To Philo Judsens, the divinity of Jewish law is the basis and test of all true philoso phy. Although. like his contemporaries, he holds that the greater part of the Penta teuch, both in its historical and legal portions, may be explained allegorically, nay, goes Eo far even as to call only the Ten Commandments, the fundamental rules of the Jewish theocracy, direct and int inedate revelations, while the other parts of the book are owing to :Moses: he yet holds the hitter to be the interpreter specially selected by God, to whose dicta in so far also divine veneration and strict obedience arc clue; and again, although many explanations of a metaphysical nature could be given to single passages, yet their literal meaning must not be tampered with. This literal meaning, according to him, is the essential part, the other explanations are mere speculation—exactly as the mid rash and some church fathers bold Only that allegorical method differed in so far from that of his contemporaries, that to him these interpretations—for which he did not dis dain sometimes even to use the numbers symbolically, or to derive Hebrew voids from Greek roots, and the like—were not a mere play of fancy, iu which he could exercise his powers of imagination, but, to a cc rtain extent, a reality, an inner necessity. lie clung to philosophy, as combined with the law. If the former could be shown, somehow or other, to be hinted at in the latter, then only be could be that which all his soul yearned to be—viz., the disciple of both: a Greek, with all the refinement of Greek culture; and a Jew—a faithful, pious, religious Jew. Nay, lie even urged the necessity of allegory from the twofold 11 ascii of the anthropomorphisms current in scripture mid from cer tain apparent superfluities, repetitions, and the like, which, in a record that emanated from the deity, must needs have a special meaningof their own, which required investi gation and a peculiar interpretation. See MIDRAtql, ILAGGADA. Yet this fanciful method never for one moment interfered with his real object of pointing out how Judaism most plainly rind unmistakably was based upon the highest ethical principles.
Ills writings develop his ideas and his system in the two directions indicated. In that division of his writings principally, which treats of the creation (Kosninpoin), he allows allegory to take the reins out of his hands; in that on the laws (Nomoi). on the other hand, he remains remarkably sober and clear, extolling the Mosaic legislation throughout, at the expense of every other known to him. In a very few instances only he is induced to find fault, or to alter slightly, by way of allegory, the existing ordi nances.
His idea of God is a pre-eminently religious, not a philosophical one. Ile alone is the real good, the perfect; the world has only an apparent existence, and is the source of all evil. God is only to be imagined as the primeval light, which cannot be seen by Itself, bat whirl' may be known from its rays, that fill the whole world. Being infinite and unerented, he is not to be compared with any created thing. He has therefore no name. and avails himself only in designations expressive of this "inexpressibility." He is :dso named the place (the talmudieal .1.1akont), because he comprises all space, and there is anywhere besides him. He is better than virtue and knowledge, bet ter than the beautitul and the good (Kalokagatheia), simpler than the one, more blissful than bliss. Thus. he has, properly speaking, no quality, or only negative ones. He is the existing unity or existence itself (an, on). comprised in the unpronounceable
tetragrainnutton. As er:ator, God manifests himself to man, and he is then called " The beginning:, the name, the word, the primeval angel." In this phase of active revelation of God, W illeh is as natural to him as burning us to the heat, and cold to the snow, we nctice two distinct sides, the pourer and the grace, to which corre spond the two na mes of Elohim and Adonai, used in the Bible. The pourer also gives the laws. and polishes the offender; while the grace is the beneficent, forgiving, mer •iful quality. Yet, since there is not to be assumed an immediate influence of God upon the world, their resretive natures being so different, that a point of contact cannot be found, an intermediate class of beings had to be created to stand between both through whom he could act in and upon creation, viz. : the spiritual world of ideas, which are not only "ideals," or types, in the Platonic sense, but real, active powers, surrounding God like a number of attendant beings. They are his messengers, who work his will, and by the Greeks are called good demons; by Moses, angels. There are very many different degrees of perfection among them. Some are immediate "serv ing angels;" others are the souls of the pious, of the prophets, and the people of Israel, NVil0 rise higher up to the deity; others, again, are the heads and chief rep resentatives of the different nations, such as Israel does not need, since they conceive and acknowledge the everlasting head of all beings, himself. The /ogos comprises all these intermediate spiritual powers in his own essence. See article Locos for Philo's views on thin part of his system. Man is a microcosm, a little world in himself, a creation of Logos, through whom he participites in the deity, or, as Scripture has it, "lie is cre ated in the image of God." lie stands between the higher and lower beings—in the mid dle of creation. The ethical principles of Stoicism, Philo identified with the Mosaic ethics, in which the ideal is most exalted moral perfectibility or smetity, and man's duties consist in veneration of God, and love and righteousness towards fellow-men. Philo holds firmly the belief in immortality. Man is immortal by his heavenly nature;lait as there are degrees in Ids divine nature, so there ant degrees in his immortality, which only then deserves this name when it has been acquired by an eminence of virtue. There is a vast difference between the mere living after death, which is common to all man kind, and the future existence of the perfect ones. Future recompense and punishment are not taken by him in the ordinary sense of the word. Virtue and sin both have all their rewards within themselves; but the soul, which is " pre-existing," having finished its course in the sulthmar world, carries this consciousness with it in a more intense and exalted manner. Paradise is oneness with God; there is no hell with bodily punish ment.3 for souls without a body, and no devil in the Philonic system.—Phile's Messianic notions are vague in the extreme, and he 'partly even interprets certain scriptural pas sages alluding to some future redeemer as referring to the soul. Yet lie indicates his belief in a distant time when some hero will arise out of the midst of the nation, who will gather all the dispersed together; and these, purified by long punishments, will henceforth form a happy, sinless, most prosperous community, to which all the other nations will be eager to belong.