Emil Schürer and Charles Bigg

“ Comparatively speaking, he is most truly a Jew in his conception of God. The doctrine of monotheism, the stress laid on the absolute majesty and sovereignty of God above the world, the principle that He is to be worshipped without images, are all points in which Philo justly feels his superiority as a Jew over popular heathenism. But only over popular heathenism, for the Greek philosophers had long since arrived at least at a theoretical monotheism, and their influence on Philo is nowhere more strongly seen than in the detailed development of his doctrine of God. ”

“ The body, therefore, is a prison, a coffin, or a grave for the soul which seeks to rise again to God. From this anthropology the principles of Philo's ethics are derived, its highest maxim necessarily being deliverance from the world of sense and the mortification of all the impulses of sense. ”

“ If now we ask wherein Philo's Judaism consisted we must answer that it lies mainly in the formal claim that the Jewish people, in virtue of the divine revelation given to Moses, possesses the true knowledge in things religious. Thoroughly Jewish is his recognition that the Mosaic Scriptures of the Pentateuch are of absolute divine authority, and that everything they contain is valuable and significant because divinely revealed. ”

“ And so in fact Philo does teach that the absolute perfection, purity and loftiness of God would be violated by direct contact with imperfect, impure and finite things. But the possibility of a connexion between God and the world is reached through a distinction which forms the most important point in his theology and cosmology, the proper Being of God is distinguished from the infinite multiplicity of divine Ideas or Forces. ”

“ Like his doctrine of God, Philo's doctrine of the world and creation rests on the presupposition of an absolute metaphysical contrast between God and the world. The world can be ascribed to God only in so far as it is a cosmos or orderly world, its material substratum is not even indirectly referable to God. ”

“ Philo's doctrine of man is also strictly dualistic, and is mainly derived from Plato. Man is a twofold being, with a higher and a lower origin. Of the pure souls which fill airy space, those nearest the earth are attracted by the sensible and descend into sensible bodies, these souls are the Godward side of man. But on his other side man is a creature of sense, and so has in him a fountain of sin and all evil. ”

“ It is a lifeless, unmoved, shapeless mass, out of which God formed the actual world by means of the Logos and divine Forces. Strictly speaking, the world is only formed, not created, since matter did not originate with God. ”

“ A consistent application of Philo's abstract conception of God would exclude the possibility of any active relation of God to the world, and therefore of religion, for a Being absolutely without quality and movement cannot be conceived as actively concerned with the multiplicity of individual things. ”

“ God himself is without quality, but He disposes of an infinite variety of divine Forces, through whose mediation an active relation of God to the world, is brought about. In the details of his teaching as to these mediating entities Philo is guided partly by Plato and partly by the Stoics, but at the same time he makes use of the concrete religious conceptions of heathenism and Judaism. ”

“ Everything that is right and good in the doctrines of the Greek philosophers had already been quite as well, or even better, taught by Moses Thus, since Philo had been deeply influenced by the teachings of Greek philosophy he actually finds in the Pentateuch everything which he had learned from the Greeks From these premises he assumes as requiring no proof that the Greek philosophers must in some way have drawn from Moses, a view indeed which is already expressed by Aristobulus. ”

“ We read of a Jewish philosopher Aristobulus in the time of Ptolemy VI. Philometor, in the middle of the 2nd century B.C., of whose philosophical commentary on the Pentateuch fragments have been preserved by Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius. So far as we can judge from these, his aim was to put upon the sacred text a sense which should appeal even to Greek readers, and in particular to get rid of all anthropomorphic utterances about God. ”

“ III. A work of a very different kind is the group of writings which we may call "An Exposition of the Mosaic law for Gentiles," which, in spite of their very various contents, present on nearer examination indubitable marks of close connexion. In them Philo seeks to give an orderly view of the chief points of the Mosaic legislation in the Pentateuch, and to recommend it as valuable to Gentile readers. ”

“ But natural death brings this consummation only to those who, while they lived on earth, kept themselves free from attachment to the things of sense; all others must at death pass into another body; transmigration of souls is in fact the necessary consequence of Philo's premises, though he seldom speaks of it expressly. ”

“ Genesis seems to have occupied six books [6] Eusebius tells us that Exodus filled five books. In the Armenian translation, first published by the learned Mechitarist, J Bapt Aucher, in 1826, are preserved four books on Genesis and two on Exodus, but with lacunae. A Latin fragment, about half of the fourth books on Genesis (Phil Jud CII. quaestt. ... super Gen) , was first printed at Paris in 1520. Of the Greek we have numerous but short fragments in various Florilegia [7] The interpretations in this work are partly literal and partly allegorical. ”

“ Περί τών άναφερομένων έν είδει νόμων είς τά συντείνοντα τών δέκα λόγων (De specialibus legibus; the unabridged title is given by Eusebius, H.E. ii. 18, 5) . Here under the rubrics of the ten commandments a systematic review of the special laws of the Mosaic economy is given; for example, under the first and second commandments (divine worship) a survey is taken of the entire legislation relating to priesthood and sacrifice; under the fourth (i e. the Sabbath law, according to Philo’s reckoning) there is a survey of all the laws about feasts ”

“ This biography of Abraham was followed by that of Isaac as a type of φυσική άρετή i e. of innate or natural virtue, which in turn was succeeded by that of Jacob as representing άσκητική άρετή, i e. virtue acquired by practice; but both these are now lost. Hence in the editions the next treatise is (3) Βίος πολιτικός όπερ έστί περί Ἰωσήφ (De Josepho, M. ii. 41–79) , where Joseph is taken as the pattern of the wise man in his civil relations. ”

“ Even in this life the truly wise and virtuous is lifted above his sensible existence, and enjoys in ecstasy the son of God, his own consciousness sinking and disappearing in the divine right. Beyond this ecstasy there lies but one further step, viz. ”

“ Ill. c. 11) ; the Greek title is given in Euseb. H.E. ii. 18, 6. This also now exists only in an Armenian translation, which has been edited by Aucher. Two small Greek fragments occur in the Florilegium of Leontius and Johannes (Mai, Scr. vet. nov. coll. vii. 1, p. 99, 100a) . (7) Τποθετικά, a writing now known to us only through fragments preserved in Euseb. Praep. Ev viii. 6, 7. The title, as Bernays [9] as shown, means "Counsels," "Recommendations," the reference being to such laws of the Jews as can be recommended also to non-Jewish readers. ”