Metabiblical

There are very few first-century Jews who have left substantial writings surviving to the present. I know of only three: Paul, Josephus, and Philo.

According to Reventlow, Philo lived from about 20 BCE to some time beyond 40 CE. During that time, Philo wrote a large quantity of biblical commentary. A little bit of quick calculation suggests that the surviving works of Philo come to about 900,000 words in English, or about 3,600 pages at 250 words per page.

Philo worked to synthesize Greek philosophy, an eclectic blend including elements of Platonism and Stoic thought, with the Septuagint, reading Moses as a philosopher. While Philo, like traditional Jews to this day, continued to view the Mosaic commandments as literally binding, he saw Moses’ writings as having a deeper philosophical meaning, and even held that Greek philosophy had in fact originated with Moses.

For the interested reader, the complete works of Philo are available in English online, here: https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/

Did you notice that the link above said Early Christian Writings, rather than Jewish? This is one of the peculiarities of history — Philo’s work has been preserved by Christian hands, as historically Christians have found quite a bit that they liked in Philo, while Philo’s works have not been preserved among the materials of traditional Judaism.

And indeed, much of Philo’s method looks more like later Christian interpretation than later Jewish interpretation, particularly in terms of how Philo thinks about the Logos.

In Philo’s thought, God is an unchanging and perfect being, living in the world of Forms, and utterly distinct from the imperfect physical world, with all its constant changes. There is a sort of conceptual gap between the spiritual world where God exists and the physical world. How is God to “reach across” that gap and interact with the world?

In Philo’s thought, there exists a sort of mediator called the Logos, which is in some way identified with God, or is a “second God”. It is through the Logos that God interacts with the world.

A very similar line of thought opens the book of John:

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. 2 It was, in the beginning, with God. 3 All things were made through it, and without it nothing was made that was made. 4 In it was life, and the life was the light of man. … 14 And the Logos became flesh, and dwelt among us.

This theology of the Logos would go on to develop further in Christian thought, eventually developing into the Trinitarian theology that Christianity would use to explain the relationship between the Christ of Christianity and the God of the Old Testament.

Although a contemporary of Jesus — Philo was born before Jesus and died after him — there is no mention in Philo’s 900,000 words of Jesus of Nazareth. Nevertheless, Philo’s allegories and Logos theology would supply the framework that Christianity would use to understand the Old Testament as a Christian document.

In the next installment, we will turn our attention to biblical interpretation as found in the New Testament.