Philo of Alexandria - Books and Journals

114 part two
9944. H.M.Keizer,Life Time Entirety: a Study of ΑΙΩΝ in Greek
Literature and Philosophy, the Septuagint and Philo (diss. University of
Amsterdam 1999).
This study is devoted to the development of the meaning and interpretation
of the Greek word αών in the period from Homer to Philo. Although ‘eternity’
is the best-known meaning of αών, its earliest attested meaning is ‘life’. Investigation
of the usage and meaning of αών in Greek literature, from Homer up
to and including the Hellenistic period (Chapter II), leads to the conclusion that
αών means here either ‘lifetime’, more specifically a complete or completed life
(life-lot), or ‘all time’ (past, future, or both). Where the role of αών in Greek
philosophy is concerned (Chapter III), it is argued that for Plato and Aristotle,
life as a whole of time is the seminal notion in their reflection on αών and time
(ρνς). Hellenistic (immanentist) philosophy uses αών to designate ‘all time’
in relation to the universe. The other path in the history of αών is the usage and
meaning of the word in the Biblical context, i.e. in the Septuagint (Chapter IV).
It emerges that αών in the Septuagint is the standing translation of #olâm. #Olâm,
and hence αών in the Biblical sense, is time constituting the human temporal
horizon. Formulated in another way, it is all time coinciding with the created
world. Chapter V of the book is devoted to the biblical exegesis of Philo, the
first author in whom we find the meeting of the worlds of Greek thought and
the Bible documented. The chapter investigates Philo’s interpretation of Biblical
aiôn and the role he allots to philosophical αών (the latter especially in Her. 165,
Mut. 267, and Deus 31–33). It is concluded that Philo in his exegesis of the biblical
words aiôn and aiônios keeps to the biblical, i.e., ‘creational’, meaning of the
words, also when the adjective pertains to God. In Philo’s conception of Platonic
αών, the notion of ‘life’ again is important. For Philo, the intelligible world no
less than the perceptible world is created by God. αών in Philo is not used for
the life of God (as the doubly emended text of Deus 32 suggests) but in whatever
meaning it is used, it describes what belongs to the created realm. Two appendices
list and categorize all instances of #olâm and αών(ις)intheSeptuagintas
well as all instances of αών(ις)inPhilo.Reviews:D.M.Hay,SPhA 12 (2000)
206–209; R. A. Bitter, Mnem 55 (2002) 237–240. (HMK)
9945. H.-J. Klauck, ‘Accuser, Judge and Paraclete: on Conscience in
Philo of Alexandria,’ Skrif en Kerk 20 (1999) 107–118.
An abridged version in English of the essay summarized in RRS 9436. (DZ)
9946. G.H.vanKooten,‘Enoch,the‘Watchers,’Seth’sDescendants
and Abraham as Astronomers,’ in A. Brenner and J. W. van Henten
(edd.), Recycling Biblical Figures, Studies in Theology and Religion 1
(Leiden 1999) 292–316, esp. 311–315.
The article argues that one of the modes of reinterpretation employed by
Jews of the Greco-Roman period in the process of recycling figures from Moses’