PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA

Philo was born around 20 BCE into the Jewish aristocracy of Alexandria, the greatest city of the Hellenistic world. Alexandria’s Jewish community was ancient, influential, and Greek-speaking — the Hebrew Bible had been translated into Greek there (the Septuagint) centuries before Philo’s birth. He grew up bilingual in culture: Jewish by faith and practice, Greek by education and language.

His family was extraordinary. His brother Alexander the Alabarch managed tax collection for the Roman government and was wealthy enough to lend money to the Herodian dynasty. His nephew Marcus married a Herodian princess; another nephew, Tiberius Julius Alexander, apostatized from Judaism to pursue a Roman career, eventually commanding troops at the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Philo could have pursued power and wealth. He chose philosophy.

He received a comprehensive Greek education: Homer, the tragedians, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, rhetoric, music, mathematics. But his central commitment was to the Torah, which he read in Greek. His life’s work was showing that Moses and Plato taught the same truths — indeed, that Plato had learned from Moses. This wasn’t mere apologetics; Philo believed it. The deepest Greek philosophy, he thought, derived from the deepest Jewish revelation.

His method was allegory. The literal text of Scripture, while valid, concealed philosophical meanings accessible through interpretation. When Genesis describes the creation of Adam, it teaches Platonic psychology: the human being as rational soul embodied in matter. When Scripture speaks of God’s “hand” or “anger,” it accommodates human weakness; God is actually incorporeal, impassible, beyond all description. The Torah is philosophy encoded for those who can read it.

In 38 CE, violent pogroms erupted against Alexandria’s Jews. The Greek population attacked Jewish quarters; the Roman prefect Flaccus permitted the violence. Jews were herded into a ghetto, beaten, killed. When Flaccus fell from favor and was executed, the Jews appealed to the new emperor, Caligula.

Philo, now elderly, led the delegation. They met Caligula in Rome and followed him to Puteoli, seeking an audience. Caligula mocked them: “So you are the god-haters who do not believe me to be a god?” He was installing his statue in the Jerusalem Temple — an act that would have provoked mass revolt. Philo’s mission seemed doomed. Then, in January 41 CE, Caligula was assassinated. The statue was never installed. Philo returned to Alexandria and wrote an account of the embassy.

He died sometime after 40 CE — we don’t know when or how. His writings survived because Christians found them useful: his Logos doctrine, his allegorical method, his synthesis of faith and philosophy. Jewish tradition largely forgot him. The philosopher who tried to bridge two worlds found his home in neither — and his influence everywhere.

Philo’s central project is synthesis: showing that Jewish Scripture and Greek philosophy teach the same truths. This required sophisticated hermeneutics. Scripture speaks literally (soma — body) and allegorically (psyche — soul). The literal level is valid for practice: follow the law, honor the Temple, keep the Sabbath. The allegorical level reveals philosophical depths: Platonic metaphysics, Stoic ethics, mystical ascent.

His theology is apophatic. God is absolutely transcendent — beyond being, beyond thought, beyond description. We can say what God is not, never what God is. The names and attributes Scripture assigns to God are accommodations to human weakness. God has no passions (impassibility), no body (incorporeality), no change (immutability). Philo anticipates the entire negative theology tradition.

Between the transcendent God and the material world stands the Logos — Word, Reason, divine intermediary. The Logos is God’s instrument in creation, the pattern of the intelligible world, the immanent rationality pervading nature. It is called “firstborn Son of God,” “image of God,” “second God” (deuteros theos). This language would prove immensely influential for Christian Trinitarian theology, though Philo’s Logos is not a person but a divine power.

Creation happens in two stages. First, God creates the intelligible world — the realm of Forms or Ideas, the Platonic template. Then the Logos shapes matter according to this template, producing the sensible world. The sensible world is good (contra Gnostics), an image of the intelligible, but inferior to its model.

Human beings span both worlds. The rational soul (nous) is akin to the divine, capable of ascending to God through contemplation. The irrational soul is bound to the body, dragged down by passion and sensation. Salvation is the mind’s return to God — achieved through ethics (Stoic self-mastery), through study (allegorical interpretation), and through mystical experience (direct vision of God, which Philo claims to have experienced).

Moses is the supreme philosopher because he achieved complete union with God. On Sinai, he “entered the darkness where God was” — not ignorance but super-knowledge, knowing by unknowing. The Torah he delivered is therefore the highest philosophy, encoded for those who can read it.

This synthesis shaped everything after. Christians found in Philo’s Logos a bridge to their own theology. Church fathers borrowed his allegory wholesale. Medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophers followed his lead in harmonizing revelation and reason. The entire project of “faith seeking understanding” begins here.