By his place at the head of the neo-Platonic school Philo enters the broad stream of the world's philosophical development, but his more lasting influence was exercised over the religious philosophy of Christianity. He was the direct master of what is known as the Patristic school, which sought to combine the intellectual conceptions of Plato with the religious ideas of the Gospels. Its most celebrated teachers were Clement and Origen, both of Alexandria, who flourished in the second century. They resorted largely to allegorical interpretation, learning from Philo to trace in the Bible principles of universal thought and profound philosophy; but they used his method and his lessons to support notions of God and the Logos which were alien to his spirit. He had [pg.196] possessed pre-eminently the soaring imagination of poetry, which is the crown of the intellectual and of the religious mind, and unites them in their highest excellence; but they bounded their philosophy within the narrow limits of dogma, and thereby destroyed the harmony between Hebraism and Hellenism which he had contrived to effect. The controversy of Origen and Celsus began again the battle between reason and faith, "which was to destroy for centuries the independence of philosophy and to break the continuity of civilization." Had Philo really been ploughing the sand, and was an agreement between faith and reason, between religion and philosophy, impossible? Can the two finest creations of the mind only be combined on the terms that one is subordinate, or rather servile, to the other? In Judaism, if anywhere, the combination should be possible, for Judaism has as its basis an intuitional conception of God, which is in harmony with the philosophical conception of the universe, and it has little dogma besides. The neo-Platonists and the Church Fathers failed to carry on the ideal of Philo, but it was to be expected that among his own people, the nation of philosophers, as he had called them, he would have found true successors. Yet the use made of his work by the Christians compelled his people to regard him as a betrayer of the law and to avoid his goal as a treacherous snare. For centuries Greek philosophy was banned from Jewish thought, and Philo's works are not mentioned by any Jewish writer. Strangers possessed his inheritance, [pg.197] and his name alone, "Philo-Judæus," bore witness to his nationality. It is an interesting speculation to consider how different might have been the history, not only of the Jews, but of the world, if the Hellenistic Judaism of Philo had prevailed in the Roman-Greek world instead of "the impurer Hellenism of Christianity." When, in the tenth century, the leaders of Jewish thought broke the bonds of seclusion, and brought anew to the interpretation of their religion the culture of the outer world, Greek philosophy became again a powerful influence, though it was Aristotle rather than Plato whom they studied. The harmonizing spirit of Philo, which may be accounted part of the genius of the race, lives on in Saadia, Maimonides, Ibn Ezra, Ibn Gabirol, and Judah Halevi. But the difference between him and the Arabic school is marked. They do not inherit his whole object, for they aimed not at a philosophical Judaism which should be a world-religion, but at a philosophical Judaism for the more enlightened Jews alone. Philo's work was the culminating point, indeed, of a great development in Judaism, produced by the mingling of the finest products of human reason and human imagination, but it was particularly the expression of his own commanding genius. He lacked a true successor, for those who shared his aim did not inherit his Jewish outlook, and those who shared his Jewish outlook did not inherit his aim. What is characteristic of and peculiar to Philo is the combination of the missionary and the philosopher. Living at a time [pg.198] when the Jewish genius expanded most brilliantly, and when Judaism exercised its greatest influence, he hoped to make his religion universal by showing it to be philosophical, and to bring about by the aid of Plato the ideal of the prophets. [pg.199]
VII
PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION
We have seen from time to time how Philo's interpretation of the Bible corresponds with Palestinian Jewish tradition; and we must now consider more in detail the relations of the two schools of Jewish learning. Until the last century it was commonly supposed that no close relation existed, and that the Alexandrian and Palestinian schools were independent and opposed; Scaliger, the greatest scholar of the seventeenth century, wrote[280] that "Philo was more ignorant of Hebraic and Aramaic lore than any Gaul or Scythian," and this was the opinion generally held. The researches of Freudenthal and Siegfried[281] have shown the falsity of these views; and, most important of all, Philo refutes them out of his own mouth. He refers in many different parts of his works[282] to the tradition and the wisdom of his ancestors, he tells us how on the Sabbath the Jews studied in their synagogues their special philosophy,[283] and he commences his "Life of Moses" by declaring that against the false calumnies of Greek writers he will set forth the true account which he has learnt from the sacred [pg.200] writings and "from certain elders of his race." In support of his statement we have the remark of Eusebius, the Christian historian, and our chief ancient authority for Philo's work,[284] that he set forth and expounded not only the laws of the Bible, but many institutions and opinions of his fathers. Apart from these direct references, the numerous points of correspondence between Philo's interpretations and those of the Talmud and later Midrash would compel us to admit a connection between Alexandria and Jerusalem.
The break between the two schools did not show itself till after the time of Philo. Up to the first century of the Christian era the rabbis encouraged the union of Shem and Japheth—the two good sons of one parent—and the stream of ideas flowed quite freely between the teachers in Palestine and the Hellenized colony in Egypt.[285] Hence the Palestinian Jews, on the one hand, received the first fruits of this mingling of cultures, and the Alexandrian Jews, on the other, must have inherited the early tradition of the rabbinical interpreters embodied in ancient Halakah and Haggadah. By this common heritage, rather than by any direct borrowing, it seems more reasonable to account for the correspondence in the two Midrashim. It should be remembered that until the second century of the common era the mass of Jewish tradition was a floating and developing body of [pg.201] opinion not consigned to writing or formalized, but handed down by word of mouth from teacher to pupil, and preacher to congregation: in this way it was diffused throughout the mind of the race, indefinitely and, to some extent, unconsciously shaping its thought. The detailed points of agreement between Philo and the Talmud and Midrash are not of great moment in themselves, but they are the signs of a unity of development and the catholicity of Judaism in the East and West. Doubtless the development was more national and at the same time more legal in Judæa, in Alexandria more Hellenistic and philosophical, but there is a common spiritual bond between the two expressions, pious images, fancies, similes, interpretations which they share. They are, as it were, children of one family, and despite the varying influences of environment they maintain a family resemblance. With the Sibylline oracles we may compare Daniel and the Psalms of Solomon; with Aristeas and his fellow-Apologists, Josephus; with the allegorical commentaries of Philo, the Midrashim. Modern scholars have gone far to prove that Philo was the expounder of an Hellenic Midrash upon the Bible, in which were gathered the thoughts and ideas that had been brought to Egypt by the Jewish settlers, modified, no doubt, by Greek influences, but still bearing the stamp of their origin. Philo, then, appears in the direct line of the tradition which from the time of the Great Synagogue was disseminated through two channels, the schools of Palestine and the writers of Alexandria. He developed the national [pg.202] Jewish theology in a literary form, which made it available for the world, but with him the tradition as a Jewish tradition ends; in its further Hellenistic development it departed entirely from its original principles.
It is natural that the larger number of parallels between Philo and the rabbis is to be found in the Haggadic portions of Talmudic teaching, for the Haggadah represents the same spirit as underlies Philo's work, though in a more peculiarly Jewish form; it is an allegory, a play of fancy, a tale that points a moral, or illustrates a question. It had, too, largely the same origin, for it gathered together the popular discourses given in the synagogue on the Sabbaths. Yet the relation of Philo to the other domain of the Talmud, the code of life, or the Halakah, is of great interest; for, as we have seen,[286] the Alexandrian community had a Sanhedrin of their own, of which Philo's brother was the president, and he himself probably a member; and in his exposition of the "Specific Laws" he has preserved for us the record of certain interpretations of the Jewish code, which are illuminating as much by their difference from, as by their agreement with, the practices of Palestine. The general aim of Philo's exegesis of the law was to show its broad principles of justice and humanity rather than to formulate its exact detail. It is true, he makes it an offence[287]—unknown to the rabbis—for [pg.203] a Jew to be initiated into the Greek mysteries, but usually he is concerned to recommend the Halakah to the world rather than expand it for his own community. This is shown in his treatment of the civil as much as the moral law. The great system of jurisprudence in his day, with which every code claiming to have universal value had necessarily to challenge comparison, was Roman Law. That part of it which was applied throughout the Empire, the jus gentium, was regarded as "written reason." It is probable that contact with Roman jurisprudence had affected the practical interpretations which the Alexandrian Sanhedrin put upon the Biblical legislation, and was the cause of some of their differences from the Palestinian Halakah. In treating the ethical law, Philo's object was to show its agreement with the loftiest conceptions of Greek philosophers, and, indeed, its profounder truth; in treating the civil law of the Bible, his object likewise was to show its agreement with the highest principles of jurisprudence and its superiority to pagan codes. If at times he supports a greater severity than the Palestinian rabbis eventually allowed, that is where greater severity implies a closer relation to Roman Law. Thus he has not the horror of capital punishment which the Jerusalem Sanhedrin exhibited; he would condemn to death the man who commits wilful homicide, whether by his own hand or by poison;[288] [pg.204] whereas the other Halakah allows it only in the former case. He who commits perjury also is to suffer capital punishment.[289] He adds a law which finds no place in the Palestinian tradition, making the exposure of children a capital crime.[290] Again, following the text of the Biblical law literally (see Deut. xxi. 18), he gives power of life and death to parents over their rebellious children, whereas the Jewish law demands a trial before a court to make the death sentence legal. He approves of the lex talionis, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," agreeing here, indeed, with the opinion of earlier rabbis like R. Eliezer (see Baba Kama 84,
, "the law of eye for eye is to be taken literally"), and disagreeing with the later Halakic interpretation, which says that the law of Moses means the award of the value of an eye for an eye, etc.