PHILO JUDAEUS

 

The Jewish philosopher, and contemporary of Jesus, Philo Judaeus, says:

“...for when he most Knew Himself, then did he most despair of himself, in order that he might attain to an exact knowledge of Him Who in reality Is.”[1]

Philo, in another work, writes;

“But explore yourselves only..., you will gain forthwith a sure Knowledge of God and His works.”[2]

Philo was an Alexandrian Jew of wide learning who wished to take the best of Greek philosophy and marry it to Hebrew thought. His work was to influence the early Christians as they sought for a metaphysical basis for their own faith.

 

An Introduction to Philo Judaeus

 

In the Torah God revealed himself to be the source of a great stream of Being, as the Sun is of light, and made it clear that true Judaism is fulfilled only when men recognize the nature of this deity, and ascend into ever higher participation in the Being of God thus radiated from the supreme and ultimately inaccessible One. In the process Philo assimilates the religious notions of paganism about him, particularly of the later forms of Platonism and Pythagoreanism. These taught the supreme and immaterial deity, but absorbed much of the emotion and form of the Mystery Religions when presenting the possibility of access to God, the Mystic ascent.[3]

 

The book by Walther Volker [Fortschritt und Vollendung bei Philo von Alexandrien, 1938], so sharply attacked this point of view that we can no longer assume without defending our major premises in methodology. Volker writing from the position of extremely conservative Protestantism, asserts that to use the term ‘mystic’ of Philo at all, as historians of religion have been freely doing, is to beg the essential question.

 

He believes that, in his own words, ‘there exists no true mysticism apart from the en Cristoi and the sacrament,’ and that the attempt ‘to make Philo responsible for the beginnings of Christian mysticism’ is motivated by the desire to discredit Christian mysticism at its very outset by its pretended extra-Christian origin. These hard words, directed against me more than any one else, not only misrepresent my motives, but my position. I have never dreamed of making Philo the origin of Christian mysticism, or any other mysticism. He seems to me to reflect a mystic movement in Judaism which as a whole acted with great influence on early Christianity. To limit mysticism to the experience “in Christ” is simply to rob us of the term by which we have long expressed a certain type of religious experience found all over the world.[4]

 

When divinity is put up in heaven, or on Olympus, and we feel for him as a child who bows in love and respect before a father, inspired by his majesty and eager to obey his commands, our religion is not mystical. But when, driven by an inner sense of lack, insufficiency, we cry out for a divinity or higher reality who or which will come into us, take away our dross, unite us to himself or itself, then we are mystics. The experience is one of classical ecstasy only occasionally for anyone, and never for most. Often it is a quiet sense of union, with few high points of emotion.[5]

 

A person of mystic and religious temper, for example, could not possibly come out from reading Plato’s ‘Dialogues’ with the same impressions as would a man to whom mysticism is vagary, and for whom positivistic analysis alone has meaning.

 

Philo Judaeus; in religion Jewish, in philosophy Neo-Platonist, with a Pythagorean interest in Number. He was contemporary with Jesus, and his mission in Judea, ‘yet knew Him not,’ as Philo lived in Egypt, in the centre of Hellenistic learning, Alexandria. The rich mixture of his cultural environment, made up as it was, of Egyptian, Greek and Oriental philosophical and religious systems, shows throughout all of his work. Much of his thought has parallels in the Hermetic and Neoplatonic writings of the period. He expounded his Jewish faith in the philosophical language of his day, and it is this example of the contemporary concerns and direction of argument to which we should pay much attention.

 

 

Know Thyself

 

Why do extend even to the heavens your learned ingenuity? Why do take up astronomy and pay such full and minute attention to the higher regions? Mark, my friend, not what is above and beyond your reach but what is close to yourself, or rather make yourself the object of your impartial scrutiny.[6]

 

What form, then, will your scrutiny take? Go in spirit to Haran - the land of the senses - the openings annd cavities of the body, and hold an inspection of eyes, ears, nostrils, and the other organs of sense, and engage in a course of philosophy most vital and fitting to a human being. Try to find out what sight is, what hearing is, what taste, smell, and touch are; in a word what sense perception is... But before you have made a through investigation into your own tenement, is it not an excess of madness to examine that of the universe? And there is a weightier charge which I do not as yet lay upon you, namely to see your own soul and the mind of which you think so proudly; I say “see” for to comprehend it you will never be able. Go to mount to heaven and brag of what you see there, you who have not yet attained to the knowledge of that which the poet speaks in the line;[7]

“All that existeth of good and ill in the halls of thy homestead.”[8]

 

But bring the explorer down from heaven and away from these researches draw the “Know Thyself,” and then lavish the same careful toil on this too in order that you may enjoy the happiness proper to man. This character Hebrews call “Terah,” Greeks “Socrates.” For they say that “Know Thyself” was likewise the theme of life-long pondering to Socrates, and that his philosophy was concerned exclusively with his own self....

 

Among these is Abraham who gained much progress and improvement towards the acquisition of the highest knowledge; for when most he knew himself in order that he might attain to an exact knowledge of Him Who in reality is. And this is nature’s law; he who has thoroughly comprehended himself, thoroughly despairs of himself, having as a step to this ascertained the nothingness in all respects of created being. And the man who has despaired of himself is beginning to know Him that is.[9]

 

 

On Knowledge of God.

 

This is a meditation on Exodus XXXIII. 13-23. Moses’ request and his vision of the ‘Backside of God’, the resultant Forms of God’s creation.

 

Doubtless hard to unriddle and hard to apprehend is the Father and Ruler of all, but that is no reason why we should shrink from searching for Him. But in such a search two principal questions arise which demand the consideration of the genuine philosopher. One is whether the Deity exists,...[10]

 

The other is what the Deity is in essence. Now to answer the first question does not need much labour, but the second is not only difficult but perhaps impossible to solve. Still, both must be examined. We see then that any piece of work always involves the knowledge of a workman,... The yearly seasons passing into each other, and then the sun and moon ruling the day and night, and the other heavenly bodies fixed or planetary and the whole firmament revolving in rhythmic order, must one not naturally of rather necessarily gain the conception of the Maker and Father and Ruler also? For none of the works of human art is selfmade, and the highest art and knowledge is shown in this universe, so that surely it has been wrought by one of excellent knowledge and absolute perfection. In this way we have gained the conception of the existence of God.[11]

 

It was this which Moses the sacred guide had before his eyes when he besought God with these words, “Reveal Thyself to me.” In these words we may almost hear plainly the inspired cry, “This universe has been my teacher, to bring me to the knowledge that Thou Art and dost subsist... But what Thou Art in Thy essence I desire to understand,... Therefore I pray and beseech Thee to accept the supplication of a suppliant, a lover of God, one whose mind is set to serve Thee alone,... Wherefore I crave pardon if, for lack of a teacher, I venture to appeal to Thee in my desire to learn of Thee.” He replies, “Thy zeal I approve as praiseworthy, but the request cannot fitly be granted to any that are brought into being by creation.”

 

“I extend all the boons which Humans are capable of receiving. But the apprehension of Me is something more than human nature, yea even the whole heaven and universe will be able to contain, Know Thyself, then and do not be led away by impulses and desires beyond thy capacity,...”[12]

 

“The powers which thou seekest to know are only discerned, not by sight, but by mind even as I, Whose they are, am discerned by mind and not by sight... But While in their essence they are beyond your apprehension, they nevertheless present to your sight a sort of impress and copy of their active working..[13]

 

“But I readily and with right goodwill will admit to you a share of what is attainable. That means that I bid you come and contemplate the universe and its contents a spectacle apprehended not by the eye of the body but by the unsleeping eye of the mind. Only let there be the constant and profound longing for wisdom which fills scholars and disciples with verities glorious in their exceeding loveliness.” When Moses heard this, he did not cease from his desire but kept the yearning for the invisible aflame in his heart.[14]

 

 

Self Knowledge Leading To Knowledge of God.

 

How strange it is, my friends, that you have been suddenly lifted to such a height above the earth and are floating there, and, leaving the lower air beneath you, are treading the ether above, thinking to master every detail respecting the movements of the sun, and of the circuits of the moon, and of the glorious rhythmical dances of the other constellations.

 

These are too high to be reached by your powers of thought, for a lot is theirs happy and divine beyond the common. Come down therefore from heaven, and, when you have come down, do not begin in turn to pass in review earth and sea and rivers, and plants and animals in their various kinds; but explore yourselves only and your own nature, and make your abode with yourselves and not elsewhere; for by observing the conditions prevailing in your own individual household, the element that is master in it, and that which is in subjection, the living and the lifeless element, the rational and irrational, the immortal and the mortal, the better and the worse, you will gain forthwith a sure knowledge of God and of His works.

 

Your reason will show you that, as there is mind in you, so there is in the universe, and that as your mind has taken upon itself sovereign control of all that is in you, and brought every part into subjection to itself, so too he, that is endued with lordship over all, guides and controls the universe by law and right of an absolute sway, taking forethought not only for those which are of greater, but for those which are of less importance in our eyes.

 

Quit, then, your meddling with heavenly concerns, and take up your abode, as I have said, in yourselves.

 

The third stage is when, having opened up the road that leads from the self, in hope thereby to come to discern the Universal Father, so hard to trace and unriddle, it will crown the accurate self-knowledge it has gained with the knowledge of God Himself.[15]