Philo of Alexandria - Books and Journals

critical studies 2003 261
For this collection of essays on the New Testament, the author has written
a lengthy introductory chapter entitled ‘„Pantheisten, Polytheisten, Monotheisten“—ein
Reflexion zur griechisch-römischen und biblischen Theologie,’ which
has Philo’s statement at Legat. 118 that it is easier for a god to become human
than a human to become god as its epigraph. In a section on Hellenistic Judaism
Philo is closely linked with the Wisdom of Solomon. Brief remarks are devoted to
the doctrine of the Logos, concluding with the assertion that ‘Philo has considerably
increased the dynamism of the conception of God’ (p. 40). With respect
to the relation between God and humanity, Philo has introduced movement in
two directions, through personification and hypostatization of the divine powers
and through the transformation of the charismatic person to a Logos-like
status (the theory of Sellin). (DTR)
20373. K.Klun,The Decalogue in Jewish and Christian Philosophy
[Slovenian] (diss. Ljubljana 2003).
The thesis considers the main differences between Jewish and Christian
understanding (‘philosophy’) of the Ten commandments. Its first section gives
background on the origin and the role of the Decalogue with the entire Mosaic
legal code. The main part of the thesis deals with Philo, whose treatment of the
Decalogue can be viewed under three headings: as a summary of the Torah; as a
collection of the most important legal and religious principles; and as the nucleus
of the Sinaitic revelation. Through an extensive treatment of the Mosaic law in
his Greek exegetical opus, Philo tries to show to a philosophical audience within
the Greco-Roman world that the ten God-given principles (heads) embrace
a complete legislation given in the Sinai desert. He even goes on to meet
the expectations of his Greek contemporaries in Alexandria by an extended
legal and moralistic analysis of each commandment, using a contemporary
Greek philosophical and religious terminology. Philo’s opinion is in fact quite
revolutionary when he argues that the state (πλις) based on a divine law is
not a Platonic idealistic illusion, but a historical fact, as proven in the Biblical
‘Mosaic Constitution,’ and by the Jewish homeland and the diaspora reality. The
creation story in Genesis serves him as a preamble to the Constitution, and he
also considers the Ten Commandments preambles to different groups of laws,
as well as being a code of the principles of natural law, a popular term among
first-century philosophers. Another important feature of Philo’s treatment is
Neopythagorean approach to the number ten and to arithmology in general,
as well as the allegorical method of the interpretation of the Bible in general,
probably the most important contribution of Philo to the Western (Christian)
method of reading the Old Testament. Philo is thus the first sage in the history
of Greek philosophy to fuse the Biblical (Jewish) and Greek language, religion,
morality and thought into a unique system of universal religious philosophy. For
this reason he, though a Jew, was even given the title church father honoris causa.
The final part of the thesis presents an analysis of some of the most important
Early Christian documents on the Decalogue and on Jewish law (The New
Testament, the Gnostic Letter of Ptolemaeus to Flora,theDidascalia apostolorum,
Irenaeus of Lyon (Adversos haereses) and some other Church fathers). The