It is a distinct question in what form we are to conceive of Philo’s
teaching as coming before him. The author of the Fourth Gospel was a
thinker, but not a professed philosopher. So far as we can judge from
the writings of his that have come down to us, we should not be inclined
to credit him with much philosophical erudition. The idea that we form
to ourselves of the Evangelist is not that of a great reader always
poring over books. I find it hard to think of him as sitting down to a
deliberate study of the Jewish scholar’s voluminous treatises. The
mental habits of the two men are too different. The Evangelist has a
shorter and more direct way of getting at the truth. He was more like
the old Ionian philosophers, who looked up to the sky and out upon the
earth, and set down the thoughts that rose in them in short loosely
connected aphorisms. The author of the Fourth Gospel did not look so
much without as within: he sank into his own consciousness, and at last
brought out to light what he found there. He dwelt upon the past until
it became luminous to him; and then he took up the pen.
We will consider presently what sort of hypothesis we may form as to the
process by which the Evangelist came to assimilate Philonian ideas, if
he did assimilate them. But it may be well, first, to try to realize
rather more exactly the extent of the agreement and difference between
the two writers.