INTRODUCTORY. THE PREPARATION FOR THE GOSPEL: THE JEWISH WORLD IN THE DAYS OF CHRIST

PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA, THE RABBIS, AND THE GOSPELS, THE FINAL DEVELOPMENT OF HELLENISM IN ITS RELATION TO RABBINISM AND THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN.

CHAPTER IV.

It is strange how little we know of the personal history of the greatest of uninspired Jewish writers of old, though he occupied so prominent a position in his time. [1 Hausrath (N.T. Zeitg. vol. ii. p. 222 &c.) has given a highly imaginative picture of Philo, as, indeed, of many other persons and things.] Philo was born in Alexandria, about the year 20 before Christ. He was a descendant of Aaron, and belonged to one of the wealthiest and most influential families among the Jewish merchant-princes of Egypt. His brother was the political head of that community in Alexandria, and he himself on one occasion represented his co-religionists, though unsuccessfully, at Rome, [a 39 or 40 A.D.] as the head of an embassy to entreat the Emperior Caligula for protection from the persecutions consequent on the Jewish resistance to placing statues of the Emperor in their Synagogues. But it is not with Philo, the wealthy aristocratic Jew of Alexandria, but with the great writer and thinker who, so to speak, completed Jewish Hellenism, that we have here to do. Let us see what was his relation alike to heathen philosophy and to the Jewish faith, of both of which he was the ardent advocate, and how in his system he combined the teaching of the two.

To begin with, Philo united in rare measure Greek learning with Jewish enthusiasm. In his writings he very frequently uses classical modes of expression; [2 Siegfried has, with immense labor, collected a vast number of parallel expressions, chiefly from Plato and Plutarch (pp. 39-47).] he names not fewer than sixty-four Greek writers; [3 Comp. Grossmann, Quaest. Phil. i. p. 5 &c.] and he either alludes to, or quotes frequently from, such sources as Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Solon, the great Greek tragedians, Plato, and others. But to him these men were scarcely 'heathen.' He had sat at their feet, and learned to weave a system from Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. The gatherings of these philosophers were 'holy,' and Plato was 'the great.' But holier than all was the gathering of the true Israel; and incomparably greater than any, Moses. From him had all sages learned, and with him alone was all truth to be found, not, indeed, in the letter, but under the letter, of Holy Scripture. If in Numb. xxiii. 19 we read 'God is not a man,' and in Deut. i. 31 that the Lord was 'as a man,' did it not imply, on the one hand, the revelation of absolute truth by God, and, on the other, accommodation to those who were weak? Here, then, was the principle of a twofold interpretation of the Word of God, the literal and the allegorical. The letter of the text must be held fast; and Biblical personages and histories were real. But only narrow-minded slaves of the letter would stop here; the more so, as sometimes the literal meaning alone would be tame, even absurd; while the allegorical interpretation gave the true sense, even though it might occassionally run counter to the letter. Thus, the patriarchs represented states of the soul; and, whatever the letter might bear, Joseph represented one given to the fleshly, whom his brothers rightly hated; Simeon the soul aiming after the higher; the killing of the Egyptian by Moses, the subjugation of passion, and so on. But this allegorical interpretation, by the side of the literal (the Peshat of the Palestinians), though only for the few, was not arbitrary. It had its 'laws,' and 'canons', some of which excluded the literal interpretation, while others admitted it by the side of the higher meaning. [1 In this sketch of the system of Philo I have largely availed myself of the careful analysis of Siegfried.]

To begin with the former: the literal sense must be wholly set aside, when it implied anything unworthy of the Deity, anything unmeaning, impossible, or contrary to reason. Manifestly, this canon, if strictly applied, would do away not only with all anthropomorphisms, but cut the knot wherever difficulties seemed insuperable. Again, Philo would find an allegorical, along with the literal, interpretation indicated in the reduplication of a word, and in seemingly superfluous words, particles, or expressions. [2 It should be noted that these are also Talmudical canons, not indeed for allegorical interpretation, but as pointing to some special meaning, since there was not a word or particle in Scripture without a definite meaning and object.] These could, of course, only bear such a meaning on Philo's assumption of the actual inspiration of the LXX. version. Similarly, in exact accordance with a Talmudical canon, [a Baba K 64 a.] any repetition of what had been already stated would point to something new. These were comparatively sober rules of exegesis. Not so the licence which he claimed of freely altering the punctuation [3 To illustrate what use might be made of such alterations, the Midrash (Ber. R. 65) would have us punctuate Gen. xxvii. 19, as follows: 'And Jacob said unto his father, I (viz. am he who will receive the ten commandments), (but) Esau (is) thy firstborn.' In Yalkut there is the still more curious explanation that in heaven the soul of Jacob was the firstborn!] of sentences, and his notion that, if one from among several synonymous words was chosen in a passage, this pointed to some special meaning attaching to it. Even more extravagant was the idea, that a word which occurred in the LXX. might be interpreted according to every shade of meaning which it bore in the Greek, and that even another meaning might be given it by slightly altering the letters. However, like other of Philo's allegorical canons, these were also adopted by the Rabbis, and Haggadic interpretations were frequently prefaced by: 'Read not thus, but thus.' If such violence might be done to the text, we need not wonder at interpretations based on a play upon words, or even upon parts of a word. Of course, all seemingly strange or peculiar modes of expression, or of designation, occurring in Scripture, must have their special meaning, and so also every particle, adverb, or preposition. Again, the position of a verse, its succession by another, the apparently unaccountable presence or absence of a word, might furnish hints for some deeper meaning, and so would an unexpected singular for a plural, or vice versa, the use of a tense, even the gender of a word. Most serious of all, an allegorical interpretation might be again employed as the basis of another. [1 Each of these positions is capable of ample proof from Philo's writings, as shown by Siegfried. But only a bare statement of these canons was here possible.]

We repeat, that these allegorical canons of Philo are essentially the same as those of Jewish traditionalism in the Haggadah, [2 Comp. our above outline with the 'XXV. theses de modis et formulis quibus pr. Hebr. doctores SS. interpretari etc. soliti fuerunt,' in Surenhusius, Biblos, pp. 57-88.] only the latter were not rationalising, and far more brilliant in their application. [3 For a comparison between Philo and Rabbinic theology, see Appendix II.: 'Philo and Rabbinic Theology.' Freudenthal (Hellen. Studien, pp. 67 &c.) aptly designates this mixture of the two as 'Hellenistic Midrash,' it being difficult sometimes to distinguish whether it originated in Palestine or in Egypt, or else in both independently. Freudenthal gives a number of curious instances in which Hellenism and Rabbinism agree in their interpretations. For other interesting comparisons between Haggadic interpretations and those of Philo, see Joel, Blick in d. Religionsgesch. i. p. 38 &c.] In another respect also the Palestinian had the advantage of the Alexandrian exegesis. Reverently and cautiously it indicated what might be omitted in public reading, and why; what expressions of the original might be modified by the Meturgeman, and how; so as to avoid alike one danger by giving a passage in its literality, and another by adding to the sacred text, or conveying a wrong impression of the Divine Being, or else giving occasion to the unlearned and unwary of becoming entangled in dangerous speculations. Jewish tradition here lays down some principles which would be of great practical use. Thus we are told, [a Ber. 31 b.] that Scripture uses the modes ofexpression common among men. This would, of course, include all anthropomorphisms. Again, sometimes with considerable ingenuity, a suggestion is taken from a word, such as that Moses knew the Serpent was to be made of brass from the similarity of the two words (nachash, a serpent, and nechosheth, brass. [b Ber. R. 31.] Similarly, it is noted that Scripture uses euphemistic language, so as to preserve the greatest delicacy. [c Ber. R. 70.] These instances might be multiplied, but the above will suffice.

In his symbolical interpretations Philo only partially took the same road as the Rabbis. The symbolism of numbers and, so far as the Sanctuary was concerned, that of colours, and even materials, may, indeed, be said to have its foundation in the Old Testament itself. The same remark applies partially to that of names. The Rabbis certainly so interpreted them. [1 Thus, to give only a few out of many examples, Ruth is derived from ravah, to satiate to give to drink, because David, her descendant, satiated God with his Psalms of praise (Ber. 7 b). Here the principle of the significance of Biblenames is deduced from Ps. xlvi. 8 (9 in the Hebrew): 'Come, behold the works of the Lord, who hath made names on earth,' the word 'desolations,' SHAMOTH, being altered to SHEMOTH, 'names.' In general, that section, from Ber. 3 b, to the end of 8 a, is full of Haggadic Scripture interpretations. On fol. 4 a there is the curious symbolical derivation of Mephibosheth, who is supposed to have set David right on halakhic questions, as Mippi bosheth: 'from my mouth shaming,' 'because he put to shame the face of David in the Halakhah.' Similarly in Siphre (Par. Behaalothekha, ed. Friedmann, p. 20 a) we have very beautiful and ingenious interpretations of the names Reuel, Hobab and Jethro.] But the application which Philo made of this symbolism was very different. Everything became symbolical in his hands, if it suited his purpose: numbers (in a very arbitrary manner), beasts, birds, fowls, creeping things, plants, stones, elements, substances, conditions, even sex, and so a term or an expression might even have several and contradictory meanings, from which the interpreter was at liberty to choose.

From the consideration of the method by which Philo derived from Scriptures his theological views, we turn to a brief analysis of these views. [2 It would be impossible here to give the references, which would occupy too much space.]

1. Theology. In reference to God, we find, side by side, the apparently contradictory views of the Platonic and the Stoic schools. Following the former, the sharpest distinction was drawn between God and the world. God existed neither in space, nor in time; He had neither human qualities nor afections; in fact, He was without any qualities ( ), and even without any name ( ) ; hence, wholly uncognisable by man ( ). Thus, changing the punctuation and the accents, the LXX. of Gen. iii. 9 was made to read: 'Adam, thou art somewhere;' but God had no somewhere, as Adam seemed to think when he hid himself from Him. In the above sense, also, Ex. iii. 14, and vi. 3, were explained, and the two names Elohim and Jehovah belonged really to the two supreme Divine 'Potencies,' while the fact of God's being uncognisable appeared from Ex. xx. 21.

But side by side with this we have, to save the Jewish, or rather Old Testament, idea of creation and providence, the Stoic notion of God as immanent in the world, in fact, as that alone which is real in it, as always working: in short, to use his own Pantheistic expression, as 'Himself one and the all' ( ). Chief in His Being is His goodness, the forthgoing of which was the ground of creation. Only the good comes from Him. With matter He can have nothing to do, hence the plural number in the account of creation. God only created the soul, and that only of the good. In the sense of being 'immanent,' God is everywhere, nay, all things are really only in Him, or rather He is the real in all. But chiefly is God the wellspring and the light of the soul, its 'Saviour' from the 'Egypt' of passion. Two things follow. With Philo's ideas of the sepration between God and matter, it was impossible always to account for miracles or interpositions. Accordingly, these are sometimes allegorised, sometimes rationalistically explained. Further, the God of Philo, whatever he might say to the contrary, was not the God of that Israel which was His chosen people. 2. Intermediary Beings. Potencies ( ). If, in what has preceded, we have once and again noticed a remarkable similarity between Philo and the Rabbis, there is a still more curious analogy between his teaching and that of Jewish Mysticism, as ultimately fully developed in the 'Kabbalah.' The very term Kabbalah (from qibbel, to hand down) seems to point out not only its descent by oral tradition, but also its ascent to ancient sources. [1 For want of handier material I must take leave to refer to my brief sketch of the Kabbalah in the 'History of the Jewish Nation,' pp. 434-446.] Its existence is presupposed, and its leading ideas are sketched in the Mishnah. [a Chag. ii. 1.]The Targums also bear at least one remarkable trace of it. May it not be, that as Philo frequently refers to ancient tradition, so both Eastern and Western Judaism may here have drawn from one and the same source, we will not venture to suggest, how high up, while each made such use of it as suited their distinctive tendencies? At any rate the Kabbalah also, likening Scripture to a person, compares those who study merely the letter, to them who attend only to the dress; those who consider the mnoral of a fact, to them who attend to the body; while the initiated alone, who regard the hidden meaning, are those who attend to the soul. Again, as Philo, so the oldest part of the Mishnah [a Ab. v. 4.] designates God as Maqom, 'the place', the, the all- comprehending, what the Kabbalists called the EnSoph, 'the boundless,' that God, without any quality, Who becomes cognisable only by His manifestations. [1 In short, the of the Stoics.]

The manifestations of God! But neither Eastern mystical Judaism, nor the philosophy of Philo, could admit of any direct contact between God and creation. The Kabbalah solved the difficulty by their Sephiroth, [2 Supposed to mean either numerationes, or splendour. But why not derive the word from ? The ten are: Crown, Wisdom, Intelligence, Mercy, Judgment, Beauty, Triumph, Praise, Foundation, Kingdom.] or emanations from God, through which this contact was ultimately brought about, and of which the EnSoph, or crown, was the spring: 'the source from which the infinite light issued.' If Philo found greater difficulties, he had also more ready help from the philosophical systems to hand. His Sephiroth were 'Potencies' ( ), 'Words' ( ), intermediate powers. 'Potencies,' as we imagine, when viewed Godwards; 'Words,' as viewed creationwards. They were not emanations, but, according to Plato, 'archetypal ideas,' on the model of which all that exists was formed; and also, according to the Stoic idea, the cause of all, pervading all, forming all, and sustaining all. Thus these 'Potencies' were wholly in God, and yet wholly out of God. If we divest all this of its philosophical colouring, did not Eastern Judaism also teach that there was a distinction between the Unapproachable God, and God manifest? [3 For the teaching of Eastern Judaism in this respect, see Appendix II.: 'Philo and Rabbinic Theology.']

Another remark will show the parallelism between Philo and Rabbinism. [4 A very interesting question arises: how far Philo was acquainted with, and influenced by, the Jewish traditional law or the Halakhah. This has been treated by Dr. B. Ritter in an able tractate (Philo u. die Halach.), although he attributes more to Philo than the evidence seems to admit.] As the latter speaks of the two qualities (Middoth) of Mercy and Judgment in the Divine Being, [b Jer. Ber. ix. 7.] and distinguishes between Elohim as the God of Justice, and Jehovah as the God of Mercy and Grace, so Philo places next to the Divine Word ( ), Goodness ( ), as the Creative Potency ( ), and Power ( ), as the Ruling Potency ( ), proving this by a curious etymological derivation of the words for 'God' and 'Lord' ( ), apparently unconscious that the LXX., in direct contradiction, translated Jehovah by Lord ( ), and Elohim by God ( )! These two potencies of goodness and power, Philo sees in the two Cherubim, and in the two 'Angels' which accompanied God (the Divine Word), when on his way to destroy the cities of the plain. But there were more than these two Potencies. In one place Philo enumerates six, according to the number of the cities of refuge. The Potencies issued from God as the beams from the light, as the waters from the spring, as the breath from a person; they were immanent in God, and yet independent beings. They were the ideal world, which in its impulse outwards, meeting matter, produced this material world of ours. They were also the angels of God, His messengers to man, the media through whom He reveled Himself. [1 At the same time there is a remarkable difference here between Philo and Rabbinism. Philo holds that the creation of the world was brought about by the Potencies, but the Law was given directly through Moses, and not by the mediation of angels. But this latter was certainly the view generally entertained in Palestine as expressed in the LXX. rendering of Deut. xxxii. 2, in the Targumim on that passage, and more fully still in Jos. Ant. xv. 5. 3, in the Midrashim and in the Talmud, where we are told (Macc. 24 a) that only the opening words, 'I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods but Me,' were spoken by God Himself. Comp. also Acts vii. 38, 53; Gal. iii. 19; Heb. ii. 2.] 3. The Logos. Viewed in its bearing on New Testament teaching, this part of Philo's system raises the most interesting questions. But it is just here that our difficulties are greatest. We can understand the Platonic conception of the Logos as the 'archetypal idea,' and that of the Stoics as the 'world-reason' pervading matter. Similarly, we can perceive, how the Apocrypha, especially the Book of Wisdom, following up the Old Testament typical truth concerning "Wisdom' (as specially set forth in the Book of Proverbs) almost arrived so far as to present 'Wisdom' as a special 'Subsistence' (hypostatising it). More than this, in Talmudical writings, we find mention not only of the Shem, or 'Name,' [2 Hammejuchad, 'appropriatum;' hammephorash, 'expositum,' 'separatum,' the 'tetragrammaton,' or four-lettered name, There was also a Shem with 'twelve,' and one with 'forty-two' letters (Kidd. 71 a).] but also of the Shekhinah,' God as manifest and present, which is sometimes also presented as the Ruach ha Qodesh, or Holy Spirit. [a Or Ruach ham Maqom, Ab. iii. 10, and frequently in the Talmud.] But in the Targumim we eet yet another expression, which, strange to say, never occurs in the Talmud. [1 Levy (Neuhebr. Worterb. i. p. 374 a.) seems to imply that in the Midrash the term dibbur occupies the same place and meaning. But with all deference I cannot agree with this opinion, nor do the passages quoted bear it out.] It is that of the Memra, Logos, or 'Word.' Not that the term is exclusively applied to the Divine Logos. [2 The 'word,' as spoken, is distinguished from the 'Word' as speaking, or revealing Himself. The former is generally designated by the term 'pithgama.' Thus in Gen. XV. 1, 'After these words (things) came the "pithgama" of Jehovah to Abram in prophecy, saying, Fear not, Abram, My "Memra" shall be thy strength, and thy very great reward.' Still, the term Memra, as applied not only to man, but also in reference to God, is not always the equivalent of 'the Logos.'] But it stands out as perhaps the most remarkable fact in this literature, that God, not as in His permanent manifestation, or manifest Presence, but as revealing Himself, is designated Memra. Altogether that term, as applied to God, occurs in the Targum Onkelos 179 times, in the so-called Jerusalem Targum 99 times, and in the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan 321 times. A critical analysis shows that in 82 instances in Onkelos, in 71 instances in the Jerusalem Targum, and in 213 instances in the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the designation Memra is not only distinguished from God, but evidently refers to God as revealing Himself. [3 The various passages in the Targum of Onkelos, the Jerusalem, and the Pseudo-Jonathan Targum on the Pentateuch will be found enumerated and classified, as those in which it is a doubtful, a fair, or an unquestionable inference, that the word Memra is intended for God revealing Himself, in Appendix II.: 'Philo and Rabbinic Theology.'] But what does this imply? The distinction between God and the Memra of Jehovah is marked in many passages. [4 As, for example, Gen. xxviii. 21, 'the Memra of Jehovah shall be my God.'] Similarly, the Memra of Jehovah is distinguished from the Shekhinah. [5 As, for example, Num. xxiii. 21, 'the Memra of Jehovah their God is their helper, and the Shekhinah of their King is in the midst of them.'] Nor is the term used instead of the sacred word Jehovah; [6 That term is often used by Onkelos. Besides, the expression itself is 'the Memra of Jehovah.'] nor for the well-known Old Testament expression 'the Angel of the Lord; [7 Onkelos only once (in Ex. iv. 24) paraphrases Jehovah by 'Malakha.'] nor yet for the Metatron of the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and of the Talmud. [8 Metatron, either = , or In the Talmud it is applied to the Angel of Jehovah (Ex. xxiii. 20), 'the Prince of the World,' 'the Prince of the Face' or 'of the Presence,' as they call him; he who sits in the innermost chamber before God, while the other angels only hear His commands from behind the veil (Chag. 15 a; 16 a; Toseft. ad Chull. 60 a; Jeb. 16 b). This Metatron of the Talmud and the Kabbalah is also the Adam Qadmon, or archetypal man.] Does it then represent an older tradition underlying all these? [9 Of deep interest is Onkelos' rendering of Deut. xxxiii. 27, where, instead of 'underneath are the everlasting arms,' Onkelos has, 'and by His Memra was the world created,' exactly as in St John i. 10. Now this divergence of Onkelos from the Hebrew text seems unaccountable. Winer, whose inaugural dissertation, 'De Onkeloso ejusque paraph. Chald.' Lips. 1820, most modern writers have followed (with amplifications, chiefly from Luzzato's Philoxenus), makes no reference to this passage, nor do his successors, so far as I know. It is curious that, as our present Hebrew text of this verse consists of three words, so does the rendering of Onkelos, and that both end with the same word. Is the rendering of Onkelos then a paraphrase, or does it represent another reading? Another interesting passage is Deut. viii. 3. Its quotation by Christ in St. Matt. iv. 4 is deeply interesting, as read in the light of the rendering of Onkelos, 'Not by bread alone is man sustained, but by every forthcoming Memra from before Jehovah shall man live.' Yet another rendering of Onkelos is significantly illustrative of 1 Cor. x. 1-4. He renders Deut. xxxiii. 3 'with power He brought them out of Egypt; they were led under thy cloud; they journeyed according to (by) thy Memra.' Does this represent a difference in Hebrew from the admittedly difficult text in our present Bible? Winer refers to it as an instance in which Onkelos 'suopte ingenio et copiose admodum eloquitur vatum divinorum mentem,' adding, 'ita ut de his, quas singulis vocibus inesse crediderit, significationibus non possit recte judicari;' and Winer's successors say much the same. But this is to state, not to explain, the difficulty. In general, we may here be allowed to say that the question of the Targumim has scarcely received as yet sufficient treatment. Mr. Deutsch's Article in Smith's 'Dictionary of the Bible' (since reprinted in his 'Remains') is, though brilliantly written, unsatisfactory. Dr. Davidson (in Kitto's Cyclop., vol. iii. pp. 948-966) is, as always, careful, laborious, and learned. Dr. Volck's article (in Herzog's Real-Encykl., vol. xv. pp. 672-683) is without much intrinsic value, though painstaking. We mention these articles, besides the treatment of the subject in the Introduction to the Old Testament (Keil, De Wette-Schrader, Bleek-kamphausen, Reuss), and the works of Zunz, Geiger, Noldeke, and others, to whom partial reference has already been made. Frankel's interesting and learned book (Zu dem Targum der Propheten) deals almost exclusively with the Targum Jonathan, on which it was impossible to enter within our limits. As modern brochures of interest the following three may be mentioned: Maybaum, Anthropomorphien bei Onkelos; Gronemann, Die Jonath. Pentat. Uebers. im Verhaltn. z. Halacha; and Singer, Onkelos im Verhaltn. z. Halacha.] Beyond this Rabbinic theology has not preserved to us the doctrine of Personal distinctions in the Godhead. And yet, if words have any meaning, the Memra is a hypostasis, though the distinction of permanent, personal Subsistence is not marked. Nor yet, to complete this subject, is the Memra identified with the Messiah. In the Targum Onkelos distinct mention is twice made of Him, [a Gen. xlix. 10, 11; Num. xxiv. 17.] while in the other Targumim no fewer than seventy-one Biblical passages are rendered with explicit reference to Him.

If we now turn to the views expressed by Philo about the Logos we find that they are hesitating, and even contradictory. One thing, however, is plain: the Logos of Philo is not the Memra of the Targumim. For, the expression Memra ultimately rests on theological, that of Logos on philosophical grounds. Again, the Logos of Philo approximates more closely to the Metatron of the Talmud and Kabbalah. As they speak of him as the 'Prince of the Face,' who bore the name of his Lord, so Philo represents the Logos as 'the eldest Angel,' 'the many-named Archangel,' in accordance with the Jewish view that the name JeHoVaH unfolded its meaning in seventy names for the Godhead. [1 See the enumeration of these 70 Names in the Baal-ha-Turim on Numb. xi. 16.] As they speak of the 'Adam Qadmon,' so Philo of the Logos as the human reflection of the eternal God. And in both these respects, it is worthy of notice that he appeals to ancient teaching. [2 Comp. Siegfried, u. s., pp. 221-223.]