Philo
Philo Judaeus of Alexandria (c.20 BC - c. AD 50).[1] The writings of Philo[2] are the most important surviving documents from the world of Hellenistic Judaism.[3] They furnish us with a great deal of first hand information concerning the religion of the Jews outside of Israel, New Testament background and the interaction of Judaism within a Gentile culture.[4] Philo was deeply influenced by Middle Platonism,[5] Aristotle, the Neo-Pythagoreans, the Cynics and the Stoics. He stood at the end of a long Jewish tradition whose thoughts he developed, as evidenced by his references to the works of his predecessors.[6] Like them he attempted to interpret the Old Testament Scriptures in such as way as to bridge the gap between Judaism and intellectual paganism[7] rather than attempting to produce his own philosophical system.[8]
Philo's Interpretation of Genesis
Philo made extensive use of allegory in his writings, but it would be a mistake to assume that he was the first of the Alexandrian Jews to allegorise Scripture. In fact, he stood almost at the end of a long tradition of men who wrote as Jews for Gentile ears.[9] Previous writers, however, had not thought of their interpretations as allegorical,[10] but rather as ‘proper’ or ‘fitting’ in that they corresponded with what the interpreter understood as the nature and character of God.[11] Philo recognised several levels of interpretation that he regarded as ‘literal’, ranging from the literalistic to sophisticated.[12] He claimed to find in the text itself indications that it was not intended literally. For example, the Trees of Life and of the Knowledge of Good and Evil are seen as being intended symbolically because no such plant have ever existed on earth.[13] For Philo a “literal or better, a literalistic interpretation is to be rejected when it is either blasphemous or ridiculous. The kind of literal interpretation that was rejected by Philo is the kind of interpretation that was rejected by Jewish interpreters as far back as Aristobulus.”[14]
Philo was, on the other hand, the first writer who attempted to maintain the validity of both the literal and allegorical interpretations of Scripture,[15] because he considered both to be divinely inspired.[16]
| “ | This appears most clearly in the Questions and Answers on Genesis and Exodus. In both of these works, literal and allegorical interpretations lie side by side. Philo is obviously more interested in the allegorical interpretation, but, for the most part, the literal interpretations are also considered valid and valuable. The same is true in... [On the Creation and Allegorical Interpretation]. Of the twenty seven times that allegorical terms appear, only five involve the rejection of a non-allegorical interpretation.”[17] | ” |
In Migration 89-93 Philo maintains that “while the Seventh Day is meant to teach the power of the unoriginate and the non-action of created beings” it should nonetheless still be observed. Likewise festivals are kept as “a symbol of gladness of soul and thankfulness to God", and circumcision portrays “the excision of pleasure and all passions, and the putting away of conceit.” He believed that such an interpretation did not mean that the physical acts did not need to be practised.[18]
Philo was the first writer to give a comprehensive account of Genesis.[19] In his synthesis of the Genesis account of creation with that of the philosophers Philo anticipated many of the teachings of the Neoplatonists.[20] The world was not without beginning, but had an origin, having been created by God,[21] but does not say whether this was out of nothing or from pre-existing matter (the latter being the most likely).[22] Moses said that God created everything in six days, not because God required a length of time to do His work, for God does all things simultaneously. According to Philo the world was created in one act of power, but Moses wrote that it was created in six days to show that there was a hierarchy and order among created beings.[23] Rather six days are mentioned because the created things needed order, and order involves number. The most suitable number for productivity is six, being the first perfect number.[24] Numerology clearly formed an important part of Philo’s hermeneutic.[25] Philo’s Stoic and Platonic dualism show through when he says that before the visible world came into being, there was an invisible and incorporeal pattern.[26] Likewise the “coats of skins” in which God clothed Adam and Eve really mean ‘physical bodies’,[27] which are like tombs for the soul.[28] The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil are symbolic, signifying
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...reverence towards God, the greatest of the virtues, by means of which the soul attains to immortality; while by the tree that is cognisant of good and evil things he signifies moral prudence, the virtue that occupies the middle position, and enables us to distinguish things by nature contrary the one to another.[29] |
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Adam represents Mind[30] and Eve, Sense Perception.[31] The Serpent enters the scene to unite Mind and Sense-Perception so they might act together.[32] In Philo’s Platonic interpretation of the Fall, Adam’s (Mind’s) trespass was a loss of Virtue, represented by Eden.[33]
The Serpent is a symbol for Pleasure
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...because in the first place he is destitute of feet, and crawls on his belly with his face downwards. In the second place, because he uses clods of clay for food. Third, because he bears poison in his teeth, by which it is his nature to kill those who are bitten by him. And the man devoted to pleasure is free from none of these aforesaid evils.… And the serpent is said to have uttered a human voice, because pleasure employs innumerable champions and defenders who take care to advocate its interests, and who dare to assert that the power over everything, both small and great, does of right belong to it without any exception whatever.[34] |
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This interpretation of Adam, Eve and the Serpent is central to Philo’s Allegory of the Soul. Viewed in this way “the text of Genesis is taken to refer not to events of the external world but to conflicting elements within the individual human being, especially to the soul.”[35] This theme forms an important element in Philo’s exegesis. Those interpretations which he classes as ‘literal’ are usually those which are not part of the allegory of the soul.[36]
In Philo we find the first reference to what is known today as “creation with apparent age”. The plants in Eden were created instantaneously with ripened fruit, ready for the animals, as Philo describes:
But in the first creation of the universe, as I have said already, God produced the whole race of trees out of the earth in full perfection, having their fruit not incomplete, but in a state of entire ripeness, to be ready for the immediate and undelayed use and enjoyment of the animals which were about immediately to be born.[37]
The Flood
Philo’s account of the Flood was later copied extensively by Clement of Alexandria and Origen so it is important to note some of the details of his interpretation. Philo accepted the biblical dimensions of the ark (300 x 50 x 30 cubits), but described it as sloping up to a square of 1 cubit like an elongated pyramid.[38] This was probably because he misunderstood the meaning of Genesis 6:16. The interior was divided into “nests”[39] (a translation necessary for the allegorisation of the text)[40] and had up to four decks.[41] He understood Noah’s Flood to be universal, covering all the mountains, islands and continents, destroying all animals and men outside of the ark.[42] However, some of the phrases he uses are regarding the extent of the Flood are ambiguous. He writes, for example, that the flood “...extended almost beyond the pillars of Hercules and the great Mediterranean Sea, since the whole earth and all the spaces of the mountains were covered with water...”[43] Even Davis Young, who believes that the Flood was local concedes that the phrase used meant that the flood was “tantamount to being universal.”[44] This tells us more about Philo’s limited understanding of the size of the earth than anything else.[45] Philo was emphatic that the Flood was anthropologically universal,[46] and destroyed all plants, animals and buildings (except for one house).[47] The roots and seeds of the plants were not destroyed because they were below the surface of the earth and the Lord promised only to destroy what was on “the face of the earth.”[48]
Upon opening the Ark, Noah found a renewed creation,[49] the plants having regrown and fruited in a single day:
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Nor ought anyone to wonder that in one day the earth when left to itself produced every thing by divine virtue, both seeds and trees, all complete, entirely and suddenly, with perfect and excellent herbs, and grains, and plants, and fruits; since in the creation of the world on one day of the six he finished and brought to perfection the whole generation of plants.[50] |
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Philo's Legacy
Though they were not preserved by the Jews,[51] Philo’s works were treasured by Christian writers[52] who seized upon his concept of the Logos, thinking that it was the same as the Logos of the prologue of John’s Gospel.[53] To Philo the Logos was “the instrument by which God makes the world and the intermediary by which the human intelligence as it is purified ascends to God again”[54] However, Philo’s Logos is not Divine, nor is it a person and it has no existence apart from the role it performs.[55] Although it was once generally accepted among scholars that there was some dependence by John on Philo’s concept of the Logos, it seems more likely that both were drawing on a common Jewish background, into which Philo imported Platonic concepts.[56] So important was Philo to the early church writers that some, such as Eusebius and Jerome even went so far as to claim that he was a Christian. Eusebius records a legendary meeting between Philo and Peter in Rome[57] and both writers argue that Philo’s work concerning Jewish ascetics (On the Contemplative Life) is a first hand report of the church (and monasteries!) founded by Mark in Alexandria.[58] It is true to say that by the fourth century “Pious legend would allow no writer so influential on early Christian exegesis to remain unconverted.”[59]
References
- ↑ For a helpful summary of Philo’s life and works, see Henry Chadwick, “Philo And The Beginnings of Christian Thought,” A. Hilary Armstrong, ed. The Cambridge History of Later Greek And Early Medieval Philosophy. Cambridge: CUP, 1970. pp.137-157.
- ↑ All quotations from Philo are taken from C.D. Yonge, The Works of Philo Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1993. Two references are given: the Greek text paragraph number and the page number in Yonge, e.g. Philo, Creation 167 (Yonge, p.23).
- ↑ “Philo,” Encyclopaedia Britannica Micropedia, 15th edn. London: Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 1992. p.385.
- ↑ R.M. Wilson, “Philo,” International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, rev., Vol. 3. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982. p.847.
- ↑ W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1989. p.36: “To Philo even Plato has been anticipated by Moses.” See Creation 8, 12, 131 (Yonge, pp.3, 4, 18-19).
- ↑ Wilson, op.cit., p.847; F.F. Bruce, New Testament History, 1969. New York: Doubleday, 1980. p.54.
- ↑ “Philo,” Britannica, p.386: Philo was no plagiarist, for he adapted Plato’s theories to his own ends. Frend, op.cit., p.36.
- ↑ Thomas H. Tobin, The Creation of Man: Philo And The History of Interpretation. The Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 14. Washington, DC: The Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1983), 2. Philo. trans F.H. Colson & Rev. G.H. Whitaker, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 1. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1929. pp.xv-xvi: “His purpose was the same as Bunyan had in the Pilgrim’s Progress and the Holy War, and Dante to some extent in his Divine Comedy namely, to set forth an allegory of the history of the human soul and its relations to God. But while Scripture to Bunyan and mediaeval eschatology for Dante were merely foundations on which they could rear the fabric which their own imagination created. Philo, entirely devoid of creative genius [when he attempts allegory of his own, as in De. Sac. 20-44 it is poor stuff], could never get away from the role of interpreter.” Brackets were footnotes in original.
- ↑ R.P.C. Hanson, Allegory And Event. London: SCM, 1959. p.41.
- ↑ Tobin, op.cit., 148. Their works contain “none of the technical vocabulary of allegory” Ibid., p.98.
- ↑ Ibid., pp.42-43. Ibid, p.43: “For example, in the interpretation of Gen. 1:26, an explanation of the verse must be given which shows that God is not in need of helpers in creating man, but that the use of such helpers is fitting and proper in order to prevent an improper attribution to God of responsibility for the creation of evil.” i.e. evil is the fault of the helpers who created man’s lower parts. See Philo, Creation 72-75 (Yonge, p.11); cf. Plato, Timaeus, 41.
- ↑ Tobin, op.cit., p.158. Ibid., p.145: “Philo twice refers to these textual details as ‘opportunities’ or ‘invitations’… to allegory.” Planter, 36 (Yonge, p.194); Confusion, 191 (Yonge, pp.194, 251).
- ↑ Philo, Creation 154 (Yonge, p.22).
- ↑ Tobin, op.cit., 159.
- ↑ Ibid., p.155.
- ↑ Ibid., p.157.
- ↑ Ibid., p.154; Philo, Creation 154, 157, 164; Legum Allegoriae[LA] 3.236, 238.
- ↑ This seems to apply both to legal and non-legal texts. Tobin, p.157, n. 52. Ibid., p.159: “For instance, in the interpretation of Gen. 2:8, God’s planting of the Garden in Eden, Philo rejects the literal interpretation as blasphemous because God can have no need of a garden. Rather the verse is taken figuratively… to refer to the planting of virtues in the human soul (LA 1.43-47). Again Philo rejects a literal interpretation… of Gen. 2:21-22 which says that God made Eve from Adam’s side. Philo claims that is ridiculous to think that a woman or any human being was ever created from a man’s side (LA 2.19). Rather the text is talking about the origins of sense perception, symbolised by the woman (LA 2.24).”
- ↑ G.R. Evans, A.E. McGrath & A.D. Galloway, The History of Christian Doctrine, Vol. 1. The Science of Theology. Basingstoke: Marshall Pickering, 1986. pp.21-38.
- ↑ Evans et al., pp.22-23. J.F. Bethune-Baker, An Introduction To The Early History of Christian Doctrine. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1929. p.50: “In doing this Philo was adopting the Greek method used in the interpretation of the Homeric writings. He could then reconcile his philosophy to his religion and be in a position to give an account of his faith to educated Greeks among whom he lived.”
- ↑ Philo, Creation 7-12 (Yonge, pp.3-4).
- ↑ Scholars are divided on the issue. See Arnold Ehrhardt, “Creatio ex nihilo,” The Framework of the New Testament Stories. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1964. p.218; Samuel Sandmel, Philo of Alexandria: An Introduction. Oxford: OUP, 1979. p.53; Gerhard May, Creatio Ex Nihilo, trans. A.S. Worrall. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994. pp.9-21.
- ↑ Philo, Creation 13; This was adopted later by Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 6.16.142; Paedagogos 9.369 and is found earlier in Aristobulus (see Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 13.12.9-12); Hanson, op.cit., p.51, 118.
- ↑ It is equal to the product of its factors [1 x 2 x 3], as well as the sum of them [1 + 2 + 3], its half being 3, its third part 2, its sixth part 1. Philo, Creation, 13 (Yonge, p.4).
- ↑ Sandmel, op.cit., p.22.
- ↑ Philo, Creation 129-130 (Yonge, p.18); Sandmel, op.cit., p.54.
- ↑ Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis 1 53 (Yonge, pp.801-802).
- ↑ Philo, AL 1.108 (Yonge, p.37).
- ↑ Philo, Creation 154 (Yonge, p.22).
- ↑ Philo, AL 1.89 (Yonge, p.35).
- ↑ Philo, AL 2.24.
- ↑ Philo, AL 2.71-75 (Yonge, pp.45-46).
- ↑ Sandmel, op.cit., p.55.
- ↑ Philo, Creation 157-158, 160 (Yonge, pp.22-23).
- ↑ Tobin, op.cit., p.178.
- ↑ Ibid., p.158.
- ↑ Philo, Creation 42 (Yonge, p.7).
- ↑ Philo, Q & A Gen. 2.5 (Yonge, p.815).
- ↑ Philo, Q & A Gen. 2.3 (Yonge, p.814).
- ↑ Jack P. Lewis, A Study of the Interpretation of Noah and the Flood in Jewish and Christian Literature. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968. p.47.
- ↑ Philo, Moses 2.60 (Yonge, p.496).
- ↑ Philo, Abraham 41-44 (Yonge, p.414).
- ↑ Philo, Q & A Gen. 2.28 (Yonge, pp.823-824).
- ↑ Davis A. Young, The Biblical Flood: A Case Study of the Church’s Response to Extrabiblical Evidence. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans / Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, 1995. p.12.
- ↑ Lewis, op.cit., p.48.
- ↑ Philo, Moses 2.60 (Yonge, p.496).
- ↑ Philo, Abraham 45-46 (Yonge, pp.414-415).
- ↑ Philo, Q & A Gen. 2.15 (Yonge, p.820).
- ↑ Philo, Moses 2.64 (Yonge, p.496).
- ↑ Philo, Q & A Gen. 2.47 (Yonge, p.829).
- ↑ Henry Chadwick, op.cit., 156-157: “The Judaism which established itself as normative was that of the rabbis.… The points of affinity between Philo and later rabbinic traditions turn out to be even less numerous than might be expected, and if later Jewish writings mention him, which is not certain, it is on terms of bitter disapproval.”
- ↑ E.g. Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria.
- ↑ Sandmel, op.cit., 14.
- ↑ A. Hilary Armstrong, An Introduction to Ancient Philosophy. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1947. p.162.
- ↑ Ibid., p.162.
- ↑ Stephen Smalley, John ~ Evangelist & Interpreter. Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1983, 1992 reprint. p.58; D.A. Carson. The Gospel According To John. Leicester: IVP, 1991. p.115; Guthrie, D. New Testament Theology. Leicester: IVP, 1981. pp.322-323. Bruce, op.cit., p.54: “Although Philo does not appear to have exercised direct influence on New Testament thought, his writings present a number of striking points of contact with the Pauline Epistles, and some knowledge of his thought and method provides positive help for the understanding of the Fourth Gospel (although the Johannine Logos doctrine is essentially different from the Philonic) and of the Epistle to the Hebrews - the work of another Alexandrian who, however, prefers the typology of salvation-history to Philonic allegory as the key top unlock the meaning of the Old Testament.” See further Henry Chadwick, “St .Paul and Philo of Alexandria," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 48 (1965-66): 286ff.; Lane, William L. “Hebrews 1-8,” Word Biblical Commentary, Vol. 47A. Waco: Word, 1991 pp.civ, cvii-cviii.
- ↑ Eusebius, History, 2.17.1 (NPNF, Vol. 1, p.117).
- ↑ Eusebius, History, 2.16.1-2 (NPNF, Vol. 1, p.116); Jerome, Lives, 2.11 (NPNF, Vol. 3, p.365).
- ↑ Tobin, op.cit., p.1.
External Links
- Philo of Alexandria By Earlychurch.org.uk
