305] and thus it would seem to be contemporary with
Philo's work, to which it affords numerous parallels. But the great
mass of the Haggadah, the Pesikta, the Mekilta, and the other
Midrashim, were all later compilations, some of them as late as the
fifth and the sixth century. Are we to say, then, that where they
correspond to Philo they show his influence? At first this would
appear the natural conclusion.

There is a better test of priority, however, than the date of
compilation, the test of the thought itself and its expression. And
judged by this test we see that the Haggadah is the more ancient, the
primal development of the Hebrew mind. The "Sayings of the Fathers"
are typical of the finest and most concentrated wisdom of the
Haggadah, and exhibit thought in its impulsive, unsystematic, gnomic
expression, neither logical nor illogical, because it knows not logic.
Beautiful ethical intuitions and profound guesses at theological truth
abound; anything like a definite system of ethics and theology is not
to be found, whence it is said, "Do not argue with the Haggadah." Even
more so is this the case with the bulk of the Midrash. There, pious
fancy will weave itself around the history and ideals of the people,
and suddenly one comes across a sage reflection or a philosophical
utterance. With Philo it is otherwise. Compared with the Greeks he is
unsystematic, inaccurate, wanting in logic, exuberant in imagination.
Compared with the rabbis he is a formal and accurate philosopher, an
exact and scholarly theologian. The floating poetical ideas of the
Haggadah are woven by him into the fabric of a Jewish philosophy and a
Jewish theology, and knit together with the rational conceptions of
Aristotle's "Metaphysics" and Plato's "Timaeus." We may say, then,
almost with certainty, that Philo derives from the early Jewish
tradition, though at the same time he introduced into that tradition
many an idea taken from the Greek thinkers, which found its way to the
later Palestinian schools of Jamnia and Tiberias, and was recast by
the Hebraic imagination.

Over and over again we find that he adopts some fancy of his ancestors
and develops it rhetorically and philosophically in his commentary. To
give many examples or references to examples of this feature of
Philo's work is not within the scope of this book, but of his
development of an old Palestinian tradition the following passage may
serve as a typical instance:

"There