[pg.7] It is a melancholy reflection upon the history of the Jews that they have failed to pay due honor to their two greatest philosophers. Spinoza was rejected by his contemporaries from the congregation of Israel; Philo-Judæus was neglected by the generations that followed him. Maimonides, our third philosopher, was in danger of meeting the same fate, and his philosophical work was for long viewed with suspicion by a large part of the community. Philosophers, by the very excellence of their t

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY AT ALEXANDRIA The three great world-conquerors known to history, Alexander, Julius Cæsar, and Napoleon, recognized the pre-eminent value of the Jew as a bond of empire, an intermediary between the heterogeneous nations which they brought beneath their sway. Each in turn showed favor to his religion, and accorded him political privileges. The petty tyrants of all ages have persecuted Jews on the plea of securing uniformity among their subjects; but the great conqueror-statesm

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO "The hero," says Carlyle, "can be poet, prophet, king, priest, or what you will, according to the kind of world he finds himself born into." [39] The Jews have not been a great political people, but their excellence has been a peculiar spiritual development: and therefore most of their heroes have been men of thought rather than action, writers rather than statesmen, men whose influence has been greater on posterity than upon their own generation. Of Philo's life we k

PHILO'S WORKS AND METHOD The first thing that strikes a reader of Philo is the great volume of his work: he is the first Jewish writer to produce a large and systematic body of writings, the first to develop anything in the nature of a complete Jewish philosophy. He had essentially the literary gift, the capacity of giving lasting expression to his own thought and the thought of his generation. Treating him merely as a man of letters, he is one of the chief figures in Greek literature of the fir

PHILO AS A PHILOSOPHER Save for a few monographs of no great importance, because of the absence of original thought, Philo's works form avowedly an exegesis of the Bible and not a series of philosophical writings. Nor must the reader expect to find an ordered system of philosophy in his separate works, much more than in the writings of the rabbis. As Professor Caird says, [234] "The Hebrew mind is intuitive, imaginative, incapable of analysis or systematic connection of ideas." Philo's philosoph

PHILO AND JEWISH TRADITION We have seen from time to time how Philo's interpretation of the Bible corresponds with Palestinian Jewish tradition; and we must now consider more in detail the relations of the two schools of Jewish learning. Until the last century it was commonly supposed that no close relation existed, and that the Alexandrian and Palestinian schools were independent and opposed; Scaliger, the greatest scholar of the seventeenth century, wrote [280] that "Philo was more ignorant of

The following are the chief works which have been consulted and are recommended to the student of Philo: The standard edition of Philo is still that of Thomas Mangey, Philonis Judæi opera quæ reperiri potuerunt omnia. 1742. Londini. A far more accurate and critical edition, which is provided with introductory essays and notes upon the sources of Philo, is in course of publication for the Berlin Academy, by Dr. Leopold Cohn and Dr. Paul Wendland. The first five volumes have already appeared, and

The references to Philo's works are made according to the chapters in Conn and Wendland's edition, so far as it has appeared. In referring to the works which they have not edited, I have used the pages of Mangey'a edition; but I have frequently mentioned the name of the treatise in which the passage occurs, as well as the page-number. I have employed the following abbreviations in the references: [pg.269]...