the Scriptures? He does so for two reasons: first, because he holds
and wishes to prove that between faith and philosophy there is no
conflict, and his generation worked out the agreement by this method;
he does so also because he wishes to establish the Torah and Judaism
upon a sure foundation for the man of outside culture. The pursuit of
philosophy must have menaced the attachment to Judaism and challenged
the authority of the Bible at Alexandria. A superficial knowledge of
the materialistic or rationalistic theories, which were propagated
respectively by the Epicurean and Stoic schools, was made the excuse
for indifference to the law. Then as now the advanced Jew would mask
his self-indulgence under the guise of a banal philosophy, and jeer
easily at archaic myths and tribal laws. The dominating motive of
Philo's work is to show that the Bible contains for those who will
seek it the richest treasures of wisdom, that its ethical teaching is
more ideal and yet more real than that which hundreds of sophists
poured forth daily in the lecture-theatres[106] to the gaping
dilettanti of learning, and lastly that the cultured Jew may search
out knowledge and truth to their depths, and find them expressed in
his holy books and in his religious beliefs and practices. Philo
frequently introduces into his philosophical interpretation a polemic
against the disintegrating and demoralizing forces which were at work
in the Alexandria of his day. His commentary therefore is a strange
medley, compounded of idealistic speculation, theology, homiletics,
moral denunciation, and polemical rhetoric. The idea, which is not
uncommon, that Philo represents the extreme Hellenic development of
Judaism, and that he gathered into his writings the opinions of all
Greek schools to the ruin of his Jewish individuality, is utterly
erroneous. In fact, he chooses out only the valuable parts of Greek
thought, which could enter into a true harmony with the Hebraic
spirit; and he not only rejects, but he attacks unsparingly those
elements which were antagonistic to holiness and righteousness. With
the enthusiasm of a Maccabee, if with other weapons, he fought against
the bastard culture, which meant self-indulgence and the excessive
attention to the body, the idol-worship, the degraded ideas of the
Divine power, and the disregard of truth and justice, that were
current in the pagan society about him. The seeking after sensual
pleasure and luxury was the most glaring evil of his city--as the
Talmud says,[107] of ten parts of lust nine were given to
Alexandria--and with every variety of denunciation he returns again
and again to the charge. Epicureanism is detestable not only for its
low idea of human life, but for its godless conception of the
universe. Its theory that the world was a fortuitous concourse of
atoms, which was governed by blind chance, and that the gods lived
apart in complete indifference to men--this was to Philo utter
atheism, and as such the greatest of sins. He attacked paganism not
only in its crude form of idolatry,[108] but in its more seductive
disguise of a pretentious philosophy. Always and entirely he was the
champion of monotheism.
Nearly as godless, and therefore as vile in his eyes as the follower
of Epicurus, is the follower of the Stoic doctrines. It has been shown
that the Jews and the Stoics were continually in conflict at
Alexandria; and the "Allegories of the Laws" are filled with attacks,
overt and hidden, upon the Stoic doctrines. The Stoics, indeed,
believed in one supreme Divine Power, not however in a transcendental
and personal God, but a cosmic, impersonal, fatalistic world-force.[109]
To Philo this conception, with its denial of the Divine will and the
Divine care for the individual, was as atheistic as the Epicurean
"chance." Equally repulsive to his religious standpoint was the Stoic
dogma, that man is, or should be, independent of all help, and that
the human reason is all-powerful and can comprehend the universe by
its own unaided power.[110] Repulsive also were their pride, their
rejection of the emotions, their hard rationalism. The battle of Philo
against the Stoics is the battle of personal monotheism against
impersonal pantheism, of religious faith and revelation against
arrogant rationalism, and of idealism against materialism. Hostile as
he is to the Stoic intellectual dogmatism, Philo is none the less
opposed to its converse, intellectual skepticism and agnosticism. Man,
he is convinced, has a Divine revelation[111] which he may not deny
without ruin. He holds with Pope that we have
"Too much of knowledge for the Skeptic side,
Too much of weakness for the Stoic's pride,"
and he attacks the Skeptics of the day who devoted their minds to
destructive dialectical quibbling and sophistry[112] instead of
seeking for God and the human good. They are the Ishmaels of
philosophy.
Philo's polemic is directed less against the Greek schools in
themselves than against the Jewish followers of the Greek schools. He
saw the danger to Judaism in the teachings of these anti-religious
philosophers, and deeply as he loved Greek culture, he loved more
deeply his religion. He wanted to reveal a philosophy in the Bible
which should win back to Judaism the men who had been captivated by
foreign thought. In one aspect, therefore, his master-work is a plea
for unity. The community at Alexandria was a very heterogeneous body;
not only were the sects which had appeared in Palestine, the Sadducees,
Samaritans, Pharisees, and Essenes, represented there too, but in
addition there were parties who attached themselves to one or other of
the Greek schools, the Pythagoreans, Skeptics, and the like, and
lastly Gnostic groups, who cultivated an esoteric doctrine of the
Godhead, and were lax in their observance of the law, which they held
to be purely symbolical and of no account in its literal meaning. The
mental activity which this growth of sects exemplified was in some
respects a healthy sign, but it contained seeds of religious chaos,
which bore their fruit in the next century. Men started by thinking
out a philosophical Judaism for themselves; they ended by ceasing to
be Jews and philosophers. Philo foresaw this danger, and he tried to
combat it by presenting his people with a commentary of the Bible
which should satisfy their intellectual and speculative bent, but at
the same time preserve their loyalty to the Bible and the law. To the
Greek world he offered a philosophical religion, to his own people a
religious philosophy. Thus the allegorical commentary is the crowning
point of his work, the offering of his deepest thought to the most
cultured of the community; and though much of its detail had only
relevancy for its own time, and its method may repel our modern taste,
yet the spirit which animates it is of value to all ages, and should
be an inspiration to every generation of emancipated Jews. That spirit
is one of fearless acceptance of the finest culture of the age
combined with unswerving love of the law and loyalty to catholic
Judaism.
We have already treated of the general characteristics of Philo's
method of allegorical interpretation, but we must now consider rather
more closely the way in which he employs it. The general principle
upon which he depends is, that besides and in addition to the literal
meaning which the Bible bears for the common man, it has a hidden and
deeper meaning for the philosopher. It is, as it were, a sort of
palimpsest; the writing on the top all may read, the writing below the
student alone can decipher. With the rabbis Philo holds that the Torah
was written "in the language of the sons of man,"[113] but he believes
with them again that it contains all wisdom. And if the ideas of
reason do not appear in its literal meaning, then they must be
searched out in some inner interpretation. Commenting on the verse in
Genesis (xi. 7), "Let us confound their language, that they may not
understand one another's speech," he says: "Those who follow the
literal and obvious interpretation think that the origin of the Greek
and barbarian languages is here described; [the contrast between
Greek, on the one hand, and barbarian--in which Hebrew, it seems, is
included--on the other, is remarkable]. I would not find fault with
them, because they also, perhaps, employ right reason, but I would
call on them not to remain content with this, but to follow me to the
metaphorical renderings, considering that the actual words of the holy
oracle are, as it were, shadows of the real bodies, and the powers
which they reflect are the true underlying ideas."[114]
Elsewhere he tells a story of the condign punishment which befell a
godless and impious man, perchance a Samaritan Jew, who made mock of
the race of allegorical interpreters, jeering at the idea that the
change of names from Abram to Abraham and from Sarai to Sarah
contained some deep meaning. He soon paid a fitting penalty for his
wicked wit, for on some very trivial pretext he went and hanged
himself. Which was just, says Philo; for such a rascal deserved a
rascal's death.[115] It is noteworthy that the Talmud also lays stress
upon the deep meaning of the patriarch's change of name.[116] "He who
calls Abraham Abram," said Bar Kappara, "transgresses a positive
command" [Hebrew: mtsva 'sha]. "Nay," said Rabbi Levi, "he transgresses
both a positive and a negative command (and commits a double sin)." Clearly
this was a test-question and an article of faith, possibly because the
letter [Hebrew: h], which was added to the name, was a letter of
mystical import in the opinion of the age. Both the rejection of the
literal and the rejection of the allegorical value of the Bible, Philo
regarded as impious, and he had to struggle against opposite factions
that were one-sided. The true son of the law believes in both [Greek:
to hrêton] and [Greek: to en hyponoiais].[117] Seeing that the
Bible was the inspired revelation of God, who is the fountain of all
wisdom and knowledge--this is Philo's cardinal dogma--it is not to be
supposed, on the one hand, that it was silent about the profoundest
ideas of the human mind, or, on the other, that it contained ideas
opposed to right reason and truth. Yet at first sight it seemed to
lack any definite philosophy and to offer anthropomorphic views of
God. Hence the true interpreter must use the actual words of the sage
as metaphors, following the maxim, "Turn it about and about, because
all is in it, and contemplate it and wax grey over it, for thou canst
have no better rule than this."[118] The principle upon which Philo,
Saadia, Maimonides, and in fact the whole line of Jewish philosophical
exegetes have worked, is that the "words of the law are fruitful and
multiply"; or, as the Bible phrase runs, "The Torah which Moses
commanded unto us is the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob." It
is the separate inheritance of each generation, which each must
cultivate so as to gather therefrom its own fruit.
The Halakah is the outcome of this devotion in one aspect, the
philosophical exegesis in another. In the one case Jewish
jurisprudence and the body of legal tradition, in the other,
philosophical ideas inspired by outer civilization, are attached to
the text of the Bible by ingenious devices of association. The device
is partly a pious fiction, partly a genuine belief; in other words,
the teachers honestly thought that there was respectively a hidden
philosophical meaning in the Bible and an oral tradition,
supplementary to the written law and arising out of it; but on the
other hand they would not have urged that their particular
interpretation alone was portended by the Scriptures. This is shown in
the Talmud by the fact that different rabbis deduced the same lessons
from different verses, and contrary laws from the same verse; in Philo
by the fact that he often gives various interpretations of one text in
different parts of his work. All that was claimed was that knowledge
and truth must be primarily referred to the Divine revelation, and all
law and practice to the authority of the Mosaic code. Philo, then, in
the same way as the rabbis, deduces all his teaching from the Bible,
not because he holds that it was explicitly contained there, but
because he desires to give to his philosophical notions Divine
authority. Like the rabbis, again, he suggests definite rules of
interpretation which may always be applied [Greek: kanones tês
allêgorias].[119] He declares that every name in the Torah has a deep
symbolical meaning, and symbolizes some power.[120] Thus the names of
the sons of Jacob typify each some moral quality, and these qualities
together make the perfect man and the perfect nation. Reuben is "the
son of insight" [Hebrew: ru'bn], Simeon is learning [Hebrew: shm'-on],
Judah [Hebrew: yhuda] stands for the praise of God.[121] It may be noted,
by the way, that all these values show traces of Hebrew etymology. Again,
the synonyms in the Bible are to be carefully studied, while even
particles and parts of words have their special value and importance.
And the skilful exegete may for homiletical purposes make slight
changes in a word, following the rabbinical rule,[122] "Read not so,
but so." Thus he plays upon the name Esau, and takes the Hebrew word
as though it were written, not [Hebrew: 'eshaw] but [Hebrew: 'ashav], a
thing made.[123] Whence he shows that Esau represents the sham
(made-up) greatness, which is boastful and insolent and shameless.
Philo is referring perhaps to Apion, the vainglorious anti-Semite,
whom he often covertly attacks. Again, whenever there is repetition in
the text, a deeper meaning is portended. Dealing with the verse,
"Sarah the wife of Abraham took Hagar the Egyptian" (Gen. xvi. 3),
Philo comments, that we already knew that Sarah was Abraham's wife:
why, then, does the Bible mention it again? And following certain
values which he has made, he draws the lesson that the study of
philosophy must always go together with the study of general
culture.[124] These examples are not isolated; yet it is rather a
barren science to search for the canons of Philo's allegory, as
Siegfried has done.
For his allegory is a very flexible instrument, which can be employed
at pleasure to deduce anything from anything. And Philo regards these
"points of construction" as the excuse, not as the motive, of his
ethical and philosophical teaching. He does not depend on such
devices, for he wanders into allegory more often than not without any
pretext of the kind.
The modern reader may consider the allegorical method artificial and
unconvincing, even if he does not go so far as Spinoza, and say that
it is "useless, harmful, and absurd."[125] We prefer to-day to show
the inner agreement of philosophical with Biblical teaching, rather
than pretend that all philosophy is contained within the Bible; and we
accept the Bible as it stands, as a book of supreme religious worth,
without requiring more of it. But that is mainly a difference of taste
or of method, and in Philo's day, and in fact down to the time of the
sixteenth-century Renaissance, Jew and Gentile alike preferred the
other way. For thought, ancient and mediæval, was pervaded with the
craving for authority or a plausible show of it. The Bible was not
only the great book of morality, but the standard of truth, that from
which knowledge in all its branches started, and that by which it was
to be judged. As all knowledge came from God, so all knowledge was in
God's Book; and allegory was the method by which the intellectual
conceptions of succeeding ages were attached to it.
The two main heads of Biblical interpretation which the Jewish
religious genius developed, Peshat and Derash,--these represent two
permanent attitudes of mind. In the first the commentator tries to get
at the exact meaning of the text before him, to make its lesson clear
and discuss the circumstances of the composition, the exact relations
of its parts. He is satisfied to take the writer of the Biblical book
for what he says in his own form of utterance. In the second the
commentator is more anxious to inculcate ideas and lessons which do
not arise obviously from the text, and to widen the significance of
what he finds in the Bible. The interpretation ceases to be a mere
exposition; it becomes creative or conciliating thought, and the
interpreter becomes a religious reformer, a philosopher, a prophet. To
this school Philo belongs, and the framework of his teaching or the
ingenuity by which he develops it from his text is of small account.
It is what he teaches and what he considers to be the vital things in
religion and life to which we must pay attention. Judged on this
ground Philo is a supreme master of Derash, and must take a place
among the most creative of the interpreters of the Bible.
* * * * *
IV
PHILO AND THE TORAH
Over and over again Philo declares that his function is to expound the
law of Moses. Moses was the interpreter of God's word to Israel; and
Philo aspired to be the interpreter of the revelation of Moses to the
Hellenistic world, "the living voice of the holy law." He believed
that Israel was a chosen people in the sense that it had received the
Divine message on behalf of the whole human race,[126] a Kingdom of
Priests, in that it occupied to other nations the position which the
priest--using the word in the fullest sense--occupied to the common
people.[127] The Torah is God's covenant, not only with one small
nation, but with all His children, and its teachings are true for all
times and for all places. "The Bible," as Professor Butcher says,[128]
"is the one book which appears to have the capacity of eternal
self-adjustment, of uninterrupted correspondence with an ever-shifting
and ever-widening environment." Nowadays this appears a truism, but
the truth first presented itself to the Jewish-Alexandrian community
when they came in contact with external culture. The Palestinian and
Babylonian Jews, free for the most part from outside influences,
developed the Torah for the Jewish people, amplified the tradition,
and determined the Halakah, the practical law. But the Alexandrian
Jews in the first place found their own attitude to the Torah affected
by their acquaintance with Greek ethics and metaphysics, and also
found it necessary to interpret the Bible in a new fashion in order to
make its value known to their environment. The Greek world required to
be shown the general principle, the broad ethical idea in each
ordinance. And thus it came about that the Alexandrian interpreters
always emphasized the universal beneath the particular, the moral
spirit beneath the forms.
It had been one of the chief functions of the prophets to demonstrate
the moral import of the law. In their vision the God of Israel became
the God of the universe, and His law of conduct was spread over all
mankind. "For the law shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the
Lord from Jerusalem" (Micah iv. 2). Philo in effect expounds Judaism
in their spirit, though he speaks their message in the voice of Plato
and to a people whose minds were trained in Greek culture. Yet it is
significant that he wrote all his commentaries round the Five Books of
Moses, and used the prophets and other Biblical books only to
illustrate and support the Mosaic teaching, which contains the whole
way of life and the whole religious philosophy. According to the
rabbis also the Prophets formed only a complement to the Torah, "a
species of Agadah";[129] and the prophetic vision of Moses was much
clearer than that of his successors. Philo, too, clearly realized that
Judaism was the religion of the law. His view of the Torah is what the
modern world would call uncritical: that is to say, he accepts the
idea that the whole of the Five Books was an objective revelation to
Moses at Sinai. But though--or because--he is innocent of the higher
criticism, and believes in the literal inspiration of the Torah, his
conception is none the less enlightened and spiritual. The law--the
Divine Logos--is not the enactment of an outside power, arbitrarily
imposed, and to be obeyed because of its miraculous origin; it is the
expression of the human soul within, when raised to its highest power
by the Divine inspiration. Every man may fit himself to receive the
Divine word, which is, in modern language, revelation.[130] Moses,
then, is distinguished above all other legislators, not because he
alone received it, but because he received it in its purest form, and
because he was the most noble interpreter of it. It is for this reason
that the law of Moses is of universal validity for conduct. The Divine
spirit possessed him so fully that his Logos, or revelation, is
eternally true, and by following it all men become fit to be blessed
with the Divine gift themselves. This is true of the other prophets of
the Bible to a smaller degree, and in a still minor degree Philo hoped
that it was true of himself.
It should be premised that the "law of nature" was at the time of
Philo an idea as widely accepted as "evolution" is to-day. Men
believed that by a study of the processes of the universe the
individual might discover the law of conduct that should bring his
action into harmony with the whole. What the Greek philosophers
declared to be the privilege of the few, Philo declared to have been
imparted by God to His people as their law of life. Hence the Mosaic
legislation is the code of nature and reason, and the righteous man
directs his conduct in accordance with those rules of nature by which
the cosmos is ordered.[131] Obedience to the law should not be
obedience to an outward prescription, but rather the following out of
our own highest nature. The ideal which the Stoic sage continually
aspired for and never attained to--the life according to nature and
right reason--this Philo claimed had been accomplished in the Mosaic
revelation, handed down by God to Israel and through them to the
world.
Before we deal with Philo's treatment of the law in its narrower
sense, it will be as well to consider briefly his interpretation of
the historical parts of the Torah. Here likewise he finds ideas of
natural reason and eternal truths embodied. To Philo, as we have seen,
the Torah is a unity, and every part of it has equal validity and
value. He had to contend against certain higher critics of his day,
who declared that Genesis was a collection of myths ([Greek:
mythôn plasmata]).[132] Moreover, the long catalogues of
genealogies in Genesis and the longer recitals of sacrifices in
Leviticus and Numbers seemed to refute those who declared that every
part of the Pentateuch was a Divine revelation. In the third book of
the "Questions to Genesis" Philo directly grapples with this
objection. Commenting on the verse (Gen. xv. 9), "Take for me a heifer
of three years old and a goat of three years old," etc., he says that
in interpreting any part or any verse of Scripture we must look to the
purpose of the whole and explain it from this outlook, "without
dissecting or disturbing its harmony or disintegrating its
unity."[133] Why should God, asked the scoffer, reveal these trivial
or prolix details? Philo's answer is in fact to spiritualize
everything that is material, and universalize everything that is
particular. While he believes in the literal inspiration of the Bible,
he does not insist upon the literal truth of every word of it, and in
the opening chapters of Genesis in particular, he treats the tales as
symbolical or allegorical myths. His philosophical commentary on the
creation, corresponding to the [Hebrew: m'sha br'shit] of the
rabbis, is found in the book _De Mundi Opificio_, which stands in
modern editions at the head of his writings. Its main theme is to
trace in the text the Platonic idealism, _i.e._, the theory that God
first created transcendental, incorporeal archetypes of all
physical and material things. Philo uses the double account of the
creation of man in the first and second chapters of Genesis as clear
evidence that the Bible describes--for those who have the mind to
see--the creation of an ideal before the terrestrial man.