here we may glance at his place in the development of Greek
philosophy. The fusion between Eastern and Western thought, which he
himself so strikingly illustrates, continued to dominate philosophy
for the next four hundred years; and Plato, who, with his deep
religious spirit, had a broad affinity with the Oriental conception of
the universe, was the supreme philosophical master. All the chief
teachers looked to him for the intellectual basis of their ideas and
read into his works their particular religious beliefs; but they
failed to maintain a true harmony between the two. The cultures of all
countries and races mingled, even as their peoples mingled under the
Roman Empire, but they were so combined as to lose the purity and
individuality of each element. The Eastern Platonists who followed
Philo brought to their interpretation less noble conceptions of the
Godhead, the Gnosticism of Syria, the dualism of Persia, the
impersonal pantheism of India, and the theurgies of Egypt, and
produced strange hybrids of the human mind. The one point of agreement
between them is that they conceive the Supreme God as impersonal and
entirely inactive, "a deified Zero," and endeavor by a system of
emanation to trace the descent of this baffling principle into man and
the universe. Philo was as unfortunate in his philosophical as in his
religious following, who both transformed his poetical metaphors into
fixed and rigid dogmas. His doctrine of the Logos was, on the one
hand, the forerunner of the Trinity of the Church, on the other of the
Trinity of the Alexandrian neo-Platonists. It is difficult, indeed, to
trace with certainty the connection between Philo and the later school
of Alexandrian Platonists, but there appears to be at least one clear
link in the teaching of the Syrian Numenius, who flourished in the
middle of the second century. To him are attributed the two sayings:
"Either Plato Philonizes or Philo Platonizes," and "What is Plato but
the Attic Moses?" Modern scholars have questioned the correctness of
the reference, but be this as it may, it is certain that Numenius used
the Bible as evidence of Platonic doctrines. "We should go back," he
says, in a fragment, "to the actual writings of Plato and call in as
testimony the ideas of the most cultured races; comparing their holy
books and laws we should bring in support the harmonious ideas which
are to be found among the Brahmans and the Jews."[278] Origen tells
us,[279] moreover, that he often introduced excerpts from the books of
Moses and the Prophets, and allegorized them with ingenuity. In one of
the few remains of his writings which have come down to us, we find
him praising the verse in the first chapter of Genesis, "The spirit of
God was upon the waters"; because, as Philo had interpreted
it--following perhaps a rabbinical tradition--water represents the
primal world-stuff. And elsewhere he mentions the efforts of the
Egyptian magicians to frustrate the miracles of Moses, following
Philo's account in his life of the Jewish hero.
The work of Philo helped to spread a knowledge of the Hebrew
Scriptures far and wide and to give them general authority as a
philosophical book; but it did not succeed in spreading the pure
Hebrew monotheism. The exalted Hebrew idea of God was still too
sublime for the pagan nations, even for their philosophers. The world
in truth was decaying morally and intellectually, and most of all in
powers of imagination; and its hunger for God found expression in
crude and stunted conceptions of His nature. Unable any longer to soar
to Heaven, it sullied the majesty of the Deity, and divided the
Godhead in order to bridge the gap. Numenius represents in philosophy
the Gnostic ideas about God which were widely held by the heretics,
Jewish and Christian, of the second century. He divides the Godhead
into two separate powers: (1) the impersonal Being behind all reality,
free from all activity whatsoever; (2) the Demiurge or active governor
of the universe, who again is subdivided into a transcendent and an
immanent power.
The teaching of Plotinus, the most famous of the later Alexandrian
neo-Platonists, shows a further step in the development of religious
Platonism. Viewed from its higher side it is an attempt to explain
everything as the emanation of the One. But philosophy in the third
century debased itself in order to support the tottering polytheistic
religion of the pagan world against the modified Hebraic creed,
Christianity, which was fast demolishing its power. Against the
Trinity of the Church the philosophers set up a heavenly Trinity of
so-called reason: the Ineffable One, the Demiurgic Mind, and the World
Soul; and between this Trinity and man they placed intermediate
hierarchies of gods, angels, and demons--in fact, the whole fugitive
army of Greek polytheism thinly disguised. All the vulgar fancies and
superstitions which Philo had intellectualized, these later Eastern
Platonists sought to revive and justify by conceptions of physical
emanation blended of false science and mysticism. They hoped to found
a universal religion by finding room in one system for the deities of
all nations!
From Plotinus down to Proclus, neo-Platonism became more
unintellectual, more insane, more pagan, and, finally, with its vapid
dreams, it brought the history of Greek philosophy to an inglorious
close. Its finer teachings, however, deeply affected mediaeval
philosophy, and not least the Arab-Jewish school. The theory of
emanations and spiritual hierarchies pervades the writings of Ibn
Ezra, Ibn Gabirol, and Ibn Daud, and thus indirectly provides a
connection between the culture of Alexandrian Judaism and the culture
of Spanish Judaism. The praise of God known as the [Hebrew: ktr mlkot] by
Ibn Gabirol is a splendid example of the Hebraizing of neo-Platonic
doctrines, which, though probably quite independent of his teaching,
recalls constantly the ideas of Philo.
By his place at the head of the neo-Platonic school Philo enters the
broad stream of the world's philosophical development, but his more
lasting influence was exercised over the religious philosophy of
Christianity. He was the direct master of what is known as the
Patristic school, which sought to combine the intellectual conceptions
of Plato with the religious ideas of the Gospels. Its most celebrated
teachers were Clement and Origen, both of Alexandria, who flourished
in the second century. They resorted largely to allegorical
interpretation, learning from Philo to trace in the Bible principles
of universal thought and profound philosophy; but they used his method
and his lessons to support notions of God and the Logos which were
alien to his spirit. He had possessed pre-eminently the soaring
imagination of poetry, which is the crown of the intellectual and of
the religious mind, and unites them in their highest excellence; but
they bounded their philosophy within the narrow limits of dogma, and
thereby destroyed the harmony between Hebraism and Hellenism which he
had contrived to effect. The controversy of Origen and Celsus began
again the battle between reason and faith, "which was to destroy for
centuries the independence of philosophy and to break the continuity
of civilization." Had Philo really been ploughing the sand, and was an
agreement between faith and reason, between religion and philosophy,
impossible? Can the two finest creations of the mind only be combined
on the terms that one is subordinate, or rather servile, to the other?
In Judaism, if anywhere, the combination should be possible, for
Judaism has as its basis an intuitional conception of God, which is in
harmony with the philosophical conception of the universe, and it has
little dogma besides. The neo-Platonists and the Church Fathers failed
to carry on the ideal of Philo, but it was to be expected that among
his own people, the nation of philosophers, as he had called them, he
would have found true successors. Yet the use made of his work by the
Christians compelled his people to regard him as a betrayer of the law
and to avoid his goal as a treacherous snare. For centuries Greek
philosophy was banned from Jewish thought, and Philo's works are not
mentioned by any Jewish writer. Strangers possessed his inheritance,
and his name alone, "Philo-Judæus," bore witness to his nationality.
It is an interesting speculation to consider how different might have
been the history, not only of the Jews, but of the world, if the
Hellenistic Judaism of Philo had prevailed in the Roman-Greek world
instead of "the impurer Hellenism of Christianity." When, in the tenth
century, the leaders of Jewish thought broke the bonds of seclusion,
and brought anew to the interpretation of their religion the culture
of the outer world, Greek philosophy became again a powerful
influence, though it was Aristotle rather than Plato whom they
studied. The harmonizing spirit of Philo, which may be accounted part
of the genius of the race, lives on in Saadia, Maimonides, Ibn Ezra,
Ibn Gabirol, and Judah Halevi. But the difference between him and the
Arabic school is marked. They do not inherit his whole object, for
they aimed not at a philosophical Judaism which should be a
world-religion, but at a philosophical Judaism for the more
enlightened Jews alone. Philo's work was the culminating point,
indeed, of a great development in Judaism, produced by the mingling of
the finest products of human reason and human imagination, but it was
particularly the expression of his own commanding genius. He lacked a
true successor, for those who shared his aim did not inherit his
Jewish outlook, and those who shared his Jewish outlook did not
inherit his aim. What is characteristic of and peculiar to Philo is
the combination of the missionary and the philosopher. Living at a
time when the Jewish genius expanded most brilliantly, and when
Judaism exercised its greatest influence, he hoped to make his
religion universal by showing it to be philosophical, and to bring
about by the aid of Plato the ideal of the prophets.
* * * * *
VII
PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION
We have seen from time to time how Philo's interpretation of the Bible
corresponds with Palestinian Jewish tradition; and we must now
consider more in detail the relations of the two schools of Jewish
learning. Until the last century it was commonly supposed that no
close relation existed, and that the Alexandrian and Palestinian
schools were independent and opposed; Scaliger, the greatest scholar
of the seventeenth century, wrote[280] that "Philo was more ignorant
of Hebraic and Aramaic lore than any Gaul or Scythian," and this was
the opinion generally held. The researches of Freudenthal and
Siegfried[281] have shown the falsity of these views; and, most
important of all, Philo refutes them out of his own mouth. He refers
in many different parts of his works[282] to the tradition and the
wisdom of his ancestors, he tells us how on the Sabbath the Jews
studied in their synagogues their special philosophy,[283] and he
commences his "Life of Moses" by declaring that against the false
calumnies of Greek writers he will set forth the true account which he
has learnt from the sacred writings and "from certain elders of his
race." In support of his statement we have the remark of Eusebius, the
Christian historian, and our chief ancient authority for Philo's
work,[284] that he set forth and expounded not only the laws of the
Bible, but many institutions and opinions of his fathers. Apart from
these direct references, the numerous points of correspondence between
Philo's interpretations and those of the Talmud and later Midrash
would compel us to admit a connection between Alexandria and
Jerusalem.
The break between the two schools did not show itself till after the
time of Philo. Up to the first century of the Christian era the rabbis
encouraged the union of Shem and Japheth--the two good sons of one
parent--and the stream of ideas flowed quite freely between the
teachers in Palestine and the Hellenized colony in Egypt.[285] Hence
the Palestinian Jews, on the one hand, received the first fruits of
this mingling of cultures, and the Alexandrian Jews, on the other,
must have inherited the early tradition of the rabbinical interpreters
embodied in ancient Halakah and Haggadah. By this common heritage,
rather than by any direct borrowing, it seems more reasonable to
account for the correspondence in the two Midrashim. It should be
remembered that until the second century of the common era the mass of
Jewish tradition was a floating and developing body of opinion not
consigned to writing or formalized, but handed down by word of mouth
from teacher to pupil, and preacher to congregation: in this way it
was diffused throughout the mind of the race, indefinitely and, to
some extent, unconsciously shaping its thought. The detailed points of
agreement between Philo and the Talmud and Midrash are not of great
moment in themselves, but they are the signs of a unity of development
and the catholicity of Judaism in the East and West. Doubtless the
development was more national and at the same time more legal in
Judæa, in Alexandria more Hellenistic and philosophical, but there is
a common spiritual bond between the two expressions, pious images,
fancies, similes, interpretations which they share. They are, as it
were, children of one family, and despite the varying influences of
environment they maintain a family resemblance. With the Sibylline
oracles we may compare Daniel and the Psalms of Solomon; with Aristeas
and his fellow-Apologists, Josephus; with the allegorical commentaries
of Philo, the Midrashim. Modern scholars have gone far to prove that
Philo was the expounder of an Hellenic Midrash upon the Bible, in
which were gathered the thoughts and ideas that had been brought to
Egypt by the Jewish settlers, modified, no doubt, by Greek influences,
but still bearing the stamp of their origin. Philo, then, appears in
the direct line of the tradition which from the time of the Great
Synagogue was disseminated through two channels, the schools of
Palestine and the writers of Alexandria. He developed the national
Jewish theology in a literary form, which made it available for the
world, but with him the tradition as a Jewish tradition ends; in its
further Hellenistic development it departed entirely from its original
principles.
It is natural that the larger number of parallels between Philo and
the rabbis is to be found in the Haggadic portions of Talmudic
teaching, for the Haggadah represents the same spirit as underlies
Philo's work, though in a more peculiarly Jewish form; it is an
allegory, a play of fancy, a tale that points a moral, or illustrates
a question. It had, too, largely the same origin, for it gathered
together the popular discourses given in the synagogue on the
Sabbaths. Yet the relation of Philo to the other domain of the Talmud,
the code of life, or the Halakah, is of great interest; for, as we
have seen,[286] the Alexandrian community had a Sanhedrin of their
own, of which Philo's brother was the president, and he himself
probably a member; and in his exposition of the "Specific Laws" he has
preserved for us the record of certain interpretations of the Jewish
code, which are illuminating as much by their difference from, as by
their agreement with, the practices of Palestine. The general aim of
Philo's exegesis of the law was to show its broad principles of
justice and humanity rather than to formulate its exact detail. It is
true, he makes it an offence[287]--unknown to the rabbis--for
a Jew to be initiated into the Greek mysteries, but usually he is
concerned to recommend the Halakah to the world rather than expand it
for his own community. This is shown in his treatment of the civil as
much as the moral law. The great system of jurisprudence in his day,
with which every code claiming to have universal value had necessarily
to challenge comparison, was Roman Law. That part of it which was
applied throughout the Empire, the _jus gentium_, was regarded as
"written reason." It is probable that contact with Roman jurisprudence
had affected the practical interpretations which the Alexandrian
Sanhedrin put upon the Biblical legislation, and was the cause of some
of their differences from the Palestinian Halakah. In treating the
ethical law, Philo's object was to show its agreement with the
loftiest conceptions of Greek philosophers, and, indeed, its
profounder truth; in treating the civil law of the Bible, his object
likewise was to show its agreement with the highest principles of
jurisprudence and its superiority to pagan codes. If at times he
supports a greater severity than the Palestinian rabbis eventually
allowed, that is where greater severity implies a closer relation to
Roman Law. Thus he has not the horror of capital punishment which the
Jerusalem Sanhedrin exhibited; he would condemn to death the man who
commits wilful homicide, whether by his own hand or by poison;[288]
whereas the other Halakah allows it only in the former case. He who
commits perjury also is to suffer capital punishment.[289] He adds a
law which finds no place in the Palestinian tradition, making the
exposure of children a capital crime.[290] Again, following the text
of the Biblical law literally (see Deut. xxi. 18), he gives power of
life and death to parents over their rebellious children, whereas the
Jewish law demands a trial before a court to make the death sentence
legal. He approves of the _lex talionis_, "an eye for an eye, a tooth
for a tooth," agreeing here, indeed, with the opinion of earlier
rabbis like R. Eliezer (see Baba Kama 84, [Hebrew: 'yn tht 'yn mmsh],
"the law of eye for eye is to be taken literally"), and disagreeing with
the later Halakic interpretation, which says that the law of Moses means
the award of the value of an eye for an eye, etc.
This is one instance among many of Philo's adoption of the older
tradition, established probably under the Sadducæan predominance,
which was modified in the rabbinical schools of the first and the
second century. Paradoxically, in his exposition of the law, Philo
follows the letter more closely as the expression of justice, while
the later rabbis often allegorize it in order to support their humaner
interpretation. Thus, commenting on the passage in Exodus xxii. 3
about the law of theft, "If the sun be risen upon him, blood shall be
shed for blood," he, like R. Eliezer, interprets [Hebrew: dbrim kktbm][291]
_i.e._, literally. "If," he says, "the owner catches the thief before
sunrise, he may kill him, but after the sun has risen he must bring him
before the court."[292] This also was the Roman law, but the Halakah
interprets more artificially: "If it were as clear as sunlight that
the thief would not have killed the owner, then the owner may not kill
him." Philo would justify the old law; the rabbis explain it away. On
the other hand, in his treatment of the law relating to slaves, Philo
extends the liberality both of the Bible and the Halakah. He declares
that the slave is to be set free when by his master's violence he loses
an eye or even a tooth.[293] The Bible and the Talmud direct emancipation
only where the slave loses a limb; but Philo writes eloquently of the
humanity of which man is deprived by the loss of sight; and he would
apparently condemn the master who injured his slave more seriously to the
full penalties of the ordinary law.[294] Maimonides, in his exposition of
the law, approves the milder practice,[295] and this suggests that it
had an old tradition behind it. Beautiful is Philo's stray maxim,
"Behave to your servants as you pray that God may behave to you. For
as we hear them, so shall we be heard, and as we regard them, so shall
we be regarded."[296] In his whole treatment of slavery, Philo shows
remarkable enlightenment for his age. He objects, indeed, to the
institution altogether, and he tempers it continually with ideas of
equality. Thus, following the Halakah, he directs the redemption of a
slave seven years after his purchase, and he treats the laws of the
seventh-year rest to the land and of the jubilee as of universal
validity.
Coming to the more specifically religious laws we find that Philo,
missionary as he is, prohibits altogether marriage with Gentiles,[297]
and that though, in the opinion of certain rabbinic teachers, the
Biblical prohibition extended only to marriage with the Canaanite
tribes, and unions with other Gentiles were permitted.[298] Philo
recognizes how dangerous such unions are for the cause which he had so
dearly at heart, the spreading of Judaism. "Even," says he, "if you
yourself remain true to your religion through the influence of the
excellent instruction of your parents, yet there is no small danger
that your children by such a marriage may be beguiled away by bad
customs to unlearn the true religion of the one only God."[299]
Throughout, Philo is true to the mission of Israel in its highest
sense. That mission is not assimilation, and it is to be brought about
by no easy method of mixing with the surrounding people. It can be
effected only by holding up the Torah in its purity as a light to the
nations, and by offering them examples of life according to the law.
Of the special ordinances for Sabbaths and festivals Philo mentions
only those consecrated by the Biblical law or ancient tradition, which
probably were the only ones settled in his day. He lays down the
prohibition to kindle fire,[300] to make or return deposits, or to
plead in the law courts on the Sabbath; he speaks of the reading of
the Haggadah and Hallel on the night of Passover, of the bringing of a
barley cake during the 'Omer and of the first fruits to the Temple on
the Feast of Weeks, of the Shofar at New Year, and of the Sukkah, but
not of the Lulab at Tabernacles. It should be remembered that the
Halakah was not consolidated till the second or third century, and in
Philo's time it was in the process of formation by different schools
of rabbis. But the passage quoted in an earlier chapter, about adding
to the law, proves his reverence for the oral law.[301]
Though his statement of the civil and religious law is of great
interest to the student of Halakic development, Philo's work presents
greater correspondence, on the whole, with the Haggadah, which in a
primitive way draws philosophical and ethical lessons from the Bible
narrative. It is a free interpretation of the Scriptures, the
expression of the individual moralist; it loves to point a moral and
adorn a tale, and in many cases it is in agreement with the
Hellenistic school. To take a few typical examples: An early
interpretation explains the story of the Brazen Serpent, as Philo
does,[302] to mean that as long as Israel are looking upward to the
Father in Heaven they will live, but when they cease to do so they
will die. Another, like him again, finds the motive of the command to
bore the ear of the slave who will not leave his master at the seventh
year of redemption, in the principle that men are God's servants, and
should not voluntarily throw away their precious freedom. So, too, the
Haggadah agrees in numerous points with Philo's stories about the
patriarchs.[303] If one were to go through the Midrashic
interpretations of the Five Books of Moses, he would find in nearly
every section interpretations reminiscent of Philo. In some cases,
however, there are striking contrasts in the two commentaries. Thus
the Midrash[304] tells that the four rivers of Eden symbolize the four
great nations of the old world; to Philo, they represent the four
cardinal virtues established by Greek philosophers. The Palestinian
commentators were prone to see an historical where Philo saw a
philosophical image.
The question may be asked, Who is the originator and who the borrower
of the common tradition? And it is a question to which chronology can
give no certain answer, and for which dates or records have no
meaning. For the Haggadah was not committed to writing till many
generations had known its influences, and it was not finally compiled
till many generations more had handed it down with continuous
accretions. The Haggadah in fact is part of the permanent spirit of
the race going back to a hoary past, and stretching down "the echoing
grooves of time" to the tradition of Judaism in our own day. The
Hebrew Word means, and the thing is, "what is said": the utterances of
the inspired teacher, some tale, some happy play of fancy, some moral
aphorism, some charming allegory which captivated the hearers, and was
handed down the generations as a precious thought. It is significant
in this regard that the Haggadah is remarkable for the number of
foreign words which it contains, Greek, Persian, and Roman terms
jostling with Hebrew and Aramaic. For while the Halakah was the
production of the Palestinian and Babylonian schools alone, the
Haggadah brought together the harvest of all lands; and scraps of
Greek philosophy found their way to Palestine before the Alexandrian
school developed its systematic allegory. In the Mishnah, the earliest
body of Jewish lore which was definitely formulated and written down,
one section is Haggadic, the passages we know as the "Ethics of the
Fathers." Now, we cannot place the date of this compilation before the
first century,[305] and thus it would seem to be contemporary with
Philo's work, to which it affords numerous parallels. But the great
mass of the Haggadah, the Pesikta, the Mekilta, and the other
Midrashim, were all later compilations, some of them as late as the
fifth and the sixth century. Are we to say, then, that where they
correspond to Philo they show his influence? At first this would
appear the natural conclusion.