V
PHILO-JUDjEUS OF ALEXANDRIA
PHILO-JUD^US
OF ALEXANDRIA
BY
NORMAN BENTWICH
Sometime Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge
PHILADELPHIA
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
TO MY MOTHER
2092983
PEEFACE
It is a melancholy reflection upon the history of the
Jews that they have failed to pay due honor to their
two greatest philosophers. Spinoza was rejected by his
contemporaries from the congregation of Israel ; Philo-
Judaeus was neglected by the generations that followed
him. Maimonides, our third philosopher, was in dan-
ger of meeting the same fate, and his philosophical
work was for long viewed with suspicion by a large
part of the community. Philosophers, by the very ex-
cellence of their thought, have in all races towered
above the comprehension of the people, and aroused
the suspicion of the religious teachers. Elsewhere,
however, though rejected by the Church, they have left
their influence upon the nation, and taken a command-
ing place in its history, because they have founded
secular schools of thought, which perpetuated their
work. In Judaism, where religion and nationality
are inextricably combined, that could not be. The
history of Judaism since the extinction of political
independence is the history of a national religious
culture; what was national in its thought alone
found favor; and unless a philosopher's work bore
this national religious stamp it dropped out of Jew-
ish history.
Philo certainly had an intensely strong Jewish
feeling, but his work had also another aspect, which
8 PREFACE
was seized upon and made use of by those who wished
to denationalize Judaism and convert it into a philo-
sophical monotheism. The favor which the Church
Fathers showed to his writings induced and was bal-
anced by the neglect of the rabbis.
It was left till recently to non-Jews to study the
works of Philo, to present his philosophy, and esti-
mate its value. So far from taking a Jewish stand-
point in their work, they emphasized the parts of his
teaching that are least Jewish ; for they were writing
as Christian theologians or as historians of Greek
philosophy. They searched him primarily for traces
of Christian, neo-Platonic, or Stoic doctrines, and
commiserated with him, or criticised him as a weak-
kneed eclectic, a half-blind groper for the true light.
Even during the last hundred years, which have
marked a revival of the historical consciousness of the
Jews, as of all peoples, it has still been left in the
main to non-Jewish scholars to write of Philo in re-
lation to his time and his environment. The purpose
of this little book is frankly to give a presentation of
Philo from the Jewish standpoint. I hold that Philo
is essentially and splendidly a Jew, and that his
thought is through and through Jewish. The sur-
name given him in the second century, "Judasus,"
not only distinguishes him from an obscure Christian
bishop, but it expresses the predominant characteris-
tic of his teaching. It may be objected that I have
pointed the moral and adorned the tale in accordance
with preconceived opinions, which as Mr. Claude
PEEFACE 9
Montefiore says in his essay on Philo it is easy to do
with so strange and curious a writer. I confess that
my worthy appeals to me most strongly as an expo-
nent of Judaism, and it may be that in this regard I
have not always looked on him as the calm, dispas-
sionate student should; for I experience towards him
that warmth of feeling which his name, $tt<ov,
" the beloved one," suggests. But I have tried so to
write this biography as neither to show partiality on
the one side nor impartiality on the other. If never-
theless I have exaggerated the Jewishness of my
worthy's thought, my excuse must be that my prede-
cessors have so often exaggerated other aspects of his
teaching that it was necessary to call a new picture
into being, in order to redress the balance of the old.
Although I have to some extent taken a line of my
own in this Life, my obligations to previous writers
upon Philo are very great. I have used freely the
works of Drummond, Schurer, Massebieau, Zeller,
Conybeare, Cohn, and Wendland; and among those
who have treated of Philo in relation to Jewish tradi-
tion I have read and borrowed from Siegfried (Philon
als Ausleger der heiligen Schrift), Freudenthal
(Hellenistische Studien}, Eitter (Philo und die Halar
cha), and Mr. Claude Montefiore's Florilegium Phi-
lonis, which is printed in the seventh volume of the
Jewish Quarterly Eeview. Once for all Mr. Montefi-
ore has selected many of the most beautiful and most
vital passages of Philo, and much as I should have
liked to unearth new gems, as beautiful and as illumi-
10 PREFACE
nating, I have often found myself irresistibly at-
tracted to Mr. Montefiore's passages. Dr. Neumark's
book, Geschiclite der jiidischen Philosophie des
Mittelalters, appeared after my manuscript was set
up, or I should have dealt with his treatment of Philo.
With what he says of the relation of Plato to Judaism
I am in great part in agreement, and I had independ-
ently come to the conclusion that Plato was the main
Greek influence on Philo's thought.
To these various books I owe much, but not so
much as to the teaching, influence, and help of one
whose name I have not the boldness to associate with
this little volume, but whose notes on my manuscript
have given it whatever value it may possess. The
index I owe to the kindly help of a sister, who would
also be nameless. Lastly I have to thank Dr. Lionel
Barnett, professor of Sanscrit at University College,
London, and my father, who read my manuscript
before it was sent to the printers. The one gave me
the benefit of his wide and accurate scholarship, the
other gave me much valuable advice and removed
many a blazing indiscretion.
NORMAN BENTWICH.
February 28, 1907.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE JEWISH COMMUNITY AT ALEXANDRIA 13
II. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO 44
III. PHILO'S WORKS AND METHOD 74
IV. PHILO AND THE TORAH 104
V. PHILO'S THEOLOGY 132
VI. PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHER 167
VII. PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION 199
VIII. THE INFLUENCE OF PHILO 242
BIBLIOGRAPHY 263
ABBREVIATIONS USED FOB THE REFERENCES 266
INDEX . 269
PHILO-JUD/EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
THE JEWISH COMMUNITY AT
ALEXANDKIA
The three great world-conquerors known to his-
tory, Alexander, Julius CaBsar, and Napoleon, recog-
nized the pre-eminent value of the Jew as a bond of
empire, an intermediary between the heterogeneous
nations which they brought beneath their sway. Each
in turn showed favor to his religion, and accorded
him political privileges. The petty tyrants of all
ages have persecuted Jews on the plea of securing
uniformity among their subjects; but the great con-
queror-statesmen who have made history, realizing
that progress is brought about by unity in difference,
have recognized in Jewish individuality a force mak-
ing for progress. Whereas the pure Hellenes had
put all the other peoples of the world in the single
category of barbarians, their Macedonian conqueror
forced upon them a broader view, and, regarding his
empire as a world-state, made Greeks and Orientals
live together, and prepared the way for a mingling
of races and culture. Alexander the Great became a
notable figure in the Talmud and Midrashim, and
many a marvellous legend was told about his passing
14 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDKIA
visit to Jerusalem during his march to Egypt. 1 The
high priest whether it was Jaddua, Simon, or Onias
the records do not make clear is said to have gone
out to meet him, and to have compelled the reverence
and homage of the monarch by the majesty of his
presence and the lustre of his robes. Be this as it may,
it is certain that Alexander settled a considerable num-
ber of Jews in the Greek colonies which he founded as
centres of cosmopolitan culture in his empire, and
especially in the town by the mouth of the Nile that
received his own name, and was destined to become
within two centuries the second town in the world;
second only to Eome in population and power, equal
to it in culture. By its geographical position, the
nature of its foundation, and the sources of its popu-
lation, and by the wonderful organization of its Mu-
seum, in which the records of all nations were stored
and studied, Alexandria was fitted to become the
meeting-place of civilizations.
There was already a considerable settlement of
Jews in Egypt before Alexander's transplantation in
332 B. c. E. Throughout Bible times the connection
between Israel and Egypt had been close. Isaiah
speaks of the day when five cities in the land of
Egypt should speak the language of Canaan and
swear to the Lord of hosts (xix. 18) ; and when
Nebuchadnezzar led away the first captivity, many of
the people had fled from Palestine to the old " cradle
of the nation." Jeremiah (xliv) went down with them
1 Comp. Leviticus Rabba 13.
THE COMMUNITY AT ALEXANDKIA 15
to prophesy against their idolatrous practices and
their backslidings ; and Jewish and Christian writers
in later times, daring boldly against chronology, told
how Plato, visiting Egypt, had heard Jeremiah and
learnt from him his lofty monotheism. Doubt was
thrown in the last century upon the continuance of
the Diaspora in Egypt between the time of Jeremiah
and Alexander, but the recent discovery of a Jewish
temple at Elephantine and of Aramaic papyri at
Assouan dated in the fifth and fourth centuries
B. c. E. has proved that these doubts were not well
founded, and that there was a well-established com-
munity during the interval.
From the time of the post-exilic prophets Judaism
developed in three main streams, one flowing from Je-
rusalem, another from Babylon, the third from Egypt.
Alexandria soon took precedence of existing settle-
ments of Jews, and became a great centre of Jewish
life. The first Ptolemy, to whom at the dismember-
ment of Alexander's empire Egypt had fallen, 1 con-
tinued to the Jewish settlers the privileges of full citi-
zenship which Alexander had granted them. He in-
creased also the number of Jewish inhabitants, for
following his conquest of Palestine (or Ccele-Syria, as
it was then called), he brought back to his capital a
large number of Jewish families and settled thirty
thousand Jewish soldiers in garrisons. For the next
hundred years the Palestinian and Egyptian Jews were
under the same rule, and for the most part the Ptole-
. Josephus, Ant. IX. 1.
16 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
mies treated them well. They were easy-going and
tolerant, and while they encouraged the higher forms
of Greek culture, art, letters, and philosophy, both at
their own court and through their dominions, they
made no attempt to impose on their subjects the
Greek religion and ceremonial. Under their tolerant
sway the Jewish community thrived, and became dis-
tinguished in the handicrafts as well as in commerce.
Two of the five sections into which Alexandria waa
divided were almost exclusively occupied by them;
these lay in the north-east along the shore and near
the royal palace a favorable situation for the large
commercial enterprises in which they were engaged.
The Jews had full permission to carry on their re-
ligious observances, and besides many smaller places
of worship, each marked by its surrounding planta-
tion of trees, they built a great synagogue, of which
it is said in the Talmud, " He who has not seen it has
not seen the glory of Israel/' l It was in the form of
a basilica, with a double row of columns, and so vast
that an official standing upon a platform had to wave
his head-cloth or veil to inform the people at the back
of the edifice when to say "Amen" in response to
the Reader. The congregation was seated according to
trade-guilds, as was also customary during the Middle
Ages; the goldsmiths, silversmiths, coppersmiths, and
weavers had their own places, for the Alexandrian
Jews seem to have partially adopted the Egyptian
caste-system. The Jews enjoyed a large amount of
1 Sukkah 51 b .
THE COMMUNITY AT ALEXANDRIA 17
self-government, having their own governor, the eth-
narch, and in Roman times their own council (San-
hedrin), which administered their own code of laws.
Of the ethnarch Strabo says that he was like an inde-
pendent ruler, and it was his function to secure the
proper fulfilment of duties by the community and
compliance with their peculiar laws. 1 Thus the people
formed a sort of state within a state, preserving their
national life in the foreign environment. They pos-
sessed as much political independence as the Palestin-
ian community when under Roman rule ; and enjoyed
all the advantages without any of the narrowing influ-
ences, physical or intellectual, of a ghetto. They were
able to remain an independent body, and foster a Jew-
ish spirit, a Jewish view of life, a Jewish culture,
while at the same time they assimilated the different
culture of the Greeks around them, and took their
part in the general social and political life.
At the end of the third and the beginning of the
second century Palestine was a shuttlecock tossed
between the Ptolemies and the Seleucids; but in the
reign of Antiochus Epiphanes (c. 150 B. c. E.) it
finally passed out of the power of the Ptolemaic house,
and from this time the Palestinian Jews had a differ-
ent political history from the Egyptian. The com-
pulsory Hellenization by Antiochus aroused the best
elements of the Jewish nation, which had seemed
likely to lose by a gradual assimilation its adherence to
pure monotheism and the Mosaic law. The struggle of
1 Quoted by Josephus, Ant. XIV. 7.
18 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXAXDEIA
Judas Maccabaeus was not so much against an external
foe as against the Hellenizing party of his own
people, which, led by the high priests Jason, Mene-
laus, and Alcimus, tried to crush both the national
and the religious spirit. The Maccabaean rule brought
not only a renaissance of national life and national
culture, but also a revival of the national reli-
gion. Before, however, the deliverance of the Jews
had been accomplished by the noble band of brothers,
many of the faithful Palestinian families had fled for
protection from the tyranny of Antiochus to the
refuge of his enemy Ptolemy Philometor. Among
the fugitives were Onias and Dositheus, who, accord-
ing to Josephus, 1 became the trusted leaders of the
armies of the Egyptian monarch. Onias, moreover,
was the rightful successor to the high-priesthood, and
despairing of obtaining his dignity in Jerusalem,
where the office had been given to the worthless Hel-
lenist Alcimus, he conceived the idea of setting up a
local centre of the Jewish religion in the country of
his exile. He persuaded Ptolemy to grant him a piece
of territory upon which he might build a temple for
Jewish worship, assuring him that his action would
have the effect of securing forever the loyalty of his
Jewish subjects. 'Ptolemy "gave him a place one
hundred and eighty furlongs distant from Memphis,
in the nomos of Heliopolis, where he built a fortress
and a temple, not like that at Jerusalem, but such as
1 Ant. XII. 5, 9, XX. 10.
THE COMMUNITY AT ALEXAKDKIA 19
resembled a tower." 1 Professor Flinders Petrie has
recently discovered remains at Tell-el-Yehoudiyeh,
the " mound of the Jews," near the ancient Leontopo-
lis, which tally with the description of Josephus, and
may be presumed to be the ruins of the temple.
It is difficult to arrive at an accurate idea of the
nature and importance of the Onias temple, because
our chief authority, Josephus, 2 gives two inconsistent
accounts of it, and the Talmud references 8 are
equally involved. But certain negative facts are
clear. First, the temple did not become, even if it
were designed to be, a rival to the temple of Jerusa-
lem : it did not diminish in any way the tribute which
the Egyptian Jews paid to the sacred centre of the
religion. They did not cease to send their tithes for
the benefit of the poor in Judaea, or their representa-
tives to the great festivals, and they dispatched mes-
sengers each year with contributions of gold and sil-
ver, who, says Philo, 4 " travelled over almost impass-
able roads, which they looked upon as easy, in that
they led them to piety." The Alexandrian-Jewish
writers, without exception, are silent about the work of
Onias ; Philo does not give a single hint of it, and on
the other hand speaks 5 several times of the great
|
1 Josephus, Bell. Jud. VII. 10.
3 Comp. the passages in the " Antiquities " above and
the Bell. Jud. V. 5.
Menahot 109, Abodah Zarah 52 b .
'De Leg. II. 578.
5 Comp. De Mon. I. 5.
20 PHILO-JUDyEUS OF ALEXANDRIA
national centre at Jerusalem as " the most beauti-
ful and renowned temple which is honored by the
whole East and West." The Egyptian Jews, accord-
ing to Josephus, claimed that the prophecy of Isaiah
had been accomplished, " that there shall be an altar
to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt" (Is.
xix. 19) . But the altar, it has recently been suggested, 1
was rather a " Bamah " (a high place) than a temple.
It served as a temporary sanctuary while the Jeru-
salem temple was denied, and afterwards it was a
place where the priestly ritual was carried out day by
day, and offerings were brought by those who could
not make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Though the
synagogue was the main seat of religious life in the
Diaspora, there was still a desire for the sacrificial
worship, and for a long time the rabbis looked with
favor upon the establishment of Onias. But when
the tendency to found a new ritual there showed
itself, they denied its holiness." The religious im-
portance of the temple, however, was never great, and
its chief interest is that it shows the survival of the
affection for the priestly service among the Hellenized
community, and helps therefore to disprove the myth
that the Alexandrians allegorized away the Levitical
laws.
During the checkered history of Egypt in the first
century B. c. E., when it was in turn the plaything of
the corrupt Roman Senate, who supported the claims
'Dr. Hirsch, in The Jews' College Jubilee Volume, p.
39.
* Menahot 119.
THE COMMUNITY AT ALEXANDRIA 21
of a series of feeble puppet-Ptolemies, the prize of the
warriors, who successively aspired to be masters of the
world, Julius Caesar, Mark Anton} 7 , and Octavian,
and finally a province of the Roman Empire, the
political and material prosperity of the Alexandrian
Jews remained for the most part undisturbed. Julius
Caesar and Augustus, who everywhere showed special
favor to their Jewish subjects, confirmed the privi-
leges of full citizenship and limited self-government
which the early Ptolemies had bestowed. 1 Josephus
records a letter of Augustus to the Jewish community
at Gyrene, in which he ordains : " Since the nation
of the Jews hath been found grateful to the Roman
people, it seemed good to me and my counsellors that
the Jews have liberty to make itee of their own cus-
toms, and that their sacred money be not touched, but
sent to Jerusalem, and that they be not obliged to go
before the judge on the Sabbath day nor on the day
of preparation for it after the ninth hour," i. e., after
the early evening. 2 This decree is typical of the
emperor's attitude to his Jewish subjects; and Egypt
became more and more a favored home of the race, so
that the Jewish population in the land, from the
Libyan desert to the border of Ethiopia, was estimated
in Philo's time at not less than one million.'
The prosperity and privileges of the Jews, combined
witH their peculiar customs and their religious sep-
1 Comp. Ant. XIV. 14-16.
'Ant. XVI. 7.
" Philo, In Flacc. 6.
22 PHILO-JUD^US 'OF ALEXANDRIA
arateness, did not fail at Alexandria, as they have
not failed in any country of the Diaspora, to arouse
the mixed envy and dislike of the rude populace, and
give a handle to the agitations of self-seeking dema-
gogues. The third book of the Maccabees tells of a
Ptolemaic persecution during which Jewish victims
were turned into the arena at Alexandria, to be trod-
den down by elephants made fierce with the blood of
grapes, and of their deliverance by Divine Providence.
Some fiction is certainly mixed with this recital, but
it may well be that during the rule of the stupid and
cruel usurper Ptolemy Physcon (c. 120 B. c. E.) the
protection of the royal house was for political reasons
removed for a time from the Jews. Josephus * relates
that the anniversary of the deliverance was celebrated
as a festival in Egypt. The popular feeling against
the peculiar people was of an abiding character, for it
had abiding causes, envy and dislike of a separate
manner of life; and the professional anti-Semite, 2 who
had his forerunners before the reign of the first Ptol-
emy, was able from time to time to fan popular feel-
ings into flame. In those days, when history and fic-
tion were not clearly distinguished, he was apt to
hide his attacks under the guise of history, and stir up
odium by scurrilous and offensive accounts of the
ancient Hebrews. Hence anti-Jewish literature origi-
nated at Alexandria.
1 C. Apion. II. 5.
2 I have used the word anti-Semite because, though the
hatred at Alexandria was not racial, but national, it has
now become synonymous with Jew-hater generally.
THE COMMUNITY AT ALEXANDKIA 23
Manetho, an historian of the second century B. c. E.,
in his chronicles of Egypt, introduced an anti-Jewish
pamphlet with an original account of the Exodus,
which became the model for a school of scribes more
virulent and less distinguished than himself. The
Battle of Histories was taken up with spirit by the
Jews, and it was round the history of the Israelites
in Egypt that the conflict chiefly raged. In reply
to the offensive picture of ^Manetho and the diatribes
of some "starveling GreeMing," there appeared the
eulogistic picture of an Ansteas, the improved Exodus
of an Artapanus. Joseph and Moses figured as the
most brilliant of Egyptian statesmen, and the Ptole-
mies as admirers of the Scriptures. The morality of
this apologetic literature, and more particularly of
the literary forgeries which formed part of it, has been
impugned by certain German theologians. But apart
from the necessities of the case, it is not fair to apply
to an age in which Cicero declared that artistic lying
was legitimate in history, the standard of modern
German accuracy. The fabrications of Jewish apolo-
gists were in the spirit of the time.
The outward history of the Alexandrian com-
munity is far less interesting and of far less impor-
tance than its intellectual progress. When Alexander
planted the colony of Jews in his greatest foundation,
he probably intended to facilitate the fusion of East-
ern and Western thought through their mediation.
Such, at any rate, was the result of his work. His
marvellous exploits had put an end for a time to the
political strife between Asia and Europe, and had
24 PHILO-JUDyEUS OF ALEXAXDEIA
started the movement between the two realms of cul-
ture, which was fated to produce the greatest combi-
nation of ideas that the world has known. Now, at
last, the Hebrew, with his lofty conception of God,
came into close contact with the Greek, who had de-
veloped an equally noble conception of man. Dis-
raeli, in his usual sweeping manner, makes one of his
characters in " Lothair " tell how the Aryan and
Semitic races, after centuries of wandering upon op-
posite courses, met again and, represented by their
two choicest families, the Hellenes and the Hebrews,
brought together the treasures of their accumulated
wisdom and secured the civilization of man. Apart
from the question of the original common source, of
which we are no longer sure, his rhetoric is broadly
true; but for two centuries the influence was nearly
all upon one side. The Jew, attracted by the brilliant
art, literature, science, and philosophy of the Hellene,
speedily Hellenized, and as early as the third century
B. c. E. Clearchus, the pupil of Aristotle, tells of a
Jew whom his master met, who was " Greek not only
in language but also in mind." l The Greek, on the
other hand, who had not yet comprehended the majes-
ty of his neighbor's monotheism, for lack of ade-
quate presentation, did not Hebraize. In Palestine
the adoption of Greek ways and the introduction of
Greek ideas proceeded rapidly to the point of demoral-
ization, until the Maccabees stayed it. Unfortunately,
the Hellenism that was brought to Palestine was not
1 Quoted in C. Apion. I. 22.
THE COMMUNITY* AT ALEXANDRIA 25
the lofty culture, the eager search for truth and
knowledge, that marked Athens in the classical age;
it was a bastard product of Greek elegance and Ori-
ental luxury and sensuousness, a seeking after base
pleasures, an assertion of naturalistic polytheism.
And hence came the strong reaction against Greek
ideas among the bulk of the people, which prevented
any permanent fusion of cultures in the land of
Israel.
The Hellenism of Alexandria was a more genuine
product. The liberal policy of the early Ptolemies
made their capital a centre of art, literature, science,
and philosophy. To their court were gathered the
chief poets, savants, and thinkers of their age. The
Museum was the most celebrated literary academy,
and the Library the most noted collection of books in
the world. Dwelling in this atmosphere of culture
and research, the Hebrew mind rapidly expanded and
began to take its part as an active force in civilization.
It acquired the love of knowledge in a wider sense
than it had recognized before, and assimilated the
teachings of Hellas in all their variety. Within a
hundred years of their settlement Hebrew or Aramaic
had become to the Jews a strange language, and they
spoke and thought in Greek. Hence it was necessary
to have an authoritative Greek translation of the Holy
Scriptures, and the first great step in the Jewish-
Hellenistic development is marked by the Septuagint
version of the Bible.
Fancy and legend attached themselves early to an
26 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
event fraught with such importance for the history of
the race and mankind as the translation of the Scrip-
tures into the language of the cultured world. From
this overgrowth it is difficult to construct a true narra-
tive ; still, the research of latter-day scholars has gone
far to prove a basis of truth in the statements made
in the famous letter of the pseudo-Aristeas, which pro-
fesses to describe the origin of the work. We may
extract from his story that the Septuagint was written
in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, about 250
B. c. E., with the approval, if not at the express request,
of the king, and with the help of rabbis brought from
Palestine to give authority to the work. But we need
not believe with later legend that each of the seventy
translators was locked up in a separate cell for seventy
days till he had finished the whole work, and that
when they were let out they were all found to have
written exactly the same words. Philo gives us a ver-
sion of the event, romantic, indeed, but more rational,
in his " Life of Moses/' 1 He tells how Ptolemy, hav-
ing conceived a great admiration for the laws of Moses,
sent ambassadors to the high priest of Judaa, re-
questing him to choose out a number of learned men
that might translate them into Greek. "These were
duly chosen, and came to the king's court, and were
allotted the Isle of Pharos as the most tranquil spot
in the city for carrying out their work ; by God's grace
they all found the exact Greek words to correspond
1 De V. Mos. II. 6, 7.
THE COMMUNITY AT ALEXANDRIA 27
to the Hebrew words, so that they were not mere
translators, but prophets to whom it had been granted
to follow in the divinity of their minds the sublime
spirit of Moses." " On which account," he adds,
" even to this day there is in every year celebrated a
festival in the Island of Pharos, to which not only
Jews but many persons of other nations sail across,
reverencing the place in which the light of interpreta-
tion first shone forth, and thanking God for His
ancient gift to man, which has eternal youth and fresh-
ness." It is significant that Philo makes no mention
in his books of the festival of Hanukah, while the
Talmud has no mention of this feast of Pharos; the
Alexandrian Jews celebrated the day when the Bible
was brought within reach of the Greek world, the
Palestinians the day when the Greeks were driven out
of the temple. At the same time the celebrations in
honor of the Septuagint and of the deliverance from
the Ptolemaic persecution 1 -are remarkable illustra-
tions of a living Jewish tradition at Alexandria, which
attached a religious consecration to the special history
of the community.
It is not correct to say with Philo that the translator
rendered each word of the Hebrew with literal faith-
fulness, so as to give its proper force. Eather may we
accept the words of the Greek translator of Ben Sira :
"Things originally spoken in Hebrew have not the
same force in them when they are translated into
another tongue, and not only these, but the law itself
1 See p. 22, above.
28 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDEIA
(the Torah) and the prophecies and the rest of the
books have no small difference when they are spoken
in their original language." J
From the making of the translation one can trace
the movement that ended in Christianity. By read-
ing their Scriptures in Greek, Jews began to think
them in Greek and according to Greek conceptions.
Certain commentators have seen in the Septuagint it-
self the infusion of Greek philosophical ideas. Be this
as it may, it is certain that the version facilitated the
introduction of Greek philosophy into the interpreta-
tion of Scripture, and gave a new meaning to certain
Hebraic conceptions, by suggesting comparison with
strange notions. This aspect of the work led the
rabbis of Palestine and Babylon in later days, when
the spread of Hellenized Judaism was fraught with
misery to the race, to regard it as an awful calamity,
and to recount a tale of a plague of darkness which
fell upon Palestine for three days when it was made ; "
and they observed a fast day in place of the old Alex-
andrian feast on the anniversary of its completion.
They felt as the old Italian proverb has it, Tradut-
iori, traditori! ("Translators are traitors!"). And
the Midrash in the same spirit declares * that the oral
law was not written down, because God knew that
otherwise it would be translated into Greek, and He
wished it to be the special mystery of His people, as
the Bible no longer was.
1 Preface to Ecclesiasticus.
* Tract. Soferim I. 7.
*Tanhuma
THE COMMUNITY AT ALEXANDRIA 29
The Sep'tuagint translation of the Bible was one
answer to the lying accounts of Israel's early history
concocted by anti-Semitic writers. As we have seen, 1
the Alexandrian Jews began early to write histories
and re-edit the Bible stories to the same purpose.
And for some time their writings were mainly apolo-
getic, designed, whatever their form, to serve a de-
fensive purpose. But later they took the offensive
against the paganism and immorality of the peoples
about them, and the missionary spirit became pre-
dominant. Alexander Polyhistor, who lived in the
first century, included in his " History of the Jews "
fragments of these early Jewish historians and apolo-
gists, which the Christian bishop Eusebius has handed
down to us. From them we can gather some notion
of the strange medley of fact and imagination which
was composed to influence the Gentile world. Abra-
ham is said to have instructed the Egyptians in
astrology; Joseph devised a great system of agri-
culture; Moses was identified variously with the
legendary Greek seer Musasus and the god Hermes.
A favorite device for rebutting the calumnies of
detractors and attracting the outer world to Jewish
ideas, was the attachment to some ancient source
of panegyrics upon Judaism and monotheism. To
the Greek philosopher Heraclitus and the Greek his-
torian Hecataeus, who wrote a history of the world,
passages which glorify the Hebrew people and the
Hebrew God were ascribed. Still more daring was
1 See p. 23, above.
30 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDKIA
the conversion into archaic hexameter verse of the
stories of Genesis and Exodus, and of Messianic
prophecies in the guise of Sibylline oracles. The
Sibyl, whom the superstitious of the time revered as
an inspired seeress of prehistoric ages, was made to
recite the building of the tower of Babel, or the vir-
tues of Abraham, and again to prophesy the day when
the heathen nations should be wiped out, and the God
of Israel be the God of all the world. Although the
fabrication of oracles is not entirely defensible, it is
unnecessary to see, with Schiirer, in these writings a
low moral standard among the Egyptian Jews. They
were not meant to suggest, to the cultured at any rate,
that the Sibyl in one case or Heraclitus in another
had really written the words ascribed to them. The
so-called forgery was a literary device of a like nature
with the dialogues of Plato or the political fantasies
of More and Swift. By the striking nature of their
utterances the writers hoped to catch the ear of the
Gentile world for the saving doctrine which they
taught. The form is Greek, but the spirit is Hebraic ;
in the third Sibylline oracle, particularly, the call to
monotheism and the denunciation of idolatry, with
the pictures of the Divine reward for the righteous,
and of the Divine judgment for the ungodly, remind
us of the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah ; as when
the poet says, 1 "Witless mortals, who cling to an
image that ye have fashioned to be your god, why do
ye vainly go astray, and march along a path which is
1 0rac. Sib., ed. Alexandra, III. 8.
not straight? Why remember ye not the eternal
founder of All? One only God there is who ruleth
alone." And again: "The children of Israel shall
mark out the path of life to all mortals, for they are
the interpreters of God, exalted by Him, and bearing a
great joy to all mankind." 1 The consciousness of the
Jewish mission is the dominant note. Masters now
of Greek culture, the Jews believed that they had a
philosophy of their own, which it was their privilege
to teach to the Greeks; their conception of God and
the government of the world was truer than any
other; their conception of man's duty more righteous;
even their conception of the state more ideal.
The apocryphal book, the Wisdom of Solomon,
which was probably written at Alexandria during the
first century B. c. E., is marked by the same spirit.
There again we meet with the glorification of the one
true God of Israel, and the denunciation of pagan
idolatry; and while the author writes in Greek and
shows the influence of Greek ideas, he makes the
Psalms and the Proverbs his models of literary form.
"Love righteousness," he begins, "ye that be judges
of the earth ; think ye of the Lord with a good nuajd
and in singleness of heart seek ye Him." His appeal
for godliness is addressed to the Gentile world in a
language which they understood, but in a spirit to
which most of them were strangers. The early his-
tory of the Israelites in Egypt comes home to Mm
l IUd., III. 195.
32 PHILO-JUM:US OF ALEXANDRIA
with especial force, for he sees it "in the light of
eternity," a striking moral lesson for the godless
Egyptian world around him in which the house of
Jacob dwelt again. With poetical imagination he
tells anew the story of the ten plagues as though he
had lived through them, and seen with his own eyes
the punishment of the idolatrous land. He ends
with a paean to the God who had saved His people.
" For in all things Thou didst magnify them, and
Thou didst glorify them, and not lightly regard them,
standing by their side in every time and place."
At this epoch, and at Alexandria especially, Juda-
ism was no self-centred, exclusive faith afraid of ex-
pansion. The mission of Israel was a very real thing,
and conversion was widespread in Rome, in Egypt,
and all along the Mediterranean countries. The Jews,
says the letter of Aristeas, "eagerly seek intercourse
with other nations, and they pay special care to this,
and emulate each other therein." And one of the
most reliable pagan writers says of them, " They have
penetrated into every state, and it is hard to find a
place where they have not become powerful." J Nor
was it merely material power which they acquired.
The days had come which the prophet Amos (viii. 11)
had predicted, when " God will send a famine in the
land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but
a famine of hearing the words of the Lord." The
Greek world" had lost faith in the poetical gods of its
1 Comp. Strabo, Frag. 6, Didot
THE COMMUNITY AT ALEXANDKIA 33
mythology and in the metaphysical powers of its phil-
osophical schools, and was searching for a more real
object to revere and lean on. The people were thirst-
ing for the living God. And in place of the gods of
nature, whom they had found unsatisfying, or the
impersonal world-force, with which they sought in
vain to come into harmony, the Jews offered them the
God of history, who had preserved their race through
the ages, and revealed to them the law of Moses.
The missionary purpose was largely responsible for
the rise of a philosophical school of Bible commen-
tators. The Hellenistic world was thoroughly sophis-
ticated, and Alexandria was distinguished above all
towns as the home of philosophical lectures and book-
making. One of Philo's contemporaries is said to
have written over one thousand treatises, and in one
of his rare touches of satire Philo relates 1 how bands
of sophists talked to eager crowds of men and women
day and night about virtue being the only good, and
the blessedness of life according to nature, all with-
out producing the slightest effect, save noise. The
Jews also studied philosophy, and began to talk in the
catchwords of philosophy, and then to re-interpret
their Scriptures according to the ideas of philosophy.
The Septuagint translation of the Pentateuch was to
the cultured Gentile an account in rather bald and
impure Greek of the history of a family which grew
into a petty nation, and of their tribal and national
1 De Post. C. 24.
3
34 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
laws. The prophets, it is true, set forth teachings
which were more obviously of general moral import;
but the books of the prophets were not God's special
revelation to the Jews, but rather individual utter-
ances and exhortations : and their teaching was treated
as subordinate to the Divine revelation in the Five
Books of Moses. Those, then, who aimed at the
spread of Jewish monotheism were impelled to draw
out a philosophical meaning, a universal value from
the Books of Moses. Nowadays the Bible is the holy
book of so much of the civilized world that it is
somewhat difficult for us to form a proper conception
of what it was to the civilized world before the Chris-
tian era. We have to imagine a state of culture in
which it was only the Book of books to one small na-
tion, while to others it was at best a curious record of
ancient times, just as the Code of Hammurabi or the
Egyptian Book of Life is to us. The Alexandrian
Jews were the first to popularize its teachings, to
bring Jewish religion into line with the thought of
the Greek world. It was to this end that they founded
a particular form of Midrash the allegorical inter-
pretation, which is largely a distinctive product of the
Alexandrian age. The Palestinian rabbis of the time
were on the one hand developing by dialectic discus-
sion the oral tradition into a vast system of religious
ritual and legal jurisprudence ; on the other, weaving
around the law, by way of adornment to it, a varie-
gated fabric of philosophy, fable, allegory, and legend.
Simultaneously the Alexandrian preachers they
THE COMMUNITY AT ALEXANDRIA 35
were never quite the same as the rabbis were em-
phasizing for the outer world as well as their own
people the spiritual side of the religion, elaborating a
theology that should satisfy the reason, and seeking
to establish the harmony of Greek philosophy with
Jewish monotheism and the Mosaic legislation. Alle-
gorical interpretation is " based upon the supposition
or fiction that the author who is interpreted intended
something ' other ' (a/Uo) than what is expressed";
it is the method used to read thought into a text
which its words do not literally bear, by attaching
to each phrase some deeper, usually some philosophi-
cal meaning. It enables the interpreter to bring writ-
ings of antiquity into touch with the culture of hiaor
any age ; " the gates of allegory are never closed, and
they open upon a path which stretches without
a break through the centuries." In the region
of jurisprudence there is an institution with a similar
purpose, which is known as " legal fiction," whereby
old laws by subtle interpretation are made to serve
new conditions and new needs. Allegorical interpre-
tation must be carefully distinguished from the writ-
ing of allegory, of which Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Pro-
gress " is the best-known type. One is the converse of
the other ; for in allegories moral ideas are represented
as persons and moral lessons enforced by what pur-
ports to be a story of life. In allegorical interpreta-
tion persons are transformed into ideas and their his-
tory into a system of philosophy. The Greek philoso-
phers had applied this method to Homer since the
36 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDEIA
fourth century B. c. E., in order to read into the epic
poet, whose work they regarded almost as a Divine
revelation, their reflective theories of the universe.
And doubtless the Jewish philosophers were influ-
enced by their example.
Their allegorical treatment of the Bible was in-
tended, not merely to adapt it to the Greek world, but
to strengthen its hold on the Alexandrian Jews
themselves. These, as they acquired Hellenic culture,
found that the Bible in its literal sense did not alto-
gether satisfy their conceptions. They detected in
it a certain primitiveness, and having eaten further
of the tree of knowledge, they were aware of its philo-
sophical nakedness. It was full of anthropomorphism,
and it seemed wanting in that which the Greek world
admired above all things a systematic theology and
systematic ethics. The idea that the words of the
Bible contained some hidden meanings goes back to the
earliest Jewish tradition and is one of the bases of the
oral law ; but the special characteristic of the Alexan-
drian exegesis is that it searched out theories of God
and life like those which the Greek philosophers had
developed. The device was necessary to secure the
allegiance of the people to the Torah. And from the
need of expounding the Bible in this way to the Jew-
ish public at Alexandria, there arose a new form of
religious literature, the sermon, and a new form of
commentary, the homiletical. The words "homileti-
cal " and " homily " suggest what they originally con-
noted; they are derived from the Greek
THE COMMUNITY AT ALEXAKDEIA 37
"an assembly/' and a homily was a discourse deliv-
ered to an assembly. The Meturgeman of Palestine
and Babylon, who expounded the Hebrew text in Ara-
maic, became the preacher of Alexandria, who gave, in
Greek, of course, homiletical expositions of the law.
In the great synagogue each Sabbath some leader in
the community would give a harangue to the assem-
bly, starting from a Biblical text and deducing from
it or weaving into it the ideas of Hellenic wisdom,
touched by Jewish influence; for the synagogues at
Alexandria as elsewhere were the schools (Schule) as
much as the houses of prayer ; schools, as Philo says,
of "temperance, bravery, prudence, justice, piety,
holiness, and in short of all virtues by which things
human and Divine are well ordered." 1 He speaks
repeatedly of the Sabbath gatherings, when the Jews
would become, as he puts it, a community of philoso-
phers," as they listened to the exegesis of the preacher,
who by allegorical and homiletical fancies would make
a verse or chapter of the Torah live again with a new
meaning to his audience. The Alexandrian Jews,
though the form of their writing was influenced by
the Greeks, probably brought with them from Pales-
tine primitive traces of allegorism. Allegory and its
counterpart, allegorical interpretation, are deeply im-
bedded in the Oriental mind, and we hear of ancient
schools of symbolists in the oldest portions of the
1 De V. Mos. II. 28.
* Comp. De Decal. 20.
38 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDEIA
Talmud. 1 At what period the Alexandrians began
to use allegorical interpretation for the purpose of
harmonizing Greek ideas with the Bible we do not
know, but the first writer in this style of whom we
have record (though scholars consider that his frag-
ments are of doubtful authenticity) is Aristobulus.
He is said to have been the tutor of Ptolemy Phil-
ometor, and he must have written at the beginning
of the first century B. c. E. He dedicated to the
king his " Exegesis of the Mosaic Law/' which was
an attempt to reveal the teachings of the Peripatetic
system, i. e., the philosophy of Aristotle, within the
text of the Pentateuch. All anthropomorphic expres-
sions are explained away allegorically, and God's ac-
tivity in the material universe is ascribed to his
Auvajuis, or power, which pervades all creation.
Whether the power is independent and treated as a
separate person is not clear from the fragments that
Eusebius 2 has preserved for us. Aristobulus was only
one link in a continuous chain, though his is the only
name among Philo's predecessors that has come
down to us. Philo speaks, fifteen times in all, of ex-
planations of allegorists who read into the Bible this
or that system of thought s regarding the words of the
law as "manifest symbols of things invisible and
hints of things inexpressible." And if their work were
1 Comp. Yer. Berakot 24c.
*Pr<rp. Evang. VIII. 10, XIII. 12.
'Comp. De Air. 15 and 37, De Jos. II. 63, De Spec. Leg.
III. 32, De Migr. 89.
THE COMMUNITY AT ALEXANDRIA 39
before us, it is likely that Philo would appear as the
central figure of an Alexandrian Midrash gathered
from many sources, instead of the sole authority for
a vast development of the Torah. We must not re-
gard him as a single philosophical genius who sud-
denly springs up, but as the culmination of a long
development, the supreme master of an old tradition.
If the allegorical method appears now as artificial
and frigid, it must be remembered that it was one
which recommended itself strongly to the age. The
great creative era of the Greek mind had passed away
with the absorption of the city-state in Alexander's
empire. Then followed the age of criticism, during
which the works of the great masters were interpreted,
annotated, and compared. Next, as creative thought
became rarer, and confidence in human reason began
to be shaken, men fell back more and more for their
ideas and opinions upon some authority of the distant
past, whom they regarded as an inspired teacher. The
sayings of Homer and Pythagoras were considered as
divinely revealed truths; and when treated allegori-
cally, they were shown to contain the philosophical
tenets of the Platonic, the Aristotelian, or the Stoic
school. Thus, in the first century B. c. E., the Greek
mind, which had earlier been devoted to the free
search for knowledge and truth, was approaching the
Hebraic standpoint, which considered that the highest
truth had once for all been revealed to mankind in in-
spired writings, and that the duty of later generations
was to interpret this revealed doctrine rather than
46 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
search independently for knowledge. On the other
hand, the Jewish interpreters were trying to reach the
Greek standpoint when they set themselves to show
that the writers of the Bible had anticipated the phil-
osophers of Hellas with systems of theology, psychol-
ogy, ethics, and cosmology. Allegorism, it may be said,
is the instrument by which Greek and Hebrew thought
were brought together. Its development was in its
essence a sign of intellectual vigor and religious ac-
tivity; but in the time of Philo it threatened to have
one evil consequence, which did in the end undermine
the religion of the Alexandrian community. Some
who allegorized the Torah were not content with dis-
covering a deeper meaning beneath the law, but went
on to disregard the literal sense, i. e., they allegorized
away the law, and held in contempt the symbolic ob-
servance to which they had attached a spiritual
meaning. On the other hand, there was a party which
adhered strictly to the literal sense (r& /JTJTOV) and re-
jected allegorism. 1 Philo protested against these ex-
tremes and was the leader of those who were liberal in
thought and conservative in practice, and who vener-
ated the law both for its literal and for its allegorical
sense. To effect the true harmony between the literal
and the allegorical sense of the Torah, between the
spiritual and the legal sides of Judaism, between
Greek philosophy and revealed religion that was the
great work of Philo-Judseus.
1 Quod Deus 11, De Air. 36.
Though the religious and intellectual development
of the Alexandrian community proceeded on different
lines from that of the main body of the nation in
Palestine, yet the connection between the two was
maintained closely for centuries. The colony, as we
have noticed, recognized whole-heartedly the spiritual
headship of Jerusalem, and at the great festivals of
the year a deputation went from Alexandria to the
holy sanctuary, bearing offerings from the whole
community. In Jerusalem, on the other hand, special
synagogues, where Greek was the language, 1 were built
for Alexandrian visitors. Alexandrian artisans and
craftsmen took part in the building of Herod's temple,
but were found inferior to native workmen.* The
notices within the building were written in Greek as
well as in Aramaic, and the golden gates to the inner
court were, we are told by Josephus, 1 the gift of
Philo's brother, the head of the Alexandrian com-
munity. Some fragments have come down to us of a
poem about Jerusalem in Greek verse by a certain
Philo, who lived in the first century B. c. E., and was
perhaps an ancestor of our worthy. He glorifies the
Holy City, extols its fertility, and speaks of its ever-
flowing waters beneath the earth. His greater name-
sake says that wherever the Jews live they consider
Jerusalem as their metropolis. The Talmud again
Acts of the Apostles VI. 9, and Tosef. Meg.
III. 6.
*Yoma 83.
1 Bell. Jud. V. 5.
V-
42 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
tells how Judah Ben Tabbai and Joshua Ben Perahva,
during the persecution of the Pharisees by Hyrcanus,
fled to Alexandria, and how later Joshua Ben Hana-
nia * sojourned there and gave answers to twelve ques-
tions which the Jews propounded to him, three of
them dealing with " the Wisdom." The Talmud has
frequent reference to Alexandrian Jews, and that it
makes little direct mention of the Alexandrian ex-
egesis is explained by the distrust of the whole Hellen-
istic movement, which the rise of Christianity and the
growth of Gnosticism induced in the rabbis of the
second and third centuries. They lived at a time
when it had been proved that that movement led away
from Judaism, and its main tenets had been adopted
or perverted by an antagonistic creed. It was a tragic
necessity which compelled the severance between the
Eastern and Western developments of the religion.
In Philo's day the breach was already threatened,
through the anti-legal tendencies of the extreme alle-
gorists. His own aim was to maintain the catholic
tradition of Judaism, while at the same time ex-
pounding the Torah according to the conceptions of
ancient philosophy. Unfortunately, the balance was
not preserved by those who followed him, and the
branch of Judaism that had blossomed forth so fruit-
fully fell off from the parent tree. But till the mid-
dle of the first century of the common era the Alex-
andrian and the Palestinian developments of Jewish
1 Comp. Niddah 69", Sotah 47.
THE COMMUNITY AT ALEXANDRIA 43
culture were complementary: on the one side there
was legal, on the other, philosophical expansion.
Moreover, the Judseo-Alexandrian school, though,
through its abandonment of the Hebrew tongue, it
lies outside the main stream of Judaism, was an im-
mense force in the religious history of the world, and
Philo, its greatest figure, stands out in our annals as
the embodiment of the Jewish religious mission,
which is to preach to the nations the knowledge of
the one God, and the law of righteousness.
II
THE LIFE AKD TIMES OF PHILO
"The hero/' says Carlyle, "can be poet, prophet,
king, priest, or what you will, according to the kind of
world he finds himself born into." 3 The Jews have
not been a great political people, but their excellence
has been a peculiar spiritual development: and there-
fore most of their heroes have been men of thought
rather than action, writers rather than statesmen, men
whose influence has been greater on posterity than
upon their own generation. Of Philo's life we know
one incident in very full detail, the rest we can only
reconstruct from stray hints in his writings, and a few
short notices of the commentators. From that inci-
dent also, which we know to have taken place in the
year 40 c. E., we can fix the general chronology of his
life and works. He speaks of himself as an old man
in relating it, so that his birth may be safely placed
at about 20 B. c. E. The first part of his life there-
fore was passed -during the tranquil era in which
Augustus and Tiberius were reorganizing the Eoman
Empire after a half-century of war ; but he was fated
to see more troublesome times for his people, when the
emperor Gaius, for a miserable eight years, harassed
the world with his mad escapades. In the riots which
ensued upon the attempt to deprive the Jews of
their religious freedom his brother the alabarch was
1 " Heroes and Hero-Worship," ch. 3.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO 45
imprisoned; 1 and he himself was called upon to
champion the Alexandrian community in its hour
of need. Although the ascent of the stupid hut
honest Claudius dispelled immediate danger from the
Jews and brought them a temporary increase of favor
in Alexandria as well as in Palestine, Philo did
not return entirely to the contemplative life which
he loved ; and throughout the latter portion of his life
he was the public defender as well as the teacher of
his people. He probably died before the reign of
Nero, between 50 and 60 c. E. In Jewish history his
life covered the reigns of King Herod, his sons,
and King Agrippa, when the Jewish kingdom reached
its height of outward magnificence; and it extended
probably up to the ill-omened conversion of Judaea
into a Eoman province under the rule of a procurator.
It is noteworthy also that Philo was partly contempo-
rary with Hillel, who came from Babylon to Jerusa-
lem in 30 B. c. E., and according to the accepted tra-
dition was president of the Sanhedrin till his death in
10 c. E. In this epoch Judaism, by contact with ex-
ternal forces, was thoroughly self-conscious, and the
world was most receptive of its teaching; hence it
spread itself far and wide, and at the same time
reached its greatest spiritual intensity. Hillel and
Philo show the splendid expansion of the Hebrew
mind. In the history of most races national great-
ness and national genius appear together. The two
grandest expressions of Jewish genius immediately
1 Ant. XIX. 5.
46 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
preceded the national downfall. For the genius of
Judaism is religious, and temporal power is not one
of the conditions of its development.
Philo belonged to the most distinguished Jewish
family of Alexandria, 1 and according to Jerome and
Photius, the ancient authorities for his life, was of
the priestly rank; his brother Alexander Lysimachus
was not only the governor of the Jewish community,
but also the alabarch, i. e., ruler of the whole Delta
region, and enjoyed the confidence of Mark Antony,
who appointed him guardian of his second daugh-
ter Antonia, the mother of Germanicus and the
Eoman emperor Claudius. Born in an atmosphere
of power and affluence, Philo, who might have con-
sorted with princes, devoted himself from the first
with all his soul to a life of contemplation; like a
Palestinian rabbi he regarded as man's highest duty
the study of the law and the knowledge of God. 2 This
is the way in which he understood the philosopher's
life 3 : man's true function is to know God, and to
make God known: he can know God only through
His revelation, and he can comprehend that revela-
tion only by continued study. HDDn 3D 1 ? K'SJi, God's
interpreter must have a wise heart,* as the rabbis
explained. Philo then considered that the true un-
derstanding of the law required a complete knowl-
edge of general culture, and that secular philosophy
1 Photius, Cod,. 108.
'Cornp. De Confus. 15.
Comp. De Mon. I. 6.
*Comp. Maimonides, Moreh II, ch. 36.
was a necessary preparation for the deeper mysteries
of the Holy Word. " He who is practicing to abide
in the city of perfect virtue, before he can be in-
scribed as a citizen thereof, must sojourn with the
' encyclic ' sciences, so that through them he may ad-
vance securely to perfect goodness." 1 The " encyclic,"
or encyclopaedic sciences, to which he refers, are the
various branches of Greek culture, and Philo finds a
symbol of their place in life in the story of Abraham.
Abraham is the eternal type of the seeker after God,
and as he first consorted with the foreign woman
Hagar and had offspring by her, and afterwards in
his mature age had offspring by Sarah, so in Philo's
interpretation the true philosopher must first apply
himself to outside culture and enlarge his mind with
that training ; and when his ideas have thus expanded,
he passes on to the more sublime philosophy of the
Divine law, and his mind is fruitful in lofty thoughts."
As a prelude to the study of Greek philosophy he
built up a harmony of the mind by a study of Greek
poetry, rhetoric, music, mathematics, and the natural
sciences. His works bear witness to the thoroughness
with which he imbibed all that was best in Greek
literature. His Jewish predecessors had written in
the impure dialect of the Hellenistic colonies (the
xoivl) (Jta/UxToc) , and had shown little literary charm;
but Philo's style is more graceful than that of any
Greek prose writer since the golden age of the fourth
1 L. A. I. 135.
2 Comp. De Cong. 6 fl.
48 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
century. Like his thought, indeed, it is eclectic and
not always clear, but full of reminiscences of the epic
and tragic poets on the one hand, and of Plato on the
other, 1 it gives a happy blending of prose and poetry,
which admirably fits the devotional philosophy that
forms its subject. And what was said of Plato by a
Greek critic applies equally well to Philo : " He rises
at times above the spirit of prose in such a way that
he appears to be instinct, not with human under-
standing, but with a Divine oracle." From the study
of literature and kindred subjects Philo passed on to
philosophy, and he made himself master of the teach-
ings of all the chief schools. There was a mingling of
all the world's wisdom at Alexandria in his day; and
Philo, like the other philosophers of the time, shows
acquaintance with the ideas of Egyptian, Chaldean,
Persian, 8 and even Indian thought. The chief Greek
schools in his age were the Stoic, the Platonic, the
Skeptic and the Pythagorean, which had each its pro-
fessors in the Museum and its popular preachers in
the public lecture-halls. Later we will notice more
closely Philo's relations to the Greek philosophers:
suffice it here to say that he was the most distin-
guished Platonist of his age.
Philo's education therefore was largely Greek, and
his method of thought, and the forms in which his
ideas were associated and impressed, were Greek. It
. Croiset, Histoire de la littcrature ffrecque,
V, p^ 425 ft.
2 Comp. Mills, " Zoroaster, Philo, and Israel."
THE LIFE A:ND TIMES OF PHILO 49
must not be thought, however, that this involved any
weakening of his Judaism, or detracted from the pur-
ity of his belief. Far from it. The Torah remained for
him the supreme standard to which all outside knowl-
edge had to be subordinated, and for which it was a
preparation. 1 But Philo brought to bear upon the elu-
cidation of the Torah and Jewish law and ceremony
not only the religious conceptions of the Jewish mind,
but also the intellectual ideas of Greek philosophy, and
he interpreted the Bible in the light of the broadest
culture of his day. Beautiful as are the thoughts and
fancies of the Talmudic rabbis, their Midrash was a
purely national monument, closed by its form as by
its language to the general world; Philo applied to
the exposition of Judaism the most highly-trained
philosophic mind of Alexandria, and brought out
clearly for the Hellenistic people the latent philosophy
of the Torah.
Greek was his native language, but at the same
time he was not, as has been suggested, entirely igno-
rant of Hebrew. The Septuagint translation was the
version of the Bible which he habitually used, but
there are passages in his works which show that he
knew and occasionally employed the Hebrew Bible. 2
Moreover, his etymologies are evidence of his knowl-
edge of the Hebrew language; though he sometimes
gives a symbolic value to Biblical names according to
. Quis Rer. Div. 43, De Judice II, De V. Mos.
II. 4.
a Ritter, Philon und die Halacha.
50 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
their Greek equivalent, he more frequently bases his
allegory upon a Hebrew derivation. That all names
had a profound meaning, and signified the true nature
of that which they designated, is among the most firmly
established of Philo' s ideas. Of his more striking deri-
vations one may cite Israel, Stf'itr 1 , the man who
beholdeth God ; Jerusalem, DiburiT, the sight of peace ;
Hebrew, nay, one who has passed over from the life
of the passions to virtue; Isaac, pn:r, the joy or laugh-
ter of the soul. These etymologies are more ingenious
than convincing, and are not entirely true to Hebrew
philology, but neither were those of the early rabbis;
and they at least show that Philo had acquired a
superficial knowledge of the language of Scripture.
Nor can it be doubted that he was acquainted with
the Palestinian Midrash, both Halakic and Hagga-
dic. At the beginning of the " Life of Moses " he de-
clares that he has based it upon "many traditions
which I have received from the elders of my nation," ]
and in several places he speaks of the " ancestral
philosophy," which must mean the Midrash which em-
bodied tradition. Eusebius also, the early Christian
authority, bears witness to his knowledge of the tradi-
tional interpretations of the law. 2
It is fairly certain, moreover, that Philo sojourned
some time in Jerusalem. He was there probably
during the reign of Agrippa (c. 30 c. E.), who was an
1 Comp. De V. Mos. I. 1, In Flacc. 23 and 33, De Mut.
Norn. 39.
*Pr(zp. Evang. VIII. r.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO 51
intimate friend of his family, and had found a refuge
at Alexandria when an exile from Palestine and Borne.
In the first book on the Mosaic laws 1 Philo speaks
with enthusiasm of the great temple, to which " vast
assemblies of men from a countless variety of cities,
some by land, some by sea, from East, West, North,
and South, come at every festival as if to some com-
mon refuge and harbor from the troubles of this har-
assed and anxious life, seeking to find there tran-
quillity and gain a new hope in life by its joyous fes-
tivities." These gatherings, at which, according to
Josephus, 2 over two million people assembled, must,
indeed, have been a striking symbol of the unity of the
Jewish race, which was at once national and inter-
national; magnificent embassies from Babylon and
Persia, from Egypt and Gyrene, from Eome and
Greece, even from distant Spain and Gaul, went in
procession together through the gate of Xistus up the
temple-mount, which was crowned by the golden sanc-
tuary, shining in the full Eastern sun like a sea of
light above the town. Philo describes in detail the
form of the edifice that moved the admiration of all
who beheld it, and for the Jew, moreover, was invested
with the most cherished associations. Its outer courts
consisted of double porticoes of marble columns burn-
ished with gold, then came the inner courts of simple
columns, and "within these stood the temple itself,
beautiful beyond all possible description, as one may
1 De Mon. II. 1-3.
a Comp. Bell Jucl. VI. 9. 3.
52 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDKIA
tell even from what is seen in the outer court ; for the
innermost sanctuary is invisible to every being except
the high priest/' The majesty of the ceremonial
within equalled the splendor without. The high priest,
in the words of Ben Sira (xlv), "beautified with
comely ornament and girded about with a robe of
glory/' seemed a high priest fit for the whole world.
Upon his head the mitre with a crown of gold en-
graved with holiness, upon his breast the mystic Urim
and Thummim and the ephod with its twelve brilliant
jewels, upon his tunic golden pomegranates and silver
bells, which for the mystic ear pealed the harmony of
the world as he moved. Little wonder that, inspired
by the striking gathering and the solemn ritual, Philo
regarded the temple as the shrine of the universe, 1 and
thought the day was near when all nations should go
up there together, to do worship to the One God.
Sparse as are the direct proofs of Philo's connection
with Palestinian Judaism, his account of the temple
and its service, apart from the general standpoint of
his writings, proves to us that he was a loyal son of
his nation, and loved Judaism for its national in-
stitutions as well as its great moral sublimity. His
aspiration was to bring home the truths of the religion
to the cultured world, and therefore he devised a new
expression for the wisdom of his people, and trans-
formed it into a literary system. Judaism forms the
kernel, but Greek philosophy and literature the shell,
*Comp. De V. Mos. II. 4.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO 53
of his work; for the audience to which he appealed,
whether Jewish or Gentile, thought in Greek, and
would be moved only by ideas presented in Greek
form, and by Greek models he himself was inspired.
Philo's first ideal of life was to attain to the pro-
foundest knowledge of God so as to be fitted for the
mission of interpreting His Word: and he relates in
one of his treatises how he spent his youth and his
first manhood in philosophy and the contemplation
of the universe. 1 " I feasted with the truly blessed
mind, which is the object of all desire (i. e., God),
communing continually in joy with the Divine words
and doctrines. I entertained no low or mean thought,
nor did I ever crawl about glory or wealth or worldly
comfort, but I seemed to be carried aloft in a kind
of spiritual inspiration and to be borne along in
harmony with the whole universe." The intense re-
ligious spirit which seeks to perceive all things in
a supreme unity Philo shares with Spinoza, whose
life-ideal was the intuitional knowledge of the uni-
verse and " the intellectual love of God/' Both men
show the pursuit of righteousness raised to philo-
sophical grandeur.
In his early days the way to virtue and happiness
appeared to Philo to lie in the solitary and ascetic
life. He was possessed by a noble pessimism, that
the world was an evil place, 2 and the worldly life an
1 De Spec. Leg. III. 1.
2 Comp. De Migr. 4, L. A. III. 45.
54 PHILO-JUD;EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
evil thing for a man's soul, that man must die to live,
and renounce the pleasures not only of the body but
also of society in order to know God. The idea was a
common one of the age, and was the outcome of the
mingling of Greek ethics and psychology and the Jew-
ish love of righteousness. For the Greek thinkers
taught a psychological dualism, by which the body
and the senses were treated as antagonistic to the
higher intellectual soul, which was immortal, and
linked man with the principle of creation. The most
remarkable and enduring effect of Hellenic influence
in Palestine was the rise of the sect of Essenes, 1 Jew-
ish mystics, who eschewed private property and the
general social life, and forming themselves into com-
munistic congregations which were a sort of social
Utopia, devoted their lives to the cult of piety and
saintliness. It cannot be doubted that their manner
of life was to some degree an imitation of the Pytha-
gorean brotherhoods, which ever since the sixth cen-
tury had spread a sort of monasticism through the
Greek world. Nor is it unlikely that Hindu teachings
exercised an influence over them, for Buddhism was at
this age, like Judaism, a missionizing religion, and
had teachers in the West. Philo speaks in several
places of its doctrines. 2 Whatever its moulding influ-
ences, Essenism represented the spirit of the age,
and it spread far and wide. At Alexandria, above all
places, where the life of luxury and dissoluteness
1 Comp. Graetz, " History of the Jews " III. 91 ff.
2 Comp. Quod Omnis Probus Liber 11 ff.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO 55
repelled the serious, ascetic ideas took firm hold of
the people, and the Therapeutic life, i. e., the life of
prayer and labor devoted to God, which corresponded
to the system of the Essenes, had numerous vota-
ries. The first century witnessed the extremes of the
religious and irreligious sentiments. The world was
weary and jaded; it had lost confidence in human
reason and faith in social ideals, and while the ma-
terialists abandoned themselves to hideous orgies and
sensual debaucheries, the higher-minded went to the
opposite excess and sought by flight from the world
and mortification of the flesh to attain to supernat-
ural states of ecstasy. A book has come down to us
under the name of Philo 1 which describes " the con-
templative life" of a Jewish brotherhood that lived
apart on the shores of Lake Mareotis by the mouth of
the Nile. Men and women lived in the settlement,
though all intercourse between the sexes was rigidly
avoided. During six days of the week they met in
prayer, morning and evening, and in the interval de-
voted themselves in solitude to the practice of virtue
and the study of the holy allegories, and the composi-
tion of hymns and psalms. On the Sabbath they sat
in common assembly, but with the women separated
from the men, and listened to the allegorical homily
of an elder; they paid special honor to the Feast of
Pentecost, reverencing the mystical attributes of the
number fifty, and they celebrated a religious banquet
l The authenticity of this book is elaborately discussed
by Conybeare in his edition of it.
56 PHILO-JUD^US OP ALEXANDRIA
thereon. During the rest of the year they only par-
took of the sustenance necessary for life, and thus in
their daily conduct realized the way which the rabbis
set out as becoming for the study of the Torah : " A
morsel of bread with salt thou must eat, and water by
measure thou must drink; thou must sleep upon the
ground and live a life of hardship, the while thou
toilest in the Torah." *
We do not know whether Philo attached himself to
one of these brotherhoods of organized solitude, or
whether he lived even more strictly the solitary life
out in the wilderness by himself. Certainly he was at
one period in sympathy with ascetic ideas. It seemed
to him that as God was alone, so man must be alone
in order to be like God. 8 In his earlier writings he
is constantly praising the ascetic life, as a means, in-
deed, to virtue rather than as a good in itself, and as
a helpful discipline to the man of incomplete moral
strength, though inferior to the spontaneous goodness
which God vouchsafes to the righteous. Isaac is the
type of this highest bliss, while the life of Jacob is the
type of the progress to virtue through asceticism. 8
The flight from Laban represents the abandonment of
family and social life for the practical service of God,
and as Jacob, the ascetic, became Israel, " the man
who beholdeth God," so Philo determined "to scorn
delights and live laborious days " in order to be drawn
1 " Ethics of the Fathers " VI. 4.
*De Mundi Op. I. 42.
* Comp. De Migr. 6 ff.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO 57
nearer to the true Being. But he seems to have been
disappointed in his hopes, and to have discovered that
the attempt to cut out the natural desires of man was
not the true road to righteousness. " I often," he
says, 1 "left my kindred and friends and fatherland,
and went into a solitary place, in order that I might
have knowledge of things worthy of contemplation,
hut I profited nothing : for my mind was sore tempted
by desire and turned to opposite things. But now,
sometimes even when I am in a multitude of men,
my mind is tranquil, and God scatters aside all un-
worthy desires, teaching me that it is not differences
of place which affect the welfare of the soul, but God
alone, who knows and directs its activity howsoever
he pleases."
The noble pessimism of Philo's early days was re-
placed by a noble optimism in his maturity, in which
he trusted implicitly in God's grace, and believed that
God vouchsafed to the good man the knowledge of
Himself without its being necessary for him to inflict
chastisements upon his body or uproot his inclina-
tions. In this mood moderation is represented as the
way of salvation; the abandonment of family and
social life is selfish, and betrays a lack of the human-
ity which the truly good man must possess.* Of
Philo's own domestic life we catch only a fleeting
glimpse in his writings. He realized the place of
woman in the home ; " her absence is its destruction,"
1 L. A. II. 21.
*De Fuga 1 ff .
58 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
he said; and of his wife it is told in another of the
" Fragments " that when asked one day in an assem-
bly of women why she alone did not wear any golden
ornament, she replied, " The virtue of a husband is a
sufficient ornament for his wife."
Though in his maturity Philo renounced the ascetic
life, his ideal throughout was a mystical union with
the Divine Being. To a certain school of Judaism,
which loves to make everything rational and moderate,
mysticism is alien; it was alien indeed to the Sad-
ducee realist and the Karaite literalist; it was alien
to the systematic Aristotelianism of Maimonides, and
it is alien alike to Western orthodox and Reform
Judaism. But though often obscured and crushed
by formal systems, mysticism is deeply seated in the
religious feelings, and the race which has developed
the Cabbalah and Hasidism cannot be accused of
lack of it. Every great religion fosters man's aspira-
tion to have direct communion with God in some
super-rational way. Particularly should this be the
case with a religion which recognizes no intermediary.
The Talmudic conceptions of nxnj, prophecy, nyzw,
the Divine Presence, and tsnpn nn, the holy spirit,
which was vouchsafed to the saint, certainly are
mystic, and at Alexandria similar ideas inspired a
striking development. Once again we can trace the
fertilizing influence of Greek ideas. Even when the
old naturalistic cults had flourished in Greece, and
political life had provided a worthy goal for man,
mystical beliefs and ceremonies had a powerful attrac-
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO 59
tion for the Hellene ; and, when the belief in the old
gods had been shattered, and with the national great-
ness the liberal life of the State had passed away, he
turned more and more to those rites which professed
to provide healing and rest for the sickening soul.
Many of the Alexandrian Jews must have been ini-
tiated into these Greek mysteries, for Philo introduces
into his exegesis of the law of Moses an ordinance
forbidding the practice. 1 He himself advocates a more
spiritual mysticism, and it is a cardinal principle
of his philosophy to treat the human soul as a god
within and its absorption in the universal Godhead
as supreme bliss, the end of all endeavor. He claimed
to have attained, himself, to this union, and to have
received direct inspiration. Giving a Greek color-
ing to the Hebrew notion of prophecy, " My soul,"
he says, " is wont to be affected with a Divine trance
and to prophesy about things of which it has no
knowledge " a . . . . " Many a time have I come with
the intention of writing, and knowing exactly what I
ought to set down, but I have found my mind barren
and fruitless, and I have gone away with nothing
done, but at times I have come empty, and suddenly
been full, for ideas were invisibly rained down upon
me from above, so that I was seized by a Divine
frenzy, and was lost to everything, place, people, self,
speech, and thought. I had gotten a stream of inter-
. De Spec. Leg. II. 260.
Comp. De Cherubim 9.
60 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDEIA
pretation, a gift of light, a clear survey of things, the
clearest that eye can give." J
In his " Guide of the Perplexed," * Maimonides de-
scribes the various degrees of the tsnpn nn, or what we
call religious "genius," with which man may be
blessed. He distinguishes between the man who pos-
sesses it only for his own exaltation, and the man who
feels himself compelled to impart it to others for their
happiness. To this higher order of genius Philo ad-
vanced in his maturity. He consciously regarded him-
self as a follower of Moses, who was the perfect inter-
preter of God's thought. So he, though in a lesser
degree, was an inspired interpreter, a hierophant (as
he expressed it in the language of the Greek mystics)
who expounded the Divine Word to his own genera-
tion by the gift of the Divine wisdom. When he had
fled from Alexandria, to secure virtue by contempla-
tion, he had as his final goal the attainment of the true
knowledge of God, and as he advanced in age, he ad-
vanced in decision and authority. He was conscious
of his philosophic grasp of the Torah, and the diffi-
dence with which he allegorized in his early works
gave place to a serene confidence that he had a
lesson for his own and for future generations. Hop-
ing for the time when Judaism should be a world-
religion, he spoke his message for Jew and Gentile.
We can imagine him preaching on Sabbaths to the
l De Migr. 7-9.
II. ch. 36 ff.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO 61
great congregation which filled the synagogue at
Alexandria, and on other days of the week expound-
ing his philosophical ideas to a smaller circle which
he collected around him.
Essentially, then, he was a philosopher and a
teacher, but he was called upon to play a part in the
world of action. Following the passage already
quoted, wherein Philo speaks of the blessings of the
life of contemplation that he had led in the past, 1 he
goes on to relate how that " envy, the most grievous of
all evils, attacked me, and threw me into the vast sea
of public affairs, in which I am still tossed about with-
out being able to make my way out." A French
scholar 2 conjectures that this is only a metaphorical
way of saying that he was forced into some public of-
fice, probably a seat in the Alexandrian Sanhedrin;
and he ascribes the language to the bitter disappoint-
ment of one who was devoted to philosophical pursuits
and found himself diverted from them. Philo's lan-
guage points rather to duties which he was compelled
to undertake less congenial than those of a member of
the Sanhedrin would have been; and probably must
refer to the polemical activity which he was called
upon to exert in defending his people against misrep-
resentation and persecution. During the reign of
Augustus and the early years of Tiberius (30 B. c. E.-
20 c. E.) the Eoman provinces were firmly ruled, and
1 Comp. De Spec. Leg. III. 1.
8 Massebieau, Du classement des ceuvres de Philon.
62 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
the governors were as firmly controlled by the emperor.
To Rectus, who was the prefect of Egypt till 14 c. E.,
and who was removed for attempted extortion, Tibe-
rius addressed the rebuke, "I want my sheep to be
shorn, not strangled." But when Tiberius fell under
the influence of Sejanus, and left to his hated minister
the active control of the empire, harder times began
for the provincials, and especially for the Jews. Se-
janus was an upstart, and like most upstarts a tyrant;
and for some reason it may be jealousy of the power
of the Jews at Rome he hated the Jewish race and
persecuted it. The great opponent of Sejanus was
Antonia, the ward of Philo's brother, and a loyal
friend to his people; and this, too, may have incited
Sejanus' ill-feeling. Whatever the reason, the Alex-
andrian Jews felt the heavy hand, and when Philo
came to write the story of his people in his own times,
he devoted one book to the persecution by Sejanus.
Unfortunately it has not survived, but veiled hints
of the period of stress through which the people
passed are not wanting in the commentary on the law.
There were always anti-Semites spoiling for a fight
at Alexandria, and there was always inflammable ma-
terial which they could stir up. The Egyptian popu-
lace were by nature, says Philo, " jealous and envious,
and were filled moreover with an ancient and invet-
erate enmity towards the Jews," * and of the degener-
ate Greek population, many were anxious from motives
1 In Place. 5.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO 63
of private gain as well as from religious enmity to
incite an outbreak; since the Jews were wealthy and
the booty would be great. Among the cultured, too,
there was one philosophical school powerful at Alex-
andria, which maintained a persistent attitude of hos-
tility towards the Jews. The chief literary anti-Sem-
ites of whom we have record at this period were Stoics,
and it is probably their " envy " to which Philo refers
when he complains of being drawn into the sea of
politics. In writings and in speeches the Stoic leaders
Apion and Chffiremon carried on a campaign of mis-
representation, and sought to give their attacks a
fine humanitarian justification by drawing fancy pic-
tures of the Jewish religion and Jewish laws. The
Jews worshipped the head of an ass/ they hated the
Gentiles, and would have no communication with
them, they killed Gentile children at the Passover, and
their law allowed them to commit any offences against
all but their own people, and inculcated a low morality.
When it was not morally bad, it was degraded and
superstitious. Whereas the modern anti-Semite usu-
ally complains about Jewish success and dangerous
cleverness, Apion accused them of having produced no
original ideas and no great men, and no citizen as
worthy of Alexandria as himself! Against these
charges PhLo, the most philosophical Jew of the time
and the most distinguished member of the Alexan-
1 Comp. Th. Reinach, Textes d'auteurs remains et grecs
relatifs au Judaisms, pp. 120 ff.
64 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDKIA
drian community, was called upon to defend his
people, and that part of his works which Eusebius
calls 'Yxoffertxa, i. e. apologetics, was probably written
in reply to the Stoic attacks. The hatred of the
Stoics was a religious hatred, which is the bitterest of
all; the Stoics were the propagators of a rival reli-
gious system, which had originally been founded by
Hellenized Semites and borrowed much from Semitic
sources. They had their missionaries everywhere and
aspired to found a universal philosophical religion. In
their proselytizing activity they tried to assimilate to
their pantheism the mythological religion of the
masses, and thus they became the philosophical sup-
porters of idolatry. Their greatest religious opponents
were the Jews, who not only refused to accept their
teachings, but preached to the nations a transcendental
monotheism against their impersonal and accommo-
dating pantheism, and a divinely-revealed law of con-
duct against their vague natural reason. In the Stoic
pantheism the first stand of the pagan national deities
was made against the God of Israel, and at Alexandria
during the first century the fight waxed fierce. It
was a fight of ideas in which persons only were vic-
tims, but at the back of the intermittent persecutions
of which we have record we may always surmise the
influence of the Stoic anti-Semites. The war of
words translated itself from time to time into the
breaking of heads.
Philo, indeed, never mentions Apion by name, but
he refers covertly in many places to his insolence and
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO 65
unscrupulcmsness. 1 Josephus wrote a famous reply to
his attacks, refuting "his vulgar abuse, gross igno-
rance and demagogic claptrap/' " and the fact that a
Palestinian Jew thought this apology necessary, proves
the wide dissemination of the poison. The disgrace
and death of Sejanus seem to have brought a relief
from actual persecution to the Alexandrian Jews; but
the ill-will between the two races in the city smoul-
dered on, and it only required a weakening of the
controlling hand at Rome to set the passions aflame
again. Eight through Philo's treatise " On the Confu-
sion of Tongues," we can trace the tension. As soon
as Gaius, surnamed Caligula, came to the imperial
chair, the opportunity of the anti-Semites returned.
Gaius, after reigning well a few months, fell ill, was
seized with madness, and proved how much evil can
be done in a short space by an imbecile autocrat.
Flaccus, the governor of Egypt, who had hitherto
ruled fairly, hoping to ingratiate himself by misrule,
allowed himself to be led by worthless minions, who,
from motives of private greed, desired a riot at Alex-
andria ; he was won over by the anti-Semites and gave
the mob a free hand in their attacks upon the " alien
Jews." l The arrival of Agrippa, the grandson of
Herod, who was on his way to his kingdom of Pales-
tine, which the capricious emperor had just conferred
upon him, excited the ill-will of the Alexandrian
1 Comp. De Confus., passim.
2 Josephus, C. Aplon., Introduction.
8 In Flacc. 10.
66 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
mob. Flaccus looked on while the people attacked
the Jewish quarters, sacked the houses, and assailed
everyone that came within their reach. The most dis-
tinguished Jews were not spared, and thirty members
of the Council of Elders were dragged to the market-
place and scourged. Philo's account gives a picture
strikingly similar to that of a modern pogrom. The
brutal indifference of Flaccus did not indeed avail to
ingratiate him with the emperor, and he was recalled
to Italy, exiled, and afterwards executed.
The recall of Flaccus did not, however, put an
end to the troubles; the mob had got out of hand,
the anti-Semitic demagogues were elated, and a fresh
opportunity for outrage soon presented itself. The
mad emperor, having exhausted ordinary human fol-
lies, went on to imagine himself first a god and then
the Supreme God, and finally ordered his image to be
set up in every temple throughout his dominion. The
Jews could not obey the order, and the mob rushed
into fresh excesses upon them, defiled the synagogues
with images of the lunatic, and in the great synagogue
itself set up a bronze statue of him, inscribed with the
name of Jupiter. With bitterness Philo points out
that it was easy enough for the vile Egyptians, who
worshipped reptiles and beasts, to erect a statue of
the emperor in their temples ; for the Jews, with their
lofty idea of God, it was impossible. Against the
attack upon their liberty of conscience they appealed
directly to Gaius. An embassy was sent to lay their
case before him, and Philo went to Italy at the
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO 67
head of the embassy. " He who is learned, gentle,
and modest, and who is beloved of men, he shall
be leader in the city." So said one of the rabbis
of old, and the maxim is especially appropriate to
Philo, who in name and deed was " beloved of men."
Philo has left us a very full account of his mission, so
that this incident of his life is a patch of bright light,
which stands out almost glaringly from the general
shadow. The account is not merely, nor, indeed, en-
tirely history. Looking always for a sermon or a sub-
ject for a philosophical lesson, Philo has tricked out
the record of the facts with much moralizing observa-
tion on the general lot of mankind, and elaborated the
part of Providence more in the spirit of religious ro-
mance than of scientific history. Yet the main facts
are clear. Philo prepared a long philosophical
" apologia " for the Jews and set out with five col-
leagues for Italy. Nor were the enemies of the Jews
remiss; and Apion, the Alexandrian anti-Semite, was
sent at the head of a hostile deputation. The emperor,
Gaius, was in one of his most flippant moods and little
inclined to listen to philosophical or literary disqui-
sitions. At first he received the Jewish deputation
in a friendly way, and led them to think that he
was favorable ; but when they came to plead their
cause, they had a rude awakening. Philo, who was
not likely to appreciate the bitter humor of the
situation, tells 1 with gravity that he expected that
1 De Leg. 27 and 28.
68 PHILO-JUDyEUS OF ALEXANDRIA
the emperor would hear the two contending parties
in all proper judicial form, but that in fact he be-
haved like an insolent, overbearing tyrant. The
audience if it can be so called took place in the
gardens of the palace, and the emperor dragged
the unfortunate deputation after him about the place,
while he gave orders to his gardeners, builders, and
workmen. Whenever they tried to put forward their
arguments, he would rush ahead, enjoying the fright
and dismay of his helpless victims. At times he
would stop to make some ribald and jeering remark,
as, " Why don't you eat pork, you fools ? " at which
the Egyptians following loudly applauded. Philo
and his comrades, half-dead with agony, could only
pray ; and in response to the prayer, says our moraliz-
ing chronicler, the emperor's heart was turned to
pity, so that he dismissed them without giving any
hostile answer. According to Josephus, he drove
them away in a passion, and Philo had to cheer his
companions by assuring them of the Divine aid. 1
The affair was a pathetic farce, and the Jewish
actors in it had a sorry time. The people about the
palace, taking their lead from the emperor, treated
them as clowns, and hissed and mocked them, and
even beat them. The scene is somewhat revolting
when one conjures up the picture of the aged Jewish
philosopher being roughly handled by the set of ruf-
fians and impudent slaves who surrounded a Roman
emperor. Happily Gaius jeered once too often in his
1 Ant. XVIII. 8. 1.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO 69
mad life. One Chaerea, a Eoman of position, nursed
an insult of the emperor, and stabbed him shortly
after these events ; and the world had the respite of a
tolerably sane emperor before the crowning horror of
N"ero was let loose upon it.
The murder of the capricious tyrant released not
only the Jews of Alexandria, but also the Jews of
Palestine, from the burden of fear for their religion.
The order had been given to set up a bronze statue of
the emperor in the temple; the Eoman governor Pe-
tronius was averse to obeying the edict, but the em-
peror insisted. King Agrippa, who had been but
lately advanced by him to the kingdom of Judaea,
interceded zealously on behalf of his people. Philo
gives us an account of this appeal by the Jewish king, 1
which recalls at every turn the scenes of the book of
Esther. We have again the fasting, the banquet, the
emperor's request, the appeal of the royal favorite for
his people. One higher critic, indeed, has been found
to suggest that the Biblical book really relates Agrip-
pa's intercession at Rome disguised in the setting of
a Persian story. Agrippa secured for a short time
the rescission of the fateful decree, but the capricious
madman soon returned to his old frame of mind, and
ordered his image to be set up immediately. Had not
his death intervened, there would certainly have been
rebellion in Palestine. As it was, the great revolt
was postponed for thirty years. For a little the Jews
1 De Leg., ad fin.
70 PHILO-JUDyEUS OF ALEXANDRIA
prevailed over their adversaries; the anti-Semitic in-
fluences were put down in Judasa and in Alexandria,
and in both places " there was light and joy and glad-
ness for the Jews." Their political privileges were
reaffirmed by imperial decree, and Philo's brother
Alexander, who had been imprisoned, was restored to
honor. 1 " It is fitting," ran the rescript of Claudius,
"to permit the Jews everywhere under our sway to
observe their ancient customs without hindrance.
And I charge them to use my indulgence with mod-
eration, and not to show contempt for the religious
rites of other peoples."
The note of triumph rings through the political
references to be found in the last parts of Philo's
allegorical commentary, and no doubt it was accentu-
ated in the lost book which he added as an epilogue,
or palinode, to his history of the embassy. God had
again preserved his people, and discomfited their
foes; recently-discovered papyri have revealed that
the arch anti-Semites, Isidorus and Lampon, were
tried at Eome and executed. Claudius was well-
disposed to the Jewish race, and before the final
storm there was a calm. Howbeit, after the death of
Agrippa, in 44 c. E., Judaea became a Roman prov-
ince, and under the rapacious governorship of Felix
Florus and Cestius Gallus, the hostility of the people
to the Romans grew more and more bitter. But in
Alexandria there was tranquillity, or at least we know
of no disquieting events during the next decade.
1 Ant. XIX. 5.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO 71
" Old age," said Philo, " is an unruffled harbor," * and
the saying refers possibly to his own experience. For
he must have died full of years and full of honors.
Through his life he was the spiritual and philosoph-
ical guide, and finally he had become the champion
of his people against their persecutors, giving dignity
to their cause and inspiring respect even in their
enemies. He was happy in the time of his death, for
he did not live to see the destruction of the national
home of his people and of that temple which he had
loved to contemplate as the future centre of a uni-
versal religion. The disintegration of his own com-
munity at Alexandria followed full soon on the
greater disaster; the temple of Onias was disman-
tled and interdicted against Jewish worship by Ves-
pasian in the year 73 c. E., and though, as has been
noted, this was not in itself of great importance, it is
symbolic of the uprooting of national life in the Dias-
pora as well as in Palestine itself. On the downfall
of Jerusalem in 70 c. E. many of the extreme anti-
Roman party, known as the Zealots, fled to Alex-
andria and stirred up rebellion and dissension. Noth-
ing but disaster could have attended the outbreak, but
it is a sad reflection that the governor who put it
down and ruthlessly exterminated the rebels was none
other than Tiberius Alexander, the nephew of Philo,
who was in turn procurator of Judaea and Egypt. By
another irony of history he had in the previous year
been largely instrumental in securing for Vespasian,
*Frag. preserved by John of Damascus, p. 404.
72 PHILO-JTJD;EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
who was besieging Jerusalem, the imperial throne of
Borne. 1 With him ends our knowledge of Philo's
family, and it ends significantly with one who has
ceased to be a Jew. The ruin of the Jewish- Alex-
andrian community was completed by a desperate
revolt in the reign of Trajan, 114-117 c. E., after
which they were deprived of their chief political
privileges; and finally, after incessant conflicts with
the Christians, they were expelled from the city by
the all-powerful Bishop Cyril (415 c. E.).
Philo himself passed out of Jewish tradition
within a short time, to become a Christian worthy.
The destruction of the nation and the gradual sev-
erance of the Christian heresy from the main com-
munity compelled the abandonment of missionary
activity and distrust of the work of its exponents.
The dangerous aspect of the Alexandrian development
was revealed. Its philosophical allegorizing might
attract the Gentile to the Jewish Scriptures, but it
also led the Jew away from his special conduct of life.
The Alexandrian Church, which claimed to continue
the tradition of Philo, departed further and further
from the Jewish standpoint, and formulated a dog-
matic creed that was utterly opposed to Jewish mono-
theism. A philosophical Judaism for the whole world
was a splendid ideal, but unfortunately in Philo's time
it was incapable of accomplishment. The result of the
attempt to found it was the establishment of a re-
ligion in which, together with the adoption of Hebraic
l Comp. Ant. XX. 5.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO 73
teachings about God, certain ideas of Alexandrian
mysticism became stereotyped as dogmas, and Jewish
law was abrogated. When Babylon replaced Pales-
tine as the centre of Jewish intellect, the works of
Philo, like the rest of the Hellenistic-Jewish litera-
ture, written as they were in a strange tongue, fell
into disuse, and before long were entirely forgotten.
The Christians, on the other hand, found in Philo a
notable evidence for many of their beliefs and a philo-
sophical testimony for the dogmas of their creed.
They claimed him as their own, and the Church
Fathers, to bind him more closely to their tradition,
invented fables of his meeting with Peter at Home and
Mark at Alexandria. They traced, in the treatise
" On the Contemplative Life," a record of early
Christian monastic communities, and on account of
this book especially regarded Philo almost with the
reverence of an apostle. To the Christian theo-
logians of Alexandria we owe it that the interpreta-
tion of Judaism to the Hellenic world in the light
of Hellenic philosophy has been preserved. Of the
two Jewish philosophers who have made a great
contribution to the world's intellectual development,
Spinoza was excommunicated in his lifetime, and
Philo suffered moral excommunication after his
death. The writings of both exercised their chief
influence outside the community; but the emanci-
pated Jewry of our own day can in either case recog-
nize the worth of the thinker, and point with pride
to the saintliness of the man.
Ill
PHILO'S WOKKS AND METHOD
The first thing that strikes a reader of Philo is
the great volume of his work: he is the first Jewish
writer to produce a large and systematic body of
writings, the first to develop anything in the nature
of a complete Jewish philosophy. He had essentially
the literary gift, the capacity of giving lasting expres-
sion to his own thought and the thought of his gen-
eration. Treating him merely as a man of letters,
he is one of the chief figures in Greek literature of
the first century. We have extant over forty books
of his composition, and nearly as many again have
disappeared. His works are one and all expositions
of Judaism, but they fall into six distinct classes of
exegesis :
I. The allegorical commentary, or "Allegories of
the Laws/' which is a series of philosophical treatises
based upon continuous texts in Genesis, from the first
to the eighteenth chapter. Together with this, the
best authorities place the two remaining books on the
" Dreams of the Bible," which are a portion of a
larger work, and deal allegorically with the dreams of
Jacob and Joseph.
II. The Midrashic commentary on the Five Books
of Moses, for which we have no single name, but
PHILO'S WORKS AND METHOD 75
which was clearly intended to be an ethical and philo-
sophical treatise upon the whole law.
III. A commentary in the form of " Questions and
Answers to Genesis and Exodus," which is incomplete
now, and save for detached fragments exists only in
a Latin translation. In its original form it provided
a short running exegesis, verse by verse, to the whole
of the first three books of the Pentateuch, and was
contained in twelve parts.
IV. A popular and missionizing presentation of
the Jewish system in the form of a " Life of Moses,"
and three appended tractates on the virtues " Cour-
age," " Humanity," and " Repentance." Scholars *
are of opinion that there are gaps in the extant " Life
of Moses," but the general plan of the work is clear.
It is at once an abstract and an interpretation of
Jewish law for the Greek world, and also an ideal
biography of the Jewish lawgiver.
V. Philosophical monographs, not so intimately
connected with the Bible as the preceding works ; but
in the nature of rhetorical exercises upon the stock
subjects of the schools, which receive a Jewish color-
ing by reason of Biblical illustrations.
VI. Historical and apologetic works that set out
the case of the contemporary Jews against their per-
secutors and traducers. Of these writings the larger
part has disappeared, and of a portion of those which
remain the genuineness has been doubted.
Lastly, there is a miscellaneous number of works
1 Comp. Massebieau, op. cit.
76 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDKIA
ascribed to Philo, which all good scholars l now admit
to be spurious : " On the Incorruptibility of the
World/' " On the Universe," " On Samson," and "On
Jonah/' etc.
It will be seen from this classification of Philo's
works, that he has dealt in several ways with the Bib-
lical material. The reason of this is partly that his
mind developed, and the interpretation of his maturer
years differed widely from that of his earliest writings.
Partly, however, it arises from the fact that the dif-
ferent treatments were meant for different audiences,
and Philo always took the measure of those whom he
was addressing. His most representative works are
" a triple cord " with which he binds the Jewish
Scripture to Greek culture. For the Greek-speaking
populace he set out a broad statement of the Mosaic
law; for the cultured community of Alexandria, Jew
and Gentile, a more elaborate exegesis, in which each
character and each ordinance of the Pentateuch re-
ceived a particular ethical value ; and, finally, for the
esoteric circle of Hellenic-Jewish philosophers, a the-
ological and psychological study of the allegories of
the law. Origen, the first great Christian exegete of
the Bible and a close student of the Philonic writings,
distinguished three forms of interpreting: the his-
torical, the moral, and the philosophical; he proba-
bly took the distinction from Philo, who exemplifies
it in his commentaries upon the Books of Moses.
1 Comp. Bernays, Ueber die unter Philos Werken steh-
enden Schriften nepl rfc aqdapaiaq K.6c[tov, and Siegfried, art.
" Philo " in the Jewish Encyclopedia.
PHILO'S WORKS AND METHOD 77
Varied as is its scope, the religious idea dominates
all his work, and endows it with one spirit. Whether
he is writing philosophical, ethical, or mystical com-
mentary, whether history, apology, or essay, his pur-
pose is to assert the true notion of the one God, and
the Divine excellence of God's revelation to His
chosen people. Thus he regards history as a theodicy,
vindicating the ways of God to man, and His special
providence for Israel; philosophy as the inner mean-
ing of the Scriptures, revealed by God in mystic com-
munion with His holy prophets, 1 and, if comprehended
aright, able to lead us on to a true conception of His
Divine being. The greater part of the Hellenistic-
Jewish literature has disappeared, but Philo sums up
for us the whole of the Alexandrian development of
Judaism. He represents it worthily in both its main
aspects : the infusion of Greek culture into the Jewish
pursuit of righteousness, and the recommendation of
Jewish monotheism and the Torah to the Greek world.
Aristagus, Aristobulus, and Artapanus are hardly more
than names, but their spirit is inherited and glorified
in Philo-Judseus. His work, therefore, is more than
the expression of one great mind ; it is the record and
expression of a great culture.
The chronology of Philo's writings is as uncertain
as the chronology of his life. Yet it is possible to
trace a deepening of outlook and an increasing origi-
nality, if we work our way up from the sixth to the
1 Quod Deus 86.
78 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
first division of the classification. It does not follow
that the works were written in this order and it may
well be that Philo was producing at one and the same
time books of several classes but we may use this
order as an ideal scale by which to mark off the stages
of his philosophical progress. In the first place come
the Troflerwa, or apologetic works, which have a prac-
tical purpose. With these we may associate the
moralizing history that dealt in five books respectively
with the persecutions of Sejanus, Flaccus, and Calig-
ula, the ill-starred embassy, and the final triumph of
the Jews over their enemies. The 'Tnoffertxa proper, as
we gather from Eusebius, contained a general apology
for Judaism, and an account of the Essenes which
have disappeared and the suspected book on the
Therapeutic sect known by the title " On the Contem-
plative Life." Whether they received this generic
name because they are suggestions for the Jewish
cause, or because they are written to answer the in-
sinuations (xaff 9 vxoffsfftv) of adversaries, is a moot
point. But their general purport is clear : they were
an apologetic presentation of Jewish life, written to
show the falsity of anti-Semitic calumnies. The Jews
are good citizens and their manner of life is humani-
tarian. The Essene sect is a living proof of Jewish
practical socialism and practical philosophy, the The-
rapeuta3 show the Jewish zeal for the contemplative
life.
Next we come to Philo's philosophical monographs,
which are not, as one might expect, the work of his
PHILO'S WORKS AND METHOD 79
mature thought, but rather the exercises of youth.
Dissertations or declamations upon hackneyed sub-
jects were part of the regular course of the university
student at Alexandria, and Philo prepared himself
for his Jewish philosophy by composing in the ap-
proved style essays upon " Providence," " The Lib-
erty of the Good," and " The Slavery of the Wicked,"
etc. What chiefly distinguishes them above other col-
lections of commonplaces is the appeal to the Bible
for types of goodness, and here again the Essenes fig-
ure as the type of the philosophical life. 1 The writer,
while still engaged in the studies of the Greek univer-
sity, is feeling his way towards his system of universal
Mosaism.
This he expounds confidently and enthusiastically
in his " Life of Moses." Philo in this book is not any
longer the apt pupil of Greek philosophers, nor the
eloquent defender of the Jewish-Alexandrian com-
munity against lying detractors. He preaches a mis-
sion to the whole world, and he lays before it his
gospel of monotheism and humanity. Each Greek
school has its ideal type, its Socrates, Diogenes, or
Pythagoras ; but Philo places above them all " the
most perfect man that ever lived, Moses, the legislator
of the Jews, 2 as some hold, but according to others
the interpreter of the sacred laws, and the greatest
of men in every way." And above all the ethical
systems of the day he sets the law of life that God
1 Quod Omnis Probus Liber 12 ff.
2 De V. Mos. I. 1.
80 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
revealed to His greatest prophet : " The laws of the
Greek legislators are continually subject to change;
the laws of Moses alone remain steady, unmoved, un-
shaken, stamped as it were with the seal of nature
herself, from the day when they were written to the
present day, and will so remain for all time so long
as the world endures. Not only the Jews but all
other peoples who care for righteousness adopt them.
.... Let all men follow this code and the age
of universal peace will come about, the kingdom of
God on earth will be established." J Nor is the Greek
to fear the lot of a proselyte. " God loves the man
who turns from idolatry to the true faith not less than
the man who has been a believer all his life ; " 2 and
in the little essays upon Repentance and Nobility,
which are attached to the larger treatise, Philo ap-
peals to his own people to welcome the stranger
within the community. " The Life of Moses " is the
greatest attempt to set monotheism before the world
made before the Christian gospels. And it is truer
to the Jewish spirit, because it breathes on every page
love for the Torah. Philo in very truth wished to
fulfil the law.
If Judaism was to be the universal religion, it must
be shown to contain the ultimate truth both about
real being, i. e. God, and about ethics; for the philo-
sophical world in that age and the philosophical
world included all educated people demanded of
1 De V. Mos. II. 5.
3 " On Repentance," II.
PHILO'S WORKS AND METHOD 81
religion that it should be philosophical, and of
philosophy that it should be religious. The de-
sire to expound Judaism in this way is the motive
of Philo's three Biblical commentaries. The " Ques-
tions and Answers to Genesis and Exodus " constitute
a preliminary study to the more elaborate works
which followed. In them Philo is collecting his ma-
terial, formulating his ideas, and determining the
main lines of his allegory. They are a type of Mid-
rash in its elementary stage, the explanation of the
teacher to the pupil who has difficulties about the
words of the law : at once like and unlike the old Tan-
naitic Midrash ; like in that they deal with difficulties
in the literal text of the Bible ; unlike in that the reply
of Philo is Agadic more usually than Halakic, specu-
lative rather than practical. In these books, 1 as has
been pointed out, there are numerous interpretations
which Philo shares with the Palestinian schools. A
few specimens taken from the first book will illustrate
Philo's plan, but it should be mentioned that in every
case he sets out the simple meaning of the text, the
Peshat, as well as the inner meaning, or Derash.
"Why does it say: 'And God made every green
herb of the field before it was upon the earth '? (Gen.
ii. 4.)
"By these words he suggests symbolically the in-
corporeal Idea. The phrase, ' before it was upon the
earth/ marks the original perfection of every plant
* Comp. Treitel, Agadah Bet Philo. Monatsschrift, 1909.
6
82 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
and herb. The eternal types were first created in the
noetic world, and the physical objects on earth, per-
ceptible by the senses, were made in their likeness."
In this way Philo reads into the first chapter of the
Bible the Platonic idealism which we shall see was
a fundamental part of his philosophy.
"Why, when Enoch died, does it say, 'And he
pleased God'? (Gen. v. 24.)
" He says this to teach that the soul is immortal,
inasmuch as after it is released from the body it con-
tinues to please."
" What is the meaning of the expression, ' And
Noah opened the roof of the ark'? (Gen. viii. 13.)
"The text appears to need no interpretation; but
in its symbolical meaning the ark is our body, and
that which covers the body and for a long time pre-
serves its strength is spoken of as its roof. And this
is appetite. Hence when the mind is attracted by
a desire for heavenly things, it springs upwards and
makes away with all material desires. It removes
that which threw a shade over it so as to reach the
eternal Ideas."
The " Questions and Answers " are essentially He-
braic in form, designed for Jews who knew and
studied their Bible ; and we can feel in them the influ-
ences of a training in traditional Mishnah and Mid-
rash; but Philo passed from them to a more artistic
expression and a more thoroughly Hellenized presen-
tation of the philosophy of the Bible. This work
is the largest extant expression of his thought and
mission; it embraces the treatises which we know
PHILO'S WORKS AND METHOD 83
as "On the Creation of the World," "The Lives
of Abraham and Joseph/' " On the Decalogue,"
and finally those " On the Specific Laws," which are
partly thus entitled and partly have separate ethical
names, as " On Honoring Parents," " On Rewards
and Punishments," " On Justice," etc. Large por-
tions of it have disappeared, notably the "Lives of
Isaac and Jacob " ; and also the " Life of Moses,"
which was introductory to his laws. For the book
which we have under that name does not belong to
the series, but is separate. The purpose of the work
broadly is to deepen the value of the Bible for the
Jews by revealing its constant spiritual message, and
to assert its value for the whole of humanity by show-
ing in it a philosophical conception of the universe
and its creation, the most lofty ethical and moral
types, the most admirable laws, and, above all, the
purest ideas of God and His relation to man. All
that seems tribal and particularist is explained away,
and the spiritual aspect of every chapter of every
word almost of the Torah is emphasized. Philo ex-
pounds the sacred book, not of one particular nation,
but of mankind. The Roman and Greek peoples were
waiting for a religious message which should at once
harmonize with rational ideas and satisfy their long-
ing for God. All the philosophical schools were con-
verting the scientific systems of the classical age into
Tponoi Bioo, " plans of life," and Philo challenges
them all with a new faith which has as its basis a
God who not only was the sole Creator and Ruler of
84 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
the world, but who had revealed to man the way of
happiness, and the good life, social as well as individ-
ual. To-day, when the world about us has accepted
or has professed to accept the ethical law of the
Bible, we are apt to regard the essentials of Judaism
as the belief in One God and the observance of cere-
monies. But to Philo Judaism was something more
comprehensive. It was the spiritual life, and the Mo-
saic law is the complete code of the Divine Republic,
of which all are or can be citizens. In the introduc-
tion to the "Life of Abraham," Philo explains the
scheme of his work : *
" ' The Sacred Laws ' [as he regularly calls the Bible]
were written in five books, of which the first is entitled
Genesis. It derives its title from the account of the
creation which it contains, though it deals also with
endless other subjects, peace and war, hunger and plenty,
great cataclysms, and the histories of good and evil men.
We have examined with great care the accounts of the
creation in our former treatise [' On the Making of the
Universe'], and we now go on naturally to inquire into
the laws; and postponing the particular laws, which are
as it were copies, we will first of all examine the more
universal, which are their models. Now men who have
lived irreproachable lives are these laws, and their vir-
tues are recorded in the Holy Scriptures not only by way
of eulogy, but in order to lead on those who read about
them to emulate their life. They are become living
standards of right reason, whom the lawgiver has glori-
fied for two reasons: (1) To show that the laws laid
down are consistent with nature [the conception of a
1 De Abr. 12.
PHILO'S WORKS AND METHOD 85
natural law binding upon all peoples was one of the
fixed ideas of the age]. (2) To show that it is not a
matter of terrible labor to live according to our positive
laws if a man has the will to do so; seeing that the
patriarchs spontaneously followed the unwritten prin-
ciples before any of the particular laws were written.
So that a man may properly say that the code of law is
only a memorial of the lives of the patriarchs. For the
patriarchs, of their own accord and impulse, chose to
follow nature, and, regarding her course with truth as
the most ancient ordinance, they lived a life according
to the law."
Philo dwells affectionately on the patriarchs, be-
cause, as he held, they proved the Jewish life to be
truest to man's nature and to the highest ideal of
humanity, and served therefore as examples to the
Gentile world of the universal truth of the religion.
The rabbis also took the patriarchs as the perfect
type of our life, saying, " Everything that happens
to them is a sign to future generations," 1 and again :
"The patriarchs are the true H231D, manifestation
of God." But while he emphasized the broad moral
teachings of Judaism exemplified by the patriarchs,
Philo nevertheless upheld in its integrity the Mosaic
law, and found in every one of the six hundred
and thirteen precepts a spiritual meaning. Even the
details of the tabernacle offerings have their univer-
sal lesson when he expounds them as symbols. Vol-
taire speaks cynically of Judaism as a religion of
sacrifices : Philo shows that the ritual of sacrifice sug-
l Comp. Bereshit Rabba 47.
86 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
gests moral lessons. The command of the red heifer,
a part of the law which was particularly subject to
attack, emphasizes the law of moral as well as of
physical cleanliness. The prohibition to add honey or
leaven to the sacrifice 1 (Lev. ii. 13) points the lesson
that all superfluous pleasure is unrighteous ; and so on
with each prescription.
The Mosaic code in his exposition is commensurate
with life in all its aspects. It deals not only with the
duties of the individual but also with the good govern-
ment of the state. The life of Joseph is made the
text of a political treatise, and throughout the books
" On the Specific Laws," the socialism of the Bible is
emphasized, 2 and held up as the ideal order of the
future. The Jewish State is enlarged in Philo's
vision from a national theocracy into a world-city
inspired by the two ideas of love of God and love of
humanity. In this conception, no doubt, the influence
of Greek philosophy is to be seen; the Jewish inter-
preter keeps before him the "Eepublic" of Plato,
and the " Polity " of Aristotle. With him, however,
the ideal state is not a vision " laid up in heaven " ; *
its foundation is already laid upon earth, its capital is
Jerusalem, and it is the mission of his people to ex-
tend its borders till it embraces all nations * an idea
which permeates the Jewish litany.
This commentary of the law is allegorical in the
1 De Sac. et Victimis 5 and 6.
*DeMon. II. 3 ff.
* Comp. Plato, Rep. V, ad fin.
4 De Exsecr. II. 587.
PHILO'S WOKKS AND METHOD 87
sense that beneath the particular law the interpreter
constantly reveals a spiritual idea, but it is not alle-
gorical in the sense that he makes an exchange of
values. He is not for the most part reading into the
text conceptions which are not suggested by it, but
really and truly expounding; and where he gives
a philosophical piece of exegesis, as when he explains
the visit of the three angels to Abraham as a theory
of the human soul about God's being, 1 he does so with
diffidence or with reference to authorities that have
founded a tradition. It is quite otherwise with the
last class of Philo's work, the fruit of his maturest
thought, with which it remains to deal.
Throughout the " Allegories of the Laws " he takes
the verse of the Bible not so much as a text to be
amplified and interpreted, but as a pretext for a philo-
sophical disquisition. The allegories indeed are only
in form a commentary on the Bible; in one aspect
they are a history of the human soul, which, if they
had been completed, would have traced the upward
progress from Adam to Moses. It is not to be ex-
pected, however, that Philo should adhere closely to
any plan in the allegories. Theology, metaphysics,
and ethics have as large a part in the medley of philo-
sophical ideas as the story of the soul. His Hebraic
mind, even when fortified by the mastery of Greek
philosophy, was unable to present its ideas systemati-
cally; it passed from subject to subject, weaving the
whole together only by the thread of a continuous
l De Abr. 3.
88 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
commentary upon Genesis. Parts of the work are
missing, it is true, which adds to the seeming want
of plan ; and greatest loss of all the first part, which
gave the philosophical account of the first chapter of
Genesis, the first six days of creation, referred to as
" The Hexameron " (TO 'Efypspov}, has disappeared. 1
Here must have been the general introduction to the
allegories, wherein Philo declared his purpose and his
method of exposition. The first treatise that we pos-
sess starts abruptly with a comment on the first verse
of the second chapter, " ' And the heaven and earth
and all their world were completed/ Moses has
previously related the creation of the mind and sense,
and now he proceeds to describe their perfection.
Their perfection is not the individual mind or sense,
but their archetypal ' ideas/ And symbolically he
calls the mind heaven, because in heaven are the ideas
of the mind, and the sense he calls earth, because it is
corporeal and material." 5
So in a rambling, unsystematic way Philo embarks
upon a discourse on idealism and psychology, making
a fresh start continually from a verse or a phrase of
the Bible. The Biblical narrative in the earliest
chapters offered a congenial soil for his explorations,
but no ground is too stubborn for his seed. The gene-
alogy of Noah's sons is as fertile in suggestion as the
story of Adam and Eve, for each name represents
some hidden power or possesses some ethical import.
1 Comp. L. A. II. 4.
*,. A. I. 1.
PHILO'S WORKS AND METHOD 89
The allegorical commentary is clearly the work of
Philo's maturity, wherein he exhibits full mastery of
an original method of exegesis. His allegories are no
longer tentative, and he writes with the confidence of
the sage, who has received not only the admiration of
his people, but the inspiration of God. Another sign
of their maturity is that asceticism seems no longer
the true path to virtue, as it was to the author of
"The Lives of the Patriarchs" and "The Specific
Laws," but, on the contrary, a moderate use of the
world's goods and a share in political life are marks
of the perfect man. These characteristics bespeak the
firmer hand and the profounder experience. Yet the
series of works which form together Philo's esoteric
doctrine were certainly put together over a long period
of years, as the varied political references indicate.
It has indeed been suggested by a modern German
scholar l that large parts were originally given in the
form of detached lectures and sermons, and that
Philo later composed them together into a continuous
commentary, working them up with much literary
elaboration. In support of this theory, it may be
urged that several of the treatises contain political
addresses to public audiences, notably the De Agricid-
tura and De Confusione Linguarum, while in others
there are invocations to prayer, or a summons to read
a passage in the Bible, addressed apparently by the
preacher to the Hazan, who had before him the scroll
of the law. From Philo's own statements we know
that the wisest men used to deliver philosophical
1 Comp. Freudenthal, Hellenistische Studien.
90 PHILO-JUD^ETJS OF ALEXANDEIA
homilies upon the Bible on the Sabbath day; and
it is natural that the man who was appointed to
head the Jewish embassy to Gaius had made him-
self known in the past to his brethren for oratory
and wisdom of speech. " Sermons/' said Jowett,
" though they deal with eternal subjects, are the most
evanescent form of literature." The dictum is true
for the most part, but occasionally the sermon, by
its depth of thought, the universality of its message,
and the beauty of its expression, has become part of
the world's heritage from the ages. Moreover, at
Alexandria philosophy was associated with preaching.
And the sermons of the Jewish-Hellenistic writer,
in their style as well as in their thought, represent
an epoch. Philo spoke in the language of the intel-
lectual world of his day, and strove to associate the
intellectual precepts of Hellenism with the Hebraic
passion for righteousness. In his great moments,
however, the Hebraic spirit towers supreme. " He
was," said Croiset, the historian of Greek literature,
" the first Greek prose writer who could speak to
God and of God to man with the ardent piety and
reverence of the Jewish prophets." x
It is a serious misconception to imagine that Philo's
philosophical allegories were meant for the general
body of Alexandrian Jews. He frequently* declares
that he is speaking to a specially initiated sect, and
warns his hearers not to divulge his teaching. The
1 Croiset, op. cit. V, p. 427.
J Comp. De Cherubim, passim.
PHILO'S WOKKS AND METHOD 91
notion of an esoteric doctrine for the aristocracy
of intellect had become a fixed idea in the Greek
schools for three centuries, ever since the days of
Aristotle; and whether through Greek influence or
otherwise it had been generally adopted by the Jewish
teachers. The rabbis of the Talmud derived from the
first chapters of Genesis the inner mystery of the law,
which was cognizable only by the sage ; and the same
idea is found in later Jewish tradition, which, ex-
pounding Paradise (D"na) as four stages of interpre-
tation, each marked by a letter of the word, Peshat,
Eemez, Derash, and Sod (iio), 1 regarded the last as
the final reward of the devoted seeker after God, as
it is said in the Psalms, " The secret of the Lord is
for those who fear Him." Jewish religious philos-
ophers have in all ages designed their work for a
select few. The Halakah, or way of life, is the fit
study of the many. So Maimonides wrote his Moreh
only for those who already were masters of the law.
And Philo likewise at Alexandria taught an esoteric
doctrine to an esoteric circle, which alone was fitted
to receive the profoundest theology. 2 The allegories
of the law do not take the place of the law itself, nor
of its ethical ordinances. They are additional to the
other exegesis and distinct, destined only for the man
of learning. And as we shall see, he asserts em-
phatically in the midst of his allegories * that the
1 Comp. Zohar III.
2 De Cherubim 9 and 14, De Somn. 8.
>De Migr. 12.
92 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDKIA
perception of the philosophical value does not release
man from the practice itself. The wise man even
as the fool must obey the law.
Why, it may be asked, does Philo artificially attach
his philosophy to the Scriptures? He does so for two
reasons: first, because he holds and wishes to prove
that between faith and philosophy there is no conflict,
and his generation worked out the agreement by this
method ; he does so also because he wishes to establish
the Torah and Judaism upon a sure foundation for
the man of outside culture. The pursuit of philosophy
must have menaced the attachment to Judaism and
challenged the authority of the Bible at Alexandria. A
superficial knowledge of the materialistic or rational-
istic theories, which were propagated respectively by
the Epicurean and Stoic schools, was made the excuse
for indifference to the law. Then as now the ad-
vanced Jew would mask his self-indulgence under
the guise of a banal philosophy, and jeer easily at
archaic myths and tribal laws. The dominating mo-
tive of Philo's work is to show that the Bible contains
for those who will seek it the richest treasures of wis-
dom, that its ethical teaching is more ideal and yet
more real than that which hundreds of sophists
poured forth daily in the lecture-theatres 1 to the gap-
ing dilettanti of learning, and lastly that the cultured
Jew may search out knowledge and truth to their
depths, and find them expressed in his holy books and
l De Post. C. 22.
PHILO'S WORKS AND METHOD 93
in his religious beliefs and practices. Philo frequently
introduces into his philosophical interpretation a po-
lemic against the disintegrating and demoralizing
forces which were at work in the Alexandria of his day.
His commentary therefore is a strange medley, com-
pounded of idealistic speculation, theology, honailetics,
moral denunciation, and polemical rhetoric. The idea,
which is not uncommon, that Philo represents the
extreme Hellenic development of Judaism, and that
he gathered into his writings the opinions of all
Greek schools to the ruin of his Jewish individuality,
is utterly erroneous. In fact, he chooses out only the
valuable parts of Greek thought, which could enter
into a true harmony with the Hebraic spirit; and he
not only rejects, but he attacks unsparingly those
elements which were antagonistic to holiness and
righteousness. With the enthusiasm of a Maccabee,
if with other weapons, he fought against the bastard
culture, which meant self-indulgence and the exces-
sive attention to the body, the idol-worship, the de-
graded ideas of the Divine power, and the disregard of
truth and justice, that were current in the pagan
society about him. The seeking after sensual pleas-
ure and luxury was the most glaring evil of his city
as the Talmud says, 1 of ten parts of lust nine were
given to Alexandria and with every variety of de-
nunciation he returns again and again to the charge.
Epicureanism is detestable not only for its low idea of
1 Midrash Esther I.
94 PHILO-JUDJEUS OF ALEXANDRIA
human life, but for its godless conception of the uni-
verse. Its theory that the world was a fortuitous con-
course of atoms, which was governed by blind chance,
and that the gods lived apart in complete indifference
to men this was to Philo utter atheism, and as such
the greatest of sins. He attacked paganism not only
in its crude form of idolatry, 1 but in its more seduc-
tive disguise of a pretentious philosophy. Always and
entirely he was the champion of monotheism.
Nearly as godless, and therefore as vile in his eyes
as the follower of Epicurus, is the follower of the
Stoic doctrines. It has been shown that the Jews and
the Stoics were continually in conflict at Alexandria ;
and the " Allegories of the Laws " are rilled with at-
tacks, overt and hidden, upon the Stoic doctrines.
The Stoics, indeed, believed in one supreme Divine
Power, not however in a transcendental and personal
God, but a cosmic, impersonal, fatalistic world-force. 2
To Philo this conception, with its denial of the Divine
will and the Divine care for the individual, was as
atheistic as the Epicurean "chance." Equally re-
pulsive to his religious standpoint was the Stoic
dogma, that man is, or should be, independent of all
help, and that the human reason is all-powerful and
can comprehend the universe by its own unaided
power. 8 Eepulsive also were their pride, their rejec-
tion of the emotions, their hard rationalism. The
1 Comp. De Sac. II. 245.
2 Comp. De Migr. 32.
8 Comp. De Post C, 11.
PHILO'S WOKKS AND METHOD 95
battle of Philo against the Stoics is the battle of
personal monotheism against impersonal pantheism,
of religious faith and revelation against arrogant ra-
tionalism, and of idealism against materialism. Hos-
tile as he is to the Stoic intellectual dogmatism, Philo
is none the less opposed to its converse, intellectual
skepticism and agnosticism. Man, he is convinced,
has a Divine revelation 1 which he may not deny with-
out ruin. He holds with Pope that we have
" Too much of knowledge for the Skeptic side,
Too much of weakness for the Stoic's pride,"
and he attacks the Skeptics of the day who devoted
their minds to destructive dialectical quibbling and
sophistry * instead of seeking for God and the human
good. They are the Ishmaels of philosophy.
Philo's polemic is directed less against the Greek
schools in themselves than against the Jewish follow-
ers of the Greek schools. He saw the danger to
Judaism in the teachings of these anti-religious phil-
osophers, and deeply as he loved Greek culture, he
loved more deeply his religion. He wanted to reveal
a philosophy in the Bible which should win back to
Judaism the men who had been captivated by foreign
thought. In one aspect, therefore, his master-work is
a plea for unity. The community at Alexandria was
a very heterogeneous body; not only were the sects
which had appeared in Palestine, the Sadducees,
1 Quaestiones in Gen. III. 33.
1 De Cong. 10.
96 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDKIA
Samaritans, Pharisees, and Essenes, represented there
too, but in addition there were parties who attached
themselves to one or other of the Greek schools, the
Pythagoreans, Skeptics, and the like, and lastly Gnos-
tic groups, who cultivated an esoteric doctrine of the
Godhead, and were lax in their observance of the
law, which they held to be purely symbolical and of
no account in its literal meaning. The mental activ-
ity which this growth of sects exemplified was in some
respects a healthy sign, but it contained seeds of
religious chaos, which bore their fruit in the next
century. Men started by thinking out a philosophical
Judaism for themselves; they ended by ceasing to
be Jews and philosophers. Philo foresaw this danger,
and he tried to combat it by presenting his people with
a commentary of the Bible which should satisfy their
intellectual and speculative bent, but at the same
time preserve their loyalty to the Bible and the law.
To the Greek world he offered a philosophical reli-
gion, to his own people a religious philosophy. Thus
the allegorical commentary is the crowning point of
his work, the offering of his deepest thought to the
most cultured of the community; and though much
of its detail had only relevancy for its own time,
and its method may repel our modern taste, yet the
spirit which animates it is of value to all ages, and
should be an inspiration to every generation of eman-
cipated Jews. That spirit is one of fearless acceptance
of the finest culture of the age combined with un-
swerving love of the law and loyalty to catholic
Judaism.
97
We have already treated of the general characteris-
tics of Philo's method of allegorical interpretation,
but we must now consider rather more closely the
way in which he employs it. The general principle
upon which he depends is, that besides and in addi-
tion to the literal meaning which the Bible bears for
the common man, it has a hidden and deeper meaning
for the philosopher. It is, as it were, a sort of palimp-
sest ; the writing on the top all may read, the writing
below the student alone can decipher. With the
rabbis Philo holds that the Torah was written "in
the language of the sons of man," 1 but he believes
with them again that it contains all wisdom. And
if the ideas of reason do not appear in its literal
meaning, then they must be searched out in some
inner interpretation. Commenting on the verse in
Genesis (xi. 7), "Let us confound their language,
that they may not understand one another's speech,"
he says : " Those who follow the literal and obvious
interpretation think that the origin of the Greek and
barbarian languages is here described; [the contrast
between Greek, on the one hand, and barbarian in
which Hebrew, it seems, is included on the other, is
remarkable]. I would not find fault with them, be-
cause they also, perhaps, employ right reason, but I
would call on them not to remain content with this,
but to follow me to the metaphorical renderings, con-
sidering that the actual words of the holy oracle are,
1 Comp. Berakot 51 b , De Agric. 12, De 8omn. II. 25.
7
-
98 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDEIA
as it were, shadows of the real bodies, and the powers
which they reflect are the true underlying ideas." '
Elsewhere he tells a story of the condign punish-
ment which befell a godless and impious man, per-
chance a Samaritan Jew, who made mock of the race
of allegorical interpreters, jeering at the idea that
the change of names from Abram to Abraham and
from Sarai to Sarah contained some deep meaning.
He soon paid a fitting penalty for his wicked wit, for
on some very trivial pretext he went and hanged him-
self. Which was just, says Philo; for such a rascal
deserved a rascal's death. 2 It is noteworthy that the
Talmud also lays stress upon the deep meaning of
the patriarch's change of name.* " He who calls
Abraham Abram," said Bar Kappara, " transgresses
a positive command " (r\wy nitfo) . " Nay," said
Eabbi Levi, "he transgresses both a positive and a
negative command (and commits a double sin)."
Clearly this was a test-question and an article of
faith, possibly because the letter n, which was added
to the name, was a letter of mystical import in the
opinion of the age. Both the rejection of the literal
and the rejection of the allegorical value of the Bible,
Philo regarded as impious, and he had to struggle
against opposite factions that were one-sided. The
true son of the law believes in both rd fyTov and
rd tv (3^ovo{'atc. 4 Seeing that the Bible was the in-
l De Confus. 38.
a De Mut. Nom. 8.
* Comp. Bereshit Rabba 64.
'De Somn. I. 16 and 17.
PHILO'S WOEKS AND METHOD 99
spired revelation of God, who is the fountain of all
wisdom and knowledge this is Philo's cardinal
dogma it is not to be supposed, on the one hand, that
it was silent about the profoundest ideas of the human
mind, or, on the other, that it contained ideas op-
posed to right reason and truth. Yet at first sight it
seemed to lack any definite philosophy and to offer
anthropomorphic views of God. Hence the true in-
terpreter must use the actual words of the sage as
metaphors, following the maxim, " Turn it about and
about, because all is in it, and contemplate it and wax
grey over it, for thou canst have no better rule than
this." 1 The principle upon which Philo, Saadia,
Maimonides, and in fact the whole line of Jewish
philosophical exegetes have worked, is that the "words
of the law are fruitful and multiply"; or, as the
Bible phrase runs, "The Torah which Moses com-
manded unto us is the inheritance of the congregation
of Jacob." It is the separate inheritance of each
generation, which each must cultivate so as to gather
therefrom its own fruit.
The Halakah is the outcome of this devotion in one
aspect, the philosophical exegesis in another. In the
one case Jewish jurisprudence and the body of legal
tradition, in the other, philosophical ideas inspired by
outer civilization, are attached to the text of the Bible
by ingenious devices of association. The device is
partly a pious fiction, partly a genuine belief ; in other
1 Comp. " Ethics of the Fathers " V. 25.
100 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
words, the teachers honestly thought that there was re-
spectively a hidden philosophical meaning in the Bible
and an oral tradition, supplementary to the written
law and arising out of it ; but on the other hand they
would not have urged that their particular interpre-
tation alone was portended by the Scriptures. This
is shown in the Talmud by the fact that different
rabbis deduced the same lessons from different verses,
and contrary laws from the same verse; in Philo by
the fact that he often gives various interpretations of
one text in different parts of his work. All that was
claimed was that knowledge and truth must be pri-
marily referred to the Divine revelation, and all law
and practice to the authority of the Mosaic code.
Philo, then, in the same way as the rabbis, deduces
all his teaching from the Bible, not because he holds
that it was explicitly contained there, but because he
desires to give to his philosophical notions Divine
authority. Like the rabbis, again, he suggests defi-
nite rules of interpretation which may always be ap-
plied (xdvovs*; T^> dMyyopias) . x He declares that every
name in the Torah has a deep symbolical meaning,
and symbolizes some power. 2 Thus the names of
the sons of Jacob typify each some moral quality,
and these qualities together make the perfect man
and the perfect nation. Reuben is "the son of in-
sight" (p~uo), Simeon is learning (p-jjDff), Judah
1 Comp. De Somn. I. 13.
* De Mut. Nom. 9.
PHILO'S WORKS AND METHOD 101
(mm') stands for the praise of God. 1 It may be
noted, by the way, that all these values show traces of
Hebrew etymology. Again, the synonyms in the
Bible are to be carefully studied, while even particles
and parts of words have their special value and im-
portance. And the skilful exegete may for homiletical
purposes make slight changes in a word, following
the rabbinical rule/ "Read not so, but so/' Thus
he plays upon the name Esau, and takes the Hebrew
word as though it were written, not ifr#, but ^, a
thing made. 3 Whence he shows that Esau represents
the sham (made-up) greatness, which is boastful
and insolent and shameless. Philo is referring per-
haps to Apion, the vainglorious anti-Semite, whom
he often covertly attacks. Again, whenever there
is repetition in the text, a deeper meaning is por-
tended. Dealing with the verse, " Sarah the wife
of Abraham took Hagar the Egyptian" (Gten. xvi. 3),
Philo comments, that we already knew that Sarah
was Abraham's wife : why, then, does the Bible men-
tion it again? And following certain values which
he has made, he draws the lesson that the study of
philosophy must always go together with the study
of general culture. 4 These examples are not isolated ;
yet it is rather a barren science to search for the
canons of Philo's allegory, as Siegfried has done.
1 De Somn. I. 5.
2 Berakot 10.
1 De Cong. 12.
* De Cong. 14.
102 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
For his allegory is a very flexible instrument, which
can be employed at pleasure to deduce anything from,
anything. And Philo regards these "points of con-
struction" as the excuse, not as the motive, of his
ethical and philosophical teaching. He does not de-
pend on such devices, for he wanders into allegory
more often than not without any pretext of the kind.
The modern reader may consider the allegorical
method artificial and unconvincing, even if he does
not go so far as Spinoza, and say that it is "useless,
harmful, and absurd." 1 We prefer to-day to show
the inner agreement of philosophical with Biblical
teaching, rather than pretend that all philosophy is
contained within the Bible; and we accept the Bible
as it stands, as a book of supreme religious worth,
without requiring more of it. But that is mainly a
difference of taste or of method, and in Philo's day,
and in fact down to the time of the sixteenth-century
Renaissance, Jew and Gentile alike preferred the
other way. For thought, ancient and mediaeval, was
pervaded with the craving for authority or a plausible
show of it. The Bible was not only the great book of
morality, but the standard of truth, that from which
knowledge in all its branches started, and that by
which it was to be judged. As all knowledge came
from God, so all knowledge was in God's Book; and
allegory was the method by which the intellectual
conceptions of succeeding ^ges were attached to it.
^'Theologico-Political Tractate" VII.
PHILO'S WORKS AXD METHOD 103
The two main heads of Biblical interpretation
which the Jewish religious genius developed, Peshat
and Derash, these represent two permanent attitudes
of mind. In the first the commentator tries to get at
the exact meaning of the text before him, to make its
lesson clear and discuss the circumstances of the com-
position, the exact relations of its parts. He is satis-
fied to take the writer of the Biblical book for what he
says in his own form of utterance. In the second the
commentator is more anxious to inculcate ideas and
lessons which do not arise obviously from the text,
and to widen the significance of what he finds in the
Bible. The interpretation ceases to be a mere exposi-
tion ; it becomes creative or conciliating thought, and
the interpreter becomes a religious reformer, a phil-
osopher, a prophet. To this school Philo belongs, and
the framework of his teaching or the ingenuity by
which he develops it from his text is of small account.
It is what he teaches and what he considers to be the
vital things in religion and life to which we must pay
attention. Judged on this ground Philo is a supreme
master of Derash, and must take a place among the
most creative of the interpreters of the Bible.
IV
PHILO AND THE TOEAH
Over and over again Philo declares that his func-
tion is to expound the law of Moses. Moses was the
interpreter of God's word to Israel ; and Philo aspired
to be the interpreter of the revelation of Moses to
the Hellenistic world, "the living voice of the holy
law." He believed that Israel was a chosen people
in the sense that it had received the Divine message
on behalf of the whole human race, 1 a Kingdom of
Priests, in that it occupied to other nations the po-
sition which the priest using the word in the fullest
sense occupied to the common people. 2 The Torah
is God's covenant, not only with one small nation, but
with all His children, and its teachings are true for
all times and for all places. "The Bible," as Pro-
fessor Butcher says/ " is the one book which appears
to have the capacity of eternal self-adjustment, of
uninterrupted correspondence with an ever-shifting
and ever-widening environment." Nowadays this
appears a truism, but the truth first presented itself
to the Jewish-Alexandrian community when they
came in contact with external culture. The Pales-
tinian and Babylonian Jews, free for the most part
from outside influences, developed the Torah for the
Jewish people, amplified the tradition, and determined
1 De Abr. 19.
1 De Mon. II. 6.
1 Harvard Studies, " Hellenism and Hebraism."
PHILO AND THE TOKAH 105
the Halakah, the practical law. But the Alexandrian
Jews in the first place found their own attitude to the
Torah affected by their acquaintance with Greek
ethics and metaphysics, and also found it necessary
to interpret the Bible in a new fashion in order to
make its value known to their environment. The
Greek world required to be shown the general princi-
ple, the broad ethical idea in each ordinance. And
thus it came about that the Alexandrian interpreters
always emphasized the universal beneath the particu-
lar, the moral spirit beneath the forms.
It had been one of the chief functions of the
prophets to demonstrate the moral import of the law.
In their vision the God of Israel became the God of
the universe, and His law of conduct was spread over
all mankind. " For the law shall go forth from Zion,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem " (Micah iv.
2). Philo in effect expounds Judaism in their spirit,
though he speaks their message in the voice of Plato
and to a people whose minds were trained in Greek
culture. Yet it is significant that he wrote all his
commentaries round the Five Books of Moses, and
used the prophets and other Biblical books only to
illustrate and support the Mosaic teaching, which,
contains the whole way of life and the whole religious
philosophy. According to the rabbis also the Proph-
ets formed only a complement to the Torah, "a
species of Agadah " ; * and the prophetic vision of
1 Comp. Schechter, " Aspects of Rabbinic Theology,"
p. 119.
106 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
Moses was much clearer than that of his successors.
Philo, too, clearly realized that Judaism was the re-
ligion of the law. His view of the Torah is what the
modern world would call uncritical : that is to say, he
accepts the idea that the whole of the Five Books was
an objective revelation to Moses at Sinai. But though
or because he is innocent of the higher criticism,
and believes in the literal inspiration of the Torah, his
conception is none the less enlightened and spiritual.
The law the Divine Logos is not the enactment of
an outside power, arbitrarily imposed, and to be obeyed
because of its miraculous origin ; it is the expres-
sion of the human soul within, when raised to its
highest power by the Divine inspiration. Every man
may fit himself to receive the Divine word, which
is, in modern language, revelation. 1 Moses, then, is
distinguished above all other legislators, not because
he alone received it, but because he received it in its
purest form, and because he was the most noble inter-
preter of it. It is for this reason that the law of
Moses is of universal validity for conduct. The Di-
vine spirit possessed him so fully that his Logos, or
revelation, is eternally true, and by following it all
men become fit to be blessed with the Divine gift
themselves. This is true of the other prophets of the
Bible to a smaller degree, and in a still minor degree
Philo hoped that it was true of himself.
It should be premised that the "law of nature"
1 Comp. De V. Mos. II. 9 and 10, III. 1.
PHILO AND THE TORAH 107
was at the time of Philo an idea as widely accepted as
" evolution " is to-day. Men believed that by a study
of the processes of the universe the individual might
discover the law of conduct that should bring his
action into harmony with the whole. What the Greek
philosophers declared to be the privilege of the few,
Philo declared to have been imparted by God to His
people as their law of life. Hence the Mosaic legisla-
tion is the code of nature and reason, and the right-
eous man directs his conduct in accordance with those
rules of nature by which the cosmos is ordered. 1
Obedience to the law should not be obedience to an
outward prescription, but rather the following out
of our own highest nature. The ideal which the
Stoic sage continually aspired for and never attained
to the life according to nature and right reason
this Philo claimed had been accomplished in the Mo-
saic revelation, handed down by God to Israel and
through them to the world.
Before we deal with Philo's treatment of the law
in its narrower sense, it will be as well to consider
briefly his interpretation of the historical parts of
the Torah. Here likewise he finds ideas of natural
reason and eternal truths embodied. To Philo, as
we have seen, the Torah is a unity, and every part of
it has equal validity and value. He had to contend
against certain higher critics of his day, who declared
that Genesis was a collection of myths
1 L. A. i. 2.
108 PHILO-JUD;EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
Moreover, the long catalogues of gene-
alogies in Genesis and the longer recitals of sacrifices
in Leviticus and Numbers seemed to refute those
who declared that every part of the Pentateuch was
a Divine revelation. In the third book of the " Ques-
tions to Genesis " Philo directly grapples with this ob-
jection. Commenting on the verse (Gen. xv. 9),
" Take for me a heifer of three years old and a goat of
three years old/' etc., he says that in interpreting any
part or any verse of Scripture we must look to the
purpose of the whole and explain it from this outlook,
" without dissecting or disturbing its harmony or dis-
integrating its unity." a Why should God, asked the
scoffer, reveal these trivial or prolix details? Philo's
answer is in fact to spiritualize everything that is
material, and universalize everything that is par-
ticular. While he believes in the literal inspiration of
the Bible, he does not insist upon the literal truth of
every word of it, and in the opening chapters of Gene-
sis in particular, he treats the tales as symbolical or
allegorical myths. His philosophical commentary on
the creation, corresponding to the rvwu r\wyn of
the rabbis, is found in the book De Mundi Opificio,
which stands in modern editions at the head of his
writings. Its main theme is to trace in the text
the Platonic idealism, i. e., the theory that God first
created transcendental, incorporeal archetypes of all
1 Comp. De Mundi Op, 2.
'Comp. p. 85, above.
PHILO AND THE TORAH 109
physical and material things. Philo uses the double
account of the creation of man in the first and second
chapters of Genesis as clear evidence that the Bible
describes for those who have the mind to see the
creation of an ideal before the terrestrial man.
In the " Allegories of the Laws," which is the pro-
founder philosophical doctrine, the account of Adam
and Eve is deliberately chosen by Philo as the text
of a psychological treatise, in which he analyzes x the
relations of the mind, the senses, and the pleasures,
represented respectively by Adam, Eve, and the Ser-
pent. The necessity of explaining the story symboli-
cally is professedly based on the fact that otherwise
we are driven to the idea that the Bible spoke inaccu-
rately about God. " It is silly," he says, " to suppose
that Adam and Eve can have hidden themselves in
the Garden of Eden, for God filled the whole." We
are driven then to suggest another meaning; and
Philo passes into a homily about the false opinion of
the man who follows the bidding of the senses (Eve)
at the instigation of pleasure (the Serpent).*
The story of Cain and Abel is another piece of
moral philosophy embodied in a concrete form. Abel
symbolizes pious humility, Cain the deadly sin of
atheism and intellectual pride, which denies the ab-
solute and ever-present power of the Deity. Philo
asks himself the question that other commentators
have frequently raised, some in reverence, some in
1 Comp. L. A. I, passim.
3 L. A. III. 12.
110 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
ridicule, " Who was Cain's wife ? " And he an-
swers that the Bible expression about the children of
Cain cannot be taken literally, but suggests the union
of the ill-ruled mind with impious opinions, which
have as their issue false pride and sin.
Philo here treats the stories in the opening of Gen-
esis as pure allegories, in which the men and women
represent symbolically characters and qualities. It
should be remembered, however, that these interpreta-
tions occur in the commentary where our author is
not so much expounding the Torah as deducing secret
doctrines from it. His proper exposition of the law
proceeds from the book on the Creation to the lives of
the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then
to the lives of Joseph and Moses. And in this com-
mentary the Bible narrative is taken as historical
truth : only in addition to the historical fact there is
a moral and universal value in every figure and every
episode. The patriarchs' lives represent the unwritten
law which the Greek world held in high honor, for it
was considered to contain the broad principles of in-
dividual and social conduct, and to be prior logically
and chronologically to the written codes. Moses,
therefore, the perfect legislator, according to Philo,
has presented in the three founders of the Hebrew
race embodiments of the unwritten law of good con-
duct for all mankind. Each of them is a moral type of
eternal validity and represents one of the ways in
Post. C. 11.
PHILO AND THE TOEAH 111
which blessedness may be attained. 1 Abraham repre-
sents the goodness which comes from instruction;
Isaac, the spontaneous goodness that is innate, and
the joy (or laughter) of the soul that is God's gift to
his favored sons ; Jacob, the goodness that comes after
long effort, through the life of practice and severe dis-
cipline. Before this triad, the Bible presents another
group of three, who represent the virtues preparatory
to the acquisition of perfect goodness : Enosh, Enoch,
and Noah. 2 They typify respectively, as their names
indicate, hope, repentance, and justice. It is a pretty
thought, helped by an error in the Septuagint trans-
lation, 8 which sees in the name of the first (i. e., man,
BHJK) the symbol of hope. Hope, the commentator
suggests, is the distinguishing characteristic of man *
as compared with other animals, and hope therefore
is our first step towards the Divine nature, the seed
of which faith is the fruit. Next in order come re-
pentance and natural justice, and from these step-
ping-stones we can rise to the higher self. Philo's
interpretation of these Bible figures would appear to
have behind it an old Midrashic tradition. As far
back as the book of Ben Sira, in the passage on " the
Praises of Famous Men" (xliv), they are taken
as typical of the different virtues, and Enoch notably
1 De Abr. 3 ff. Ibid. 6-10.
8 The LXX renders the verse Gen. iv. 26, which Is trans-
lated in the Authorized Version: "Then began men to
call upon the name of the Lord," ovroc faniaev CTTI -rbv TUV
bfov irarepa; i. e., "He hoped in the Father of all."
4 Quod Det. 38.
112 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
is the type of repentance. In the first century the
world was becoming incapable of understanding ab-
stract ideas, and required ethics to be concretely em-
bodied in examples of life. Philo found within the
Jewish Scriptures what the Christian apostles later
transferred to other events.
Joseph, whose life followed that of the patriarchs,
is the type of the political life, the model of the man
of action and ambition. Taken alone, this is inferior
to the life of the saint and philosopher, but mixed
with the other it produces the perfect man, for the
truly good man must take his part in public life. The
story of Joseph, then, illustrates the full humanity of
Moses* scheme, and it marks also, according to Philo,
the great moral lesson, that if there be one spark of
nobility in a man's soul, God will find it and cause it
to shine forth. 1 For Joseph, until he comes down to
Egypt, is not a virtuous man, but full of conceit and
unworthy aspiration for supremacy ; he shows his true
worth when he is sold into slavery; and then by the
Divine inspiration he becomes the ideal statesman.
Very suggestive is Philo's homily, by which he devel-
ops the Bible narrative, that the function of the states-
man is to expound dreams; 8 because his task is to
interpret the life of man, which is one long dream of
changing scenes, wherein we forget what has gone
before, as the fleeting shadow leads us from childhood
to youth, from youth to manhood, from manhood to
1 De Jos. 21.
*De Jos. 22.
PHILO AND THE TOKAH 113
old age. Lastly, from the story of Joseph he draws
the lesson that when the Hebrew has attained to a
high position in a foreign land, as in Egypt, where
there is utter blindness about the true God, he can
and should retain his national laws, 1 and not assim-
ilate the practices of his environment.
Eusebius 2 mentions, among the works of Philo
which he had before him, a book on " The Statesman,"
in which doubtless the principles of government and
social life were more fully treated. The book has
disappeared, but the life of Joseph suffices to show
that Philo recognized the place of public service in
the human ideal.
Moses is not only the divinely inspired legislator,
but he typifies also the perfection of the human soul,
the highest example of the man at one with God, su-
preme as king, lawgiver, priest, and prophet. He is
the link between God and man, the perfect interpreter
of the Divine Word ; and though Philo avoids the sug-
gestion of any Divine power incarnate in man, he
speaks imaginatively of the Logos of Moses, 3 i. e., his
reason, as identical with the Logos of God, the Divine
law of the universe. It is significant of his attitude to
religion that he lays no stress upon the miracles of the
Bible narrative. Not that he rationalizes them away;
he rejects all rationalizing whatsoever; but he inter-
1 De Jos. 42.
'Hist. Ecclesiast. II. 18, L
De7. Mos. III. 4 ff.
8
114 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXAKDKIA
prets them as great spiritual signs, rather than as di-
versions from the laws of nature. His allegory of
the burning bush which Moses saw at Horeb is typical,
and presents a truth to which the whole history of
Israel bears witness. The weak thorn-bush, which
was not consumed by the fire, is the image of the idea
of Israel, which almost cries to the people in their
misfortune : " Do not despair ! Your weakness is
your strength, and by it you shall wound race after
race. You will be preserved by those who wish to
destroy you, and you shall not perish. In evil days
you shall not suffer, and when a tyrant thinks to up-
root you, you shall shine forth the more in brighter
glory." ' The passage is t3^pical also of the rhetorical
artifice with which Philo, following the taste of the
time, recommended the Bible to the Greeks.
We turn now to Philo's treatment of the Mosaic
legislation, the Torah in its narrower sense, which is
to modern Jewry perhaps the most striking part of his
commentary. His problem was the same as ours to
bring the ancient law into harmony with the ideas of
a non-Jewish environment, and to show its essential
value when tried by an external cultural standard.
Briefly his solution is that he sees everything in the
Torah sub specie ceternitatis, in the light of eternity ;
and by his faithfulness to the law, combined with his
spiritual interpretation of it, he stands forth as the
greatest Jewish missionary of his age. Unfortunately
for Judaism, depth of thought and philosophical judg-
1 De Y. Mos. II. 3.
PHILO AND THE TORAH 115
ment are not the qualities which mark the successful
religious missionary. Philo's philosophical treatment
of the Torah was understood only of the few; the
fanatical Pauline rejection of the law appealed to
the masses. The spirit of the age demanded, in-
deed, the ethical interpretation of the Bible, and it
was carried out in many ways, some true, some un-
true to Judaism. Philo and Josephus tell us how
Judaism was spreading over the world. 1 " There is
not any city of the Greeks," says the historian, " nor
of the barbarians, nor of any nation whatsoever, to
which our custom of resting on the seventh day has
not been introduced, and where our fasts and our
dietary laws are not observed As God Him-
self pervadeth all the universe, so hath our law passed
through the world/' And their testimony is sup-
ported by the frequent gibes against Judaizing Ro-
mans in the Roman poets, 2 and by the explicit state-
ments of Strabo,* the famous geographer, and, more
remarkable still, of Seneca, the Stoic philosopher-
statesman. The bitter foe of the Jews, he confessed that
this superstitious pest was infecting the whole world,
and that the conquered people (Judasa had lately
been made a Roman province) were taking their
conquerors captive. 4 Philo, with his ardent hope,
looked for the near coming of the time when the
worship of the Jewish God would prevail over the
1 De V. Mos. II. 5, Josephus, C. Apion. II. 37.
*Comp. Horace, Satires I. 4, 138; I. 9, 60.
Frag, preserved in Josephus, Ant. XIV. 7.
*Comp. Reinach, op. cit., p. 262.
116 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDKIA
world, and sought to show that the Jewish law, which
is the expression of Jewish belief, and which differs
from all others, not only in the extent of its sway, but
in its unchangeableness, could be universalized to fit
its new service. To this end he interpreted the Mosaic
code, which "no war, tyrant, persecution, or visita-
tion, human or Divine, can destroy: for it is
eternal." 1 In the arrangement of the Torah,
Philo finds a proof of its universality. It begins with
the account of the creation, to teach us that the same
Being that is the Creator and Father of the universe
is also its Legislator, and, again, that he who follows
the law will choose to live in harmony with nature,
and will exhibit consistency of action with words and
of words with action. Other philosophers, notably the
Stoics, claimed to lay down a plan of life that fol-
lowed the law of nature ; but their practice notoriously
fell below their unrealizable professions. In Judaism
alone spirit and practice were at one, so that each
inspired the other and secured human excellence.
" Not theory but practice is the root of the matter "
(nt?yon xSx ipy tmon xS), according to the rabbis: 2
and Philo, who, contemplative philosopher as he was,
yet recognized the all-importance of conduct, writes
in the same spirit : a " We must first study and then
act, for we learn, not for learning's sake, but in order
to action/'
1 De V. Mos. II. 3.
" Ethics of the Fathers " I. 17.
'De Fuga 6.
PHILO AND THE TORAH 117
Philo seeks to arrange the law under general moral
heads, and he finds in the Decalogue the holy text
upon which the rest of the code is but a commentary.
He may be following a tradition common among all
the Jews, for in the Midrash to Numbers (xiii) it
is said that the six hundred and thirteen precepts
are all contained in the Ten Commandments:
;m m^iSo nixn nrw. We do not know, however,
in what way the early rabbis carried out this idea,
whereas we possess Philo's arrangement; and some
of its features are very suggestive. 1 To the first
two commandments he attaches the ritual laws re-
lating to priests and sacrifices, to the fourth the laws
of all the festivals, to the seventh the criminal
and civil law, to the tenth the dietary laws. The
Decalogue he conceives as falling into two divisions,
between which the fifth commandment is a link. For
the first four commandments are ordinances that de-
termine man's relation to God, and the last five those
which determine his relation to his fellows. Honor
of the parents is the link between the Divine and the
human virtues, even as parents themselves are a link
between immortal God and mortal man. Correspond-
ing to the two divisions of the Decalogue are the
two generic virtues which the Mosaic legislation has
set as its goal, piety, and humanity, or what the rabbis
called charity (ncn). " He who loves God, but does
not show love towards his own kind, has but the half
of virtue." 51 Thus in one and the same age Hillel,
1 De Decal. 12. * De Decal. 23.
118 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
incited by a single scoffer, and Philo, moved by the
taunts of a tribe of anti-Semites, looked for the most
vital lesson of the Torah, and they found it alike in
"the love of our neighbor/' That was Judaism on
its practical side.
In order to show the humanitarian spirit of the
Torah, Philo emphasizes its socialistic institutions,
the law of the seventh year's rest to the land (r\w
ntrntyn), of the emancipation of the slaves, and of the
Jubilee. These to him are not tribal laws, but the
ideal institutions for the whole world, which shall
one day be set up when the theocracy has been estab-
lished over all mankind. And in an age when slavery
was as accepted a condition as factory-labor is to-day,
he ventured to assert the principle of the equality of
man. " If," saith the law, " one of thy brethren be
sold to thee, let him serve thee for six years, and in the
seventh year let him go free without payment." And
Philo thereon comments : * "A second time Moses
calls our fellow-creature brother, to impress upon the
master that he has a tie with his servant, so that he
may not neglect him as a stranger. Nay, but if he
follows the direction of the law, he will feel sympathy
with him, and will not be vexed when he is about to
liberate him. For though we call our servants slaves,
yet in verity they are only dependents who serve us
in order to have the means of life." This corre-
sponds with the Talmud dictum, " Whoever buys a
1 De Septen. 9.
PHILO AND THE TOEAH 119
Jewish slave buys a master for himself." 1 Com-
menting again upon the verse in Exodus xxi. 6,
which says with seeming harshness that a servant who
wishes to stay with his master after the year of eman-
cipation has arrived, shall be nailed by the ear to a
door, he explains that no man should consent of his
own will to be a slave, for we should only be servants
of God; and if a man deliberately rejects freedom for
comfort, he should wear a mark of degradation. The
so-called Christian principle of the dignity of human
life and the equality of man, Philo shows to be the
spirit of the Mosaic law, not limited within the con-
fines of one nation, but valid for the world. Nor is it
contained therein as a mere sentimental aspiration,
but it is realized in the institutions of the Jewish
polity.
Philo looked for the same broad principles in his
treatment of the ceremonial law. The Sabbath day
is the central observance, one might say, the lodestar
of the Jewish life, round which, the other ceremonies
revolve. The Sabbath is the call to man's higher
nature, for it is the day on which we are bidden to
devote ourselves to the Divine power within us and
to seek to know God. " The six days in which the
Creator made the universe are an example to us to
work, but the seventh day, on which He rested, is an
example to us to meditate. As on that day God is
said to have looked upon His work, so we, too, should
1 Kiddushin 20-. '
120 PHILO-JUDyEUS OF ALEXANDRIA
contemplate the universe thereon, and consider our
highest welfare. Let us never neglect the example
of the best life, the combination of action and thought,
but keeping a clear vision of it before our minds,
so far as our human nature will permit, let us liken
ourselves to immortal God by word and deed." '
High-flown this language may be, but what Philo
wishes to mark is the spiritual value of the Sabbath.
It is not merely a day of rest from workaday toil, but
it is a day upon which we devote all our thoughts to
God, and enter into closer communion with Him,
rmji m~K nnnn, a repose of love and devotion.
Heine said that on one day of the week the lowliest
Jew became a prince, Philo that he became a philoso-
pher. As in all of Philo's interpretations of Jewish
custom, there is something mystic in his conception of
the Sabbath. For he regards all Divine service and
all prayer as a mystic rite which leads the human soul
unto God. In the special ordinances of the day he
finds a spiritual motive. We may not touch fire, be-
cause fire is the seed and beginning of industry. 2 The
servant of the house may not work," because on this
day he shall have a taste of freedom and humanity,
and he will work the more cheerfully during the
remaining six days. Some rabbis later, when numbers
of Gentiles had adopted this without the other in-
stitutions of Judaism, claimed the Sabbath as the
1 De Decal. 20.
*De Septen. 7.
"De Septen. 6.
PHILO AND THE TORAH 121
special heritage of Israel ; and in the book of Jubilees 1
it is said that Israel alone has the right to observe the
Sabbath. Not so Philo, who, desiring to give the day
a value for all, regards it as God's covenant with the
whole of humanity. 2
The Sabbath idea is reflected in all the festivals,
which have as their dominating idea man's joyful
gratitude to God. Influenced probably by a mystic
fondness for certain numbers, Philo enumerates ten
festivals, as follows: 8 (1) Each day in the year,
if we use it aright a truly Philonic conception;
(2) The Sabbath; (3) The new moon then in
Alexandria, as in Palestine, a solemn day; (4) The
Passover; (5) The bringing of the first barley
('Orner) ; (6) The Feast of Unleavened Bread. These
last three are separate aspects of one celebration,
which is divided up so as to produce the holy decad.
(7) Pentecost; (8) New Year; (9) Atonement (to
the mystic the Feast of feasts) ; (10) Tabernacles.
Following his design of revealing in Judaism a re-
ligion of universal validity, Philo points out in all
these festivals a double meaning. On the one hand,
they mark God's providence to His chosen people,
shown in some great event of their history this is
the special meaning for the Israelite and, on the
other, they indicate God's goodness as revealed in the
march of nature, and thus help to bind man to the
'Ch. 2. 31.
2 Comp. De Migr. 23.
*De Septen. 1. 2.
122 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
universal process. So Passover is the festival of the
spring and a memorial of the creation (rw#DS "or
rvpjna ) as well as the memorial of the great Exodus,
and of our gratitude for the deliverance from the
inhospitable land of Egypt. And those who look for
a deeper moral meaning may find in it a symbol of
the passing over from the life of the senses to the
life with God. Similarly, Philo deals with the other
festivals, 1 and in their particular ceremonies he finds
symbols which stamp eternal lessons of history and of
morality upon our hearts. The unleavened bread is
the mark of the simple life, the New Year Shofar of
the Divine rule of peace, the Sukkot booth of the
equality of all men, and, as he puts it elsewhere, of
man's duty in prosperity to remember the troubles
of his past, so that he may worthily recognize God's
goodness. Much of this may appear trite to us; and
the association of the festivals with the seasons of na-
ture may to some appear a false development of his-
torical Judaism; nevertheless Philo's treatment of
this part of the Torah is notable. It shows remark-
able feeling for the ethical import of the law, and it
establishes the harmony between the Greek and He-
brew conceptions of the Deity by combining the God
of history with the God of nature in the same festival.
The ideas were not unknown to Palestinian rabbis;
Philo, by giving them a Greek dress, opened them
to the world.
l De Septen. 18 ff.
PHILO AND THE TORAH 123
Equally remarkable and equally suggestive is
Philo's treatment of the dietary laws. We have seen
that he placed them under the governing principle of
the tenth commandment, " Thou shalt not covet/' or,
more broadly, "Thou shalt not have base desires."
The dietary laws are at once a symbol and a discipline
of temperance and self-control. We know that the
Greeks, as soon as they had a superficial knowledge
of Jewish observance, jeered at the barbarous and
stupid superstition of refusing to eat pork. Again we
are told in the letter of the false Aristeas that when
Ptolemy's ambassadors went to Jerusalem, to sum-
mon learned men to translate the Torah into Greek,
Eleazar, the high priest, instructed them in the deeper
moral meaning of the dietary laws. Further, in the
fourth book of the Maccabees an Alexandrian ser-
mon upon the Empire of Eight Reason we find an
eloquent defence of these same laws as the precepts of
reason which fortify our minds. Philo, then, is follow-
ing a tradition, but he improves upon it. Accepting
the Platonic psychology, which divided the soul into
reason, temper (i. e., will), and desire, he shows how
the aim of the Mosaic law about food is to control
desire and will, so as to make them subservient to rea-
son. By practicing self-restraint in the two common-
est actions of life eating and drinking the Israelite
acquires it in all things. The hard ascetic who would
root out bodily desires errs against human nature, but
the wise legislator controls them and curbs them by
precepts, so that they are bent to the higher reason.
124 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
Modern apologists for Judaism have been found who,
trying to force science to support their tottering faith,
allege that the dietary law is hygienic. Philo relies
on no such treacherous reed. We may not eat, he
gays, 1 the flesh of the pig or shell-fish, not because
they are unhealthy, but because they are the sweetest
and most delightful of all food, and for that very rea-
son they are marks of the sensual life. This and this
alone is the true religious justification of the dietary
law.
In this way, by showing how the letter represents
the spirit, Philo fulfils the law; his religion is lib-
eral in thought, conservative in practice. He sees
clearly that to throw off the law and reject tradition
involves in the end chaos and the overthrow of right-
eousness. And certain Christian and other theo-
logians, if one may make bold to say so, fail to realize
the spirit of Philo, when they speak of him as a man
who approached the light, but was too tied down by
the old traditions to receive the full illumination.
Rather is it true that the Jewish aspiration of " free-
dom under the law," or spirit through the letter, is
absolutely fundamental in Philo, and loyalty to the
Torah is a guiding principle in his religious outlook.
He asserts it clearly and strikingly, not only in his
ethical commentary on the law, but in his philosophi-
cal allegories. Both passages deserve quotation, since
they mark the fundamental contrast between Philo
and non-Jewish allegorists of the law. In the first
l De Concupisc. 1-3.
PHILO AND THE TORAH 125
Philo is commenting upon the command " Thou shalt
not add to or take away from the law" (Deut. xix.
14) .* He shows first how each of the virtues is marred
by excess in either direction ; virtue in fact, according
to the Aristotelian formula, is " a mean."
"And in the same way, if we add anything great or
small to piety, the queen of virtues, or take anything
away, we mar it and change its form. Addition will
engender superstition, and diminution impiety, and true
piety will disappear, which above all things we should
pray for to enlighten our souls: for it is the cause of
the greatest of goods, inducing in us a knowledge of our
conduct towards God, which is a thing more royal and
kingly than any public office or distinction. Further,
Moses lays down another general command, ' Do not
remove the boundary stone of thy 'neighbor, which thy
ancestors have set up.' This, methinks, does not refer
merely to inheritances and the boundary of land, but it
is ordained with a view to the preservation of ancient
customs. For customs are unwritten laws, the decrees
of men of old, not carved indeed upon pillars and in-
scribed upon parchment, but engraved upon the souls of
the generations who through the ages maintain the
chosen community. Children should take over the pa-
ternal customs from their parents as part of their inheri-
tance, for they were reared on them, and lived on them
from their swaddling days, and they should not neglect
them merely because the tradition is not written. The
man who obeys the written laws is not, indeed, worthy
of praise, for he may be constrained thereto by fear of
punishment. But he who holds fast to the unwritten
laws gives proof of a voluntary goodness and is worthy
of our eulogy."
'Comp. De Just. II. 360.
126 PHILOJUD^US OF ALEXANDEIA
Clearly he is arguing here for the observance of the
oral law, which later was standardized in the Halakah.
In the other passage, which occurs in the philo-
sophical book " On the Migration of Abraham," 1 he
sets forth the reason of the authority of the law with
more argument, and controverts those who would
allegorize away the ordinances.
" To whom, then, God has granted both to be and to
seem good, he is truly happy and truly renowned. And
we must have a great care for reputation, as a matter of
great importance and of much value, for our social and
bodily life. [By reputation Philo means reputation of
being loyal Jews. He is addressing here an esoteric
circle who, if they were lax, would bring philosophy into
disrepute.] And almost all can secure it, who are well
content not to disturb established customs, but dili-
gently preserve the constitution of their nation. But
there are some who, looking upon the written laws as
symbols of intellectual things, lay great stress on these,
but neglect the former. Such men I would blame for
their shallowness of mind [ei^petal. For they ought to
give good heed to both to the accurate investigation of
the unseen meaning, but also to the blameless observ-
ance of the visible letter. But now, as if they were
living by themselves in a desert, and were souls without
bodies, and knew nothing of city or village or house or
intercourse with men, they despise all that seems valu-
able to the many, and search for bare and naked truth
as it is in itself. Such people the sacred Scripture
teaches to give good heed to a good reputation, and to
abolish none of those customs which greater and more
inspired men than we instituted in the past. For, be-
cause the seventh day teaches us symbolically concern-
Ch. 16.
127
ing the power of the uncreated God, and the inactivity
of the creature, we must not therefore abolish its ordi-
nances, so as to light a fire, or till the ground, or bear a
burden, or prosecute a lawsuit, or demand the restora-
tion of a deposit, or exact the repayment of a loan, or
do any other thing, which on week-days is allowed. Be-
cause the festivals are symbols of spiritual joy and of
our gratitude to God, we must not therefore give up the
fixed assemblies at the proper seasons of the year. Nor,
because circumcision symbolizes the excision of all lusts
and passions, and the destruction of the impious opinion
according to which the mind imagines that it is itself
capable of production, must we therefore abolish the law
of fleshly circumcision. We should have to neglect the
service of the temple, and a thousand other things, if
we were to restrict ourselves only to the allegorical or
symbolic sense. That sense resembles the soul, the
other sense the body. Just as we must be careful of the
body, as the house of the soul, so must we give heed to
the letter of the written laws. For only when these are
faithfully observed, will the inner meaning, of which
they are the symbols, become more clearly realized, and,
at the same time, the blame and accusation of the multi-
tude will be avoided." *
Philo's position is, then, that man on the one hand
owes loyalty to his nation, and on the other is not only
a creature of spirit, but has a body and bodily pas-
sions. He cannot, therefore, have a religion which is
individual or merely spiritual, but he requires com-
mon forms and ceremonies that can bind him with
1 1 have taken this translation and that on the next
page from Mr. Claude Montefiore's Florilegium Philonis.
Jewish Quarterly Review, vol. VII.
128 PHILO-JUDyEUS OF ALEXANDRIA
the rest of the community, and train his body by good
habit to obey his reason. We do not reach the
spirit by denying but by obeying the letter. To
the mere formal observance of the law and the Tin-
reasoning custom which blindly follows the practice
of our fathers (auvrjdtia) Philo is equally opposed, and
he protests, with the earnestness of an Isaiah, against
superstitious sacrifice and against the lip-service of
the materialist. 1
" If a man practices ablutions and purifications, but de-
files his mind while he cleanses his body; or if, through
his wealth, he founds a temple at a large outlay and
expense; or if he offers hecatombs and sacrifices oxen
without number, or adorns the shrine with rich orna-
ments, or gives endless timber and cunningly wrought
work, more precious than silver or gold let him none
the more be called religious (evae/3^. For he has wan-
dered far from the path of religion, mistaking ritual for
holiness, and attempting to bribe the Incorruptible, and
to flatter Him whom none can flatter. God welcomes
genuine service, and that is the service of a soul that
offers the bare and simple sacrifice of truth, but from
false service, the mere display of material wealth, he
turns away."
Lot's daughter, born of a pillar of stone, symbolizes
this unthinking, hypertrophied religion; and custom,
its mother, which always lags behind and has no
seed of life, is the enemy of truth. The religious
man pursueth righteousness righteously, the super-
stitious unrighteously.
1 Comp. De Ebr. 40, and De Spec. Leg. II. 414.
PHILO AND THE TOEAH 129
Thus Philo holds the balance between a formless
spirituality and an unspiritual formalism. The end
of religious observance is the love of God, but the love
of God requires more than feeling; it must impreg-
nate life. Dubnow, in his summary of Jewish his-
tory, formulates an epigram, which, like most of its
kind, becomes in its conciseness and pointed antithe-
sis a half-truth. "At Jerusalem/' he says, "Juda-
ism appeared as a system of practical ceremonies; at
Alexandria as a complex of abstract symbols." No
doubt it is true that at Jerusalem the practical side
of the law was most prominent, but the spiritual ex-
altation to which it should lead was appraised as the
true end by the great rabbis. Witness Hillel, and
indeed all the writers of the gnomic wisdom in the
" Ethics of the Fathers." At Alexandria, again, while
the philosophical principle underlying the outward
practice was especially emphasized, the practice itself
was loyally observed, and its value perceived, by those
who most thoroughly understood Judaism. Witness
the writings of Philo, the Wisdom of Solomon, and
the fourth book of the Maccabees. The antithesis
between letter and spirit, faith and works, is in truth
a false one; and wherever the significance of Judaism
has been fully comprehended, the two aspects of the
law have been inextricably intertwined. As Philo un-
derstood the Jewish mission, it was not merely to dif-
fuse the Jewish God-idea, but quite as much to diffuse
the Jewish attitude to God, the way of life. Abstract
ideas, however lofty, can never be the bond of a re-
9
130 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
ligious community, nor can they be a safeguard for
moral conduct. Sooner or later congregations must
submit themselves to some law, be it a law of dogma,
or be it a law of conduct. Antinomianism, the
opposition to the law, to which Paul later gave power-
ful, even fanatical, expression, was a strong move-
ment at Alexandria in Philo's day. Preparatory to
the spread of Christianity, numerous sects sprang up
there which purported to follow a spiritual Judaism
wherein the law was abrogated because, forsooth, its
symbolism was understood ! In the extreme allegor-
ists, whom Philo attacks for their shallowness, one
may discern the prototypes of the Cainites, Ophites,
Melchizedecians, and the rest of the heretical parties
that produced the religious chaos of the next cen-
turies. From that welter of opinions there at last
emerged dogmatic Christianity. The Christian re-
formers came to free man from the yoke of the law;
but their successors imposed on the mind the fetters
of dogma, and, in order to check the passions of the
body, advocated renunciation and asceticism. So that
not only Judaism as a system of belief, but Judaism
as a system of life was lost in their handiwork. Spir-
ituality lacking knowledge and allegorism in excess
led to this result. In Philo they are controlled by
affection for the Torah, and by a conviction of the
need for national cohesion.
Philo is loyal to the Jewish tradition not only be-
cause he had a deep feeling for what a modern teacher
has called the catholic conscience and the historical
PHILO AND THE TORAH 131
continuity of Judaism, but because his philosophy
was based on a conviction that the Jewish religion was
the truest guide to conduct and righteousness and to
the love of God. To him, as to Plato and Aristotle,
the law was the outward register of the moral ideal;
the " word-and-deed symbols " of ceremonial and
prayer were emblems indeed of moral principles, but
at the same time they had an intrinsic value, in that
they impressed these principles upon the mind, and
brought belief and action into harmony. " Religion
is law, not philosophy," said Hobbes. With Philo,
religion is law and philosophy. Thus the love of the
Torah is of the essence of his religious thought. As
he puts it in the exhortation to his fellow-ambassadors
before Gaius, 1 " to die in defence of it is a kind of
life/' In his philosophical Judaism he sought always
for the universal and the spiritual, but so as always
to increase the honor of the law, and not only of the
law but of the customs of his ancestors, thinking with
the Psalmist that " the Torah is a tree of life to those
who keep fast hold of her, and those who support her
are blessed."
1 De Leg. II. 574.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY
"The most remarkable feature about Judaism,"
says Darmesteter, " is that without a philosophical
system it had reached a philosophical conclusion about
the government of the world and the nature of God." 3
The same idea underlies the statement of the Peri-
patetic writer Theophrastus (who lived in the latter
part of the fourth century B. c. E.) that the Jews are a
people of philosophers,* and the epigram of Heine,
that they pray in metaphysics. Intuitively, the law-
giver and prophets of the Hebrew race had attained
a conception of monotheism to which the greatest of
the Greek philosophers had hardly struggled by rea-
son. The Greeks had started with separate nature-
powers, which they had finally resolved into a supreme
nature-force; the Hebrews had started with the his-
torical God of their fathers, whom they had universal-
ized into the Creator of the world and Father of all
the human race. Wellhausen has suggested that the
intellectual development of Judaism with its tendency
to become a purified monotheism moved in the same
direction towards which Greek thought tended in its
philosophical speculation of the universe. The differ-
1 Essais, Les Proph&tes d' Israel.
Frag, cited by Porphyry, De Abstinentia II. 25.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 133
ence between the two conceptions of God, however, re-
mained even in their universalized aspect; the one
was an impersonal world-force, the other a personal
God in direct relation with individual man. Else-
where than in Judaea, it has heen well said, religious
development reaches unity only by sacrificing per-
sonality. But the prophets, whose conception of Gtod
was imaginative rather than rational, preserved His
nearness while expanding His sway. Israel, to use
Philo's etymology, is the man who sees God, 1 and
his religious genius gave to the world a personal
incorporeal Deity, who is both transcendent and
immanent, personal and yet above human concep-
tion. It is unnecessary to quote evidence of this
view of the Godhead in the Bible, and it would be
superfluous to adduce passages from the rabbis, did
they not bear a striking similarity to the words of
Philo. God to them is not only the Creator of the
world, but also the Father of the world, the Governor
of the world, the Only One of the world, the Space of
the world, filling it as the soul fills the body.* Now,
this Jewish conception of God is dominant in Philo.
To him also God is not only the Creator but the
Father of the universe. 8 He is the One and the All. 4
He is ever at rest, yet he outstrippeth everything,
l De Cong. 10.
3 Comp. Schechter, " Aspects of Rabbinic Theology,"
pp. 21 ff.
* L. A. I. 7.
4 L. A. I. 14.
134 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
nearest to everyone, yet far removed, everywhere and
nowhere, above and outside the universe, yet filling
creation with Himself. 1 Philo loves to attach to the
Deity these opposite predicates, for in this way alone
can we form for ourselves some conception, however
inadequate, of His Being. Strictly, God is uncondi-
tioned, and cannot be the subject of predication, for
all determination involves negation, and hence in one
aspect He is not conceivable nor describable, nor
nameable.* Siegfried and Zeller press this negative
attitude to the Deity, and find that there is an inher-
ent contradiction in Philo's system, which ruins it,
in that his God, upon whom all depends and who is
the object of all knowledge, is absolutely unknowable
and unapproachable. But this is to take Philo ac-
cording to the strict letter to the neglect of the spirit,
and to do that with one so eloquent and so careless of
verbal accuracy is utterly to misunderstand him.
The Greek philosophers in their attempt to formu-
late an exact notion of the First Being by abstract
metaphysics had, indeed, conceived it in this fashion ;
and Philo, harmonizing Greek metaphysics and He-
brew intuition, is drawn at times into a presentation
of God which appears to deny His personality and
make of Him an abstraction. What has been said of
Spinoza is true no less of Philo. 8 " The tendency to
unity, to the infinite, to religion, overbalanced itself
l De Confus. 2, De Post. C. 5.
a Comp. De Somn. I. 11, De Mut. Nom. 4.
8 Caird, " Life of Spinoza " II.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 135
till, by its mere excess, it seemed to be changed into
its opposite. But this is not his spirit, only the dead
ultimate result of an imperfect logic that confuses an
abstract with a concrete unity/' In truth, the mo-
ment man tries to define his conception of God's es-
sence in words, he either impairs and perverts his
idea, or he must use words that do not really make
the idea any clearer than it was unexpressed. Thus
in the Hymn of Sir the writer, versifying the creeds
of Maimonides, seeks to define God: "He is a Unity,
but there is no Unity like His; He is hidden and
there is no end to His oneness." But nobody can
claim that this gives any adequate conception of what
he means. So, too, Philo, when he tries to analyze
God's being metaphysically, only obscures the God of
his soul, who was the historical God of Israel.
The Hebraic God, like the Greek First Being, has
no qualities, but unlike the other He has ethical at-
tributes, and it is by these that we know Him and by
these that He is related to the universe and to man.
" Failing to comprehend Him in His essence we must
aim at the next best thing, to comprehend Him as
He is manifested to the world." 1 So in the " Hymn
of Unity " it is written, " In images they told of Thee,
but not according to Thy essence ! They but likened
Thee in accordance with Thy works." * And this is
the manner in which Philo conceives Him : " God's
grace and goodness it is which are the causes of crea-
1 De Mon. I. 5.
1 Comp. " The Authorised Prayer Book," p. 78.
136 PHILO-JUD;ETJS OF ALEXANDRIA
tion." 1 "The just man, seeking the nature of all
things, makes this most excellent discovery, that all
things are due to the grace of God." "To those who
ask the origin of creation, one could most easily reply
that it is the goodness and grace of God which He be-
stowed on the race that is after His image. 2 " For all
that is in the universe and the universe itself are the
gift and bounty and grace of God." ! Again, God is
omnipotent ; He could make all evil, but He wills only
what is best." 4 " All is due to God's grace, though
nothing is worthy of it; ' but God looked to His own
eternal goodness, and considered that to do good be-
fitted His own blessed and happy nature."
Philo's life-aim, as we have seen,' was to see God
in all things and all things in God. He is the sole
principle of being, exercising continuous causality;
and yet He is always at rest, for His energy is
the expression of His being. " He never ceases to
create, for creation is as proper to Him as it is
proper to fire to burn and to snow to cause cold."'
Further, to Him all human activity and excellence are
directly due. He fertilizes virtue by sending down
the seed from Heaven, 8 and He brings forth wisdom
1 Quod Deus 23.
* De Mundi Op. 5.
8 L. A. III. 24.
*De 8omn. II. 38.
"L. A. III. 24.
4 See p. 77, above.
7 L. A. I. 3.
*De Plant. 7, Quod Det. 31.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 137
from the human mind by His own Divine effluence.
" It is the distinctive feature of Jewish thought," said
Spinoza, "never to make account of particular and
secondary causes, but in a spirit of devotion, piety,
and godliness to refer all things directly to the
Deity." No Jewish thinker ever applied this prin-
ciple more thoroughly than Philo; and it gives an
unique color to his work in the history of ancient
philosophy. All our lives are one unceasing miracle,
due to the constant manifestation of God's power;
and the miracles of the Bible are examples of the
universal working of Divine care rather than excep-
tions from it.
The dominant feeling behind Greek thought is that
man is the measure of all things: Plato, attacking
the standpoint of his nation, had declared that God is
the measure, and Philo repeats his maxim with a new
intensity. It means for him that man's mind is a
fragment or particle of the Divine universal mind,
which, however, is impotent till called into activity
'by the further Divine gift of inspiration. Knowl-
edge and happiness, therefore, come not through God,
but from God. 1 "The Divine Word streams down
from the fount of wisdom, and waters the plants of
virtuous souls." * " To God alone is it fitting to use
the word ' my/ " 8 or, put in another way, man has
only the usufruct and God the ownership of his
1 De Cherubim 35.
'L. A. II. 70.
' De Cherubim 32, De Somn. II, 56.
138 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
powers. Pride of intellect is therefore a deadly sin,
because it involves a false, incomplete idea of God, and
true knowledge involves reverence. The ideal of the
Greek sage, the independent reason, is a godless thing,
and those in whom a knowledge of Greek philosophy
produces intellectual pride are not disciples of Divine
Wisdom. In a fine passage Philo charges with
hypocrisy those who talk in high-sounding language
about the all-powerful Deity, and yet declare that by
their own intellect they can comprehend the world. 1
This was the attitude not only of the proud Stoic,
but of certain kindred Jewish sects, which were sub-
ject to Greek influences, such as the Gnostics and
the Cainites. And upon them Philo appears to be
pouring his wrath when he exclaims : " How have
you the effrontery to go on making and listening to
fine professions about piety and the honor of God,
when you have within you, forsooth, the mind equal
to God that comprehends all human things, and can
combine good and evil portions, giving to some a
mixed, to others an unmixed lot? And when any-
body accuses you of impiety, you brazenly declare
that you belong to the school of that noble guide and
teacher Cain (i. e., insolent reason), who bade you
pay honor to the secondary rather than the primary
cause/'
Philo has often been reproached with intellectual-
ism, and excessive regard to acquired wisdom, and it
1 De Post. C. 11.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 139
ma} r be urged that by his allegorical method he tried
to find in the Bible the sanction of two degrees of
religious faith, the higher for the philosopher and the
lower for the ordinary man. At the same time, how-
ever, before his God he retains the childlike simplicity
of the most un-Hellenic rabbi, and the perfect humil-
ity of the Hasid. His conviction of the dependence of
all upon God's grace is the perfect corrective of his
intellectual exclusiveness. The idea of God as the
unity which comprehends everything and causes
everything is the great Jewish contribution to
thought, and binds our literature together in all its
manifestations. It characterizes and unites the po-
etical utterance of the Bible prophets, the pious wis-
dom of the rabbis, the philosophical systems of Philo
and Maimonides.
The more sublime and exalted the conception of
God, the more imperative became the need for the
thinking Jew to explain how the perfect infinite Be-
ing came into relation with the imperfect finite world
of man and matter. How can the incorporeal God be
the founder of the material universe? How can the
infinite mind be present in the finite thought of man ?
How can the all-good Power be the creator of the evil
which we see in the material world and of the wicked-
ness that flourisheth among men? These questions
presented themselves to the Israelite after he had con-
summated his marvellous religious intuition, and be-
came the starting-point of a theology which is nascent
in the Wisdom literature of the Bible. Theology is
140 PHILO-JUDjEUS OF ALEXANDKIA
the reasoning about God which follows always in the
footsteps of religious certitude. First, man by his in-
tuitive reason rises to some idea of the Godhead satis-
fying to his emotion; next, by his discursive reason,
he endeavors to justify that idea to his experience in
analyzing God's operations. Renan, disposing sweep-
ingly of a great question, declares that the Jewish
monotheism excluded any true theology. But, in fact,
in Palestine, and still more in Alexandria from the
third century B. c. E., Jewish thought had as one of
its constant aims to develop a theory of the operations
of the one God in the world of material plurality.
When the Jews came in contact with the cosmological
mythology of Babylon, their God seemed to soar be-
yond the reach of men, and they looked to powers
nearer them to bridge the widening gulf. To some
extent this aim engendered a modification in the re-
ligious monotheism, and led to the interposition of
intermediate conceptions between the Inconceivable
and man. "The whole angelology," says Deutsch, 1
" so strikingly simple before the Captivity and so won-
derfully complex after it, owes its quick development
in Babylonian soil to some awe-stricken desire which
grows with growing culture, removing the inconceiv-
able Being further and further from human touch or
knowledge." Speaking generally, it may be said that
reflection about God's relations produced in Palestine
the doctrine of angels, in Alexandria the doctrine of
Wisdom and the Logos. At the same time the Wis-
1 Essay on the Talmud.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 141
dom and the Word were not unknown to the Pales-
tinian Midrash, and the hierarchies of angels to the
Alexandrian, for the suggestion of the different sub-
ordinate powers had been evolved before the two tra-
ditions had become independent. The doctrine of
angels never indeed won recognition from the rabbis,
but it was for centuries an element of popular belief.
More philosophical than the doctrine of angels was
the conception of different attributes of God (nnn),
which were different manifestations of His activit)',
to the human mind separable and distinguishable
from each other, though absolutely they were insep-
arable aspects of the Godhead. Chief among these
were the attribute of mercy and the attribute of jus-
tice, D'ornn mo and pn mo, 1 by which, according
to a Midrash, Adam was driven from Eden. And
these conceptions, though distrusted by the Syna-
gogue, entered into later parts of the Prayer Book.
" Attribute of Mercy, reveal thyself for us ; make our
supplication to fall at the feet of Thy Creator ; and on
behalf of Thy people beseech for mercy " ; thus runs a
fine prayer in the Ne'ilah service of the Day of Atone-
ment, and many of the other Selihot prove the persist-
ence of this development of Jewish belief. The theory
of Divine attributes was common to Palestine and
Alexandria, and plays, as we shall see, an important
part in Philo's * thought ; but the distinctive Hellenis-
tic theology is the hypostasis of the Wisdom and the
1 Bereshit Rabba 21, and Yalkut 26.
"Comp. De Plant. 30.
142 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDKIA
Word of God. In the Bible itself, and notably in
Proverbs, we find Wisdom personified the first vague,
poetical suggestion of a Jewish theology. As the Jews
came into contact with Hellenic influence, the ten-
dency to develop the personification into a power in-
creased, and may be traced through the first flower of
Grasco-Jewish culture, the Wisdom literature. The
Greek philosophers had conceived the First Cause as a
ruling Mind, or universal Eeason, and influenced by
this conception, yet loyal to their monotheistic faith,
the Jewish writers of the Hellenistic age spoke of the
Wisdom as the minister of God, the power by which
He ruled creation. The apocryphal books of Eccle-
siasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon exhibit Wisdom
passing from the poetical personification of the Bible
to the separate hypostasis of theology. In the verse
of the Bible sage, " Wisdom hath builded her house,
she hath hewn out her seven pillars" (Prov. ix. 1),
she is the creation of the purely poetical fancy, but
in the Wisdom of Solomon she has become a link be-
tween Heaven and earth, the creation of the theolo-
gian's reflection. " She reacheth from one end of the
world to the other with strength, and ordereth all
things graciously. She is settled by God on His
throne, and by her He made the world, by her the
righteous were saved. She watched over the father of
the human race, and she delivered Israel from Egypt."
In Ecclesiasticus it is written, " All Wisdom is from
the Lord and is with Him forever. She cometh forth
from the mouth of the Most High, and was created be-
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 143
fore all things. God having fashioned her from the
beginning placed her over all His works. Then she
covered the earth as a mist, she pitched her tent in
high places and her palace was in a pillar of cloud.
She ministered in the tabernacle, and was established
in Zion, in Jerusalem, the beloved city." In similar
strain, in the apocalyptic book of Enoch (xxx), God
says, " On the sixth day I ordered My Wisdom to
make man"; and in the Sibylline Oracles and Aris-
tobulus she appears as the assessor of God who ruleth
over men.
Parallel with Wisdom, the Word of God was de-
veloped into something between a poetical image and
a separate power. Again the development starts from
a Biblical metaphor. " By the word of the Lord were
the heavens created, and all their host by the breath
of His mouth "(Ps. xxxiii). " God of our Fathers and
Lord of Mercy, who didst make all things by Thy
word," says the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon.
Inspired again by the phrase of the Psalmist, " He
sent His word, and healed them" (Ps. cvi. 20), he
hymns the Divine Logos as the all-powerful emissary
doing God's bidding among men. "It was neither
herb nor emollient that cured Israel in the wilderness
(when bitten by the fiery scorpions), but Thy Logos,
Lord, which heals all things." Later, when he de-
scribes the destruction of the first-born in Egypt, he
rises in a paean to a finer poetical flight: "When
tranquil silence folded all things, and night in her
own swiftness was in the midst of her course, Thy all-
144 PHILO-JUDyEUS OF ALEXANDRIA
powerful Logos leaped from heaven, from his royal
throne, a stern warrior into the midst of the doomed
land, bearing as a sharp sword Thy Divine command-
ment, and having taken his stand filled all things
with death : and he touched heaven and walked upon
earth." The Jewish poet, rejecting the idea that the
perfect God could descend to earth and slay men,
brushes away the anthropomorphism of the Bible,
and summons from his mind this creation mixed of
Hebrew imagination and Greek reason. So, too, On-
kelos, wherever activity upon earth was ascribed to
God, wrote, in his translation (Targum) of Scrip-
ture, " the word of the Lord," and for the material
hand he substituted the more abstract might. The
same development, 1 under the names of Memra and
(less frequently) of im, shows that the word-agent
of God appealed to certain of the rabbis in their
desire to explain away, on the one hand, expressions
in the Bible which seemed to invest the Deity with
corporeal qualities, and, on the other, so to divide His
infinite perfection as to make His presence immanent
upon earth.
The teachers at Alexandria were above all others
induced to develop the Word into the active power,
since they seemed thereby to find in the Bible a re-
markable anticipation of Greek philosophy. The Greek
Logos, by which " the Word " was translated in the
Septuagint, meant also thought and reason, and dur-
ing the Hellenistic age was the regular term by which
1 Comp. Hagigah 14.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 145
the philosophical schools expressed the impersonal
world-force which governed all things. The Logos
idea among the Jews was a modification of intuitive
and nai've monotheism; among the Greeks it was a
step upwards, demanded by reason, from polytheism to
a monistic view of the universe. By the first century
its recognition as the ruling power in both the physi-
cal and moral universe had become a point of union
in all philosophical schools the common stamp of
philosophical theology. Between the Semitic min-
isterial word uttered by a personal Being and the
Greek pantheistic governing reason, there was proba-
bly an early connection, due to Eastern influences
which operated upon the founders of Greek philos-
ophy, which later schools lost sight of. When the
Hebrew Scriptures were translated, the two coalesced
more fruitfully in the Greek term Logos, and a
point of union was provided between the philo-
sophical and the Jewish theology. Moreover the local
Egyptian influence aided the union, for the god
Thoth was also identified with the Logos, which thus
appeared as a religious conception common to all
races, the basis of a universal creed. And besides the
world-reason of the philosophers, another Greek in-
fluence no doubt tended to further the development
of the Logos in Jewish thought. One of the most
marked characteristics of the Hellenistic age is the'
renascence of wonder at the institutions of human
life, and more especially at numbers and speech.
10
146 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
Numbers were held to contain the essence of things,
and the marvellous powers of four, seven, and ten re-
ceived honor from all sects and schools. Words, too,
were regarded almost as a mystic power, distinct from
thought, incorporeal things which made thought real
and gave it expression. The mystical susceptibility
of Philo to the power of numbers has been noticed by
every critic and exaggerated by not a few; his mys-
tical valuation of words and speech, though far more
important in his thought, has been commonly passed
over. The analysis which Greek writers made of the
relation between the mental thought, the sound
which utters it, and the mind which thinks it, was
invested with special importance for the Jewish
thinker, who transferred it from the human to the
Divine sphere. He applied it to interpret the con-
stant Biblical phrases " and God said " or " and God
spoke/' according to notions in which philosoplry and
theology are mixed; and propounded a mystic ideal-
ism and a mystic cosmology, in which God's thought
or comprehensive Word becomes the archetype of the
visible universe, His single words the substantive uni-
verse and the laws of nature. A century before Philo,
Aristobulus assuming the genuineness of his Frag-
ments wrote : 1 " We must understand the Word of
God, not as a spoken word, but as the establishment of
actual things, seeing that we find throughout the
Torah that Moses has declared the whole creation to
be words of God." Philo, following his predecessor,
1 Quoted by Euseb., op. cit. XIII. 8.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 147
says, " God speaks not words but things/' 1 and, again,
commenting on the first chapter of Genesis, " God,
even as He spake, at the same moment created." a
And of human speech he has this pretty conceit a
little before : " Into the mouth there enter food and
drink, the perishable food of a perishable body; out
of it issue words, immortal laws of an immortal soul,
by which rational life is guided/' ' If human speech
is " immortal law," much more is the speech of God.
His words are ideas seen by the eye of the soul, not
heard by the ear.* The ten commandments given at
Sinai were "ideas" of this incorporeal nature, and
the voice that Israel heard was no voice such as men
possess, but the njoty, the Divine Presence itself,
which exalted the multitude. 8 Philo is here expand-
ing and developing Jewish tradition. In the " Ethics
of the Fathers" (v) we read: "By ten words was
the world created " ; and in the pages of the Midrash
the Sip-na, i. e., the mystic emanation of the Deity,
which revealed itself after the spirit of prophecy had
ceased to be vouchsafed, is credited with wondrous and
varied powers, now revealing the Decalogue, now per-
forming some miracle, now appearing in a vision to
the blessed, now prophesying the future fate of the
race to a pious rabbi. The fertilizing stream of Greek
1 De Decal. 11.
*De Mundi Op. 24.
Ibid. 20.
* De Migr. 9.
6 De Decal. 11.
148 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
philosophical idealism nourished the growth of the
Jewish pious imagination, and in the Logos of Philo
the fruit matured. It is idle to try to formulate a
single definite notion of Philo's Logos. For it is the
expression of God in all His multiple and manifold
activity, the instrument of creation, the seat of ideas,
the world of thought which God first established as the
model of the visible universe, the guiding providence,
the sower of virtue, the fount of wisdom, described
sometimes in religious ecstasy, sometimes in philo-
sophical metaphysics, sometimes in the spirit of the
mystical poet. Of his last manner let us take a speci-
men singled out by a Christian and a Jewish theolo-
gian as of surprising beauty. Commenting on the
verse of the Psalmist, "The river of God is filled with
water," Philo declares that it is absurd to call any
earthly stream the river of God.
" The poet clearly refers to the Divine Logos that is full
of the fountain of wisdom, and is in no part itself empty.
Nay, it is diffused through the universe, and is raised up
on high. In another verse the Psalmist says, ' The
course of the river gladdens the city of God.' And in
truth the continuous rush of the Divine Logos is borne
along with eager but regular onset, and overflows and
gladdens all things. In one sense he calls the world the
city of God, for it has received the ' full cup ' of the
Divine draught, and has quaffed a perpetual, eternal joy.
But in another sense he gave this name to the soul of
the wise, wherein God is said to walk as in a city. And
who can pour out the sacred measures of their joy to the
blissful soul which holds out the holy cup, that is its
own reason, save the Logos, the cupbearer of God, the
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 149
master of the feast? Nor is the Logos cupbearer only,
but it is itself the pure draught, itself the joy and ex-
ultation, itself the pouring forth and the delight, itself
the ambrosial philtre and potion of bliss." 1
Through the luxury of metaphor and imagination
one may discern the underlying thought of the mystic
writer, that the Logos is the effluence of God,
either in the whole universe or the individual man,
filling the one as the other with the Divine Shekinah.
It is the link which joins God and man, the ladder of
Jacob's dream, which stretches from Heaven to earth. 2
That man can attain the Divine state by the help of
God's effluence was a cardinal thought of Philo's;
this, indeed, is the form in which he conceives the
Messianic hope. God does not come down to earth
incarnate in man's form, but God's active influence
possesses the soul of man, and makes it live with God,
and if man be peculiarly blessed, carries it up to the
ineffable Spirit. Similarly his idea of the Messiah is
more spiritual than that of the popular belief. The
ascent of man to God's height, not the descent of God
to man's level, will produce the age of universal peace.
There are various degrees of the Divine influence,
stretching from complete possession by the Deity
Himself to the advent of single Divine thoughts.
These Philo regards as M-foi, words or thoughts
for he does not clearly distinguish between the two
and he resolves the realistic angels of the Bible
1 De Somn. II. 27.
2 De Somn. I. 23.
150 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
into this spiritual conception. 1 Thus he says, " the
place'' where Jacob alighted and had the vision
(Gen. xxvii. 11) is the symbol of the perfect contem-
plation of God; the angels which he saw ascending
and descending are the inferior light of Divine pre-
cepts. These thoughts are continually vouchsafed to
all of us, prompting us to noble actions, comforting us
in times of sadness, inspiring lofty ideas.
" Up and down through the whole soul the Logoi of God
move without end; when they ascend, drawing it up
with them, and severing it from the mortal part, and
showing only the vision of ideal things; but when they
descend, not casting it down, but descending with it
from humanity or compassion towards our race, so as to
give assistance and help, in order that, inspiring what is
noble, they may revive the soul which is borne along on
the stream of the body." a
Conversely, the rabbis taught that from each word
that proceeded from the mouth of God an angel was
created, as it is said : " By the word of the Lord
the Heavens were made, and all the host of them by
the breath of His mouth." *
Apart from these sudden and occasional emanations
of the Divine Spirit, the individual man has within
him a permanent Divine Logos by which he may
direct his conduct aright. Viewed in this aspect, the
Logos, i. e., the activity of God, is conscience, the
1 Comp. De Somn. II. 11.
*De Somn. I. 22.
8 Comp. Hagigah 14'.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 151
Judge in the soul, which is the true man dwelling
within, 1 ruler and king, judge and arbiter, witness
and accuser, correcting and restraining. Rising to
holder personification, Philo, who loves to present a
spiritual thought in a concrete image, calls it the un-
defiled high priest in us. 2 In this power he finds a
sure refutation of skepticism; for in virtue of the Di-
vine voice man may secure moral certitude: and he
finds also a philosophical value for popular supersti-
tion. It was a common notion of the pagans as well as
the Jews of the time that an intermediate order of be-
ings passed between heaven and earth and brought
supernatural aid to men; and also that a familiar
spirit, or Daemon, dwelt within the soul of each man.
The finer spirit of Philo resolves the attendant Da-
mon and the messenger-dasmons or angels into the
spiritual effluences of the one Deity; save for a few
places where he makes a pose of agreement with pop-
ular notions and speaks of winged denizens of
Heaven * who descend to earth, he habitually expounds
angels as inward revelations of God.
As the revelation of God to the individual is a Lo-
gos, so, too, is his revelation to the whole of mankind.
It was pointed out in the -last chapter that Philo iden-
tified the Torah with the law of nature, and he did
this by regarding it as the Divine Logos. The more
perfect emanation of God is in one view the power by
1 Quod Deus 26 and 32.
*De Confus. 14.
1 De Gigant. 2.
152 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
which He directs the physical creation, in another the
perfect law which He set up as the model of conduct
for His highest creatures. The rabbis, indeed, were
prone to glorify the law as the primal creation of God,
and the instrument of all the later creations, ^3
D'DBMK-OJ my rnnn. 1 They speak of it as the light,
the pillar, and the bond of the universe, the model
whereon the architect looked ; 2 and Philo amplifies
this simple poetical concept and develops it afresh
in the light of Greek idealistic and cosmical notions/
so that the Torah, as the Logos of God, is equated
with the source of all being, wisdom, and knowledge,
with the ideal world which is the archetype of the
material, and with all the law and order of nature.
And as the Torah is the Logos, so also its particular
precepts are Logoi.
It seems difficult to trace the unity among all these
different aspects of the " Word," but in fact they are
only different expressions of the Divine activity in
the universe. All these are comprehended in the
Logos, and then again divided out of it, so that it is,
as it were, a crystal prism reflecting the light of the
Godhead in a myriad different ways. One curious
illustration of the universal sense in which Philo
understood the Logos is his interpretation of the
manna; it is typical also of his manner of exegesis
1 " Ethics of the Fathers " III.
2 Comp. Schechter, op. cit., " The Law as Personified in
Literature."
3 Comp. L. A. III. 73, De Somn. II. 33.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 153
and his habit of spiritualizing the material. It is
related in Exodus (xvi. 15) that when the Israelites
saw the heavenly food they exclaimed Kin p, " What
is it?" and hence the food obtained its name of
manna. Now the Greek Septuagint word for p is rt,
which means not only "what" but "anything."
Philo sees in the gift of the heavenly food a symbol
of the inspiration of the chosen people by the Divine
Logos, and says that the Logos is rightly called
manna, i. e. f anything, because it is the "most gen-
eric of all things, and that by which man may be
nourished." x
The central thought of Philo's system is that God
is immanent in all His work ; but it would seem to him
sacrilegious to apply to the Godhead itself this uni-
versal, unceasing activity, and so he develops the
Logos as the most ideal attribute of the Deity, and the
sum of all His immanence and effluence. He pre-
ferred the Logos to the older Wisdom, probably be-
cause he could by this conception bring his idea of
God into closer relation with Greek philosophical
notions, for already the Hellenistic world had come
spontaneously to revere the cosmical Logos. Only
Philo gave to the expression of their physical and
metaphysical speculation a religious warmth new to
it, when he associated it with the word uttered by
the personal God. Philosophy, theology, and religion
were all joined and harmonized in his conception.
If we have followed thus far the spirit of Philo
1 De Cong. 31.
154 PHILO-JUD;ETJS OF ALEXANDRIA
aright, the Logos is only the immanent manifestation
of the One God, who is both transcendental and im-
manent, metaphorically, not metaphysically, separate.
In other words, it is the complete aspect of God as
He reveals Himself to the world. Above it and includ-
ing it is the being or essence of God, seen in Himself,
and not in relation to His outward activity. But it
is often suggested that the Logos appears to Philo
as a second God, subordinate, indeed, to the Supreme
Being, but yet a separate personality. It is said, with
truth, that he speaks of it as a person, now calling
it king, priest, primal man, the first-born son of God,
even the second God, and identifying it at other times
with some personal being, Melchizedek or Moses, and
apostrophizing it as man's helper, guide, and advo-
cate. 1 Now we have reason to think that Gnostic sects
of Jews, both in Alexandria and in Palestine, were at
this time tending towards the division of the God-
head into separate powers. The heresy of " Minut,"
frequently mentioned in the Talmud, consisted origi-
nally, in the opinion of modern scholars, of a Gnostic
ditheism ;* and during the latter part of the first cen-
tury and thereafter we hear of sects in Egypt and
Syria which supported similar theories. Theology
here produced its fantastic offspring theosophy, and
the followers of the esoteric wisdom let their specula-
tions carry them away from the cardinal principle of
l De Confus. 14, Fragments I, L. A. III. 23, Quis Rer.
Div. 42, De Gigant. 12.
2 Comp. Graetz, " Gnosticism and Judaism," pp. 15 ff.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 155
Judaism. Influenced by Egyptian speculation, they
imagined an incarnation of the Divine Spirit, and
in the mystical thought of the day they adumbrated
theories of virgin birth.
Now these prototypes of Christian belief had un-
doubtedly manifested themselves at Alexandria in
Philo's day. His treatises show traces of them, 1 and
the question is whether he countenanced them or
tried to summon the theosophists of his generation
back to the true Jewish conception of God. Certain
Christian and philosophical critics of Philo, for whom
the wish was perhaps father to the thought, have
found in Philo's Logos a conception which is at times
impersonal, at times personal, at times an aspect of
the One God, and at times a second independent God.
If we take Philo literally, this certainly is the case.
But let it be clearly understood, this interpretation
not only involves Philo in inconsistency, but it utterly
ruins and destroys his religious and philosophical sys-
tem. It means that the champion of Jewish mono-
theism wanders into a vague ditheism. And in view
of this, the modern commentators of Philo, notably
Professor Drummond/ have examined his words more
carefully and studied them in relation to their con-
text ; and they have shown how, judged in this critical
fashion, the personality of the Logos is only figura-
tive. It is, indeed, probable that certain extreme pas-
sages, where the Logos is presented most explicitly as
1 Comp. De Cherubim 14 and 17, De Oigant. 12.
* Drummond, " Philo-Judaeus and the Jewish Hellenis-
tic School," vol. II.
156 PHILO-JUDyEUS OF ALEXAKDKIA
a separate Deity, are due to Christological interpola-
tion. The Church Fathers found in the popular be-
lief in the Divine Word a remarkable support of the
Trinity, and regarding, as they did, Philo's writings
as valuable testimony to the truth of Christianity,
they had every temptation to bring his passages about
the Logos still closer to their ideas. And between
the first and the fifth century, when we first hear from
Eusebius of manuscripts of Philo at the Christian
monastery of Cffisarea from which we can trace our
texts in direct line there was no high standard in
dealing with ancient authorities. It is the Christian
teachers who preserved Philo, and they preserved him
not as scholars but as missioners. The best editors
have recognized that our text has been interfered with
by evidence-making scribes, as where a passage about
the new Jerusalem appears, agreeing almost word for
word with the picture of Eevelations. Similarly, not
a few passages about the Logos are probably spurious. 1
Yet, even when we have expurgated our text of
Philo, there remain, it will be said, numerous passages
where the Logos is spoken of and apostrophized as a
person. This is so, but the conclusion which is drawn,
that the Logos is regarded as a second deitj^, is un-
justifiable. The Jewish mind from the time of the
prophets unto this day has thought in images and
metaphors, and the personification of the Logos is
only the most striking instance of Philo's regular
1 De Somn. I. 32, De Confus. 14, L. A. III. 25, De V.
Mos. III. 14.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 157
habit of personifying all abstract ideas. The alle-
gorical habit particularly conduces to this, for as per-
sons are constantly resolved into ideas, so ideas come
to be naturally represented as persons. There are
thus two steps in Philo's theology, which seem to some
extent to counteract each other; in the first place, he
resolves the concrete physical expressions of the Bible
into spiritual ideas, in the second he portrays those
ideas in pictorial language and clothes them in per-
sonifications. The allegorizer requires an allegorist
to interpret him aright.
NOT must it be forgotten that Philo was preaching
spiritual monotheism not only to Jews, but also to the
Hellenic world, for whom it was a vast bound from
their naturalistic polytheism. Zealous as he was for
the pure faith, he realized that mankind could not
attain it directly, but must approach it by conceptions
of the One God gradually increasing in profundity
and truth. The Greek thinkers had approximated
closest to the Hebraic God-idea when they conceived
one supreme, immanent reason in the universe; and
Philo, in carrying his audiences beyond this to the
transcendent-immanent Being, transformed the Greek
cosmical concept into a Divine power of the One Be-
ing. For the true believer this is the stepping-stone
to the perfect idea. " The Logos," he says, " is the
God of us imperfect people, but the true sages worship
the One Being/' * And, again, " The imperfect have
L. A. III. 73.
158 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
as their law the holy Logos." 1 And in this sense, it is
"intermediate (peOoptos) between God and man." J
What such passages mean is that the separation of the
Logos is a stage in man's progress up to the true idea
of God. It is a second-best Deity, so to say, rather
than a second Deity; for those who regard the Logos
as God have no conception at all of the perfect Being
of which it is only the principal attribute.
The theology of Philo is characterized throughout
by a tolerant and philosophical grasp of the difficulty
of pure monotheism, and of the necessity of a long
intellectual searching before the goal can be attained.
To declare the Unity of God is simple enough; to
have a real conception of it is a very different and a
very difficult thing. And Philo's theology has a two-
fold aim, in which either part complements the other.
It explains, on the one hand, how God is revealed to
the world through His powers or attributes or modes
of activity, and, on the other, how man can ascend to
an ecstatic union with the Real Being through com-
prehension of those powers. By the ideal ladder which
brings down God to earth, man can climb again to
Heaven. The three chief rungs of the ladder are the
attributes of creation, and of ruling power, and the
Logos. The perfect unity of the Godhead is not, of
course, properly the subject of attributes, but the
limited mind of man so conceives it for its own under-
standing, and speaks of God's justice, God's goodness,
1 De Sacrif. 38.
2 Quis Rer. Div. 42.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 159
God's wisdom. These are, to use philosophical termi-
nology, categories of the religious understanding,
which are finally resolved by the perfect sage in " the
synthetic apperception of Unity."
Philo follows what may have been a Hebrew tradi-
tion in explaining the two names of God, " Elohim "
and "Jehovah," as connoting His two chief attri-
butes: (1) the creative or beneficent, (2) the ruling
or judicial, or, as it is sometimes called, the law-giving
power. 1 Names, as we know, were always regarded by
Philo as profound symbols, and naturally the names of
God are of vital import; and the twofold expression
for the Hebrew Deity, of which the higher critics have
made much destructive use, was noticed by the earli-
est commentators, but made the basis by them of a
constructive theology. The ruling and the creative
attributes of God are outlined and contained in the
highest mode of all, the Logos, "the reason of God
in every phase and form of it that is discoverable and
realizable by man." For by the Logos, God is both
ruler and good.* This is the profound interpretation
of the story in Genesis, that " God placed at the east
of the garden of Eden the two Cherubim and a flam-
ing sword, which turned every way to keep the way of
the tree of life" (Gen. iv. 24). The Cherubim are
the symbols of the powers of majesty and goodness;
the flaming sword is the Logos ; " because," says our
author quaintly, " all thought and speech are the most
1 De Plant. 21.
2 L. A. III.
160 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDEIA
mobile and the most ardent (t. e., the most inten-
sive) of things, and especially the thought and speech
of the only Principle." *
To correspond with the descending attributes of
God we have the ascending dispositions of man to-
wards Him, fear, love, and thirdly their synthesis in
loving knowledge. When we are in the first stage of
religion we obey the law in hope of reward or fear
of punishment; when we have progressed higher in
thought, we worship God as the good Creator; when
we have ascended one further stage, we surpass both
fear and love in an emotion which combines them,
realizing, as Browning puts it, that " God is law and
God is love." In illustration of this scheme of Philo's
we may examine two passages out of his philosophical
commentary. In the first he is commenting upon the
appearance of the three angels to Abraham as he sat
outside his tent (Gen. xviii). 8 And, by the way, it may
be remarked that the Midrash commenting on this
passage notes that it begins, " And the Lord appeared
unto Abraham," and then continues, " And he lifted
up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood be-
fore him." Hence we may learn that it was really
the one God who appeared to the Patriarch, and that
the three angels were but a vision of his mind. This
is the dominant note of Philo's interpretation, but he
as usual elaborates the old Midrash philosophically.
1 De Cherubim 9.
*De Abr. 24 and 25.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 161
" The words," he says, " are symbols of things appre-
hended by intelligence alone the soul receives a triple
expression of one being, of which one is the representa-
tive of the actual existent, and the other two are shad-
ows, as it were, cast from this. So it happens also in the
physical world, for there often occur two shadows of
bodies at rest or in motion. Let no one suppose, how-
ever, that shadow is properly used in relation to God.
It is only a popular use of words for the clearer under-
standing of our subject. The reality is not so, but, as
one standing nearest to the truth might say, the middle
one is the Father of the universe, who is called in Scrip-
ture the ' Self-existent'; and those on either side of Him
are the two oldest and chief powers, the Creative and
the Regal. The middle one, then, being attended by the
others as by a bodyguard, presents to the contemplative
mind a mental image or representation now of one and
now of three; of one whenever the soul, being properly
purified and perfectly initiated, rises to the idea which is
unmingled and free from limitation, and requires noth-
ing to complete it; but of three whenever it has not yet
been initiated into the great mysteries, and still cele-
brates the lesser rites, unable to apprehend the Being
in itself without modification, but apprehending it
through its modes as either creating or ruling. This is,
as the proverb says, a second-best course, but yet it par-
takes of godlike opinion. But the former does not par-
take of for it is itself the Godlike opinion, or rather
it is truth, which is more precious than all opinion.
" Further, there are three classes of human character,
to each of which one of the three conceptions of God has
been assigned. The best class goes with the first, the
conception of the absolute Being; the next goes with
the conception of Him as a Benefactor, in virtue of which
He is called God; the third with the conception of Him
as a Ruler, in virtue of which He is called Lord. The
11
162 PHILO-JUDJ3US OF ALEXANDKIA
noblest character serves Him who is in all the purity of
His absolute Being; it is attracted by no other thing or
aspect, but is solely and intently devoted to the honor of
the one and only Being; the second is brought to the
knowledge of the Father through His beneficent power;
the third through His regal power."
In the second passage, which occurs in the treatise
on flight from the world/ Philo is allegorizing the
law about founding six cities of refuge (Exodus
xxxii). These are but material symbols for the six
stages of the ascent of the mind to the pure God-idea.
The chief city, the metropolis, is the Divine Logos,
next come the two powers already considered, and
then three secondary powers, the retributive, the law-
giving, and the prohibitive. "Very beautiful and
well-fenced cities they are, worthy refuges of souls
that merit salvation/' Each of these cities is an
aspect of the religious mind; when it settles in the
first it obeys the law from fear of punishment and
thinks of God as the Judge; in the second it ob-
serves the precepts in hope of reward and conceives
God as the legislator of a fixed code ; in the next it is
repentant and throws itself on God's grace, marking
the first step of the spiritual life. Then it ascends in
order to the idea of God as the governor of the uni-
verse, and the emotion which the rabbis called nxv
D'Dty, the fear of Heaven ; and to the idea of God as the
Creator and the universal Providence, which has as
its emotional reflex the love of Heaven, D'Dt?
1 De Fuga 18.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 163
But even this, which is the highest stage for many
men, is not an adequate conception. Above it is the
contemplation of God, apart from all manifestations
in the perceptible world, in His ideal nature, the
Logos, which at once transcends and comprehends the
universe. And the attitude of this man can be best ex-
pressed perhaps by Spinoza's phrase, " the intellectual
love of God/' amor intellectualis Dei. The worship-
per of the Logos has grasped and has harmonized all
the manifestations of the Deity; he sees and honors
all things in God; he comprehends the universe as
the perfect manifestation of one good Being.
Is this the highest point which man can reach?
Many religious philosophers have held that it is, but
Philo, the mystic, yearning to track out God "be-
yond the utmost bound of human thought," imagines
one higher condition. The Logos is only the image
or the shadow of the Godhead. 1 Above it is the one
perfect reality, the transcendent Essence. Now, man
cannot by any intellectual effort attain knowledge of
the Infinite as He truly is, for this is above thought.
But to a few blessed mortals God of His grace vouch-
safes a mystic vision of His nature. Thus Moses, the
perfect hierophant, had this perfect apprehension, and
passed from intellectual love to holy adoration. And
the true philosopher has as the goal of his aspirations
the heaven-sent ecstasy, in which he sees God no
longer through His effects, or in the modes of His
1 L. A. II.
164 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDEIA
activity, but through Himself in His own essence. The
philosopher, when he receives this vision (x6xTei<i),
is possessed by the Shekinah, 1 and, losing conscious-
ness of his individuality, becomes at one with God.
So much for Philo's theory of man's upward
progress. We may add a word about his treatment
of the problem which troubled thinkers in that
age, and which has harassed theologians ever since,
viz., to show how punishment and evil could be de-
rived from a God who was all-powerful and all-
good. The Gnostics were driven by the difficulty to
imagine an evil world-power, which was in inces-
sant conflict with the Good God : and popular belief
had conjured up a legion of subordinate powers, who
took part in the work of creation and the government
of the world. When Philo is speaking popularly, he
accepts this current theology and speaks also of a
punitive power of God* (duvafju*; xoXaffTtxij} ; but not
when he is the philosopher. For then, in perfect
faith, he denies the absolute existence of evil. " It is
neither in Paradise nor indeed anywhere whatso-
ever. " ' Man, however, by his free will causes evil in
the human sphere; and when God formed in man a
rational nature capable of choosing for itself, moral
evil became the necessary contrary of good.* More-
over, the punitive activity of God, though it seems
1 L. A. I. 13, II. 15, Quis Uer. Div. 53.
2 Comp. De Decal., ad fin.
*L. A. I. 20, De Fuga 12.
*De Mundi Op. 54, De Fuga 11.
PHILO'S THEOLOGY 165
to cause suffering and misery, is in truth a good, sim-
ulating evil, and if men judged the universal process
as a whole, they would find it all good. The existence
of evil involves no derogation from the perfect unity
of God.
If we have understood correctly Philo's theology,
neither Logos, nor subordinate powers, nor angels,
nor demons have an objective existence ; they are mere
imaginings of varying incompleteness which the lim-
ited minds of men, " moving in worlds not realized,"
make for themselves of the one and only true God.
Philo's theology is the philosophical treatment of
Jewish tradition, just as Philo's legal exegesis is the
philosophical treatment of the Torah. While main-
taining and striving to deepen the conception of
God's unity, he aims at expounding to the reason how,
on the one hand, that unity is revealed in the world
about us, and how, on the other, we may advance to
its true comprehension. It was, however, unfortunate
that Philo expressed his theology in the current lan-
guage, which was vague and inexact, and adapted cer-
tain foreign theosophical ideas to Judaism; hence
succeeding generations, paying regard to the pictorial
representation rather than to the principles of his
thought, sought and found in him evidence of theories
of Divine government to which Judaism was pre-emi-
nently opposed. The first chapter of the Fourth Gos-
pel shows that gradual process of thought which finally
made the Logos doctrine the antithesis of Judaism.
In the first verse we have a thought which might well
166 PHILO-JUDJSUS OF ALEXANDEIA
have been written by Philo himself : " In the begin-
ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God/' But in the fourteenth verse
there is manifest the sharp cleavage : " And the Word
was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld
his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the
Father, full of grace and truth." There may be a
fine spiritual thought beneath the letter here, but the
notion of the Incarnation is not Jewish, nor philo-
sophical, nor Philonic. Philo's work was made to
serve as the guide of that Christian Gnosticism which,
within the next hundred years, proclaimed that Juda-
ism was the work of an evil God, and that the essential
mission of Jesus the good Logos was to dethrone
Jehovah! But though the Logos conception was
turned to non-Jewish and anti-Jewish purposes, it
was in Philo the offspring of a pure and philosophical
monotheism. Whatever the later abuse of his teach-
ing, Philo constructed a theology which, though af-
fected by foreign influences, was essentially true to
Judaism; and more than that, he was the first to
weave the Jewish idea of God into the world's
philosophy.
VI
Save for a few monographs of no great importance,
because of the absence of original thought, Philo's
works form avowedly an exegesis of the Bible and not
a series of philosophical writings. Nor must the
reader expect to find an ordered system of philosophy
in his separate works, much more than in the writings
of the rabbis. As Professor Caird says, 1 "The He-
brew mind is intuitive, imaginative, incapable of
analysis or systematic connection of ideas." Philo's
philosophical conceptions lie scattered up and down
his writings, " strung on the thread of the Bible nar-
rative which determines the sequence of his thoughts."
Nevertheless, though he has not given us explicit
treatises on cosmology, metaphysics, ethics, psychol-
ogy, etc., and though he was incapable of close logical
thinking, he has treated all these subjects suggestively
and originally in the course of his commentary, and
his readers may gather together what he has dispersed,
and find a co-ordinated body of religious philosophy.
However loosely they are set forth in his treatises, his
ideas are closely connected in his mind. Herein he
'"The Evolution of Theology In the Greek Philos-
ophers" VIII.
168 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDKIA
differs from his Jewish predecessors, for the notion of
the old historians of the Alexandrian movement, that
there was a systematic Jewish philosophy before Philo,
does not appear to have been well-founded. All that
Aristeas and Aristobulus and the Apocryphal authors
had done was to assimilate certain philosophemes to
their religious ideas; they had not re-interpreted the
whole system of philosophy from a Jewish point of
view or traced an independent system, or an eclectic
doctrine in the Holy Scriptures. This was the
achievement of Philo. His thought is not original in
the sense of presenting a new scheme of philosophy,
but it is original in the sense of giving a fresh inter-
pretation to the philosophical ideas of his age and
environment. He ranges them under a new principle,
puts them in a new light, and combines them in a new
synthesis. This again is characteristic of the Jewish
mind. Intent on God, it does not endeavor to make
its own analysis of the universe by independent rea-
soning, but it utilizes the systems of other nations
and endeavors to harmonize them with its religious
convictions. Hence it is that nearly all Jewish phi-
losophy appears to be eclectic ; its writers have ranged
through the fields of thought of many schools and
culled flowers from each, which they bind together
into a crown for their religion. They do not, with few
exceptions, pursue philosophy with the purpose of
widening the borders of secular knowledge; but
rather in order to bring the light of reason to illumi-
nate and clarify faith, to harmonize Judaism with the
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHER 169
general culture of its environment, and to revivify be-
lief and ceremony with a new interpretation. All this
applies to our worthy, but at the same time he was a
philosopher at heart, because he believed that the
knowledge of God came by contemplation as well as
by practice, and, further, because he had a firm faith
in the universalism of Judaism ; and he believed that
this universal religion must comprehend all that is
highest and truest in human thought. Like most
Jewish philosophers he is synthetic rather than ana-
lytic, believing in intuition and distrusting the dis-
cursive reason, careless of physical science and soaring
into religious metaphysics. Again, like most Jewish
philosophers, he is deductive, starting with a synthesis
of all in the Divine Unity, and making no fresh in-
ductions -*rom phenomena. It has been said that,
though Philo was a philosopher and a Jew, yet Saadia
was the first Jewish philosopher. But Philo's philo-
sophical ideas are in complete harmony with his Juda-
ism; and if by the criticism it is meant that most of
the content of his works is based upon Greek models,
it is true on the other hand that the spirit which per-
vades them is essentially Jewish, and that by the new
force which he breathed into it he reformed and gave
a new direction to the Greek philosophy of his age.
Philo's philosophy is certainly eclectic in some de-
gree, and we find in it ideas taken from the schools
of Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, and the Stoics. Its
fixed point was his theology, and wherever he finds
anything to support this he adapts it to his pur-
170 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
pose. He approached philosophy from a position
opposed to that of the Greeks: they brought a ques-
tioning and free mind to the problems of the uni-
verse ; he comes full of religious preconceptions. Yet
in this lies his strength as well as his limitation, for
he gains thus a point of certainty and a clear end,
which other eclectic systems of the day did not pos-
sess. He welds together all the different elements of
his thought in the heat of his passion for God. His
cosmology and his ontology are a philosophical expo-
sition of the Jewish conception of God's relation to
the universe, his ethics and his psychology of the
Jewish conception of man's relation to God.
The religious preconceptions of Philo drew him to
Plato above all other philosophers, so that his
thought. is essentially a religious development of Pla-
tonism. It is not too much to say that Philo's work
has a double function, to interpret the Bible according
to Platonic philosophy and to interpret Plato in the
spirit of the Bible. The agreement was not the arti-
ficial production of the commentator, for in truth
Plato was in sympathy with the religious conscience
as a whole. The contrast between Hellenism and He-
braism is true, if we restrict it to the average mind of
the two races. The one is intent on things secular,
the other on God. But the greatest genius of the
Hellenic race, influenced perhaps by contact with Ori-
ental peoples, possessed, in a remarkable degree, the
Hebraic spirit, which is zealous for God and makes
for righteousness. Plato was not only a great phi-
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHER 171
losopher, but also a great theologian, a great religious
reformer, and a great prophet, the most perfectly de-
veloped mind which the world, ancient or modern,
has known. His " Ideas," which are the archetypes
of sensible things, were not only logical concepts but
also a kingdom of Heaven connected with the human
individual by the Divine soul. And as he grew older,
so his religious feeling intensified, and he trans-
lated his philosophy into theology and positive
religion. Platonism, it has been well said, is a temper
as much as a doctrine ; it is the spirit that turns from
the earth to Heaven, from creation to God. In his
last work, " The Laws," wherein he designs a theo-
cratic state, which has striking points of resemblance
with the Jewish polity, he says : " The conclusion of
the matter is this, which is the fairest and truest of
all sayings, that for the good man to sacrifice and
hold converse with the Deity by means of prayers and
service of every kind is the noblest thing of all and
the most conducive to a happy life, and above all
things fitting/' 1
This is typical of Plato's attitude towards life in
his old age; and further, his metaphysical system of
monistic idealism is the most remarkable approach
to Hebrew monotheism which the Greek world made.
The Patristic writers in the first centuries of the
Christian era were so struck by this Hebraism in the
Greek thinker, that they attributed it to direct borrow-
1 Plato, " Laws " 718.
172 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
ing. Aristobulus had written of a translation of the
Pentateuch older than the Septuagint, which Plato
was supposed to have studied. Clement called him the
Hebrew philosopher, Origen and Augustine comment
on his agreement with Genesis, and think that when
he was in Egypt he listened to Jeremiah. 1 Eusebius
worked out in detail his correspondences with the
Bible. Some early neo-Platonist, perhaps Numenius,
declared that Plato was only the Attic Moses ; and in
more modern times the Cambridge Platonists of the
sixteenth century harbored similar ideas, and Nietz-
sche spoke bitterly of the day when " Plato went to
school with the Jews in Egypt."
Of Philo, then, we may say, as Montaigne said of
himself, that he was a Platonist before he knew who
Plato was. Yet he was the first Hellenistic Jew who
perceived the fundamental harmony between the
philosophers idealism and Jewish monotheism, and
he was the first important commentator of Plato who
developed the religious teaching of his master into a
powerful spiritual force.
It is true that the seeds of neo-Platonism, i. e., the
religious re-interpretation of Platonism under the
influence of Eastern thought, had been sown already ;
and Philo must have received from his environment
to some extent the mystical version of the master's
system, with its goal of ecstatic union with God, and
its tendency to asceticism as a means thereto. But
the earlier products of the movement had been crude,
1 Comp. Bk. 12 of the Prcep. Evang.
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHER 173
and had lacked a powerful moving spirit. This was
provided by Philo when he introduced his overmas-
tering conception of God. The popular saying,
" Either Plato Philonizes or Philo Platonizes " * con-
tains a deep truth in its first as well as in its second
part. It not only marks the likeness in style of the
two writers, but it suggests that Philo, on the one
hand, made fruitful the religious germ in Plato's
teaching by his Hebraism, and, on the other, nour-
ished the philosophical seed in Judaism by his Plato-
nism. Plato's teaching falls into two main classes,
the dialectical and the mythical, and it is with the
latter that Philo is in specially close connection. For
in his myths Plato tries to achieve a synthesis by
imaginative flight where he had failed by discursive
reason. He unifies experience by striking intuitions,
something in the spirit of a Hebrew prophet. More-
over his style, as well as his thought, has here affinity
with Jewish modes of thought. As Zeller says, speak-
ing of the myths : " From the first, in the act of pro-
ducing his work he thinks in images. They mark the
point where it becomes evident that he cannot be
wholly a philosopher because he is still too much of
a poet." And this is true of all Philo's writings, and
to generalize somewhat widely, of most Jewish phi-
losophy. In " The Timseus," particularly, Plato,
throughout, is the poet-philosopher, writing imagina-
tive myths, which present pictorially an idealistic
scheme of the universe; and "The Timaeus" is for
1 Quoted by Suidas, s. v. Philo.
174 PHILO-JUMXJS OF ALEXANDRIA
Philo, after the Bible, the most authoritative of
books, the source of his chief philosophical ideas.
The dominant philosophical principle of Plato is
what is known as the Theory of Ideas. He imagined
a world of real existences, invisible, incorporeal,
eternal, grasped only by thought, prior to the objects
of the physical universe, and the models or archetypes
of them. In " The Timasus," which is a system of cos-
mology at once religious and metaphysical, the
" Ideas " are represented as the thoughts of the one
Supreme Mind, the intermediate powers by which the
Supreme Unity, known as the " Idea of the Good," or
" the Creator/' evolves the material universe. Thus the
universe is seen as the manifestation of one Beneficent
Spirit, who brings it into existence and rules over it
through His " ideal " thoughts. Philo adopts com-
pletely and uncritically this theory of transcendental
ideas in his philosophical exegesis of the cosmogony
in Genesis. " Without an incorporeal archetype God
brings no simple thing to fulfilment." 1 There is an
idea of stars, of grass, of man, of virtue, of music.
And the Platonic conception receives a religious sanc-
tion. The ideas are a necessary step between God and
the material universe, and those who deny them throw
all things into confusion. 2 " God would not touch mat-
ter Himself, but He did not grudge a share of His na-
ture to it through His powers, of which the true name
1 De Mundi Op. 43.
*De Victimis II. 260-262.
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHER 175
is ideas/' We have already noticed 1 how ingeniously
Philo deduces the Theory of Ideas from the Biblical
account of the creation, and associates it with the
Hebraic conception of the ministerial Wisdom and
Word. He, however, gives a new direction to the
Platonic theory, owing to his Hebraic conception of
God. The ideas with him are not the thoughts of an
impersonal mind, but the emanations of a personal,
volitional Deity. Keeping close to Jewish tradition,
he says that they are the words of the Deity speaking.
As human speech consists of incorporeal ideas, which
produce an effect upon the minds of others, so the
Divine speech is a pattern of incorporeal ideas which
impress themselves upon a formless void, and so
create the material world. 2 In this way Philo asso-
ciates his cosmology with his theology. The creative
" Ideas " are equated collectively with the Supreme
Logos, 3 individually with the Logoi which represent
God's particular activities. Thus the Logos repre-
sents the whole ideal or noetic world, " the kingdom
of Heaven " ; and it is in this metaphysical sense that
the Logos is the first creation, " the first-born son of
God," prior to the physical universe, which is His
grandson. The whole universe is thus seen as the
orderly manifestation of one principle. Philo, ex-
panding a favorite image of the Haggadah, illus-
trates God's creation by the simile of a king founding
a city. " He gets to him an architect, who first de-
1 Oomp. p. 81, above.
* De Kacrif. 24, Quod Bet. 24. De Mundi Op. 24
176 PHILO-JTJD^US OF ALEXAKDKIA
signs in his mind the parts of the perfect city, and
then, looking continually to his model, hegins to con-
struct the city of stones and wood. So when God
resolved to found the world-city, He first brought its
form into mind, and using this as a model he com-
pleted the visible world." *
The theory of religious idealism is the centre of
Philo's philosophy, and provides the basis of his ex-
planation of the material universe. Physics, indeed,
he considered of small account, because he believed
there could be no certainty in such speculations. 1 His
mind was utterly unscientific; but as a religious
philosopher he found it necessary to give a theory of
the creation. Jewish dogma held that the world had
been called into being out of nothing; the Greek
philosophers repudiated such an idea, and held that
creation must be the result of a reasonable process;
Aristotle had imagined that matter was a separately
existent principle with mind, and that the world was
eternal ; and the Stoics held that matter was the sub-
stance of all things, including the pantheistic power
itself :
" All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature Is, and God the soul."
Philo impugns both these theories, 8 the one because it
denies the creative power of God, the other because
it confuses the Creator with His creation. He looked
1 De Mundi Op. 4.
- De Somn. I. 4.
*De Victimis II. 260.
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHEK 177
for a system which should satisfy at once the Jewish
notion that the world was brought out of nothing by
the will of God, and the philosophical concept that
God is all reality ; and he found in Plato's idealism a
view of the creation which he could harmonize with
the religious view. Plato declared that the material
world had been created out of the Non-Ens (/^ ov) >
t. e., that which has no real existence. He conceived
space and matter as the mere passive receptacle of
form, which is nothing till the form has given it
quality. Though Philo's language is vague, this
seems to be his view when he is speaking philosophi-
cally. It is, perhaps, a slight deviation from the
earlier religious standpoint of the Jews, which looks
to a direct and deliberate creation of the world-
stuff, rather than to the informing of space by spirit,
and regards the world as separate from God, and
not as a manifestation of His being. But the more
philosophical conception appears likewise in the Wis-
dom of Solomon. " For Thine all-powerful hand
that created the world out of formless matter," says
the author (xi. 17), establishing before Philo the
compromise between two competing influences in his
mind. More emphatically Philo rejects the notion
of creation in time. 1 Time, he says, came into being
after God had made the universe, and has no mean-
ing for the Divine Ruler, whose life is in the eternal
present.
1 Quod Deus 6, De Post. C. 5.
12
178 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
Summing up, we may say that Philo regards the
universe as the image of the Divine manifestation or
evolution in thought produced by His beneficent will ;
and this view is true to the religious standpoint of
traditional Judaism in spirit if not in letter.
In his conception of the human soul, Philo again
harmonizes the simple Jewish notion with the devel-
oped Greek psychology by means of the Platonic
idealism. The soul in the Bible is the breath of God ;
in Plato it is an Idea incarnate, represented in " The
Timaeus " as a particle of the Supreme Mind. Philo,
following the psychology of his age, divides the soul
into a higher and a lower part: (1) the Nous; (2) the
vital functions, which include the senses. He lays
all the stress upon the former, which gives man his
kinship with God and the ideal world, while the other
part is the necessary result of its incarnation in the
body. He variously describes the Nous as an insep-
arable fragment of the Divine soul, a Divine breath
which God inspires into each body, a reflection, an
impression, or an image of the blessed Logos, sealed
with its stamp. 1 Following the Platonic conception,
Philo occasionally speaks of the Divine soul as having
a prenatal existence, 8 holding, as the English poet put
it, that
" The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar."
1 Quod Det. 24, De Mundi Op. 45 and 51.
*L. A. I. 32, De Confus. 27.
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHER 179
Here, too, he follows an older Jewish-Hellenistic tra-
dition, which appears in the Wisdom of Solomon
(viii. 19 and 20), where it is written: " A good soul
fell to my lot. Nay rather, being good, I came into
a body undefiled." The Nous is in fact the god
within, and it bears to the microcosm Man the rela-
tion which the infinite God bears to the macrocosm. 1
Indeed, it is the Logos descended from above, but
yearning to return to its true abode. Thus Philo
sings its Divine nature:
" It is unseen, but sees all things: its essence is un-
known, but it comprehends the essence of all things.
And by arts and sciences it makes for itself many roads
and ways, and traverses sea and land, searching out all
things within them. And it soars aloft on wings, and
when it has investigated the sky and its changes it is
borne upwards towards the aether and the revolutions of
the heavens. It follows the stars in their orbits, and
passing the sensible it yearns for the intelligible world."
The Nous is the king of the whole organism, the
governing and unifying power, and hence is often
called the man himself. The senses, resembling the
powers of God, are only the bodyguard, subordinate
instruments, and inferior modes of the Divine part.*
So Philo explains that all our faculties are derived
from the Divine principle, and he draws the moral
lesson that our true function is to bend them all to
the Divine service, so as to foster our noblest part.
The aim of the good man is to bring the god within
1 De Mon. II. 214, De Mundi Op. I. 16.
*De Mundi Op. 22 and 48, L. A. I. 13 and II. 12 ff.
180 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDKIA
him into union with the God without, and to this end
he must avoid the life of the senses, 1 which mars the
Divine Xous, and may entirely crush it. The Divine
soul, as it had a life before birth, so also has a life
after death; for what is Divine cannot perish. Im-
mortality is man's most splendid hope. If the Di-
vine Presence fills him with a mystic ecstasy, he has,
indeed, attained it upon this earth, but this bliss is
only for the very blessed sage; and he, too, looks for-
ward to the more lasting union with the Godhead
after this terrestrial life is over.* True at once to
the principles of Platonism and Judaism, Philo ad-
mits no anthropomorphic conception of Heaven or of
Hell. He is convinced that there is a life hereafter,
and finds in the story of Enoch the Biblical symbol
thereof,' but he does not speculate about the nature
of the Divine reward. The pious are taken up to
God, he says, and live forever, 4 communing alone with
the Alone. 8 The unrighteous souls, Philo sometimes
suggests, in accordance with current Pythagorean
ideas, are reincarnated according to a system of trans-
migration within the human species (itahyyevetfia) .'
Yet the sinner suffers his full doom on earth. The
true Hades is the life of the wicked man who has not
'De Sacrif. 32.
8 De Plant. 9.
8 Quaestiones in Gen. II. 59.
4 De Fuga 6.
* Quaestiones in Gen. IV. 140.
De Cherubim 32.
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHER 181
repented, exposed to vengeance, with uncleansed guilt,
obnoxious to every curse. 1 And the Divine punish-
ment is to live always dying, to endure death death-
less and unending, the death of the soul. 8
The Divine Nous constitutes the true nature of
man; Philo, however, insists with almost wearisome
repetition, that the god within us has no power in.
itself, and depends entirely on the grace and inspira-
tion of God without for knowledge, virtue, and happi-
ness.' The Stoic dogma, that the wise man is per-
fectly independent and self-contained (aordpx^) ap-
pears to him as a wicked blasphemy. "Those who
make God the indirect, and the mind the direct cause
are guilty of impiety, for we are the instruments
through which particular activities are developed,
but He who gives the impulse to the powers of the
body and the soul is the Creator by whom all things
are moved/' 4 All thought-functions, memory, rea-
soning, intuition, are referred directly to Divine in-
spiration, which is in Platonic terminology the illumi-
nation of the mind by the ideas. Thus, finally, all
human activity is referred back to God.
This guiding principle determines Philo's attitude
to knowledge, involving, as it does, that we only know
by Divine inspiration, or, as he says, by the imma-
1 L. A. I. 15.
'L. A. II. 25.
"L. A. I. 11 ff., II. 12-14.
4 De Cherubim 35.
182 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
nence of the Logoi. 1 The possibility of knowledge
was one of the burning questions of the age, and it
was the failure of the old dogmatic schools to answer
it which led to a great religious movement in Greek
philosophy. How can man attain to true knowledge,
it was asked, about the universe, seeing that percep-
tions vary with each individual, and of conceptions
we have no certain standard? The old Hebrew at-
titude to this question is expressed by the verse of the
Psalmist: "The heavens are the heavens of the
Lord, but the earth hath He given to the sons of
men" (Psalm cxv), which implies that man must
not try to penetrate the secrets of the universe. Philo
is sufficiently a philosopher to desire knowledge about
things Divine and human, but at the same time he
has a complete distrust in the powers of human sense
and human reason. About the physical universe he is
frankly a skeptic/ but his religious faith leads him to
hold that God vouchsafes to man some knowledge of
Himself and of the proper way of life, i. e,., ethics.
"Man knows all things in God." 1 Plato similarly
had despaired of knowledge of the physical world,
and had turned to the heavenly ideas as the true ob-
ject of thought. Moreover, in his early period, while
his theory was still poetical and mystical, he had con-
ceived that knowledge was made possible in the sub-
1 De Somn. I. 12.
*De Somn. I. 4.
1 De Plant. 1.
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHER 183
ject, by the entrance of " forms," or emanations, from
the ideas. This theory Philo adapts to his Jewish
outlook. Like Plato, he turns away from the physical
to the ideal world, 1 and he regards the ideas of wis-
dom, virtue, bravery, etc., which are theologically
powers of God, as continually sending forth Logoi,
forms or forces (the angels of popular belief), to in-
form and enlighten our minds. Throughout, God is
the cause of all knowledge as well as of being, for these
effluences are but an expression of God's activity. In
Philo's theory, object and subject are really one.
What can be known are the modes or attributes of
God, which philosophically are " Ideas " ; what knows
is the emanation of the Idea, which God sends into
the human soul that is prepared to receive it by pious
contemplation. " Through the heavenly Wisdom, wis-
dom is seen, for wisdom sees itself/' " Through God,
God is known, for He is His own light." !
Thus all knowledge is intuition, and man's function
is not so much to reason as to lead a life of piety and
contemplate the Divine work in the hope of being
blessed with inspiration. It would be a mistake, how-
ever, to take Philo's words quite literally. He does
not deny the need of human effort and striving for
knowledge ; for the Divine influence is not vouchsafed
till we have prepared for it and consecrated all our
faculties to God. But, devout mystic as he is,
1 Quod Det. 31.
* De Migr. 8, De Spec. Leg. I. 9.
184 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
he ascribes every consummation to the direct help of
the Deity. " The mind is the cause of nothing, but
rather the Deity, who is prior to mind, generates
thought." 1 The Greek philosopher had ascribed the
final synthesis of knowledge to a superhuman force.
Philo ascribes to God all the intermediate steps from
sense-perception. It may be admitted that his passive
notion of philosophy involves the abandonment of the
Greek ideal, the eager searching of Plato after truth.
He lived in an age in which, through loss of intellec-
tual power, man had come to despair of the attain-
ment of knowledge by human effort, and to rely
entirely upon supernatural means, Divine revelations,
visions, and the like. It is consistent with his whole
position that the crown of life is represented, not as
an intellectual state, but as a superhuman ecstasy of
the Nous, wherein it is freed not only from the body
but from the rest of the soul, and is, so to say, led out
of itself.' He comments on the verse, " And the sun
went down and a deep sleep fell on Abraham " (Gen.
xv. 12). "When the Divine light," he says, "shines
upon the mortal soul, the mortal light sinks, and our
reason is driven out at the approach of the Divine
spirit." ! This is the Alexandrian interpretation of
nyiv and nnj, and though it is much affected by
Greek mystical ideas, yet at the same time it is broadly
true to the spirit of Jewish mysticism, as we see it
1 L. A. I. 13.
2 L. A. III. 13, 14.
3 Quis Rer. Div. 53.
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHEK 185
presented in writers of all ages, and as the Psalmist
expressed it, " to abide under the shadow of the Al-
mighty."
Philo's ethics, like the rest of his philosophy, ex-
hibits the transfusion of Greek ideas with his Hebrew
spirit. The Greek philosophers had evolved a rational
plan of life, while the Jewish teachers were impreg-
nated with burning ardor for the living God; and
Philo brings the two things together, making ethics
dependent on religion. The Stoics, who were the
most powerful school of his day, regarded as the ideal
of goodness life according to unbending reason and
in complete independence of God or man. Philo
understands God as a personal power making for
righteousness, and man's excellence, accordingly,
which is likeness to God, is piety and charity. 1 Above
all he insists upon Faith (7K<mc), and he defines
virtue as a condition of soul which fixes its hopes
upon the truly Existent God. The Stoics also pro-
fessed to honor faith or confidence above all things,
but the virtue which they meant was reliance upon
man's own powers. Philo's virtue is almost the con-
verse of this. Man must feel completely dependent
upon God, and his proper attitude is humility and
resignation. So only can he receive within his soul
the seed of goodness, and finally the Divine Logos."
Yet at the same time Philo remains loyal to the Jew-
1 De Mundi Op. 54.
3 De Abr. 31.
186 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDEIA
ish ideal of conduct: faith without works is empty,
and, as he puts it, "The true-born goods are faith
and consistency of word and action/' *
The attainment of the highest excellence demands
severe discipline, save for those few blessed souls
whom God perfects without any effort on their part.
The rest can only secure self-realization by self-re-
nunciation; they must avoid the bodily passions and
bodily lusts. 2 At times the Divine enthusiasm causes
Philo, like many a Jewish saint and like his master
Plato, to scorn all bodily limitations and recommend
"insensibility" (fadOeia)* by which he means that
man should crush his physical desires and repress
his feelings. Not that the good life seems to him
to imply absence of pleasure. On the contrary, it
is filled with the purest of joy, for when man rises
to the love of God "in calm of mind, all passion
spent," then and then alone has he tasted true joy-
ousness. The symbol of this bliss is Isaac (prtt'),
the laughter of the soul.
It was noticed in the second chapter that Philo
modified his ethical ideas during his life. In the
earlier period he insists more strongly on the need of
ascetic self-denial, and has almost a horror of the
world. Maturer experience, however, taught him
that man is made for this world, and that a wise use
of its goods was a surer path to happiness and to
1 DC Fuga 27.
>L. A. I. 32, II. 25.
"Comp. L. A. III. 45.
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHER 187
God than flight from all temptations. In his later
writings, therefore, he exhibits a striking moderation.
He reproaches the ascetics for their " savage enthusi-
asm," 1 probably hinting at the extreme sects of the
Essenes and the Therapeutae. " Those who follow a
gentler wisdom seek after God, but at the same time
do not despise human things."
" Truth will properly blame those who without dis-
crimination shun all concern with the life of the State,
and say that they despise the acquisition of good repute
and pleasure. They are only making grand pretensions,
and they do not really despise these things. They go
about in torn raiment and with solemn visage, and live
the life of penury and hardship as a bait, to make people
believe that they are lovers of good conduct, temperance,
and self-control."'
Philo's aphorism, which follows, " Be drunk in a
sober manner," is characteristic. The Stoic extreme
of passionlessness is almost as false as the Epicurean
hedonism, and the mean between them is the ideal
Jewish life, in which godliness and humanity are
blended.
We have now examined the main divisions of
Philo's philosophy, and we see that his metaphysics,
cosmology, theory of knowledge, and ethics are all
religious in tone, and all determined in their main
lines by his Jewish outlook. His Hebraism is a seal
which stamps all that enters his mind from Greek
1 Quod Det. 7.
* De Fuga 5 ff .
188 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXAKDKIA
sources, and the Bible, spiritually interpreted, is the
canon of all his wisdom.
There remains one minor aspect of his work which
must be briefly examined, because it has become
closely associated with his name. This is his number-
symbolism, by which he ascribes important powers
to certain numbers, so that they are regarded as holy
themselves and sanctifying that to which they are
attached. This feature of his thought is commonly
ascribed to Pythagorean influence, which was strong
at Alexandria, and, indeed, throughout the world, at
this era. The exact details of the holiness of four,
seven, ten, fifty, etc., Philo may have borrowed from
neo-Pythagorean sources, but the general tendency was
the natural result of his environment and his stage of
thought. It was a feature of the recurring childish-
ness of ideas and the renascence of wonder at common
things which is apparent on many hands. To have
denied the powers of numbers would have seemed as
absurd and eccentric then as to deny the powers of
electricity to-day. And in all ages people hare been
found to regard numbers mystically as a link between
God and earth, and a means of solving all physical and
metaphysical problems. The Hebrew intellect, primi-
tive as it was, tended particularly to the reverence of
the numerical powers. Witness the Bible itself, which
emphasizes certain numbers ; and witness also the fifth
chapter of the Pirke Abot, with its lists ranged under
four, seven, and ten, which is only typical of the
rabbinical attitude. Philo is not original in his views
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHER 189
concerning numbers, not above nor below the loose
thinking of his age. He accepts unquestioningly the
potency of seven, because of its marvellous mathe-
matical properties, ratios, etc., its geometrical efficacy,
and because of the seven periods of life from infancy
to old age, of the seven parts of the body, the seven
motions, the seven strings of the lyre, the seven vowels,
and the very name, which is connected with worship
( ff/?aoyzo<:) . All this is trifling and trite, but what
is of importance is the use which Philo makes of the
sentiment. He converts it throughout to the support
and glorification of Jewish institutions. Thus, if a
man honors seven, he says, he will devote the Sab-
bath to meditation and philosophy. 1 Further, as seven
is the symbol of rest and tranquillity, the Sabbath
must be a day of perfect rest. Ten is magnified so
as to honor the Decalogue, 1 fifty so as to honor the
Feast of Pentecost. So, too, the Pythagoreans' mathe-
matical conceptions of God as "the beginning and
limit of all things," or, again, as the principle of
equality, are approved by Philo, " because they breed
in the soul the fairest and most nourishing fruit
piety/' In short, Philo's Pythagoreanism only em-
phasizes his commanding purpose to deepen and
recommend the Jewish God-idea and the Jewish
method of life.
Jewish influences throughout are the determining
element of Philo's teaching; they are the dynamic
1 De Mundi Op. 15, L. A. I. 46.
* De Decal. 6-8.
190 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDKIA
forces working upon the Greek matter and producing
the new Platonism, which constitutes Philo's contri-
bution to Greek philosophy. It may, indeed, be said
that his Hebraism makes Philo anti-philosophical, be-
cause he has no desire or hope of adding to positive
knowledge, but aims only at the calm of the individual
soul in union with its God. The Platonic Theory of
Ideas, metaphysical in origin, plays a very important
part in his works, but it is adapted mystically, and
turned from an ideal of the human intellect to a sup-
port of monotheism and piety. Here Philo is at once
the leader and the child of his generation; men were
no longer satisfied with rational systems, but wanted
a religious philosophy, based upon a transcendental
principle and a Divine revelation which could give
them some certainty and some positive hope in life.
Doubtless, the strong mystical tendency in Philo de-
stroyed the balance between the intuitive and the
discursive reason which makes the perfect philosopher.
In his overpowering passion for God, he distrusts
overmuch the analytical efforts of the human mind.
Nevertheless, his acquired Hellenism gives his Jewish
conceptions a philosophical impress, and this has made
him the model of the school of religious philosophers.
The ministerial " Word " became the " ideal " ex-
pression of God's mind, the governing reason, the
world-soul ; the angels were spiritualized as a kingdom
of Ideas. Piety received an intellectual as well as a
religious value, and the Mosaic law was raised to a
higher dignity as an ethical code of universal validity.
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHEE 191
A complete harmony between the Hellenic and the
Hebraic outlook upon life was impossible, but Philo
at least accomplished a harmony between Hebraic
monotheism and Greek metaphysics. He desired to
show that faith and philosophy were in agreement,
and that the imaginative and reflective conceptions
of God and the Divine government were in unison.
And he may be considered to have realized his desire
in his synthesis of Jewish theology and Platonic
idealism. He is through and through a great inter-
preter, elucidating points of unity between distinct
systems of thought. In him the fusion of cultures,
which began with the Septuagint translation, reached
its culmination. It reached its zenith and straight-
way the severance began.
In the next chapter we shall trace Philo's place in
Jewish thought; here we may glance at his place in
the development of Greek philosophy. The fusion be-
tween Eastern and Western thought, which he himself
so strikingly illustrates, continued to dominate phi-
losophy for the next four hundred years; and Plato,
who, with his deep religious spirit, had a broad affin-
ity with the Oriental conception of the universe, was
the supreme philosophical master. All the chief
teachers looked to him for the intellectual basis of
their ideas and read into his works their particular
religious beliefs; but they failed to maintain a true
harmony between the two. The cultures of all coun-
tries and races mingled, even as their peoples mingled
under the Eoman Empire, but they were so combined
192 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDKIA
as to lose the purity and individuality of each element.
The Eastern Platonists who followed Philo brought
to their interpretation less nohle conceptions of the
Godhead, the Gnosticism of Syria, the dualism of
Persia, the impersonal pantheism of India, and the
theurgies of Egypt, and produced strange hybrids of
the human mind. The one point of agreement be-
tween them is that they conceive the Supreme God
as impersonal and entirely inactive, " a deified Zero,"
and endeavor by a system of emanation to trace the
descent of this baffling principle into man and the
universe. Philo was as unfortunate in his philosophi-
cal as in his religious following, who both transformed
his poetical metaphors into fixed and rigid dogmas.
His doctrine of the Logos was, on the one hand, the
forerunner of the Trinity of the Church, on the other
of the Trinity of the Alexandrian neo-Platonists. It
is difficult, indeed, to trace with certainty the connec-
tion between Philo and the later school of Alexandrian
Platonists, but there appears to be at least one clear
link in the teaching of the Syrian Numenius, who
flourished in the middle of the second century. To
him are attributed the two sayings: "Either Plato
Philonizes or Philo Platonizes," and " What is Plato
but the Attic Moses?" Modern scholars have ques-
tioned the correctness of the reference, but be this
as it may, it is certain that Numenius used the Bible
as evidence of Platonic doctrines. "We should go
back," he says, in a fragment, " to the actual writings
of Plato and call in as testimony the ideas of the most
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHER 193
cultured races; comparing their holy books and laws
we should bring in support the harmonious ideas
which are to be found among the Brahmans and the
Jews." ' Origen tells us/ moreover, that he often
introduced excerpts from the books of Moses and the
Prophets, and allegorized them with ingenuity. In
one of the few remains of his writings which have
come down to us, we find him praising the verse in
the first chapter of Genesis, " The spirit of God was
upon the waters"; because, as Philo had interpreted
it following perhaps a rabbinical tradition water
represents the primal world-stuff. And elsewhere he
mentions the efforts of the Egyptian magicians to
frustrate the miracles of Moses, following Philo's ac-
count in his life of the Jewish hero.
The work of Philo helped to spread a knowledge of
the Hebrew Scriptures far and wide and to give them
general authority as a philosophical book; but it did
not succeed in spreading the pure Hebrew monothe-
ism. The exalted Hebrew idea of God was still too
sublime for the pagan nations, even for their philoso-
phers. The world in truth was decaying morally and
intellectually, a^d most of all in powers of imagina-
tion; and its hunger for God found expression in
crude and stunted conceptions of His nature. Unable
any longer to soar to Heaven, it sullied the majesty
of the Deity, and divided the Godhead in order to
1 Comp. Euseb., Praep. Evang. IX 411A.
2 C. Celsum IV. 51.
13
194 PHILO-JUD,EUS OF ALEXANDEIA
bridge the gap. Numenius represents in philosophy
the Gnostic ideas about God which were widely held
by the heretics, Jewish and Christian, of the second
century. He divides the Godhead into two separate
powers: (1) the impersonal Being behind all reality,
free from all activity whatsoever; (2) the Demiurge
or active governor of the universe, who again is sub-
divided into a transcendent and an immanent power.
The teaching of Plotinus, the most famous of the
later Alexandrian neo-Platonists, shows a further step
in the development of religious Platonism. Viewed
from its higher side it is an attempt to explain every-
thing as the emanation of the One. But philosophy
in the third century debased itself in order to support
the tottering polytheistic religion of the pagan world
against the modified Hebraic creed, Christianity,
which was fast demolishing its power. Against the
Trinity of the Church the philosophers set up a heav-
enly Trinity of so-called reason: the Ineffable One,
the Demiurgic Mind, and the World Soul; and be-
tween this Trinity and man they placed intermediate
hierarchies of gods, angels, and demons in fact, the
whole fugitive army of Greek polytheism thinly dis-
guised. All the vulgar fancies and superstitions
which Philo had intellectualized, these later Eastern
Platonists sought to revive and justify by conceptions
of physical emanation blended of false science and
mysticism. They hoped to found a universal religion
by finding room in one system for the deities of all
nations !
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHEK 195
From Plotinus down to Proclus, neo-Platonism
became more unintellectual, more insane, more pagan,
and, finally, with its vapid dreams, it brought the his-
tory of Greek philosophy to an inglorious close. Its
finer teachings, however, deeply affected mediaeval
philosophy, and not least the Arab-Jewish school.
The theory of emanations and spiritual hierarchies
pervades the writings of Ibn Ezra, Ibn Gabirol, and
Ibn Baud, and thus indirectly provides a connection
between the culture of Alexandrian Judaism and the
culture of Spanish Judaism. The praise of God
known as the noVn nro by Ibn Gabirol is a splendid
example of the Hebraizing of neo-Platonic doctrines,
which, though probably quite independent of his
teaching, recalls constantly the ideas of Philo.
By his place at the head of the neo-Platonic school
Philo enters the broad stream of the world's philo-
sophical development, but his more lasting influence
was exercised over the religious philosophy of Chris-
tianity. He was the direct master of what is known
as the Patristic school, which sought to combine the
intellectual conceptions of Plato with the religious
ideas of the Gospels. Its most celebrated teachers
were Clement and Origen, both of Alexandria, who
flourished in the second century. They resorted
largely to allegorical interpretation, learning from
Philo to trace in the Bible principles of universal
thought and profound philosophy; but they used his
method and his lessons to support notions of God and
the Logos which were alien to his spirit. He had
196 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDEIA
possessed pre-eminently the soaring imagination of
poetry, which is the crown of the intellectual and of
the religious mind, and unites them in their highest
excellence; but they bounded their philosophy within
the narrow limits of dogma, and thereby destroyed
the harmony between Hebraism and Hellenism which
he had contrived to effect. The controversy of Origen
and Celsus began again the battle between reason
and faith, "which was to destroy for centuries the
independence of philosophy and to break the conti-
nuity of civilization." Had Philo really been plough-
ing the sand, and was an agreement between faith
and reason, between religion and philosophy, impossi-
ble ? Can the two finest creations of the mind only be
combined on the terms that one is subordinate, or
rather servile, to the other ? In Judaism, if anywhere,
the combination should be possible, for Judaism has
as its basis an intuitional conception of God, which is
in harmony with the philosophical conception of the
universe, and it has little dogma besides. The neo-
Platonists and the Church Fathers failed to carry on
the ideal of Philo, but it was to be expected that
among his own people, the nation of philosophers, as
he had called them, he would have found true succes-
sors. Yet the use made of his work by the Christians
compelled his people to regard him as a betrayer of
the law and to avoid his goal as a treacherous snare.
For centuries Greek philosophy was banned from Jew-
ish thought, and Philo's works are not mentioned by
any Jewish writer. Strangers possessed his inheri-
PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHEE 197
tance, and his name alone, " Philo-Judaeus," bore wit-
ness to his nationality. It is an interesting specula-
tion to consider how different might have been the his-
tory, not only of the Jews, but of the world, if the Hel-
lenistic Judaism of Philo had prevailed in the Eoman-
Greek world instead of "the impurer Hellenism of
Christianity." When, in the tenth century, the lead-
ers of Jewish thought broke the bonds of seclusion,
and brought anew to the interpretation of their re-
ligion the culture of the outer world, Greek philosophy
became again a powerful influence, though it was
Aristotle rather than Plato whom they studied. The
harmonizing spirit of Philo, which may be accounted
part of the genius of the race, lives on in Saadia, Mai-
monides, Ibn Ezra, Ibn Gabirol, and Judah Halevi.
But the difference between him and the Arabic school
is marked. They do not inherit his whole object, for
they aimed not at a philosophical Judaism which
should be a world-religion, but at a philosophical Ju-
daism for the more enlightened Jews alone. Philo's
work was the culminating point, indeed, of a great
development in Judaism, produced by the mingling of
the finest products of human reason and human
imagination, but it was particularly the expression of
his own commanding genius. He lacked a true suc-
cessor, for those who shared his aim did not inherit
his Jewish outlook, and those who shared his Jewish
outlook did not inherit his aim. What is characteris-
tic of and peculiar to Philo is the combination of the
missionary and the philosopher. Living at a time
198 PHILO-JUDJEUS OF ALEXANDRIA
when the Jewish genius expanded most brilliantly,
and when Judaism exercised its greatest influence, he
hoped to make his religion universal by showing it to
be philosophical, and to bring about by the aid of
Plato the ideal of the prophets.
VII
PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION
We have seen from time to time how Philo's inter-
pretation of the Bible corresponds with Palestinian
Jewish tradition ; and we must now consider more in
detail the relations of the two schools of Jewish learn-
ing. Until the last century it was commonly supposed
that no close relation existed, and that the Alexan-
drian and Palestinian schools were independent and
opposed; Scaliger, the greatest scholar of the seven-
teenth century, wrote * that " Philo was more ignorant
of Hebraic and Aramaic lore than any Gaul or Scy-
thian," and this was the opinion generally held. The
researches of Freudenthal and Siegfried 2 have shown
the falsity of these views; and, most important of
all, Philo refutes them out of his own mouth. He
refers in many different parts of his works * to the
tradition and the wisdom of his ancestors, he tells
us how on the Sabbath the Jews studied in their
synagogues their special philosophy,* and he com-
mences his " Life of Moses " by declaring that against
the false calumnies of Greek writers he will set forth
the true account which he has learnt from the sacred
1 De Sectis Judaids XVIII.
2 Comp. Freudenthal, Hellenistische Studien, and Sieg-
fried, Philo als Ausleger der heiligen Schrift.
3 Comp. Quis Rer. Div. XLIII, and Chapter II above.
*De Hon. II. 212.
200 PHILO-JUD.EUS OF ALEXANDBIA
writings and " from certain elders of his race." In
support of his statement we have the remark of
Eusebius, the Christian historian, and our chief an-
cient authority for Philo's work, 1 that he set forth and
expounded not only the laws of the Bible, but many
institutions and opinions of his fathers. Apart from
these direct references, the numerous points of corre-
spondence between Philo's interpretations and those of
the Talmud and later Midrash would compel us to
admit a connection between Alexandria and Jeru-
salem.
The break between the two schools did not show
itself till after the time of Philo. Up to the first
century of the Christian era the rabbis encouraged
the union of Shem and Japheth the two good sons
of one parent and the stream of ideas flowed quite
freely between the teachers in Palestine and the Hel-
lenized colony in Egypt. 2 Hence the Palestinian Jews,
on the one hand, received the firstfruits of this ming-
ling of cultures, and the Alexandrian Jews, on the
other, must have inherited the early tradition of the
rabbinical interpreters embodied in ancient Hala-
kah and Haggadah. By this common heritage, rather
than by any direct borrowing, it seems more reason-
able to account for the correspondence in the two
Midrashim. It should be remembered that nntil the
second century of the common era the mass of Jew-
ish tradition was a floating and developing body of
1 Hist. Ecclesiast. II. iv. 2.
2 Comp. Graetz, "History" II. xviii.
PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION 201
opinion not consigned to writing or formalized, but
handed down by word of mouth from teacher to pupil,
and preacher to congregation: in this way it was
diffused throughout the mind of the race, indefi-
nitely and, to some extent, unconsciously shaping its
thought. The detailed points of agreement between
Philo and the Talmud and Midrash are not of great
moment in themselves, but they are the signs of a
unity of development and the catholicity of Judaism
in the East and West. Doubtless the development
was more national and at the same time more legal
in Judaea, in Alexandria more Hellenistic and philo-
sophical, but there is a common spiritual bond be-
tween the two expressions, pious images, fancies,
similes, interpretations which they share. They are,
as it were, children of one family, and despite the
varying influences of environment they maintain a
family resemblance. With the Sibylline oracles we
may compare Daniel and the Psalms of Solomon;
with Aristeas and his fellow- Apologists, Josephus;
with the allegorical commentaries of Philo, the Mid-
rashim. Modern scholars have gone far to prove
that Philo was the expounder of an Hellenic Midrash
upon the Bible, in which were gathered the thoughts
and ideas that had been brought to Egypt by the Jew-
ish settlers, modified, no doubt, by Greek influences,
but still bearing the stamp of their origin. Philo, then,
appears in the direct line of the tradition which from
the time of the Great Synagogue was disseminated
through two channels, the schools of Palestine and
the writers of Alexandria. He developed the national
202 PHILO-JUD^EUS OP ALEXANDRIA
Jewish theology in a literary form, which made it
available for the world, but with him the tradition as
a Jewish tradition ends; in its further Hellenistic
development it departed entirely from its original
principles.
It is natural that the larger number of parallels be-
tween Philo and the rabbis is to be found in the Hag-
gadic portions of Talmudic teaching, for the Hagga-
dah represents the same spirit as underlies Philo's
work, though in a more peculiarly Jewish form; it is
an allegory, a play of fancy, a tale that points a moral,
or illustrates a question. It had, too, largely the
same origin, for it gathered together the popular dis-
courses given in the synagogue on the Sabbaths. Yet
the relation of Philo to the other domain of the Tal-
mud, the code of life, or the Halakah, is of great
interest; for, as we have seen, 1 the Alexandrian com-
munity had a Sanhedrin of their own, of which Philo's
brother was the president, and he himself probably a
member ; and in his exposition of the " Specific
Laws " he has preserved for us the record of certain
interpretations of the Jewish code, which are illum-
inating as much by their difference from, as by their
agreement with, the practices of Palestine. The gen-
eral aim of Philo's exegesis of the law was to show
its broad principles of justice and humanity rather
than to formulate its exact detail. It is true, he
makes it an offence 2 unknown to the rabbis for
1 Comp. Chapter I, p. 17, above.
*De Spec. Leg. II. 260.
PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION" 203
a Jew to be initiated into the Greek mysteries, but
usually he is concerned to recommend the Halakah
to the world rather than expand it for his own
community. This is shown in his treatment of the
civil as much as the moral law. The great system
of jurisprudence in his day, with which every code
claiming to have universal value had necessarily to
challenge comparison, was Roman Law. That part
of it which was applied throughout the Empire, the
jus gentium, was regarded as " written reason." It
is probable that contact with Roman jurisprudence
had affected the practical interpretations which the
Alexandrian Sanhedrin put upon the Biblical legis-
lation, and was the cause of some of their differ-
ences from the Palestinian Halakah. In treating
the ethical law, Philo's object was to show its agree-
ment with the loftiest conceptions of Greek philos-
ophers, and, indeed, its profounder truth; in treat-
ing the civil law of the Bible, his object likewise was
to show its agreement with the highest principles of
jurisprudence and its superiority to pagan codes.
If at times he supports a greater severity than the
Palestinian rabbis eventually allowed, that is where
greater severity implies a closer relation to Roman
Law. Thus he has not the horror of capital punish-
ment which the Jerusalem Sanhedrin exhibited; he
would condemn to death the man who commits wilful
homicide, whether by his own hand or by poison; 1
1 De Spec. Leg. III. 17.
204 PHILO-JmLEUS OF ALEXANDRIA
whereas the other Halakah allows it only in the
former case. He who commits perjury also is to
suffer capital punishment. 1 He adds a law which
finds no place in the Palestinian tradition, making the
exposure of children a capital crime. 3 Again, follow-
ing the text of the Biblical law literally (see Deut.xxi.
18), he gives power of life and death to parents over
their rebellious children, whereas the Jewish law de-
mands a trial before a court to make the death sen-
tence legal. He approves of the lex taUonis, " an eye
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," agreeing here, indeed,
with the opinion of earlier rabbis like R. Eliezer
(see Baba Kama 84, PDD \*y nnn py, "the law of
eye for eye is to be taken literally"), and disagree-
ing with the later Halakic interpretation, which says
that the law of Moses means the award of the value
of an eye for an e3 T e, etc.
This is one instance among many of Philo's adop-
tion of the older tradition, established probably under
the Sadducsean predominance, which was modified in
the rabbinical schools of the first and the second cen-
tury. Paradoxically, in his exposition of the law,
Philo follows the letter more closely as the expres-
sion of justice, while the later rabbis often allegorize
it in order to support their humaner interpretation.
Thus, commenting on the passage in Exodus xxii. 3
about the law of theft, " If the sun be risen upon
him, blood shall be shed for blood," he, like R.
1 Ibid. II. 6.
3 De Parentilus Colendis 56.
PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION 205
Eliezer, interprets oaroa D^ai, 1 i. e., literally. " If,"
he says, "the owner catches the thief before sun-
rise, he may kill him, but after the sun has risen
he must bring him before the court." 1 This also
was the Roman law, but the Halakah interprets
more artificially : " If it were as clear as sunlight
that the thief would not have killed the owner, then
the owner may not kill him." Philo would jus-
tify the old law; the rabbis explain it away. On the
other hand, in his treatment of the law relating to
slaves, Philo extends the liberality both of the Bible
and the Halakah. He declares that the slave is to be
set free when by his master's violence he loses an eye
or even a tooth." The Bible and the Talmud direct
emancipation only where the slave loses a limb; but
Philo writes eloquently of the humanity of which
man is deprived by the loss of sight; and he would
apparently condemn the master who injured his slave
more seriously to the full penalties of the ordinary
law. 4 Maimonides, in his exposition of the law, ap-
proves the milder practice, 5 and this suggests that it
had an old tradition behind it. Beautiful is Philo's
stray maxim, " Behave to your servants as you pray
that God may behave to you. For as we hear them, so
shall we be heard, and as we regard them, so shall we
1 Comp. Sifre Debarim 237.
*De Spec. Leg. IV.
*De Spec. Leg. III. 36.
*De Spec. Leg. III. 33 and 34.
"Moreh Nebukim III, ch. 39.
206 PHILO-JUD.EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
be regarded." 1 In his whole treatment of slavery,
Philo shows remarkable enlightenment for his age.
He objects, indeed, to the institution altogether,
and he tempers it continually with ideas of equality.
Thus, following the Halakah, he directs the redemp-
tion of a slave seven years after his purchase, and he
treats the laws of the seventh-year rest to the land
and of the jubilee as of universal validity.
Coming to the more specifically religious laws we
find that Philo, missionary as he is, prohibits alto-
gether marriage with Gentiles, 2 and that though, in the
opinion of certain rabbinic teachers, the Biblical pro-
hibition extended only to marriage with the Canaan-
ite tribes, and unions with other Gentiles were per-
mitted. 8 Philo recognizes how dangerous such unions
are for the cause which he had so dearly at heart, the
spreading of Judaism. " Even," says he, " if you
yourself remain true to your religion through the in-
fluence of the excellent instruction of your parents,
yet there is no small danger that your children by such
a marriage may be beguiled away by bad customs to
unlearn the true religion of the one only God." 4
Throughout, Philo is true to the mission of Israel in
its highest sense. That mission is not assimilation,
and it is to be brought about by no easy method of
mixing with the surrounding people. It can be ef-
1 Fragmenta ex Antonio II. 672.
*De Spec. Leg. III. 5, II. 304, 305.
Deut. vii. 3, and Abodah Zarah 36b.
*De Spec. Leg. III. 5, II. 304.
fected only by holding up the Torah in its purity as
a light to the nations, and by offering them examples
of life according to the law.
Of the special ordinances for Sabbaths and festi-
vals Philo mentions only those consecrated by the Bib-
lical law or ancient tradition, which probably were the
only ones settled in his day. He lays down the prohi-
bition to kindle fire, 1 to make or return deposits, or to
plead in the law courts on the Sabbath ; he speaks of
the reading of the Haggadah and Hallel on the night
of Passover, of the bringing of a barley cake during
the 'Omer and of the first fruits to the Temple on the
Feast of Weeks, of the Shofar at New Year, and of the
Sukkah, but not of the Lulab at Tabernacles. It
should be remembered that the Halakah was not con-
solidated till the second or third century, and in
Philo's time it was in the process of formation by dif-
ferent schools of rabbis. But the passage quoted in an
earlier chapter, about adding to the law, proves his
reverence for the oral law."
Though his statement of the civil and religious law
is of great interest to the student of Halakic de-
velopment, Philo's work presents greater correspond-
ence, on the whole, with the Haggadah, which in a
primitive way draws philosophical and ethical lessons
from the Bible narrative. It is a free interpretation
of the Scriptures, the expression of the individual
moralist; it loves to point a moral and adorn a tale,
and in many cases it is in agreement with the Hel-
1 De Septen. 5 ff. a See Chapter IV, p. 125, above.
208 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
lenistic school. To take a few typical examples: An
early interpretation explains the story of the Brazen
Serpent, as Philo does, 1 to mean that as long as Israel
are looking upward to the Father in Heaven they
will live, but when they cease to do so they will die.
Another, like him again, finds the motive of the com-
mand to bore the ear of the slave who will not leave
his master at the seventh year of redemption, in the
principle that men are God's servants, and should not
voluntarily throw away their precious freedom. So,
too, the Haggadah agrees in numerous points with
Philo's stories about the patriarchs.* If one were to
go through the Midrashic interpretations of the Five
Books of Moses, he would find in nearly every section
interpretations reminiscent of Philo. In some cases,
however, there are striking contrasts in the two com-
mentaries. Thus the Midrash 8 tells that the four
rivers of Eden symbolize the four great nations of
the old world; to Philo, they represent the four cardi-
nal virtues established by Greek philosophers. The
Palestinian commentators were prone to see an his-
torical where Philo saw a philosophical image.
The question may be asked, Who is the originator
and who the borrower of the common tradition ? And
it is a question to which chronology can give no cer-
tain answer, and for which dates or records have no
x Mishnah Rosh Hashanah III. 8, and Philo, De Somn.
II. 11.
* Comp. Agadah "bei Philo, by Treitel, Monatsschrift,
1909.
1 Comp. Bereshit Rabba 16, 4.
PHILO AND JEWISH TKADITIOX 209
meaning. For the Haggadah was not committed to
writing till many generations had known its influ-
ences, and it was not finally compiled till many gen-
erations more had handed it down with continuous
accretions. The Haggadah in fact is part of the per-
manent spirit of the race going back to a hoary
past, and stretching down " the echoing grooves
of time" to the tradition of Judaism in our own
day. The Hebrew Word means, and the thing is,
"what is said": the utterances of the inspired
teacher, some tale, some happy play of fancy, some
moral aphorism, some charming allegory which cap-
tivated the hearers, and was handed down the gen-
erations as a precious thought. It is significant in
this regard that the Haggadah is remarkable for the
number of foreign words which it contains, Greek,
Persian, and Eoman terms jostling with Hebrew and
Aramaic. For while the Halakah was the production
of the Palestinian and Babylonian schools alone, the
Haggadah brought together the harvest of all lands ;
and scraps of Greek philosophy found their way to
Palestine before the Alexandrian school developed
its systematic allegory. In the Mishnah, the earliest
body of Jewish lore which was definitely formulated
and written down, one section is Haggadic, the
passages we know as the "Ethics of the Fathers."
Now, we cannot place the date of this compilation
before the first century, 1 and thus it would seem to
1 Comp. Taylor's edition.
14
210 PHILO-JUTLEUS OF ALEXAXDEIA
be contemporary with Philo's work, to which it
affords numerous parallels. But the great mass of
the Haggadah, the Pesikta, the Mekilta, and the
other Midrashim, were all later compilations, some
of them as late as the fifth and the sixth century.
Are we to say, then, that where they correspond to
Philo they show his influence? At first this would
appear the natural conclusion.
There is a better test of priority, however, than the
date of compilation, the test of the thought itself and
its expression. And judged by this test we see that
the Haggadah is the more ancient, the primal devel-
opment of the Hebrew mind. The " Sayings of the
Fathers" are typical of the finest and most concen-
trated wisdom of the Haggadah, and exhibit thought
in its impulsive, unsystematic, gnomic expression,
neither logical nor illogical, because it knows not
logic. Beautiful ethical intuitions and profound
guesses at theological truth abound; anything like a
definite system of ethics and theology is not to be
found, whence it is said, " Do not argue with the
Haggadah." Even more so is this the case with
the bulk of the Midrash. There, pious fancy will
weave itself around the history and ideals of the
people, and suddenly one comes across a sage re-
flection or a philosophical utterance. With Philo it
is otherwise. Compared' with the Greeks he is un-
systematic, inaccurate, wanting in logic, exuberant
in imagination. Compared with the- rabbis he is a
formal and accurate philosopher, an exact and schol-
PHILO AND JEWISH TEADITION 211
arly theologian. The floating poetical ideas of the
Haggadah are woven by him into the fabric of a Jew-
ish philosophy and a Jewish theology, and knit to-
gether with the rational conceptions of Aristotle's
" Metaphysics " and Plato's " Tima3us." We may
say, then, almost with certainty, that Philo derives
from the early Jewish tradition, though at the same
time he introduced into that tradition many an idea
taken from the Greek thinkers, which found its way
to the later Palestinian schools of Jamnia and Tibe-
rias, and was recast by the Hebraic imagination.
Over and over again we find that he adopts some
fancy of his ancestors and develops it rhetorically
and philosophically in his commentary. To give many
examples or references to examples of this feature of
Philo's work is not within the scope of this book, but
of his development of an old Palestinian tradition
the following passage may serve as a typical instance :
" There Is an old story," he writes, " composed by the
sages and handed down by memory from age to age.
.... They say that, when God had finished the world,
he asked one of the angels if aught were wanting on
land or in sea, in air or in heaven. The angel answered
that all was perfect and complete. One thing only he
desired, speech, to praise God's works, or to recount,
rather than praise, the exceeding wonderfulness of all
things made, even of the smallest and the least. For the
due recital of God's works would be their most adequate
praise, seeing that they needed no addition of ornament,
but possessed in the sincerity of truth the most perfect
eulogy. And the Father approved the angel's words, and
afterwards appeared the race gifted with the muses and
212 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
with. song. This is the ancient story; and in accord with,
it, I say that it is God's peculiar work to do good, and the
creature's work to give Him thanks." *
Now this legend and moral appear in another form
in the collection of Midrash, the Pirke Eabbi Eliezer,
which apparently had ancient sources that have disap-
peared. There it is told: "When the Holy One,
blessed be He, consulted the Torah as to the com-
pleteness of the work of creation, she answered him :
* Master of the future world, if there be no host,
over whom will the King reign, and if there be no
creatures to praise him, where is the glory of the
King ? ' And the Lord of the world was pleased with
her answer and forthwith He created man." a
The Haggadah is rich also in allegorical specula-
tion, of which there are traces in the Biblical books
themselves. In the book of Micah, for example, we
find that the patriarchs are taken as types of certain
virtues, Abraham of Kindness, non, and Jacob of
Truth, HDK (vii. 20). And when the ideas of the peo-
ple expanded philosophically in Palestine and in Alex-
andria, the profounder conceptions were attached to
Scripture by the device of allegorical interpretation,
^De Plant. 30.
* It is impossible for me to make an adequate acknowl-
edgment of my debt to Dr. Schechter, President of the
Jewish Theological Seminary of America. But I should
say that I have borrowed freely from his articles on
rabbinic theology in the Jewish Quarterly Review,
vols. VI and VII, now included in his "Aspects of Rab-
binic Theology."
PHILO AND JEWISH TKADITION 213
and certain rabbis attributed a higher value to the
inner than to the literal meaning. Thus Akiba, who
wrote an elaborate allegorical work upon the Song of
Songs, 1 held that the book was the most profound
in the Bible, and Eabbi Judah similarly regarded the
book of Job. 2 The Palestinian allegorists took to
themselves a wider field than the Alexandrian, and
looked for the deeper meanings rather in the Wisdom
Literature than in the Pentateuch, which was to them
essentially the Book of the Law, and, therefore, not
a fit subject for Mashal, i. e. } inner meanings.' Hence,
their allegorism was more natural, more real, and
truer to the spirit of that which they interpreted. They
allegorized when an allegory was invited, whereas
Philo and his school often forced their philosophical
meanings in face of the clear purport of the text, and
without regard to the Hebrew. In the one case alle-
gory was a genuine development, and might have been
adopted by the original prophet: in the other, it was
reconstruction ; and the artificial un-Hebraic character
of the Hellenistic commentary was one of the causes
of its disappearance from Jewish tradition. While
the Palestinian allegorists based their continuous
philosophical interpretation upon the Wisdom Books,
they, at the same time, looked for secondary meanings
wherever opportunity offered, and found lessons in
letters and teachings in names. An early school of
1 Mishnah Yodayim III. 5.
2 Bereshit Rabba 26. 7.
*Comp. Schechter, op. cit.. Introduction.
214 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
commentators was actually known as
or interpreters of signs, and their method was by ex-
amination of the letters of a word, or by comparison
of different verses, to explore homilies. For instance,
the verse, "And God showed Moses a tree" (Exod.
xvi. 26), by which he sweetened the waters at Marah,
symbolized, by a play on the word imn, 1 that God
taught Moses the Torah, of which it is said, " She is
a tree of life" (Prov. iii. 18). Another happy ex-
ample of this method occurs in the sixth section of
the Pirke Abot, where the names in the itinerary,
niD3 SH'Sruni .SirSnj runno (Numb. xxi. 19), are
invested with a spiritual meaning. Whoever believes
in the Torah, it is written, shall be exalted, as it is
said, " From the gift of the law man attains the heri-
tage of God, and by that heritage he reaches Heaven."
In this passage of Palestinian allegorism, it may be
noticed that the Torah is regarded as a spiritual bond
between man and God, and as a sort of intermediary
power between them. This feature is almost as fre-
quent in the Midrash as the Logos-idea in Philo, so
that it may be said that rabbinic theology finds an
idealism in the Torah which corresponds to the ideal-
ism of the Philonic Word. It is expressed, no doubt,
naively and fancifully, even playfully, without at-
tempt at philosophical deductions. It is informed by
the same spirit as the Alexandrian allegory, but it is
essentially poetical and impulsive, and set forth in
1 Berakot 24 b .
> Mekilta nbisn I. 1.
PHILO AND JEWISH TKADITION 215
mythical personification, not in deliberate meta-
physics. The Torah to the rabbis was the embodiment
of the Wisdom which the writer of Proverbs had glori-
fied, and it takes its prerogatives. God gazes upon the
Torah before He creates the world. 1 The Torah,
though the chief, is not, however, the only object of
rabbinic idealism. God and His name, it is said,
alone existed before the world was created, 2 and in a
Talmud legend relating the birth of man, the ideal
power is identified with Truth, which, like the Logos,
is pictured as God's own seal.
" From Heaven to Earth, from Earth once more to
Heaven
Shall Truth, with constant interchange, alight
And soar again, an everlasting link
Between the world and Sky."
(Translation of Emma Lazarus.)*
Correspondingly, Philo identifies the Logos with the
name of God and with Truth.
Of another piece of Talmudic idealism we catch a
trace in Maimonides' " Guide of the Perplexed/' '
where he says that the rabbis explained the designa-
tion of God,nmya asnS [rendered in the authorized
version, " He who rideth on the heavens" (Ps. Ixviii.
4)], to mean that He dwelt in the highest sphere of
heaven amid the eternal ideas of Justice and Virtue,
as it is said : " Justice and Kighteousness are the base
1 Bereshit Rabba I. 2.
3 Pirke R. Eliezer III.
8 Comp. Poems, II, p. 25.
4 Moreh II, ch. 70.
216 PHILO-JinLEUS OF ALEXANDRIA
of Thy throne" (Ps. Ixxxix. 15). These fancies and
interpretations indicate that in Palestine as well as in
Alexandria an idealistic theology and a religious
metaphysics were developing at this period, though in
the East it was more imaginative, more Hebraic, more
in the spirit of the old prophets.
The more serious metaphysical and theological
speculation of the rabbis was embodied in the doctrine
of the " Creation," and the " Chariot," rnytf-a nt?j?D
and niD^D nt?jm, which in form were commentaries
on the early chapters of Genesis and the visions of
Ezekiel. They were reserved for the wisest and most
learned, for the rabbis had always a fear of in-
troducing the student to philosophy until his knowl-
edge of the law was well established. They held, with
Plato, that metaphysical speculation must be the
crown of knowledge, and if treated as its foundation,
before the necessary discipline had been obtained, it
would produce all sorts of wild ideas. Judaism for
them was primarily not a philosophical doctrine but a
system of life. The Hellenistic school was so far false
to their standpoint that it laid stress for the ordinary
believer upon the philosophical meaning as well as
upon the law. And as events proved, this led to the
neglect of the law and the dogmatic establishment of
speculative theories as the basis of a new religion.
Doubtless the consciousness that the philosophical de-
velopment led away from Judaism increased the dis-
trust of the later rabbis for such speculation, and
made them regard esoteric as a milder term for heret-
PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION 217
ical; but the warning is already given in Ben Sira:
" It is not needful for thee to see the secret things." *
The Talmud, indeed, records certain ideas about the
powers of God and His relation to the universe in
the names of the great masters; and in these ideas
there are striking resemblances to Philo's conceptions.
The Word is spoken of as an intermediate agency;*
the finger of God is really the Word; the angels are
sprung from the Words of God : Ben Zoma declared
that the whole work of creation was carried out by
the Word, as it is written, " And God said." 8 But on
the other hand there are passages in which the rabbis
oppose the Alexandrian attitude, and point out in its
excessive philosophizing a danger to Judaism, so that
in the end they exclude it. Rabbi Ishmael, we are
told, warned his pupils of the danger of Greek wis-
dom. 4 Akiba, living at a time when the Jews were
righting for spiritual as well as for physical life
against the combined forces of the Greeks and Rom-
ans, proposed to ban all the D'jirn D'lao, 5 and the
Gemara argues that among these were included the
Apocryphal works which showed Greek influence.
Again, Elisha ben Abuya, the arch-heretic, is held up
to reproach because he read JTD nso,* under which
title Greek Gnostic books are probably implied.
'Eccles. III. 15.
2 Hagigah 14 ff., Sanhedrin 37".
3 Bereshit Rabba 4.
4 Menahot 99.
'Mishn'ah Sanhedrin II. 1.
'Hagigah 15".
218 PHILO-JUD.EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
At the time when this spirit shows itself, the ap-
pearance of heretical offshoots from Judaism was al-
ready pronounced. Heresy was the aftermath of the
combination of Judaism and Hellenism, and if fur-
ther disintegration was to be avoided, the seductive
Greek influence had to be discouraged. There is al-
ways the danger in a mingling of two cultures, that
each will lose its particular excellence in a compound
which has certain qualities, but not the virtues, of
either element. Compromises may be desirable in
political affairs ; in affairs of thought they are perilous.
Down to the time of Philo, the fusion of thought at
Alexandria had been beneficial, and had broadened
the Jewish outlook without impairing its strength, but
the dissolving forces of civilization never operated
more powerfully than in the early centuries of the
common era, when the intellect of the world was
jaded and weary, and the great movement in culture
was a jumbling together of the ideas of East and
West. More especially in the cosmopolitan towns,
Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome, national life, national
culture, and national religion were undermined; and
even the Jew, despite the stronghold of his law and
tradition, was caught in the general vortex of ming-
ling creeds and theologies. Out of this confusion
(which was in one aspect a continuation of the work
of Philo) emerged, first, fantastic Gnostic religious
and philosophical sects, and, finally, the Christian
Church, which proved the system best fitted to survive
PHILO AND JEWISH TKADITION 219
in the circumstances, but was in essence as well as in
origin a blending of different outlooks, and true to the
cardinal points of neither Hebraism nor Hellenism.
The rabbis, with remarkable intuition, saw that the
Hellenistic development of Judaism, which had vainly
striven to make Judaism universal, had ended in vio-
lating its monotheism and abrogating its law ; and in
that era of disintegration, denationalization, and de-
composition they determined to keep their heritage
pure and inviolate. Judaism by their efforts was the
only national culture which survived, and some sacri-
fice had to be made to secure this end. The literary
monuments of the Alexandrian community from the
Septuagint translation to the philosophy of the Chris-
tian scholarchs were cut out of Jewish tradition, and
the Babylonian school was ignorant altogether of the
mv nwn (Greek wisdom). When Ben Zoma desired
to study the D'jwn D'iSD, and asked of his teacher at
what hour of the day it was lawful to do so, he received
the reply that it was permissible at an hour which
was neither day nor night; for the precept was to
study the Torah by day and night, as it is said,
nVSi DDV 13 mni (Josh. i. 8). Bar Kappara,
indeed, a rabbi of the third century, explained Genesis
ix. 27, " God shall enlarge Japheth and he shall
dwell in the tents of Shem," to mean that the words
of the Torah shall be recited in the speech of Japheth
(i. e., Greek) in the synagogues and schools, 1 but by
1 Bereshit Rabba 36. 8
220 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
most other teachers the union between Shem and
Japheth was no longer encouraged, because Japheth
had become degraded and was allied with the cruel
children of Edom (Kome).
Besides the Talmud and the Midrash we have, in
the work of Josephus, another indication that there
was in Philo's own day communication between Alex-
andria and Palestine. The Jewish historian marks
the influence of Hellenic ideas in Palestine in fullest
measure, and like Philo he seeks by embellishment to
recommend the histories and Scriptures of his people
to the non-Jew and to bring home their thought to
the cultured Roman-Greek world. Thus, in the
preface to his " Antiquities," he notes, as Philo noted
in his commentary, that Moses begins his laws with
a philosophical cosmology; he says also that Moses
spoke some things under a fitting allegory, hiding
beneath it a very remarkable philosophical theory.
The allegorical commentary which Josephus declared
that he intended to write has not if it was written
come down to us, but we have in his writings certain
allegorical valuations of names that agree directly
with Philo. Abel he explains as signifying mourning,
Cain, f'p, as selfish possession. In the priestly gar-
ments of Aaron he sees with Philo a symbol of the
universe, which the high priest supported when he
entered the Holy of Holies. And the ritual vessels of
the tabernacle have also their universal significance.
" If," says the Palestinian Hellenist, " any man do but
consider the fabric of the tabernacle and regard the
PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION" 221
vestments of the high priest, he will find that our legis-
lator was a Divine man, and that we are unjustly re-
proached by those who attack us for tribal narrowness.
For if he look upon these things without prejudice, he
will find that each one was made by way of imitation
and representation of the universe. "When Moses or-
dered twelve loaves to be set on the table, he denoted
the years as distinguished into so many months. By
branching out the candlestick into seven parts, he inti-
mated the seven divisions of the planets The
vestments of the high priest, being made of linen, signi-
fied the earth, the blue color thereof denoted the sky,
the pomegranates symbolized lightning, and the noise of
the bells resembled thunder. And the fashion of the
ephod showed that God had made the world of four
elements." 1
Let us listen now to Philo: "The raiment of the
priest is altogether a representation and imitation of
the universe, and its parts are the parts of the other.
His tunic is all of blue linen, the symbol of the sky.
[The rabbis had a similar fancy of the Tsitsith
(fringes).] And the flowers embroidered thereon
mark the earth, from which all things flower. And
the pomegranates are a symbol of the water, being
skilfully called thus (fiotexot, i, e., flowing fruit) be-
cause of their juice, and the bells are the symbols of
the harmony of all the elements/' *
It is true that the symbolism of the two allegorists
is varied, but a common spirit and aim underlie their
interpretations. This is true alike of their account
of the ritualistic and civil law of Moses. Either, then,
x Ant. III. 2. *De 7. Mos. II. 12.
222 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
there was a common source of Jewish apologetic lit-
erature, or Josephua must have borrowed from Philo.
It is significant that he is the only contemporary of
Philo that mentions him. He speaks of him as a dis-
tinguished philosopher, the brother of the alabarch,
and the leader of the embassy to Gaius. 1 He knows
also of the anti-Semitic diatribes of Philo's great en-
emy Apion, and two of his extant books are a masterly
reply to their outpourings. Hence it is not rash to
assume that he knew at least that part of Philo's work
which had a missionary and apologetic purpose the
" Life of Moses " and the " Hypothetica." He makes
no acknowledgment to them, it is true, but expressions
of obligation were not in the fashion of the time. Pla-
giarism was held to be no crime, and citation of au-
thorities in notes or elsewhere was almost unknown in
literature save in the Talmud, 2 where to tell some-
thing in the name of somebody else is a virtue. But
one can hardly doubt that the man who devoted him-
self to refuting the lying calumnies of Apion first
made himself master of the classical work of Apion's
opponent, which claimed to give to the Greek world
the authoritative account of the Jewish lawgiver and
his legislation.
What Josephus knew must have been known to
other cultured Jews of Palestine. Yet Philo, save in
one doubtful case which will be noticed, is not men-
tioned by any Jewish writer between Josephus in the
Ant. XVIII. 8. 1.
a Comp. " Ethics of the Fathers " VI. 6.
PHILO AND JEWISH TEADITION 223
first and Azariah del Kossi in the sixteenth century.
The compilers of the Midrashim and the Yalkut, the
philosophers of the Dark and Middle Ages, finally the
Cabbalists, are continually reminiscent of his doc-
trines, but they do not mention his works or his ex-
istence. The Midrash Tadshe, 1 a tenth century com-
pilation of allegorical exegesis, contains definite paral-
lels to Philonic passages, especially in its quotations
from an Essene Tannaite, Pinhas ben Jai'r; but again
the trace of influence is indirect. On the other hand,
the Christian writers from the time of Clement in
the second century quote him freely, make anthologies
of his beautiful sayings, and in their more imaginative
moments acclaim him the comrade of Mark and the
friend of Peter. The rise of the Christian Church,
which coincided with the downfall of the nation,
caused the rabbis to emphasize the national character
of Judaism in order to preserve the old faith of their
fathers in the critical condition in which exile, perse-
cution, and assimilation placed it. The first century
was a time of feverish dreams and wild hopes that
were not realizable: men had looked for the coming
of the days of universal peace and good-will, and the
Alexandrian Jews in particular hoped for the spread-
ing of Judaism over the world. The rabbis recog-
nized that this consummation was far away, and that
Judaism must remain particularist for centuries in
the hope of a final universalism. Meantime it must
1 See Epstein, Philon et le Midrasch Tadsche, Revue
des Etudes Juives, XXI, p. 80.
224 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDKIA
hold fast to the law and, in default of a national home,
strengthen the national religious life in each Jewish
household. They regarded Greek as not only a
strange but a hostile tongue, and the allegorical exe-
gesis of the Bible, which had led to the whittling away
of the law, as a godless wisdom. The Septuagint trans-
lation, which had offered a starting point for philo-
sophical speculation, was replaced by a new Greek ver-
sion of the Old Testament made by Aquila, a prose-
lyte, in the first century. It gave a baldly literal
translation of the Hebrew text, sacrificing form and
even lucidity to a faithful transcript. With uncon-
scious irony the rabbis, who rejoiced in its truth to
the Hebrew, said of Aquila, "Thou art fairer than
the children of men, grace is poured into thy lips "
(Ps. xlv). In truth the work was utterly innocent of
literary grace. A translation of the Bible marked the
end, as it had marked the beginning, of Jewish-Hel-
lenistic literature, but if the first had suggested the
admission, so the other suggested the rejection of
Greek philosophy from the interpretation of Judaism
and a return to the exclusive national standpoint. The
rabbinical appreciation of Aquila's work shows that,
while the Jews were in Palestine, many still required a
Greek translation of the Bible ; but when in the third
century c. E. the centre of the religion was moved to
Babylon, Greek was forgotten, and the rabbis for a
period lost sight of Greek culture. It is another irony
of history that our manuscripts of Philo go back to
1 Yer. Meg. .1. 71c.
PHILO AXD JEWISH TRADITION 225
an archetype in the library of Caesarea in Palestine,
which Eusebius studied in the fourth century. Philo
came to the land of his fathers in the possession of
his people's enemies, and at a time when he could no
longer be understood by his people.
Philo's works were not translated into Hebrew,
and as Greek ceased to be the language of the cul-
tured, they could not, in their original form, have
influenced later Jewish philosophers. But the Chris-
tians, in their proselytizing activity, had translated
them into Latin and Armenian before the fifth cen-
tury, and through one of these means they may possi-
bly have exercised an influence upon the new school of
Jewish philosophy, which, opening with Saadia in the
tenth century, blossomed forth in the Arabic-Spanish
epoch. The light of historical research is beginning to
illumine the obscurity of the Dark Ages, and has re-
vealed traces of an Alexandrian allegorist in the
writings of the Persian Jew Benjamin al-ISTehawendi,
himself a distinguished allegorizer of the Bible, who
wrote in the ninth century and taught that God
created the world by means of one ministerial angel.*
Benjamin relates that the doctrine was held by a
Jewish sect known as the Maghariya, which prob-
ably sprang up in the fourth or the fifth century,
when sects grew like mushrooms. The Karaite al-
Kirkisani, who wrote fifty years later, says that
an article by Dr. Poznanski In the Revue des
Etudes Juives, 1905, Philo dans Vancienne litterature
judeo-arabe, pp. 10 ff.
15
226 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
the Maghariya sect used in support of their doctrine
the "prolegomena of an Alexandrian sage" who
gave certain remarkable interpretations of the Bible ;
and in one of Dr. Schechter's Genizah fragments,
which is probably to be ascribed to Kirkisani, there
are contained examples of the Alexandrian's explana-
tions of the Decalogue, which occur, and occur only,
in Philo's treatise on the " Ten Commandments."
This connection between Philo and an obscure Jew-
ish sect, or an obscurer Persian-Jewish writer, may ap-
pear far-fetched and not worth the making. In itself
doubtless it is unimportant, but it serves to keep Philo,
however barely, within Jewish tradition. For it shows
that Alexandrian literature, though probably through
the medium of a Mohammedan source, was known
to some Jews in the centuries of transition. It may be
that further examination of the great Genizah col-
lection, which has opened to Jewish scholarship a new
world, will reveal further and stronger ties to unite
Philo with his philosophical successors, of whom the
first is Saadia Gaon (892-942 c. E.). Indeed the
main interest of this newly-discovered connection, if
it can be seriously so regarded, is that it suggests the
possibility of Saadia's acquaintance with Philo by
means of a translation. That Saadia read the works
upon which Christian theologians relied, is certain;
and a fragment in which he refers to the teaching of
Judah the Alexandrian 1 also unearthed from the
1 Comp. Pozn&nski, op. cit., p. 27.
PHILO A^ T D JEWISH TRADITION 227
Cairo Genizah goes some way to support the sugges-
tion. The passage refers to the connection of the
number " fifty " with the different seasons of the year,
and though it does not tally exactly with any piece
of the extant Philo, it is in the Philonic manner. And
Philo, who was surnamed Judseus by the Church,
would have been re-named by his own people, trans-
lating from the Church writers, mirr. One would
the more willingly catch on to this floating straw, be-
cause Saadia was at once a compatriot of Philo, born
in the Fayyum of Egypt, and the first Jew who strove
to carry on his work. He aimed at showing the phi-
losophy of the Torah, and its harmony with Greek
wisdom in particular. Aristotle, who had been trans-
lated into Arabic, had meantime supplanted Plato as
the master of philosophy for theologians, and Saadia's
magnum opus, mjni nuiDK, is colored throughout by
Aristotelian ideas. But the difference of masters
does not obscure the likeness of aim, and, albeit un-
consciously, Saadia renews the task of the Hellenic-
Jewish school.
Saadia's work was carried on and expanded in a
great outburst of the Jewish genius, which showed
itself most brilliantly in the Moorish-Spanish king-
dom. The general cultural conditions of Alexandria
in the first century B. c. E. were reproduced in Spain
in the tenth century. Once again the Jews found
themselves politically emancipated amid a sympa-
thetic environment, and again they illumined their
religious tradition with all the culture which their
228 PHILO-JUD^TJS OF ALEXANDRIA
environment could afford. The mingling of thought
gave birth to a great literature, both creative and
critical ; to a striking body of lyric poetry ; to a syste-
matic theology, and a religious philosophy.
While the study of the old Talmudic lore was main-
tained, the greatest teachers developed tradition
afresh by a philosophical restatement designed to
make it appeal to the mental attitude of the enlight-
ened. The sermon flourished again, collections of
Haggadah (Yalkut) were made as storehouses of
homilies, and metaphysical treatises modelled upon
the works of the schoolmen set forth a philosophical
Judaism for the learned world. It is notable also
that these last were not written in Hebrew or in the
Talmudic dialect, but in Arabic, the language of their
cultured environment; for though the missionary
spirit was dead, the controversial activity of the pe-
riod impelled the Jewish philosophers to present their
ideas in the form used by the philosophers of the
general community.
It is not only the general conditions of the Arab-
Jewish period, but also the special development of
Jewish ideas, which recalls the work of the Alexan-
drian school. This was, indeed, to be expected, see-
ing that in both cases there was a mingling of He-
braism and Hellenism. In Spain, however, the Jews
acquired Hellenism at second hand, and through the
somewhat distorted medium of Arabic translations or
scholastic misunderstanding, and hence the harmony
is neither complete nor pure. They endeavored to
PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION 229
show that the teachings of Aristotle are implicit
in the written and the oral law, but the interpreta-
tion is hardly convincing even in " The Guide of the
Perplexed/' of Maimonides, the monumental work
which marks the culmination of mediaeval Jewish
philosophy.
If there is one figure in Jewish tradition with
whom Philo challenges at once comparison and con-
trast, it is Maimonides, the brightest star of the Ara-
bic, as he was of the Hellenic, development of the
Jewish religion. Though there is nothing on which
to found any direct influence of the one on the
other, the aim, the method, the scope of their philo-
sophical work are the same, the relation which they
hold to exist between faith and philosophy well-
nigh identical. The metaphysics of the Bible, ac-
cording to both, is hidden beneath an allegory, and
is meant only for the more learned of the people.
To Maimonides the Bible is not only the standard of
all wisdom, but it is " the Divine anticipation of
human discovery." In the words of Hosea, God has
therein "multiplied visions and spoken in simili-
tudes " (xii. 11). The duty of the Jewish philosopher
is to expound these metaphors and similes; and Mai-
monides, endeavoring to knit Greek metaphysics
closely with Jewish tradition, propounds a science of
allegorical values, which by exact philological study
traces the inner as well as the outer meaning of the
Hebrew words. But differentiated as it is by greater
mastery of the tradition and closer adherence to the
230 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDKIA
Hebrew text, his method is nearly as artificial and
his thought as extraneous to the text as the method
and thought of Philo. The content of their philoso-
phies is, indeed, strikingly alike, save that the one is
a Platonist, the other an Aristotelian. This involves
not so much a difference of philosophical views as a
difference of temper and of objective. The followers
of Plato are mystics, yearning for the love of God ; the
followers of Aristotle are rationalists, seeking for the
abstract knowledge of God. Hence in Maimonides
there is less soaring and more argument than in Philo.
Everything is deduced, so far as may be, with exacti-
tude and logical sequence according to the logic of
the schoolmen and everything is formalized accord-
ing to scholastic principles. But the subjects treated
are the same the nature of God and His attributes,
His relation to the universe and man, the manner
of the creation, and the way of righteousness.
Maimonides, who is in form more loyal to Jewish
tradition, is to a larger degree than Philo dependent
on authority for the philosophical ideas which he ap-
plies to religion. To a great extent this is due to the
spirit of his age, for in the Middle Ages not only was
the matter of thought, but also its form, accepted on
authority, and Aristotle ruled the one as imperiously
as the Bible ruled the other. The differences of form
and substance do not, however, obscure the essential
likeness with Philo's interpretation of Judaism.
With him Maimonides holds that the essential nature
PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION 231
of God is incognizable. 1 No positive predication can
properly be applied to Him, but we know Him by
His activities in relation to man and the world, i. e.,
by His attributes or by what Philo called His powers.
Maimonides does not preserve the absolute monar-
chy of the Divine government, but places between
God and man intermediate beings with subordinate
creative powers the separate intelligences of the
stars, which are identified with the angels of the
Bible.' But he maintains inviolate the sole causality
of God and His immanence in the human soul. Mai-
monides, like Philo, gives in addition to a metaphysi-
cal theology a philosophical exposition of the law of
Moses, which has the same guiding principle as the
books on the " Specific Laws." Moses was the perfect
legislator, 1 whose ordinances are D'p"TC, i. e., perfectly
equitable, attaining " the mean " the Aristotelian
conception of excellence and identical with the eter-
nal laws of nature. 4 Numerous details of Maimonides'
interpretations agree with those given in the books
on the " Specific Laws." Whether correspondence of
thought is merely an indication of the similar work-
ings of Jewish genius in similar conditions, or
whether it is the effect of an early tradition common
to both, or whether, finally, there was connection,
however indirect, between the two minds, it is now
1 Moreh II, ch. 1 fl.
3 Ibid. 31.
*IUd. 31.
* Moreh III. 43 ff.
232 PHILO-JmLEUS OF ALEXANDRIA
impossible to say. But at least the philosophy of Mai-
monides confirms the inner Jewishness of the philoso-
phy of Philo, and its essential loyalty to Jewish
tradition.
Not less striking than his correspondence with later
Jewish religious philosophy, though not less indefi-
nite, is the relation of Philo to the later Jewish mys-
tical and theosophical literature, purporting also to
be a development of hoary tradition, and indeed
calling itself simply the tradition, nbap. Between
Philo and the Cabbalah it is as difficult to establish
any direct connection as between Philo and rabbinic
Midrash, but the likeness in spirit and the signs of a
common source are equally remarkable. To trace God
in all things through various attributes and emana-
tions, to bring God and man into direct union, to
prove that there is an immanent God within the soul
of the individual, and to show how this may be in-
spired with the transcendental Deity this is common
to both. In the earliest times the mystic doctrine
appears to have been a form of Jewish Gnosticism,
speculation about the nature of God and His connec-
tion with the world. It probably embraced the nwyn
rvwn and the namo ntpyn, though we know not what
these exactly contained. 1 But it was not till the Mid-
dle Ages that Jewish mysticism received definite and
separate literary expression, and by that time it was
mixed up with a number of neo-Platonic and magical
1 Comp. Ginzberg, art. " Cabbalah," Jewish Encyclo-
pedia.
PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION 333
fancies and foreign theosophies. The later compila-
tions of this character form what is more regularly
known as the Cabbalah; but, apart from the profes-
sions of the later writers, a continuous train of tra-
dition affirms the existence of secret teachings in
Judaism from the time of the Babylonian captivity.
Jewish mysticism is as much a continuous expression
of the spirit of the race as the Jewish law. We may
then without rashness conclude that the later Cab-
balah is a coarser development, for a less enlightened
and less philosophical age, of the Gnostic material
which Philo refashioned in the light of Platonism for
the Hellenized community at Alexandria. Modern
scholars have favored the idea that the Essenes were
the first systematizers of and the first practitioners in
the Cabbalah, and have interpreted their name 1 to
mean those engaged in secret things, but the mystic
tradition itself is earlier than the foundation of a
special mystic sect. It is part of the heritage from
the Jewish prophets and psalmists and the Baby-
lonian interaction with Hebraism.
Philo had large sympathies with the Essenic devel-
opment of Judaism, and he speaks at times as though
he had joined one of their communities, and therein
had been initiated into the great mysteries and secret
philosophies of the sages. We have noted that he
offers his most precious wisdom to the worthy few
alone, "who in all humility practice genuine piety,
1 Comp. Taylor's " Ethics of the Fathers," ch. 5, notes.
234 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
free from all false pretence." They, in turn, are to
discourse on these doctrines only to other members of
the brotherhood. " I bid ye, initiated brethren, who
listen with chastened ears, receive these truly sacred
mysteries in your inmost souls, and reveal them not to
one of the uninitiated, but laying them up in your
hearts, guard them as a most excellent treasure in.
which the noblest of possessions is stored, the knowl-
edge, namely, of the First Cause and of virtue, and
moreover of what they generate." r These mysteries,
it is not unlikely, represent according to some scholars
the "PD of the Talmudical rabbis, which was elaborately
developed in the Zohar and kindred writings. Be this
as it may, Philo's religious intensityexpresses the spirit
of the Cabbalists, his mystic soaring is the prototype of
their theosophical ecstasies; his persistent declaration
that God encloses the universe, but is Himself not en-
closed by anything, contains the root of their concep-
tion of the En Sof (]io |'tf), a his Logos-idealism,
with its Divine effluences, which are the true causes of
all changes, physical and mental, is companion to
their system of D'oSiy and nivso, emanations and
spheres. His fancies about sex and the struggle be-
tween a male and female principle in all things * are a
constant theme of their teachers, and form a special
section of their wisdom, Jinn IID , the mystery of gen-
eration. His conception of the Logos as the heavenly
1 De Cherubim 12 and 14. Comp. De Somn. I. 8.
3 Comp. De Somn. I. 12.
* Comp. De Fuga 9.
PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION 235
archetype of the human race, the " Man-himself,"
is the Platonic counterpart of their }i?.np DIK, or
" primal man," who is known in the ancient allegor-
izing of the Song of Songs. His number-mysticism
and his speech-idealism reappear more crudely, but
not obscurely, in their ideas of creative letters, of
which the cosmogony by the twenty-two letters of
the Hebrew alphabet in the Sefer Yezirah is typical.
Finally, his teachings of ecstasy and Divine possession
are repeated in divers ways in their descriptions of
the pious life (nurwn).
Philo, indeed, viewed from the Jewish standpoint,
is the Hellenizer not only of the law but also of
the Cabbalah, the philosophical adapter of the secret
traditional wisdom of his ancestors. He brings it
into close relation with Platonism and purifies it;
he clears away its anthropomorphisms and supersti-
tious fantasies, or rather he raises them into idealistic
conceptions and sublime exaltations of the soul. By
his deep knowledge of the intellectual ideas of Greece
he refined the strange compound of lofty imagination
and popular fancy, and raised it to a higher value.
Plato and the Cabbalah represent the same mystic
spirit in different degrees of intellectual sublimity
and religious aspiration; Philo endeavored to unite
the two manifestations. He lived in a markedly non-
rational age given over to mystical speculation; and
Alexandria especially, by her cosmopolitan character,
" furnished the soil and seed which formed the mys-
tic philosophy that knew how to blend the wisdom and
236 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
folly of the ages." * Through the mass of apocalyptic
literature that was poured forth in the first centuries
of the common era, through the later books of the
Apocrypha, through the Sefer Yezirah of the ninth
and the Zohar of the thirteenth century, and through
the vast literature inspired by these books, run the
ideas that composed Philo's mystic theology. Philo
himself was unknown, but his religious interpretation
of Platonism had entered into the world's thought,
and inspired the mystics of his own race as well as of
the Christian world.
After a thousand years of Latin domination the
Renaissance revived the study of Greek in Western
Europe, and to the most cultured of his race Philo
was no longer a sealed book. The first Jewish writer
to show an intimate acquaintance with him and a
clear idea of his relation to Jewish tradition was Aza-
riah dei Rossi, who lived in the sixteenth century.
His " Meor Einayim " dealt largely with the Hellenis-
tic epoch of Judaism, and its attitude towards it is
summed up in the remark that " all that is good in
Philo agrees with our law/' J He pointed out many
instances of agreement, and some of disagreement, but
he objected in general to the allegorizing of the his-
torical parts of the Torah and to the absence of the
traditional interpretations in Philo's commentaries.
He shared largely the rabbinical attitude and could
not give an independent historical appreciation of
T Comp. Hort, Introduction to Clement's Irp&ytamf.
*Ed. Cassel, pp. 4 and 15".
PHILO AND JEWISH TKADITION 237
Philo's work. That was not to come for two hundred
years more. To Dei Eossi we owe the Jewish transla-
tion of Philo's name, mjo^K rrYT .* To the outer
world Philo was " the Jew " ; to his own people, " the
Alexandrian."
As soon as Greek was reintroduced into the schol-
arly world, Philo began to reassert an important in-
fluence on theology. One remarkable school of Eng-
lish mystics and religious philosophers, the Cambridge
Platonists, who wrote during the seventeenth century,
founded upon him their method and also their gen-
eral attitude to philosophy. 1 They were Christian
neo- Platonists, who looked for spiritual allegories in
the Old and New Testaments, and combined the
teachings of Jesus with the emotional idealism of the
Alexandrian interpreters of Plato. They affirmed
enthusiastically God's revelation to the universe and
to individual man through the Logos. Their imita-
tion of Philo's allegorism serves to mark the impor-
tant place that he occupied in the learned world dur-
ing the seventeenth century; and supports, however
slightly, the suggestion that he influenced, directly or
indirectly, the supreme Jewish philosopher of the age,
Baruch de Spinoza. That he was well known in Hol-
land at the time is shown in divers ways. He is
quoted by the famous jurist Grotius in his book
which founded the science of international law; he
is quoted and criticised, as we have seen, by Scaliger ;
1 Comp. Imre Binah. Meor Einayim, ch. 30.
1 Comp. J. A. Stewart, " Myths of Plato," ad fin.
238 PHILO-JUD.ETJS OF ALEXANDRIA
and curiously enough, his name, " Philo-Judaeus,"
is applied by Rembrandt to the portrait of his own
father, now in the Ferdinandeum at Innsbruck. It
is tempting to conjecture that there was a direct
connection between the Jewish philosophers of the
ancient and the modern world. Whether it existed
or not, there is certainly kinship in their ideas. Spi-
noza does actually refer in one place, in his " The-
ologicc-Political Tractate" (ch. x), to the opinion
of Philo-Judseus upon the date of Psalm Ixxxviii, and
there are other places in the same book, where he al-
most echoes the words of the Jewish Platonist; as
where he speaks of God's eternal Word being divinely
inscribed in the human mind : " And this is the true
original of God's covenant, stamped with His own
seal, namely, the idea of Himself, as it were, with the
image of His Godhead" (iv) ; or, again, "The
supreme reward for keeping God's Word is that Word
itself." Spinoza knew no Greek, but, master as he was
of Christian theology, he may have studied Philo in
a Latin translation, and caught some of his phrases.
With or without influence, he developed, as Philo had
done, a system of philosophy, starting from the He-
brew conception of God and blending Jewish tradition
with scientific metaphysics. The Unity of God and
His sole reality were the fundamental principles of
his thought, as they had been of Philo's. He re-
jected, indeed, with scorn the notion that all philos-
ophy must be deduced from the Bible, which was to
him a book of moral and religious worth, but free from
PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION 239
all philosophical doctrine. Theology, the subject of
the Bible, according to him, demands perfect obedi-
ence, philosophy perfect knowledge. 1 Both alike are
saving, but the spheres of the two are distinct: and
Moses and the prophets excel in law and imagination,
not in reason and reflection. Hence Spinoza ap-
proached the Bible from the critical standpoint;
and, on the other hand, he approached philosophy
with a free mind searching for truth, independent
of religious dogmatism, and he was, therefore, the
founder of modern philosophy. None the less his
view of the universe is an intellectual expression of
the Hebraic monotheism, which unites a religious with
a scientific monism. He regards God as the only
reality, sees and knows all things in Him, and deduces
all things from His attributes, which are the incom-
plete representations that man makes of His true na-
ture; he explains all thought, all movement, and all
that seems material as the working of His modes ; and,
finally, he places as the end of man's intellectual pro-
gress and the culmination of his moral life the love of
God. In truth, Jewish philosophy has its unity
and its special stamp, no less than Jewish religion and
tradition, from which it receives its nurture. Thrice
it has towered up in a great system : through Philo in
the classical, through Maimonides in the mediaeval,
through Spinoza in the modern world. In the Renais-
sance of Jewish learning during the nineteenth cen-
1 Comp. " Theologico-Political Tractate " XV.
240 PHILO-JUTL-EUS OF ALEXANDEIA
tury, Philo was at last studied and interpreted by
scholars of his own people. The first modern writer
to reveal the philosophy of Jewish history was Nach-
man Krochmal (1785-1840), and his posthumous
Hebrew book, "The Guide of the Perplexed of the
Time," edited by Zunz, contained the first critical ap-
preciation of the Hellenistic Jewish culture by a rab-
binic scholar. He knew no Greek, but he studied the
works of German writers, and in his account of Philo
gives a summary of the remarks of the theologian
Neander, himself a baptized Jew. In his own criti-
cism he discerns the weakness and strength of Philo
from the Jewish aspect. " There are," he says, " many
strange things in Philo's exegesis, not only because
he draws far-fetched allegories from the text, but also
because he interprets single words without a sure
foundation in Hebrew philology. He uses Scripture
as a sort of clay which he moulds to convey his philo-
sophical ideas. Yet we must be grateful to him be-
cause many of his interpretations are beautiful orna-
ments to the text; and we may apply to them what
Ibn Ezra said of the teachings of the Haggadah,
' Some of them are fine silks, others as heavy as sack-
cloth/"
Krochmal translated into Hebrew examples of
Philo's allegories and gave parallels and contrasts from
the Talmud. The relation between the Palestinian
and the Alexandrian exegesis was more elaborately
considered by a greater master of Hellenistic litera-
241
ture, Zacharias Frankel (1801-1875), who has been
followed by a band of Jewish scholars. Yearly our
understanding of the Alexandrian culture becomes
fuller. Philo, too, has in part been translated into
Hebrew. Indirect in the past, his influence on Jewish
thought in the future bids fair to be direct and
increasing.
16
VIII
THE INFLUENCE OF PHILO
The hope which Philo had cherished and worked for
was the spreading of the knowledge of God and the
diffusion of the true religion over the whole world. 1
The end of Jewish national life was approaching, but
rabbis in Palestine and philosophers at Alexandria,
unconscious of the imminent doom, thought that the
promise of the prophet was soon to be fulfilled, and
all peoples would go up to worship the one God at the
temple upon Mount Zion, which should be the re-
ligious centre of the world. In Philo's day a uni-
versal Judaism seemed possible, a Judaism true to
the Torah as well as to the Unity of God,' spread
over the Megalopolis of all peoples; and in the light
of this hope Philo welcomed proselytism. The Jews
had a clear mission ; they were to be the light of the
world, because they alone of all peoples had perceived
God. Israel (Stotsr), to repeat Philo's etymology, is
the man who beholds God, and through him the other
nations were to be led to the light. The mission of
Israel was not a passive service, but an active preach-
ing of God's word, and an active propagation of God's
law to the Gentile. He must welcome the stranger
1 Comp. De Humanitate II. 395.
De V. Mos. II. 1-5.
THE INFLUENCE OF PHILO 243
that came within the gates. 1 Philo struggled against
the separative and exclusive tendency which charac-
terized a section of his race. He laid stress upon the
valuelessness of birth, and the saving power of God's
grace to the pagan who has come to recognize Him,
in language which Christian commentators call in-
credible in a Jew, but which was in fact typical of
the common feeling at Alexandria. Appealing to the
Gentiles, Philo declared that " God has special regard
for the proselyte, who is in the class of the weak and
humble together with the widow and orphan 1 ; for
he may be alienated from his kindred when he is con-
verted to the honor of the one true God, and aban-
dons idolatrous, polytheistic worship, but God is all
the more his advocate and helper/' And speaking to
the Jews he says : * " Kinship is not measured by
blood alone when truth is the judge, but by likeness
of conduct and by the pursuit of the same objects."
Similarly, in the Midrash, it is said that proselytes
are as dear to God as those who were born Jews; 4
and, again, that the Torah was given to Israel for the
benefit of all peoples ; 6 or * that the purpose of Israel's
dispersion was that they might make proselytes.
Philo's short treatise on " Nobility " is an eloquent
1 Comp. De Hon. II. 6.
2 De Just. 6.
8 Comp. De Nobilitate 6.
4 Bamidbar Rabba 8.
Tanhuma to Debarim.
" Comp. Pesahim 87".
244 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDKIA
plea for the equal treatment of the stranger who
joins the true faith; and the author finds in the
Bible narratives support for his thesis, that not good
birth but the virtue of the individual is the true test
of merit. Of the valuelessness of the one, Cain, Ham,
and Esau are types; of the supreme worth of the
other, Abraham, who is set up as the model of the
excellent man brought up among idolaters, but led
by the Divine oracle, revealed to his mind, to embrace
the true idea of God. If the founder of the Hebrew
nation was himself a convert, then surely there was a
place within the religion for other converts. Ee-
markable is the closing note of the book :
" We should, therefore, blame those who spuriously ap-
propriate as their own merit what they derive from
others, good birth; and they should justly be regarded as
enemies not only of the Jewish race, but of all mankind;
of the Jewish race, because they engender indifference
in their brethren, so that they despise the righteous life
in their reliance upon their ancestors' virtue; and of the
Gentiles, because they would not allow them their meed
of reward even though they attain to the highest excel-
lence of conduct, simply because they have not com-
mendable ancestors. I know not if there could be a
more pernicious doctrine than this: that there is no
punishment for the wicked offspring of good parents, and
no reward for the good offspring of evil parents. The
law judges each man upon his own merit, and does not
assign praise or blame according to the virtues of the
forefathers."
And, again, he writes : " God judges by the fruit
of the tree, not by the root; and in the Divine judg-
THE INFLUENCE OF PHILO 245
ment the proselyte will be raised on high, and he will
have a double distinction, because on earth he ' de-
serted ' to God, and later he receives as his reward a
place in Heaven/' 1
Unfortunately, the development of missionizing
activity, which followed Philo's epoch, threatening, as
it did, the fundamental principles of Judaism, neces-
sitated the reassertion of its national character and
antagonism to an attitude which sought expansion
by compromise. It is the tragedy of Philo's work that
his mission to the nations was of necessity distrusted
by his own race, and that his appeal for tolerance
within the community was turned to a mockery by the
hostility which the converts of the next century
showed to the national ideas. Christian apologists
early learned to imitate Philo's allegorical method,
and appropriated it to explain away the laws of Moses.
Within a hundred years of Philo's death, his ideal,
at least in the form in which he had conceived it,
had been shattered for ages. While he was preaching
a philosophical Judaism for the world at Alexandria,
Peter and Paul were preaching through the Diaspora
an heretical Judaism for the half-converted Gentiles.
The disciples of Jesus spread his teaching far and
wide ; but they continually widened the breach which
their Master had himself initiated, and so their
work became, not so much a development of Juda-
ism, as an attack upon it. In some of its principles,
l De Exsecr. 6. II. 433.
246 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
indeed, the message of Jesus was the message of
Philo, emphasizing, as it did, the broad principles of
morality and the need of an inner godliness. But
it was fundamentally differentiated by a doctrine of
God and the Messiah which was neither Jewish nor
philosophical, and by the breaking away from the
law of Moses, which cut at the roots of national life.
Whatever the moral worth of the preaching of Jesus,
it involved and involves the overthrow of the Jewish
attitude to life and religion, which may be expressed
as the sanctification of ordinary conduct, and as
morality under the national law. To this ideal Philo
throughout was true, and the Christian teachers were
essentially opposed, and however much they approxi-
mated to his method and utilized his thought, they
were always strangers to his spirit. Philo's philos-
ophy was in great part a philosophy of the law; the
Patristic school borrowed his allegorizing method and
produced a philosophy of religious dogma! Those
who spread the Christian doctrine among the Hel-
lenized peoples and the sophisticated communities
that dwelt round the Mediterranean found it neces-
sary to explain and justify it by the metaphysical
and ethical catchwords of the day, and in so doing
they took Philo as their model. They followed both
in general and in detail his allegorical interpretations
in their recommendation of the Old Testament to
the more cultured pagans, as the apology of Justin,
the commentaries of Origen, and the philosophical
miscellany ( IrptiJ.ar't<; ) of Clement abundantly show.
THE INFLUENCE OF PHILO 247
Certain parts of the New Testament itself exhibit
the combination of Hebraism and Hellenism which
characterizes the work of Philo. In the sayings of
Jesus we have the Hebraic strain, but in Luke and
John and the Epistles the mingling of cultures. Thus
the Apostles seem to some the successors of Philo, and
the Epistles the lineal descendants of the " Allegories
of the Laws." In the Fourth Gospel and the Epistle
to the Hebrews especially the correspondence is
striking. But there is, in fact, despite much that is
common, a great gulf between them. The later mis-
sionaries oppose the national religion and the Torah :
Philo was pre-eminently their champion.
The most commanding of the Apostles, Paul of
Tarsus, when he took the new statement of Judaism
out of the region of spirit and tried to shape it into
a definite religion for the world, "forgot the rock from
which he was hewn." As a modern Jewish theolo-
gian says, 1 " His break with the past is violent ; Jesus
seemed to expand and spiritualize Judaism ; Paul in
some senses turns it upside down." His work may
have been necessary to bring home the Word to the
heathen, but it utterly breaks the continuity of devel-
opment. Paul himself was little of a philosopher, and
those to whom he preached were not usually philo-
sophical communities such as Philo addressed at
Alexandria, but congregations of half converted, su-
perstitious pagans. The philosophical exposition of
Monteflore, Jewish Quarterly Review, VI, p.
423.
248 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDKIA
the law was too difficult for them, while the ob-
servance of the law in its strictness demanded too
great a sacrifice. The spiritual teaching of Jesus
was dissociated by his Apostle from its source, and
the break with Judaism was deliberate and com-
plete. The fanatical zest of the missionary dominated
him, and he proclaimed distinctly where the new He-
braism which was offered to the Gentile should de-
part from the historic religion of the Jews : " For
Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to
everyone that believeth," 1 he says to the Eomans;
and to the Galatians : " As many as are of the works
of the law are under the curse." * " Christ hath re-
deemed us from the curse of the law .... But be-
fore faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up
with the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us
unto Christ that we might be justified by faith. But
after that faith is come, we are no longer under a
schoolmaster." Paul's position then and he is the
forerunner of dogmatic Christianity involved a re-
jection of the Torah; and it is this which above all
else constituted his cleavage from both Judaism and
the Philonic presentation of it.
Philo is commonly regarded as the forerunner of
Christian teaching, and it is doubtless true that he
suggested to the Church Fathers parts of their the-
ology, and represented also the missionary spirit
1 Epistle to the Romans V.
'Epistle to the Galatians III. 10.
THE INFLUENCE OF PHILO 249
which inspired the teaching of some Apostles. But it
must be clearly understood that he shared still more
the spirit of Hillel, whose maxim was " to love thy
fellow-creatures and draw them near to the Torah,"
and that he would have been fundamentally opposed to
the new missionary attitude of Paul. The doctrines
of the Epistle to the Romans, or the Epistle to the
Ephesians, are absolutely antipathetic to the ideal of
the " Allegories of the Laws." Paul is allied in spirit
though his expression is that of the fanatic rather
than of the philosopher to the extreme allegorist
section of philosophical Jews at Alexandria, attacked
by Philo for their shallowness in the famous passage,
quoted from De Migrations Abrahami (ch. 16 *),
who, because they recognized the spiritual meaning
of the law, rejected its literal commands ; because they
saw that circumcision symbolized the abandonment
of the sensual life, no longer observed the ceremony.
The same antinomian spirit is shown in the Epistle
to the Galatians by the allegory of the children whom
Abraham had by Hagar the bondwoman and Sarah
the free wife : " For there are the two covenants, the
one from the mount of Sinai which gendereth to bond-
age, which is Hagar But we, brethren, as
Isaac was, are the children of promise." To Philo
the law and the observance of the letter were the high-
road to freedom and the Divine spirit, and, remaining
loyal to the Jewish conception of religion, for all his
Comp. Chapter IV, above, p. 126.
250 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDKIA
philosophical outlook., he said : " The rejection of
the NO/MS will produce chaos in our lives." To Paul
the law was an obstacle to the spread of religious truth
and a fetter to the spiritual life of the individual.
It is possible that an extremist section of the Jews
pressed the letter of the law to excess, so as to lose its
spirit, but the opposite excess, into which Paul
plunged the new faith, was as narrow. It involved a
glorification of belief, which did not imply any
relation to conduct. Philo had pleaded no less earn-
estly than the Apostle for the reliance upon grace
and the saving virtue of faith, but he did not there-
fore absolve men from the law which made for right-
eousness. 1 And lest it be thought that the stress laid
upon faith was peculiar to Hellenizing Judaism, we
have only to note such passages as Dr. Schechter has
adduced from the early Midrash on the rabbinic con-
ception.* " Great was the merit of faith which Israel
put in God ; for it was by the merit of this faith that
the Holy Spirit came over them, and they said the
nvty, (i. e., the Song of Moses) to God, as it is said,
' And they believed in the Lord and His servant
Moses. Then sang Moses and the children of Israel
this song unto the Lord.' " Or again 8 and the
passage reminds us still more strongly of both Philo
and Christian Gospel " Our Father Abraham came
l De Abr. 46.
* Comp. Schechter, op. cit., Introduction.
* Comp. Mekilta 33*, ed. Friedmann.
THE INFLUENCE OF PHILO 251
into the possession of this world and the world here-
after only by the merit of his faith."
What is new in the Christian position is not the
magnifying of faith; it is the severance of faith from
the law and the particular faith which is magnified.
Philo, and the rabbis, too, believed that faith was the
goal of virtue, and the culmination of the moral life;
but faith to them implied the sanctification of the
whole of life, the love of God " shown in obedience to
a law of conduct." Paul, however, hating the law,
set up a new faith in the saving power of Jesus
and in certain beliefs about him, which afterwards
were crystallized, or petrified, into merciless dogmas,
contrary alike to the Jewish ideas of God and of life.
The new religion, when it was denationalized, inevi-
tably became ecclesiastical: for as the national regu-
lation of life was rejected, in order to ensure some
kind of uniformity, it had to bind its members to-
gether by definite articles of belief imposed by a cen-
tral authority. The true alternative was not between a
legal and a spiritual religion for every religion must
have some external rule but between a law of con-
duct and a law of belief. Philo and the rabbis chose
the former way; Paul and the Church, the latter.
Christian theology, no less than the Christian concep-
tion of religion, exhibits also a complete breach with
the Jewish spirit of Philo. In the Epistles there are,
indeed, in many places doctrines of the Logos in the
same images and the same Hebraic metaphors as
Philo had worked into his system; but their purport
252 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
is entirely changed by association with new un-Jewish
dogmas. Philo, allegorizing, 1 had seen the holy Word
typified in the high priest, and in Melchizedek, the
priest of the Most High; he had called it the son
of God and His first-born. Paul, dogmatizing, ex-
alts Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, above Mel-
chizedek and the high priest, and calls on the Hebrews
to gain salvation by faith in the son of God, who died
on behalf of the sinful human race. Philo, in his
poetic fancy, speaks of God associating with the virgin
soul and generating therein the Divine offspring of
holy wisdom; 1 the Christian creed-makers enun-
ciated the irrational dogma of the immaculate con-
ception of Jesus. So, too, the earliest philosophical
exponents of Christianity, Clement of Alexandria,
and Origen, may have derived many of their detailed
ideas from Philo, but they converted one might
rather say perverted his monotheistic theology into
a dogmatic trinitarianism. They exalted the Logos, to
Philo the " God of the imperfect," and a second-best
Deity, to an equal place with the perfect God. For
man, indeed, he was nearer and the true object of
human adoration. And this not only meant a de-
parture from Judaism; it meant a departure from
philosophy. The supreme unity of the pure reason
was sacrificed no less than the unity of the soaring
religious imagination. The one transcendental God
1 Comp. L. A. III. 26, and Chapter V, above, p. 154.
*De Cherubim 12.
253
became again, as He had been to the Greek theolo-
gians, an inscrutable impersonal power, who was
unknown to man and ruled over the universe by His
begotten son, the Logos. The sublimity of the He-
brew conception, which combines personality with
unity, was lost, and the harmony of the intellectual
and emotional aspirations achieved by Philo was
broken straightway by those who professed to follow
him. The skeleton of his thought was clothed with
a body wherein his spirit could never have dwelt. It
was the penalty which Philo paid for vagueness of
expression and luxuriance of words that his works
became the support of doctrines which he had com-
bated, the guide of those who were opposed to his
life's ideal.
The experience of the Church showed how right
was Philo's judgment when he declared that the re-
jection of the Torah would produce chaos. The
fourth and fifth centuries exhibit an era of unparal-
leled disorder and confusion in the religious world, 1
sect struggling with sect, creed with creed, churches
rising and falling, dogmas set up by councils and
forced upon men's souls at the point of the Roman
sword ! And out of this straggling mass of beliefs and
fancies, theologies and superstitions, sects and polit-
ical forces, there arose a tyrannical, dogmatic Church
which laid far heavier burthens on men's minds than
ever the most ruthless Pharisee of the theologian's
1 Comp. Gibbon, " Decline of the Roman Empire," ch.
15.
254 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
imagination had laid upon their body and spirit.
The yoke of the law of Moses, sanctifying the life, had
been broken; the fiat of popes and the decrees of
synods were the saving beliefs which ensured the
Kingdom of Heaven! Was it to this that the alle-
gorizing of the law, the search for the spirit beneath
the letter, the reinterpretation of the holy law of
Moses in the light of philosophical reason, had
brought Judaism ? And was the association of Jewish
religion with Greek philosophy one long error ? That
would be a hard conclusion, if we had to admit that
Judaism cannot stand the test of contact with for-
eign culture. But in truth the Hellenistic interpre-
tation of the Bible, so long as it was genuinely philo-
sophical, remained loyal to Judaism. Only when it
became hardened into dogma, fixed not only as good
doctrine, but as the only saving doctrine, as the tree
of life opposed to the Torah, the tree of death only
then did it become anti-Jewish, and appear as a bas-
tard offspring of the Hebraic God-idea and Greek
culture. Nor should it be forgotten that the Chris-
tian theology and the Christian conception of religion
are a falling away also from the highest Hellenic ideas ;
for to Plato as well God was a purely spiritual unity,
and religion " a system of morality based upon a law
of conduct and touched with emotion." In Philo, as
we have seen, the Hebraic and Hellenic conceptions
of God touch at their summits in their noblest ex-
pressions; the conceptions of Plato are interfused
with the imagination of the prophets. The Christian
THE INFLUENCE OF PHILO 255
theology was a descent to a commoner Hellenism
or one should rather call it a commoner syncretism
as well as to an easier, impurer Hebraism.
It must not be put down to the fault of the Septua-
gint or the allegorists or Philo that the Alexandrian
development of Judaism led on to Koman Chris-
tianity. It is to be ascribed rather to the infirmity
of human nature, which requires the ideas of its in-
spired teachers and peoples to be brought down to
the common understanding, and causes the progress
towards universal religion to be a slow growth. The
masses of the Alexandrian Jews in his own day cannot
have grasped his teaching; for Philo, to some de-
gree, lived in a narrow world of philosophical ideal-
ism, and he did not calculate the forces which op-
posed and made impossible the spread of his faith in
its integrity. He was aiming at what was and must
for long remain unattainable the establishment
among the peoples of philosophical monotheism.
No man is a prophet in his own land or in his
own time and because Philo has in him much of the
prophet, he seems to have failed. But it is the burden
of our mission to sow in tears that we may reap in
joy. And the work of the Alexandrian-Jewish school
may be sad from one aspect of Jewish history, but it
is nevertheless one of the dominating incidents of our
religious annals. It did not succeed in bringing over
the world to the pure idea of God, but it did help in
undermining cruder paganism. It brought the nations
nearer to God, and it introduced Hebraism into the
256 PHILO-JUIXETTS OF ALEXANDRIA
thought of the Western peoples. It marked, there-
fore, a great step in the religious work of Israel; yet
by the schools of rabbis who felt the hard hand of
its offspring upon their people it was regarded as a
long misfortune, to be blotted from memory. What
seemed so ominous to them was that the annihilation
of the nation came at the same time as the cleavage
in the religion. Judaism seemed attacked no less by
internal foes than by external calamity; and was
likely to perish altogether or to drift into a lower
conception of God, unless it could find some stalwart
defence. Hence they insisted on the extension of the
fence of the law, and abandoned for centuries the
mission of the Jews to the outer world. This was
the true Galut, or exile; not so much the political
exclusion from the land of their fathers, but the en-
forced exclusion from the mission of the prophets.
Philo is one of the brightest figures of a golden age
of Jewish expansion, which passed away of a sudden,
and has never since returned. In the silver and
bronze ages which followed, his place in Judaism was
obscured. But this age of ours, which boasts of its
historical sense, looking back over the centuries and
freed from the bitter dismay of the rabbis, can ap-
praise his true worth and see in him one who realized
for himself all that Judaism and Jewish culture could
and still can be.
Some Jewish teachers have thought that Philo'a
work was a failure, others that it provides a warning
rather than an example for later generations of Jews,
THE INFLUENCE OF PHILO 257
proving the mischief of expanding Judaism for the
world. As well one might say that Isaiah's prophecy
was a calamity, because the Christian synoptics
used his words as evidences of Christianity. What
is universal in Jewish literature is in the fullest
sense Jewish, and we should beware of renouncing
our inheritance because others have abused and per-
verted it. Other critics, again, say that Philo is weari-
some and prolix, artificial and sophisticated. There
is certainly some truth in this judgment; but Philo
has many beautiful passages which compensate. Part
of his message was for his own generation and the
Alexandrian community, and with the passing away of
the Hellenistic culture it has lost its attraction. But
part of it is of universal import, and is very pertinent
and significant for every generation of Jews which,
enjoying social and intellectual emancipation, lives
amid a foreign culture. Doubtless the position of
Philo and the Alexandrian community was to some
extent different from that of the Jews at any time
since the greater Diaspora that followed the destruc-
tion of the temple. They had behind them a national
culture and a centre of Jewish life, religious and so-
cial, which was a powerful influence in civilization
and united the Jews in every land. And this gave a
catholicity to their development and a standard for
their teaching which the scattered communities of
Jews to-day do not possess. None the less Philo's
ideal of Judaism as religion and life is an ideal for
our time and for all time. Its keynote is that Israel
17
258 PHILO-JUD^US OF ALEXANDRIA
is a holy people, a kingdom of priests, which has a
special function for humanity. And the performance
of this function demands the religious-philosophical
ordering of life. From the negative side Philo stands
for the struggle against Epicureanism, which in other
words is the devotion to material pleasures and sen-
sual enjoyments. In adversity, as he notes, the race
is truest to its ideals, but as soon as the breeze of pros-
perity has caught its sails, then it throws overboard
all that ennobles life. The hedonist whom he attacks,
like the Epicuros ( Dmp'SK) of the rabbis, is not the
banal thinker of one particular age, but a permanent
type in the history of our people. We seem to spend
nearly all our moral strength in the resistance of per-
secution, and with tranquillity from without comes
degradation within. Emancipation, which should be
but a means to the realization of the higher life, is
taken as an end, and becomes the grave of idealism.
With a reiteration that becomes almost wearisome, but
which is the measure of the need for the warning,
Philo protests against this desecration of life, of lib-
erty, and of Judaism. His position is, that a free and
cultured Jewry must pursue the mission of Israel
alike by the example of the righteous life devoted to
the service of God, and by the preaching of God's
revealed word. This is his " burden of the word of
the Lord " to the worldly-wise and the materialists of
civilized Alexandria and to Jews of other lands.
From the positive side Philo stands for the spir-
itual significance of the religion. Judaism, which
THE INFLUENCE OF PHILO 259'
lays stress upon the law, the ceremonial, and the cus-
toms of our forefathers, is threatened at times with
the neglect of the inward religion and the hardness
of legalism. Not that the law, when it is understood,
kills the spirit or fetters the feelings, but a formal
observance and an unenlightened insistence upon the
letter may crush the soul which good habits should nur-
ture. Eeligion at its highest must be the expression of
the individual soul within, not the acceptance of a law
from without. Although Philo's estimate of the
Torah is from the historical and philological stand-
point uncritical, in the religious sense it is finely
critical inasmuch as it searches out true values. Philo
looks in every ordinance of the Bible for the spiritual
light and conceives the law as an inspiration of spir-
itual truth and the guide to God, or, as he puts it
sometimes, " the mystagogue to divine ecstasy." For
the crown of life to him is the saint's union with God.
In mysticism religion and philosophy blend, for mys-
ticism is the philosophical form of faith. Just as the
Torah to Philo has an outward and an inward mean-
ing, so, too, has the religion of the Torah; and the
outward Judaism is the symbol, the necessary bodily
expression of the inward, even as the words of Moses
are the symbol, the suggestive expression of the
deeper truth behind them. Yet mystic and spiritual
as he is, Philo never allows religion to sink into mere
spirituality, because he has a true appreciation and a
real love for the law. The Torah is the foundation of
Judaism, and one of the three pillars of the universe,
260 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
as the rabbis said; and neither the philosopher nor
the mystic in Philo ever causes him to forget that
Judaism is a religion of conduct as well as of belief,
and that the law of righteousness is a law which must
be practiced and show itself in active life. He holds
fast, moreover, to the catholicity of Judaism, which
restrains the individual from abrogating observance
till the united conscience of the race calls for it;
unless progress comes in this ordered way, the re-
former will produce chaos.
Philo is conservative then in practice, but he is pre-
eminently liberal in thought. The perfect example
himself of the assimilation of outside culture, he de-
mands that Judaism shall always seek out the fullest
knowledge, and in the light of the broadest culture of
the age constantly reinterpret its religious ideas and
its holy books. Above all it must be philosophical,
for philosophy is "the breath and finer spirit of all
knowledge," and it vivifies the knowledge of God as
well as the knowledge of human things. Without it
religion becomes bigoted, faith obscurantist, and cere-
mony superstitious. But the Jew does not merely
borrow ideas or accept his philosophy ready-made
from his environment; he interprets it afresh accord-
ing to his peculiar God-idea and his conception of
God's relation to man, and thereby makes it a gen-
uine Jewish philosophy, forming in each age a special
Jewish culture. And as religion without philosophy
is narrow, so, to Philo, philosophy without religion
is barren; remote from the true life, and failing in
THE INFLUENCE OF PHILO 261
the true purpose of the search for wisdom, which is
to raise man to his highest function. Philosophy,
then, is not the enemy of the Torah: it is its true
complement, endowing it with a deeper meaning and
a pro founder influence. Thus the saying runs in the
" Ethics of the Fathers,"
mm }-N ns:>n p* DK irmn |-K mm yx DK,
" If there is no Torah, there is no wisdom ; if there is
no wisdom, there is no Torah." The thought that
study of the law is essential to Judaism Philo shares
with the rabbis, and the Torah is in his eyes Israel's
great heritage, not only her literature but her life.
As Saadia said later, 1 " This nation is only a na-
tion by reason of its Torah." It is because Philo
starts from this conviction that his mission is so
striking, and its results so tragical. The Judaism
which he preached to the pagan world was no food
for the soul with the strength taken out to ren-
der it more easily assimilated. He emphasizes its
spiritual import, he shows its harmony, as the age
demanded, with the philosophical and ethical con-
ceptions of the time, but he steadfastly holds aloft,
as the standard of humanity, the law of Moses. The
reign of " one God and one law " seemed to him not
a far-off Divine event, but something near, which
every good Jew could bring nearer. He was op-
pressed by no craven fear of Jewish distinctiveness ;
and the Biblical saying that Israel was a chosen peo-
>m;ni nuioK ni.
262 PHILO-JUD^EUS OF ALEXANDRIA
pie was real to him and moved him to action. It
meant that Israel was essentially a religious nation,
nearer God, and possessed of the Divine law of life,
and that it had received the Divine bidding to spread
the truth about God to all the world. It was a creed
and more, it was an inspiration which constantly
impelled to effort. It would be difficult to sum up
Philo's message to his people better than by the
verses in Deuteronomy which he, the interpreter of
God's Word and the successor of Moses, as he loved
to consider himself, proclaims afresh to his own age,
and beyond it to the congregation of Jacob in all
ages, " Keep therefore my commandments and do
them ; for this is your wisdom and your understand-
ing in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all
these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a
wise and understanding people.
" For what nation is there so great, who hath God
so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all
things that we call upon Him for?
" And what nation is there so great that hath stat-
utes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which
I set before you this day? " (Deut. iv. 5-7).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following are the chief works which have been
consulted and are recommended to the student of Philo:
The standard edition of Philo is still that of Thomas
Mangey, Philonis Judcei opera quce reperiri potuerunt
omnia." 1742. Londiai.
A far more accurate and critical edition, which is
provided with introductory essays and notes upon the
sources of Philo, is in course of publication for the
Berlin Academy, by Dr. Leopold Cohn and Dr. Paul Wend-
land. The first five volumes have already appeared, and
the remainder may be expected before long. The only
complete edition which contains the Latin text of the
Quaestiones as well as the Greek works is that published
by Tauchnitz in eight volumes; but the text is not
reliable.
There is an English translation of Philo's works in
the Bohn Library (G. Bell & Sons) by C. D. Yonge (4
vols.), but it is neither accurate nor neat. The same may
be said of the German translation of Jost, but an ad-
mirable German version edited by Dr. L. Cohn is now
appearing, which contains notes of the parallel passages
in rabbinic and patristic literature.
Works bearing on Philo and his period generally:
Schiirer, " History of the Jewish People at the Time
of Jesus Christ " (English translation).
Siegfried, Philo von Alexandrien als Ausleger der
heiligen Schrift.
Zeller, Geschichte der Philosophic der Griechen, vol.
Ill, sec. 2.
Drummond, " Philo-Judaeus and the Jewish Alexandrian
School." 2 vols. (London.)
Herriot, Philon le Juif.
Vacherot, Ecole d'Alexandrie, vol. I.
Eusebius, Prceparatio Evangelica. ed. Gilford.
Freudenthal, J., Hellenistische Studien.
264 BIBLIOGKAPHY
Harnack, " History of Dogma," vol. I.
Josephus, "Wars of the Jews"; "Antiquities of the
Jews."
Mommsen, Th., " The Roman Provinces."
Works bearing on the special subjects of the different
chapters :
I. THE JEWISH COMMUNITY AT ALEXANDRIA.
Graetz, "History of the Jews" (Eng. trans.),
vol. II.
Swete, " Introduction to the Septuagint."
Hirsch, S. A., " The Temple of Onias," in the
Jews' College Jubilee Volume.
Friedlander, M. (Vienna), Geschichte der jii-
dischen Apologetik and Religiose Bewegungen-
der Juden im Zeitalter von Jesus.
II. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO
Conybeare, edition of De Vita Contemplativa.
(Oxford.)
Hils, Les juifs en Rome. Revue des Etudes
Juives, vols. 8 and 11.
Reinach, Th6odor, Textes d'auteurs grecs et re-
mains rclatifs au Judaisme.
Br6hier et Massebieau, Essai sur la chronologic
de Philon. Revue de VHistoire des Religions,
1906.
III. PHILO'S WORKS AND METHOD
Hart, J. H. A., " Philo of Alexandria," Jewish
Quarterly Review, vols. XVII and XVIII.
Massebieau, Du classement des oeuvres de
Philon.
Cohn, Leopold, Einteilung und Chronologie der
Schriften Philos.
IV. PHILO AND THE TORAH
Treitel, L., Der Nomos in Philon. Monatsschrift
fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums,
1905.
BIBLIOGRAPHY 265
V. PHILO'S THEOLOGT
Montefiore, C., Florilegium Philonis, Jewish
Quarterly Review, vol. VIII.
Caird, Ed., " Evolution of Theology in the
Greek Philosophers."
Heinze, Die Lehre vom Logos.
Bucher, Philonische Studien.
Von Arnim, Philonische Studien.
VI. PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHER
Freudenthal, Max, Die Erkenntnisstheorie von
Philo.
Bigg, " The Christian neo-Platonists of Alex-
andria."
Bussell, "The School of Plato."
Stewart, J. A., " The Myths of Plato."
Guyot, H., Les reminiscences de Philon chez
Plotin. 1906.
Neumark, Geschichte der judischen Philosophic
des Mittelalters.
VII. PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION
Schechter, " Aspects of Rabbinic Theology."
Taylor, " Ethics of the Fathers."
Ritter, Bernhard, Philo und die Halacha. Bres-
lau, 1879.
Dei Rossi, " Meor Einayim," ed. Cassel.
Krochmal, " Moreh Nebuchei Hazeman," ed.
Zunz.
Frankel, Z., Ueber den Einfluss der paldstinen-
sischen Exegese auf die alexandrinische Herme-
neutik.
Epstein, Le livre des Jubiles, Philon et le Mid-
rasch Tadsche, Revue des Etudes Juives, XXI.
Ginzberg, L., " Allegorical Interpretation," in
Jewish Encyclopedia.
Joel, M., Blicke in die Religionsgeschichte.
Treitel, L., Agadah lei Philo. Monatsschrift
fur Oeschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums,
1909.
ABBREVIATIONS USED FOR THE
REFERENCES
The references to Philo's works are made according to
the chapters in Cohn and Wendland's edition, so far as
it has appeared. In referring to the works which they
have not edited, I have used the pages of Mangey's
edition; but I have frequently mentioned the name of
the treatise in which the passage occurs, as well as the
page-number.
I have employed the following abbreviations in the
references:
L. A. Mil Legum Allegoriae.
De Mundi Op De Mundi Opificio.
De Sacrif De Sacrificiis Abelis.
Quod Det Quod Deterius Potiori Insidiatur.
De Post. C De Posteritate Caini.
De Gigant De Gigantibus.
Quod Deus Quod Deus Sit Immutabilis.
De Agric De Agricultura.
De Plant De Plantatione.
De Ebr De Ebrietate.
De Conf us De Confusione Linguarum.
De Mlgr De Migratione Abraham!.
Quis Rer. Div Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres.
De Cong De Congressu Eruditorum Causa.
De Fuga De Fuga et Inventione.
De Mut. Nom De Mutatione Nominum.
De Somn De Somniis.
De Abr De Vita Abraham!.
De Jos De Vita Josephl.
De V. Mos. . . . De Vita Mosis.
ABBREVIATIONS 267
De Mon De Monarchia.
De Spec. Leg De Specialibus Legibus.
De Sac De Sacerdotum Honoribus et de
Victimis.
De Leg De Legatione ad Gaium.
In Flacc In Flaccum.
De Decal De Decalogo.
De Septen De Septenario.
De Concupisc De Concupiscentia,
De Just De Justitia.
De Exsecr De Exsecrationibus.
Ant Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews,
tr. by Whiston.
Bell. Jud Wars of the Jews.
C. Apion Contra Apionem.
Hist. Ecclesiast Eusebius: Historia Ecclesiastica.
Praep. Evang Eusebius: Praeparatio Evangelica.
Photius, Cod Photius: Codex.
INDEX
Abraham (see Lives of Abraham
and Joseph), 83; model of the
excellent man, 244.
Agrippa (King), Philo's life covers
reign of, 45; Philo in Jerusa-
lem during reign of, 50; ar-
rives at Alexandria, 65; ad-
vanced to Kingdom of Judea,
69; intercedes at Rome for his
people, 69; death of, 70.
Alexander (the Great), a notable
figure in Talmud, 13; settles
Jews in Greek colonies, 14;
result of his work, 23.
Alexander Lysimachus, Alabarch
of Delta region, 46; guardian
of Antony's daughter, 46;
restored to honor after im-
prisonment, 70.
Alexandria, Jewish community at
(see Jewish), 13 ff., 41, 42 f.;
Jewish population of, under
Ptolemy I, 15; meeting-place
of civilizations, 14, 48, 95;
centre of Jewish life, 15, 129;
two sections occupied by
Jews, 16; prosperity of Jews
in, 21, 22, 32; anti-Semitic
literature and influences in,
22, 62, 67, 74; Jewish tradi-
tion at, 27; synagogues at,
37; deputation to Jerusalem
from, 41; rabbis flee to, 42;
Agrippa finds a refuge at, 51,
65; mystical and ascetic ideas
of people at, 55, 59; philo-
sophical schools at, 63, 90, 92,
94, 140; development of Juda-
ism in, 77, 255; Egyptian
caste-system adopted at, 16;
Jews of, popularize teachings
of Bible, 34; Jews of, refer-
red to, in Talmud, 42; Philo
forced into Sanhedrin of, 61,
202, 203 f.; Philo member
of, 61: disintegration of
community at, 71; Zealots
flpc to. on fall of Jerusalem,
71: replaced by Babvlon as
centre of Jewish intellect. 73;
Samaritans in, 106; antino-
mian movement in, 130; pro-
totypes of Christian belief at,
155; Pythagorean influence at,
188; national life and culture
undermined at (see National),
218.
Alexandrian, exegesis, character-
istic of, 36; church, departs
from Jewish standpoint, 72;
Platonists, connection between
Philo and later school of, 192;
schools, relation of, to Pales-
tinian, 199 f., 213; literature
in the Dark and Middle Ages,
225 f.
Allegories of the Laws, an al-
legorical commentary, 74,
87 f.; attacks Stoic doctrines,
94; the Epistles, lineal de-
scendants of, 247.
Angels, doctrine of, in Palestine,
140; Philo's treatment of, 150-
1.
Antiochus Epiphanes, Palestine
passes to, 17.
Anti-Semitic, party, Flaccus won
over by, 65; literature and
influences in Alexandria, 22,
62, 67, 74; party, punishment
of, at Rome, 70.
Apion, a Stoic leader, 63; accuses
Jews, 63, 67; Philo's references
to, 63, 101; Josephus' reply
to, 65.
Aquila, new Greek version of Old
Testament made by, 224; rab-
bis' views of, 224.
Aristeas, spirit of, glorified in
Philo, 77.
Aristobulus, first allegorist of
Alexandria, 38; his spirit in-
herited by Philo, 77; on wis-
dom, 143"; on the Word of
God, 146; difference between
Philo and, 168.
Artapanus, Jewish apologist, 77.
Assouan, Aramaic papyri at, 15.
Babylon, replaces Alexandria as
centre of Jewish intellect, 73;
Greek culture forgotten in,
224.
Bible, the, Philo's interpretation
270
INDEX
and views on, 49, 102, 108 ff . ;
Philo reveals spiritual mes-
sao-e of, 83; authority of,
challenged at Alexandria, 92;
wisdom personified in, 141,
142.
Cabbalah, the, Essenes practi-
tioners in, 233; Philo as the
Hellenizer of, 235.
Caligula. See Gaius.
Chaldean, thought, Philo'9 ac-
quaintance with, 48.
Christian, monastic communities,
73; heresy, a severance from
main community, 72; theolo-
gians, fail to realize spirit of
Philo, 124; reformers, and the
yoke of the law, 130; teachers
preserve Philo's works, 156,
248; writers quote Philo, 223;
apologists imitate allegorical
method, 245.
Christianity, the movement to-
wards, 28; rise of, 42; conflict
with Judaism at Alexandria,
72; Philo's writings regarded
as testimony to, 156; Philo's
influence over religious phil-
osophy of, 193.
Conversion to Judaism, in Egypt
and Rome, 32.
Courage, tractate appended to
Life of Moses, 75.
Creation of the World, descrip-
tion of. 83.
Croiset, criticism of Philo by, 90.
Decalogue, The, contents of, 83.
Derash, Philo a master of, 103.
Dreams of the Bible, classed
with Allegories of the Laws,
74.
Dubnow, on Alexandrian Judaism,
129.
Egypt, Alexander's march to, 14;
settlement of Jews in, 14;
connection between Israel and,
14; visited by Plato, 15, 172;
Diaspora in, after Jeremiah,
15; a favored home of the
Jews, 21; conversion wide-
spread in (see Rome), 32;
Flaccus, governor of, 65;
Jews of, under same rule as
Palpstine Jews, 15.
Egyptian, populace, Philo on, 62:
thought, Philo's acquaintance
with, 48.
Epistles, the Pauline, lineal de-
scendants of Allegories of the
Laws, 247; doctrines of the
Logos in, 250.
Essenes, rise of, 34, 54; account
of, in Philo's works, 78; type
of the philosophical life, 79;
practitioners in the Cabbalah,
233.
Flaccus, won over by Anti-Sem-
ites, 65; indifference of, to
attacks of Jews, 66; recall of,
66; Philo on the persecutions
of, 78.
Frankel Z., writes on Alexandrian-
Jewish culture, 241.
Gaius (Roman Emperor), comes
to the imperial chair, 65;
Jews appeal directly to, 66;
receives Jewish deputation, 67;
death of, 69.
Greek philosophers, Philo's rela-
tion to, 48, 52; philosophy,
Philo's influence on, 49, 191 f. ;
colonies, Alexander settles
Jews in, 14.
Greek culture, various branches
of, 47; the chief schools of, 48,
54; fertilizing influence of
ideas of, 58; and Jewish
Scripture, 76; neglected in
Babylon, 224.
Haggadah, the, in Philo's works,
202, 207 f . ; antiquity of, 209 f. ;
allegorical speculation in, 212.
Halakah, outcome of devotion to
Torah, 99; Palestinian Jews
determine, 105; observance of
oral law standardized in, 126;
relation of Philo to, 202 f. ;
differences between Alexan-
drian Sanhedrin and Pales-
tinian, 203 f. ; codification of,
207.
Hebrew, language, evidence of
Philo's knowledge of, 49; in-
cluded in barbarian languages,
97; Philo's derivations from,
50, 101; race, the three foun-
ders of, 110 f. ; tradition,
Philo follows, 159; mind, Pro-
fessor Caird on, 167.
Hellenism, of Palestine, 24, 25;
of Alexandria (see Greek
culture), 25; influence of, in
Palestine, 51; and the inter-
pretation of the Bible, 254;
INDEX
271
New Testament, a combina-
tion of Hebraism and, 247;
Christian theology a descent
to a commoner, 254.
Hillel, Philo contemporary with,
45; shows expansion of He-
brew mind, 45; on chief les-
Bon of Torah, 117, 118; spirit
of, shared by Philo, 249.
Humanity, tractate appended to
a Life of Hoses, 75.
Incarnation, notion of, not Jew-
ish, 166.
Indian, thought, Philo'a acquaint-
ance with, 48.
Isaac. See Lives of Isaac and
Jacob, 83.
Israel, Philo's derivation of the
name, 50, 133; God's special
providence for, 77; the mis-
sion of, 206, 242.
Italy, Philo visits, 66.
Jacob. See Lives of Isaac and
Jarob, 83.
Jeremiah, prophesies in Egypt,
14; heard by Plato, 15.
Jerusalem, Alexander's visit to,
14; Philo, on national cen-
tre at, 20, 41, 86; spiritual
headship of, 41; special syna-
gogues for Alexandrians in,
41; derivation of name of, 50;
Philo's sojourn at, 50; down-
fall of, 71; Judaism at, 129.
Jesus, spread of his teaching, 245;
his message compared with
that of Philo, 245; preaching
of, effect on Jewish attitude
to life, 246; Paul sets up a
new faith in, 251.
Jewish, community at Alexandria
(see Alexandria), 13 ff., 72;
temple at Elephantine, 15;
kingdom reaches its height,
45; mind, religous conception
of, 49, 137, 166; law and cere-
mony, elucidation of, 49;
race, symbol of the unity of,
51; aspiration toward " free-
dom under the law," 124; in-
fluences, dominant in Philo,
133, 189; philosophy, eclectic,
168; philosophy, new school
of in Middle Ages, 225 f.
Joseph (see Lives of Abraham
and Joseph), 83; as Egyptian
statesman, 23.
Josephus, on Onias and Dositheus,
18; inconsistent accounts of
Onias temple, 19; on Egyptian
Jews, 20; account of Herod's
temple by, 41; writes a reply
to Apion, 65; description of
Gaius' conduct to Jewish
deputation, 68; on the spread-
ing of Judaism, 115; indicates
communication between
schools of Alexandria and
Palestine, 220; relation to
Philo and his works, 222.
Jowett, on sermons, 90.
Judaism, genius of, 46, 196; Phi-
lo's exposition of, 52, 74, 78,
81, 84, 105; Philo protests
against desecration of, 258;
mysticism in, 58; philosophi-
cal, 72, 230; Alexandrian de-
velopment of, 77, 92; moral
teachings of, 85; religion of
the law, 106, 116, 260; Jose-
phus on the spreading of, 115;
a religion of universal validity,
121, 169; at Jerusalem and
Alexandria, 129; catholic con-
science of, 130, 131; Darme-
steter on, 132; Logos doctrine
and, 165; danger of union with
Gentiles to, 206; a national
culture, 219; influences of
Jesus and Paul on, 247; Hel-
lenistic interpretation of the
Bible and, 254.
Judas Maccabaeus, struggles
against Hellenizing party, 18.
Krochmal, Nachman, criticism ot
Philo, 240.
Life of Moses, contents of, 75,
79 f. ; an attempt to set mono-
theism before the world, 80;
tractates appended to, 75.
Lives of Abraham and Joseph,
description of, 83.
Lives of Isaac and Jacob, con-
tents of, 83.
Logos, 143 ff. ; its relation to God's
Providence, 143; meaning of,
144-164, 148; Aristobulus on,
146; regarded as the effluence
of God, 149; spoken of as a
person, 156; the soul, an im-
age of, 178; development of
Philo's doctrine of, 192.
272
INDEX
Maimonides, object of his Moreh,
91; principles of, 99, 229;
comparison of Philo with,
229 f.
Mark Antony, Alexander Lysima-
chus in the confidence of, 46.
Monastic communities, supposed
record of Christian, in Philo,
73.
Moses, Philo a follower of, 60,
113 f.; Philo's ideal type,
79 f . ; Philo, as interpreter of
his revelation, 104, 106 f. See
Life of Moses.
National, centre at Jerusalem,
Philo on, 20, 41, 86; life
undermined at Rome and
Alexandria, 218.
Old Testament, Septuagint transla-
tion of, 25-30; Aquila's new
Greek version of, 224.
Onias, leader of army of Egyptian
monarch, 18; successor to
high priesthood, 18; builds
temple, 18, 19 f. ; temple of,
dismantled, 71; Jewish writers
silent about work of, 19.
Oral law, observance of, standard-
ized in the Halakah, 126.
Origen, distinguishes three
methods of interpretation, 76;
teacher of Patristic school,
195; imitates Philo, 186.
Palestine, struggle for, between
Ptolemies and Seleucids, 17;
Hellenism of, compared with
that of Athens, 24, 25; rabbis
of, 28; Philo visits, 50; effect
of Hellenic influence in, 54;
New Moon a solemn day in,
121; aims of Jewish thought
in, 140; doctrine of angels in,
140.
Palestinian Jews, under same
rule as Egyptian Jews, 15;
rabbis, oral tradition, 34;
development of Jewish cul-
ture, 42 f., 200; Midrash,
Philo's acquaintance with, 52;
schools, relation existing be-
tween Alexandrian and, 199 f.,
203 f., 213.
Paul, the most commanding of
the apostles, 247; influence of,
compared with that of Jesus,
247; rejection of the Torah by,
248; seta up a new faith in
Jesus, 251.
Pentateuch, Samaritan doctrines
with reference to, 106.
Peshat, as a form of interpreta-
tion, 103.
Philo, contemporary with Herod,
45, 50; family of, 46; works of
74 ff. ; philosophical training
of, 49; flees from Alexandria,
60; meeting of Peter and
Mark with, 73; forced into
Sanhedrin of Alexandria, 61;
writings of, regarded as testi-
mony to Christianity, 73, 156;
influence of, over Christian
religious philosophy, 195,
242 ff. ; relation of, to Greek
philosophers, 48, 52; acquaint-
ance of, with Chaldean and
Indian thought, 48; his in-
terpretation and views of the
Bible, 49, 102, 108 ff; evidence
of his knowledge of Hebrew
language, 49; follows Hebrew
tradition, 159, 199 ff. ; com-
pared with Spinoza, 73, 134,
163; on persecutions of Seja-
nus and Flaccus, 62, 78; re-
plies to attacks of stoics, 64,
95; stoics' view of God com-
pared with that of, 185; goes
to Italy, 66; refers to Apion,
63, 101; Josephus' knowledge
of the works of, 222; Christian
teachers preserve works of,
156, 247; relation of, to the
Halakah, 202 f. ; comparison
of Maimonides with, 229 f. ;
doctrine of the Logos (see
Logos), 144 ff.; connection be-
tween Saadia and, 226 f. ; the
Hellenizer of the Cabbalah,
235; opposed to missionary at-
titude of Paul, 249.
Plato, hears Jeremiah, 15; Philo'b
style reminiscent of, 48; con-
ception of the Law in, 131;
Philo's philosophy compared
with that of, 170 ff. ; dominant
philosophical principle of, 174;
a mystic, 230; conception of
God in, 254.
Ptolemies, the: Ptolemy _I, in-
creases number of Jewish in-
habitants in Alexandria, 15;
IV, gives Heliopolis to Onias,
16; admirers of Scriptures, 23.
INDEX
273
Questions and Answers to
Genesis and Exodus, now
incomplete, 75, 81 f. ; a pre-
liminary study to more elab-
orate works, 81; Hebraic in
form, 82.
Repentance, tractate appended
to Life of Moses, 75.
Rome, Alexandria second to, 14;
conversion widespread in (see
Egypt), 32; Agrippa an exile
from, 51; power of Jews at,
62: Jewish struggle with, 220;
Philo's apocryphal meeting
with Peter at, 73; national
life and culture undermined
at (see National), 218.
Saadia, founds new school of Jew-
ish philosophy, 225 f. ; con-
nection between Philo and,
226 f.
Samaritan, doctrines with refer-
ence to Pentateuch, 106; Jew,
itory of, 98.
Sanhedrin, Hillel, president of, 45;
Philo forced into Alexandrian,
61; duties of members of, 61;
of Alexandrian community,
202; of Jerusalem and capital
punishment, 203; differences
between Palestinian Halakah
and Alexandrian. 203 f.
Sejanus, Tiberius falls under in-
fluence of, 62: Antonia oppo-
nent of, 62; Philo'a book on
persecution of, 62, 78; dis-
grace and death of, 65.
Septuagint, Hellenistic develop-
ment marked by, 25; Philo's
version of origin of, 26; cele-
brations in honor of, 27; in-
fusion of Greek philosophic
ideas into, 28; Christianizing
influence of, 29; value of, to
the cultured Gentile, 33; re-
placed by new Greek version
of Old Testament, 224.
Solomon, Wisdom of, written at
Alexandria, 31.
Specific Laws, The, description
of, 83; socialism of Bible em-
phasized in, 86.
Spinoza, his ideal of life, 53; com-
pared with Philo's, 73, 134,
163, 239; on Jewish thought,
137; influenced by Philo, 237 f;
approaches Bible from critical
standpoint, 239.
Stoics, the chief Anti-Semites, 63;
Philo replies to attacks of, 64,
95; in conflict with Jews at
Alexandria, 94; beliefs of, 64,
94, 110, 176; view of God com-
pared with that of Philo, 185.
Synagogues, at Alexandria, 16, 37.
Tiberius Alexander, nephew of
Philo, 71.
Tradition, Jewish, at Alexandria,
27; Philo and Jewish, 199 ff.
Zealots, flight of, to Alexandria,
n.
oro
BALTIMORE, MD., v. s. A,
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