3. There are several historical treatises, which were complete in themselves. 4. de Vita Mosis, originally in two, but now arranged in three books.
*The first number refers to the section in Richter and
Tauchnitz; the subsequent figures to the volume and page of Mangey.
PHILO
2. A work called “frodericd, of which only frag- ments have been preserved. This is perhaps the same as—3. The Apology for the Jews, from which Eusebius extracted an account of the Essenes (Prep. Ev. viii. 11), and to which perhaps belonged the de Vita Contemplativa, containing an account of the Therapeutz. The genuineness of the latter has been sharply disputed by Lucius and others, and ably defended especially by Massebieau and Conybeare (the former in the Revue de Histoire des Religions, xvi. [1887] pp. 170ff., 284ff.; the latter in his edition of the treatise, 1895. There are some valuable remarks also in Edersheim’s article on Philo in Smith and Wace’s Dictionary of Christian Biography, iv. 368 ff., and some of the principal objections are considered in a review of Conybeare in the Jewish Quarterly Review, 1896, p. 1551ff.). 4. in Flaccum. 5. Legatio ad Gaium, which survives out of five books Iepi dperdv, de- scribing the persecutions of the Jews, and the sad fate of the persecutors.
The editions contain also certain works, the spuriousness of which is generally admitted: de hes ; and, in Armenian, de Sampsone and de
ond.
For fuller information and references, see the excellent section on the writings of Philo in Schiirer’s GJ V° iii. 487 ff. The above classification is in the main that suggested by Ewald (@VI? vi. 294 ff.), who, however, regards the Life of Moses as an introduction to group 2 (3), and places the leading groups in a different order. We have followed the careful classification of Cohn (‘ Eintei- lung und Chronologie der Schriften Philos,’ pub- lished in Philologus, Zeitschr. fiir das classische Alterthum: Supplementband vii. Heft 3, 1899). A similar classification, though somewhat differ- ently arranged, is given, with other interesting matter, in an earlier article by Cohn, on ‘The latest Researches on Philo of Alexandria’ in the Jewish Quarterly Review, v. [Oct. 1892] pp. 24-50.
iii. SysTEM oF THouGHT.—1. The general char- acter and basis of Philo’s system.—The peculiarities of Philo’s thought are largely due to the influence of his time and place. In Alexandria, Greek phil- osophy and Oriental mysticism met and mingled ; and while the former, in its decline into scepticism, sought for support in eclectic schemes or in positive revelation, the latter endeavoured to justify itself before the world of thought by clothing its ideas in the language of philosophy. Jews, living in the midst of intellectual culture, and deeply versed in the finest portions of Greek literature, could no longer be satisfied with the crude ideas of their forefathers, and it became necessary to show that their ancestral religion was in harmony with the highest philosophy. Of those who made this attempt Philo was by far the most eminent, and his writings possess a singular interest for the Christian student, not only as revealing an in- structive phase of human thought, but on account of the influence which they exercised, directly and indirectly, on the theology of the Church. He combined in himself the two tendencies which were seeking for reconciliation ; for he was at once a religious man, full of devout feeling and moral enthusiasm, and, although his philosophy was largely borrowed, distinguished by no small share of speculative faculty. Of the truth and Divine authority of the Jewish religion he was profoundly convinced. His system avowedly rested upon the Scriptures, which were inspired in the minutest details. The prophets speak nothing of their own, but only what the Divine Spirit suggests, while the voluntary powers are in suspense. This con- dition, transcending the ordinary operations of the will, is open to good and wise men, and Philo does not hesitate to speak of his own enjoyment of it
PHILO 199
(de Migrat. Abr. 7 [i. 441]). Moses, however, was the supreme prophet, as well as king, legislator, and high priest ; and his law remained, among the vicissitudes of States, unchangeable and eternal. Nevertheless, Philo did not resort to the Hebrew Scriptures, but, accepting the current story of the miraculous origin of the LXX, he assumed that the Hebrew and Greek were one and the same both in the facts and in the words. But, though he was ready to attach the utmost importance to a letter or even to an accent, he is not remarkable for the correctness of his citations. This subject has been investigated by Siegfried, who arrives at the fol- lowing results :—A large part of Philo’s citations consists of paraphrases from memory; in many instances the citation and the interpretation are so blended that a complete separation is impossible ; there are many examples of double citation, one agreeing with the LXX, the other deviating from it; many of his deviations are found in single manuscripts of the LXX; others are explicable from the Hebrew text; some instances occur which point to a Hebrew text different from the Masso- retic ; and others indicate an attempt to improve the Greek. Passages also occur in which Philo bases an interpretation on an expression which is not found in our text of the LXX. And, finally, some variations must be ascribed to errors of tran- seribers. (See Siegfried’s Philo von Alexandria als Ausleger des Alten Testaments, 1875, p. 162, where he sums up the results of three articles in Hilgen- feld’s Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theol. 1873. See also Dr. H. E. Ryle’s Philo and Holy Scripture: or the Quotations of Philo from the Books of the OT, 1895, where the subject is carefully treated in the Introduction, § ii.; and two articles in the JQR, v. [Jan. 1893] pp. 246-280, and viii. [Oct. 1895] pp. 88-122, ‘On the Philonean Text of the Septu- agint,’ so far as it may be gathered from the Armenian version of the Questiones et Respon- stones, by F. C. Conybeare, who surmises that ‘Philo, at different times, and in writing his dif- ferent works, used different texts of the LXX’; which would not be surprising, as the text must by that time have swarmed with variants). His canon must have been substantially the same as that which is now recognized, though there is no direct proof that he accepted Ruth, Esther, Eccle- siastes, Song of Songs, Lamentations, Ezekiel, or Daniel. (See the subject fully treated in Dr. Ryle’s work, Introduction, §i. This volume con- tains also the text of Philo’s quotations from Scripture).