This commentary of the law is allegorical in the [pg.87] sense that beneath the particular law the interpreter constantly reveals a spiritual idea, but it is not allegorical in the sense that he makes an exchange of values. He is not for the most part reading into the text conceptions which are not suggested by it, but really and truly expounding; and where he gives a philosophical piece of exegesis, as when he explains the visit of the three angels to Abraham as a theory of the human soul about God's being,[97] he does so with diffidence or with reference to authorities that have founded a tradition. It is quite otherwise with the last class of Philo's work, the fruit of his maturest thought, with which it remains to deal.
Throughout the "Allegories of the Laws" he takes the verse of the Bible not so much as a text to be amplified and interpreted, but as a pretext for a philosophical disquisition. The allegories indeed are only in form a commentary on the Bible; in one aspect they are a history of the human soul, which, if they had been completed, would have traced the upward progress from Adam to Moses. It is not to be expected, however, that Philo should adhere closely to any plan in the allegories. Theology, metaphysics, and ethics have as large a part in the medley of philosophical ideas as the story of the soul. His Hebraic mind, even when fortified by the mastery of philosophy, was unable to present its ideas systematically; it passed from subject to subject, weaving the whole together only by the thread of a continuous [pg.88] commentary upon Genesis. Parts of the work are missing, it is true, which adds to the seeming want of plan; and—greatest loss of all—the first part, which gave the philosophical account of the first chapter of Genesis, the first six days of creation, referred to as "The Hexameron"
, has disappeared.[98] Here must have been the general introduction to the allegories, wherein Philo declared his purpose and his method of exposition. The first treatise that we possess starts abruptly with a comment on the first verse of the second chapter, "'And the heaven and earth and all their world were completed.' Moses has previously related the creation of the mind and sense, and now he proceeds to describe their perfection. Their perfection is not the individual mind or sense, but their archetypal 'ideas.' And symbolically he calls the mind heaven, because in heaven are the ideas of the mind, and the sense he calls earth, because it is corporeal and material."[99]
So in a rambling, unsystematic way Philo embarks upon a discourse on idealism and psychology, making a fresh start continually from a verse or a phrase of the Bible. The Biblical narrative in the earliest chapters offered a congenial soil for his explorations, but no ground is too stubborn for his seed. The genealogy of Noah's sons is as fertile in suggestion as the story of Adam and Eve, for each name represents some hidden power or possesses some ethical import.
[pg.89] The allegorical commentary is clearly the work of Philo's maturity, wherein he exhibits full mastery of an original method of exegesis. His allegories are no longer tentative, and he writes with the confidence of the sage, who has received not only the admiration of his people, but the inspiration of God. Another sign of their maturity is that asceticism seems no longer the true path to virtue, as it was to the author of "The Lives of the Patriarchs" and "The Specific Laws," but, on the contrary, a moderate use of the world's goods and a share in political life are marks of the perfect man. These characteristics bespeak the firmer hand and the profounder experience. Yet the series of works which form together Philo's esoteric doctrine were certainly put together over a long period of years, as the varied political references indicate. It has indeed been suggested by a modern German scholar[100] that large parts were originally given in the form of detached lectures and sermons, and that Philo later composed them together into a continuous commentary, working them up with much literary elaboration. In support of this theory, it may be urged that several of the treatises contain political addresses to public audiences, notably the De Agricultura and De Confusione Linguarum, while in others there are invocations to prayer, or a summons to read a passage in the Bible, addressed apparently by the preacher to the Hazan, who had before him the scroll of the law. From Philo's own statements we know that the wisest men used to deliver philosophical [pg.90] homilies upon the Bible on the Sabbath day; and it is natural that the man who was appointed to head the Jewish embassy to Gaius had made himself known in the past to his brethren for oratory and wisdom of speech. "Sermons," said Jowett, "though they deal with eternal subjects, are the most evanescent form of literature." The dictum is true for the most part, but occasionally the sermon, by its depth of thought, the universality of its message, and the beauty of its expression, has become part of the world's heritage from the ages. Moreover, at Alexandria philosophy was associated with preaching. And the sermons of the Jewish-Hellenistic writer, in their style as well as in their thought, represent an epoch. Philo spoke in the language of the intellectual world of his day, and strove to associate the intellectual precepts of Hellenism with the Hebraic passion for righteousness. In his great moments, however, the Hebraic spirit towers supreme. "He was," said Croiset, the historian of Greek literature, "the first Greek prose writer who could speak to God and of God to man with the ardent piety and reverence of the Jewish prophets."[101]
It is a serious misconception to imagine that Philo's philosophical allegories were meant for the general body of Alexandrian Jews. He frequently[102] declares that he is speaking to a specially initiated sect, and warns his hearers not to divulge his teaching. The [pg.91] notion of an esoteric doctrine for the aristocracy of intellect had become a fixed idea in the Greek schools for three centuries, ever since the days of Aristotle; and whether through Greek influence or otherwise it had been generally adopted by the Jewish teachers. The rabbis of the Talmud derived from the first chapters of Genesis the inner mystery of the law, which was cognizable only by the sage; and the same idea is found in later Jewish tradition, which, expounding Paradise
as four stages of interpretation, each marked by a letter of the word, Peshat, Remez, Derash, and Sod
