*

IV

PHILO AND THE TORAH

Over and over again Philo declares that his function is to expound the
law of Moses. Moses was the interpreter of God's word to Israel; and
Philo aspired to be the interpreter of the revelation of Moses to the
Hellenistic world, "the living voice of the holy law." He believed
that Israel was a chosen people in the sense that it had received the
Divine message on behalf of the whole human race,[126] a Kingdom of
Priests, in that it occupied to other nations the position which the
priest--using the word in the fullest sense--occupied to the common
people.[127] The Torah is God's covenant, not only with one small
nation, but with all His children, and its teachings are true for all
times and for all places. "The Bible," as Professor Butcher says,[128]
"is the one book which appears to have the capacity of eternal
self-adjustment, of uninterrupted correspondence with an ever-shifting
and ever-widening environment." Nowadays this appears a truism, but
the truth first presented itself to the Jewish-Alexandrian community
when they came in contact with external culture. The Palestinian and
Babylonian Jews, free for the most part from outside influences,
developed the Torah for the Jewish people, amplified the tradition,
and determined the Halakah, the practical law. But the Alexandrian
Jews in the first place found their own attitude to the Torah affected
by their acquaintance with Greek ethics and metaphysics, and also
found it necessary to interpret the Bible in a new fashion in order to
make its value known to their environment. The Greek world required to
be shown the general principle, the broad ethical idea in each
ordinance. And thus it came about that the Alexandrian interpreters
always emphasized the universal beneath the particular, the moral
spirit beneath the forms.

It had been one of the chief functions of the prophets to demonstrate
the moral import of the law. In their vision the God of Israel became
the God of the universe, and His law of conduct was spread over all
mankind. "For the law shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the
Lord from Jerusalem" (Micah iv. 2). Philo in effect expounds Judaism
in their spirit, though he speaks their message in the voice of Plato
and to a people whose minds were trained in Greek culture. Yet it is
significant that he wrote all his commentaries round the Five Books of
Moses, and used the prophets and other Biblical books only to