If there is one figure in Jewish tradition with whom Philo challenges at once comparison and contrast, it is Maimonides, the brightest star of the Arabic, as he was of the Hellenic, development of the Jewish religion. Though there is nothing on which to found any direct influence of the one on the other, the aim, the method, the scope of their philosophical work are the same, the relation which they hold to exist between faith and philosophy wellnigh identical. The metaphysics of the Bible, according to both, is hidden beneath an allegory, and is meant only for the more learned of the people. To Maimonides the Bible is not only the standard of all wisdom, but it is "the Divine anticipation of human discovery." In the words of Hosea, God has therein "multiplied visions and spoken in similitudes" (xii. 11). The duty of the Jewish philosopher is to expound these metaphors and similes; and Maimonides, endeavoring to knit Greek metaphysics closely with Jewish tradition, propounds a science of allegorical values, which by exact philological study traces the inner as well as the outer meaning of the Hebrew words. But differentiated as it is by greater mastery of the tradition and closer adherence to the [pg.230] Hebrew text, his method is nearly as artificial and his thought as extraneous to the text as the method and thought of Philo. The content of their philosophies is, indeed, strikingly alike, save that the one is a Platonist, the other an Aristotelian. This involves not so much a difference of philosophical views as a difference of temper and of objective. The followers of Plato are mystics, yearning for the love of God; the followers of Aristotle are rationalists, seeking for the abstract knowledge of God. Hence in Maimonides there is less soaring and more argument than in Philo. Everything is deduced, so far as may be, with exactitude and logical sequence—according to the logic of the schoolmen—and everything is formalized according to scholastic principles. But the subjects treated are the same—the nature of God and His attributes, His relation to the universe and man, the manner of the creation, and the way of righteousness.
Maimonides, who is in form more loyal to Jewish tradition, is to a larger degree than Philo dependent on authority for the philosophical ideas which he applies to religion. To a great extent this is due to the spirit of his age, for in the Middle Ages not only was the matter of thought, but also its form, accepted on authority, and Aristotle ruled the one as imperiously as the Bible ruled the other. The differences of form and substance do not, however, obscure the essential likeness with Philo's interpretation of Judaism. With him Maimonides holds that the essential nature [pg.231] of God is incognizable.[332] No positive predication can properly be applied to Him, but we know Him by His activities in relation to man and the world, i.e., by His attributes or by what Philo called His powers. Maimonides does not preserve the absolute monarchy of the Divine government, but places between God and man intermediate beings with subordinate creative powers—the separate intelligences of the stars, which are identified with the angels of the Bible.[333] But he maintains inviolate the sole causality of God and His immanence in the human soul. Maimonides, like Philo, gives in addition to a metaphysical theology a philosophical exposition of the law of Moses, which has the same guiding principle as the books on the "Specific Laws." Moses was the perfect legislator,[334] whose ordinances are
, i.e., perfectly equitable, attaining "the mean"—the Aristotelian conception of excellence—and identical with the eternal laws of nature.[335] Numerous details of Maimonides' interpretations agree with those given in the books on the "Specific Laws." Whether correspondence of thought is merely an indication of the similar workings of Jewish genius in similar conditions, or whether it is the effect of an early tradition common to both, or whether, finally, there was connection, however indirect, between the two minds, it is now [pg.232] impossible to say. But at least the philosophy of Maimonides confirms the inner Jewishness of the philosophy of Philo, and its essential loyalty to Jewish tradition.
Not less striking than his correspondence with later Jewish religious philosophy, though not less indefinite, is the relation of Philo to the later Jewish mystical and theosophical literature, purporting also to be a development of hoary tradition, and indeed calling itself simply the tradition,
. Between Philo and the Cabbalah it is as difficult to establish any direct connection as between Philo and rabbinic Midrash, but the likeness in spirit and the signs of a common source are equally remarkable. To trace God in all things through various attributes and emanations, to bring God and man into direct union, to prove that there is an immanent God within the soul of the individual, and to show how this may be inspired with the transcendental Deity—this is common to both. In the earliest times the mystic doctrine appears to have been a form of Jewish Gnosticism, speculation about the nature of God and His connection with the world. It probably embraced the
, though we know not what these exactly contained.[336] But it was not till the Middle Ages that Jewish mysticism received definite and separate literary expression, and by that time it was mixed up with a number of neo-Platonic and magical [pg.233] fancies and foreign theosophies. The later compilations of this character form what is more regularly known as the Cabbalah; but, apart from the professions of the later writers, a continuous train of tradition affirms the existence of secret teachings in Judaism from the time of the Babylonian captivity. Jewish mysticism is as much a continuous expression of the spirit of the race as the Jewish law. We may then without rashness conclude that the later Cabbalah is a coarser development, for a less enlightened and less philosophical age, of the Gnostic material which Philo refashioned in the light of Platonism for the Hellenized community at Alexandria. Modern scholars have favored the idea that the Essenes were the first systematizers of and the first practitioners in the Cabbalah, and have interpreted their name[337] to mean those engaged in secret things, but the mystic tradition itself is earlier than the foundation of a special mystic sect. It is part of the heritage from the Jewish prophets and psalmists and the Babylonian interaction with Hebraism.
Philo had large sympathies with the Essenic development of Judaism, and he speaks at times as though he had joined one of their communities, and therein had been initiated into the great mysteries and secret philosophies of the sages. We have noted that he offers his most precious wisdom to the worthy few alone, "who in all humility practice genuine piety, [pg.234] free from all false pretence." They, in turn, are to discourse on these doctrines only to other members of the brotherhood. "I bid ye, initiated brethren, who listen with chastened ears, receive these truly sacred mysteries in your inmost souls, and reveal them not to one of the uninitiated, but laying them up in your hearts, guard them as a most excellent treasure in which the noblest of possessions is stored, the knowledge, namely, of the First Cause and of virtue, and moreover of what they generate."[338] These mysteries, it is not unlikely, represent according to some scholars the