Philo-Judæus of Alexandria

by Norman Bentwich

, or what we call religious "genius," with which man may be blessed. He distinguishes between the man who possesses it only for his own exaltation, and the man who feels himself compelled to impart it to others for their happiness. To this higher order of genius Philo advanced in his maturity. He consciously regarded himself as a follower of Moses, who was the perfect interpreter of God's thought. So he, though in a lesser degree, was an inspired interpreter, a hierophant (as he expressed it in the language of the Greek mystics) who expounded the Divine Word to his own generation by the gift of the Divine wisdom. When he had fled from Alexandria, to secure virtue by contemplation, he had as his final goal the attainment of the true knowledge of God, and as he advanced in age, he advanced in decision and authority. He was conscious of his philosophic grasp of the Torah, and the diffidence with which he allegorized in his early works gave place to a serene confidence that he had a lesson for his own and for future generations. Hoping for the time when Judaism should be a world-religion, he spoke his message for Jew and Gentile. We can imagine him preaching on Sabbaths to the [pg.61] great congregation which filled the synagogue at Alexandria, and on other days of the week expounding his philosophical ideas to a smaller circle which he collected around him.

Essentially, then, he was a philosopher and a teacher, but he was called upon to play a part in the world of action. Following the passage already quoted, wherein Philo speaks of the blessings of the life of contemplation that he had led in the past,[70] he goes on to relate how that "envy, the most grievous of all evils, attacked me, and threw me into the vast sea of public affairs, in which I am still tossed about without being able to make my way out." A French scholar[71] conjectures that this is only a metaphorical way of saying that he was forced into some public office, probably, a seat in the Alexandrian Sanhedrin; and he ascribes the language to the bitter disappointment of one who was devoted to philosophical pursuits and found himself diverted from them. Philo's language points rather to duties which he was compelled to undertake less congenial than those of a member of the Sanhedrin would have been; and probably must refer to the polemical activity which he was called upon to exert in defending his people against misrepresentation and persecution. During the reign of Augustus and the early years of Tiberius (30 B.C.E.-20 C.E.) the Roman provinces were firmly ruled, and [pg.62] the governors were as firmly controlled by the emperor. To Rectus, who was the prefect of Egypt till 14 C.E., and who was removed for attempted extortion, Tiberius addressed the rebuke, "I want my sheep to be shorn, not strangled." But when Tiberius fell under the influence of Sejanus, and left to his hated minister the active control of the empire, harder times began for the provincials, and especially for the Jews. Sejanus was an upstart, and like most upstarts a tyrant; and for some reason—it may be jealousy of the power of the Jews at Rome—he hated the Jewish race and persecuted it. The great opponent of Sejanus was Antonia, the ward of Philo's brother, and a loyal friend to his people; and this, too, may have incited Sejanus' ill-feeling. Whatever the reason, the Alexandrian Jews felt the heavy hand, and when Philo came to write the story of his people in his own times, he devoted one book to the persecution by Sejanus. Unfortunately it has not survived, but veiled hints of the period of stress through which the people passed are not wanting in the commentary on the law.

There were always anti-Semites spoiling for a fight at Alexandria, and there was always inflammable material which they could stir up. The Egyptian populace were by nature, says Philo, "jealous and envious, and were filled moreover with an ancient and inveterate enmity towards the Jews,"[72] and of the degenerate Greek population, many were anxious from motives [pg.63] of private gain as well as from religious enmity to incite an outbreak; since the Jews were wealthy and the booty would be great. Among the cultured, too, there was one philosophical school powerful at Alexandria, which maintained a persistent attitude of hostility towards the Jews. The chief literary anti-Semites of whom we have record at this period were Stoics, and it is probably their "envy" to which Philo refers when he complains of being drawn into the sea of politics. In writings and in speeches the Stoic leaders Apion and Chæremon carried on a campaign of misrepresentation, and sought to give their attacks a fine humanitarian justification by drawing fancy pictures of the Jewish religion and Jewish laws. The Jews worshipped the head of an ass,[73] they hated the Gentiles, and would have no communication with them, they killed Gentile children at the Passover, and their law allowed them to commit any offences against all but their own people, and inculcated a low morality. When it was not morally bad, it was degraded and superstitious. Whereas the modern anti-Semite usually complains about Jewish success and dangerous cleverness, Apion accused them of having produced no original ideas and no great men, and no citizen as worthy of Alexandria as himself! Against these charges Philo, the most philosophical Jew of the time and the most distinguished member of the Alexandrian [pg.64] community, was called upon to defend his people, and that part of his works which Eusebius calls

; i.e. apologetics, was probably written in reply to the Stoic attacks. The hatred of the Stoics was a religious hatred, which is the bitterest of all; the Stoics were the propagators of a rival religious system, which had originally been founded by Hellenized Semites and borrowed much from Semitic sources. They had their missionaries everywhere and aspired to found a universal philosophical religion. In their proselytizing activity they tried to assimilate to their pantheism the mythological religion of the masses, and thus they became the philosophical supporters of idolatry. Their greatest religious opponents were the Jews, who not only refused to accept their teachings, but preached to the nations a transcendental monotheism against their impersonal and accommodating pantheism, and a divinely-revealed law of conduct against their vague natural reason. In the Stoic pantheism the first stand of the pagan national deities was made against the God of Israel, and at Alexandria during the first century the fight waxed fierce. It was a fight of ideas in which persons only were victims, but at the back of the intermittent persecutions of which we have record we may always surmise the influence of the Stoic anti-Semites. The war of words translated itself from time to time into the breaking of heads.

Philo, indeed, never mentions Apion by name, but he refers covertly in many places to his insolence and [pg.65] unscrupulousness.[74] Josephus wrote a famous reply to his attacks, refuting "his vulgar abuse, gross ignorance and demagogic claptrap,"[75] and the fact that a Palestinian Jew thought this apology necessary, proves the wide dissemination of the poison. The disgrace and death of Sejanus seem to have brought a relief from actual persecution to the Alexandrian Jews; but the ill-will between the two races in the city smouldered on, and it only required a weakening of the controlling hand at Rome to set the passions aflame again. Right through Philo's treatise "On the Confusion of Tongues," we can trace the tension. As soon as Gaius, surnamed Caligula, came to the imperial chair, the opportunity of the anti-Semites returned. Gaius, after reigning well a few months, fell ill, was seized with madness, and proved how much evil can be done in a short space by an imbecile autocrat. Flaccus, the governor of Egypt, who had hitherto ruled fairly, hoping to ingratiate himself by misrule, allowed himself to be led by worthless minions, who, from motives of private greed, desired a riot at Alexandria; he was won over by the anti-Semites and gave the mob a free hand in their attacks upon the "alien Jews."[76] The arrival of Agrippa, the grandson of Herod, who was on his way to his kingdom of Palestine, which the capricious emperor had just conferred upon him, excited the ill-will of the Alexandrian [pg.66] mob. Flaccus looked on while the people attacked the Jewish quarters, sacked the houses, and assailed everyone that came within their reach. The most distinguished Jews were not spared, and thirty members of the Council of Elders were dragged to the marketplace and scourged. Philo's account gives a picture strikingly similar to that of a modern pogrom. The brutal indifference of Flaccus did not indeed avail to ingratiate him with the emperor, and he was recalled to Italy, exiled, and afterwards executed.

The recall of Flaccus did not, however, put an end to the troubles; the mob had got out of hand, the anti-Semitic demagogues were elated, and a fresh opportunity for outrage soon presented itself. The mad emperor, having exhausted ordinary human follies, went on to imagine himself first a god and then the Supreme God, and finally ordered his image to be set up in every temple throughout his dominion. The Jews could not obey the order, and the mob rushed into fresh excesses upon them, defiled the synagogues with images of the lunatic, and in the great synagogue itself set up a bronze statue of him, inscribed with the name of Jupiter. With bitterness Philo points out that it was easy enough for the vile Egyptians, who worshipped reptiles and beasts, to erect a statue of the emperor in their temples; for the Jews, with their lofty idea of God, it was impossible. Against the attack upon their liberty of conscience they appealed directly to Gaius. An embassy was sent to lay their case before him, and Philo went to Italy at the [pg.67] head of the embassy. "He who is learned, gentle, and modest, and who is beloved of men, he shall be leader in the city." So said one of the rabbis of old, and the maxim is especially appropriate to Philo, who in name and deed was "beloved of men." Philo has left us a very full account of his mission, so that this incident of his life is a patch of bright light, which stands out almost glaringly from the general shadow. The account is not merely, nor, indeed, entirely history. Looking always for a sermon or a subject for a philosophical lesson, Philo has tricked out the record of the facts with much moralizing observation on the general lot of mankind, and elaborated the part of Providence more in the spirit of religious romance than of scientific history. Yet the main facts are clear. Philo prepared a long philosophical "apologia" for the Jews and set out with five colleagues for Italy. Nor were the enemies of the Jews remiss; and Apion, the Alexandrian anti-Semite, was sent at the head of a hostile deputation. The emperor, Gaius, was in one of his most flippant moods and little inclined to listen to philosophical or literary disquisitions. At first he received the Jewish deputation in a friendly way, and led them to think that he was favorable; but when they came to plead their cause, they had a rude awakening. Philo, who was not likely to appreciate the bitter humor of the situation, tells[77] with gravity that he expected that [pg.68] the emperor would hear the two contending parties in all proper judicial form, but that in fact he behaved like an insolent, overbearing tyrant. The audience—if it can be so called—took place in the gardens of the palace, and the emperor dragged the unfortunate deputation after him about the place, while he gave orders to his gardeners, builders, and workmen. Whenever they tried to put forward their arguments, he would rush ahead, enjoying the fright and dismay of his helpless victims. At times he would stop to make some ribald and jeering remark, as, "Why don't you eat pork, you fools?" at which the Egyptians following loudly applauded. Philo and his comrades, half-dead with agony, could only pray; and in response to the prayer, says our moralizing chronicler, the emperor's heart was turned to pity, so that he dismissed them without giving any hostile answer. According to Josephus, he drove them away in a passion, and Philo had to cheer his companions by assuring them of the Divine aid.[78]

The affair was a pathetic farce, and the Jewish actors in it had a sorry time. The people about the palace, taking their lead from the emperor, treated them as clowns, and hissed and mocked them, and even beat them. The scene is somewhat revolting when one conjures up the picture of the aged Jewish philosopher being roughly handled by the set of ruffians and impudent slaves who surrounded a Roman emperor. Happily Gaius jeered once too often in his [pg.69] mad life. One Chaerea, a Roman of position, nursed an insult of the emperor, and stabbed him shortly after these events; and the world had the respite of a tolerably sane emperor before the crowning horror of Nero was let loose upon it.

The murder of the capricious tyrant released not only the Jews of Alexandria, but also the Jews of Palestine, from the burden of fear for their religion. The order had been given to set up a bronze statue of the emperor in the temple; the Roman governor Petronius was averse to obeying the edict, but the emperor insisted. King Agrippa, who had been but lately advanced by him to the kingdom of Judæa, interceded zealously on behalf of his people. Philo gives us an account of this appeal by the Jewish king,[79] which recalls at every turn the scenes of the book of Esther. We have again the fasting, the banquet, the emperor's request, the appeal of the royal favorite for his people. One higher critic, indeed, has been found to suggest that the Biblical book really relates Agrippa's intercession at Rome disguised in the setting of a Persian story. Agrippa secured for a short time the rescission of the fateful decree, but the capricious madman soon returned to his old frame of mind, and ordered his image to be set up immediately. Had not his death intervened, there would certainly have been rebellion in Palestine. As it was, the great revolt was postponed for thirty years. For a little the Jews [pg.70] prevailed over their adversaries; the anti-Semitic influences were put down in Judæa and in Alexandria, and in both places "there was light and joy and gladness for the Jews." Their political privileges were reaffirmed by imperial decree, and Philo's brother Alexander, who had been imprisoned, was restored to honor.[80] "It is fitting," ran the rescript of Claudius, "to permit the Jews everywhere under our sway to observe their ancient customs without hindrance. And I charge them to use my indulgence with moderation, and not to show contempt for the religious rites of other peoples."