The details lying latent in
those we have quoted will soon be illuminated and filled out when
we come to treat of the opinions of the Pharisees. 10

7 Cap. viii. 20.

8 Cap. ii. 23, 24.

9 Cap. xiv. 46.

10 See a very able discussion of the relation between the ideas
concerning immortality, resurrection, judgment, and retribution,
contained in the Old Testament Apocrypha, and those in the New
Testament, by Frisch, inserted in Eichhorn's Allgemeine Bibliothek
der Biblischen Literatur, band iv. stuck iv.

There lived in Alexandria a very learned Jew named Philo, the
author of voluminous writings, a zealous Israelite, but deeply
imbued both with the doctrines and the spirit of Plato. He was
born about twenty years before Christ, and survived him about
thirty years. The weight of his character, the force of his
talents, the fascinating adaptation of his peculiar philosophical
speculations and of his bold and subtle allegorical expositions of
Scripture to the mind of his age and of the succeeding centuries,
together with the eminent literary position and renown early
secured for him by a concurrence of causes, have combined to make
him exert according to the expressed convictions of the best
judges, such as Lucke and Norton a greater influence on the
history of Christian opinions than any single man, with the
exception of the Apostle Paul, since the days of Christ. It is
important, and will be interesting, to see some explanation of his
views on the subject of a future life. A synopsis of them must
suffice.

Philo was a Platonic Alexandrian Jew, not a Zoroastrian
Palestinian Pharisee. It was a current saying among the Christian
Fathers, "Vel Plato Philonizat, vel Philo Platonizat." He has
little to say of the Messiah, nothing to say of the Messianic
eschatology. We speak of him in this connection because he was a
Jew, flourishing at the commencement of the Christian epoch, and
contributing much, by his cabalistic interpretations, to lead
Christians to imagine that the Old Testament contained the
doctrine of a spiritual immortality connected with a system of
rewards and punishments.

Three principal points include the substance of Philo's faith on
the subject in hand. He rejected the notion of a resurrection of
the body and held to the natural immortality of the soul. He
entertained the most profound and spiritual conceptions of the
intrinsically deadly nature and wretched fruits of all sin, and of
the self co