In order to show the humanitarian spirit of the Torah, Philo emphasizes its socialistic institutions, the law of the seventh year's rest to the land
, of the emancipation of the slaves, and of the Jubilee. These to him are not tribal laws, but the ideal institutions for the whole world, which shall one day be set up when the theocracy has been established over all mankind. And in an age when slavery was as accepted a condition as factory-labor is to-day, he ventured to assert the principle of the equality of man. "If," saith the law, "one of thy brethren be sold to thee, let him serve thee for six years, and in the seventh year let him go free without payment." And Philo thereon comments:[156] "A second time Moses calls our fellow-creature brother, to impress upon the master that he has a tie with his servant, so that he may not neglect him as a stranger. Nay, but if he follows the direction of the law, he will feel sympathy with him, and will not be vexed when he is about to liberate him. For though we call our servants slaves, yet in verity they are only dependents who serve us in order to have the means of life." This corresponds with the Talmud dictum, "Whoever buys a [pg.119] Jewish slave buys a master for himself."[157] Commenting again upon the verse in Exodus xxi. 6, which says with seeming harshness that a servant who wishes to stay with his master after the year of emancipation has arrived, shall be nailed by the ear to a door, he explains that no man should consent of his own will to be a slave, for we should only be servants of God; and if a man deliberately rejects freedom for comfort, he should wear a mark of degradation. The so-called Christian principle of the dignity of human life and the equality of man, Philo shows to be the spirit of the Mosaic law, not limited within the confines of one nation, but valid for the world. Nor is it contained therein as a mere sentimental aspiration, but it is realized in the institutions of the Jewish polity.
Philo looked for the same broad principles in his treatment of the ceremonial law. The Sabbath day is the central observance, one might say, the lodestar of the Jewish life, round which the other ceremonies revolve. The Sabbath is the call to man's higher nature, for it is the day on which we are bidden to devote ourselves to the Divine power within us and to seek to know God. "The six days in which the Creator made the universe are an example to us to work, but the seventh day, on which He rested, is an example to us to meditate. As on that day God is said to have looked upon His work, so we, too, should [pg.120] contemplate the universe thereon, and consider our highest welfare. Let us never neglect the example of the best life, the combination of action and thought, but keeping a clear vision of it before our minds, so far as our human nature will permit, let us liken ourselves to immortal God by word and deed."[158] High-flown this language may be, but what Philo wishes to mark is the spiritual value of the Sabbath. It is not merely a day of rest from workaday toil, but it is a day upon which we devote all our thoughts to God, and enter into closer communion with Him,
, a repose of love and devotion. Heine said that on one day of the week the lowliest Jew became a prince, Philo that he became a philosopher. As in all of Philo's interpretations of Jewish custom, there is something mystic in his conception of the Sabbath. For he regards all Divine service and all prayer as a mystic rite which leads the human soul unto God. In the special ordinances of the day he finds a spiritual motive. We may not touch fire, because fire is the seed and beginning of industry.[159] The servant of the house may not work,[160] because on this day he shall have a taste of freedom and humanity, and he will work the more cheerfully during the remaining six days. Some rabbis later, when numbers of Gentiles had adopted this without the other institutions of Judaism, claimed the Sabbath as the [pg.121] special heritage of Israel; and in the book of Jubilees[161] it is said that Israel alone has the right to observe the Sabbath. Not so Philo, who, desiring to give the day a value for all, regards it as God's covenant with the whole of humanity.[162]
The Sabbath idea is reflected in all the festivals, which have as their dominating idea man's joyful gratitude to God. Influenced probably by a mystic fondness for certain numbers, Philo enumerates ten festivals, as follows:[163] (1) Each day in the year, if we use it aright—a truly Philonic conception; (2) The Sabbath; (3) The new moon—then in Alexandria, as in Palestine, a solemn day; (4) The Passover; (5) The bringing of the first barley ('Omer); (6) The Feast of Unleavened Bread. These last three are separate aspects of one celebration, which is divided up so as to produce the holy decad. (7) Pentecost; (8) New Year; (9) Atonement (to the mystic the Feast of feasts); (10) Tabernacles. Following his design of revealing in Judaism a religion of universal validity, Philo points out in all these festivals a double meaning. On the one hand, they mark God's providence to His chosen people, shown in some great event of their history—this is the special meaning for the Israelite—and, on the other, they indicate God's goodness as revealed in the march of nature, and thus help to bind man to the [pg.122] universal process. So Passover is the festival of the spring and a memorial of the creation
as well as the memorial of the great Exodus, and of our gratitude for the deliverance from the inhospitable land of Egypt. And those who look for a deeper moral meaning may find in it a symbol of the passing over from the life of the senses to the life with God. Similarly, Philo deals with the other festivals,[164] and in their particular ceremonies he finds symbols which stamp eternal lessons of history and of morality upon our hearts. The unleavened bread is the mark of the simple life, the New Year Shofar of the Divine rule of peace, the Sukkot booth of the equality of all men, and, as he puts it elsewhere, of man's duty in prosperity to remember the troubles of his past, so that he may worthily recognize God's goodness. Much of this may appear trite to us; and the association of the festivals with the seasons of nature may to some appear a false development of historical Judaism; nevertheless Philo's treatment of this part of the Torah is notable. It shows remarkable feeling for the ethical import of the law, and it establishes the harmony between the Greek and Hebrew conceptions of the Deity by combining the God of history with the God of nature in the same festival. The ideas were not unknown to Palestinian rabbis; Philo, by giving them a Greek dress, opened them to the world.