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 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