the Church Fathers showed to
his writings induced and was balanced by the neglect of the rabbis.

It was left till recently to non-Jews to study the works of Philo, to
present his philosophy, and estimate its value. So far from taking a
Jewish standpoint in their work, they emphasized the parts of his
teaching that are least Jewish; for they were writing as Christian
theologians or as historians of Greek philosophy. They searched him
primarily for traces of Christian, neo-Platonic, or Stoic doctrines,
and commiserated with him, or criticised him as a weak-kneed eclectic,
a half-blind groper for the true light.

Even during the last hundred years, which have marked a revival of the
historical consciousness of the Jews, as of all peoples, it has still
been left in the main to non-Jewish scholars to write of Philo in
relation to his time and his environment. The purpose of this little
book is frankly to give a presentation of Philo from the Jewish
standpoint. I hold that Philo is essentially and splendidly a Jew, and
that his thought is through and through Jewish. The surname given him
in the second century, "Judaeus," not only distinguishes him from an
obscure Christian bishop, but it expresses the predominant
characteristic of his teaching. It may be objected that I have pointed
the moral and adorned the tale in accordance with preconceived
opinions, which--as Mr. Claude Montefiore says in his essay on
Philo--it is easy to do with so strange and curious a writer. I
confess that my worthy appeals to me most strongly as an exponent of
Judaism, and it may be that in this regard I have not always looked on
him as the calm, dispassionate student should; for I experience
towards him that warmth of feeling which his name, [Greek: philon],
"the beloved one," suggests. But I have tried so to write this
biography as neither to show partiality on the one side nor
impartiality on the other. If nevertheless I have exaggerated the
Jewishness of my worthy's thought, my excuse must be that my
predecessors have so often exaggerated other aspects of his teaching
that it was necessary to call a new picture into being, in order to
redress the balance of the old.

Although I have to some extent taken a line of my own in this Life, my
obligations to previous writers upon Philo are very great. I have used
freely the works of Drummond, Schuerer, Massebieau, Zeller, Conybeare,
Cohn, and Wendland; and among those who have treated of Philo in