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PHILO was an Alexandrian Jew, probably a Pharisee, and connected with a priestly family. Of his life little is known but that he was sent as chief of a deputation from the Jews of Alexandria to the Emperor Caligula, to defend themselves against Apion, who had accused them of refusing to pay due honours to Caesar. Beyond the fact that he paid a second visit to Rome in the time of Claudius, nothing further is known of his life.
But his works are of great interest. They show that there was a large and important school of thinkers in Alexandria, who made it their business to reconcile Judaism with Greek philosophy, especially with the philosophy of Plato. They did this by the unlimited use of allegory in their interpretation of the Scriptures. Thus Philo, commenting on the text (Gen. ii. 1), "The heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them," explains that the heavens meant Reason, and the earth Sensation. As for the world being created in six days, this could not be literal, since time had no existence till creation was accomplished. But six was a perfect number, and seven was still more perfect. The whole Biblical history is interpreted in like manner. The four rivers of Paradise are the four virtues. Adam is, again, Reason; Eve, sense and Passion; and so on.
But the most important of the conceptions of this school is their theory of the Logos; translated usually in the Christian Scriptures as the Word, but having the double meaning of Word and Reason, as in the similar instance of the Italian ragionare. Next to the Supreme God, in Philo's philosophy, came the Reason, Thought, or Word. Of this he speaks as the first-begotten Son of God; as the Creator and Governor of the world; as the second God; as God's High priest, as existing from all eternity. In other places he speaks of the Logos as the Idea of Ideas, from which issued first the Platonic world of invisible forms, and ultimately the visible universe. The momentous influence of this school of thought on Christian theology is obvious.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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