Philo of Alexandria. Jean Danielou
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the two Egyptians. The relentless adversaries of Philo and the Alexandrian Jews saw their careers end tragically. Flaccus had perished. Philo could thus judge that the God of the Jews avenged his persecuted servants.
After his finally successful mission, Philo returned to Alexandria at the end of A.D. 41. We can imagine the reception he received. He had been the savoir of the Jewish community. It remained for him to finish this labor by drawing a lesson from it. It is then that he wrote In Flaccum, presumably dedicated to the new Roman governor of Alexandria and the Legatio ad Gaium addressed to Claudius. In his fashion, the Christian Apologists of the following century addressed their books to the Emperor. Philo was then over sixty. We know nothing of his last years or of the date of his death.
1. J. Schwartz, “Note sur la famille,” 595–96.
2. See Goodenough, The Politics of Philo, 65–66.
3. Fuks, “Notes on the Archive,” 216.
4. Schwartz, “Note sur la famille,” 596.
5. Ibid., 601–2.
6. Ibid., 599.
7. [Translator: this is not in De Congressu, 17, which is on Philo, IV, 467, nor in other paragraphs whose numbers are likely misprints of 17. Furthermore, De Congressu is allegorical and exhortative rather than biographical. In any case paragraphs 17 and 18 do recommend the study of rhetoric and philosophy: “Rhetoric, sharpening the mind to the observation of facts and training and welding thought to expression, will make the man a true master of words and thought, thus taking into its charge the peculiar gift which nature has not bestowed on any other creature. Dialectic is the sister and twin, as some have said of Rhetoric, distinguishes true argument from false and combats the plausibilities of sophistry and thus will heal that great plague of the soul deceit. It is profitable to take them and the like for our early associates and for the field of our preliminary studies.” ]
8. Philo VII, 475, 477.
9. Philo IX, 127, 129.
10. Ibid., 155, 157, 159.
11. Ibid., 163, 165.
12. Ibid., 165, 167
13. Philo I, 279.
14. Ibid., 125.
15. De Opificio Mundi, 128; De Vita Mosis, 216, etc.
16. Wolfson, Philo, I:96.
17. See Thyen, Der Stil, 7–11.
18. Wolfson, Philo, I:98.
19. Ibid., I:79.
20. Friedländer, Geschichte der jüdischen Apologetik, 10ff.; Dalbert, Die Theologie.
21. Philo VII, 477.
22. Goodenough, An Introduction, 79.
23. Philo IX, 321.
24. Ibid.
25. Bell, Jews and Christians in Egypt, 12–16.
26. Today Saint-Bernard-de-Comminges in Haute-Garonne.
27. The Life and Works of Flavius Josephus, 550.
28. See Mireaux, La reine Bérénice.
29. Norden, Genesiszitat.
30. Bell, Jews and Christians in Egypt, 23–26.
31. Musurillo, The Acts of Pagan Martyrs.
Chapter 2
Philo and His Time
Philo’s biography has shown him at the crossroad of Judaism, Hellenism, and Roman civilization. We now pose the question of discovering what he knew in these three areas. We begin by seeing how many tendencies collide in the Jewish world, whether Palestinian or Hellenistic. This late Judaism is simultaneously a period of messianic Zealots and cosmopolitan Herodians, of Pharisaic legalism and Essene pietism. We witness an apocalyptic strain flourish there at the same time as the Gnostic interpretation of Genesis. Similarly, many tendencies see the light of day in Greek philosophy. It is a time of eclecticism, as Cicero had shown half a century earlier: Stoicism, Platonism, and Aristotelianism combine in various proportions. Lastly, at the political level, this is a period when the imperial ideology is elaborated but also of republican revolts.
It would be an impossible task to attempt to draw of picture of such a complex world. Equally, it would be meaningless. What matters to us is what Philo in fact deemed important. Thus, as Wolfson has clearly shown, pagan religious trends affected him little. His Jewish faith makes him impermeable to them. He spoke of them only to criticize. To learn what he knew, the best thing is to query him. We ask ourselves which contemporary tendencies he discussed. It happens that there is a group of his works that precisely set out less his ideas than those of his time. These works will be our sources here. We will see what Philo tells us about Jewish pietism, Greek philosophy, and Roman politics.
Philo and the Essenes
The core of Philo’s thought is indisputably Biblical. Almost all of his output is Scriptural commentary. He uses the Greek Septuagint translation done at Alexandria itself during the previous centuries. These Biblical sources of Philo’s thought are not what interest us for the moment. We will devote a long study to them as well as to the exegetical methods that he found at Alexandria. Our goal is different now. We want to discover what Philo knew about contemporary Judaism. This is the question we put to him. Indeed Philo spoke of Judaism. He wrote an Apology for the Jews of which Eusebius has given us important fragments. In the book Every Good Man is Free, he presented his