Philo of Alexandria
Philo of Alexandria was a prominent Jewish philosopher and theologian who lived in the Hellenistic city of Alexandria, Egypt, during the first century CE. He belonged to a wealthy and influential Jewish family within a community that enjoyed certain privileges but also faced significant anti-Semitic hostility. Philo is best known for his efforts to harmonize Jewish theology with Greek philosophy, particularly Platonism and Stoicism. He produced a substantial body of work, including over sixty treatises, where he employed an allegorical method to interpret the Hebrew Scriptures, suggesting that they contain both literal and deeper spiritual meanings.
Central to Philo's philosophy is the concept of the Logos, a divine intermediary that connects the transcendent God of the Old Testament with the material world. This idea significantly influenced early Christian thought, particularly in shaping the theological understanding of the Logos found in the Gospel of John. Philo's writings emphasized the importance of contemplation and virtue, arguing that true wisdom comes from an intimate knowledge of God beyond mere intellectual understanding. His legacy extends to Neoplatonism and early Christian theology, highlighting his role in bridging Jewish and Greek philosophical traditions.
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Philo of Alexandria
Alexandrian philosopher
- Born: c. 20 b.c.e.
- Birthplace: Alexandria, Egypt
- Died: c. 45 c.e.
- Place of death: Possibly outside Alexandria, Egypt
Philo harmonized Old Testament theology with Greek philosophy, especially Platonism and Stoicism; his thought contributed much to that of Plotinus, originator of Neoplatonism, and to the ideas of the early church fathers.
Early Life
Philo (FI-loh) came from one of the richest and most prominent Jewish families of Alexandria. The city had a large Jewish community, with privileges granted by its founder, Alexander the Great, and confirmed by his successors, the Ptolemies. The intellectual climate was Greek, and the resident Jews read their Scriptures in the Greek Septuagint version. According to ancient sources, the Greek population of Alexandria showed great hostility toward Jews.
Philo’s brother Alexander held the Roman post of alabarch and collected taxes from Arab communities. He also managed the financial affairs of Antonia, mother of Emperor Claudius, and supplied a loan to Herod Agrippa, Caligula’s choice as Jewish king.
In 39 c.e., anti-Semitism flared in the city, touched off by the visit of Herod Agrippa. The ensuing pogrom, permitted by the Roman governor Aulus Avilius Flaccus, resulted in a mission of opposing delegations to Caligula in Rome. The delegations consisted of three Greeks, led by the famous anti-Semite Apion, and five Jews, of whom Philo was eldest and spokesman. Caligula rudely dismissed the Jews and ordered his statue placed in their temples. In 41, under Claudius, Jewish rights were restored.
Life’s Work
At least sixty-four treatises attributed to Philo are known. Only four or five are spurious; a few others, whose names have survived, no longer exist. The dates of the treatises, and even the order of their composition, are not known, except when a treatise refers to a previous one or to a dated event, such as the delegation to Rome. All the treatises have been translated into English (1854-1855), but some retain their original titles.
Foremost among Philo’s writings are the exegetical works on the Pentateuch. These were arranged by Philo himself. Of the cosmogonic works, De opificis mundi (On the Creation, 1854), an allegorical explanation of Genesis, is most important. The historical works, allegorical commentaries on various topics in Genesis, are known as Quod Deus sit immutabilis (On the Unchangeableness of God, 1854), De Abrahamo (On Abraham, 1854), De Josepho (On Joseph, 1854), De vita Moysis (On the Life of Moses, 1854), and De allegoriis legum (Allegorical Interpretation, 1854). Philo also wrote legislative works, commentaries on Mosaic legislation, such as De Decalogo (On the Decalogue, 1854) and De praemiis et poenis (On Rewards and Punishments, 1854). Philosophical writings, such as De vita contemplativa (On the Contemplative Life, 1854), and political writings, such as In Flaccum (Against Flaccus, 1854) and De legatione ad Gaium (On the Embassy to Gaius, 1854), are attributed to Philo as well.
As a devout Jew, Philo’s intent was to reconcile the prevalent Alexandrian philosophical thought of Platonism and Stoicism with the sacred law of Israel (the Old Testament). He wanted to show the identity of the truths of philosophy and of revelation—and the priority of the latter. He thus suggests not only that Moses had been a consummate philosopher but also that the “holy assembly” of Greek philosophers (Philo includes Plato, Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Empedocles—and the Stoics Zeno and Cleanthes) had access to Holy Scripture.
Beyond the notion of the unity of God, on which the Bible, Stoicism, and Plato’s Timaeos (365-361 b.c.e.; Timeaus, 1793) clearly agree, the Old Testament bears little relation to Greek philosophy. Philo thus adopted for the Old Testament the Stoic technique of reading the Greek myths as allegories illustrating philosophical truths. Even as a Jew he was not original in this, for the Jewish philosopher Aristobulus (fl. mid-second century b.c.e.) and others had employed this method. Jews, however, could not gratuitously disregard the literal sense of the Old Testament stories. Philo resolved the problem by asserting that Scripture has at least two levels of meaning: the literal, for the edification of simple folk, and a deeper spiritual meaning, of which the literal account was merely an allegory. This higher meaning was available to subtler minds capable of comprehending it. Indeed, the allegorical method seems imperative when the literal sense presents something unworthy of God or an apparent contradiction and when the text defines itself as allegorical.
Philo rejects the anthropomorphism of God in the Old Testament as a concession to weaker minds. His teaching is that Yahweh, God, is perfect existence (to ontos on) and absolutely transcendent, that is, outside creation, beyond comprehension, and inexpressible. One can know of his existence but nothing of his essence; one cannot predicate anything of him, for he is unchangeable. In this Philo went beyond Plato and the Stoics. Having described God in such terms, Philo was compelled to harmonize this with the scriptural concept of Yahweh as a personal God, immanent in the world and intimate with his people.
In order to bridge the gulf between this transcendent God and the created cosmos, Philo adopted the Stoic doctrine of divine emanations, or intermediaries, as the means of God’s extension to the physical world. The first emanation and—according to Philo’s various terminology—God’s firstborn, His mediator, administrator, instrument, or bond of unity, is the divine Logos. The Logos is, in Stoic symbolism, the nearest circle of light (fire) proceeding from God, defined as pure light shedding His beams all around. In the Old Testament, the angel of God is an allegory for the Logos. The Logos is also identified with Plato’s Demiurge.
Philo varied his conception of the intermediary beings of creation, including the Logos. Sometimes they are forces, ideas, or spiritual qualities of God; sometimes they are spiritual personal beings, which Philo identifies with the biblical “powers” (dynameis, an order of angels). They derive from the Logos as Logos derives directly from God. God created first an invisible, spiritual world as a pattern (paradeigma) for the visible world. This is identified as the Logos endiathekos (organizer). Thus Logos is the location of Plato’s Ideas. From this pattern, Logos prophorikos (forward-carrying) created the material world. Like the Greeks, who believed that nothing could be produced out of nothing, Philo assumed primeval lifeless and formless matter (hyle) as the substratum of the material world. At the same time, this matter became, for Philo, the source of the world’s imperfection and evil.
God made the first preexistent, ideal man through Logos. This was man untainted by sin and truly in the divine image. His higher soul (nous, or pneuma) was an emanation of the purely spiritual Logos; it permeated man as his true, essential nature. Man’s body and lower nature, or soul, with its earthly reason, were fashioned by lower angelic powers, or Demiurges. In a flight of Platonic dualism of body and soul, Philo saw the body as the tomb of the pneuma. The soul’s unfolding was retarded by the body’s sensuous nature, which it must overcome in order to gain salvation.
Philo’s ethical doctrine employs the Logos in yet another, Stoic guise: operating as man’s conscience and as teacher of the virtues. Men should strive for Stoic apatheia, apathy—the eradication of all passions. They should cultivate the four cardinal virtues of the Stoics (justice, temperance, courage, and wisdom). As this is an interior task, public life was discouraged by Philo; man, however, will never succeed by himself in getting free of the passions. God, through his Logos, can help man build virtue in the soul. It follows that man must place himself in correct relationship to God.
For this last and most important task, the sciences—grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, mathematics, music, and astronomy—are helpful. Yet they have never been sufficient to produce the Stoic ideal man of virtue. Contemplation of God alone is true wisdom and virtue. Thus Philo forges a link between Greek philosophy and the world of the mystery religions. He advocates going beyond ordinary conceptual knowledge, which recognizes God in his works, to an immediate intuition of the ineffable Godhead. In this ecstasy, the soul sees God face-to-face. Having passed beyond the original Ideas within the Logos, already beautiful beyond words, the soul is seized by a sort of “sober intoxication.” As it approaches the highest peak of the knowable (ton noeton), pure rays of divine light come forth with increasing brilliance, until the soul is lost to itself and understands all.
Philo says that he himself had frequently been so filled with divine inspiration but that the ecstasy was indeed available to all the “initiated.” These statements lend credence to the possibility that he ended his life as a member of the sect of the Therapeutae, an Essene-like community near Alexandria that he described affectionately in On the Contemplative Life. Eusebius of Caesarea, quoting Philo, wrote that such communities in Egypt were founded by Mark the Evangelist and that their lives epitomized Christian practice in the seminal days of the new faith.
Significance
Though Photius’s remark that Philo of Alexandria was a Christian cannot be accepted, his philosophy exerted a profound influence on early Christian theology. The Logos of John’s Gospel certainly seems identical with one or more senses of the Logos in Philo. Ultimately, however, the Christian Logos, meaning the incarnate Word of God, can never be traced to Philo, for whom Logos was always incorporeal. Common to both Philo and many church fathers was the belief that philosophy was a special gift from God to the Greeks, just as revelation was His gift to the Jews. The fathers also used the allegorical method in interpreting Scripture beyond its literal meaning.
Philo’s importance in Christian thought is underscored by the extensive commentary on and frequent reference to him by early Christian writers. Eusebius, Saint Jerome, and Photius all provide lists of his tractates. Philo’s philosophical language regarding God’s transcendence influenced Christian apologists such as Justin, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen.
Philo’s greatest influence extended to Plotinus, founder of Neoplatonism. Though Plotinus may have pursued philosophy in India, many of his principles echo those of Philo: that the body is the prison of the soul, that politics is trivial and distracting, that God (the One) is utterly transcendent yet the source of all truth and goodness, that Creation was effected by emanations from the One, and that pure souls may hope to return to the One, though in this life it is possible to encounter the One in a mystical experience. Thus, Philo had an impact on the two major theological systems of the Roman Empire.
Bibliography
Colson, F. H., and G. H. Whitaker. Philo. 12 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966-1981. These volumes provide the original Greek with English translation on facing pages. They supply ample introductory sections, copious footnotes, and a complete bibliography addressing all problems of Philo scholarship.
Copleston, Frederick. “Greece and Rome.” In A History of Greek Philosophy, edited by W. K. C. Guthrie. London: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Contains a short but encyclopedic survey of Philo’s chief doctrines. Greek terms and references in Philo’s writings are given for each specific teaching of Philo.
Philo of Alexandria. The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged. Translated by C. D. Yonge. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1993. Includes an introduction, bibliographical references, and an index. Philo is not easy reading.
Wolfson, Harry A. “Greek Philosophy in Philo and the Church Fathers.” In The Crucible of Christianity, edited by Arnold Toynbee. New York: World, 1969. Wolfson isolates the primary similarities and oppositions in the thought of the earliest Christian fathers and Philo. The chapter is fully documented for further research.
Wolfson, Harry A. Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982. This is the most thorough, complete, useful, and current treatment of Philo available in English.
Zeller, Eduard. Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy. Translated by Wilhelm Nestle. New York: Meridian Books, 1955. Includes an overview of Philo’s key ideas. Zeller defines major differences between Philo and Greek thought.