The circumstance that Philo was contemporary with New-Test, events, coupled with his high intelligence and interest in sacred learning, as well as with the fact that he once visited Jerusalem " to offer up prayers and sacrifices in the Temple" (although only one such visit is referred to by him [Richter's ed. of Fragments, vi, 200], his piety and devotion probably led to occasional repetitions of this pilgrimage, which were less likely to be mentioned because of his modesty and reserve in per- sonal matters), led ancient writers to connect Philo in- timately with Christianity. Photius (Bill. Cod. 15) makes him a friend of the apostle Peter ; as do also Eu- sebius (Hist. Eccles. ii, 17), Jerome (Catal. Scriptor. Fc- cles.), and Suidas. Photius goes so far as to say that Philo was admitted into the Christian Church, from which he afterwards fell. But while we have no direct means of testing the truth of such statements, they cer- tainly do not bear the evidence on their face. A man of such decided characteristics as Philo could no more have remained quiet after conversion than did Saul of Tarsus, and, because we have no utterances from him as a Christian, we have reason to reject the story as fabu- lous from first to last. Besides, Philo's own extant writ- ings do not give the slightest reference to any such im- portant step, and this fact tells even more strongly, if possible, against the report.
His Theology and Philosophy. — In the article Neo- Platonism (q. v.) it has been shown that this eclectic philosophy, though it developed in the 3d century after Christ, is not only to be regarded in its origin as co- eval with Christianity, but must acknowledge as its father and founder Philo the Jew (see Kingsley, Alex- andria and her Schools, p. 79). Alexandria, from its very foundation by Alexander the Great in B.C. 332, had sought to establish Greek civilization within its borders, and to produce an intellect that might be the rival of Athens in her proudest day. Mind was the secret of Greek power, and for that the great conqueror would work in this African city, which he designed to be the point of union of two, or, rather, of three worlds. For in this place, named after himself, Europe, Asia, and Africa were to meet and to hold communion. Un- der the Ptolemies this desire was strengthened still more, and yet the outcome of all the Ptolemrean appli- ances was of little or no account if we except the great collection of MSS. and art treasures. The wisest men, though gathered from the most learned centres of the world, failed to produce anything that was really worth preserving. In physics they did little. In art nothing. In metaphysics less than nothing. Says Kingsley, " You must not suppose that the philosophers whom the Ptol- emies collected (as they would any other marketable article) by liberal offers of pay and patronage, were such men as the old Seven Sages of Greece, or as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. In these three last indeed, Greek thought reached not merely its greatest height, but the
edge of a precipice, down which it rolled headlong aftel their decease. . . . When the Romans destroyed Greece, God was just and merciful. The eagles were gathered together only because the carrion needed to be removed from the face of God's earth. And at the time of which I now speak the signs of approaching death were fear- fully apparent. Hapless and hopeless enough were the clique of men out of whom the first two Ptolemies hoped to form a school of philosophy ; men certainly clever enough, and amusing withal, who might give the kings of Egypt many a shrewd lesson in kingcraft and the crafts of this world, and the art of profiting by the folly of fools and the selfishness of the selfish ; or who might amuse them, in default of fighting-cocks, by puns and repartees, and battles of logic; 'how one thing cannot be predicated of another,' or ' how the wise man is not only to overcome every misfortune, but not even to feel it,' and other such weighty questions, which in those days hid that deep unbelief in any truth whatsoever which was spreading fast over the minds of men . . . during those frightful centuries which immediately pre- ceded the Christian wra, when was fast approaching that dark chaos of unbelief and unrighteousness which Saul of Tarsus so analyzes and describes in the first chapter of his Epistle to the Romans; when the old light was lost, the old faiths extinct, the old reverence for the laws of family and national life destroyed, yea, even the natural instincts themselves perverted; that chaos whose darkness Juvenal and Petronius and Taci- tus have proved in their fearful pages not to have been exaggerated by the more compassionate though more righteous Jew" (p. 55-63).
Fortunately for the Macedonians, another Eastern nation had closely intermingled with them, and from this mixture of two races came that superior product which gave to Alexandrian thought not only a new im- pulse, but a superior life. When Hellenism was trans- ferred to Alexandria, the Grecian spirit, as we have seen, was in an exhausted and faded condition. But together with Hellenism had come Judaism also. True, the lat- ter was not sought for and imported at the bidding of the mighty conqueror of three worlds, but he had suf- fered the Jews to find a home in Alexandria, and thus Judaism found its establishment then and there. The Ptolemies also pursued the same conciliatory policy; and Judaism gained strength and developed so much at Alexandria that it became a centre of Jewish thought and learning for several centuries, and its rabbins were called " the light of Israel."