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,[35] 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.[36] 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,[37] the gift
of Philo's brother, the head of the Alexandrian community. 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 namesake says that wherever the Jews live they
consider Jerusalem as their metropolis. The Talmud again tells how
Judah Ben Tabbai and Joshua Ben Perahya, during the persecution of the
Pharisees by Hyreanus, fled to Alexandria, and how later Joshua Ben
Hanania[38] sojourned there and gave answers to twelve questions 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 exegesis is explained
by the distrust of the whole Hellenistic 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
allegorists. His own aim was to maintain the catholic tradition of
Judaism, while at the same time expounding 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 fruitfully fell off from the parent tree. But
till the middle of the first century of the common era the Alexandrian
and the Palestinian developments of Jewish culture were complementary:
on the one side there was legal, on the other, philosophical
expansion. Moreover, the Judæo-Alexandrian school, though, through its
abandonment of the Hebrew tongue, it lies outside the main stream of
Judaism, was an immense 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 AND 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."[39] The Jews have not been a great political people, but their
excellence has been a peculiar spiritual development: and therefore
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 incident 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 therefore was passed during the tranquil era in which
Augustus and Tiberius were reorganizing the Roman 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 imprisoned;[40] and he himself was called
upon to champion the Alexandrian community in its hour of need.
Although the ascent of the stupid but 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 Judæa into a Roman province under
the rule of a procurator. It is noteworthy also that Philo was partly
contemporary with Hillel, who came from Babylon to Jerusalem in 30
B.C.E., and according to the accepted tradition was president of the
Sanhedrin till his death in 10 C.E. In this epoch Judaism, by contact
with external 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 greatness and national genius appear
together. The two grandest expressions of Jewish genius immediately
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,[41] 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 daughter Antonia, the mother of Germanicus and
the Roman emperor Claudius. Born in an atmosphere of power and
affluence, Philo, who might have consorted 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.[42] This is the way in which he
understood the philosopher's life[43]: 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 revelation only by continued
study. [Hebrew: v-nbi' lbb hkma], God's interpreter must have a wise
heart,[44] as the rabbis explained. Philo then considered that the true
understanding of the law required a complete knowledge of general culture,
and that secular philosophy 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 inscribed as a citizen thereof,
must sojourn with the 'encyclic' sciences, so that through them he may
advance securely to perfect goodness."[45] The "encyclic," or
encyclopædic 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.[46]
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 [Greek: koinê dialektos]), 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 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,[47] 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 understanding, 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
teachings 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,[48] 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 professors 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 distinguished 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 must not be thought, however, that this
involved any weakening of his Judaism, or detracted from the purity of
his belief. Far from it. The Torah remained for him the supreme
standard to which all outside knowledge had to be subordinated, and
for which it was a preparation.[49] But Philo brought to bear upon the
elucidation 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 ignorant 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.[50] Moreover, his etymologies
are evidence of his knowledge of the Hebrew language; though he
sometimes gives a symbolic value to Biblical names according to 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 derivations one may
cite Israel, [Hebrew: v-shr-'l], the man who beholdeth God; Jerusalem,
[Hebrew: yrv-shlom], the sight of peace; Hebrew, [Hebrew: 'bri], one who
has passed over from the life of the passions to virtue; Isaac, [Hebrew:
ytshk], the joy or laughter 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 Haggadic. At the beginning of the "Life of Moses" he
declares that he has based it upon "many traditions which I have
received from the elders of my nation,"[51] and in several places he
speaks of the "ancestral philosophy," which must mean the Midrash
which embodied tradition. Eusebius also, the early Christian
authority, bears witness to his knowledge of the traditional
interpretations of the law.[52]
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 intimate friend of his family, and had found a
refuge at Alexandria when an exile from Palestine and Rome. In the
first book on the Mosaic laws[53] 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 common refuge and
harbor from the troubles of this harassed and anxious life, seeking to
find there tranquillity and gain a new hope in life by its joyous
festivities." These gatherings, at which, according to Josephus,[54]
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
international; magnificent embassies from Babylon and Persia, from
Egypt and Cyrene, from Rome 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 sanctuary, 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 burnished 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 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 engraved
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,[55] 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 institutions 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 transformed
it into a literary system. Judaism forms the kernel, but Greek
philosophy and literature the shell, 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 profoundest 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.[56]
"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 religious
spirit which seeks to perceive all things in a supreme unity Philo
shares with Spinoza, whose life-ideal was the intuitional knowledge of
the universe and "the intellectual love of God." Both men show the
pursuit of righteousness raised to philosophical 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,[57] and the worldly life
an 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 Jewish
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,[58] Jewish mystics, who eschewed private property and the
general social life, and forming themselves into communistic
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 Pythagorean
brotherhoods, which ever since the sixth century 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.[59] Whatever
its moulding influences, 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 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 votaries. 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 materialists 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 supernatural
states of ecstasy. A book has come down to us under the name of
Philo[60] which describes "the contemplative 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
devoted themselves in solitude to the practice of virtue and the study
of the holy allegories, and the composition 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 thereon. During the rest of the year they only partook 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."[61]
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.[62] In his earlier writings he is constantly praising the ascetic
life, as a means, indeed, 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.[63]
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 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,[64]
"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, but 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 unworthy 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 replaced 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 inclinations. 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 humanity
which the truly good man must possess.[65] 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," he said;
and of his wife it is told in another of the "Fragments" that when
asked one day in an assembly 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."