Philo of Alexandria - Books and Journals

critical studies 2000 151
city, so there are two kinds of soul, one marked by order and virtue, the other
by disorder and vice. In certain passages Philo also criticizes the city and praises
solitude. This theme is also relevant to his idealized descriptions of two extraurban
communities, the Essenes and the Therapeutae. Finally the article briefly
touches on the theme of Jerusalem as the idealized city. Philo is a distant ancestor
of Augustine’s famous contrast between the city of God and the city of human
beings. The articles ends with some conclusions. Philo is seen as ambivalent
towards the city. He habitually makes three contrasts: between the ideal and the
reality of the city, between the good and the bad city, and between city life and
solitude. His thought represents a mixture of both classical and Judaic views.
From a historical point of view his conception looks both backwards to the ideal
of the classical polis and forwards to Christian views when the desert was to
become like the city. (DTR)
20066.D.T.Runia,‘Philo’sLongestArithmologicalPassage:De opificio
mundi 89–128,’ in L.-J. Bord and D. Hamidovic (edd.), De Jérusalem
à Rome: mélanges offerts à Jean Riaud (Paris 2000) 155–174.
The article was written as a preliminary study for the author’s commentary on
Opif. in the Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series (= 3108). The placement of
such a long excursus on the hebdomad in Philo’s commentary on the Genesis
creation account is quite remarkable and gives rise to two questions which are
examined in the article. Firstly, what is the principle of organization that Philo
uses to structure the excursus? The author first examines two structural analyses
made by K. Staehle and R. Radice and finds them both defective. A structural
analysis of the entire passage is given. It can be divided into two main parts,
§§ 91–110 and §§ 111–127. The chief difference between the two is that the
former contains much arithmetical calculation involving the seven (e.g. four
phases of the moon amounting to 7× 4 = 28 days), whereas the latter only
lists groups of seven things (e.g. seven planets, seven vowels). The latter part
is well structured. The former part is much more difficult, with esp. the section
§§ 101–106 proving difficult to understand from a structural point of view. The
author stresses the role that association plays in this section. It is possible to
reconstruct Philo’s mode of thought, but the result is far from satisfying. In order
to understand it the methods of ancient authors, who make use of excerpted
material, need to be taken into account. The second question to be discussed is
why the long excursus is so little related to the rest of the treatise. Partly this is
explained by the emphasis that scripture places on the hebdomad, which Philo
wishes to explain in philosophical terms, i.e. by emphasizing the special features
of the number, rather than exegetically. Another factor is that Philo did not wish
to emphasize the role of the hebdomad as completing the other six days, as he
did in Spec. 2.56–59. The article closes by looking at the relationship between
Judaism and Hellenism in the excursus. Although Hellenism predominates,
there are a number of hints that reveal that the writer is Jewish. In some respects
the excursus is reminiscent of Philo’s philosophical treatises. (DTR)