Selected Writings

EDITOR

INTRODUCTION

IF the extent of the influence exercised by an author formed a true measure of his eminence, Philo would probably rank with the greatest not only of Jewish, but also of Greek thinkers. He was a pioneer in a number of important fields of human thought. He was not only the first theologian, i.e. the first who tried to bring into harmony the teachings of a supernatural revelation and the conclusions of speculative thought, but also the first psychologist of faith, the first mystic among professors of monotheism, and—last but not least—the first systematizer of Biblical allegory. The contributions which he made to these and other branches of inquiry give to his writing an importance of the first degree for the history of religious thought.

Yet notable as was his achievement, we can hardly credit him with any great depth or originality of thought. He owes his dominant position less to his own personal qualities than to the circumstances of the time in which he wrote. He lived in an age which had become ripe for a synthesis of Jewish creed and Greek thought. Judaism had for long been slowly, but steadily, developing the universalistic tendencies of its great prophets, the rational trend of its moral legislation and the consciousness of individual piety; while Hellenism had similarly been developing the idea of a cosmopolitan community united by the bond of Greek education and a rigid canon of rules for ethical conduct, along with a strong bent towards the theological side of philosophical speculation. These two spiritual movements met in Alexandria, at once the chief home of the Jewish Dispersion and the chief centre of Hellenistic culture; and their conjunction provided the material, to a writer conscious of this convergence, for a new presentment of religious and philosophical problems. It was the merit of Philo that he seized this opportunity.

Posterity has been duly grateful to him for this. While it has neglected to keep the works of greater thinkers of his era, it has preserved more than three-quarters of the vast expanse of his writings (about 2,500 pages). Oddly enough the transmittors were not the genuine sons of his nation, to the glorification of whose Law the whole labour of his literary life was devoted, but the abrogators of Mosaic Legislation, the theological scholars of the Christian Church. The spread of the rival creed, to which the literary productions of the Jewish hellenizing movement appealed so strongly, led the spiritual leaders of the Synagogue to cut away this entire branch from the stock of Jewish tradition. In rabbinic literature there is (except for some faded echoes in the writings of remote sectarians) no mention either of Philo’s name or of his work, and even the Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages who revived his ideas in a new setting, had no notion of the existence of their forerunner. Only in the sixteenth century did a Jewish scholar of broader education, who breathed the humanistic air of Italy and was in touch with the theological literature of the Church, Azarya dei Rossi, rediscover, as it were, Philo; and since then Jewish learning has—somewhat reluctantly and not nearly so readily as modern research on Christian theology or Greek philosophy—received the writings of this forgotten son into the domain of its own interests.

Of the outward life of Philo as little is known as befits a devotee of religious contemplation. He was born about 25 B.C. as the son of one of the noblest and wealthiest members of the Jewish community in Alexandria, brought up in the faith of his fathers and instructed according to the best standards of Greek education. His brother Alexander rose, by virtue of his economic and diplomatic talents, to be a high official of the Roman administration in Egypt, the confidant of Agrippa (the grandson of Herod and later King of Judaea) and even a friend of the Emperor Claudius. But Philo despised the honours of a worldly career and devoted himself to the study of Greek wisdom. Some elaborations of philosophical problems, which are probably works of his early years, bear witness of his extensive acquaintance with the subjects of higher Greek education and his thorough knowledge of the principal teachings of classic and of contemporary philosophy (especially of the Stoic, Platonic and Pythagorean schools, but they are totally devoid of any originality of thought. A third feature of these tracts (and one which remained a characteristic of his entire literary production) is the elaborate and flowery style. Rhetoric, the disease of Hellenistic literature, has left its deep impress also on this scorner of verbose vanity.

There was apparently in Philo’s development a phase in which he was content with the modest role of an author of moral treatises presenting the ideas then current in the philosophical schools in a popular form and elegant style. Fortunately, however, he managed to emerge from this barren track and found a worthier scope for his talents in the great work of interpreting the Pentateuch. This occupation filled the main part of his life. It was as an expositor of Scripture that he won his fame, and in that activity he was at his best. In his exegetical writings he presents himself as a man fully sensible of the claims of social intercourse, and well acquainted with the refinements of civilization, but also as one passionately attached to meditation and the search for wisdom. He was by temper a philosopher who derived his ideas of human nature more from abstract thought than from experience. Hence his portraits of ethical types lack the delicate shadows of true life; they give vague phrases instead of pictures, and personified qualities instead of human beings. He felt really at home, as he himself avows, only when his mind rose from the ‘images’ of this changeful world to the realms of the Absolute.

From his tranquil meditations on the inner meaning of the Divine Laws Philo was rudely torn by disturbances in the outside world. The peaceful era of the government of Augustus and Tiberius came to an end. The new Emperor Caligula, instigated by his Egyptian friends, conceived a grudge against the Jews, who alone firmly resisted his megalomaniac plan of self-deification. The Alexandrinian populace, quick to perceive the imperial ill-humour and annoyed by the efforts of its Jewish neighbours to enlarge their special privileges into full citizenship, found in some trifling accident the long-sought opportunity for anti-Jewish riots, and a veritable civil war ensued (A.D. 38). When, shortly afterwards, Caligula ordered his own effigy to be set up in the temple of Jerusalem, an upheaval of all Jewry within the boundaries of the Roman empire seemed to be inevitable. On this critical moment (still before the news of the last fateful decree of the Emperor had been received) the Jews of Alexandria decided to send an embassy of notables to Rome (A.D. 40) and appointed as its head Philo—a proof of the reputation which he had won in his community and of the hopes which were based on the relations of his family with Roman notables. The story of this unsuccessful mission is related, with a vividness hardly surpassed in the historical writings of the period, in his Legacy to Gaius. As we might expect this work exhibits clearly the moral dignity of its author; what surprises us is its realistic tone. It shows that Philo was not only ready to stand firm by the beliefs of his fathers in the hour of stress, but also that he had the wit to elude the snares of court-intrigue and the courage to face without flinching the imperial madman. Philo published this account (together with a story of the fate of the Roman prefect in Egypt, Flaccus, who was convicted of supporting the rioters in Alexandria) after Caligula was murdered (A.D. 41). Claudius had then ascended the throne and peace had been restored both in Alexandria and in Palestine. The dramatic turn of events appeared to him the work of Providence; this theological idea runs through the account and gives life and vigour to it. Its author was, as he says, already an old man when circumstances ‘dragged him down into the vast sea of political cares’. Not long after the storm abated he retired from public life and resumed his exegetical work, to which he had added considerably by the time of his death (before A.D. 50).

These are almost all the facts known about the life of Philo. He was certainly a great teacher; but it is by no means easy to present his teaching in systematic shape. One reason is that in form his main work is an exegesis of the Bible and not a working out of first principles. Consequently his philosophical concepts lie scattered throughout his writings, and the reader has to piece together cognate ideas which he has disjoined. Another reason is the variety of his interests, which is reflected in a kaleidoscopic transition from one theme to another. Often Philo opens his exegetical expositions with a literal explanation after the pattern of the rabbinic Midrash jumps from this to a philosophical or moral disquisition (it is in the latter that he is especially prone to rhetorical flourishes), and concludes with some remark of a highly spiritual nature. The student is left wondering whether this author was a ‘reformed’ Rabbi who dressed up the simple teachings of his fathers in the fashionable garb of the Greek theory, or a moralizing preacher with a professional weakness for sonorous effects, or perhaps a mystic with a distressing penchant for the dry formulas of philosophical dogmatism. That under all these guises Philo spoke with the voice of his age may be granted; yet it would be unfair not to see in him something more than a mere sounding-board for the current and diverse theories of his time and surroundings. Through all his desultory ramblings the attentive hearer, who has grown accustomed to his sudden changes of theme and has learnt to tolerate his interludes of dull verbosity will discern the voice of the human soul which has commenced the eternal dialogue with her inward God, sola cum solo.

Two seemingly contradictory concepts of the deity dominate Philo’s thought: the one of a Supreme Being, self-sufficient, removed from mankind and incomprehensible in its nature; and the other, of a personal God, close to human life at every turn. It has been aptly said that in Philo’s God-idea the First Cause of the metaphysicians has been blended with the Lord of the Bible. The same, however, might be said of every man of intellect in whom the emotional side is stronger than the intellectual. Philo’s idea of divine perfection was such as to compel him to equip the Godhead both with the absolute abstractness which strict logic required, and with the moral qualities which Jewish piety indicated. The two aspects of perfection were united in the concept of the Divine Logos, the Word and Wisdom of the Supreme Being, who also is represented as being simultaneously abstract and personal. He is, on the one side, the sum of the divine thoughts (the ideas) and the force of the deity, on the other side God’s first-born son (after Proverbs viii, 22), who executes the volition of his father (hence the prominence of this idea in Christian dogma), and his deputy in the character of head of the angels. This many-faced entity is the connecting link between the Inaccessible creation; it embodies God’s presence in the world. In its secret primordial existence, in its primary manifestation as a creative and a ruling power, in its subsequent unfolding in the potencies of stern judgement and