dealt in several ways with the Biblical material. The reason of this
is partly that his mind developed, and the interpretation of his
maturer years differed widely from that of his earliest writings.
Partly, however, it arises from the fact that the different treatments
were meant for different audiences, and Philo always took the measure
of those whom he was addressing. His most representative works are "a
triple cord" with which he binds the Jewish Scripture to Greek
culture. For the Greek-speaking populace he set out a broad statement
of the Mosaic law; for the cultured community of Alexandria, Jew and
Gentile, a more elaborate exegesis, in which each character and each
ordinance of the Pentateuch received a particular ethical value; and,
finally, for the esoteric circle of Hellenic-Jewish philosophers, a
theological and psychological study of the allegories of the law.
Origen, the first great Christian exegete of the Bible and a close
student of the Philonic writings, distinguished three forms of
interpreting: the historical, the moral, and the philosophical; he
probably took the distinction from Philo, who exemplifies it in his
commentaries upon the Books of Moses.
Varied as is its scope, the religious idea dominates all his work, and
endows it with one spirit. Whether he is writing philosophical,
ethical, or mystical commentary, whether history, apology, or essay,
his purpose is to assert the true notion of the one God, and the
Divine excellence of God's revelation to His chosen people. Thus he
regards history as a theodicy, vindicating the ways of God to man, and
His special providence for Israel; philosophy as the inner meaning of
the Scriptures, revealed by God in mystic communion with His holy
prophets,[85] and, if comprehended aright, able to lead us on to a
true conception of His Divine being. The greater part of the
Hellenistic-Jewish literature has disappeared, but Philo sums up for
us the whole of the Alexandrian development of Judaism. He represents
it worthily in both its main aspects: the infusion of Greek culture
into the Jewish pursuit of righteousness, and the recommendation of
Jewish monotheism and the Torah to the Greek world. Aristaeus,
Aristobulus, and Artapanus are hardly more than names, but their
spirit is inherited and glorified in Philo-Judæus. His work,
therefore, is more than the expression of one great mind; it is the
record and expression of a great culture.
The chronology of Philo's writings is as uncertain as the chronology
of his life. Yet it is possible to trace a deepening of outlook and an
increasing originality, if we work our way up from the sixth to the
first division of the classification. It does not follow that the
works were written in this order--and it may well be that Philo was
producing at one and the same time books of several classes--but we
may use this order as an ideal scale by which to mark off the stages
of his philosophical progress. In the first place come the [Greek:
Hypotheticha], or apologetic works, which have a practical purpose.
With these we may associate the moralizing history that dealt in five
books respectively with the persecutions of Sejanus, Flaccus, and
Caligula, the ill-starred embassy, and the final triumph of the Jews
over their enemies. The [Greek: Hypotheticha] proper, as we gather
from Eusebius, contained a general apology for Judaism, and an account
of the Essenes--which have disappeared--and the suspected book on the
Therapeutic sect known by the title "On the Contemplative Life."
Whether they received this generic name because they are suggestions
for the Jewish cause, or because they are written to answer the
insinuations ([Greek: kath' hypothesin]) of adversaries, is a moot
point. But their general purport is clear: they were an apologetic
presentation of Jewish life, written to show the falsity of
anti-Semitic calumnies. The Jews are good citizens and their manner of
life is humanitarian. The Essene sect is a living proof of Jewish
practical socialism and practical philosophy, the Therapeutae show the
Jewish zeal for the contemplative life.
Next we come to Philo's philosophical monographs, which are not, as
one might expect, the work of his mature thought, but rather the
exercises of youth. Dissertations or declamations upon hackneyed
subjects were part of the regular course of the university student at
Alexandria, and Philo prepared himself for his Jewish philosophy by
composing in the approved style essays upon "Providence," "The Liberty
of the Good," and "The Slavery of the Wicked," etc. What chiefly
distinguishes them above other collections of commonplaces is the
appeal to the Bible for types of goodness, and here again the Essenes
figure as the type of the philosophical life.[86] The writer, while
still engaged in the studies of the Greek university, is feeling his
way towards his system of universal Mosaism.
This he expounds confidently and enthusiastically in his "Life of
Moses." Philo in this book is not any longer the apt pupil of Greek
philosophers, nor the eloquent defender of the Jewish-Alexandrian
community against lying detractors. He preaches a mission to the whole
world, and he lays before it his gospel of monotheism and humanity.
Each Greek school has its ideal type, its Socrates, Diogenes, or
Pythagoras; but Philo places above them all "the most perfect man that
ever lived, Moses, the legislator of the Jews,[87] as some hold, but
according to others the interpreter of the sacred laws, and the
greatest of men in every way." And above all the ethical systems of
the day he sets the law of life that God revealed to His greatest
prophet: "The laws of the Greek legislators are continually subject to
change; the laws of Moses alone remain steady, unmoved, unshaken,
stamped as it were with the seal of nature herself, from the day when
they were written to the present day, and will so remain for all time
so long as the world endures. Not only the Jews but all other peoples
who care for righteousness adopt them.... Let all men follow this code
and the age of universal peace will come about, the kingdom of God on
earth will be established."[88] Nor is the Greek to fear the lot of a
proselyte. "God loves the man who turns from idolatry to the true
faith not less than the man who has been a believer all his life;"[89]
and in the little essays upon Repentance and Nobility, which are
attached to the larger treatise, Philo appeals to his own people to
welcome the stranger within the community. "The Life of Moses" is the
greatest attempt to set monotheism before the world made before the
Christian gospels. And it is truer to the Jewish spirit, because it
breathes on every page love for the Torah. Philo in very truth wished
to fulfil the law.
If Judaism was to be the universal religion, it must be shown to
contain the ultimate truth both about real being, _i.e._ God, and
about ethics; for the philosophical world in that age--and the
philosophical world included all educated people--demanded of religion
that it should be philosophical, and of philosophy that it should be
religious. The desire to expound Judaism in this way is the motive of
Philo's three Biblical commentaries. The "Questions and Answers to
Genesis and Exodus" constitute a preliminary study to the more
elaborate works which followed. In them Philo is collecting his
material, formulating his ideas, and determining the main lines of his
allegory. They are a type of Midrash in its elementary stage, the
explanation of the teacher to the pupil who has difficulties about the
words of the law: at once like and unlike the old Tannaitic Midrash;
like in that they deal with difficulties in the literal text of the
Bible; unlike in that the reply of Philo is Agadic more usually than
Halakic, speculative rather than practical. In these books,[90] as has
been pointed out, there are numerous interpretations which Philo
shares with the Palestinian schools. A few specimens taken from the
first book will illustrate Philo's plan, but it should be mentioned
that in every case he sets out the simple meaning of the text, the
_Peshat_, as well as the inner meaning, or _Derash_.
"Why does it say: 'And God made every green herb of the field before
it was upon the earth'? (Gen. ii. 4.)
"By these words he suggests symbolically the incorporeal Idea. The
phrase, 'before it was upon the earth,' marks the original perfection
of every plant and herb. The eternal types were first created in the
noetic world, and the physical objects on earth, perceptible by the
senses, were made in their likeness."
In this way Philo reads into the first chapter of the Bible the
Platonic idealism which we shall see was a fundamental part of his
philosophy.
"Why, when Enoch died, does it say, 'And he pleased God'? (Gen. v.
24.)
"He says this to teach that the soul is immortal, inasmuch as after it
is released from the body it continues to please."
"What is the meaning of the expression, 'And Noah opened the roof of
the ark'? (Gen. viii. 13.)
"The text appears to need no interpretation; but in its symbolical
meaning the ark is our body, and that which covers the body and for a
long time preserves its strength is spoken of as its roof. And this is
appetite. Hence when the mind is attracted by a desire for heavenly
things, it springs upwards and makes away with all material desires.
It removes that which threw a shade over it so as to reach the eternal
Ideas."
The "Questions and Answers" are essentially Hebraic in form, designed
for Jews who knew and studied their Bible; and we can feel in them the
influences of a training in traditional Mishnah and Midrash; but Philo
passed from them to a more artistic expression and a more thoroughly
Hellenized presentation of the philosophy of the Bible. This work is
the largest extant expression of his thought and mission; it embraces
the treatises which we know as "On the Creation of the World," "The
Lives of Abraham and Joseph," "On the Decalogue," and finally those
"On the Specific Laws," which are partly thus entitled and partly have
separate ethical names, as "On Honoring Parents," "On Rewards and
Punishments," "On Justice," etc. Large portions of it have
disappeared, notably the "Lives of Isaac and Jacob"; and also the
"Life of Moses," which was introductory to his laws. For the book
which we have under that name does not belong to the series, but is
separate. The purpose of the work broadly is to deepen the value of
the Bible for the Jews by revealing its constant spiritual message,
and to assert its value for the whole of humanity by showing in it a
philosophical conception of the universe and its creation, the most
lofty ethical and moral types, the most admirable laws, and, above
all, the purest ideas of God and His relation to man. All that seems
tribal and particularist is explained away, and the spiritual aspect
of every chapter--of every word almost--of the Torah is emphasized.
Philo expounds the sacred book, not of one particular nation, but of
mankind. The Roman and Greek peoples were waiting for a religious
message which should at once harmonize with rational ideas and satisfy
their longing for God. All the philosophical schools were converting
the scientific systems of the classical age into [Greek: Tropoi Biou],
"plans of life," and Philo challenges them all with a new faith which
has as its basis a God who not only was the sole Creator and Ruler of
the world, but who had revealed to man the way of happiness, and the
good life, social as well as individual. To-day, when the world about
us has accepted--or has professed to accept--the ethical law of the
Bible, we are apt to regard the essentials of Judaism as the belief in
One God and the observance of ceremonies. But to Philo Judaism was
something more comprehensive. It was the spiritual life, and the
Mosaic law is the complete code of the Divine Republic, of which all
are or can be citizens. In the introduction to the "Life of Abraham,"
Philo explains the scheme of his work:[91]
"'The Sacred Laws' [as he regularly calls the Bible] were
written in five books, of which the first is entitled
Genesis. It derives its title from the account of the
creation which it contains, though it deals also with
endless other subjects, peace and war, hunger and plenty,
great cataclysms, and the histories of good and evil men. We
have examined with great care the accounts of the creation
in our former treatise ['On the Making of the Universe'],
and we now go on naturally to inquire into the laws; and
postponing the particular laws, which are as it were copies,
we will first of all examine the more universal, which are
their models. Now men who have lived irreproachable lives
are these laws, and their virtues are recorded in the Holy
Scriptures not only by way of eulogy, but in order to lead
on those who read about them to emulate their life. They are
become living standards of right reason, whom the lawgiver
has glorified for two reasons: (1) To show that the laws
laid down are consistent with nature [the conception of a
natural law binding upon all peoples was one of the fixed
ideas of the age]. (2) To show that it is not a matter of
terrible labor to live according to our positive laws if a
man has the will to do so; seeing that the patriarchs
spontaneously followed the unwritten principles before any
of the particular laws were written. So that a man may
properly say that the code of law is only a memorial of the
lives of the patriarchs. For the patriarchs, of their own
accord and impulse, chose to follow nature, and, regarding
her course with truth as the most ancient ordinance, they
lived a life according to the law."
Philo dwells affectionately on the patriarchs, because, as he held,
they proved the Jewish life to be truest to man's nature and to the
highest ideal of humanity, and served therefore as examples to the
Gentile world of the universal truth of the religion. The rabbis also
took the patriarchs as the perfect type of our life, saying,
"Everything that happens to them is a sign to future generations,"[92]
and again: "The patriarchs are the true [Hebrew: mrbba], manifestation of
God." But while he emphasized the broad moral teachings of Judaism
exemplified by the patriarchs, Philo nevertheless upheld in its
integrity the Mosaic law, and found in every one of the six hundred
and thirteen precepts a spiritual meaning. Even the details of the
tabernacle offerings have their universal lesson when he expounds them
as symbols. Voltaire speaks cynically of Judaism as a religion of
sacrifices: Philo shows that the ritual of sacrifice suggests moral
lessons. The command of the red heifer, a part of the law which was
particularly subject to attack, emphasizes the law of moral as well as
of physical cleanliness. The prohibition to add honey or leaven to the
sacrifice[93] (Lev. ii. 13) points the lesson that all superfluous
pleasure is unrighteous; and so on with each prescription.
The Mosaic code in his exposition is commensurate with life in all its
aspects. It deals not only with the duties of the individual but also
with the good government of the state. The life of Joseph is made the
text of a political treatise, and throughout the books "On the
Specific Laws," the socialism of the Bible is emphasized,[94] and held
up as the ideal order of the future. The Jewish State is enlarged in
Philo's vision from a national theocracy into a world-city inspired by
the two ideas of love of God and love of humanity. In this conception,
no doubt, the influence of Greek philosophy is to be seen; the Jewish
interpreter keeps before him the "Republic" of Plato, and the "Polity"
of Aristotle. With him, however, the ideal state is not a vision
"laid up in heaven";[95] its foundation is already laid upon earth,
its capital is Jerusalem, and it is the mission of his people to
extend its borders till it embraces all nations[96]--an idea which
permeates the Jewish litany.
This commentary of the law is allegorical in the sense that beneath
the particular law the interpreter constantly reveals a spiritual
idea, but it is not allegorical in the sense that he makes an exchange
of values. He is not for the most part reading into the text
conceptions which are not suggested by it, but really and truly
expounding; and where he gives a philosophical piece of exegesis, as
when he explains the visit of the three angels to Abraham as a theory
of the human soul about God's being,[97] he does so with diffidence or
with reference to authorities that have founded a tradition. It is
quite otherwise with the last class of Philo's work, the fruit of his
maturest thought, with which it remains to deal.
Throughout the "Allegories of the Laws" he takes the verse of the
Bible not so much as a text to be amplified and interpreted, but as a
pretext for a philosophical disquisition. The allegories indeed are
only in form a commentary on the Bible; in one aspect they are a
history of the human soul, which, if they had been completed, would
have traced the upward progress from Adam to Moses. It is not to be
expected, however, that Philo should adhere closely to any plan in the
allegories. Theology, metaphysics, and ethics have as large a part in
the medley of philosophical ideas as the story of the soul. His
Hebraic mind, even when fortified by the mastery of philosophy, was
unable to present its ideas systematically; it passed from subject to
subject, weaving the whole together only by the thread of a continuous
commentary upon Genesis. Parts of the work are missing, it is true,
which adds to the seeming want of plan; and--greatest loss of all--the
first part, which gave the philosophical account of the first chapter
of Genesis, the first six days of creation, referred to as "The
Hexameron" [Greek: to Hexêmeron], has disappeared.[98] Here must
have been the general introduction to the allegories, wherein Philo
declared his purpose and his method of exposition. The first treatise
that we possess starts abruptly with a comment on the first verse of
the second chapter, "'And the heaven and earth and all their world
were completed.' Moses has previously related the creation of the mind
and sense, and now he proceeds to describe their perfection. Their
perfection is not the individual mind or sense, but their archetypal
'ideas.' And symbolically he calls the mind heaven, because in heaven
are the ideas of the mind, and the sense he calls earth, because it is
corporeal and material."[99]
So in a rambling, unsystematic way Philo embarks upon a discourse on
idealism and psychology, making a fresh start continually from a verse
or a phrase of the Bible. The Biblical narrative in the earliest
chapters offered a congenial soil for his explorations, but no ground
is too stubborn for his seed. The genealogy of Noah's sons is as
fertile in suggestion as the story of Adam and Eve, for each name
represents some hidden power or possesses some ethical import.
The allegorical commentary is clearly the work of Philo's maturity,
wherein he exhibits full mastery of an original method of exegesis.
His allegories are no longer tentative, and he writes with the
confidence of the sage, who has received not only the admiration of
his people, but the inspiration of God. Another sign of their maturity
is that asceticism seems no longer the true path to virtue, as it was
to the author of "The Lives of the Patriarchs" and "The Specific
Laws," but, on the contrary, a moderate use of the world's goods and a
share in political life are marks of the perfect man. These
characteristics bespeak the firmer hand and the profounder experience.
Yet the series of works which form together Philo's esoteric doctrine
were certainly put together over a long period of years, as the varied
political references indicate. It has indeed been suggested by a
modern German scholar[100] that large parts were originally given in
the form of detached lectures and sermons, and that Philo later
composed them together into a continuous commentary, working them up
with much literary elaboration. In support of this theory, it may be
urged that several of the treatises contain political addresses to
public audiences, notably the _De Agricultura_ and _De Confusione
Linguarum_, while in others there are invocations to prayer, or a
summons to read a passage in the Bible, addressed apparently by the
preacher to the Hazan, who had before him the scroll of the law. From
Philo's own statements we know that the wisest men used to deliver
philosophical homilies upon the Bible on the Sabbath day; and it is
natural that the man who was appointed to head the Jewish embassy to
Gaius had made himself known in the past to his brethren for oratory
and wisdom of speech. "Sermons," said Jowett, "though they deal with
eternal subjects, are the most evanescent form of literature." The
dictum is true for the most part, but occasionally the sermon, by its
depth of thought, the universality of its message, and the beauty of
its expression, has become part of the world's heritage from the ages.
Moreover, at Alexandria philosophy was associated with preaching. And
the sermons of the Jewish-Hellenistic writer, in their style as well
as in their thought, represent an epoch. Philo spoke in the language
of the intellectual world of his day, and strove to associate the
intellectual precepts of Hellenism with the Hebraic passion for
righteousness. In his great moments, however, the Hebraic spirit
towers supreme. "He was," said Croiset, the historian of Greek
literature, "the first Greek prose writer who could speak to God and
of God to man with the ardent piety and reverence of the Jewish
prophets."[101]
It is a serious misconception to imagine that Philo's philosophical
allegories were meant for the general body of Alexandrian Jews. He
frequently[102] declares that he is speaking to a specially initiated
sect, and warns his hearers not to divulge his teaching. The
notion of an esoteric doctrine for the aristocracy of intellect had
become a fixed idea in the Greek schools for three centuries, ever
since the days of Aristotle; and whether through Greek influence or
otherwise it had been generally adopted by the Jewish teachers. The
rabbis of the Talmud derived from the first chapters of Genesis the
inner mystery of the law, which was cognizable only by the sage; and
the same idea is found in later Jewish tradition, which, expounding
Paradise ([Hebrew: prds]) as four stages of interpretation, each
marked by a letter of the word, Peshat, Remez, Derash, and Sod
([Hebrew: sod]),[103] regarded the last as the final reward of the
devoted seeker after God, as it is said in the Psalms, "The secret of
the Lord is for those who fear Him." Jewish religious philosophers
have in all ages designed their work for a select few. The Halakah, or
way of life, is the fit study of the many. So Maimonides wrote his
Moreh only for those who already were masters of the law. And Philo
likewise at Alexandria taught an esoteric doctrine to an esoteric
circle, which alone was fitted to receive the profoundest
theology.[104] The allegories of the law do not take the place of the
law itself, nor of its ethical ordinances. They are additional to the
other exegesis and distinct, destined only for the man of learning.
And as we shall see, he asserts emphatically in the midst of his
allegories[105] that the perception of the philosophical value does
not release man from the practice itself. The wise man even as the
fool must obey the law.