Part 8

In his conception of the human soul, Philo again harmonizes the simple Jewish notion with the developed Greek psychology by means of the Platonic idealism. The soul in the Bible is the breath of God; in Plato it is an Idea incarnate, represented in "The Timæus" as a particle of the Supreme Mind. Philo, following the psychology of his age, divides the soul into a higher and a lower part: (1) the Nous; (2) the vital functions, which include the senses. He lays all the stress upon the former, which gives man his kinship with God and the ideal world, while the other part is the necessary result of its incarnation in the body. He variously describes the Nous as an inseparable fragment of the Divine soul, a Divine breath which God inspires into each body, a reflection, an impression, or an image of the blessed Logos, sealed with its stamp. Following the Platonic conception, Philo occasionally speaks of the Divine soul as having a prenatal existence, holding, as the English poet put it, that

"The soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar."

Here, too, he follows an older Jewish-Hellenistic tradition, which appears in the Wisdom of Solomon (viii. 19 and 20), where it is written: "A good soul fell to my lot. Nay rather, being good, I came into a body undefiled." The Nous is in fact the god within, and it bears to the microcosm Man the relation which the infinite God bears to the macrocosm. Indeed, it is the Logos descended from above, but yearning to return to its true abode. Thus Philo sings its Divine nature:

"It is unseen, but sees all things: its essence is unknown, but it comprehends the essence of all things. And by arts and sciences it makes for itself many roads and ways, and traverses sea and land, searching out all things within them. And it soars aloft on wings, and when it has investigated the sky and its changes it is borne upwards towards the æther and the revolutions of the heavens. It follows the stars in their orbits, and passing the sensible it yearns for the intelligible world."

The Nous is the king of the whole organism, the governing and unifying power, and hence is often called the man himself. The senses, resembling the powers of God, are only the bodyguard, subordinate instruments, and inferior modes of the Divine part. So Philo explains that all our faculties are derived from the Divine principle, and he draws the moral lesson that our true function is to bend them all to the Divine service, so as to foster our noblest part. The aim of the good man is to bring the god within him into union with the God without, and to this end he must avoid the life of the senses, which mars the Divine Nous, and may entirely crush it. The Divine soul, as it had a life before birth, so also has a life after death; for what is Divine cannot perish. Immortality is man's most splendid hope. If the Divine Presence fills him with a mystic ecstasy, he has, indeed, attained it upon this earth, but this bliss is only for the very blessed sage; and he, too, looks forward to the more lasting union with the Godhead after this terrestrial life is over. True at once to the principles of Platonism and Judaism, Philo admits no anthropomorphic conception of Heaven or of Hell. He is convinced that there is a life hereafter, and finds in the story of Enoch the Biblical symbol thereof, but he does not speculate about the nature of the Divine reward. The pious are taken up to God, he says, and live forever, communing alone with the Alone. The unrighteous souls, Philo sometimes suggests, in accordance with current Pythagorean ideas, are reincarnated according to a system of transmigration within the human species ([Greek: palengenesia]). Yet the sinner suffers his full doom on earth. The true Hades is the life of the wicked man who has not repented, exposed to vengeance, with uncleansed guilt, obnoxious to every curse. And the Divine punishment is to live always dying, to endure death deathless and unending, the death of the soul.

The Divine Nous constitutes the true nature of man; Philo, however, insists with almost wearisome repetition, that the god within us has no power in itself, and depends entirely on the grace and inspiration of God without for knowledge, virtue, and happiness. The Stoic dogma, that the wise man is perfectly independent and self-contained ([Greek: autarchês]) appears to him as a wicked blasphemy. "Those who make God the indirect, and the mind the direct cause are guilty of impiety, for we are the instruments through which particular activities are developed, but He who gives the impulse to the powers of the body and the soul is the Creator by whom all things are moved." All thought-functions, memory, reasoning, intuition, are referred directly to Divine inspiration, which is in Platonic terminology the illumination of the mind by the ideas. Thus, finally, all human activity is referred back to God.

This guiding principle determines Philo's attitude to knowledge, involving, as it does, that we only know by Divine inspiration, or, as he says, by the immanence of the Logoi. The possibility of knowledge was one of the burning questions of the age, and it was the failure of the old dogmatic schools to answer it which led to a great religious movement in Greek philosophy. How can man attain to true knowledge, it was asked, about the universe, seeing that perceptions vary with each individual, and of conceptions we have no certain standard? The old Hebrew attitude to this question is expressed by the verse of the Psalmist: "The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth hath He given to the sons of men" (Psalm cxv), which implies that man must not try to penetrate the secrets of the universe. Philo is sufficiently a philosopher to desire knowledge about things Divine and human, but at the same time he has a complete distrust in the powers of human sense and human reason. About the physical universe he is frankly a skeptic, but his religious faith leads him to hold that God vouchsafes to man some knowledge of Himself and of the proper way of life, i.e., ethics. "Man knows all things in God." Plato similarly had despaired of knowledge of the physical world, and had turned to the heavenly ideas as the true object of thought. Moreover, in his early period, while his theory was still poetical and mystical, he had conceived that knowledge was made possible in the subject, by the entrance of "forms," or emanations, from the ideas. This theory Philo adapts to his Jewish outlook. Like Plato, he turns away from the physical to the ideal world, and he regards the ideas of wisdom, virtue, bravery, etc., which are theologically powers of God, as continually sending forth Logoi, forms or forces (the angels of popular belief), to inform and enlighten our minds. Throughout, God is the cause of all knowledge as well as of being, for these effluences are but an expression of God's activity. In Philo's theory, object and subject are really one. What can be known are the modes or attributes of God, which philosophically are "Ideas"; what knows is the emanation of the Idea, which God sends into the human soul that is prepared to receive it by pious contemplation. "Through the heavenly Wisdom, wisdom is seen, for wisdom sees itself." "Through God, God is known, for He is His own light."

Thus all knowledge is intuition, and man's function is not so much to reason as to lead a life of piety and contemplate the Divine work in the hope of being blessed with inspiration. It would be a mistake, however, to take Philo's words quite literally. He does not deny the need of human effort and striving for knowledge; for the Divine influence is not vouchsafed till we have prepared for it and consecrated all our faculties to God. But, devout mystic as he is, he ascribes every consummation to the direct help of the Deity. "The mind is the cause of nothing, but rather the Deity, who is prior to mind, generates thought." The Greek philosopher had ascribed the final synthesis of knowledge to a superhuman force. Philo ascribes to God all the intermediate steps from sense-perception. It may be admitted that his passive notion of philosophy involves the abandonment of the Greek ideal, the eager searching of Plato after truth. He lived in an age in which, through loss of intellectual power, man had come to despair of the attainment of knowledge by human effort, and to rely entirely upon supernatural means, Divine revelations, visions, and the like. It is consistent with his whole position that the crown of life is represented, not as an intellectual state, but as a superhuman ecstasy of the Nous, wherein it is freed not only from the body but from the rest of the soul, and is, so to say, led out of itself. He comments on the verse, "And the sun went down and a deep sleep fell on Abraham" (Gen. xv. 12). "When the Divine light," he says, "shines upon the mortal soul, the mortal light sinks, and our reason is driven out at the approach of the Divine spirit." This is the Alexandrian interpretation of [Hebrew: shkina] and [Hebrew: nboah], and though it is much affected by Greek mystical ideas, yet at the same time it is broadly true to the spirit of Jewish mysticism, as we see it presented in writers of all ages, and as the Psalmist expressed it, "to abide under the shadow of the Almighty."

Philo's ethics, like the rest of his philosophy, exhibits the transfusion of Greek ideas with his Hebrew spirit. The Greek philosophers had evolved a rational plan of life, while the Jewish teachers were impregnated with burning ardor for the living God; and Philo brings the two things together, making ethics dependent on religion. The Stoics, who were the most powerful school of his day, regarded as the ideal of goodness life according to unbending reason and in complete independence of God or man. Philo understands God as a personal power making for righteousness, and man's excellence, accordingly, which is likeness to God, is piety and charity. Above all he insists upon Faith ([Greek: pistis]) and he defines virtue as a condition of soul which fixes its hopes upon the truly Existent God. The Stoics also professed to honor faith or confidence above all things, but the virtue which they meant was reliance upon man's own powers. Philo's virtue is almost the converse of this. Man must feel completely dependent upon God, and his proper attitude is humility and resignation. So only can he receive within his soul the seed of goodness, and finally the Divine Logos. Yet at the same time Philo remains loyal to the Jewish ideal of conduct: faith without works is empty, and, as he puts it, "The true-born goods are faith and consistency of word and action."

The attainment of the highest excellence demands severe discipline, save for those few blessed souls whom God perfects without any effort on their part. The rest can only secure self-realization by self-renunciation; they must avoid the bodily passions and bodily lusts. At times the Divine enthusiasm causes Philo, like many a Jewish saint and like his master Plato, to scorn all bodily limitations and recommend "insensibility" ([Greek: apatheia]) by which he means that man should crush his physical desires and repress his feelings. Not that the good life seems to him to imply absence of pleasure. On the contrary, it is filled with the purest of joy, for when man rises to the love of God "in calm of mind, all passion spent," then and then alone has he tasted true joyousness. The symbol of this bliss is Isaac ([Hebrew: ytshk]), the laughter of the soul.

It was noticed in the second chapter that Philo modified his ethical ideas during his life. In the earlier period he insists more strongly on the need of ascetic self-denial, and has almost a horror of the world. Maturer experience, however, taught him that man is made for this world, and that a wise use of its goods was a surer path to happiness and to God than flight from all temptations. In his later writings, therefore, he exhibits a striking moderation. He reproaches the ascetics for their "savage enthusiasm," probably hinting at the extreme sects of the Essenes and the Therapeutæ. "Those who follow a gentler wisdom seek after God, but at the same time do not despise human things."

"Truth will properly blame those who without discrimination shun all concern with the life of the State, and say that they despise the acquisition of good repute and pleasure. They are only making grand pretensions, and they do not really despise these things. They go about in torn raiment and with solemn visage, and live the life of penury and hardship as a bait, to make people believe that they are lovers of good conduct, temperance, and self-control."

Philo's aphorism, which follows, "Be drunk in a sober manner," is characteristic. The Stoic extreme of passionlessness is almost as false as the Epicurean hedonism, and the mean between them is the ideal Jewish life, in which godliness and humanity are blended.

We have now examined the main divisions of Philo's philosophy, and we see that his metaphysics, cosmology, theory of knowledge, and ethics are all religious in tone, and all determined in their main lines by his Jewish outlook. His Hebraism is a seal which stamps all that enters his mind from Greek sources, and the Bible, spiritually interpreted, is the canon of all his wisdom.

There remains one minor aspect of his work which must be briefly examined, because it has become closely associated with his name. This is his number-symbolism, by which he ascribes important powers to certain numbers, so that they are regarded as holy themselves and sanctifying that to which they are attached. This feature of his thought is commonly ascribed to Pythagorean influence, which was strong at Alexandria, and, indeed, throughout the world, at this era. The exact details of the holiness of four, seven, ten, fifty, etc., Philo may have borrowed from neo-Pythagorean sources, but the general tendency was the natural result of his environment and his stage of thought. It was a feature of the recurring childishness of ideas and the renascence of wonder at common things which is apparent on many hands. To have denied the powers of numbers would have seemed as absurd and eccentric then as to deny the powers of electricity to-day. And in all ages people have been found to regard numbers mystically as a link between God and earth, and a means of solving all physical and metaphysical problems. The Hebrew intellect, primitive as it was, tended particularly to the reverence of the numerical powers. Witness the Bible itself, which emphasizes certain numbers; and witness also the fifth chapter of the Pirke Abot, with its lists ranged under four, seven, and ten, which is only typical of the rabbinical attitude. Philo is not original in his views concerning numbers, not above nor below the loose thinking of his age. He accepts unquestioningly the potency of seven, because of its marvellous mathematical properties, ratios, etc., its geometrical efficacy, and because of the seven periods of life from infancy to old age, of the seven parts of the body, the seven motions, the seven strings of the lyre, the seven vowels, and the very name, which is connected with worship ([Greek: sebasmos]). All this is trifling and trite, but what is of importance is the use which Philo makes of the sentiment. He converts it throughout to the support and glorification of Jewish institutions. Thus, if a man honors seven, he says, he will devote the Sabbath to meditation and philosophy. Further, as seven is the symbol of rest and tranquillity, the Sabbath must be a day of perfect rest. Ten is magnified so as to honor the Decalogue, fifty so as to honor the Feast of Pentecost. So, too, the Pythagoreans' mathematical conceptions of God as "the beginning and limit of all things," or, again, as the principle of equality, are approved by Philo, "because they breed in the soul the fairest and most nourishing fruit--piety." In short, Philo's Pythagoreanism only emphasizes his commanding purpose--to deepen and recommend the Jewish God-idea and the Jewish method of life.

Jewish influences throughout are the determining element of Philo's teaching; they are the dynamic forces working upon the Greek matter and producing the new Platonism, which constitutes Philo's contribution to Greek philosophy. It may, indeed, be said that his Hebraism makes Philo anti-philosophical, because he has no desire or hope of adding to positive knowledge, but aims only at the calm of the individual soul in union with its God. The Platonic Theory of Ideas, metaphysical in origin, plays a very important part in his works, but it is adapted mystically, and turned from an ideal of the human intellect to a support of monotheism and piety. Here Philo is at once the leader and the child of his generation; men were no longer satisfied with rational systems, but wanted a religious philosophy, based upon a transcendental principle and a Divine revelation which could give them some certainty and some positive hope in life. Doubtless, the strong mystical tendency in Philo destroyed the balance between the intuitive and the discursive reason which makes the perfect philosopher. In his overpowering passion for God, he distrusts overmuch the analytical efforts of the human mind. Nevertheless, his acquired Hellenism gives his Jewish conceptions a philosophical impress, and this has made him the model of the school of religious philosophers. The ministerial "Word" became the "ideal" expression of God's mind, the governing reason, the world-soul; the angels were spiritualized as a kingdom of Ideas. Piety received an intellectual as well as a religious value, and the Mosaic law was raised to a higher dignity as an ethical code of universal validity.

A complete harmony between the Hellenic and the Hebraic outlook upon life was impossible, but Philo at least accomplished a harmony between Hebraic monotheism and Greek metaphysics. He desired to show that faith and philosophy were in agreement, and that the imaginative and reflective conceptions of God and the Divine government were in unison. And he may be considered to have realized his desire in his synthesis of Jewish theology and Platonic idealism. He is through and through a great interpreter, elucidating points of unity between distinct systems of thought. In him the fusion of cultures, which began with the Septuagint translation, reached its culmination. It reached its zenith and straightway the severance began.

In the next chapter we shall trace Philo's place in Jewish thought; here we may glance at his place in the development of Greek philosophy. The fusion between Eastern and Western thought, which he himself so strikingly illustrates, continued to dominate philosophy for the next four hundred years; and Plato, who, with his deep religious spirit, had a broad affinity with the Oriental conception of the universe, was the supreme philosophical master. All the chief teachers looked to him for the intellectual basis of their ideas and read into his works their particular religious beliefs; but they failed to maintain a true harmony between the two. The cultures of all countries and races mingled, even as their peoples mingled under the Roman Empire, but they were so combined as to lose the purity and individuality of each element. The Eastern Platonists who followed Philo brought to their interpretation less noble conceptions of the Godhead, the Gnosticism of Syria, the dualism of Persia, the impersonal pantheism of India, and the theurgies of Egypt, and produced strange hybrids of the human mind. The one point of agreement between them is that they conceive the Supreme God as impersonal and entirely inactive, "a deified Zero," and endeavor by a system of emanation to trace the descent of this baffling principle into man and the universe. Philo was as unfortunate in his philosophical as in his religious following, who both transformed his poetical metaphors into fixed and rigid dogmas. His doctrine of the Logos was, on the one hand, the forerunner of the Trinity of the Church, on the other of the Trinity of the Alexandrian neo-Platonists. It is difficult, indeed, to trace with certainty the connection between Philo and the later school of Alexandrian Platonists, but there appears to be at least one clear link in the teaching of the Syrian Numenius, who flourished in the middle of the second century. To him are attributed the two sayings: "Either Plato Philonizes or Philo Platonizes," and "What is Plato but the Attic Moses?" Modern scholars have questioned the correctness of the reference, but be this as it may, it is certain that Numenius used the Bible as evidence of Platonic doctrines. "We should go back," he says, in a fragment, "to the actual writings of Plato and call in as testimony the ideas of the most cultured races; comparing their holy books and laws we should bring in support the harmonious ideas which are to be found among the Brahmans and the Jews." Origen tells us, moreover, that he often introduced excerpts from the books of Moses and the Prophets, and allegorized them with ingenuity. In one of the few remains of his writings which have come down to us, we find him praising the verse in the first chapter of Genesis, "The spirit of God was upon the waters"; because, as Philo had interpreted it--following perhaps a rabbinical tradition--water represents the primal world-stuff. And elsewhere he mentions the efforts of the Egyptian magicians to frustrate the miracles of Moses, following Philo's account in his life of the Jewish hero.

The work of Philo helped to spread a knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures far and wide and to give them general authority as a philosophical book; but it did not succeed in spreading the pure Hebrew monotheism. The exalted Hebrew idea of God was still too sublime for the pagan nations, even for their philosophers. The world in truth was decaying morally and intellectually, and most of all in powers of imagination; and its hunger for God found expression in crude and stunted conceptions of His nature. Unable any longer to soar to Heaven, it sullied the majesty of the Deity, and divided the Godhead in order to bridge the gap. Numenius represents in philosophy the Gnostic ideas about God which were widely held by the heretics, Jewish and Christian, of the second century. He divides the Godhead into two separate powers: (1) the impersonal Being behind all reality, free from all activity whatsoever; (2) the Demiurge or active governor of the universe, who again is subdivided into a transcendent and an immanent power.

The teaching of Plotinus, the most famous of the later Alexandrian neo-Platonists, shows a further step in the development of religious Platonism. Viewed from its higher side it is an attempt to explain everything as the emanation of the One. But philosophy in the third century debased itself in order to support the tottering polytheistic religion of the pagan world against the modified Hebraic creed, Christianity, which was fast demolishing its power. Against the Trinity of the Church the philosophers set up a heavenly Trinity of so-called reason: the Ineffable One, the Demiurgic Mind, and the World Soul; and between this Trinity and man they placed intermediate hierarchies of gods, angels, and demons--in fact, the whole fugitive army of Greek polytheism thinly disguised. All the vulgar fancies and superstitions which Philo had intellectualized, these later Eastern Platonists sought to revive and justify by conceptions of physical emanation blended of false science and mysticism. They hoped to found a universal religion by finding room in one system for the deities of all nations!

From Plotinus down to Proclus, neo-Platonism became more unintellectual, more insane, more pagan, and, finally, with its vapid dreams, it brought the history of Greek philosophy to an inglorious close. Its finer teachings, however, deeply affected mediaeval philosophy, and not least the Arab-Jewish school. The theory of emanations and spiritual hierarchies pervades the writings of Ibn Ezra, Ibn Gabirol, and Ibn Daud, and thus indirectly provides a connection between the culture of Alexandrian Judaism and the culture of Spanish Judaism. The praise of God known as the [Hebrew: ktr mlkot] by Ibn Gabirol is a splendid example of the Hebraizing of neo-Platonic doctrines, which, though probably quite independent of his teaching, recalls constantly the ideas of Philo.

By his place at the head of the neo-Platonic school Philo enters the broad stream of the world's philosophical development, but his more lasting influence was exercised over the religious philosophy of Christianity. He was the direct master of what is known as the Patristic school, which sought to combine the intellectual conceptions of Plato with the religious ideas of the Gospels. Its most celebrated teachers were Clement and Origen, both of Alexandria, who flourished in the second century. They resorted largely to allegorical interpretation, learning from Philo to trace in the Bible principles of universal thought and profound philosophy; but they used his method and his lessons to support notions of God and the Logos which were alien to his spirit. He had possessed pre-eminently the soaring imagination of poetry, which is the crown of the intellectual and of the religious mind, and unites them in their highest excellence; but they bounded their philosophy within the narrow limits of dogma, and thereby destroyed the harmony between Hebraism and Hellenism which he had contrived to effect. The controversy of Origen and Celsus began again the battle between reason and faith, "which was to destroy for centuries the independence of philosophy and to break the continuity of civilization." Had Philo really been ploughing the sand, and was an agreement between faith and reason, between religion and philosophy, impossible? Can the two finest creations of the mind only be combined on the terms that one is subordinate, or rather servile, to the other? In Judaism, if anywhere, the combination should be possible, for Judaism has as its basis an intuitional conception of God, which is in harmony with the philosophical conception of the universe, and it has little dogma besides. The neo-Platonists and the Church Fathers failed to carry on the ideal of Philo, but it was to be expected that among his own people, the nation of philosophers, as he had called them, he would have found true successors. Yet the use made of his work by the Christians compelled his people to regard him as a betrayer of the law and to avoid his goal as a treacherous snare. For centuries Greek philosophy was banned from Jewish thought, and Philo's works are not mentioned by any Jewish writer. Strangers possessed his inheritance, and his name alone, "Philo-Judæus," bore witness to his nationality. It is an interesting speculation to consider how different might have been the history, not only of the Jews, but of the world, if the Hellenistic Judaism of Philo had prevailed in the Roman-Greek world instead of "the impurer Hellenism of Christianity." When, in the tenth century, the leaders of Jewish thought broke the bonds of seclusion, and brought anew to the interpretation of their religion the culture of the outer world, Greek philosophy became again a powerful influence, though it was Aristotle rather than Plato whom they studied. The harmonizing spirit of Philo, which may be accounted part of the genius of the race, lives on in Saadia, Maimonides, Ibn Ezra, Ibn Gabirol, and Judah Halevi. But the difference between him and the Arabic school is marked. They do not inherit his whole object, for they aimed not at a philosophical Judaism which should be a world-religion, but at a philosophical Judaism for the more enlightened Jews alone. Philo's work was the culminating point, indeed, of a great development in Judaism, produced by the mingling of the finest products of human reason and human imagination, but it was particularly the expression of his own commanding genius. He lacked a true successor, for those who shared his aim did not inherit his Jewish outlook, and those who shared his Jewish outlook did not inherit his aim. What is characteristic of and peculiar to Philo is the combination of the missionary and the philosopher. Living at a time when the Jewish genius expanded most brilliantly, and when Judaism exercised its greatest influence, he hoped to make his religion universal by showing it to be philosophical, and to bring about by the aid of Plato the ideal of the prophets.

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VII

PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION

We have seen from time to time how Philo's interpretation of the Bible corresponds with Palestinian Jewish tradition; and we must now consider more in detail the relations of the two schools of Jewish learning. Until the last century it was commonly supposed that no close relation existed, and that the Alexandrian and Palestinian schools were independent and opposed; Scaliger, the greatest scholar of the seventeenth century, wrote that "Philo was more ignorant of Hebraic and Aramaic lore than any Gaul or Scythian," and this was the opinion generally held. The researches of Freudenthal and Siegfried have shown the falsity of these views; and, most important of all, Philo refutes them out of his own mouth. He refers in many different parts of his works to the tradition and the wisdom of his ancestors, he tells us how on the Sabbath the Jews studied in their synagogues their special philosophy, and he commences his "Life of Moses" by declaring that against the false calumnies of Greek writers he will set forth the true account which he has learnt from the sacred writings and "from certain elders of his race." In support of his statement we have the remark of Eusebius, the Christian historian, and our chief ancient authority for Philo's work, that he set forth and expounded not only the laws of the Bible, but many institutions and opinions of his fathers. Apart from these direct references, the numerous points of correspondence between Philo's interpretations and those of the Talmud and later Midrash would compel us to admit a connection between Alexandria and Jerusalem.

The break between the two schools did not show itself till after the time of Philo. Up to the first century of the Christian era the rabbis encouraged the union of Shem and Japheth--the two good sons of one parent--and the stream of ideas flowed quite freely between the teachers in Palestine and the Hellenized colony in Egypt. Hence the Palestinian Jews, on the one hand, received the first fruits of this mingling of cultures, and the Alexandrian Jews, on the other, must have inherited the early tradition of the rabbinical interpreters embodied in ancient Halakah and Haggadah. By this common heritage, rather than by any direct borrowing, it seems more reasonable to account for the correspondence in the two Midrashim. It should be remembered that until the second century of the common era the mass of Jewish tradition was a floating and developing body of opinion not consigned to writing or formalized, but handed down by word of mouth from teacher to pupil, and preacher to congregation: in this way it was diffused throughout the mind of the race, indefinitely and, to some extent, unconsciously shaping its thought. The detailed points of agreement between Philo and the Talmud and Midrash are not of great moment in themselves, but they are the signs of a unity of development and the catholicity of Judaism in the East and West. Doubtless the development was more national and at the same time more legal in Judæa, in Alexandria more Hellenistic and philosophical, but there is a common spiritual bond between the two expressions, pious images, fancies, similes, interpretations which they share. They are, as it were, children of one family, and despite the varying influences of environment they maintain a family resemblance. With the Sibylline oracles we may compare Daniel and the Psalms of Solomon; with Aristeas and his fellow-Apologists, Josephus; with the allegorical commentaries of Philo, the Midrashim. Modern scholars have gone far to prove that Philo was the expounder of an Hellenic Midrash upon the Bible, in which were gathered the thoughts and ideas that had been brought to Egypt by the Jewish settlers, modified, no doubt, by Greek influences, but still bearing the stamp of their origin. Philo, then, appears in the direct line of the tradition which from the time of the Great Synagogue was disseminated through two channels, the schools of Palestine and the writers of Alexandria. He developed the national Jewish theology in a literary form, which made it available for the world, but with him the tradition as a Jewish tradition ends; in its further Hellenistic development it departed entirely from its original principles.

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, 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--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; whereas the other Halakah allows it only in the former case. He who commits perjury also is to suffer capital punishment. He adds a law which finds no place in the Palestinian tradition, making the exposure of children a capital crime. 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.