—On Creation, cap. 50.
Philo the mediator between Hellenistic and Jewish-Christian thought.
There probably is no other man who marks so well the fusion of Hellenic and Hebrew ideas and the transition from them to Christian thought as Philo Judaeus.[1552] He flourished at Alexandria in the first years of our era—the exact dates both of his birth and of his death are uncertain—and speaks of himself as an old man at the time of his participation in the embassy of Jews to the Emperor Gaius or Caligula in 40 A.D. He repeats the doctrines of the Greek philosophers and anticipates much that the church fathers discuss. Before the Neo-Platonists he regards matter as the source of all evil and feels the necessity of mediators, angels or demons, between God and man. Before the medieval revival of Aristotle and natural philosophy he tries to reconcile the Mosaic account of creation with belief in a world soul, and monotheism with astrology. Before the rise of Christian monasticism he describes in his treatise On the Contemplative Life an ascetic community of Therapeutae at Lake Maerotis.[1553] After Pythagoras he enlarges upon the mystic significance of numbers. After Plato he repeats the conception of an ideal city of God which was to gain such a hold upon Christian imagination.[1554] After the Stoics he proclaims the doctrine of the law of nature, holds that the institution of human slavery is absolutely contrary to it, and writes “a treatise to prove that every virtuous man is free” and that to be virtuous is to live in conformity to nature.[1555] He had previously written another treatise designed to show that “every wicked man was a slave,”[1556] and he held a theory which we met in the Enoch literature and shall meet again in a number of subsequent writers that sin was punished naturally by forces of nature such as floods and thunderbolts. He did not originate the practice of allegorical interpretation of the Bible but he is our first great extant example thereof. He even went so far as to regard the tree of life and the story of the serpent tempting Eve as purely symbolical, an attitude which found little favor with Christian writers.[1557] His effort by means of the allegorical method to find in the books of the Pentateuch all the attractive concepts and theories which he had learned from the Greeks became later in the Christian apologists an assertion that Plato and Pythagoras had borrowed their doctrines from Abraham and Moses. His doctrine of the logos had a powerful influence upon the writers of the New Testament and the theology of the early church.[1558] Yet Philo affirms that no more perfect good than philosophy exists in human life and in both literary style and erudition he is a Hellene to his very finger tips. The recent tendency, seen especially in German scholarship, to deny the writers of the Roman Empire any capacity for original thought and to trace back their ideas to unextant authors of a supposedly much more productive Hellenistic age has perhaps been carried too far. But if we may not regard Philo as a great originator, and it is evident that he borrowed many of his ideas, he was at any rate a great transmitter of thought, a mediator after his own heart between Jews and Greeks, and between them both and the Christian writers to come. Standing at the close of the Hellenistic age and at the opening of the Roman period, he occupies in the history of speculative and theological thought an analogous position to that of Pliny the Elder in the history of natural science, gathering up the lore of the past, perhaps improving it with some additions of his own, and exercising a profound influence upon the age to come.
His influence upon the middle ages was indirect.
Philo’s medieval influence, however, was probably more indirect than Pliny’s and passed itself on through yet other mediators to the more remote times. Comparatively speaking, the Natural History of Pliny probably was more important in the middle ages than in the early Roman Empire when other authorities prevailed in the Greek-speaking world. Philo’s influence on the other hand must soon be transmitted through Christian, and then again through Latin, mediums. This is indicated by the fact that to-day many of his works are wholly lost or extant only in fragments[1559] or in Armenian versions,[1560] and that we have no sure information as to the order in which they were composed.[1561] But his initial force is none the less of the greatest moment, and seems amply sufficient to justify us in selecting his writings as one of our starting points. The extent to which one is apt to find in the writings of Philo passages which are forerunners of the statements of subsequent writers, may be illustrated by the familiar story of King Canute and the tide. Philo in his work On Dreams[1562] speaks of the custom of the Germans of charging the incoming tide with their drawn swords. But what especially concern us are Philo’s statements concerning magic, astrology, the stars, the perfection and power of numbers, demons, and the interpretation of dreams.
Good and bad magic.
Philo draws a distinction between magic in the good and bad sense. The former and true magical art is the lore of learned Persians called Magi who investigate nature more minutely and deeply than is usual and explain divine virtues clearly.[1563] The latter magic is a spurious imitation of the other, practised by quacks and impostors, old-wives and slaves, who by means of incantations and the like procedure profess to change men from love to hatred or vice versa and who “deceive unsuspecting persons and waste whole families away by degrees and without making any noise.” It is to this adulterated and evil magic that Philo again refers when he likens political life to Joseph’s coat of many colors, stained with the blood of wars, and in which a very little truth is mixed up with a great deal of sophistry akin to that of the augurs, ventriloquists, sorcerers, jugglers and enchanters, “from whose treacherous arts it is very difficult to escape.”[1564] This distinction between a magic of the wise and of nature and that of vulgar impostors is one which we shall find in many subsequent writers, although it was not recognized by Pliny. Philo also antecedes numerous Christian commentators upon the Book of Numbers[1565] in considering the vexed question whether Balaam was an evil enchanter and diviner, or a divine prophet, or whether he combined magic and prophecy, and thus indicated that the former art is not evil but has divine approval. Philo’s conclusion is the more usual one that Balaam was a celebrated diviner and magician, and that it is impossible that “holy inspiration should be combined with magic,” but that in the particular case of his blessing Israel the spirit of divine prophecy took possession of him and “drove all his artificial system of cunning divination out of his soul.”[1566]
Stars not gods nor first causes.
Philo has considerably more to say upon the subject of astrology than upon that of magic. He was especially concerned to deny that the stars were first causes or independent gods. He chided the Chaldean adepts in genethlialogy for recognizing no other god than the universe and no other causes than those apparent to the senses, and for regarding fate and necessity as gods and the periodical revolutions of the heavenly bodies as the cause of all good and evil.[1567] Philo more than once exhorts the reader to follow Abraham’s example in leaving Chaldea and the science of genethlialogy and coming to Charran to a comprehension of the true nature of God.[1568] He agreed with Moses that the stars should not be worshiped and that they had been created by God, and more than that, not created until the fourth day, in order that it might be perfectly clear to men that they were not the primary causes of things.[1569]
But rational and virtuous animals: and God’s viceroys over inferiors.