PHILO
24
PHILO
of classification. The solution of the difficulty would
be of great value especially for the subdivisions of the
first group of writings, in order to understand the
development of Philo's doctrines; but on this point
there is a wide divergence of opinion. It is probable,
however, that the "Exposition of the Law" with its
frequent appeals to the authority of the masters and
its cautious way of introducing the allegorical inter-
pretation is anterior to the "Allegorical Commen-
tary" which shows more assurance and independence
of thought.
Doctrine. — Philo's work belongs for the most part to the immense literature of commentaries on the Law, and it is especially as a commentator that he must be considered. But in this regard he holds a unique place. First of all, he uses the Greek transla- tion of the Septuagint. The variations that have been pointed out between his text and that which we now possess of the Septuagint maj- be explained to our satisfaction, not by the reading of the Hebrew text (Ritter), but by the fact that our recension is of a later date than the one he used. Furthermore, his method of interpretation appears as something new and original among the juridical commentaries of the Palestinian rabbis. Eliminating what formed the common basis of all commentaries of this kind — the interpretation of the Hebrew proper names (Philo gives them at times a Greek etymology), the particular rules for the signs which indicate that Moses intended us to look beyond the literal sense (Siegfried), the oral traditions added to the account of the Pentateuch (and again, at the beginning of the "Life of Moses" these traditions are clearly of Alexandrine origin), and the prescriptions of the worship in Jerusalem — two essential features remain: first, the con\iction that the Jewish law is identical with the natural; and then the allegorical interpretation. The first, according to which the acts of the prophets and the prescriptions of Moses are regarded as ideals con- formable to nature (in the Stoic sense), gives to the Jewish religion a universality incompatible with the narrow national Messianism of the Jewish sibyls. Philo thus abandons entirely the Messianic promises; there is no national tradition to exclude the Gentile from Judaism. To find his precursors one must go back to the Prophets; tradition he revives, but only with serious modifications. To the idea of moral uni- versality he adds the idea of nature which he received from the Stoics. His interpretation is wholly bent on identifjdng the Mosaic prescription with natural law.
The second feature is the allegorical interpretation. Without doubt Philo had his predecessors among the Alexandrines. The proof of this is found not in the fragments of Aristobulus (which are grossly false and later than Philo), but in the work of Philo himself, which is based sometimes on the authority of his pre- decessors, in the "Wisdom of Solomon" (an Alex- andrine work of the first century B. c, which contains some traces of this method), and finally in the descrip- tion Philo has given us of the occupations of the Therapeuta? and the Essenes. The tradition, how- ever, thus formed cannot have amounted to much, for it does not prevail against personal inspiration and it lacks unity. This interpretation appears to us rather as a day-by-day creation of that age, and in Philo's works we can follow an allegory in process of forma- tion, e. g. the interpretation of man "after the image of God". The development of the interior moral life as Philo conceived it is always bound up with his allegorical method. This method differs from that of most of his Greek predecessors who sought an arti- ficial means to bring out the philosophical conceptions in time-honoured texts, such as that of Homer. As a rule he does not search in the sacred text for any strictly philosophical theory; more often he puts forth these theories directly on their own merits.
Though at times enthusiastic in his admiration of
Greek philosophers, he does not trj- to represent them
as unavowed disciples of Moses, \^"hat he seeks in
Genesis is not this or that truth, but the description
of the attitudes of the soul towards God, such as inno-
cence, sin, repentance. The allegorical method of
Philo neither proves nor attempts to prove anything.
It is not a mode of apologetic; in the "Life of Moses"
e. g. this method is seldom employed; the only
apologetic feature is the presentation of the high
moral import of the Jewish laws taken in their literal
sense. But the method is indispensable for the in-
terior life; it gives the concrete image which the
mystic needs to explain his effusions, and it makes
the Jewish books profitable in the spiritual life. The
spiritual life consists in the feeling of confidence which
gives us faith in God, a feeling which coincides with
that of the nothingness of man left to his own strength.
Faith in God is not in itself the condition but the end
or crowning of this life, and human life oscillates
between confidence in self and confidence in God.
This God conceived in His relations with the moral
needs of man has the omnipotence and infinite good-
ness of the God of the prophets; it is by no means
the God of the Stoics, in direct relation with the
cosmos rather than with man.
L'nder this influence the Philonian cult became an eminently moral one: the originality of Philonism consists in its moral interpretation of the actions of the divinity upon the world, which till then had been regarded more in their physical aspect. The funda- mental idea is here that of Divine power conceived according to the manner of the Jews as goodness and sovereignty in relation to man. It is remarkable that with this idea the cosmic power of philosophy or of Greek religion is transformed by Philo into moral power. Divine wisdom is without doubt like the Isis in Plutarch's treatise, mother of the world, but above all mother of goodness in the virtuous soul. The "Man of God" is the moral consciousness of man rather than the prototype or ideal. The Divine spirit is transformed from the material ether into the prin- ciple of moral inspiration. We recognize, it is true, the traces of the cosmic origin of the Divine inter- mediaries; the angels are material intermediaries as well as spiritual, and Philo accepts the belief in the power of the heavenly bodies as an inferior degree of wisdom. Nevertheless he did his best to suppress everj' material intermediary between man and God. This is quite evident in the celebrated theory of the Logos of God. This Logos, which according to the Stoics is the bond between the different parts of the world, and according to the Heracliteans the source of the cosmic oppositions, is regarded by Philo as the Divine word which reveals God to the soul and calms the passions (see Logos). It is finally from this point of view of the interior life that Philo transforms the moral conception of the Greeks which he knew mainly in the most popular forms (cynical diatribes); he discovers in them the idea of the moral conscience accepted though but slightly developed by phi- losophers up to that time. A very interesting point of view is the consideration of the various moral systems of the Greeks, not simply as true or false, but as so many indications of the soul's progress or recoil at different stages.
Consult various editions of Philo's works: Mangey (2 vols., London, 1742); Cohn and Wendland, I-V {Berlin, 1896-1906); CcMONT. De Mternilate Mundi (Berlin, 1891); ConybeaBE, Philo about Cojilemplalite Life (Oxford, 1895): Haeeis. Frag- mmis of Philo Jud(nis (Cambridge. 1886); Wendland, NfM- enliieckle Fragmenle Philos (Berlin, 1891). Writings: Gbossmann, De Philonis operum continua serie. I (Leipzig. 1841). II (1S42); Massebiead, Le Classement des (Euvres de Philon in Biblioth. de VEcole des haules dudes. 1 (1889), 1-91; Massebieau and Bb^hier, Chronologie de la Vie et des (Euvres de Philon in Revue d'hisl. des relig. (1906), 1-3. Doctrine: Dbcmmond. Philo JudiFus (2 vols.. Ix)ndon, 1888); Herriot. Philon le Juif: Essai sur VEcole Juire d'Aleiandrie (Paris. 1898); Martin, Philon (Paris, 1907) ; Br^hier, Les Idies Philosophiquea et Religieuses
