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Updated: May 10, 2025
Certain Christian and philosophical critics of Philo, for whom the wish was perhaps father to the thought, have found in Philo's Logos a conception which is at times impersonal, at times personal, at times an aspect of the One God, and at times a second independent God. If we take Philo literally, this certainly is the case.
He knows also of the anti-Semitic diatribes of Philo's great enemy Apion, and two of his extant books are masterly reply to their outpourings. Hence it is not rash to assume that he knew at least that part of Philo's work which had a missionary and apologetic purpose the "Life of Moses" and the "Hypothetica."
To give many examples or references to examples of this feature of Philo's work is not within the scope of this book, but of his development of an old Palestinian tradition the following passage may serve as a typical instance: "There is an old story," he writes, "composed by the sages and handed down by memory from age to age.... They say that, when God had finished the world, he asked one of the angels if aught were wanting on land or in sea, in air or in heaven.
And elsewhere he mentions the efforts of the Egyptian magicians to frustrate the miracles of Moses, following Philo's account in his life of the Jewish hero. The work of Philo helped to spread a knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures far and wide and to give them general authority as a philosophical book; but it did not succeed in spreading the pure Hebrew monotheism.
"'All's fair in love and war," he grinned. "Besides, the campaign's over. Philo's gained experience. He's a veteran now. He'll never be such easy game again. Haven't we behaved well, on the whole?" he asked the Gay Lady, dropping upon a cushion at her feet. "I don't think you have," said the Gay Lady gently. "We haven't! Why not?" She shook her head.
Siegfried and Zeller press this negative attitude to the Deity, and find that there is an inherent contradiction in Philo's system, which ruins it, in that his God, upon whom all depends and who is the object of all knowledge, is absolutely unknowable and unapproachable.
Moreover, Philo's definition of the Supreme Being would not be inconsistent with that "substantia constans infinitis attributis, quorum unumquodque aeternam et infinitam essentiam exprimit," given by another great Israelite, were it not that Spinoza's doctrine of the immanence of the Deity in the world puts him, at any rate formally, at the antipodes of theological speculation.
In short, Philo's Pythagoreanism only emphasizes his commanding purpose to deepen and recommend the Jewish God-idea and the Jewish method of life. Jewish influences throughout are the determining element of Philo's teaching; they are the dynamic forces working upon the Greek matter and producing the new Platonism, which constitutes Philo's contribution to Greek philosophy.
Moreover, his etymologies are evidence of his knowledge of the Hebrew language; though he sometimes gives a symbolic value to Biblical names according to their Greek equivalent, he more frequently bases his allegory upon a Hebrew derivation. That all names had a profound meaning, and signified the true nature of that which they designated, is among the most firmly established of Philo's ideas.
In the Mishnah, the earliest body of Jewish lore which was definitely formulated and written down, one section is Haggadic, the passages we know as the "Ethics of the Fathers." Now, we cannot place the date of this compilation before the first century, and thus it would seem to be contemporary with Philo's work, to which it affords numerous parallels.
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