APPENDIX TO DE PRAEMIIS ET POENIS
(The title.) This, which is given by Cohn as printed here, except that I have ventured to mark a doubt as to the fitness of the addition περὶ ἀρῶν, is founded on Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. ii. 18. 5, who in enumerating the works of Philo known to him speaks of this as τὸ περὶ τῶν προκειμένων τοῖς μὲν ἀγαθοῖς ἄθλων τοῖς δὲ πονηροῖς ἐπιτιμίων καὶ ἀρῶν. But if Eusebius is to be understood as giving a formal title traceable to Philo himself, is there any reason why it should not be given in full? In itself the title does not seem very appropriate. If the “curses” are to be distinguished from the “punishments,” the “blessings” must also be distinguished from the “rewards.”
§§ 4–6. The allusion may perhaps be to the conduct, good or bad, of the people in the wilderness after the Sinaitic giving of the Law, but as the warnings are so largely drawn from Deuteronomy, which Philo accepts as Moses’ final message, it seems more likely that he is thinking of the subsequent history. If so, and indeed in any case, the absence of any definite notice of persons or events, and of any attempt to draw the moral which the books themselves draw of the punishment of the people for apostasy and their restoration on repentance, is remarkable. The only person of whom anything substantial is said is Samuel, and what is said of him has no historical bearing. And this is still more true of Gideon, who is mentioned in De Conf. 130.
§ 8. Triptolemus. The story told here is given by Ovid, Met. v. 642 ff. Ceres harnessed two winged dragons or snakes to her car and sent it to Athens to Triptolemus, who rode in it through the air over Europe and Asia and scattered the corn seeds. In Verg. Georg. i. 19 he is also the inventor of the plough.
§ 23. (Noah and Deucalion.) This identification is, I think, unique in Philo. Though he often mentions Greek mythical personages, and not always with signs of disbelief (e.g. Pasiphaë in Spec. Leg. iii. 44 f.), he nowhere equates them with Old Testament characters. (The identification of the Aloeidae with the Babel-builders which Mangey suggested at De Som. ii. 283 is quite impossible, see my note there.) As for this particular identification, which of course is especially easy, neither Mangey nor Cohn quote any real parallel. Cohn indeed notes that Theophilus, a Christian writer of the late second century A.D., thought that the Greeks had given the name of Deucalion to Noah because he said δεῦτε καλεῖ ὑμᾶς ὁ θεὸς εἰς μετάνοιαν, but I have seen no evidence that it was made by Jews of Philo’s time. The nearest parallel I have found is in Malchus, otherwise called Cleodemus, on whom see Schürer, Jewish People (Eng. trans.) ii. 3, pp. 209 f. Malchus stated that Abraham’s three sons by Keturah accompanied Heracles to Libya, and that Heracles married the daughter of one of them. Schürer calls Malchus “a classic example of that intermixture of Oriental and Greek tradition which was popular throughout the region of Hellenism.” But none of the Graeco-Jewish writers whom he mentions show anything really similar.
§ 44. μετακληθεὶς. To understand this of the change of name from Jacob to Israel is certainly tempting, though we might have expected Philo to enlarge a little more on the point, if he mentions it at all. Also there is no particular point in speaking of Jacob here as summoned or invited by God. And it would be natural enough for μετα- in this compound as in so many others to express change. On the other hand there is no authority for the usage; Tzetzes (twelfth century A.D.), cited by Stephanus, can hardly count. Philo uses the word elsewhere in the sense of “summoned” or perhaps “summoned away” (De Som. i. 188 cannot be quoted as an exception; see note on vol. v. pp. 601 ff.), and what is perhaps more important, throughout De Mut. 57–129, where he treats at length of the changes of name, including that of Jacob, he uses μετονομάζω. The other reading καταβληθεὶς has, on Cohn’s principles, inferior authority and would of course require correction. Mangey suggested κατηχηθεὶς=“instructed,” and translated “informatus.” Perhaps κατελεηθεὶς, cf. ἠλέησε in § 39.
§ 46. (Monad and dyad.) The doctrine is the same as that ascribed to the Pythagoreans by Diogenes Laertius viii. 25 ἀρχὴν μὲν ἁπάντων μονάδα· ἐκ δὲ τῆς μονάδος ἀόριστον δυάδα ὡς ἂν ὕλην τῇ μονάδι αὐτῷ αἰτίῳ ὄντι ὑποστῆναι· ἐκ δὲ τῆς μονάδος καὶ τῆς ἀορίστου δυάδος τοὺς ἀριθμούς, “the principle of all things is the monad or unit; arising from the monad the undefined dyad or two serves as material substratum to the monad which is cause; from the monad and undefined dyad spring numbers” (Hicks). The passage continues that “from numbers come points, from points lines, from lines plane figures, from plane figures solid figures, from solid figures sensible bodies,” whence ultimately the universe. With the epithet “undefined” (ἀόριστος) here applied to the dyad, that is, passive matter, compare its application to αἰσθητὴ φύσις in § 36. A fuller discussion of these ideas is given by Zeller, Presocratic Philosophy (Eng. trans.), vol. i. pp. 387 ff.
§§ 49–51. As suggested in Gen. Introd. to vol. vi. p. xi. this passage gives the best clue to Philo’s meaning in adapting to spiritual experience and applying to the three Patriarchs the formula “Nature, Instruction, Practice” which runs through ancient educational literature from Plato and Aristotle to Cicero and Quintilian. Except possibly in the case of Jacob this application does not rest on the history of the three. The starting-point is that Isaac’s name means “joy,” and Philo would argue that in education joy is the characteristic of the student who learns naturally and instinctively. Carried over to the spiritual sphere, joy is the characteristic of the soul which instinctively knows God’s will, has not any temptation to disobey it and finds a ground for rejoicing even in what would naturally be displeasing (cf. § 30). So with Abraham. In education readiness to believe belongs to the mind which is most susceptible to teaching; and though Abraham’s name does not, like Isaac’s, supply a suitable clue, the emphasis laid on his faith in Genesis fits him to represent Instruction. The argument needed to fit Jacob into the formula is more strained. But his second name of Israel = “Seeing God,” does express the attainment which is the result of practice, and his history, which, though Philo does not suggest it, was subjected to more vicissitudes than the other two, would assist the idea.
In education it was recognized that all three were indispensable, though in different degrees, to every mind for successful study, and Quintilian stresses this in Inst. Pr. 27. Philo makes the same point for the spiritual life in De Abr. 53.
§ 55. (Definition of νόμος.) Cohn rightly calls attention to this, as the accepted definition of νόμος by the Stoics (see Index to S.V.F. s.v.). The more exact form seems to be λόγος ὀρθὸς προστάττων(προστακτικός), κτλ. or sometimes λόγος φύσεως, κτλ. So Cic. De Leg. i. 6. 18 “lex est ratio summa insita in natura, quae iubet ea quae facienda sunt, prohibetque contraria.” Philo quotes it in this form in De Ios. 29. Cf. also Mos. ii. 4, where, as here, he connects it with kingship.
§ 60. σπορὰν … ἥμερον. ἥμερος when applied to vegetation of any kind often means simply “cultivated,” as opposed to “wild.” So e.g. Spec. Leg. iv. 209, but at other times it takes on something of what it connotes when applied to animals or men, i.e. the qualities of a domesticated animal or a civilized man. So in § 8, where it is applied to bread-food as opposed to acorns, the translation “kindly,” though not quite satisfactory, gives the meaning better than “cultivated” would. Here too the meaning is, I think, more than “thriving” alone would give (Cohn, “gut gedeihen”). The crop is “responsive” to the trouble taken on it.
§ 65. (The twelve sons of Jacob and the Zodiac.) For this connexion of the twelve tribes and their founders with the Twelve Signs cf. De Som. ii. 111 ff., where Philo is discussing Gen. 37:9–11, where Joseph says “the sun and moon and eleven stars did obeisance to me,” thus “classing himself as the twelfth to complete the Zodiac.”
It seems to be agreed that the Signs are mentioned in Job 38:32 under the name of the Mazzaroth (a word copied without translation by the LXX), and many modern scholars have thought that Gen. 37:9 actually refers to them, some indeed finding traces of them in the blessing of Jacob in ch. 49. Whether this is so or not, Philo naturally took the words so, but the tone of that passage, where Joseph’s presumption is condemned, is very different from this, where the twelve tribes are the earthly counterpart of the twelve great heavenly bodies. It would be interesting to know how far the idea was current in Philo’s time. An article by Feuchtwanger, in Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums, 1915, pp. 241–267, gives an account of the place held by the Zodiac in Rabbinical tradition, but mostly in later times, and does not dwell much upon its relation to the tribes and their founders. One point mentioned (also by the Jewish Encyclopaedia, s.v. Zodiac) is the tradition that each of the tribes had one of the Signs on its banner.
§ 78. (The lacuna.) This evidently contained the end of the story of Korah and something at the beginning of the Blessings. But was there anything else? I think that there is good reason to think that there was something, and perhaps a good deal. Eight examples have been given of rewards against two of punishments. Also in § 7 he has classified both under five heads, individuals, families, cities, nations and countries, great regions of the earth. In Mos. ii. 53–56 he has signalized the Flood and the destruction of the cities of the plain as the two great judgements of God upon the unrighteous. These fit the fifth and third of the heads, and it is unlikely that he would fail to mention them here whether briefly or at length. Possibly he may have cited also the disasters which befell the Egyptians through the plagues and at the Red Sea to cover “nations and countries.”
If it is objected that, while he has stated that the rewards also fall under the five heads, he is content to stop at the second, one answer might be that the expansion of Jacob’s family into a great nation, with its “orderly cities, schools of wisdom, justice and religion” (§ 66), though mentioned as the reward of Jacob’s family, is also a reward to the nation and its cities. But a better answer is that, apart from this, there were no good examples of the other heads to give. The preservation of Zoar might have been quoted as an example of a city rewarded, though this is not in Genesis ascribed to its merits, but otherwise what record is there in the Pentateuch of any larger nation or city being so rewarded? I think we must conclude that § 7 is loosely worded, and that the full classification applies only to the punishments.
The part lost at the beginning of the Blessings need not have been more than a single sentence stating that Moses promised that in the future also prosperity would be the reward of obedience and misfortune of disobedience.
§ 87. (Pacification of wild beasts.) Philo has no authority for this in the Pentateuch beyond Lev. 26:6 “I will destroy evil (or wicked) beasts out of your land.” It seems to me impossible to doubt that he is thinking of Isaiah 11:6–9 or perhaps rather that he reads the text in Leviticus in the light of Isaiah; that is a straining of which he is not incapable. I do not understand Heinemann’s remark (Bildung‚ p. 419), that “it is noteworthy that he does not appeal to Isaiah xi.” Apparently he thinks that Philo has no direct knowledge of that passage (“schwerlich hat er von dieser Stelle unmittelbare Kenntniss”). If this means that the absence of any direct statement that the thought comes from Isaiah shows ignorance of the passage, I entirely disagree. Philo never mentions Isaiah by name, but quotes from him four times as one of the prophets and once (Quis Rerum 25, Isaiah 50:4) without any indication that it is a quotation. Here he gives the substance of Isaiah’s description spiritualized by the thought that this can never come about till the “wild beasts within ourselves” are tamed, a thought which to his mind, in which the allegorical is always seen behind the literal, would be assisted by the epithet πονηρά = “wicked,” applied to the beasts in Leviticus.
Besides Isaiah, Philo may have had in mind Job 5:23 (of the righteous) “the savage beasts shall be at peace with them,” and still more, Hosea 2:18 “I will make for them in that day a covenant with the wild beasts of the field, and the birds of heaven, and the reptiles of the earth.” Both these books were known to him and are quoted (Job being mentioned by name).
Heinemann goes on to say that Philo must certainly have drawn from the “Wise Sayings” (Weissagungen), for which he gives a reference to the Sibylline Oracles iii. 788, since the Greek pictures of the “Beast-peace” are by no means so authoritative as to have given him the conception. This may be true, but it seems to me that he could find enough authority in Scripture itself.
§ 89. Maltese dogs. This breed is mentioned by Strabo vi. p. 277, by Athenaeus xii. p. 518 (of the Sybarites ἔχαιρον τοῖς Μελιταίοις κυνιδίοις), and by Pliny, Hist. Nat. iii. 26, where they are called “catulos.”
§ 111. τοῖς ὀνόμασι κυρίοις. κύρια ὀνόματα, said in L. & S. to signify “authorized, proper or literal words,” are, according to Aristot. Rhet. iii. 2. 2, ordinary words as opposed to those which are figurative, foreign, archaic or in any way uncommon (Cope). Philo often uses the phrase for a proper or personal name (e.g. Mos. ii. 207: people do not as a rule address a parent by his κύριον ὄνομα), but more often for a word which exactly expresses its meaning, e.g. De Conf. 192, Moses when he spoke of God “confounding” the languages at Babel did not mean that He divided them, for then he would have used a κυριώτερον such as τομή or διάκρισις. Sometimes it means a word which brings out some true or striking aspect, e.g. Quod Deus 139, “seers” (ὁρῶντες) was a κύριον ὄνομα for prophets. Here the use is extended further. “Day” is κύριον, because it expresses the lesson which Philo draws more exactly than “years” for instance would, and “number” is κύριον, because it brings out a similar lesson more exactly than “all thy days” would. Thus the phrase has been made to mean something almost the opposite of what we should call literal, and so also does the phrase “literally true” as often used in English. (See also note to Mos. ii. 38 (vol. vi. p. 606).)
§ 111. οὔτʼ ἐν λόγῳ … οὔτʼ ἐν ἀριθμῷ. Mangey quotes Iamblichus, Vita Pythagorae 208, where it is said that his disciples who remembered him told how
τοὺς μὲν ἑταίρους ἦγεν ἴσον μακαρέσσι θεοῖσι,
τοὺς δʼ ἄλλους ἡγεῖτʼ οὔτʼ ἐν λόγῳ οὔτʼ ἐν ἀριθμῷ.
Cf. also Callimachus, Ep. 25, and Theocritus xiv. 48, where it is in the form
οὔτε λόγω τινὸς ἄξιοι οὔτʼ ἀριθματοί.
§ 123. In which God … walks as in a palace. St. Paul, quoting freely Lev. 26:12, also gives ἐν the sense of “in” rather than “among” in 2 Cor. 6:16 “We are the temple of the living God; as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them” (so E.V. rightly).
§ 154. (The symbols of peace.) Salt has been used in this sense, De Ios. 210, and joined with libations in Spec. Leg. iii. 96. On the altar of mercy Mangey says that there was an altar of that name at Athens founded by the descendants of Heracles and used as an asylum for suppliants. I do not know what evidence he has for his statement about the founders. He refers to the scholiast on Soph. O.C. 260 ἐπεὶ καὶ Ἐλέου βωμὸς ἐν Ἀθήναις ἵδρυται, and Pausanias (presumably of Athens) τοὺς εἰς ἐλέου βωμὸν καταφυγόντας ἀσυλίαν ἔχειν. He does not give the reference for this, but see Paus. i. 17 Ἀθηναίοις δὲ ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ καὶ ἄλλα ἐστὶν οὐκ ἐς ἅπαντας ἐπίσημα καὶ Ἐλέου βωμός, ᾧ μάλιστα θεῶν ἐς ἀνθρώπινον βίον καὶ μεταβολὰς πραγμάτων ὅτι ὠφέλιμος, μόνοι τιμὰς Ἑλλήνων νέμουσιν Ἀθηναῖοι. If, judging from this, we may take the Altar of Mercy as an allusion to the Athenian institution, it might give some ground for giving κοινὴ ἑστία‚ which otherwise might be taken in a general way, as in De Virt. 124, the special sense of the altar placed in the Prytaneium of a city for state sacrifices, or the further hospitality given to ambassadors and others. See references in L. & S. and more fully in Stephanus.
§ 154. All are through Seven and are Seven. Cohn translates “denn alles geschieht mit Hilfe des Sabbats und ist Sabbatfeier.” Here, by giving Sabbath for ἑβδομάς, as he generally does, he fails to express the potency and sanctity of the number itself. Mangey has “omnia vel sunt hebdomas vel pertinent ad hebdomadem.” Both these seem to take πάντα as = “all things in general” rather than “they all,” i.e. the symbols just mentioned. I have not noticed any real parallel to this. In Spec. Leg. ii. 156, speaking of the feast of unleavened bread which is held for seven days “to mark the precedence and honour which the number holds in the universe,” he adds, “the sacred seven which He intended to be the source and fountain to men of all good things.” For “all are seven” cf. De Fug. 173 “Peace and Seven are identical.” Both these point to limiting the scope of πάντα.
§ 171. The days of their misfortunes (or inauspicious days.) See on Spec. Leg. iii. 183. Is there any specific allusion?
Massebieau’s translation “decreed that they (the Jews) should observe their ill-omened (or abominable) public festivals” can hardly be got out of the Greek. Possibly “their fast-days.” The Law knows of only one regular fast-day, the Day of Atonement. But after the Captivity four such were appointed (Jewish Encyclopaedia on Fasting and Fast-days). Heinemann, Bildung, p. 97, says that Philo betrays no knowledge of them, but on the other hand, in describing the Law he has no occasion to do so. But, on the whole, it seems better to take the words generally of what naturally happens to a conquered nation. The celebration of the conqueror’s victories is a celebration of their defeat.