Philo of Alexandria - Books and Journals

266 part two
intellectual love of God as central to the human quest for happiness, but unlike
Philo he is supremely confident in the ability of the human being to achieve full
understanding of God’s nature without receiving any kind of divine aid. No other
philosopher had such optimism in the cognitive powers of the human being.
Thus the approaches that the two thinkers develop on the subject of human
knowledgeofGodarediametricallyopposed.(DTR)
20387. H.Najman,‘CainandAbelasCharacterTraits:aStudyin
the Allegorical Typology of Philo of Alexandria,’ in G. P. Luttikhuizen
(ed.), Eve’s Children. The Biblical Stories Retold and Interpreted in Jewish
and Christian Traditions, Themes in Biblical Narrative 5 (Leiden 2003)
107–118.
Najman argues that Philo’s interpretation of Cain and Abel is typological, with
Cain representing the type of wickedness, and Abel exemplifying the type of
holiness. They are the archetypes of good and evil and their conflict is the conflict
between good and evil in every human soul. Cain is a self-lover. He becomes
a farmer and is called a tiller of the soil because he refers all things to his own
mind, not realising that the land belongs to God. Due to his self-love he does not
bring an offer to God immediately. By way of contrast, Abel is a lover of God, as
his name signifies (it means ‘one who refers all things to God’). He becomes a
shepherd, which is a good preparation for rulership. According to Najman ‘the
story of Cain and Abel is important because they exemplify the ways in which
the archetypes of virtue and vice may come to leave their copies upon the human
soul’ (p. 117). (ACG)
20388. H.Najman,Seconding Sinai. The Development of Mosaic Discourse
in Second Temple Judaism, Supplements to the Journal for the
Study of Judaism 77 (Leiden 2003), esp. 70–107, 126–137.
In biblical and para-biblical texts of the Second Temple period, the significance
of Moses expands as authoritative laws are amplified and attributed to
him and as Moses himself is idealized as an authority figure with several roles.
The Book of Deuteronomy is a model for these trends, which characterize what
Najman terms ‘Mosaic discourse.’ Four features of this discourse are that the
new text that reworks older traditions (1) claims for itself the authority of the
earlier traditions; (2) portrays itself as having the status of Torah; (3) re-presents
the Sinaitic revelation; and (4) claims a link to or authorship by Moses. Najman
examines the Mosaic discourse in Deuteronomy, Jubilees,theTemple Scroll,and
Philo. The political situation in Alexandria requires Philo to authorize Jewish
law for both Jews and non-Jews, which he does in several ways. He presents
Mosaic law as superior to laws of all other peoples and claims that it is a copy of
the law of nature. In associating Mosaic law with universal concepts like the law
of nature, Philo achieves ‘a strikingly original fusion’ (p. 78), in which Mosaic
law is not subordinate to the universal ideas. Mosaic law is also not reducible
to a written code of rules, because the lives of the patriarchs and of Moses are