ied and Zeller press this
negative attitude to the Deity, and find that there is an inherent
contradiction in Philo's system, which ruins it, in that his God, upon
whom all depends and who is the object of all knowledge, is absolutely
unknowable and unapproachable. But this is to take Philo according to
the strict letter to the neglect of the spirit, and to do that with
one so eloquent and so careless of verbal accuracy is utterly to
misunderstand him.

The Greek philosophers in their attempt to formulate an exact notion
of the First Being by abstract metaphysics had, indeed, conceived it
in this fashion; and Philo, harmonizing Greek metaphysics and Hebrew
intuition, is drawn at times into a presentation of God which appears
to deny His personality and make of Him an abstraction. What has been
said of Spinoza is true no less of Philo.[179] "The tendency to unity,
to the infinite, to religion, overbalanced itself till, by its mere
excess, it seemed to be changed into its opposite. But this is not his
spirit, only the dead ultimate result of an imperfect logic that
confuses an abstract with a concrete unity." In truth, the moment man
tries to define his conception of God's essence in words, he either
impairs and perverts his idea, or he must use words that do not really
make the idea any clearer than it was unexpressed. Thus in the Hymn of
[Hebrew: ygdl] the writer, versifying the creeds of Maimonides, seeks to
define God: "He is a Unity, but there is no Unity like His; He is
hidden and there is no end to His oneness." But nobody can claim that
this gives any adequate conception of what he means; so, too, Philo,
when he tries to analyze God's being metaphysically, only obscures the
God of his soul, who was the historical God of Israel.

The Hebraic God, like the Greek First Being, has no qualities, but
unlike the other He has ethical attributes, and it is by these that we
know Him and by these that He is related to the universe and to man.
"Failing to comprehend Him in His essence we must aim at the next best
thing, to comprehend Him as He is manifested to the world."[180] So in
the "Hymn of Unity" it is written, "In images they told of Thee, but
not according to Thy essence! They but likened Thee in accordance with
Thy works."[181] And this is the manner in which Philo conceives Him:
"God's grace and goodness it is which are the causes of creation."[182]
"The just man, seeking the nature of all things, makes this most