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Updated: May 10, 2025
They lived at a time when it had been proved that that movement led away from Judaism, and its main tenets had been adopted or perverted by an antagonistic creed. It was a tragic necessity which compelled the severance between the Eastern and Western developments of the religion. In Philo's day the breach was already threatened, through the anti-legal tendencies of the extreme allegorists.
And this is true of all Philo's writings, and to generalize somewhat widely, of most Jewish philosophy. In "The Timæus," particularly, Plato, throughout, is the poet-philosopher, writing imaginative myths, which present pictorially an idealistic scheme of the universe; and "The Timæus" is for Philo, after the Bible, the most authoritative of books, the source of his chief philosophical ideas.
"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." It is a serious misconception to imagine that Philo's philosophical allegories were meant for the general body of Alexandrian Jews.
The noble pessimism of Philo's early days was replaced by a noble optimism in his maturity, in which he trusted implicitly in God's grace, and believed that God vouchsafed to the good man the knowledge of Himself without its being necessary for him to inflict chastisements upon his body or uproot his inclinations.
And I charge them to use my indulgence with moderation, and not to show contempt for the religious rites of other peoples." The note of triumph rings through the political references to be found in the last parts of Philo's allegorical commentary, and no doubt it was accentuated in the lost book which he added as an epilogue, or palinode, to his history of the embassy.
She hurried back into the house, once more looked to the sick child, called his mother and showed her how to prepare the compresses, urging her to follow Imhotep's directions carefully and exactly till she should return; she pressed one loving kiss on little Philo's forehead feeling as she did so that he was less hot than he had been in the morning and then she left, going first to her own dwelling.
Philo's philosophical treatment of the Torah was understood only of the few; the fanatical Pauline rejection of the law appealed to the masses. The spirit of the age demanded, indeed, the ethical interpretation of the Bible, and it was carried out in many ways, some true, some untrue to Judaism. Philo and Josephus tell us how Judaism was spreading over the world.
Thus Philo's aim was to discover the deeper meaning of the "allegorical" narratives in the Old Testament. Let us try to realise whither such an interpretation could lead. We read the account of creation and find in it not only a narrative of outward events, but an indication of the way which the soul has to take in order to attain to the divine.
He pointed out many instances of agreement, and some of disagreement, but he objected in general to the allegorizing of the historical parts of the Torah and to the absence of the traditional interpretations in Philo's commentaries. He shared largely the rabbinical attitude and could not give an independent historical appreciation of Philo's work. That was not to come for two hundred years more.
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. The allegorical commentary is clearly the work of Philo's maturity, wherein he exhibits full mastery of an original method of exegesis.
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