Footnote 116:[ (return) ]
Philo by his exhortations to seek the blessed life, has by no means broken with the intellectualism of the Greek philosophy, he has only gone beyond it. The way of knowledge and speculation is to him also the way of religion and morality. But his formal principle is supernatural and leads to a supernatural knowledge which finally passes over into sight.
Footnote 117:[ (return) ]
But everything was now ready for this synthesis so that it could be, and immediately was, completed by Christian philosophers.
Footnote 118:[ (return) ]
We cannot discover Philo's influence in the writings of Paul. But here again we must remember that the scripture learning of Palestinian teachers developed speculations which appear closely related to the Alexandrian, and partly are so, but yet cannot be deduced from them. The element common to them must, for the present at least, be deduced from the harmony of conditions in which the different nations of the East were at that time placed, a harmony which we cannot exactly measure.
Footnote 119:[ (return) ]
The conception of God's relation to the world as given in the fourth Gospel is not Philonic. The Logos doctrine there is therefore essentially not that of Philo (against Kuenen and others. See p. 93).
Footnote 120:[ (return) ]
Siegfried (Philo. p. 160-197) has presented in detail Philo's allegorical interpretation of scripture, his hermeneutic principles and their application. Without an exact knowledge of these principles we cannot understand the Scripture expositions of the Fathers, and therefore also cannot do them justice.
Footnote 121:[ (return) ]
See Siegfried, Philo. p. 176. Yet, as a rule, the method of isolating and adapting passages of scripture, and the method of unlimited combination were sufficient.
Footnote 122:[ (return) ]
Numerous examples of this may be found in the epistle of Barnabas (see c. 4-9), and in the dialogue of Justin with Trypho (here they are objects of controversy, see cc. 71-73, 120), but also in many other Christian writings, (e.g., Clem. ad. Cor. VIII. 3; XVII. 6; XXIII. 3, 4; XXVI. 5; XLVI. 2; 2 Clem. XIII. 2). These Christian additions were long retained in the Latin Bible, (see also Lactantius and other Latins: Pseudo-Cyprian de aleat. 2 etc.), the most celebrated of them is the addition "a ligno" to "dominus regnavit" in Psalm XCVI., see Credner, Beiträge II. The treatment of the Old Testament in the epistle of Barnabas is specially instructive, and exhibits the greatest formal agreement with that of Philo. We may close here with the words in which Siegfried sums up his judgment on Philo. "No Jewish writer has contributed so much as Philo to the breaking up of particularism, and the dissolution of Judaism. The history of his people, though he believed in it literally, was in its main points a didactic allegoric poem for enabling him to inculcate the doctrine that man attains the vision of God by mortification of the flesh. The law was regarded by him as the best guide to this, but it had lost its exclusive value, as it was admitted to be possible to reach the goal without it, and it had, besides, its aim outside itself. The God of Philo was no longer the old living God of Israel, but an imaginary being who, to obtain power over the world, needed a Logos by whom the palladium of Israel, the unity of God, was taken a prey. So Israel lost everything which had hitherto characterised her."
Footnote 123:[ (return) ]
Proofs in Friedländer, Sittengeschichte, vol. 3.
Footnote 124:[ (return) ]
See the chapter on belief in immortality in Friedländer. Sittengesch. Roms. Bde. 3. Among the numerous mysteries known to us, that of Mythras deserves special consideration. From the middle of the second century the Church Fathers saw in it, above all, the caricature of the Church. The worship of Mithras had its redeemer, its mediator, hierarchy, sacrifice, baptism and sacred meal. The ideas of expiation, immortality, and the Redeemer God, were very vividly present in this cult, which of course, in later times, borrowed much from Christianity: see the accounts of Marquardt, Réville, and the Essay of Sayous, Le Taurobole in the Rev. de l'Hist. des Religions, 1887, where the earliest literature is also utilised. The worship of Mithras in the third century became the most powerful rival of Christianity. In connection with this should be specially noted the cult of Æsculapius, the God who helps the body and the soul; see my essay "Medicinisches aus der ältesten Kirchengeschichte," 1892. p. 93 ff.
Footnote 125:[ (return) ]
Hence the wide prevalence of the cult of Æsculapius.