is incomprehensible and to see that he is
invisible " (De Post. Cain. 15). The classical
instance is the experience of Moses as
narrated in Ex. xxxiii. 13 ff. All that is
vouchsafed to him is a vision of the environ-
ment of the Divinity. "His nature does
200
UNION WITH GOD
not admit of being seen : and what wonder
that the Existent cannot be grasped by man,
since even the mind in each of us is unknow-
able by us. For who ever beheld the essence
of his soul ? " (De Mut. Norn. 9 f.). Yet very
important statements occur of an opposite
drift. And these probably bring us as near
as we can reach to an analysis of a mystical
experience which is really beyond analysis.
" There is," he says, "a more perfect and more
completely purified type of spirit [again ex-
emplified by Moses], initiated into the Divine
mysteries, which does not reach a knowledge
of the First Cause from created things, of the
substance, as it were, from the shadow, but
overleaping the created, receives a clear
manifestation of the Uncreated, so as to
grasp Him from Himself (Leg. All. iii.
100). Some light is shed upon the meaning
of this vague phrase by several remarkable
utterances. Describing the discipline of the
wrestling soul, Philo speaks of a point at
which "a bright incorporeal ray, purer than
ether, suddenly shining upon it, revealed the
ideal world as under guidance. But the
201
UNION WITH GOD
Guide, encompassed by unstained light, was
hard to behold or to divine, for the soul's
vision was obscured by the splendour of the
rays. Yet she, despite the streaming to-
wards her of intense radiance, endured,
through her extraordinary craving for a
vision. Then the Father and Saviour,
seeing her genuine longing and yearning,
pitied her, and imparting power to the
approach of her sight, did not withhold the
vision of himself, in so far as it was possible
for a created and mortal nature to contain
it" (De Praem. et Poen. 37 ff.). He seems
to feel, however, that his description is quite
inadequate. And so he returns to the ex-
perience. " How this approach [i.e. of the
eyes of the soul to God] has taken place, it
is worth while observing by means of a simile.
Can we behold this sense-perceived sun by
any other means than the sun itself? Or,
can we behold the stars by any other means
than the stars? In a word, is not light seen
by means of light? In the same fashion
God also, who is his own radiance, is seen
through himself alone, no other co-operating,
202
UNION WITH GOD
or being able to co-operate towards the pure
apprehension of his existence " (ibid. 45 ). We
may connect with this a noteworthy state-
ment in Qu. in Gen. iv. i (p. 238, Aucher) :
" Since God is incomprehensible, not only to
the race of men, but also to all the parts
of heaven which surpass men in purity, he
caused a certain radiance to flash forth from
himself, which we may rightly call his form,
scattering incorporeal rays about the mind
and filling it with super-celestial light.
Under this guidance the mind is led,
through the mediating form, to the
Prototype."
Some further clues to the meaning of
what he conceives as the most intimate
experience of union with God may be found
in certain descriptions of moments of spiritual
rapture. And first let us recall his famous
account of his own spiritual illumination as
a thinker. " I am not ashamed," he says,
"to recount my own experience. ... At
times, when I proposed to enter upon my
wonted task of writing on philosophical
doctrines, with an exact knowledge of the
203
UNION WITH GOD
materials which were to be put together, I
have had to leave off without any work
accomplished, finding my mind barren and
fruitless,; and upbraiding it for its self-
complacency, while startled at the might
of the Existent, in whose power it lies to
open and close the wombs of the soul.
But at other times, when I had come
empty, all of a sudden I was filled
with thoughts showered down and sown
upon me unseen from above, so that by
Divine possession I fell into a rapture and
became ignorant of everything, the place,
those present, myself, what was spoken or
written. For I received a stream of inter-
pretation [reading, with Markland, e<rx ov
yap epfjLrjveias pevaiv], a fruition of light, the
most clear-cut sharpness of vision, the
most vividly distinct view of the matter
before me, such as might be received
through the eyes from the most luminous
presentation" (Zte Migr. Abr. 34 f.).
Such illumining of his spirit means for
him the direct impact of the Divine. And
no doubt it has contributed materials
204
UNION WITH GOD
to his attempt, acknowledged by himself as
inadequate, to delineate the soul's vision of
God. Of similar import is his remarkable
appeal to the soul in Quis Rer. Div. H.
69 f.: "If a yearning come upon thee, O
soul, to possess Divine blessings, forsake
not only thy 'land/ the body, and thy
'kindred,' the life of sense, and thy 'father's
house' (Gen. xii. i), the [uttered] word, 1 but
escape from thyself also, and go forth from
(eWT7?&) thyself, filled with a Divine frenzy
like those possessed in the mystic rites of the
Corybantes, and holden by the Deity after
the manner of prophetic inspiration. For
when the mind is filled with God and is no
longer self-contained, but rapt and frenzied
with a heavenly passion and driven by the
Truly Existent and drawn upwards to him,
while truth goes in front and removes
obstacles that it may tread the highway,
this is thy [Divine] inheritance." Here is
an impressive description of spiritual ecstasy,
and perhaps it delineates with as much de-
1 See De Migr. Abr. 2 : \6yov rov Kara npofopdv, a
passage which explains the symbolism here.
205
UNION WITH GOD
finiteness as Philo could reach what for him,
on the basis of real experience, was the
content of his most intimate union with
God. He makes a like appeal in Quaestt.
in Exod. ii. 51 (pp. 505-506, Aucher), in
which, after laying down certain conditions,
the cutting off of desires, pleasures, despon-
dencies, fears, and the casting aside of folly,
wrong-doing, and cognate evils, he shows
the soul how it may be consecrated to God
a living temple. " Then he may appear to
thee visibly, causing incorporeal rays to shine
upon thee, granting visions of his nature
undreamed of and ineffable, which are the
overflowing sources of all other blessings."
In such experiences it is plain, as Br^hier
fitly expresses it, that " Philo's contemplation
[of God] is ... an inward rapture in which
all precise knowledge disappears in the feeling
of the existence of a Being incomprehensible
and without limitations" (op. cit. p. 296).
Here we inevitably recall the parallel ex-
perience of a nature at various points so
closely akin to that of Philo, although so
immeasurably his superior in creative power.
206
UNION WITH GOD
St. Paul also has entered into the mystic
ecstasy : "I knew a man in Christ who four-
teen years ago was caught up to the third
heaven. In the body or out of the body ?
That I do not know : God knows. I simply
know that, in the body or out of the body
(God knows which), this man was caught
up to paradise and heard sacred secrets,
which no human lips can repeat. Of an
experience like that I am prepared to boast,
but not of myself personally not except as
regards my weaknesses!" (2 Cor. xii 3 ff. :
Moffatt's tr.). The smallest reflection will
show that, like Philo, Paul feels himself
rapt by the Divine power, his soul perfectly
passive, and thus laid open for the reception
of ineffable Divine revelations.
Attention has been already called to Philo's
opposing statements regarding the possibility
of an immediate apprehension of God, state-
ments which have their parallels in thewritings
of many mystics. Possibly he is quite aware
of these apparently contradictory standpoints.
And some important utterances on the more
and the less direct vision of the Existent
207
UNION WITH GOD
may be an attempt to suggest a via media.
Of special significance is that in De Abr.
1 19 ff., a section in which he explains the sym-
bolic meaning of Abraham's three heavenly
visitants (Gen. xvii. i ff.). " When the soul,
as at broad noon, is encompassed by the
Divine radiance, and, being wholly filled with
spiritual light, welcomes [reading avya?
aa-Trdffrjrai, with Wendland] the rays poured
forth around, it receives a threefold impres-
sion of the one essence, the first as of One
who is three, the other two as of shadows
cast by him. . . . Let no one, however,
suppose that we can properly speak of
shadows in the case of God. We only use
this expression to bring out more clearly
what has to be explained. . . . But, as one
might say in close accord with the truth, the
Father of all stands in the midst, who in
Holy Scripture is called by his proper name,
the Existent, while on either side are his
highest Powers, those closest to the Existent,
the creative and the ruling. . . . With these,
then, as his attendants, He in the midst pre-
sents to the spirit that has vision at one time
208
UNION WITH GOD
the impression of one, at another of three ; of
one, when the mind is in the highest state of
purification and not only passing beyond the
multitude of numbers, but also beyond the
Two which is the neighbour of the One,
hastens to the unmixed and uncompounded
Idea, which needs no other than itself; of
three, when the mind has not yet been initi-
ated into the Great Mysteries, but still only
knows the lower grades, and cannot grasp the
Existent from himself alone without the help
of another, but only through what he does,
either as creating or ruling." This paragraph
is full of interest as indicating how Philo at-
tempted to satisfy his own mind as to the
relation of the mediate to the immediate
vision of God. The spirit which is "in the
highest state of purification " is that which is
able fully to renounce itself and to yield
wholly to the Divine influence. Not that
Philo appears ever to adopt the conception,
characteristic of mysticism, of a complete
fusion of the individual soul with God. But
its self-consciousness is suppressed, and, as
in prophetic inspiration, which seems power-
o 209
UNION WITH GOD
fully to have influenced his conception, it
becomes simply the receptacle or the instru-
ment of the Divine Spirit.
Thus the two poles of thought stand over
against each other. On the one hand, the
transcendent God cannot be grasped by
finite creatures. Yet no other goal will
satisfy. Perhaps, as Zeller suggests (Philos.
d. Griechcn*, iii. 2. 2, p. 463), "the very
transcendence of Philo's conception of God
arose, not from the attempt to cut off all
relations between men and God, but rather
from the very opposite effort, to reach the
Deity, whom he could not find in himself or
in the world, beyond the bounds of all finite
existence." That could only be realised in a
Divinely inspired ecstasy, in which the finite,
for the moment, transcended mortal limits,
and was virtually endowed with infinity.
210
CHAPTER VII
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
WE have attempted in the preceding
chapter to give a brief description
of what Philo means by the soul's Vision of
God, that which he conceives to be the su-
preme spiritual attainment. This attainment,
we found, is realised in an ecstatic condition
in which the restrictions of sense are for the
moment left behind, and the purified soul is
alone with the Alone. But Philo's Mysti-
cism, which reaches its crowning point in
this high experience, has so large a bearing
upon his whole religious outlook and aspi-
rations that it calls for a more detailed
examination.
It has already been noted that success in
the quest after union with God is regarded
by Philo as the meed only of a few. This
conviction colours both his thought and his
21 I
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
language. Again and again when he deals
with the ineffable discoveries of the soul in
God which he seeks to elucidate allegorically,
he speaks as if to an esoteric circle, and
employs the terminology of the Mystery-cults
of paganism. " This," he exclaims, "receive
in your souls, ye initiates, purified of hearing,
as veritably sacred mysteries, and divulge it
not to any of the uninitiated, but keep it in
the storehouse of your mind as a treasure
not composed of silver and gold, substances
which perish, but as the fairest of existing
possessions " (De Cherub. 48). The same awe
in declaring the deeper secrets of the Divine
appears in De Sacr. Ab. et Cain. 60, where
he speaks of the necessity of hiding "the
sacred revelation concerning the Uncreated
and his Powers, since not every one can guard
the deposit of the Divine ritual." Moses'
action in pitching the tabernacle (which the
LXX of Ex. xxx. 7 calls " his tent," and Philo
" his own tent ") outside and away from the
camp, means that "having established his
mind firmly, he begins to worship God, and
having entered into the cloud abides there,
212
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
receiving initiation into the Divine Mysteries.
Indeed he becomes not only an initiate but
also a hierophant of ritual and a teacher of
Divine things, in which he guides those
whose hearing is purified " (De Gig. 54). The
full force of this mystic terminology is made
clear by Leg. All. iii. 100 : " There is a more
perfect and purified type of spirit which has
been initiated into the Great Mysteries, which
does not discover the Cause from created
things, the abiding, as it were, from the
shadow, but overleaping the created, receives
a clear vision of the Uncreated so as to ap-
prehend him from himself" 1 Possibly this
usage requires no further explanation. In
every period, those whose spiritual affinities are
mystical draw together through the attraction
of a common experience and cultivate on its
basis a common speech. Yet there is some-
thing to be said for Reitzenstein's hypothesis
(Poimandres, p. 204, note i) that Philo was
here influenced by his Egyptian environment
in which there had grown up as the result of
1 See the interesting collection of mystery-terms from Philo
in Bousset, Religion d. Judentums*, p. 519, note 3.
213
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
mystery-cults (< an elaborated literary form and
manner" of this type. That is, however,
something very different from the theory
which accompanies it, that Philo's doctrine
of ecstasy is itself the product of Hellenistic
religion, a question to which we must return.
Before we go further, let us try to form
some more or less clear notion of the terms we
have to use. Mysticism, it need scarcely be
said, is one of the most question-begging
descriptions of certain elusive because very
personal spiritual conditions. Some power-
ful minds regard such states as a kind of nar-
cotic indulgence of the sensibilities, fostered
by turbid thought and unethical feeling.
Some at the opposite extreme would embrace
under the name those experiences which are
supremely life-enhancing. Others associate
it with individualities of a religious bent
whose intellectual nature is completely over-
shadowed by the emotional. And further
interpretations of " Mysticism " have been
current. Hence there has come into vogue a
use of the term as lax as that of such words
as "evolution," " realism," "socialism."
214
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
It is surely true, as Dr. Bigg suggests,
that " in one sense all believers in the unseen
are mystics" (Christian Platonists of Alex-
andria, p. 99, note i) That is to say, a stage
may be reached in the experience of com-
munion with God which is so intimate as to
be indescribable in terms of normal states of
consciousness. Various degrees of intensity
may be discovered in the attitude of the
spirit which, to use Plotinus' phrase, is "in
love with " God. Probably some spiritual
minds which delight in exercising a strong
control over the processes of their Godward
aspiration discredit the circle of ideas usually
called "mystic," because to them it seems to
imply spheres of being that are nebulous
or morally unproductive. Yet many such
persons would willingly admit that St. Paul
stands on the summit of religious experience
when he exclaims : "I have been crucified with
Christ : nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ
lives in me : indeed the life which I now live
as a man I live by faith faith in the Son of
God, who loved me, and gave himself for me "
(Gal. ii. 19, 20). But faith in Paul's profound
215
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
sense of the term undoubtedly involves a
mystical element, a factor or condition which
eludes psychological analysis, although it is
far removed from many of the typical formu-
lations of what may be called technical mysti-
cism. On the other hand, there have been
yearning souls throughout the ages whose
dominant aim has been to get beyond the
limits of self and to be merged in Him who
is the All. This probably represents the
most intensified degree of the mystical ex-
perience in the strictest sense. It is, however,
in reality no more than the exaggeration of
an element which is discernible everywhere
in religious experience, by whatever designa-
tion it may be named, the longing for union
with the Divine. This is described from the
standpoint of his own special experience by
St. Paul as being " in Christ " : and from a
totally divergent angle of vision by an entirely
different type of thinker, Spinoza, as amor
intellectualis Dei. * The goal in all cases is
1 But, as Mr. C. C. J. Webb cogently points out, "there is
in this amor intellectualis Dei no question of reciprocation "
{God and Personality, p. 70).
216
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
complete unification of life. For some this
means individuality raised to its highest power,
for others entire absorption in Perfect or
Absolute Being.
There can be little doubt that the direction
which this mystical element in human nature
is trained to take, depends largely on the
temperament of the individual. Many will
be content to satisfy its needs in the relation
which Faith in its deep Pauline sense estab-
lishes between the soul and God. For such,
no abandonment of personality is involved.
Rather does personality reach for the first
time its full realisation. Others, however,
are led to discipline their spiritual natures so
resolutely by patient concentration on the
goal of their desires that they enter upon
abnormal spiritual conditions of greater or
less intensity which assume the nature of a
trance. This state also may vary in-
definitely. Its most common form is ecstasy.
"Taken alone," says Miss Underbill, "and
apart from its content, ecstasy carries no
guarantee of spiritual value. It merely
indicates the presence of certain abnormal
217
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
psycho-physical conditions, an alteration
of the normal equilibrium. . . . Ecstasy,
physically considered, may occur in any
person in whom (i) the threshold of con-
sciousness is exceptionally mobile, and (2)
there is a tendency to dwell upon one
governing idea or intuition. Its worth
depends entirely on the objective worth of
that idea or intuition." (Mysticism, p. 430).
It need scarcely be said that the governing
idea in the case of all truly mystical natures
is that of God.
The excellent summary of the facts just
quoted will serve as an introduction to an
examination of Philo's mysticism. And it
also puts us on our guard against a miscon-
ception which has recently gained currency
through the dogmatic assertions of prominent
scholars. Thus Reitzenstein declares that
Philo's doctrine of ecstasy is "to be fully
explained from Hellenism," and, quoting
certain commonplaces of mystical technique,
remarks that " Philo has taken over these
Hellenistic theories" (op. cit. p. 204, note i,
238, note 3). Similarly Brdhier attempts to
218
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
show that various mystical doctrines in Philo
have their origin in traditions of Egyptian
mystical theology such as are to be found in
Plutarch's treatise, On his? and the Hermetic
Tractates (see esp. op. cit. pp. 245-248).
Apart altogether from the fact that these
tractates are of much later date than Philo,
and must have been as directly exposed to
his influence as we know Plotinus to have
been, the material he adduces is in no sense
the special property of Egyptian theology.
Still less are the mystic conceptions which
Reitzenstein (followed as usual by Bousset)
finds him to have borrowed from his environ-
ment in any degree characteristically Hellen-
istic. They bear the familiar stamp of
Mysticism as it appears in every quarter of
the world where spiritual or even unspiritual
religion is cultivated. To describe the in-
variable phenomena of the mystic quest for
God as the peculiar product of Hellenistic
religious activity, is to ignore a realm of facts
1 It is plain to the careful reader of such texts as De Cherub.
42 if. and Leg. All. iii. 3, 139, quoted by Brehier in support
of his view, that Philo's use of earlier ideas in these passages
is purely metaphorical and illustrative.
219
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
of which no one who writes on the history
of religion has any business to be ignorant.
We have recognised how frequently Philo
uses the terminology of the Mystery-cults of
paganism for his own purposes. His actual
estimate of these cults is made sufficiently
plain by such passages as De Spec. Leg.
i. 319: " Further, he (Moses) removes from
the sacred legislation rites and mysteries and
all such clap-trap and buffoonery, considering
that people brought up in such a common-
wealth as Israel are above cultivating ritual
and despising truth and running after
ceremonies belonging to the darkness of
night, while they cling to mystic fictions and
ignore what can stand the light of day.
Therefore let none of Moses' disciples and
friends either initiate or be initiated. For
either of the two, the teaching or learning of
mystic rites is no small profanation. . . .
Let those whose activities are hurtful be
ashamed and search for holes and recesses
in the earth and deep darkness, and let them
hide and cast a shadow over their own un-
righteousness. . . . Ought we not openly to
220
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
offer whatever is needful and profitable to all
who are worthy of it for their benefit? But
the fact is that seldom is a good man
initiated, but you do find robbers and pirates
and bands of wretched, unbridled women,
because they pay fees to the hierophants who
initiate them."
Let us more minutely scrutinise that
condition of ecstasy or inspiration in which
Philo, like most mystics, attains his most
satisfying apprehension of the living reality
of God. How completely his thought is
saturated with ecstatic experiences appears
from his constant use of the vocabulary of
Divine possession. Terms like IvOovviaGpo*;,
"Divine inspiration," evOova-idfav, "to be
Divinely inspired," eWtaa0>w>9, "Divine
rapture," eTriQudfav, "to be in a condition
of Divine rapture," /copvpavnav, "to be filled
with supernatural frenzy," paKffveiv, "to be
seized with Divine madness,"
"to be possessed by Deity,"
"Divine possession," deo^oprjro^ "possessed
by God," and its corresponding verb,
, e/39 ovpdvios, " heavenly passion,"
221
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
and <Wracrt9, " ecstasy," are of frequent occur-
rence. 1 It is unnecessary to enlarge on the
fact established in our last chapter that the
literal meaning of the word " ecstasy " is
fundamental for Philo. We there quoted a
passage of marked significance (Quis Rer.
Div. H. 69 f.) in which he adjures the soul
that craves the summum bonum of the Beatific
Vision to " escape from" (airbbpaOi) itself, to
"go forth from" (eWr^t) itself, "filled with
a Divine frenzy like those possessed in the
mystic rites of the Corybantes." This associa-
tion of ecstasy with an inward rapture is
found repeatedly in Philo. A very important
instance is Leg. All. i. 82 ff. "When the
spirit (which allegorically represents Judah,
o efoyitoXo??;/?, the man given to praising
God ") goes out of itself and offers itself
to God ... it there and then surrenders
(6fjLo\oy[av TToieiTcu, possibly, ' comes to terms
with ') to the Existent. . . . And truly it
must be observed that this act of praise
(TO egofio\oyei<T0ai) is not the doing of the soul
1 See the useful list in Bousset, Religion d. Judentums 2 ,
p. 517, note 2, which might be considerably extended.
222
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
but of God, who reveals to it his beneficence."
The passage occurs in a paragraph in which
he compares the various tribes of Israel to
the jewels in the high priest's breastplate.
Judah, the symbol of the man who praises
God, has as his gem the carbuncle (avOpat;).
For the spirit which he represents, the spirit
which goes out of itself, "is kindled into a
flame of thanksgiving to God and becomes
drunken with that drunkenness which does
not intoxicate." Again, in an interpretation
of the story of Hannah who was rebuked for
drunkenness (i Sam. i. 14) as she prayed
before the Lord, Philo remarks : "In the
case of the God-possessed not only is the
soul wont to be stirred and driven into frenzy,
but to be flushed and inflamed, since the joy
which wells up within and makes the spirit
glow transmits the experience to the outward
parts" (De Ebriet. 147). Very suggestive is
an actual description of ecstasy (Leg. All.
ii. 31). Taking as his basis Gen. ii. 21
(LXX), " God put Adam into a trance
(e/co-rao-t?) and caused him to sleep," Philo
says that "the going-forth (e/co-rao-^) and
223
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
turning (rpoirrj) of the spirit is a sleep which
falls upon it. It goes forth when it ceases
to busy itself with the ideas which impinge
upon it, and when it does not exercise
activity upon them it slumbers. Its going
forth is an apt account of what happens, that
is, its turning in the direction not of itself but
of God who . . . imparts to it this new
direction." In this definition of ecstasy the
emphasis is placed not on the rousing of
the spirit to a Divine madness, but on its
quiescence. And this aspect of the condition
appears to be as familiar to Philo as the
other. We have referred in a former chapter
to that experience of the soul which he calls
" intercourse with the God who loves to
give," in which there is a cessation of all effort,
and the soul simply receives the Divine
bounties (De Migr. Abr. 30 f.). He de-
lineates the beginnings of the Quietist type
of ecstasy with real vividness in Quaestt. in
Gen. iv. 140 (Aucher, pp. 350-351), where
he is discussing Isaac's solitary meditation in
the fields at the close of the day. " The
man," he says, " who highly values the
224
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
removal and absence of all thought of the
visible, begins to lead a solitary life alone
with the sole invisible God. . . . Hence,
nominally, they go forth from their city or
home ; really, the meaning is that the spirit,
apart from the body (per se), begins to be
inwardly so inspired and initiated in Divine
things as to be possessed almost wholly by
God." Some other utterances are sharper in
outline. " The most secure method of con-
templating (Oecopelv) the Existent is with the
soul alone, apart from all utterance " (De
Gig. 52). Dean Inge, who points out that
the ecstasy of Plotinus was of this calm type
which is experienced in solitude, remarks that
"the vision of the One is only the highest
and deepest kind of prayer, which is the
mystical art par excellence " (Philosophy of
Plotinus, ii. p. 143). In the light of his
statement it is worthy of note that Philo gives
no prominence to the conception of prayer as
the request for blessings from God. Indeed,
he contrasts such request with what he calls
"great prayer" (basing the expression on
Num. vi. 2), namely, the conviction that
p 225
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
" God is of himself the cause of blessings,
without the co-operation of any one else "
(Quod Deus sit immut. 87).
A careful reader of Philo can scarcely avoid
the conclusion that, so far from conceiving
ecstasy in terms of Hellenistic religion, the
thought in which he endeavours to express
the mystic experience is determined by the
phenomena of prophetic vision in the Old
Testament. The prophet is above all else
a man of piercing glance, " having within
himself a spiritual sun and unshadowed rays
so as to grasp with perfect clearness those
things invisible to the senses and only to be
apprehended by the mind " (De Spec. Leg.
iv. 192). These prophetic functions, indeed,
may be caricatured. And here, no doubt,
he has in view the "prophets" who are in-
fluential among his pagan contemporaries.
Those who deal in divination parody the
Divine possession of the genuine seer.
" Each by his guesses and conjectures sets
forth an order of things out of harmony with
truth : and easily cajoling the unstable in
character, like a stiff blast blowing against
226
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
ships without ballast, retards and capsizes
them and prevents them from reaching the
sacred havens of piety. For he deems it his
duty to proclaim his divinations not as in-
ventions of his own, but as Divine oracles
imparted to him alone in secret, in order to
gain a surer confidence for his deceit from
large companies of people. Such a man he
[Moses] designates by the accurate name of
false prophet " (De Spec. Leg. iv. 50). In
contrast with him the genuine prophet
" declares nothing at all of his own, but is
an interpreter of the promptings of another in
all that he proclaims, continuing in a state of
ignorance all the time he is Divinely possessed:
for his reason has removed and withdrawn
from the citadel of the soul, where has
come to dwell the Divine Spirit, stimu-
lating and producing sound in the entire
mechanism of the voice so as clearly to
reveal that which he predicts" (ibid. 49 : cf. the
exact parallel, ibid. i. 66). We may note in
passing the further light shed by the contrast
on Philo's estimate of the Hellenistic idea of
possession. And the account of the true
227
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
prophetic state reminds us of the material
which this Jew of Alexandria contributed to
the formation in the early Church of a rigid
doctrine of inspiration. More than once he
singles out as central for the prophetic state
the falling into abeyance of reason (vow)
which is confined within definite limits of
comprehension, and its replacement by the
Divine influence which opens up for the
prophet a new realm of vision (e.g. De Vita
M. ii. 6).
But perhaps the clearest exposition of his
conception is to be found in Quis Rer. Div.
H. 249 ff., a passage which shows that he
has reflected carefully on these abnormal
phenomena. Here he distinguishes four
types of ecstasy. The first he describes
as " a mad frenzy which produces derange-
ment in old age or melancholia or some such
symptom." The second is "the intense
stupor caused by events happening suddenly
and unexpectedly." The third is "the
quiescence of the understanding when at any
time it comes to be still." The fourth, "the
noblest type of all, is that Divine possession
228
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
and frenzy characteristic of prophetic natures."
This experience is typical of the inspired
man. But Philo has a wider view of the
possibilities. " Holy Scripture," he says,
"allows prophecy to every fine and noble
nature. For the prophet sets forth nothing
of his own but what lies beyond his range,
at the prompting of another. Now it is not
right for a worthless person to become the
interpreter of God. Therefore, properly
speaking, no rascal is divinely possessed.
This befits the wise alone : for he only is the
echoing instrument of God, invisibly struck
by him. Hence all whom he [Moses]
recorded as righteous he introduced as
possessed and exercising prophetic functions."
He proceeds minutely to analyse the ecstatic
state of the prophet, taking as his starting-
point the words of Gen. xv. 12: "About
the setting of the sun, ecstasy fell upon him."
" As long as our own reason encompasses us
with brightness . . . filling our whole soul,
as it were, with noonday light, we remain in
ourselves and do not experience possession.
But when the light of reason sets . . . ecstasy
229
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
and Divine possession and frenzy fall upon
us. For when the Divine light blazes forth,
the human sets, and when that sets, this
rises. That is what is wont to happen to
prophetic natures. For the reason within
us leaves its abode at the arrival of the
Divine Spirit, but when the Spirit departs
the reason returns to its place. For it is not
fitting that the mortal should dwell with the
immortal. On this account the setting of the
rational power and its obscuration produces
ecstasy and inspired frenzy. And what
accompanies this he weaves into the text
of Scripture, saying (Gen. xv. 13), 'it was
said to Abraham.' For truly the prophet,
even when he appears to speak, is really
silent, while another uses his organs ot
speech, his mouth and tongue, to declare
his will."
The fundamental element, therefore, in
ecstasy as conceived by Philo, is the replac-
ing of the human reason (vov? or X^o/to?) by
the Divine Spirit, which takes complete
possession of the personality and uses it for
its own high ends. An interesting passage
230
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
(Quaestt. in Gen. iii. 9) adds one or two
features to his main conception. Ecstasy
is there described as a " Divine excess
made tranquil," and emphasis is laid on the
fact that it does not come on gradually,
but with a sudden inrush of the Spirit.
Possibly, however, this latter statement must
be estimated in the light of his view as a
whole. For, as we pointed out in an earlier
chapter, Philo is often influenced in the precise
formulation of his thought at any given time
by the actual words of the text on which he
is commenting. And here the text (Gen. xv.
12) reads : " An ecstasy y*?// upon Abraham."
The earlier part of the description recalls the
existence of ecstatic states in which frenzy
has no part. One specially pregnant instance
of this negative aspect of the condition ought
not to be omitted. In a symbolic interpre-
tation of Ex. xxxii. 27, where Moses com-
mands the members of the tribe of Levi,
who have remained loyal to God, to attack
the worshippers of the golden calf, and to
slay " each man his brother and his neighbour,
and him who is nearest to him," Philo takes
231
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
the first class mentioned as representing the
body, which is the brother of the soul ; the
second, as standing for the material element,
which is the neighbour of the rational ; and
the third, as signifying the "uttered Word,"
which stands nearest to the mind. " For
only thus," he says, "could the noblest
element in us worship the noblest of all
existences if, in the first place, the man were
reduced to soul, its brother the body with all
its ineffectual desires being disjoined and
separated from it : if, secondly, the soul, as
I remarked, should cast aside the irrational
element, the neighbour of the rational
for that, like a torrent divided into five
parts among the five senses . . . stirs up the
current of the passions if, in the next place,
the reason should divorce and separate from
itself the uttered word, so that the rational
should be left alone, parted from the body,
parted from the sense-life, parted from the
sound of the uttered word. For when thus
left to live a life of solitude, it can cleave to
the only Existent in purity and without
being drawn aside " (De Fuga, 90 ff.). This
232
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
remarkable passage lays bare the bed-rock of
Philo's conception of ecstasy as that unin-
terrupted stillness of the soul, that complete
unity of being in which no discordant element
exists, and God can reveal Himself without let
or hindrance. It prepares us directly for what
is perhaps the highest description in his writ-
ings of the issue of prophetic inspiration,
expressed in his answer to the question :
" Why does Scripture say, Moses alone shall
draw near unto God ? " (Quaestt. in Exod.
ii. 29). "This," he observes, "is said
perfectly naturally. For the prophetic mind,
when it has been initiated in Divine things
and is inspired, resembles unity. 1 . . . Now he
who cleaves to the nature of unity is said to
have approached God with the intimacy as it
were of a kinsman. For, abandoning all
mortal types, he is transferred into the
Divine type so that he becomes akin to God
and truly Divine.'
1 This has reference to certain numerical speculations on
Moses and his companions, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu ( 27),
in which Moses is represented by the first numeral I,
symbolising the purest intelligence, the prophetic, while the
other three are adornments of that.
233
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
In ecstasy, therefore, the spirit reaches the
true end of its being, the pure apprehension
of God. " For the goal of bliss is the advent
of God who draws near, bountifully filling the
entire soul with all his incorporeal and eternal
light " (Quaestt. in Gen. iv. 4 ; Aucher, p. 246).
In this condition it desires to remain. For
if the visitation of God be only transient, the
soul is left forlorn and empty : in a moment
thick darkness comes upon it (ibid., loc. cit.\
And yet the passing of this blissful experience
is inevitable. It is not possible for a created
being uninterruptedly to sustain the Divine
presence (deum in segerere : ibid. 29; Aucher,
p. 268). " When the spirit, possessed by
the love of God, reaching to the very holy
of holies, advances with all eagerness and
ardour, it forgets all else in its Divine
rapture : it forgets even itself, and remembers
and cleaves to Him alone whom it attends
and worships, to whom it solemnly dedicates
its sacred and untainted virtues. But when
its Divine passion is stilled and its ardent
yearning slackens, it retraces its course from
the realm of the Divine and becomes man,
234
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
lighting upon those human interests which lie
in wait for it at the entrance of the sanctuary "
(De Somn. ii. 232 ff.). This means that the
spirit is too frail to keep itself so firmly con-
centrated on God and so completely alienated
from material concerns as to be able to retain
its full Divine illumination.
Hence we are not surprised to find
repeated hints in Philo that the grasp of the
Existent in ecstasy is a rare attainment. No
doubt he has frequent descriptions of the
T6\e*o9, the man who has reached the goal and
may be called " completely a man of God."
But when we look deeper we can discern
that he reserves this high designation for a
favoured few. It holds good without reser-
vation of Abraham and Moses. But in the
main it stands for an ideal which towers high
above the aspirations of humanity.
At this point, as at so many, the position
of Philo is strikingly elucidated by the
mystical experience of Plottnus. Apparently
by this famous mystic the estatic state was
rarely enjoyed. Dean Inge, in drawing a
most illuminating contrast between Plotinus
235
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
and later mystics such as Bohme and Blake,
points out that while Bohme, for example,
used to hypnotise himself to induce abnormal
spiritual conditions, Plotinus always insisted
that the Divine vision must be waited for
(Philosophy of Plotinus, ii. 152 f.). This
meant a patient quieting of the soul, of which
but few are capable.
Philo's outlook is, in essentials, the same.
We might almost venture to say that the
catena of extracts so skilfully linked together
by Dr. Inge (pp. cit. ii. pp. 132-142) to
illustrate the fundamental character of the
mysticism of Plotinus, except for modifica-
tions here and there in the interest of Jewish
monotheism, unfolds to us the very essence
of Philo's mystic ecstasy.
That ecstasy is the crowning-point of a
religious experience which may well create in
the unprejudiced student of Philo a willing
and affectionate reverence. He will carry
away from his acquaintance with the
Alexandrian sage a feeling like that which
Dr. Rendel Harris so sympathetically de-
scribes when speaking of his own work on
236
THE MYSTICISM OF PHILO
the Fragments. " To us," he says (Fragments
of Philo, p. i f.), " his fragments are no mere
chaff and draff, but such blessed brokenness
of truth just dawning on the world that one
would imagine him to be holding out to us
what had previously passed through the
hands of the Master Himself." To these
words the present writer can whole-heartedly
say, Amen.
237
INDEX
(i) AUTHORS AND SUBJECTS
Abraham, 33, 34, 41, 46, 122,
123, 124, 133, 138, 199, 231,
235.
Advocate (irapAK^ros), 113,
114.
Alexandria, 8, 19, 38, 159, 176,
177.
Allegory, 2, 25, 32, 33, 34, 35,
36, 38, 40, 48.
Angels, 6, 80, 159, 162.
Archer Hind, 73.
Arnim, Von, 24.
Aucher, 24, 164, 182, 224.
Barker, E., 63.
Bigg, 123, 185, 215.
Blake, W., 236.
Body, 75, 86, 88, 98, 99.
Bohme, 236.
Bousset, 8, 38, 78, 213, 219,
222.
Brehier, 53, 54, 58, 77, 108,
112, 125, 140, 165, 218,
219.
Cicero, 53.
Clement of Alexandria, 36.
Cohn, 24, 25, 138, 153.
Compendia, 2, 9.
Conscience, 27, 53, lo6ff., Ill,
114, 115, Ii6f., 146.
Creation, 64, 65, 76.
Diaspora, 19, 21, 151.
Diogenes Laertius, 64, 188.
Drummond, J., 53, 69, 71, 170,
1 80, 189.
Dualism, 70, 73.
Ecstasy, 199, 205, 210, 214,
217 f., 221, 223 ff., 229, 230,
231, 233.
Education (Greek), 7, 10, 13,
19-
Egyptian theology, 219.
Ephesus, 177.
Epicharmus, 105.
Epistles^ Pauline), 2O.
Ezekiel, 160.
I0 7> IO 8| 114-
Faith, 27, 122, 125, 126, 127,
131-134, 215 f., 217.
Fathers (Christian), I, 58.
Flesh (<rdp), 74, 89, 90, 94.
Fourth Gospel, 20, 37, 47-50,
176.
Geffcken, 2.
God, relation of, to world, 62 f. ;
as Creator, 64 f., 67, 84 f. ;
and necessity, 73; man's
longing for, 96 ff., 193;
relation of, to Lord, 144 ;
generosity of, 154, 155;
transcendence of, 160 ; Spirit
of, 27, 172, 184, 187, 190;
239
INDEX
as Father, 1 79 ft., 184;
immediate apprehension of,
207, 209, 235.
Grace (Divine), 17, 27, 59,
117, 142, 143, 145, 147,
148 f., 152, 153, 156.
Harris, Rendel, 176, 236.
Hatch, E., 58.
Hatch, W. H. P., 125.
Hebrews (Epistle to), 20, 124,
134, 162, 170.
Heinze, 69.
Hellenism, 7, 8,' 13, 19, 21, 26,
31, 76, 140, 214, 218, 219,
226.
Heraclitus, 177.
Hermetic documents, 61, 158,
219.
Hope, 119.
Ideas (Platonic), 64, 67, 158.
Immortality, 9, 134, 137, 138,
140, 141.
Inge, W. R., 225, 235, 236.
Inspiration (verbal), 32, 37,
3 8 39. 40 44 prophetic,
226, 227, 233.
Jeremiah, 56, 112.
Jesus, 6, 22, 154, 181, 182.
Jowett, 23.
Kroll, J., 61, 184.
Law, (Mosaic), 2, 30, 31, 44,
45. 5 1 . 54, 56.
Leckie.J. H., 141.
Lietzmann, H., 89.
Life, 135, 137.
Lightfoot, 41.
Logos, 5, 6, 27, 79, 84, 85, 87,
109, 161, 162, 163, 167-169,
170, 172 f., 176 f., 186, 189,
192.
\6yot, 67, 158, 166, 169.
Man, Ideal, in Philo, 76, 78;
in Paul, 78, 79.
Mangey, 133.
Markland, 66, 204.
Matter, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68,
70, 71, 72, 74.
Mechilta, 122.
Mediators, 27, I57ff.
Memra, 160.
Moses, 2, 3, 29, 30, 51, 57, 63,
64, 155, 200, 212, 220, 231,
235.
Mystery-terminology, 34, 212,
213, 220.
Mysticism, 211 ff., 214.
Myth, 39.
Neo-Pythagoreanism, 60, 89.
New Testament, 20, 184, 191.
Old Testament, in Christian
theology, 4 ; in Philo, i8f.,
25, 46, 62, 83, 122, 1 80, 1 88.
otffla, relation of, to f/X?;, 67,
69.
Panaetius, 53-
Passions, 100, 101.
Paul, 26, 40, 41. 42, 43. 56,
58, 131 f., 134, 135, 136, 138,
141, 149, i$of., 183, 191,
206 f., 215.
Peter, 7.
PhatdruS) 1 88.
Philo, use of, by Fathers, 1,2;
date of, 6; traditions regard-
ing, 7 ; and Hellenism, 7 ;
style of, 10 ; personality of,
10-15 ; culture of, 12, 13, 14 ;
poetic strain in, 15 ff. ; relig-
ion of, i, 6, 22, 23; verbal
minutiae in, 37 ; and Posi-
donius, 6 1 ; syncretism of, 61,
79 j his experiences of
spiritual illumination, 203 ff. ;
opposition of, to mystic
initiation, 220.
240
INDEX
Philosophy of Philo, I, 5, 19,
22, 25, 60.
Plato, 2, 1 8, 60, 62, 64, 65, 70,
72, 73, 74, 80, 158, 1 80.
Pleasure, 100.
Plotinus, 215, 219, 225, 235,
236.
Plutarch, 219.
Posidonius, 53, 61.
Powers (Divine), 5, 6, 162, 164,
165, 166, 169, 208.
Prayer, 225, 226.
Pre-existence (of Souls), 80.
Prophets, 57, 58, 226, 227,
228.
, 129, I3of.
92.
s, 92, 93.
Reason (i>ous), 81, 83, 84, 85,
87, 9i, 93, 94, io6f., 147,
1 86.
Redemption, 89, 148.
Reitzenstein, 213, 218, 219.
Repentance, 27, ii6ff., 121.
Revelation, I, 193.
Ritual, 54, 55.
Ryle, 39, 57-
Schlatter, 126.
Schmekel, 9, 53, 60.
Schiirer, 50.
Self-love, 102.
Seneca, 64.
Septuagint, 31, 32, 38.
Shekinah, 160.
Siegfried, 32, 62, 70, 71, 161.
Sin, 27, 72, 8 1, 98, 101, 104.
Sonship, 179, i8of.
Soul (turf), 75. 86, 87, 90,
91, 92.
Spinoza, 216.
Spirit (WKVIM), 75, 84, 87, 90,
91, 92, 94, 95, 185.
Stoics, 2, 5, 9, 52, 60, 63, 67,
74, 86, 112, 125, 158, 183,
1 88.
Supplication, 152, 153, 169,
170.
Symbolism, 48, 49.
Synagogue, 59.
Syncretism, 60, 79.
Thompson, J. M., 48.
Thoth, 158.
Timaeus, 61, 63, 65, 69, 70, 73,
80, 86.
rAetos, 120, 235.
rpoirf), 105.
Underhill, E., 217.
Union (with God), 27, 28,
I78ff.
Ur-Anthropos, 78.
i, 69, 70.
lS, 126.
Vanity (rO^os), 103, 105.
Vision of God, 192 ff. ; condi-
tions of, I94ff. ; Philo's
conception of, 198-202.
Webb, C. C. J., 216.
Wendland, P., 24, 208.
Windisch, H., 57, 101, 178.
Wisdom, 9, 62, 159, 162, 173,
174.
Wisdom of Solomon > 8, 159.
Zeller, 70, 80, 189, 210.
2 4 I
INDEX
(2) REFERENCES IN PHILO
(Paragraphs numbered as in Cohn and Wendland's ed.)
De Opificio
Mundi
PAGE
Leg. Alleg. iii. contd. PAGE
j
t2
100
2OI, 213
8f
.
3
105 f. .
I 4 8
16 .
.
. 65
129 .
101
21
.
. 66
139
2I 9
23 '
.
. 72
145
93
24 -
. .
. 163
161 .
75
45-52, 89-106 .
. 48
171 .
93
66 .
.
93
207 .
172
73
.
. 101
209
34
77
.
. 178
211
99, 100, 117
134
.
76
215 .
154
139
.
84
De Cherubim
146 .
169 .
. 109
104, 148
2 7 ff. . .
37 f-
34, M4
12
Legum Allegoriarum
Librii.
42 ff. .
55, 219
5
. .
. 66
48 .
. 212
22
. 66
49
. 179
34
, ,
147
8iff. .
13
37
.
84, 185
130 .
13
48 f. .
65 .
. 149
173
De Sacrificiis Abelis et Caini
82 ff. .
. 222
3
J
o .
*75
97
93
60 .
. 212
107 .
. 136
123 .
Leg. Alleg.
ii.
Quod Deter ius Potiori in-
19 .
39
sidiari soleat
22
93
13
36
3 1
.
. 223
22 f. .
. 107
85
93
70 .
- 93
Leg. Alleg.
iii.
72 f. .
3
.
. 219
82-90
'. 81
27 .
. .
. 97
83 -
. 186
41 f. .
.
. 194
8 4 .
. 94
47 -
.
193
95
. 152
64 .
.
. 100
97
. 101
68 .
.
. 100
109 .
. 88
7i
. .
98
122
. 101
. .
86
139
. 76
78
. .
146
148 f. .
. 104
96
.
. 163
158 f. .
'95
242
INDEX
De Posteritate Caini
PAGE
De Ebrietate
PAGfc
!5
. 200
44
12
22
12
49 ff. .
13
27
. 197
89 . .
13
31
97
147 .
. 22 3
59 .
. 114
De Sobrietate
105 f.
13
56 .
183
142
. 155
145
155
De Confusione
Lingu-
169 . .
. 166
arum
41
. 170
De Gigantibtis
97
. 96
6-15 . .
20ff. .
. 80
. 188
134 f. .
135 ^
35
35
23 ...
29 ...
95
90
145
146 .
. 181
170, 182
40 ...
47 ...
. 90
. 190
De Migratione Abrahami
52 ...
. 225
2
. 205
53 ...
. 190
.
. . 12
54 ...
U : : :
. 213
. 191
140
9
3off. .
32 .
89
. 149, 224
. 49
210 f. .
. 113
34 f. - -
. 204
43 f- -
133
Quod Deus sit immutabilis
38 f. . . . . 12
g : :
. 169
65 ...
13
90 .
56
72 . .* .
. 100
96 .
. 56
76 ...
J 45
102
. 162
82 f. .
175
136 f. .
. 106
87 ...
. 226
I6 9
. 179
123 .
137
170 f. .
. 199
I34ff. .
. 109
173 ff
. . 169
181 .
. 165
De Agricultura
193
. 179
i ff.
37
31
IO7
Qiiis Rerum Divinarum
49 f.
**/
IS4
Heres sit
96 f. .' !
39
19 .
130
mff. .
13
21
. 123
136 ...
26 ff. .
. 130
29
^ 1 5
De Plantatione
3 1
17, 155
18 .
164, 1 86
55*
. 1 86
22 ff. .
. 198
69 f. .
17, 205, 222
3 2ff. . . .
32
73
. 86
37
139
79
. 173
89 ...
145
90 ff. .
. 129
243
INDEX
Quis Rerum Di-vinarum
De Somniis i. continued
PACK
Heres sit continued \
93
'AGE
126
M : : : :
68
IOI
125
86 ....
172
io6ff.
102
91 ....
160 . 67
,68
92 f
43
205
167
103 ff. .
171
255
95
142 .
1 66
265 .
190
143 ....
1 66
268
88
148 ....
197
273
153
151 f. ....
139
276 . .
138
163 ....
144
De Congressu Eruditionis
Gratia
11-24
4i
J 3
181 .
232 ....
236 ....
De Somniis ii.
148
196
196
67 i '. ' ! '.
14
45 ....
48 ff. .
79
14
De Fuga et Inventione
*T W *** * * *
61-68
48
12 f. .
28 ff. ....
54 f- ....
163
14
37
232 ff. .
242 ff. ....
252 ....
235
173
189
55
'37
353
73
58 ....
66ff. ....
138
165
De Abrahamo
69 f. ....
90 ff. .
85
232
8 ....
26 ....
119
120
IOI ....
161
41 ....
102
io8ff. .
162
47 ....
120
131 ....
107
55
*35
141 ....
194
79 f !
200
203 f. .
49
94
99 ....
119 ff. .
151
208
14
De Mutatione Nominum
I56ft ....
12
9 f. . . . .
201
167-199 .
36
49 ....
100
200 ....
34
58 f. ....
65 ....
146
49
263 ....
268 f. . . .122
128
, 128
82 ....
129 ....
192
145
De Josepho
1-27
36
138 .
15
15 .
49
161 f. .
18
3 2ft. . . .
14
De Somniis i.
47 f. . . . .
112
9 ....
62 ....
66 ....
153
164
166
54ft ....
189 .
265 . . . .
:l
244
INDEX
De Vita Mosis i.
PAGE
De Virtutibus
PAGE
4 ....
5O
145 f.
43
84, 222-226
50
169 . . . .
157
De Vita Mosis ii. (iii.)
6 ....
228
175 ff.
177
121
120
188 .
147
14 ....
36 ....
51
3 1
216 .
123
40 ....
De Praemiis et Poenis
48 ....
53
15
119
103 ....
33
26
199
147 . . . 72,
100
27, 30, 49
134
187 f
30
37ff . . . .
2O2
238 ....
147
39
I8 4
239 ....
17
70 .
136
De Decalogo
sff. . . . .
18-31
"3
116 .
De Exsecrationibus
163 . . .
153
118
87 ....
1 08
Legatio ad Gaium
134 ....
75
5
193
De Specialibus Legibus i.
36 ....
96
6f. .
Quaestiones in Genesim i.-
164
43
156
82 .
118
207 .
198
92 .
182
235 ff. "3>
260 ( = De Sacrific. )
116
42
Quaestiones in Genesim ii.
42 f. .
121
266 ....
86
271 ....
54
Quaestiones in Genesim iii.
281 f. .
9
231
307 ....
144
190 f. .
41
318 ....
182
Quaestiones in Genesim iv.
319 ....
220
i
203
328 f. .
67
4 .
234
De Spec. Leg. iii.
64 .
101
I ff. .
12
140 . . . .
22 4
4-6 . . . .
16
203 ....
105
161 .
88
Quaestiones in Exodtim i.-
De Spec. Leg. iv.
15
117
49 f. ....
227
Quaestiones in Exodum ii.
75 ....
93
29 .
233
123 ....
87
Si
206
192 .
226
68 ....
I6 4
245
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BY MORRISON AND GIBB LTD.
EDINBURGH
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
BERKELEY
Return to desk from which borrowed.
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
31952LU
JAN 1
REC'D L
APRS 1977
LD 21-100m-9 > '481B399sl6)476
2361