Philo Judaeus, or Philo of Alexandria, was a Jewish philosopher who lived from around 25 BC to AD 40. He was one of the first to try to combine Jewish religious beliefs with Greek ways of thinking.
Who Was Philo?
Philo came from an important family in Alexandria. He learned about both the Jewish faith and Greek ideas during his education. We do not know much about his life, but we do know that in AD 40, he led a group of Jewish representatives to Rome to meet with Emperor Caligula.
At that time, there was growing tension between Greeks and Jews in Alexandria. The Jewish community there was growing larger and becoming more successful in business, especially in selling wheat. This made some Greeks angry and jealous. In AD 42, the Greeks started riots and forced the Jewish people to leave certain parts of the city.
Because of these events, Philo wrote two books defending the Jewish people. One book was called Against Flaccus (about the governor of Alexandria) and the other was called Embassy to Caligula (about his meeting with the emperor in Rome)."
How Did Philo Bring Together Jewish and Greek Thinking?
The Jewish people in Alexandria were strongly influenced by Greek culture. They even read their holy writings in Greek instead of Hebrew. This Greek translation was called the Septuagint.
Even though these Jews lived among Greeks and followed some Greek customs, they kept their traditional Jewish beliefs. Philo was like this, too. He carefully followed God's law (found in the first five books of the Bible) and believed it was God's perfect message. He thought this law was important for everyone, both Jews and non-Jews.
At the same time, Philo's way of thinking was very Greek. He probably did not know much Hebrew (the original language of Jewish scripture). Instead, he learned from Greek teachers. When Philo read the Bible, he mainly studied the Old Testament, especially its first five books. He read these in Greek rather than Hebrew. Philo believed God had guided the translation of these books into Greek, so he did not need to look at the Hebrew version.
To understand Philo’s work, one must recognize that there are two reasons to accept Greek culture:
Jews living in Greek areas needed to understand Greek ways of life to survive.
The Jewish faith was meant to reach out to other people. The ancient Jewish prophets had said that Israel should be a light to teach non-Jewish people about God.
From his studies, Philo found many true ideas in Greek philosophy. He wanted to show how these Greek ideas could work together with the truth he found in the Bible. This was a big challenge for him. He needed to figure out how to accept new ideas while staying true to his faith. This is similar to how some Christians today try to understand how modern science fits with their religious beliefs.
How Did Philo Interpret the Scripture?
Philo had a special way of reading the Bible that helped him connect its teachings with Greek ideas. This way of reading is called allegory. When using allegory, readers look for deeper meanings hidden in the stories. Many people before Philo had used this method, and many others used it after him.
Using allegory, Philo could read the book of Genesis in a new way. Instead of seeing it as just old stories about what happened long ago (which is how Greeks might have seen it), he saw it as stories about how all people search for God and try to live better lives.
Philo believed Moses wrote these stories in a special way. He said that God had taught Moses, and Moses had also learned the best ideas from philosophy. Unlike other teachers who just made up stories, Moses could help people see important ideas through his writing.
When Philo read the Bible this way, he found deeper spiritual meanings in its stories and rules. These deeper meanings matched many of the true things he had learned from Greek thinkers.
When Philo thought about God, he was careful to compare Greek ideas with what the Bible taught. If Greek ideas did not match the Bible's teaching, he rejected them.
The Bible does not say much about how God made the world or what the world is made of. Because of this, Philo felt free to use ideas from Greek philosophers to help explain these things. Philo believed that both the Bible's teachings and the true parts of Greek philosophy came from God. In ancient Greek philosophy, Logos referred to a universal principle of order, logic, and knowledge that holds the world together. The human mind is made in the image of the divine Logos, and so it has some capacity to receive and discover truths about realities beyond what we can know by our senses.
What Did Philo Teach About God and How the World Was Made?
Of all the Greek thinkers, Philo thought Plato's ideas about God were closest to the truth. He agreed with Plato about several things:
God existed forever before he made the world. Even after making the world, God stayed separate from it and greater than it. The world cannot live or move by itself - it needs God to give it life and keep it moving. When God does this, the world works perfectly.
Philo believed God takes care of everything he created. The Greeks called this care "providence," but they thought it just meant God keeps nature working in its usual way. Philo saw it differently. He believed God cares about each individual thing he made. He thought God could even change how nature usually works if he wanted to.
God is one, but he made many different things. God never changes and does not need anything. God does not even the world he made. God created everything because he is good and wanted to share his goodness.
Moses wrote that God made the world in six days. But Philo thought God actually made everything at the same time. He believed the story of six days just helps us understand that God created everything in an organized way.
Philo taught that God made the world from nothing. There was nothing there before God created. God used all the available material when he made the world, which is why Philo believed there is only one world. God created the world because he wanted to, and Philo thought this might mean the world will last forever.
Philo noticed that the Greek philosopher Plato had similar ideas about God creating the world. He thought Plato must have learned these ideas from Moses's writings.
What Did Philo Say About the Logos?
When Philo developed his ideas about the Logos, he both used and changed some ideas from Greek philosophers. Plato had taught that there were perfect ideas that had always existed. He said that when God made the world, he looked at these perfect ideas as a pattern. But Philo disagreed with part of this teaching. He believed that only God had existed forever.
Philo found a way to combine these different ideas. He taught that the perfect ideas had always existed, but only as thoughts in God's mind. These thoughts only became a complete pattern when God decided to make the physical world we can see. For Philo, these perfect ideas existed only in God's mind, and God used them as a pattern when making our world.
Philo believed that the Logos was extremely important. It was more than just the tool God used to make the world we can see. He tried to explain the Logos in several important ways. Philo called the Logos "the idea of ideas." He saw it as the first-begotten Son of the uncreated Father and even called it a "second God." He believed the Logos was the perfect model for how human minds should work.
The Logos, according to Philo, had a special role. It was like a power that keeps everything God made working together. It helps people understand God's messages, acting like a bridge between God and the world God created. Like a priest, it carries people's prayers to God. Philo believed the Logos was present when God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, and that it lived inside Moses to guide him.
While some people wondered if the Logos was the same as God, Philo said it was only a picture or image of God. He did not think of the Logos as a person. Even today, it is hard to understand exactly what Philo thought the Logos was or how it related to God.
Many Christian writers later used some of Philo's ideas about the Logos. The author of the Gospel of John was especially important in this. In the beginning of his Gospel, John calls the Logos "the Word" and says God used it to create the world (see John 1:1–4).
We do not know much about where these ideas about the Logos first came from. We do know that other Jewish people who lived in Greek areas during Philo's time also talked about the Logos. When we look at how Philo used this idea, it seems he was more influenced by Greek philosophy than by the Bible's teachings.
What Did Philo Believe About How Humans Were Created?
Philo had other interesting ideas about how God created things. He believed the stars and planets were living beings with minds that could never do evil. However, he thought humans were different. Humans could be both good and bad, wise and foolish.
Philo believed God made all good things by himself. But since humans could be both good and bad, he thought they must have been made by lesser divine beings helping God. This is why we are told by Moses that God said, “Let Us make man” (Genesis 1:26). The word "us" was important to Philo.
Philo saw two separate steps in how humans were created. In the first step, God made an idea or pattern of what humans should be. This pattern was not physical. It had no body and wasn't male or female. It could never be corrupted or destroyed (Genesis 1:26). In the second step, as described in Genesis 2:7, "God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils."
This created the first physical human being, with a body and soul, who could die. Humans were now either male or female. Philo believed that when the first man and woman saw each other, they felt desire. This led to physical pleasure, which Philo saw as the beginning of doing wrong things and breaking God's laws.
Philo did not think we should take the story of the garden of Eden literally. He did not believe there were ever real trees of life or knowledge or that such trees would ever exist. Instead, he saw them as symbols:
The tree of knowledge represents understanding right from wrong
How Did Philo Think People Should Connect with God?
Philo's ideas show that he saw the world as split into two parts. He believed spiritual things were good and physical things were bad. These ideas come from the ideas of Plato, a way of thinking called Platonism. Philo tried to find these ideas in the Old Testament. Because of this way of thinking, Philo agreed with another group of Greek thinkers called the Stoics. They taught that only what is good for the soul matters. Philo believed God gave us the world to use for a while, not to own forever.
Philo taught that to grow closer to God, people needed to stop paying attention to the physical world around them. He generally believed people should deny themselves physical pleasures to focus on spiritual things.
The only temple worthy of God is a pure soul. Philo thought true faith comes from how we feel and think inside, not from the religious activities we do on the outside. The soul is like Abraham or like the Israelites wandering in the desert. Through spiritual self-discipline, the soul comes to realize that the body is a major obstacle to perfection.
The goal of this spirituality is to draw near to God, who has drawn the mind to himself. God is knowable by the mind. However, God is unknowable in himself. We can know only that he is, not what he is.
Philo believed that as people try to become better, they eventually learn something important: they cannot become perfect by themselves. They learn that being good is a gift from God. When people understand their own limits, they begin to truly know God and realize how much they need God's help.
How Did Philo's Ideas Affect Later Religious Teachers?
The Jewish historian Josephus used some of Philo's ideas in his writings. However, Philo had his greatest influence on early Christian writers and teachers. Over the next 200 years, the type of Jewish thinking that combined Greek and Jewish ideas (which Philo represented) became less important. Instead, the teachings of Jewish rabbis became the main form of Judaism.
However, Christians in the years 100–300 AD found many of Philo's ideas helpful. His writings were so important that people translated them into different languages, including Latin (the language of Rome) and Armenian. Several important early Christian teachers (called "church fathers") used Philo's ideas in their own work. These included Clement and Origen, who wrote in Greek, and Ambrose, who wrote in Latin.