Philo of Alexandria - Books and Journals

critical studies 1999 117
in the Wisdom of Solomon, especially 1:13 and 2:23–24. These passages reflect
what M. Kolarcik has termed the ‘ambiguity of death’, because Ps.Solomon
wishes to emphasize that there are different kinds of death—that of the body,
to which righteous and ungodly alike are subject, and that of the soul, to
which only the ungodly are subject because of their own choice to behave
immorally. Themes found in Philo that are echoed in Wisdom include the
distinction between death of the body and that of the soul, the notion that
spiritual death ‘entered the world’ as a punishment when Adam disobeyed God’s
commandment, the idea that Cain experienced his punishment when he killed
Abel, and the idea that Abel, though physically dead, remains alive to God. (EB)
9954. S. M. McDonough, YHWH at Patmos: Rev. 1:4 in its Hellenistic
and Early Jewish Setting, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen
Testament 2.107 (Tübingen 1999), esp. 79–84 and 162–169.
The title of the study refers to its main subject, a thorough historical analysis
of the background of the description of God in Rev 1:4 as ‘the One who is and
who was and who is to come’. Two sections survey the evidence that Philo can
bring to the discussion. In the first (pp. 79–84) the author first emphasizes that
for Philo God is essentially nameless, as is clear from a number of texts which
are given a brief analysis. Next it has to be asked whether Philo knew about
the tetragrammaton in Hebrew. It is concluded that he certainly knew about it
and may have seen it as underlying the LXX terms νand κρις. Hemay
well not have known how it was pronounced, but was aware of restrictions
in its use. In the second section (pp. 162–169) McDonough discusses the
evidence on Philo’s use of the Septuagintal self-description of God as νand
of its philosophical equivalent τ ν. The pre-existing convergence of these two
descriptions was a vital source of inspiration for Philo’s project of reconciling
religion and philosophy. In contrast to Plato and the Platonists Philo does not
use τ ν for the forms. Only God is ‘real being’, which means that he is radically
different firstly to all idols, and secondly to all other beings. It is also possible that
Philo derived God’s necessary being from the epithet ν,astepthatisalso
found in Greek philosophy. The discussion concludes with a brief examination
of the question whether Philo takes the epithets to indicate God’s everlasting or
timeless being. The most important text here is Deus 32, which in fact contains
a Dreizeitenformel parallel to Rev 1:4. (DTR)
9955. M. Meiser, ‘Gattung, Adressaten und Intention von Philos ‘In
Flaccum’,’ Journal for the Study of Judaism 30 (1999) 418–430.
The fictive speeches found in Flacc. do not allow the work to be classified as
pragmatic historiography, but fit the mimetic genre. The upshot of the treatise
asformulatedin§191thatGoddoesnotdeserthispeopledoesnotyetprovea
destination to Jews (against Gerschmann), whereas the lack of a specific Jewish
terminology, the pagan colour in which Judaism is presented, and the emphasis
on the loyalty to the emperor indicate that Flacc. is written for pagan readers (the