compilation, the test of the thought itself and its expression. And
judged by this test we see that the Haggadah is the more ancient, the
primal development of the Hebrew mind. The "Sayings of the Fathers"
are typical of the finest and most concentrated wisdom of the
Haggadah, and exhibit thought in its impulsive, unsystematic, gnomic
expression, neither logical nor illogical, because it knows not logic.
Beautiful ethical intuitions and profound guesses at theological truth
abound; anything like a definite system of ethics and theology is not
to be found, whence it is said, "Do not argue with the Haggadah." Even
more so is this the case with the bulk of the Midrash. There, pious
fancy will weave itself around the history and ideals of the people,
and suddenly one comes across a sage reflection or a philosophical
utterance. With Philo it is otherwise. Compared with the Greeks he is
unsystematic, inaccurate, wanting in logic, exuberant in imagination.
Compared with the rabbis he is a formal and accurate philosopher, an
exact and scholarly theologian. The floating poetical ideas of the
Haggadah are woven by him into the fabric of a Jewish philosophy and a
Jewish theology, and knit together with the rational conceptions of
Aristotle's "Metaphysics" and Plato's "Timæus." We may say, then,
almost with certainty, that Philo derives from the early Jewish
tradition, though at the same time he introduced into that tradition
many an idea taken from the Greek thinkers, which found its way to the
later Palestinian schools of Jamnia and Tiberias, and was recast by
the Hebraic imagination.
Over and over again we find that he adopts some fancy of his ancestors
and develops it rhetorically and philosophically in his commentary. To
give many examples or references to examples of this feature of
Philo's work is not within the scope of this book, but of his
development of an old Palestinian tradition the following passage may
serve as a typical instance:
"There is an old story," he writes, "composed by the sages
and handed down by memory from age to age.... They say that,
when God had finished the world, he asked one of the angels
if aught were wanting on land or in sea, in air or in
heaven. The angel answered that all was perfect and
complete. One thing only he desired, speech, to praise God's
works, or to recount, rather than praise, the exceeding
wonderfulness of all things made, even of the smallest and
the least. For the due recital of God's works would be their
most adequate praise, seeing that they needed no addition of
ornament, but possessed in the sincerity of truth the most
perfect eulogy. And the Father approved the angel's words,
and afterwards appeared the race gifted with the muses and
with song. This is the ancient story; and in accord with it,
I say that it is God's peculiar work to do good, and the
creature's work to give Him thanks."[306]
Now this legend and moral appear in another form in the collection of
Midrash, the Pirke Rabbi Eliezer, which apparently had ancient sources
that have disappeared. There it is told: "When the Holy One, blessed
be He, consulted the Torah as to the completeness of the work of
creation, she answered him: 'Master of the future world, if there be
no host, over whom will the King reign, and if there be no creatures
to praise him, where is the glory of the King?' And the Lord of the
world was pleased with her answer and forthwith He created man."[307]
The Haggadah is rich also in allegorical speculation, of which there are
traces in the Biblical books themselves. In the book of Micah, for
example, we find that the patriarchs are taken as types of certain
virtues, Abraham of Kindness, [Hebrew: hsd], and Jacob of Truth,
[Hebrew: 'mt] (vii. 20). And when the ideas of the people expanded
philosophically in Palestine and in Alexandria, the profounder
conceptions were attached to Scripture by the device of allegorical
interpretation, and certain rabbis attributed a higher value to the
inner than to the literal meaning. Thus Akiba, who wrote an elaborate
allegorical work upon the Song of Songs,[308] held that the book was the
most profound in the Bible, and Rabbi Judah similarly regarded the book
of Job.[309] The Palestinian allegorists took to themselves a wider
field than the Alexandrian, and looked for the deeper meanings rather in
the Wisdom Literature than in the Pentateuch, which was to them
essentially the Book of the Law, and, therefore, not a fit subject for
Mashal, _i.e._, inner meanings.[310] Hence, their allegorism was more
natural, more real, and truer to the spirit of that which they
interpreted. They allegorized when an allegory was invited, whereas
Philo and his school often forced their philosophical meanings in face
of the clear purport of the text, and without regard to the Hebrew. In
the one case allegory was a genuine development, and might have been
adopted by the original prophet: in the other, it was reconstruction;
and the artificial un-Hebraic character of the Hellenistic commentary
was one of the causes of its disappearance from Jewish tradition. While
the Palestinian allegorists based their continuous philosophical
interpretation upon the Wisdom Books, they, at the same time, looked for
secondary meanings wherever opportunity offered, and found lessons in
letters and teachings in names. An early school of commentators was
actually known as [Hebrew: dorsh rshomot][311] or interpreters of signs,
and their method was by examination of the letters of a word, or by
comparison of different verses, to explore homilies. For instance, the
verse, "And God showed Moses a tree" (Exod. xvi. 26), by which he
sweetened the waters at Marah, symbolized, by a play on the word
[Hebrew: vyvrhu],[312] that God taught Moses the Torah, of which it is
said, "She is a tree of life" (Prov. iii. 18). Another happy example of
this method occurs in the sixth section of the Pirke Abot, where the
names in the itinerary, [Hebrew: mmtna nhlial, vmnhlial bmot] (Numb.
xxi. 19), are invested with a spiritual meaning. Whoever believes in the
Torah, it is written, shall be exalted, as it is said, "From the gift of
the law man attains the heritage of God, and by that heritage he reaches
Heaven."
In this passage of Palestinian allegorism, it may be noticed that the
Torah is regarded as a spiritual bond between man and God, and as a
sort of intermediary power between them. This feature is almost as
frequent in the Midrash as the Logos-idea in Philo, so that it may be
said that rabbinic theology finds an idealism in the Torah which
corresponds to the idealism of the Philonic Word. It is expressed, no
doubt, naïvely and fancifully, even playfully, without attempt at
philosophical deductions. It is informed by the same spirit as the
Alexandrian allegory, but it is essentially poetical and impulsive,
and set forth in mythical personification, not in deliberate
metaphysics. The Torah to the rabbis was the embodiment of the Wisdom
which the writer of Proverbs had glorified, and it takes its
prerogatives. God gazes upon the Torah before He creates the
world.[313] The Torah, though the chief, is not, however, the only
object of rabbinic idealism. God and His name, it is said, alone
existed before the world was created,[314] and in a Talmud legend
relating the birth of man, the ideal power is identified with Truth,
which, like the Logos, is pictured as God's own seal.
"From Heaven to Earth, from Earth once more to Heaven
Shall Truth, with constant interchange, alight
And soar again, an everlasting link
Between the world and Sky."
(Translation of Emma Lazarus.)[315]
Correspondingly, Philo identifies the Logos with the name of God and
with Truth.
Of another piece of Talmudic idealism we catch a trace in Maimonides'
"Guide of the Perplexed,"[316] where he says that the rabbis explained
the designation of God, [Hebrew: lrubb b'rbot] [rendered in the authorized
version, "He who rideth on the heavens" (Ps. lxviii. 4)], to mean that
He dwelt in the highest sphere of heaven amid the eternal ideas of
Justice and Virtue, as it is said: "Justice and Righteousness are the
base of Thy throne" (Ps. lxxxix. 15). These fancies and
interpretations indicate that in Palestine as well as in Alexandria an
idealistic theology and a religious metaphysics were developing at
this period, though in the East it was more imaginative, more Hebraic,
more in the spirit of the old prophets.
The more serious metaphysical and theological speculation of the
rabbis was embodied in the doctrine of the "Creation," and the
"Chariot," [Hebrew: m'sha br'shit] and [Hebrew: m'sha mrkba], which in
form were commentaries on the early chapters of Genesis and the visions
of Ezekiel. They were reserved for the wisest and most learned, for the
rabbis had always a fear of introducing the student to philosophy until
his knowledge of the law was well established. They held, with Plato, that
metaphysical speculation must be the crown of knowledge, and if treated as
its foundation, before the necessary discipline had been obtained, it
would produce all sorts of wild ideas. Judaism for them was primarily
not a philosophical doctrine but a system of life. The Hellenistic
school was so far false to their standpoint that it laid stress for
the ordinary believer upon the philosophical meaning as well as upon
the law. And as events proved, this led to the neglect of the law and
the dogmatic establishment of speculative theories as the basis of a
new religion. Doubtless the consciousness that the philosophical
development led away from Judaism increased the distrust of the later
rabbis for such speculation, and made them regard esoteric as a milder
term for heretical; but the warning is already given in Ben Sira: "It
is not needful for thee to see the secret things."[317] The Talmud,
indeed, records certain ideas about the powers of God and His relation
to the universe in the names of the great masters; and in these ideas
there are striking resemblances to Philo's conceptions. The Word is
spoken of as an intermediate agency;[318] the finger of God is really
the Word; the angels are sprung from the Words of God: Ben Zoma
declared that the whole work of creation was carried out by the Word,
as it is written, "And God said."[319] But on the other hand there are
passages in which the rabbis oppose the Alexandrian attitude, and
point out in its excessive philosophizing a danger to Judaism, so that
in the end they exclude it. Rabbi Ishmael, we are told, warned his
pupils of the danger of Greek wisdom.[320] Akiba, living at a time
when the Jews were fighting for spiritual as well as for physical life
against the combined forces of the Greeks and Romans, proposed to ban
all the [Hebrew: sfrim hitsonim],[321] and the Gemara argues that among
these were included the Apocryphal works which showed Greek influence.
Again, Elisha ben Abuya, the arch-heretic, is held up to reproach because
he read [Hebrew: sfri minim],[322] under which title Greek Gnostic books
are probably implied.
At the time when this spirit shows itself, the appearance of heretical
offshoots from Judaism was already pronounced. Heresy was the
aftermath of the combination of Judaism and Hellenism, and if further
disintegration was to be avoided, the seductive Greek influence had to
be discouraged. There is always the danger in a mingling of two
cultures, that each will lose its particular excellence in a compound
which has certain qualities, but not the virtues, of either element.
Compromises may be desirable in political affairs; in affairs of
thought they are perilous. Down to the time of Philo, the fusion of
thought at Alexandria had been beneficial, and had broadened the
Jewish outlook without impairing its strength, but the dissolving
forces of civilization never operated more powerfully than in the
early centuries of the common era, when the intellect of the world was
jaded and weary, and the great movement in culture was a jumbling
together of the ideas of East and West. More especially in the
cosmopolitan towns, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome, national life,
national culture, and national religion were undermined; and even the
Jew, despite the stronghold of his law and tradition, was caught in
the general vortex of mingling creeds and theologies. Out of this
confusion (which was in one aspect a continuation of the work of
Philo) emerged, first, fantastic Gnostic religious and philosophical
sects, and, finally, the Christian Church, which proved the system
best fitted to survive in the circumstances, but was in essence as
well as in origin a blending of different outlooks, and true to the
cardinal points of neither Hebraism nor Hellenism. The rabbis, with
remarkable intuition, saw that the Hellenistic development of Judaism,
which had vainly striven to make Judaism universal, had ended in
violating its monotheism and abrogating its law; and in that era of
disintegration, denationalization, and decomposition they determined
to keep their heritage pure and inviolate. Judaism by their efforts
was the only national culture which survived, and some sacrifice had
to be made to secure this end. The literary monuments of the
Alexandrian community from the Septuagint translation to the
philosophy of the Christian scholarchs were cut out of Jewish
tradition, and the Babylonian school was ignorant altogether of the
[Hebrew: hkma yonit] (Greek wisdom). When Ben Zoma desired to study the
[Hebrew: sfrim hitsonim], and asked of his teacher at what hour of the
day it was lawful to do so, he received the reply that it was permissible
at an hour which was neither day nor night; for the precept was to study
the Torah by day and night, as it is said, [Hebrew: ] (Josh. i. 8). Bar
Kappara, indeed, a rabbi of the third century, explained Genesis ix. 27,
"God shall enlarge Japheth and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem," to
mean that the words of the Torah shall be recited in the speech of
Japheth (_i.e._, Greek) in the synagogues and schools,[323] but by
most other teachers the union between Shem and Japheth was no longer
encouraged, because Japheth had become degraded and was allied with
the cruel children of Edom (Rome).
Besides the Talmud and the Midrash we have, in the work of Josephus,
another indication that there was in Philo's own day communication
between Alexandria and Palestine. The Jewish historian marks the
influence of Hellenic ideas in Palestine in fullest measure, and like
Philo he seeks by embellishment to recommend the histories and
Scriptures of his people to the non-Jew and to bring home their
thought to the cultured Roman-Greek world. Thus, in the preface to his
"Antiquities," he notes, as Philo noted in his commentary, that Moses
begins his laws with a philosophical cosmology; he says also that
Moses spoke some things under a fitting allegory, hiding beneath it a
very remarkable philosophical theory. The allegorical commentary which
Josephus declared that he intended to write has not--if it was
written--come down to us, but we have in his writings certain
allegorical valuations of names that agree directly with Philo. Abel
he explains as signifying mourning, Cain, [Hebrew: kin], as selfish
possession. In the priestly garments of Aaron he sees with Philo a
symbol of the universe, which the high priest supported when he
entered the Holy of Holies. And the ritual vessels of the tabernacle
have also their universal significance.
"If," says the Palestinian Hellenist, "any man do but
consider the fabric of the tabernacle and regard the
vestments of the high priest, he will find that our
legislator was a Divine man, and that we are unjustly
reproached by those who attack us for tribal narrowness. For
if he look upon these things without prejudice, he will find
that each one was made by way of imitation and
representation of the universe. When Moses ordered twelve
loaves to be set on the table, he denoted the years as
distinguished into so many months. By branching out the
candlestick into seven parts, he intimated the seven
divisions of the planets.... The vestments of the high
priest, being made of linen, signified the earth, the blue
color thereof denoted the sky, the pomegranates symbolized
lightning, and the noise of the bells resembled thunder. And
the fashion of the ephod showed that God had made the world
of four elements."[324]
Let us now listen now to Philo: "The raiment of the priest is
altogether a representation and imitation of the universe, and its
parts are the parts of the other. His tunic is all of blue linen, the
symbol of the sky. [The rabbis had a similar fancy of the Tsitsith
(fringes).] And the flowers embroidered thereon mark the earth, from
which all things flower. And the pomegranates are a symbol of the
water, being skilfully called thus ([Greek: rhoischoi], _i.e._,
flowing fruit) because of their juice, and the bells are the symbols
of the harmony of all the elements."[325]
It is true that the symbolism of two allegorists is varied, but a
common spirit and aim underlie their interpretations. This is true
alike of their account of the ritualistic and civil law of Moses.
Either, then, there was a common source of Jewish apologetic
literature, or Josephus must have borrowed from Philo. It is
significant that he is the only contemporary of Philo that mentions
him. He speaks of him as a distinguished philosopher, the brother of
the alabarch, and the leader of the embassy to Gaius.[326] He knows
also of the anti-Semitic diatribes of Philo's great enemy Apion, and
two of his extant books are masterly reply to their outpourings. Hence
it is not rash to assume that he knew at least that part of Philo's
work which had a missionary and apologetic purpose--the "Life of
Moses" and the "Hypothetica." He makes no acknowledgment to them, it
is true, but expressions of obligation were not in the fashion of the
time. Plagiarism was held to be no crime, and citation of authorities
in notes or elsewhere was almost unknown in literature--save in the
Talmud,[327] where to tell something in the name of somebody else is a
virtue. But one can hardly doubt that the man who devoted himself to
refuting the lying calumnies of Apion first made himself master of the
classical work of Apion's opponent, which claimed to give to the Greek
world the authoritative account of the Jewish lawgiver and his
legislation.
What Josephus knew must have been known to other cultured Jews of
Palestine. Yet Philo, save in one doubtful case which will be noticed,
is not mentioned by any Jewish writer between Josephus in the first
and Azariah dei Rossi in the sixteenth century. The compilers of the
Midrashim and the Yalkut, the philosophers of the Dark and Middle
Ages, finally the Cabbalists, are continually reminiscent of his
doctrines, but they do not mention his works or his existence. The
Midrash Tadshé,[328] a tenth century compilation of allegorical
exegesis, contains definite parallels to Philonic passages, especially
in its quotations from an Essene Tannaite, Pin[h.]as ben Jaïr; but
again the trace of influence is indirect. On the other hand, the
Christian writers from the time of Clement in the second century quote
him freely, make anthologies of his beautiful sayings, and in their
more imaginative moments acclaim him the comrade of Mark and the
friend of Peter. The rise of the Christian Church, which coincided
with the downfall of the nation, caused the rabbis to emphasize the
national character of Judaism in order to preserve the old faith of
their fathers in the critical condition in which exile, persecution,
and assimilation placed it. The first century was a time of feverish
dreams and wild hopes that were not realizable: men had looked for the
coming of the days of universal peace and good-will, and the
Alexandrian Jews in particular hoped for the spreading of Judaism over
the world. The rabbis recognized that this consummation was far away,
and that Judaism must remain particularist for centuries in the hope
of a final universalism. Meantime it must hold fast to the law and, in
default of a national home, strengthen the national religious life in
each Jewish household. They regarded Greek as not only a strange but a
hostile tongue, and the allegorical exegesis of the Bible, which had
led to the whittling away of the law, as a godless wisdom. The
Septuagint translation, which had offered a starting point for
philosophical speculation, was replaced by a new Greek version of the
Old Testament made by Aquila, a proselyte, in the first century. It
gave a baldly literal translation of the Hebrew text, sacrificing form
and even lucidity to a faithful transcript. With unconscious irony the
rabbis, who rejoiced in its truth to the Hebrew, said of Aquila, "Thou
art fairer than the children of men, grace is poured into thy
lips"[329] (Ps. xlv). In truth the work was utterly innocent of
literary grace. A translation of the Bible marked the end, as it had
marked the beginning, of Jewish-Hellenistic literature, but if the
first had suggested the admission, so the other suggested the
rejection of Greek philosophy from the interpretation of Judaism and a
return to the exclusive national standpoint. The rabbinical
appreciation of Aquila's work shows that, while the Jews were in
Palestine, many still required a Greek translation of the Bible; but
when in the third century C.E. the centre of the religion was moved to
Babylon, Greek was forgotten, and the rabbis for a period lost sight
of Greek culture. It is another irony of history that our manuscripts
of Philo go back to an archetype in the library of Cæsarea in
Palestine, which Eusebius studied in the fourth century. Philo came to
the land of his fathers in the possession of his people's enemies, and
at a time when he could no longer be understood by his people.
Philo's works were not translated into Hebrew, and as Greek ceased to
be the language of the cultured, they could not, in their original
form, have influenced later Jewish philosophers. But the Christians,
in their proselytizing activity, had translated them into Latin and
Armenian before the fifth century, and through one of these means they
may possibly have exercised an influence upon the new school of Jewish
philosophy, which, opening with Saadia in the tenth century, blossomed
forth in the Arabic-Spanish epoch. The light of historical research is
beginning to illumine the obscurity of the Dark Ages, and has revealed
traces of an Alexandrian allegorist in the writings of the Persian Jew
Benjamin al-Nehawendi, himself a distinguished allegorizer of the
Bible, who wrote in the ninth century and taught that God created the
world by means of one ministerial angel.[330] Benjamin relates that
the doctrine was held by a Jewish sect known as the Maghariya, which
probably sprang up in the fourth or the fifth century, when sects grew
like mushrooms. The Karaite al-Kirkisani, who wrote fifty years later,
says that the Maghariya sect used in support of their doctrine the
"prolegomena of an Alexandrian sage" who gave certain remarkable
interpretations of the Bible; and in one of Dr. Schechter's Genizah
fragments, which is probably to be ascribed to Kirkisani, there are
contained examples of the Alexandrian's explanations of the Decalogue,
which occur, and occur only, in Philo's treatise on the "Ten
Commandments."