John Rather and Dr. James Siebach, Philosophy
Philo Judaeus was a deeply philosophic exegete of Hebrew scripture whose commitment to Greek philosophy led him to re-interpret the nature of the study of scripture. His reinterpretation is a form of philosophical reflection on the nature of reality within the context of the exegesis of scriptural texts. A Greek aristocrat, Philo received an education which emphasized the importance of philosophy, and particularly Platonism. His most mature works show influence from three schools of thought. First, Philo is a middle plantonist. He accepts Plato’s metaphysics of universal ideas and theory of creation. Second, Phho borrows from the Stoa a method of allegorical interpretation which he used to reveal Greek philosophical concepts in scripture. Third, Philo knew the Pythagoreans numbers symbolism and adapted it to his purposes. Philo also shows a deep respect for the Hebrew Bible, and particularly for the prophets of the Pentateuch. It is in the man Philo that these two worlds of philosophy and scripture merge and synthesize.
My research of Philo over the past year, made possible by this grant, has been of great intellectual and spiritual significance to me. In the first place, much of Philo’s work deals with his particular means of translation of the Pentateuch from Hebrew into Greek. As a result, a sufficient understanding of Philo’s work at times requires an excellent knowledge of the subtleties of these two languages. Drawing philosophical connections to Plato and others in light of these subtleties has proven to be an intellectually difficult, yet stimulating, project. In the second place, it is interesting to know that although Philo never knew or wrote of Christianity, by the third century A.D. he had already received the honorary title of Bishop in the Catholic Church. The reason for this is that many early Christian apologists drew heavily from Philo’s scriptural interpretive tradition to create a Catholic tradition. These apologists hoped that just as Philo had philosophically rationalized Judaism to the Hellenized Jews, so they might rationalize Christianity to the Greeks. For an L.D.S. scholar such a study provides a great deal of insight into the philosophical traditions and influences which affected the most primitive forms of Christianity.
My original objective was to show how the exegetic works of Philo made important contributions to the redirection of Jewish piety. I anticipated that these contributions would appear in the scriptural interpretive tradition in two forms. First, in the doctrine of man, as it appears in Timaeus 90a-d, which establishes the ideal of contemplation and the primacy of the intellect.
Second, in the doctrine of creation which affirms the rational structure of the universe derived from its model which is situated in the divine Logos. Although this project required a great deal of research which at times led in unanticipated directions, in the end I have concluded that my original thesis is accurate. The specific results of my research for this grant can be found in my Honors thesis.
In the remaining space of this project summary I provide three examples of Philo’s exegetical work. These all come from his work on the translation of the first chapter of Genesis. These examples are clear demonstrations of the two influences at work in Philo.
For example, Moses writes that God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters.” Philo suggests that on the second day God organized the four elements. The creation of the four elements is described by Philo as taking place “by means of God’s allincising Logos, which derived the formless primordial matter into heavy and light, or dense and rare. The rare was further divided into air and fire, and the dense into water and earth. The process of division was carried out with superhuman and meticulous accuracy, so that the halves are always equal to the last atom.”
Later in the Hebrew text Moses writes that “the evening and morning were the first day.” Of this Philo maintains, “(Moses) says that in six days the world was created, not because its Creator was in need of a length of time for his work, for it is a reasonable assumption that God does all things simultaneously, not only commanding but also thinking. Six days are mentioned because there was a need of order for the things coming into being. Order implies number, and of numbers, according to the laws of nature, the most appropriate for productivity is six, for counting from one it is the first perfect number, being equal to the product of its factors (1x2x3), as well as made up of the sum of these (1+2+3), its half being three; its third being two; its sixth, one.”
Finally, towards the end of the first chapter of Genesis Moses writes, “Let us make man in our own image.” Philo in this case suggests that image refers to the divine pattern of things which God created on the first day. He states, “Bezalel (Hebrew for “in the image of God”) means, then, ‘in the shadow of God,’but God’s shadow is his Logos, which he used as an instrument and thus created the whole world. This shadow and representation, as it were, is in turn the archetype of other things. For just as God is the Pattern of the Image, so does the Image become the pattern of others. Thus the Image, had been modeled after God, but man after the Image, which had acquired the force of a pattern.