fear the lot of a
proselyte. "God loves the man who turns from idolatry to the true
faith not less than the man who has been a believer all his life;"[89]
and in the little essays upon Repentance and Nobility, which are
attached to the larger treatise, Philo appeals to his own people to
welcome the stranger within the community. "The Life of Moses" is the
greatest attempt to set monotheism before the world made before the
Christian gospels. And it is truer to the Jewish spirit, because it
breathes on every page love for the Torah. Philo in very truth wished
to fulfil the law.

If Judaism was to be the universal religion, it must be shown to
contain the ultimate truth both about real being, _i.e._ God, and
about ethics; for the philosophical world in that age--and the
philosophical world included all educated people--demanded of religion
that it should be philosophical, and of philosophy that it should be
religious. The desire to expound Judaism in this way is the motive of
Philo's three Biblical commentaries. The "Questions and Answers to
Genesis and Exodus" constitute a preliminary study to the more
elaborate works which followed. In them Philo is collecting his
material, formulating his ideas, and determining the main lines of his
allegory. They are a type of Midrash in its elementary stage, the
explanation of the teacher to the pupil who has difficulties about the
words of the law: at once like and unlike the old Tannaitic Midrash;
like in that they deal with difficulties in the literal text of the
Bible; unlike in that the reply of Philo is Agadic more usually than
Halakic, speculative rather than practical. In these books,[90] as has
been pointed out, there are numerous interpretations which Philo
shares with the Palestinian schools. A few specimens taken from the
first book will illustrate Philo's plan, but it should be mentioned
that in every case he sets out the simple meaning of the text, the
_Peshat_, as well as the inner meaning, or _Derash_.

"Why does it say: 'And God made every green herb of the field before
it was upon the earth'? (Gen. ii. 4.)

"By these words he suggests symbolically the incorporeal Idea. The
phrase, 'before it was upon the earth,' marks the original perfection
of every plant and herb. The eternal types were first created in the
noetic world, and the physical objects on earth, perceptible by the
senses, were made in their likeness."

In this way Philo reads into the first chapter o