Logos

Mediterranean elite, and in the population at large, anew "nation"--universal in scope--would be bornwithin the decaying society of the Roman empire.The seed-crystal for an everlasting empire, foundedon Rome's ruins, was in place.The first partisans of Philo's movement wereknown as the "allegoricists," as opposed to the "literalists"that Philo was so fond of ridiculing. Decisively,Philo had split the Jewish community aroundhis idea. It is probable that the widely-traveled Philohad been to Jerusalem several times, and developedcollaborators there. The centrist idea of Jewish unityhad been demolished, and the cultist Jews were nowopposed by a faction demanding a humanist revolution.Philo contemptuously called the Pharisees, Sadducees,and their ilk "citizens of a petty state"-referring to their fanatical attachment to Jerusalem--while he described his faction as "those on the roll ofcitizens of a greater country, namely, this wholeworld."The term that Philo used to describe "this wholeworld" was megalopolis, the "one great city." ForPhilo, the entire universewas like a single city,governed by reason and natural law--the logos.Individualstates and kingdoms necessarily were merely asubordinate feature of this natural law, and theirauthority is thus derived nowhere but from God. Thiswas the Mosaic state who_e establishment was the taskof Philo's partisans, who must act to bring civilizationinto harmony with natural law. Philo drew upon theprevalent Messianic tradition of the Jews to suggestthat "salvation" would occur when a great teacherleaderwould emerge to found the Kingdom of God.But Philo was explicit about his belief that such aleader would also be prepared to wage politicalwarfare as well as epistemological debate, and thatthe Mosaic state, the just and true Republic, could beYou have ridiculed civic life (politeia),perhaps founded on earth as the symbol of human progress.because you have not realized how serviceable it This was Philo's conception of the Kingdom ofis. You should first exercise and train yourself in God. It embodied the Platonic axiom of Perfection.the private and public affairs of life, and becomeAt the time, the notion of perfection did not existyourselves politicians.... 20 as an active concept. The Roman elite was in the gripof the pseudo-intellectual Stoic tradition, whose dull-In the purest sense, the followers of Philo--like ing assumptions about a static and unchanging unithefollowers of Jesus Christ had formed a political verse were the hallmark of Roman political thought.party. With them, Philo had created an entirely new Philo's revolutionary view of political history is bestconcept of nationality. For the first time, the idea of highlighted in comparison with that of the famousa "nation" was based on the adherence of its citizens stoic historian Polybius, writing in the second centuryto a system of ideas. No longer was nationality based before Christ. According to Polybius, history--espeonterritory or race or tribe, but on a brotherhood of cially political history---operates in cycles. The risecommon belief. The Idea of Humanism, as presented and fall of great empires, evident throughout history,by the pre-Socratic Ionian philosophers, systematized was to Polybius just a sign that whatever man couldby Plato, and elaborated by Philo, forged the corn- raise up would be eventually destroyed and turned tomon bond for the citizens of the "Kingdom of God." ruins. Small states could become great; great statesAs that notion took root in ever broader circles in the could pass through evolutionary changes from mon-CAMPAIGNER / August 1980 31