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 Sadducee
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 aspiration
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 [Hebrew: nb'a], prophecy,
[Hebrew: shkyna], the Divine Presence, and [Hebrew: rua hkdsh], 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 attraction for the Hellene; and, when the belief in the old
gods had been shattered, and with the national greatness 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 initiated into these
Greek mysteries, for Philo introduces into his exegesis of the law of
Moses an ordinance forbidding the practice.[66] 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 coloring 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"[67]....
"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 interpretation, a gift of light, a clear survey
of things, the clearest that eye can give."[68]
In his "Guide of the Perplexed,"[69] Maimonides describes the various
degrees of the [Hebrew: rua hkdsh], or what we call religious "genius,"
with which man may be blessed. He distinguishes between the man who
possesses 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 advanced in his maturity. He consciously
regarded himself as a follower of Moses, who was the perfect
interpreter 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
generation by the gift of the Divine wisdom. When he had fled from
Alexandria, to secure virtue by contemplation, he had as his final
goal the attainment of the true knowledge of God, and as he advanced
in age, he advanced in decision and authority. He was conscious of his
philosophic grasp of the Torah, and the diffidence 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. Hoping 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 great
congregation which filled the synagogue at Alexandria, and on other
days of the week expounding 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,[70] 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 without being able to make my way out." A French
scholar[71] conjectures that this is only a metaphorical way of saying
that he was forced into some public office, probably, a seat in the
Alexandrian Sanhedrin; and he ascribes the language to the bitter
disappointment of one who was devoted to philosophical pursuits and
found himself diverted from them. Philo's language 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 misrepresentation and persecution. During
the reign of Augustus and the early years of Tiberius (30 B.C.E.-20
C.E.) the Roman provinces were firmly ruled, and 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,
Tiberius 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. Sejanus
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 Alexandrian 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 material which they could stir up. The
Egyptian populace were by nature, says Philo, "jealous and envious,
and were filled moreover with an ancient and inveterate enmity towards
the Jews,"[72] and of the degenerate Greek population, many were
anxious from motives 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 Alexandria, which maintained a persistent attitude of
hostility towards the Jews. The chief literary anti-Semites 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 Chæremon carried on a campaign of misrepresentation, and sought to
give their attacks a fine humanitarian justification by drawing fancy
pictures of the Jewish religion and Jewish laws. The Jews worshipped
the head of an ass,[73] 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 usually 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 Philo, the most philosophical Jew of the time
and the most distinguished member of the Alexandrian community, was
called upon to defend his people, and that part of his works which
Eusebius calls [Greek: Hypotheticha]; _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 religious 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 supporters 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 accommodating
pantheism, and a divinely-revealed law of conduct 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 victims, 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 unscrupulousness.[74] Josephus wrote
a famous reply to his attacks, refuting "his vulgar abuse, gross
ignorance and demagogic claptrap,"[75] 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 smouldered on, and it only
required a weakening of the controlling hand at Rome to set the
passions aflame again. Right through Philo's treatise "On the
Confusion 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 Alexandria; he was won
over by the anti-Semites and gave the mob a free hand in their attacks
upon the "alien Jews."[76] The arrival of Agrippa, the grandson of
Herod, who was on his way to his kingdom of Palestine, which the
capricious emperor had just conferred upon him, excited the ill-will
of the Alexandrian mob. Flaccus looked on while the people attacked
the Jewish quarters, sacked the houses, and assailed everyone that
came within their reach. The most distinguished Jews were not spared,
and thirty members of the Council of Elders were dragged to the
marketplace 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 follies, 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 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, entirely
history. Looking always for a sermon or a subject for a philosophical
lesson, Philo has tricked out the record of the facts with much
moralizing observation on the general lot of mankind, and elaborated
the part of Providence more in the spirit of religious romance than of
scientific history. Yet the main facts are clear. Philo prepared a
long philosophical "apologia" for the Jews and set out with five
colleagues 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
disquisitions. 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[77] with gravity that he expected that the emperor would hear
the two contending parties in all proper judicial form, but that in
fact he behaved 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 moralizing 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.[78]
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 ruffians and impudent slaves who surrounded a Roman emperor.
Happily Gaius jeered once too often in his mad life. One Chaerea, a
Roman 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 Nero 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 Roman governor Petronius was averse
to obeying the edict, but the emperor insisted. King Agrippa, who had
been but lately advanced by him to the kingdom of Judæa, interceded
zealously on behalf of his people. Philo gives us an account of this
appeal by the Jewish king,[79] 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 Agrippa'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 prevailed over their
adversaries; the anti-Semitic influences were put down in Judæa and
in Alexandria, and in both places "there was light and joy and
gladness for the Jews." Their political privileges were reaffirmed by
imperial decree, and Philo's brother Alexander, who had been
imprisoned, was restored to honor.[80] "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 moderation, 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 accentuated 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 Rome 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., Judæa became a Roman province, 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.
"Old age," said Philo, "is an unruffled harbor,"[81] 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
philosophical 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 universal religion. The
disintegration of his own community at Alexandria followed full soon
on the greater disaster; the temple of Onias was dismantled and
interdicted against Jewish worship by Vespasian 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
Diaspora 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 Alexandria and stirred up rebellion and dissension. Nothing
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 Judæa and Egypt. By
another irony of history he had in the previous year been largely
instrumental in securing for Vespasian, who was besieging Jerusalem,
the imperial throne of Rome.[82] 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-Alexandrian 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 severance of the Christian heresy from the main community
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 dogmatic creed
that was utterly opposed to Jewish monotheism. 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 religion in which, together with
the adoption of Hebraic teachings about God, certain ideas of
Alexandrian mysticism became stereotyped as dogmas, and Jewish law was
abrogated. When Babylon replaced Palestine as the centre of Jewish
intellect, the works of Philo, like the rest of the Hellenistic-Jewish
literature, 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 philosophical 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 Rome 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 theologians
of Alexandria we owe it that the interpretation 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 emancipated Jewry of our own day can in either
case recognize the worth of the thinker, and point with pride to the
saintliness of the man.
* * * * *
III
PHILO'S WORKS 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 expression to his own
thought and the thought of his generation. 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 which was clearly intended to be an ethical
and philosophical 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 "Courage," "Humanity," and "Repentance." Scholars[83] 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 coloring by reason of Biblical illustrations.
VI. Historical and apologetic works that set out the case of the
contemporary Jews against their persecutors 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 ascribed to Philo,
which all good scholars[84] now admit to be spurious: "On the
Incorruptibility of the World," "On the Universe," "On Samson," and
"On Jonah," etc.