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The Works of Philo: Complete and Unabridged, New Updated Edition

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Philo Judaeus, the great Jewish exegete and philosopher, was a contemporary of Josephus and the Apostles Paul and Peter during the 1st century A.D. This volume of his complete works must be one of the most, if not the most, exhaustive commentaries on the five books of the Old Testament (the Pentateuch) in existence.

In true rabbinic fashion, Philo discourses on the letter and spirit of the Pentateuch, from all the major characters of the five books of the Old Testament to the creation of the world. His prose style is a combination of stream-of-consciousness, meditation, and textual exposition. Philo's works are not merely a collection of essays on the Pentateuch, but a window into rich allegorical and contemplative mind of a great rabbi--the Pentateuch interpreted by a rabbi within the context of first century Hellenism buttressed by nearly 2000 years of a tradition personally handed down from God. Philo addresses the reader in 2nd person; it is almost as if the reader was a student sitting and listening at the feet of the rabbi.

It is, however, easy to lose one's place in the text. Philo divides his essays topically: e.g., The Creation of the World, Abel, Cain, Noah's Drunkenness, Abraham's Exodus from Ur, The Tower of Babel, Moses, etc. Within each essay, however, Philo waxes upon the topic and upon anything tangentially related to it in a great stream-of-consciousness. Moreover, the text is invariably printed in two columns, justified, separated with a line in 10 point font on every page, front and back. If it were not for the consecutive paragraph numbering, the text would seem like a great jumbled mass of impenetrable rabbinic commentary.

But Philo writes some true gems, and it is worth culling the dense text for them. His first essay alone, "On the Creation of the World", justifies purchasing the entire volume. Philo's exposition of Genesis chapter 1 is second to none. Not even St. Augustine's commentary of Genesis in "City of God" raises you to such heights. One of Philo's many insights into the purpose behind the order of creation is his answer to why God created vegetation before He created the sun. Philo's final essays, "Questions and Answers," offers his interpretation into every conceivable question concerning the Book of Genesis. In between "On the Creation of the World" and "Questions and Answers" are fascinating commentaries on all major characters in the first five books of the Old Testament and on the laws, the Ten Commandments and the 613 laws in the Pentateuch.

Philo's works are still relatively obscure. But they rank with the works of Josephus. Josephus gives us history; Philo, interpretation. It is as if Philo was a Jewish Augustine who mixed "Confessions" and "City of God" into one volume.

As tantalized and delighted as I was by the Classics of Western Spirituality anthology of Philo selections, I avoided buying this Hendrickson edition of the C.D. Yonge translation of the complete works of Philo of Alexandria until I could stand it no longer. Because Yonge worked in the 19th century, I thought his work would be as stilted as Hendrickson's Josephus by Whiston. I was wrong. Yonge's translation has been updated here by David Scholer to accord with a text discovered after Yonge wrote, keyed to Loeb Library numbers, with passages unavailable to Yonge newly translated. The text occasionally creaks, but it generally very readable, and actually enjoyable (not something that can be said of most ancient philosophical/theological texts!). The more modern Winston selections from the texts and their superior notes in the CWS edition are still excellent to have, but you really need to read more complete treatises to get into Philo's remarkable, even amusing, mind.

The writings of Philo Judaeus (Philo of Alexandria, c20 BC - c50 AD) are important to the historical examination of late Second Temple Judaism, the religious 'world' into which Christ came. A prominent scholar and exegete, Philo's writings are considered the most thorough and most representative documents illuminating Hellenistic Judaism. Philo is interesting to Christians because, like Saul of Tarsus (Paul the Apostle), he was a Pharisee, a student and interpreter of Hebrew Scripture. (The Pharisees were a scholarly rabbinical sect particularly known for their studies of the Pentateuch. Their exegetic work was esteemed such that they were held by many to be the spiritual "rulers" of Judaism. The Torah commentators who wrote the Talmud were Pharisees. They are generally criticized by Christians but it should be noted that they shared some important beliefs with Christians, namely the priority of the immaterial to the material, the promise of the Messiah, the existence of angelic beings, and of the Divine gift of eternal existence for those who enter a right relationship with God. The Pharisees famously opposed Jesus, but it is also known that a number of them became Christians. Philo however, who spent most of his life in Alexandria, and died c.50 AD, likely had little or no contact with Jesus' followers.) Not only a Hebrew scholar but a noted scholar within Alexandrian academe, Philo is an interesting expositor of Greek philosophy and mathematics of the period, showing a great fondness for Euclidean geometry and number theory. However, the exegesis of the scriptural Creation account and of the special laws and the Decalogue is the author's central focus. This complete and unabridged volume is no trivial work, perhaps only approached by the most serious-minded student.
From Philo's examination of the Creation account we learn that [two millennia ago] leading scholarship did not hold Genesis 1 to be a literal (i.e., scientific) accounting. Philo expresses certainty that Genesis 1 can only be rightly understood as spiritual allegory. "Literal" interpretations of Moses' language [within Genesis 1] must produce a god with a localized body, nostrils, mouth, hands, etc., wholly incompatible with the incorporeal God revealed in scripture (and required by reason, what kind of matter could the Maker of matter be made of?). The Creation account is rather understood as describing the relationship of Creator and creation -- God's intimacy ("hovering", Gen 1:2) and God's ultimacy ("over" the abyss, Gen 1:2). Philo's rejection of literal interpretations is often strongly worded: "let us take care that we are never filled with such absurdity..." and "let not such fabulous nonsense ever enter our minds."
We note that the ideas contained in modern philology are often not the concepts which were understood in earlier ages. For example, "the heavens and the earth" was understood [at least by some] to mean three-dimensional space itself plus time -- as "the heavens", and the constituents of the matter contained within space and time -- as "the earth". Thus Genesis 1:1 speaks of creation ex nihilo, everything from nothing [interestingly, as does the inflationary big bang theory]. The creation of light, the "separation" of light and darkness; God's "breath", "image", "likeness", speech, sight -- all of these expressions are understood as spiritual revelations into the nature of God's relationship to his creation (and not as a science text). The modern fundamentalist "literal" interpretation of Genesis 1 tends to overlook significant theological and philological indicators and ignores ancient expositors like Philo, Origen, Augustine, and Aquinas, disingenuously [or ignorantly] claiming that interpretations other than the supposed "obvious" one are modern inventions. Philo examines several allegorical interpretations in depth. Of comparisons of man to God, Philo states: "Moses says that man was made in the image and likeness of God. And he says well; for nothing that is born on earth is more resembling God than man. And let no one think that he is able to judge of this likeness from the characters of the body: for neither is God a being with the form of a man, nor is the human body like the form of God; but the resemblance is spoken of with reference to the most important part of the soul, namely the mind: for the mind which exists in each individual has been created after the likeness of that one mind which is in the universe as its primitive model, being in some sort the god of that body which carries it about and bears its image within it."

Philo's complete works, are very difficult to come by, yet this book makes his work accessible! This is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, as the Loeb edition is massive, and expensive. This is a must-have for all scholars, laymen, and those who enjoy extra-canonical literature, especially for insight to the Judaic background of the New Testament.

Philo of Alexandria was a contemporary of both Paul and Christ. Though he did not know them, it cannot be doubted that the Jewish philosopher made a significant impact on the early Christian world. He has been styled the first theologian on account of his hellenized Judaism, and for the fact that he espoused the concept of God's creating force - the Logos - as found in the Gospel of John, which was written nearly a half-century later. Philo's works may be divided into two groups: works that deal directly with the biblical texts, and those that do not. In the former works Philo links philosophy to the Pentateuch by the use of allegory, which uncovers how the Stoic concept of the Logos, and the Platonistic World of Forms are already present in the Old Testament; and in the later he describes the monastic order of the Therapeutae - mystics who claimed they saw the vision of God - the Essenes, and also defends the Jews against anti-Jewish acts by Gaius Caligula in an apologetic work "Embassy to Gaius." These works are a culmination of many divergent areas of thought; and to discover these works will be to discover the general milieu of Hellenistic ideas so pervasive in the Mediterranean world of the 1st century.

This collection of Philo's works, translated by the classicist C.D. Yonge, represents an affordable though dated collection of the Jewish mystic's works.

Philo is extremely important from the point of view of early Christianity, since he is a contemporary of Jesus and St Paul, and his allegorical method of interpreting the Bible had a strong impact on many important Christian Church Fathers, especially Origen, who introduced the allegorical method of reading the Bible into Christianity.

Philo interprets the Bible in an allegorical fashion (that is, he seeks for meanings past the literal sense of the letter of the text) to seek deeper spiritual truths about God and the cosmos. Philo justifies this using the assumption the Bible is the word of God, and because it is inspired it has infinite layers of meaning which delve into the deeper infinite mystery of God himself. In this sense, Philo is completely the opposite of scientific historians like Herodotus, Thucydides or Josephus, who read their sacred texts or cultural documents in terms of scientific history, and were averse to any myth-mongering or allegory. However, valuable historical information is especially to be found in Philo's 'Embassy to Gaius', and also his works on the Essene sect of Judaism, both very valuable sources of historical information for those interested in the time of Jesus and St Paul.

Philo's more mystical works interpret the Bible in terms of Neo-Platonic philosophy, which was flourishing in Alexandria where Philo studied and worked. He interprets key Old Testament texts in terms of the journey of the mind to God, leaving behind the body and the visible creation to the invisible realm of spirit where the incomprehensible God dwells, formless and in mystery. Philo is especially interesting in the way he treats many old testament characters and places in terms of stations on the mystical journey to the ineffable, a method which was taken over brilliantly by Origen and later applied extensively to the Old and New Testaments to read Christ into scripture. Also of interest is Philo's introduction of the Greek and Stoic concept of the logos, an intermediate agent between God and the world which comes from God, which God uses to form and create the world. It is possible the writer of the Gospel of John was influenced at least in part by this idea, when meditating on how Jesus could be both human and also the son of God, as Christian tradition was to believe, and the writer of the Gospel took this concept and adopted it to Christian belief in the appropriate way.

In any case studying Philo's works is essential for understanding the mindset of the world in the time of Christ, the Apostles and St Paul, and this collection represents a readily available and affordable copy of Philo's works.

I just received this excellent volume, and I'm already devoting way too much time to reading the text, reading more on line about Philo, and sending emails to others about this particular translation.

My parish priest is currently focusing on some of the Wisdom literature in the Old Testament, and as an adjunct to these lessons, I decided to give Philo a try. Indeed, Philo is keenly interested in Wisdom. He describes the Tabernacle as an image of Wisdom. What is also of interest to me is Philo's adoption of a dualist view of the world. The body is evil to him. One can easily infer that Mani and the successor schools of Christian dualism were clearly sewing on fertile ground in the subsequent centuries.

Philo writes as if he were speaking to a student, and this is only right as he would indeed have been imparting a great body of knowledge, as a true generalist, to students who have attached themselves to this man of learning who is the teacher of his school of philosophy. The reader too now gets to walk with this teacher.

It is no wonder that Patristic writers would find much of Philo to be a great value, and much of what he concludes to be rejected too -- the dualistic view of man and creation being a prime example. Still, to see the imagery and language of the Hellenistic world in Philo's writing gives one insight into the thoughts, the idioms, the common language of the thinkers of the Grecco-Roman world. His use of the Hellenistic imagery, vocabulary, and methods of reasoning will be seen again, and taken to new (transformed)levels by the Church Fathers of Christendom over the next several hundred years. For Patristic scholars, Philo seems like something of a prototype.

Philo speaks the language of Plato, Cicero, Seneca, and Aristotle. His religion is certainly different, but the world in which he lives is the same world, and he interprets, and divines the meanings of his Sacred Texts in the context of this world.

While some translations of philosophical and theological works, especially from antiquity, are so wooden and stilted as to make the text too formidable for non-academicians, not so this translation. Philo is made approachable to this reader in large part due to the translation. Despite the amount of reading, the translation assures that the text is never off-putting. Would that all translations could be this readable.

The works of Philo are important to scholars of history and philosophy for a number of reasons, and are found in an accessible translation here.

Jewish and Kabbalistic scholars will find early Neoplatonized commentary on the Jewish scriptures, while classicists will find useful comparative points regarding Roman practices, and philosophers will find useful developments of Plato's thoughts. This book really does have a great deal to offer many students of different disciplines. Christian scholars too will find a great deal of roots of early Church theology in this work as well.

I would highly recommend the study of Philo to most people, and this is a good translation of his works.

Along with Josephus no source is cited more than Philo when it comes historical biblical study. Incredibly literate and actually entertaining.

Philo (about 20 BCE to about 50 CE) of Alexandria, Egypt, was, according to Harry Wolfson's Philo, the first Jewish philosopher who "contributed anything new" to Jewish-Greek philosophy. His philosophy incorporated the somewhat mystical views of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (about 428 to about 348 BCE). About forty books that he wrote still exist that do not offer a systematic philosophy; they are, in essence, a collection of sermons.
Philo was convinced that the Bible should be understood on two levels. The first level contains its literal or plain meaning, words mean what they say. The second is an underlying or allegorical layer, which requires that the alert more intelligent reader go beyond the obvious and delve deeper into the text. Philo used allegory to interpret virtually everything in Scripture, including names, dates, numbers and events.
Philo argued that biblical allegories differ radically from Greek myths. Myths are man-made and false. They are invented stories designed to deceive the masses with what the educated philosopher knows is nonsense, because the masses are unable to understand and deal with the truth. The masses need myths to help them live without fear. Thus, myths do not teach the real truths of nature and how it functions; they only make people feel good and they stop or at least hinder people from committing many wrongs.
But, Philo insists, biblical stories are not lies. They are the work of a compassionate God and contain and transmit the real truth. Even biblical tales that were never designed to be taken literally have an underlying level of true divine doctrine, which can be mined and understood by using the allegorical method. Thus, for example, Philo states that the tales of creation, which are not true facts or even remotely real science, are parables with profound truthful life-essential significance below their false literal surface. The following are some examples where Philo interprets the Bible allegorically:
1. Genesis 6:6 states that after viewing the evils that humans committed God "reconsidered that He made man on earth, and He was sad of heart." Taken literally, the passage is stating that the all-knowing deity changed His mind and decided to destroy the human race. It also describes Him suffering a bout of sadness. This is contrary to the philosophical understanding of a God without defects and the view contained in I Samuel 15:29 - that God is not like man and does not change His mind. Thus, Philo could not accept the literal meaning of this verse. He realized that Scripture is speaking metaphorically: the human behavior resulted in horrific and harmful natural consequences, and it was as if God changed His mind and decided to no longer treat humans mercifully.
2. Deuteronomy 21:18 describes a case of parents with a stubborn and rebellious son who refuses to obey them. Philo felt that the biblical punishment, that the child be killed, was overly harsh. He offered a couple of allegorical interpretations, including interpreting the father as God, the mother as philosophy, and the child as a person who refuses to study philosophy to understand God and truth. The failure to study and understand philosophy, the allegory indicates, is tantamount to death.
3. Philo, as previously stated, used allegory in interpreting everything in Scripture, even when there was no contradiction with rational thought. Thus for example, he accepted the stories of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob literally, but also insisted that they should be understood as allegory, each patriarch represented a different type of behavior.
Philo's overuse of allegory made the rabbis very uncomfortable. They were concerned that Jews reading his books would begin to ignore the biblical laws. As a result, his books were ignored by Judaism for many centuries, until the middle ages, although they were accepted by Christians.