APPENDIX TO DE SPECIALIBUS LEGIBUS, I
§ 2. (Circumcision in Egypt.) The original authority for this is Herodotus ii. 36. In itself it is not impossible that Philo, knowing little of the intimate practices of the Egyptians outside the Jewish and Hellenistic world, should take Herodotus for his authority. But in Quaest. in Gen. iii. 47, 48, where he gives the arguments for circumcision in much the same way as here, he adds that the Egyptians circumcised females as well as males and at the age of puberty, and neither of these did he find in Herodotus. The statement made here is supported by Diodorus i. 28, iii. 32. Josephus, Contra Apion. ii. 140 ff. says positively that the Egyptian priests were circumcised, but the fact that Apion, himself an Egyptian, appears to have ridiculed the Jews on this ground tells rather against it for the nation at large. See on the whole question Wendland in Archiv für Papyrusforschung ii. (1903) (referred to by Goodenough, p. 30).
§ 6. The spirit force in the heart. The doctrine and phraseology is Stoic. So “All the Stoics say that τὸ ἡγεμονικόν resides ἐν ὅλῃ τῇ καρδίᾳ ἢ ἐν τῷ περὶ τὴν καρδίαν πνεύματι,” S. V. F. ii. 838. The ἡγεμονικόν itself is a πνεῦμα according to them, ibid. 96. For the question between the brain and the heart as the seat of the mind see §§ 213 f. below.
§ 25. “Blind” wealth. Philo in several places, e.g. ii. 23 below, De Abr. 25, contrasts the “seeing” with the “blind” riches, and in these passages he borrows the phrase from Plato, Laws 631 C πλοῦτος οὐ τυφλὸς ἀλλʼ ὀξὺ βλέπων, though the thought is not quite the same, since with Plato the “seeing wealth” is wealth in the literal sense used wisely, with Philo wisdom or virtue itself. But here, where there is no such contrast and the stress is rather on the uncertainty of riches, τοῦ λεγομένου may refer rather to the fable, earlier than Plato, that Zeus made Plutus blind, so that he should distribute his gifts without regard to merit (see Aristophanes, Plutus).
§ 27. Some assert … state of flux. Cf. e.g. Plato, Theaetetus 160 D κατὰ μὲν Ὅμηρον καὶ Ἡράκλειτον καὶ πᾶν τὸ τοιοῦτον φῦλον οἷον ῥεύματα κινεῖσθαι τὰ πάντα, Cratylus 402 A λέγει που Ἡράκλειτος ὅτι πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει, καὶ ποτάμου ῥωῇ ἀπεικάζων τὰ πάντα λέγει ὡς δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης. Rather nearer to our passage is Aristot. Physica viii. 3, 253 b 9, φασί τινες (apparently the Heracleiteans) κινεῖσθαι τῶν ὄντων οὐ τὰ μὲν τὰ δʼ οὔ, ἀλλὰ πάντα καὶ ἀεί, ἀλλὰ λανθάνειν τὴν ἡμετέραν αἴσθησιν.
§ 28. θεοὺς … ὥσπερ ἀπὸ μηχανῆς. The phrase seems to me to suggest primarily the use of the supernatural as a facile way of getting out of a difficulty and to carry with it the idea of artificiality rather than suddenness and unexpectedness. The fact that the “machine” was employed to bring the god hovering over the stage is incidental, though it served to enhance the impression of something artificial and slightly ludicrous. To take the examples given in Stephanus, this is the sense in Plato, Cratylus 425 D ὥσπερ οἱ τραγῳδοποιοί, ἐπειδάν τι ἀπορῶσιν, ἐπὶ τὰς μηχανὰς καταφεύγουσι θεοὺς αἴροντες (“like the tragic poets who in any perplexity have their gods waiting in the air,” Jowett), and in Aristotle, Poetics xv. 7. So in Plutarch, Them. 10 Themistocles employs oracles and divine signs ὥσπερ ἐν τραγῳδίᾳ μηχανὴν ἄρας. In Demosthenes, p. 1026. 1 Τιμοκράτης μόνος ἀπὸ τοσούτων, ὥσπερ ἀπὸ μηχανῆς, μαρτυρεῖ, the thought seems to be that he assumes the rôle of a superior being. In Plato (?), Cleitophon 407 A the point is different, viz. that the gods in these appearances are apt to rebuke the follies of humanity. In our passage and in ii. 165 the main idea seems to be artificiality.
§§ 33 f. The argument from design has been given in much the same form in Leg. All. iii. 97–99. For other statements of it see S. V. F. ii. 1009–1020, particularly Cic. De Nat. Deorum, ii. 16–17, iii. 26. Cf. also Cic. Tusc. i. 68 (referred to by Heinemann), Pro Milone 83, 84 and Xen. Mem. i. 4.
§ 55. (Lynching of apostates.) Two questions arise here, (1) whether the lynching so strongly recommended here and almost as explicitly in § 316 is in accordance with Deut., (2) whether it was customary or practicable in Philo’s time. As to (1), in Deut. 13:6–11, which I take to be more to the point than ibid. 12–17 (enjoining the destruction of an apostate city), which Heinemann cites, the E.V. merely says, “thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.” Philo would indeed find in the LXX, instead of “thou shalt surely kill him,” “thou shalt surely report it” (ἀναγγέλλων ἀναγγελεῖς), which sounds more judicial. But in § 316 this is interpreted to mean that the report is to be sent round to summon the lovers of piety to assist in the execution. In Deut. 17:4–7 a careful inquiry is to be made when such a call is reported, and two or three witnesses are required. Heinemann thinks that Philo is not referring to these passages at all, but is merely extracting a general law from the case of Phinehas. I do not think this can be right, so far as Deut. 13 is concerned, as in § 316 he formally expounds that passage. As for Deut. 17, Philo if faced with it might reply that it does not suggest a formal trial, but that the self-constituted executioners before taking action must assure themselves that the charge is true, and that what he says here does not deny that.
As to (2), Goodenough (pp. 36 ff.) argues that the Acts (e.g. Stephen’s execution and the attempts to stone Paul) shews that the Jews did sometimes inflict capital punishment without direct permission from the Roman government. He also cites 3 Maccabees 7:10–15, which gives an account of a decree of Ptolemy Philopator empowering the Jews in Alexandria to put transgressors against the law to death (E.V. somewhat inaccurately “without warrant or special commission”) (Greek ἄνευ πάσης βασιλικῆς ἐξουσίας ἢ ἐπισκέψεως). All this may be true, but hardly meets the case. Stephen was tried by the Sanhedrin; and the persons for whose execution Paul voted, Acts 26:10, were presumably legally tried. And the Decree, even if historical, need not mean more than that Jewish constituted authorities might condemn independently of the king. But Philo’s words, “Jury, council or any kind of magistrate at all,” must surely include Jewish as well as Roman courts. That he should be seriously encouraging his fellow-Jews in Alexandria, where we know that the Jews had independent jurisdiction, to put apostates to death without any legal trial, seems to me almost impossible. But was it perhaps otherwise in other cities of the Dispersion, where the Jews had no such privileges and knew that the ordinary courts would not take cognizance of apostasy or heresy? Paul’s experiences at Iconium and Lystra possibly lend themselves to such a view. It is to Jews so circumstanced that this section is addressed if it has any practical bearing. Otherwise it must be regarded as a rhetorical way of saying that apostasy is so hateful a crime that to avenge it on the spot is not only pardonable but a duty.
§ 58. The connexion of this section, which comes in so oddly as it stands, would become much clearer, if we might suppose that some words had been lost at the end, as “such practices Moses absolutely forbids.” In this case a new paragraph would begin with ἔνιοι δέ, linked with the preceding by the antithesis of the two bondages, but introducing the new subject of indirectly idolatrous practices. What he means by the “like principle” would then become quite clear. It may be noted that in Lev. 19 the prohibition of printing marks comes in directly after and is followed shortly by denunciation of divination and the like.
§§ 59 ff. Goodenough, pp. 37 f., observes that Philo ignores the passages in Leviticus which prescribe the death-penalty for some kinds of divination and only alludes to Deut. 17 where we have no punishment prescribed but expulsion from the commonwealth and that only indirectly. In this he sees a reflection of the fact that public opinion would not have tolerated stoning such persons, while the Roman government always discouraged and in A.D. 16 expelled them from Italy. But he fails to note that Deut. provided Philo with a far more specific list of the forms of μαντική, on which he enlarges in the following section, and also that it leads on to the promise of the true divination, which is described in § 65.
§ 67. Only one temple. Cohn and Heinemann note that Josephus also gives the same reason for the one temple (Contra Apion. ii. 193, Ant. iv. 200). It does not follow that Josephus is dependent on Philo. The argument of the oneness of God, which Josephus supplements with the oneness of the Hebrew race, was an obvious argument against the attempts to build other temples like that of Leontopolis in the Dispersion.
§§ 71 f. The temple here described is of course Herod’s temple (18 or 19 B.C.), elaborately described by Josephus, Wars v. and Ant. xv. Philo (Mangey ii. 646, an extract from De Providentia) speaks of something which he saw at Ascalon, when he visited that city in the course of a journey to “the temple of his fathers to pray and sacrifice.” The passage does not in the least suggest that this was his only visit to Jerusalem, and he may have gone there often, though I cannot find authority for Edersheim’s statement that he acted as envoy to carry the tributes (see § 78). But whether he went there once or oftener, there is not much sign of personal observation in his description of the building itself, which is very slight compared with Josephus’s. Heinemann (Bildung, p. 16) notes an inaccuracy, viz. that the sanctuary stood in the “very middle,” whereas the part in front was much larger than the part behind. However, that the description should be slight is natural enough. He is expounding the laws of the Pentateuch and these did not provide for the building which would be needed when the nation was settled in Palestine, as he himself observes in Mos. ii. 72, 73, but only for a portable sanctuary. This last with its furniture was fully described in Mos. ii. 74–108, and the omission of any such description here may be due to a feeling that this one part of the law had been definitely suspended.
§ 79. (The consecration of the Levites.) The idea that the Levites received consecration as a reward for slaughtering the idolaters is supposed to have been obtained by Philo from Ex. 32:29, “consecrate yourselves to the Lord,” where the Hebrew phrase is literally “fill your hands,” which the LXX translates literally, but in the indicative, “ye have filled your hands.” In Ex. 28:41 (37) the same Hebrew phrase evidently meaning “consecrate” or “install” is translated in LXX by “thou shalt fill their hands.” See Driver on both passages. In the other eight passages, however, cited by Driver from the Pentateuch, where the same phrase is used in the Hebrew, the LXX has a different verb, τελειόω with or without χεῖρας. It seems to me rather doubtful whether Philo would have seen consecration in the words “ye have filled your hands every man against his son,” etc., and more likely that he found it rather in the words that follow, “that a blessing should be given you.”
§ 80. Redundant … excrescence. The E.V. in Lev. 21:18 has “anything superfluous,” which prima facie would seem to be represented here by κατὰ πλεονασμὸν περιττεύσαντος. But in the LXX the word in the list of defects corresponding to the Hebrew translated as “superfluous” is ὠτότμητος, “with a split ear.” Is this one of the few cases where Philo seems somehow to have known the Hebrew? Heinemann does not notice the point.
§ 83. εὐχάς = votive offerings. If the word is genuine here, this must surely be the sense, as what requires an unhampered rapidity must be a concrete object. The word seems to be used in the LXX in this sense, Deut. 12:6, 17, 26, but I cannot find that it is so used elsewhere by Philo or other authors. Stephanus only quotes it from inscriptions and L. & S. (revised) do not mention it at all. I have left the text as Cohn prints it, pending further knowledge as to what is exactly meant by the? appended to R’s εὐχὰς, or what the Armenian, which is extant for this part, has to say.
§ 90. (φῶς ἡλίου as R, or as Cohn φῶς, ἡλίου ἥλιος?) Cohn’s principal objection to the reading of what he considers the best authority, R, is that ἡλίου ἀνέλαμψεν is an inadmissible hiatus. I do not know how far this argument is valid. Cohn nowhere, so far as I know, formulates his doctrine of hiatus. On p. 197 of the article in Hermes, 1908, he gives examples of corrigenda, and amongst them is γάμον οὕτως for γάμου οὕτως, and γάμων ἁγνήν for γάμου ἅγνης. I do not understand how on these principles his own ἡλίου ἥλιος is to stand. It is no doubt an objection to R’s reading that it does not account for the φῶς ἥλιος or φῶς ἥλιος δʼ of the other MSS. Could not this be met by φῶς ἥλιός τʼ? Mangey has ἥλιος διανέλαμψε, to which Cohn objects that there is no such word, i.e. it is not found in the dictionaries. This is no argument at all, see on Mos. i. 172. Words compounded with διά and ἀνά are fairly common, and the διά would have some point here.
§ 96. ἱερωμένον. Cohn, who printed ἱερώμενον (present of ἱεράομαι), later declared for the MSS. ἱερωμένον (perfect participle of ἱερόω), and this is followed in the translation. But except for the MSS., ἱερώμενον = “acting as priest,” makes equally good sense.
§ 103. Scars and prints. Cohn quotes Seneca, De Ira, i. 16. 7, S. V. F. i. 215 “Nam ut dicit Zenon, in sapientis quoque animo, etiam cum vulnus sanatum est, cicatrix manet. Sentiet itaque suspiciones quasdam et umbras affectuum, ipsis quidem carebit.” This is not quite the same. The figure of the scarred soul was familiar to Philo from Gorgias 524 E.
§ 146. The thought here, though differing in detail, bears in mind Timaeus 69 E, where the mortal soul is placed in the thorax, with its nobler part = θυμός divided by the midriff from the baser = ἐπιθυμία. The θυμός is settled nearer the head, in order that it may be under the control of the reason and join with it in restraining the lusts. The sequel in Plato is definitely quoted in § 149, where see footnote.
§ 172. διʼ ἣν αἰτίαν … Cohn suggests completing this passage thus: διʼ ἣν αἰτίαν τοῦτο προστέτακται αὐτίκα λεκτέον· ἐαρινῇ μὲν κτλ. That is, ἣν stands for τίνα or ἥντινα and introduces an indirect question. This is no doubt common in Greek and may be in Philo, though I have not noticed an example: ii. 251 is not as it stands parallel. On the other hand, it may be pure relative, and introduce something of which the preceding statement is the cause. So above, § 124, and ii. 51.
§ 180. At the beginning of the year. Though the Jewish sacred year began with Nisan in the spring, the civil year continued to begin with Tishri in the autumn. See article “Time” in Hastings’ Biblical Dictionary, and cf. Jos. Ant. i. 81. Heinemann, however, says that Philo knows nothing of this, and is merely following the Macedonian calendar introduced into Egypt. He certainly seems to take it for granted, ii. 153, that the month of the autumnal equinox is the “first in the sun’s revolution.” He must, however, have known that in Ex. 23:16 and elsewhere in the Law, the Feast of Tabernacles is said to occur at the “going out (ἔξοδος) of the year.”
§ 208. Fullness and Want, etc. That with Heracleitus κόρος = ἐκπύρωσις and χρησμοσύνη = διακόσμησις is also stated by Hippolytus (quoted in Zeller, Pres. Phil. ii. p. 46, note 1), καλεῖ δὲ αὐτὸ (sc. τὸ πῦρ) χρησμοσύνην καὶ κόρον. χρησμοσύνη δέ ἐστιν ἡ διακόσμησις κατʼ αὐτόν, ἡ δὲ ἐκπύρωσις κόρος. The thought is perhaps the same in Diog. Laert. ix. 8 (of Heracleitus), “that what tends to γένεσις is called war and strife, what tends to ἐκπύρωσις is agreement and peace.”
§ 242. Thirdly because … thrust from office. The thought lying behind this somewhat illogical sentence may be this. In § 117 he has said that all priests, whether suffering from defects or not, were entitled to eat the sacred meats, and therefore it might be thought that the defective are included in “every male priest”; cf. Lev. 6:29. But in v. 26 we have “the priest that offers it shall eat of it,” and as the defective cannot offer the sacrifice “every male priest” must be taken to mean “such as are qualified by freedom of defect.”
§ 273. (Footnote a.) It must be remembered of course that the temple which Hecataeus mentioned is Zerubbabel’s temple, not Herod’s, which Philo saw. But it may be presumed that in a matter like this the third temple would reproduce the second, about the details of which I understand that little is known.
§ 291. (Wasps bred from horses.) So Plutarch (Cleomenes, ad fin.) mentions the idea that bees are bred from the carcasses of oxen, wasps from horses, beetles from donkeys, and serpents from men.
§ 318. What is pleasing to nature, etc. Philo, I suspect, substituted the Stoic “nature” for “before the Lord thy God,” because he sees in καλόν and ἀρεστόν Stoic phraseology. The Stoic identification of τὸ καλόν with the Good is of course one of their leading doctrines, but ἀρεστόν was also a term applied to τὸ ἀγαθόν and ἀρετή, cf. S. V. F. iii. 208 τὴν δʼ ἀρετὴν πολλοῖς ὀνόμασι προσαγορεύουσι. ἀγαθόν τε γὰρ λέγουσιν αὐτὴν ὅτι ἄγει ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ τὸν ὀρθὸν βίον· καὶ ἀρεστὸν ὅτι δοκιμαστόν ἐστιν ἀνυπόπτως. So also ibid. 88.
§ 321. λόγων ποτίμων. This phrase, which occurs again in ii. 62 and several times in other treatises, is no doubt a reminiscence of Phaedrus (243 D), which has also been clearly, though rather loosely, quoted in the preceding section. In Quod Omn. Prob. 13 the same two passages from the Phaedrus are brought together in the same sentence. The connexion of πότιμοι λόγοι with Plato is brought out most clearly in Leg. All. ii. 32, where, as in Plato, they serve to wash away the briny taste (τὸ ἁλμυρόν).
§ 322. (Footnote 1.) I have adopted Cohn’s reading from R with the alteration of πνευμάτων into αὐρῶν. But the fact that the sense which lies behind R’s nonsensical διανέμοντες αὐτῶν is easily recovered does not, I think, make the reading of A and H unworthy of consideration. Their wording τὰς … ἀέρος εὐκρασίας ἀνέμων τε corresponds with the parallel in De Praem. 41 ἀέρος καὶ πνευμάτων εὐκρασίας, while none of the other parallels corresponds with the form postulated by R.
§§ 327–end. (Errors attacked in these sections.) It seems to me, subject to correction by others more expert in such matters, that Philo in these allegorical interpretations is not alluding to particular schools, but to ways of thinking in general. The theory of Ideas, which he here rather unexpectedly adopts as an essential part of the true creed, was, I think, denied by the Stoics (S. V. F. i. 65), and in the full Platonic sense by Aristotle, but did any school of Philo’s time hold it? The atheistical argument in § 330 that God has been invented to deter men more effectually from evil-doing is developed at length in an iambic poem (to which Mr. Angus has called my attention), attributed to the tyrant Critias, and quoted by Sext. Emp. ix. 54. But this again does not belong to a particular school. The Stoics sometimes identified νοῦς and θεός (see on iii. 1), and Heinemann, (Bildung, p. 176) quotes Sen. Ep. xxxi. 11, where the “animus rectus bonus” is said to be “deus in humano corpore hospitans.” But this surely belongs to a region of thought different from Philo’s description of the practical achievements of mind. The votaries of sense may at first sight suggest the Epicureans, who held that sensations are always true, though our judgements about them are fallible (Zeller, Stoics and Epicureans, Eng. trans. p. 402), but that again is different from Philo’s disquisition on the practical value of the senses. (Heinemann, loc. cit. says that the doctrine of the divinity of αἴσθησις was ascribed to Diogenes, but I have been unable to trace the reference.)
My feeling is that by his fourth and fifth class Philo is simply speaking of the οἴησις which, as he constantly says, leads men to ascribe to themselves what belongs to God, and the division into mind and sense, a very reasonable division since human self-confidence divides itself between the two, is merely made to fit in with Ammon and Moab, which, on philological grounds, he identifies with the two.
§ 333. Fourth and fifth class also. Heinemann suggests with considerable probability that in De Mut. 205 τεθλασμένοι γὰρ τὰ γεννητικὰ τῆς διανοίας ἢ καὶ τελείως ἀποκοπέντες οἱ τὸν ἴδιον νοῦν καὶ τὴν αἴσθησιν ἀποσεμνύνοντες ὡς μόνα τῶν κατʼ ἀνθρώπους αἴτια πραγμάτων, we should read ἀποκοπέντες <ἢ> οἱ, thus bringing into the allegory as here Deut. 23:3, as well as the two preceding verses. The only objection to this is that it leaves the τεθλασμένοι and ἀποκοπέντες without any theological interpretation corresponding to the other classes. Possibly this might be met by inserting <οἱ ἄθεοι ἢ> instead of merely <ἢ>.