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Updated: May 10, 2025
Philo's answer is in fact to spiritualize everything that is material, and universalize everything that is particular. While he believes in the literal inspiration of the Bible, he does not insist upon the literal truth of every word of it, and in the opening chapters of Genesis in particular, he treats the tales as symbolical or allegorical myths.
The Church Fathers found in the popular belief in the Divine Word a remarkable support of the Trinity, and regarding, as they did, Philo's writings as valuable testimony to the truth of Christianity, they had every temptation to bring his passages about the Logos still closer to their ideas.
The Jews are good citizens and their manner of life is humanitarian. The Essene sect is a living proof of Jewish practical socialism and practical philosophy, the Therapeutae show the Jewish zeal for the contemplative life. Next we come to Philo's philosophical monographs, which are not, as one might expect, the work of his mature thought, but rather the exercises of youth.
Further, they rejected the bloody sacrifices of the law, and would have nothing to do with the temple at Jerusalem. We can see by Philo's "On the Contemplative Life" how completely Alexandrian Judaism had sucked in Buddhist doctrine, and how Therapeutic asceticism formed the bridge from Buddhism to Christian monachism.
His system still has a strong flavor of Pantheism, and moreover his identification of the Will of God with the Wisdom and the Word of God, and his hypostatization of the latter as in a sense a being distinct from God, reminds us strongly of Philo's Logos, which became the Logos of Christianity, the second person in the Trinity.
They are the Ishmaels of philosophy. Philo's polemic is directed less against the Greek schools in themselves than against the Jewish followers of the Greek schools. He saw the danger to Judaism in the teachings of these anti-religious philosophers, and deeply as he loved Greek culture, he loved more deeply his religion.
His grace elects the pious before they are born, giving them victory over sensuality, and steadfastness in virtue. Such are the most important passages of Keim's résumé of Philo's philosophy, and its resemblance to Christian doctrine is unmistakeable, and adds one more proof to the fact that Christianity is Alexandrian rather than Judæan.
The important points to notice here are: that in the time of Philo, these Christians were scattered all over the world; that the commentaries they had, which Eusebius says were the Christian's gospels, were the works of ancient men, who founded the sect, so that the founders were men who lived long before Philo's time; that they were thoroughly organised, proving thereby that their sect was not a new one in his day; that the "discipline," organised association, ranks of priests, etc., implied a long existence of the sect before Philo studied it, and that such existence was clearly not consistent with any persecution being then directed against it.
Schechter's Genizah fragments, which is probably to be ascribed to Kirkisani, there are contained examples of the Alexandrian's explanations of the Decalogue, which occur, and occur only, in Philo's treatise on the "Ten Commandments." This connection between Philo and an obscure Jewish sect, or an obscurer Persian-Jewish writer, may appear far-fetched and not worth the making.
In support of his statement we have the remark of Eusebius, the Christian historian, and our chief ancient authority for Philo's work, that he set forth and expounded not only the laws of the Bible, but many institutions and opinions of his fathers.
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