Chapter 5

I. The allegorical commentary, or "Allegories of the Laws," which is a series of philosophical treatises based upon continuous texts in Genesis, from the first to the eighteenth chapter. Together with this, the best authorities place the two remaining books on the "Dreams of the Bible," which are a portion of a larger work, and deal allegorically with the dreams of Jacob and Joseph.

II. The Midrashic commentary on the Five Books of Moses, for which we have no single name, but which was clearly intended to be an ethical and philosophical treatise upon the whole law.

III. A commentary in the form of "Questions and Answers to Genesis and Exodus," which is incomplete now, and save for detached fragments exists only in a Latin translation. In its original form it provided a short running exegesis, verse by verse, to the whole of the first three books of the Pentateuch, and was contained in twelve parts.

IV. A popular and missionizing presentation of the Jewish system in the form of a "Life of Moses," and three appended tractates on the virtues "Courage," "Humanity," and "Repentance." Scholars[83] are of opinion that there are gaps in the extant "Life of Moses," but the general plan of the work is clear. It is at once an abstract and an interpretation of Jewish law for the Greek world, and also an ideal biography of the Jewish lawgiver.

V. Philosophical monographs, not so intimately connected with the Bible as the preceding works; but in the nature of rhetorical exercises upon the stock subjects of the schools, which receive a Jewish coloring by reason of Biblical illustrations.

VI. Historical and apologetic works that set out the case of the contemporary Jews against their persecutors and traducers. Of these writings the larger part has disappeared, and of a portion of those which remain the genuineness has been doubted.

Lastly, there is a miscellaneous number of works ascribed to Philo, which all good scholars[84] now admit to be spurious: "On the Incorruptibility of the World," "On the Universe," "On Samson," and "On Jonah," etc.

It will be seen from this classification of Philo's works, that he has dealt in several ways with the Biblical material. The reason of this is partly that his mind developed, and the interpretation of his maturer years differed widely from that of his earliest writings. Partly, however, it arises from the fact that the different treatments were meant for different audiences, and Philo always took the measure of those whom he was addressing. His most representative works are "a triple cord" with which he binds the Jewish Scripture to Greek culture. For the Greek-speaking populace he set out a broad statement of the Mosaic law; for the cultured community of Alexandria, Jew and Gentile, a more elaborate exegesis, in which each character and each ordinance of the Pentateuch received a particular ethical value; and, finally, for the esoteric circle of Hellenic-Jewish philosophers, a theological and psychological study of the allegories of the law. Origen, the first great Christian exegete of the Bible and a close student of the Philonic writings, distinguished three forms of interpreting: the historical, the moral, and the philosophical; he probably took the distinction from Philo, who exemplifies it in his commentaries upon the Books of Moses.

Varied as is its scope, the religious idea dominates all his work, and endows it with one spirit. Whether he is writing philosophical, ethical, or mystical commentary, whether history, apology, or essay, his purpose is to assert the true notion of the one God, and the Divine excellence of God's revelation to His chosen people. Thus he regards history as a theodicy, vindicating the ways of God to man, and His special providence for Israel; philosophy as the inner meaning of the Scriptures, revealed by God in mystic communion with His holy prophets,[85] and, if comprehended aright, able to lead us on to a true conception of His Divine being. The greater part of the Hellenistic-Jewish literature has disappeared, but Philo sums up for us the whole of the Alexandrian development of Judaism. He represents it worthily in both its main aspects: the infusion of Greek culture into the Jewish pursuit of righteousness, and the recommendation of Jewish monotheism and the Torah to the Greek world. Aristaeus, Aristobulus, and Artapanus are hardly more than names, but their spirit is inherited and glorified in Philo-Judæus. His work, therefore, is more than the expression of one great mind; it is the record and expression of a great culture.

The chronology of Philo's writings is as uncertain as the chronology of his life. Yet it is possible to trace a deepening of outlook and an increasing originality, if we work our way up from the sixth to the first division of the classification. It does not follow that the works were written in this order--and it may well be that Philo was producing at one and the same time books of several classes--but we may use this order as an ideal scale by which to mark off the stages of his philosophical progress. In the first place come the [Greek: Hypotheticha], or apologetic works, which have a practical purpose. With these we may associate the moralizing history that dealt in five books respectively with the persecutions of Sejanus, Flaccus, and Caligula, the ill-starred embassy, and the final triumph of the Jews over their enemies. The [Greek: Hypotheticha] proper, as we gather from Eusebius, contained a general apology for Judaism, and an account of the Essenes--which have disappeared--and the suspected book on the Therapeutic sect known by the title "On the Contemplative Life." Whether they received this generic name because they are suggestions for the Jewish cause, or because they are written to answer the insinuations ([Greek: kath' hypothesin]) of adversaries, is a moot point. But their general purport is clear: they were an apologetic presentation of Jewish life, written to show the falsity of anti-Semitic calumnies. The Jews are good citizens and their manner of life is humanitarian. The Essene sect is a living proof of Jewish practical socialism and practical philosophy, the Therapeutae show the Jewish zeal for the contemplative life.

Next we come to Philo's philosophical monographs, which are not, as one might expect, the work of his mature thought, but rather the exercises of youth. Dissertations or declamations upon hackneyed subjects were part of the regular course of the university student at Alexandria, and Philo prepared himself for his Jewish philosophy by composing in the approved style essays upon "Providence," "The Liberty of the Good," and "The Slavery of the Wicked," etc. What chiefly distinguishes them above other collections of commonplaces is the appeal to the Bible for types of goodness, and here again the Essenes figure as the type of the philosophical life.[86] The writer, while still engaged in the studies of the Greek university, is feeling his way towards his system of universal Mosaism.

This he expounds confidently and enthusiastically in his "Life of Moses." Philo in this book is not any longer the apt pupil of Greek philosophers, nor the eloquent defender of the Jewish-Alexandrian community against lying detractors. He preaches a mission to the whole world, and he lays before it his gospel of monotheism and humanity. Each Greek school has its ideal type, its Socrates, Diogenes, or Pythagoras; but Philo places above them all "the most perfect man that ever lived, Moses, the legislator of the Jews,[87] as some hold, but according to others the interpreter of the sacred laws, and the greatest of men in every way." And above all the ethical systems of the day he sets the law of life that God revealed to His greatest prophet: "The laws of the Greek legislators are continually subject to change; the laws of Moses alone remain steady, unmoved, unshaken, stamped as it were with the seal of nature herself, from the day when they were written to the present day, and will so remain for all time so long as the world endures. Not only the Jews but all other peoples who care for righteousness adopt them.... Let all men follow this code and the age of universal peace will come about, the kingdom of God on earth will be established."[88] Nor is the Greek to fear the lot of a proselyte. "God loves the man who turns from idolatry to the true faith not less than the man who has been a believer all his life;"[89] and in the little essays upon Repentance and Nobility, which are attached to the larger treatise, Philo appeals to his own people to welcome the stranger within the community. "The Life of Moses" is the greatest attempt to set monotheism before the world made before the Christian gospels. And it is truer to the Jewish spirit, because it breathes on every page love for the Torah. Philo in very truth wished to fulfil the law.

If Judaism was to be the universal religion, it must be shown to contain the ultimate truth both about real being, _i.e._ God, and about ethics; for the philosophical world in that age--and the philosophical world included all educated people--demanded of religion that it should be philosophical, and of philosophy that it should be religious. The desire to expound Judaism in this way is the motive of Philo's three Biblical commentaries. The "Questions and Answers to Genesis and Exodus" constitute a preliminary study to the more elaborate works which followed. In them Philo is collecting his material, formulating his ideas, and determining the main lines of his allegory. They are a type of Midrash in its elementary stage, the explanation of the teacher to the pupil who has difficulties about the words of the law: at once like and unlike the old Tannaitic Midrash; like in that they deal with difficulties in the literal text of the Bible; unlike in that the reply of Philo is Agadic more usually than Halakic, speculative rather than practical. In these books,[90] as has been pointed out, there are numerous interpretations which Philo shares with the Palestinian schools. A few specimens taken from the first book will illustrate Philo's plan, but it should be mentioned that in every case he sets out the simple meaning of the text, the _Peshat_, as well as the inner meaning, or _Derash_.

"Why does it say: 'And God made every green herb of the field before it was upon the earth'? (Gen. ii. 4.)

"By these words he suggests symbolically the incorporeal Idea. The phrase, 'before it was upon the earth,' marks the original perfection of every plant and herb. The eternal types were first created in the noetic world, and the physical objects on earth, perceptible by the senses, were made in their likeness."

In this way Philo reads into the first chapter of the Bible the Platonic idealism which we shall see was a fundamental part of his philosophy.

"Why, when Enoch died, does it say, 'And he pleased God'? (Gen. v. 24.)

"He says this to teach that the soul is immortal, inasmuch as after it is released from the body it continues to please."

"What is the meaning of the expression, 'And Noah opened the roof of the ark'? (Gen. viii. 13.)

"The text appears to need no interpretation; but in its symbolical meaning the ark is our body, and that which covers the body and for a long time preserves its strength is spoken of as its roof. And this is appetite. Hence when the mind is attracted by a desire for heavenly things, it springs upwards and makes away with all material desires. It removes that which threw a shade over it so as to reach the eternal Ideas."

The "Questions and Answers" are essentially Hebraic in form, designed for Jews who knew and studied their Bible; and we can feel in them the influences of a training in traditional Mishnah and Midrash; but Philo passed from them to a more artistic expression and a more thoroughly Hellenized presentation of the philosophy of the Bible. This work is the largest extant expression of his thought and mission; it embraces the treatises which we know as "On the Creation of the World," "The Lives of Abraham and Joseph," "On the Decalogue," and finally those "On the Specific Laws," which are partly thus entitled and partly have separate ethical names, as "On Honoring Parents," "On Rewards and Punishments," "On Justice," etc. Large portions of it have disappeared, notably the "Lives of Isaac and Jacob"; and also the "Life of Moses," which was introductory to his laws. For the book which we have under that name does not belong to the series, but is separate. The purpose of the work broadly is to deepen the value of the Bible for the Jews by revealing its constant spiritual message, and to assert its value for the whole of humanity by showing in it a philosophical conception of the universe and its creation, the most lofty ethical and moral types, the most admirable laws, and, above all, the purest ideas of God and His relation to man. All that seems tribal and particularist is explained away, and the spiritual aspect of every chapter--of every word almost--of the Torah is emphasized. Philo expounds the sacred book, not of one particular nation, but of mankind. The Roman and Greek peoples were waiting for a religious message which should at once harmonize with rational ideas and satisfy their longing for God. All the philosophical schools were converting the scientific systems of the classical age into [Greek: Tropoi Biou], "plans of life," and Philo challenges them all with a new faith which has as its basis a God who not only was the sole Creator and Ruler of the world, but who had revealed to man the way of happiness, and the good life, social as well as individual. To-day, when the world about us has accepted--or has professed to accept--the ethical law of the Bible, we are apt to regard the essentials of Judaism as the belief in One God and the observance of ceremonies. But to Philo Judaism was something more comprehensive. It was the spiritual life, and the Mosaic law is the complete code of the Divine Republic, of which all are or can be citizens. In the introduction to the "Life of Abraham," Philo explains the scheme of his work:[91]

"'The Sacred Laws' [as he regularly calls the Bible] were written in five books, of which the first is entitled Genesis. It derives its title from the account of the creation which it contains, though it deals also with endless other subjects, peace and war, hunger and plenty, great cataclysms, and the histories of good and evil men. We have examined with great care the accounts of the creation in our former treatise ['On the Making of the Universe'], and we now go on naturally to inquire into the laws; and postponing the particular laws, which are as it were copies, we will first of all examine the more universal, which are their models. Now men who have lived irreproachable lives are these laws, and their virtues are recorded in the Holy Scriptures not only by way of eulogy, but in order to lead on those who read about them to emulate their life. They are become living standards of right reason, whom the lawgiver has glorified for two reasons: (1) To show that the laws laid down are consistent with nature [the conception of a natural law binding upon all peoples was one of the fixed ideas of the age]. (2) To show that it is not a matter of terrible labor to live according to our positive laws if a man has the will to do so; seeing that the patriarchs spontaneously followed the unwritten principles before any of the particular laws were written. So that a man may properly say that the code of law is only a memorial of the lives of the patriarchs. For the patriarchs, of their own accord and impulse, chose to follow nature, and, regarding her course with truth as the most ancient ordinance, they lived a life according to the law."

Philo dwells affectionately on the patriarchs, because, as he held, they proved the Jewish life to be truest to man's nature and to the highest ideal of humanity, and served therefore as examples to the Gentile world of the universal truth of the religion. The rabbis also took the patriarchs as the perfect type of our life, saying, "Everything that happens to them is a sign to future generations,"[92] and again: "The patriarchs are the true [Hebrew: mrbba], manifestation of God." But while he emphasized the broad moral teachings of Judaism exemplified by the patriarchs, Philo nevertheless upheld in its integrity the Mosaic law, and found in every one of the six hundred and thirteen precepts a spiritual meaning. Even the details of the tabernacle offerings have their universal lesson when he expounds them as symbols. Voltaire speaks cynically of Judaism as a religion of sacrifices: Philo shows that the ritual of sacrifice suggests moral lessons. The command of the red heifer, a part of the law which was particularly subject to attack, emphasizes the law of moral as well as of physical cleanliness. The prohibition to add honey or leaven to the sacrifice[93] (Lev. ii. 13) points the lesson that all superfluous pleasure is unrighteous; and so on with each prescription.

The Mosaic code in his exposition is commensurate with life in all its aspects. It deals not only with the duties of the individual but also with the good government of the state. The life of Joseph is made the text of a political treatise, and throughout the books "On the Specific Laws," the socialism of the Bible is emphasized,[94] and held up as the ideal order of the future. The Jewish State is enlarged in Philo's vision from a national theocracy into a world-city inspired by the two ideas of love of God and love of humanity. In this conception, no doubt, the influence of Greek philosophy is to be seen; the Jewish interpreter keeps before him the "Republic" of Plato, and the "Polity" of Aristotle. With him, however, the ideal state is not a vision "laid up in heaven";[95] its foundation is already laid upon earth, its capital is Jerusalem, and it is the mission of his people to extend its borders till it embraces all nations[96]--an idea which permeates the Jewish litany.

This commentary of the law is allegorical in the sense that beneath the particular law the interpreter constantly reveals a spiritual idea, but it is not allegorical in the sense that he makes an exchange of values. He is not for the most part reading into the text conceptions which are not suggested by it, but really and truly expounding; and where he gives a philosophical piece of exegesis, as when he explains the visit of the three angels to Abraham as a theory of the human soul about God's being,[97] he does so with diffidence or with reference to authorities that have founded a tradition. It is quite otherwise with the last class of Philo's work, the fruit of his maturest thought, with which it remains to deal.

Throughout the "Allegories of the Laws" he takes the verse of the Bible not so much as a text to be amplified and interpreted, but as a pretext for a philosophical disquisition. The allegories indeed are only in form a commentary on the Bible; in one aspect they are a history of the human soul, which, if they had been completed, would have traced the upward progress from Adam to Moses. It is not to be expected, however, that Philo should adhere closely to any plan in the allegories. Theology, metaphysics, and ethics have as large a part in the medley of philosophical ideas as the story of the soul. His Hebraic mind, even when fortified by the mastery of philosophy, was unable to present its ideas systematically; it passed from subject to subject, weaving the whole together only by the thread of a continuous commentary upon Genesis. Parts of the work are missing, it is true, which adds to the seeming want of plan; and--greatest loss of all--the first part, which gave the philosophical account of the first chapter of Genesis, the first six days of creation, referred to as "The Hexameron" [Greek: to Hexêmeron], has disappeared.[98] Here must have been the general introduction to the allegories, wherein Philo declared his purpose and his method of exposition. The first treatise that we possess starts abruptly with a comment on the first verse of the second chapter, "'And the heaven and earth and all their world were completed.' Moses has previously related the creation of the mind and sense, and now he proceeds to describe their perfection. Their perfection is not the individual mind or sense, but their archetypal 'ideas.' And symbolically he calls the mind heaven, because in heaven are the ideas of the mind, and the sense he calls earth, because it is corporeal and material."[99]

So in a rambling, unsystematic way Philo embarks upon a discourse on idealism and psychology, making a fresh start continually from a verse or a phrase of the Bible. The Biblical narrative in the earliest chapters offered a congenial soil for his explorations, but no ground is too stubborn for his seed. The genealogy of Noah's sons is as fertile in suggestion as the story of Adam and Eve, for each name represents some hidden power or possesses some ethical import.

The allegorical commentary is clearly the work of Philo's maturity, wherein he exhibits full mastery of an original method of exegesis. His allegories are no longer tentative, and he writes with the confidence of the sage, who has received not only the admiration of his people, but the inspiration of God. Another sign of their maturity is that asceticism seems no longer the true path to virtue, as it was to the author of "The Lives of the Patriarchs" and "The Specific Laws," but, on the contrary, a moderate use of the world's goods and a share in political life are marks of the perfect man. These characteristics bespeak the firmer hand and the profounder experience. Yet the series of works which form together Philo's esoteric doctrine were certainly put together over a long period of years, as the varied political references indicate. It has indeed been suggested by a modern German scholar[100] that large parts were originally given in the form of detached lectures and sermons, and that Philo later composed them together into a continuous commentary, working them up with much literary elaboration. In support of this theory, it may be urged that several of the treatises contain political addresses to public audiences, notably the _De Agricultura_ and _De Confusione Linguarum_, while in others there are invocations to prayer, or a summons to read a passage in the Bible, addressed apparently by the preacher to the Hazan, who had before him the scroll of the law. From Philo's own statements we know that the wisest men used to deliver philosophical homilies upon the Bible on the Sabbath day; and it is natural that the man who was appointed to head the Jewish embassy to Gaius had made himself known in the past to his brethren for oratory and wisdom of speech. "Sermons," said Jowett, "though they deal with eternal subjects, are the most evanescent form of literature." The dictum is true for the most part, but occasionally the sermon, by its depth of thought, the universality of its message, and the beauty of its expression, has become part of the world's heritage from the ages. Moreover, at Alexandria philosophy was associated with preaching. And the sermons of the Jewish-Hellenistic writer, in their style as well as in their thought, represent an epoch. Philo spoke in the language of the intellectual world of his day, and strove to associate the intellectual precepts of Hellenism with the Hebraic passion for righteousness. In his great moments, however, the Hebraic spirit towers supreme. "He was," said Croiset, the historian of Greek literature, "the first Greek prose writer who could speak to God and of God to man with the ardent piety and reverence of the Jewish prophets."[101]