PHILO-JUDÆUS
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 [Greek: threptêria]
PREFACE
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-Judæus was neglected by the generations that followed
him. Maimonides, our third philosopher, was in danger 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
excellence 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 commanding
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 Jewish history.
Philo certainly had an intensely strong Jewish feeling, but his work
had also another aspect, which was seized upon and made use of by
those who wished to denationalize Judaism and convert it into a
philosophical monotheism. The favor which the Church Fathers showed to
his writings induced and was balanced 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 estimate its value. So far from taking a
Jewish standpoint 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
relation 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 surname given him
in the second century, "Judæus," not only distinguishes him from an
obscure Christian bishop, but it expresses the predominant
characteristic 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 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 exponent of
Judaism, and it may be that in this regard I have not always looked on
him as the calm, dispassionate student should; for I experience
towards him that warmth of feeling which his name, [Greek: philon],
"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 nevertheless I have exaggerated the
Jewishness of my worthy's thought, my excuse must be that my
predecessors 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, Schürer, Massebieau, Zeller, Conybeare,
Cohn, and Wendland; and among those who have treated of Philo in
relation to Jewish tradition I have read and borrowed from Siegfried
(_Philon als Ausleger der heiligen Schrift_), Freudenthal
(_Hellenistische Studien_), Ritter (_Philo und die Halacha_), and Mr.
Claude Montefiore's _Florilegium Philonis_, which is printed in the
seventh volume of the Jewish Quarterly Review. Once for all Mr.
Montefiore 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 illuminating, I have often found myself
irresistibly attracted to Mr. Montefiore's passages. Dr. Neumark's
book, _Geschichte der jüdischen 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 independently 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
II. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO
III. PHILO'S WORKS AND METHOD
IV. PHILO AND THE TORAH
V. PHILO'S THEOLOGY
VI. PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHER
VII. PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION
VIII. THE INFLUENCE OF PHILO
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABBREVIATIONS USED FOR THE REFERENCES
INDEX
PHILO-JUDÆUS OF ALEXANDRIA
I
THE JEWISH COMMUNITY AT ALEXANDRIA
The three great world-conquerors known to history, Alexander, Julius
Cæsar, and Napoleon, recognized 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 conqueror-statesmen who have made
history, realizing that progress is brought about by unity in
difference, have recognized in Jewish individuality a force making 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 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
number 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 Rome in population and power, equal to it in culture. By its
geographical position, the nature of its foundation, and the sources
of its population, and by the wonderful organization of its Museum, 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 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 community during the interval.
From the time of the post-exilic prophets Judaism developed in three
main streams, one flowing from Jerusalem, another from Babylon, the
third from Egypt. Alexandria soon took precedence of existing
settlements of Jews, and became a great centre of Jewish life. The
first Ptolemy, to whom at the dismemberment of Alexander's empire
Egypt had fallen,[2] continued to the Jewish settlers the privileges
of full citizenship which Alexander had granted them. He increased
also the number of Jewish inhabitants, for following his conquest of
Palestine (or Coele-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 Ptolemies 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 distinguished in the handicrafts as well
as in commerce. Two of the five sections into which Alexandria was
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 religious
observances, and besides many smaller places of worship, each marked
by its surrounding plantation 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."[3] 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 self-government, having their own
governor, the ethnarch, and in Roman times their own council
(Sanhedrin), which administered their own code of laws. Of the
ethnarch Strabo says that he was like an independent ruler, and it was
his function to secure the proper fulfilment of duties by the
community and compliance with their peculiar laws.[4] Thus the people
formed a sort of state within a state, preserving their national life
in the foreign environment. They possessed as much political
independence as the Palestinian community when under Roman rule; and
enjoyed all the advantages without any of the narrowing influences,
physical or intellectual, of a ghetto. They were able to remain an
independent body, and foster a Jewish 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 different political history from
the Egyptian. The compulsory 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 foe as against the Hellenizing party of his own
people, which, led by the high priests Jason, Menelaus, and Alcimus,
tried to crush both the national and the religious spirit. The
Maccabæan rule brought not only a renaissance of national life and
national culture, but also a revival of the national religion. 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, according to Josephus,[5] 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 Hellenist 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
resembled a tower."[6] Professor Flinders Petrie has recently
discovered remains at Tell-el-Yehoudiyeh, the "mound of the Jews,"
near the ancient Leontopolis, 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,[7] 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 Jerusalem: 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 Judæa, or their representatives to the great festivals,
and they dispatched messengers each year with contributions of gold
and silver, who, says Philo,[9] "travelled over almost impassable
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[10] several times of the great national
centre at Jerusalem as "the most beautiful and renowned temple which
is honored by the whole East and West." The Egyptian Jews, according
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,[11] was rather a "Bamah" (a high place) than a temple.
It served as a temporary sanctuary while the Jerusalem temple was
defiled, 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.[12]
The religious importance 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 of a series of feeble puppet-Ptolemies, the prize
of the warriors, who successively aspired to be masters of the world,
Julius Cæsar, Mark Antony, 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 Cæsar and
Augustus, who everywhere showed special favor to their Jewish
subjects, confirmed the privileges of full citizenship and limited
self-government which the early Ptolemies had bestowed.[13] Josephus
records a letter of Augustus to the Jewish community at Cyrene, 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 use of their own customs, 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.[14] 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.[15]
The prosperity and privileges of the Jews, combined with their
peculiar customs and their religious separateness, 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 demagogues. The third book of
the Maccabees tells of a Ptolemaic persecution during which Jewish
victims were turned into the arena at Alexandria, to be trodden 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[16] 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,[17] who had his forerunners before the reign
of the first Ptolemy, was able from time to time to fan popular
feelings into flame. In those days, when history and fiction 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 originated at
Alexandria.
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 a Manetho and the diatribes of some
"starveling Greekling," there appeared the eulogistic picture of an
Aristeas, the improved Exodus of an Artapanus. Joseph and Moses
figured as the most brilliant of Egyptian statesmen, and the Ptolemies
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 apologists were in the spirit of the time.
The outward history of the Alexandrian community is far less
interesting and of far less importance than its intellectual progress.
When Alexander planted the colony of Jews in his greatest foundation,
he probably intended to facilitate the fusion of Eastern 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 started the movement
between the two realms of culture, which was fated to produce the
greatest combination 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 developed an equally noble conception of man.
Disraeli, in his usual sweeping manner, makes one of his characters in
"Lothair" tell how the Aryan and Semitic races, after centuries of
wandering upon opposite 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."[18]
The Greek, on the other hand, who had not yet comprehended the majesty
of his neighbor's monotheism, for lack of adequate presentation, did
not Hebraize. In Palestine the adoption of Greek ways and the
introduction of Greek ideas proceeded rapidly to the point of
demoralization, until the Maccabees stayed it. Unfortunately, the
Hellenism that was brought to Palestine was not 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 Oriental
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 event fraught with
such importance for the history of the race and mankind as the
translation of the Scriptures into the language of the cultured world.
From this overgrowth it is difficult to construct a true narrative;
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 professes 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 version of the
event, romantic, indeed, but more rational, in his "Life of
Moses."[19] He tells how Ptolemy, having conceived a great admiration
for the laws of Moses, sent ambassadors to the high priest of Juddea,
requesting 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 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 interpretation
first shone forth, and thanking God for His ancient gift to man, which
has eternal youth and freshness." 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[20]
are remarkable illustrations 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 faithfulness, so as to give its proper
force. Rather 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 (the Torah) and the prophecies and the rest of the
books have no small difference when they are spoken in their original
language."[21]
From the making of the translation one can trace the movement that
ended in Christianity. By reading their Scriptures in Greek, Jews
began to think them in Greek and according to Greek conceptions.
Certain commentators have seen in the Septuagint itself 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
interpretation 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;[22] and they observed a fast day in place of the old
Alexandrian feast on the anniversary of its completion. They felt as
the old Italian proverb has it, _Traduttori, traditori!_ ("Translators
are traitors!"). And the Midrash in the same spirit declares[23] 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.
The Septuagint 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,[24] 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 apologetic, designed, whatever
their form, to serve a defensive purpose. But later they took the
offensive against the paganism and immorality of the peoples about
them, and the missionary spirit became predominant. Alexander
Polyhistor, who lived in the first century, included in his "History
of the Jews" fragments of these early Jewish historians and
apologists, 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. Abraham
is said to have instructed the Egyptians in astrology; Joseph devised
a great system of agriculture; Moses was identified variously with the
legendary Greek seer Musaeus 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 historian Hecatæeus, who wrote a history of
the world, passages which glorify the Hebrew people and the Hebrew God
were ascribed. Still more daring was 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
superstitions of the time revered as an inspired seeress of
prehistoric ages, was made to recite the building of the tower of
Babel, or the virtues 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 Schürer, 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,[25]
"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
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."[26] 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 mind 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 history of the Israelites in Egypt comes
home to him 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 pæan 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, Judaism was no
self-centred, exclusive faith afraid of expansion. 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."[27] 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
mythology and in the metaphysical powers of its philosophical schools,
and was searching for a more real object to revere and lean on. The
people were thirsting 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 commentators. The Hellenistic world was
thoroughly sophisticated, 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[28]
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 without 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 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 utterances 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 Christian era. We have
to imagine a state of culture in which it was only the Book of books
to one small nation, 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 interpretation, which is largely a
distinctive product of the Alexandrian age. The Palestinian rabbis of
the time were on the one hand developing by dialectic discussion 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 variegated fabric of philosophy, fable, allegory,
and legend. Simultaneously the Alexandrian preachers--they were never
quite the same as the rabbis--were emphasizing 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. Allegorical interpretation is "based upon the
supposition or fiction that the author who is interpreted intended
something 'other' [Greek: allo] 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
philosophical meaning. It enables the interpreter to bring writings of
antiquity into touch with the culture of his or 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 interpretation must be
carefully distinguished from the writing of allegory, of which
Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" 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 purports to be a story
of life. In allegorical interpretation persons are transformed into
ideas and their history into a system of philosophy. The Greek
philosophers had applied this method to Homer since the 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 influenced by
their example.
Their allegorical treatment of the Bible was intended, 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 altogether satisfy
their conceptions. They detected in it a certain primitiveness, and
having eaten further of the tree of knowledge, they were aware of its
philosophical 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 Alexandrian 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 Jewish public at Alexandria, there arose
a new form of religious literature, the sermon, and a new form of
commentary, the homiletical. The words "homiletical" and "homily"
suggest what they originally connoted; they are derived from the Greek
word [Greek: homilia], "an assembly," and a homily was a discourse
delivered to an assembly. The Meturgeman of Palestine and Babylon, who
expounded the Hebrew text in Aramaic, 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 assembly, 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."[29] He speaks
repeatedly of the Sabbath gatherings, when the Jews would become, as
he puts it, a community of philosophers,[30] 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 Palestine primitive traces of allegorism. Allegory and its
counterpart, allegorical interpretation, are deeply imbedded in the
Oriental mind, and we hear of ancient schools of symbolists in the
oldest portions of the Talmud.[31] 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
fragments are of doubtful authenticity) is Aristobulus. He is said to
have been the tutor of Ptolemy Philometor, 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
expressions are explained away allegorically, and God's activity in
the material universe is ascribed to his [Greek: Dunamis] 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[32] 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 explanations of allegorists who read into the Bible this or
that system of thought[33] regarding the words of the law as "manifest
symbols of things invisible and hints of things inexpressible." And if
their work were 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 regard him as a single philosophical genius who suddenly
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 allegorically, 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 inspired writings, and that the duty of later generations
was to interpret this revealed doctrine rather than 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
philosophers of Hellas with systems of theology, psychology, 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 activity; 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 discovering 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 observance to which they had attached a spiritual meaning. On
the other hand, there was a party which adhered strictly to the
literal sense ([Greek: to hrêton]) and rejected allegorism.[34] Philo
protested against these extremes and was the leader of those who were
liberal in thought and conservative in practice, and who venerated 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-Judæus.