thus becomes virtue; Abraham's country and kindred, from which he was commanded to depart, the human body and its members; the five cities of Sodom, the five senses; the Euphrates, correction of manners. By Philo and his compeers even the most insignificant words and phrases, and those especially, were held to conceal the most precious meanings.
A perfectly natural and logical result of this view was reached when Philo, saturated as he was with Greek culture and nourished on pious traditions of the utterances at Delphi and Dodona, spoke reverently of the Jewish Scriptures as "oracles." Oracles they became, as oracles they appeared in the early history of the Christian Church, and oracles they remained for centuries: eternal life or death, infinite happiness or agony, as well as ordinary justice in this world, being made to depend on certain interpretations of a long series of recondite or doubtful utterances—interpretations frequently given by men who might have been prophets and apostles, but who had become simply oracle-mongers.
Pressing the oracle into the service of science, Philo became the forerunner of that long series of theologians who, from Augustine and Cosmas to Mr. Gladstone, have attempted to extract from scriptural myth and legend profound contributions to natural science. Thus he taught that the golden candlesticks in the tabernacle symbolized the planets, the high priest's robe the universe, and the bells upon it the harmony of earth and water—whatever that may mean. So Cosmas taught, a thousand years later, that the table of showbread in the tabernacle showed forth the form and construction of the world; and Mr. Gladstone hinted, more than a thousand years later still, that Neptune's trident had a mysterious connection with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.[1]
These methods, in spite of the resistance of Tertullian and Irenæus, were transmitted to the early Church; as applied to the
- ↑ For Philo Judæus, see Yonge's translation, Bonn's edition; see also Sanday on Inspiration, pp. 78-85. For admirable general remarks on this period in the history of exegesis, see Bartlett, Bampton Lectures, 1888, p. 29. For efforts in general to save the credit of myths by allegorical interpretation, and for those of Philo in particular, see Drummond, Philo-Judæus, London, 1888, vol. i, pp. 18, 19 and notes. For interesting samples of Alexandrian exegesis and for Philo's application of the term "oracle" to the Jewish Scriptures, see Farrar, History of Interpretation, p. 147 and note. For his discovery of symbols of the universe in the furniture of the tabernacle, see Drummond, as above, vol. i, pp. 269 et seq. For the general subject, admirably discussed from a historical point of view, see the Rev. Edwin Batch, D. D., The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, Hibbert Lectures for 1888, chap. iii. For Cosmas, see my chapters on Geography and Astronomy. For Mr. Gladstone's view of the connection between Neptune's trident and the doctrine of the Trinity, see his Juventus Mundi.
