time is itself measured by the sun, and can therefore have existed only after the creation." In regard to Eve's issuing out of Adam's side, he says, "This is a mythical statement"; for how can a human being be formed out of a man's side?" Again, Adam's hiding himself from God cannot be literally true, for God is present everywhere. The name Bathuel means literally "daughter of God;" this, says Philo, denotes Wisdom (Sophia); and as to the difficulty of making the father of Rebecca a female, he adds, Wisdom, God's daughter, is to be deemed masculine and a father, as begetting in the soul science, prudence, and all praiseworthy actions. The whole Pentateuch is in Philo's view more or less allegorical, some parts having no meaning except a figurative one; the larger portion, commencing with the account of the Patriarchs, is historical, yet in the historical fact lies hid a deeper meaning.

The earliest traces of Jewish allegory may be found in the Book of Proverbs 10. That Philo only adopts what was already familiar is shown not only by his assuming the ready assent of his hearers, but by often giving different renderings of the same passage as understood by different expositors". He was preceded among others by Aristobulus, by the author of the Book of Wisdom, and also by the LXX, which often substitutes allegoric paraphrase for translation. Philosophy cramped by orthodoxy was forced into the way of allegory as the only means by which new opinions could be grafted upon old traditions. By this the most discordant elements were reconciled to the Jewish mind under a popular name. Philo often states that the Greek philosophers copied from Moses; and Aristobulus who lived 150 years earlier says expressly that not only the poets, as Orpheus, Homer and Hesiod, but the most eminent Greek thinkers, especially Plato, had derived their lore from some old version of the Pentateuch. Josephus, following the same tendency, promises an extended

9 « Το ρητον επι τουτου μυθώδες εστιν.” Philo, Mangey, i. 70.

10 Prov. iii. 18; xi. 30.

"Comp. Mang. i. 513. 638. Pf. iv. 124; v. 54.

allegorical theory, and many similar instances occur in the Pauline epistles. Like the author of Hebrews', Philo confines to the "wise" those recondite expositions 13 which he compares to the Pagan mysteries, enjoining the initiated to withhold them from the profane". He probably assumes the style of the Hierophant more for effect than from any absolute necessity for secrecy; yet there appear to have been then as now many illiterate and bigoted persons who, obstinately attached to the "beggarly elements" of the letter, would have felt outraged by innovation 15. On the other hand many of those favoured persons who might be said to be among the initiated (θεοφιλεις and θεραπευται) incur the censure of Philo for excess in the use of allegory, thus abandoning wholly the historic sense, and endangering all faith in the national institutions and privileges.

§ 2.

THE DIVINE POWERS AND THE LOGOS.

God being perfectly pure and holy cannot touch the impure and imperfect. The Alexandrian Jews therefore removed their Deity from immediate contact with the world, adopting the oriental notion, which though properly forming no part of Plato's philosophy may yet seem to have been countenanced by him, of the impurity of matter as source of evil'. Pantheism is on this account impious; it is to make the world to be itself God instead of God's work". God dwells alone in inaccessible solitude; his emblem, or that of his everlasting associate,

12 Heb. v. 11.

14 Pfeif. ii. 26. 100. 144.

13 Pfeif. v. 316. 332.

15 Pfeif. ii. 24. Mang. i. 146.
ύλης ψαύειν τον ίδμονα και μακαριον.”
Wisd. ix. 15. There were however

1 « Ου γαρ ην θεμις απείρου και πεφυρμένης Pfeif. v. 126; comp. ii. 258. Mang. ii. 261. other precedents both Greek and Oriental besides Plato for ascetic maxims and practice.

2 Pfeif. iv. 162.

Wisdom, is the solitary dove; his unchangeableness is eternal repose; with him, not in the changing world, dwell true freedom, peace and joy; and the "aσuntai σopias," the wrestlers ασκηται σοφιας,” for wisdom and virtue whose highest aim is to become like God3, must court the solitude which is pleasing to him; they must forsake the flesh as the Israelites escaped from Egyptian bondage, quitting, as did the Levites*, not only country and kindred, but even themselves, in order to approach nearer to God. As in the O. T. idea of the life being in the blood good men had been carried up alive to God, so on the spiritual principle of death being the commencement of true life, it became desirable to anticipate it by self-mortification. Such ideas led numbers to quit society for the purpose of spiritual improvement, giving rise to the remarkable ascetic communities of the Therapeutæ and Essenes. These monastic saints are described as pale and wasted men who try to overmaster the flesh by the spirit so as to become if possible altogether soul". Rarely they leave their abodes, or if they do, they sojourn in desert places', imitating Moses who after 40 days' abstinence on the lonely mount became so glorified that the Israelites could not endure the brightness of his presence. The same tendency to renounce common human relations and enjoyments as prejudicial to a divine life obtained a place in certain Christian dicta' which long continued to influence the Ebionites, and on which a painful commentary was given by the "sainted libertine" of Assisi, when stripping off his rags he threw them at his father's feet, exclaiming, "Take back what was your own; henceforth I acknowledge no father but him who is in heaven."

3 "Ežopolovalaι sq." Mangey's Philo, ii. 193. 197. 404.

* Mangey, i. 337.

"Metathesis," or translation, thus came to be confounded with "metanoia," in the type of Enoch. Ecclûs. xliv. 16; comp. LXX, Gen. v. 24; and the idea recurs in Philo, Mang. ii. 410. Pfeif. v. 238. Hence Heb. xi. 5.

Pfeif. iv. 334.

8

M. ii. 145. Comp. 2 Cor. iii. 7.

7 M. ii. 279. Pfeif. v. 240.

Matt. v. 29; vi. 25; x. 9; xix. 12. 23. 27. Luke xiv. 26.

When God had been removed beyond the world and all impurities of matter, it became necessary to devise some means of bringing him back again, to account for his admitted control over nature generally, as well as for the particular interpositions recorded in Scripture. Pantheism was excluded as profane; and the only remaining resource was that of emanations or intermediate beings. The connecting link always required between the universal and individual when broken in regard to the Supreme divinity was supplied either by a subordinate person or by a plurality of persons. The personal Will and Word by which God made the world, implied ideas in the divine mind and powers in the creating agent. It was, according to Philo, through his "Powers" that God created the universe and maintains it. These powers are of two kinds; the ideal archetypes of creation, and secondly, spiritual beings dwelling in the air; both are "duvaμeis vπngeтovσaι,” “ministering spirits," a sort of body guard surrounding the eternal and constituting his "glory." They are innumerable as the stars and of different kinds. Some descending the ladder of the firmament become involved in mortal bodies; others escaping soar aloft, while the most pure and godlike, who never yearned after the flesh, act as emissaries of the Supreme; they are the divine mandates or "oyo," the Dæmons and Heroes of the philosophers, and the Angels of Moses. The ministry of the λoyo ayyɛλo is either carried on under a visible form, as by the three men who appeared to Abraham at Mamre, or invisibly, as in the influences guiding the soul to truth and virtue. Floating between abstraction and personality they include the Creative attribute through which God has his name ɛos, that of Dominion by virtue of which he is zugios; moreover Legislation, Mercy, Peace, Wisdom, &c. When Philo wishes to explain the scriptural Theophanies, he treats the "Powers" as persons; again, fearing lest divine agents distinct from God should lead to polytheistic mistake, he assures us that they are only aspects or modes of operation inseparable from God as the senses and faculties from the

human soul. The paradox of imagining the same beings to be both persons and abstractions, united with God yet separate from him, is excused on the ground of the feebleness of the intellect, and its incapacity to grasp at once the majestic union of the divine perfections.

The duvaμes collectively are the half-personified constituents of the ideal world which are again comprehended and absorbed in the divine Logos. The word Logos has many meanings. It unites speech and reason, word and thought. The Hebrew "Dabar" seems equally extensive, being used generally for "matter" or "thing," like the Latin res allied to pnua, and the German sache from sagen 10. The divine Logos may be either the direct voice of God, his written oracles, or his natural laws, either distributed as "xoyo" or personified as "ayyeλo;" λογοι” αγγελοι;”

and as the Logos of man is either enunciated (googinos) or unspoken thought (evdiabɛtos), so the divine is twofold; one kind answering to the nooμos vontos or ideal", the other the manifested world', or development of the ideal by God's creative fiat.

Philo adroitly transfers to Moses the Platonic doctrine of ideas. God made the ideal world on the first day, and as the plan of a city prearranged by its projector, the invisible patterns of the universe reposed in the mind of its Author. The divine Logos may be either the sum or residence of the ideas"; comprehending either way the infinite variety of

10 Words therefore are things in Jewish etymology as in Jewish philosophy. The term translated things in our version is inuara in the LXX. Of a king it may be said that his word is tantamount to act (Eschyl. Suppl. 545, Bothe. Judith ii. 2. Eccles. viii. 4. Esth. vii. 8. Matt. viii. 8); especially in the call of the King of kings. (Ecclûs. xlii. 15. Wisd. ix. 1. Psal. xxxiii. 6. 9. 4 Esd. vi. 38; xvi. 55.) Hence Philo gives to God the name of the "Speaker” (“ 'O λaλwv." Pfeif. iv. 268.) Εννοησις” οι " λογισμος θειος.” Διανόησις.

13 Quoting Gen. i. 27 and ii. 5.

12

14 So the "holy tabernacle" in Wisd. ix. 8 is not merely the Cosmos, the outstretched tent of Isaiah (xl. 22. Acts vii. 44), but the "Cosmos noetos," the universe of ideas encircling the Deity as a garment. Sophia, too, according to Philo (Pfeif. iv. 192), is the "palace" of the great King.