Chapter 13

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.

There is a better test of priority, however, than the date of 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.