in the East and West. Doubtless the
development was more national and at the same time more legal in
Judaea, in Alexandria more Hellenistic and philosophical, but there is
a common spiritual bond between the two expressions, pious images,
fancies, similes, interpretations which they share. They are, as it
were, children of one family, and despite the varying influences of
environment they maintain a family resemblance. With the Sibylline
oracles we may compare Daniel and the Psalms of Solomon; with Aristeas
and his fellow-Apologists, Josephus; with the allegorical commentaries
of Philo, the Midrashim. Modern scholars have gone far to prove that
Philo was the expounder of an Hellenic Midrash upon the Bible, in
which were gathered the thoughts and ideas that had been brought to
Egypt by the Jewish settlers, modified, no doubt, by Greek influences,
but still bearing the stamp of their origin. Philo, then, appears in
the direct line of the tradition which from the time of the Great
Synagogue was disseminated through two channels, the schools of
Palestine and the writers of Alexandria. He developed the national
Jewish theology in a literary form, which made it available for the
world, but with him the tradition as a Jewish tradition ends; in its
further Hellenistic development it departed entirely from its original
principles.

It is natural that the larger number of parallels between Philo and
the rabbis is to be found in the Haggadic portions of Talmudic
teaching, for the Haggadah represents the same spirit as underlies
Philo's work, though in a more peculiarly Jewish form; it is an
allegory, a play of fancy, a tale that points a moral, or illustrates
a question. It had, too, largely the same origin, for it gathered
together the popular discourses given in the synagogue on the
Sabbaths. Yet the relation of Philo to the other domain of the Talmud,
the code of life, or the Halakah, is of great interest; for, as we
have seen,[286] the Alexandrian community had a Sanhedrin of their
own, of which Philo's brother was the president, and he himself
probably a member; and in his exposition of the "Specific Laws" he has
preserved for us the record of certain interpretations of the Jewish
code, which are illuminating as much by their difference from, as by
their agreement with, the practices of Palestine. The general aim of
Philo's exegesis of the law was to show its broad principles of
justice and humanity rather than to formulate