Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism Christianity and Islam
Third Printing, Revised
HARRY AUSTRYN WOLFSON
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS STRUCTURE AND GROWTH OF PHILOSOPHIC SYSTEMS FROM PLATO TO SPINOZA II
PHILO
VOLUME I
PHILO FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY IN JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, AND ISLAM
BY
HARRY AUSTRYN WOLFSON
NATHAN LITTAUER PROFESSOR OF HEBREW LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY
VOLUME I
THIRD PRINTING
REVISED
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1962 COPYRIGHT, 1947
BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OP HARVARD COLLEGE
All rights reserved
Distributed in Great Britain by Oxford University Press, London
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PREFACE
RELIGIOUS philosophies without a scriptural preamble, such as those with which we are nowadays acquainted, were unknown throughout the Middle Ages. To mediaeval philosophers of the various creeds, religion was not an outworn survival of primi• tive times, which, with the magic wand of philosophy, they tried to transform into something serviceable. Nor was it to them a peculiar kind of human experience, which, by philosophic probing into the mysterious workings of the subnormal or super• normal human mind, they hoped to track down to its hidden sources. Nor, again, was religion to them a floating wreckage of an ancient term, gutted out of its original contents, which, in accordance with the salvage-laws of language, they appropriated and used as a designation for their own particular brands of philosophy. It was to them a certain set of inflexible principles, of a divinely revealed origin, by which philosophy, the product of erring human reason, had to be tested and purged and puri• fied. What these principles were, how in the light of them philosophy for the first time was rewritten, and how also for the first time the principles themselves were recast in a philo• sophic mould — this is the burden of the present study. In a previous study, we tried to show how the entire seventeen- century-old philosophic structure raised upon the principles of a common preamble of faith was overthrown by Spinoza. When that study, The Philosophy of Spinoza, was published in 1934, we conceived the idea of working out more fully the background of some of the problems dealt with in Spinoza's philosophy. Starting with one problem and working backwards and sideways, we gradually managed to draw into our purview all of its major problems, treating of them in their historical development, through mediaeval Latin and Hebrew philosophy, from the vi PREFACE thirteenth to the seventeenth century j back of that, through Arabic Moslem and Jewish philosophy, from the eighth to the thirteenth century j and back of that, through the Church Fathers, through Philo, and through classical Greek philosophy. The outcome of this effort will be published in a series of books under the general title Structure and Growth of Philosophic Systems from Plato to Spinoza. The present two-volume study constitutes the second book of the series. Other studies on philosophers following Philo, as well as a general introductory study on Greek philosophy, to the latter of which occasional references are made in the footnotes of this book, will appear at reasonably short intervals. A revised and expanded edition of the two volumes on Spinoza will complete the series. Primarily this is a study of Philo, and as such it is an attempt to build up, out of innuendoes, a systematic structure of his thought and also to piece together, out of allusions and implica• tions, the story of its growth. But the work is also designed to serve as a general prolegomenon to the major problems of reli• gious philosophy for the seventeen centuries following Philo. The structure of the problems as herein presented will provide a general framework for the same problems as they appear in the works of later philosophers. The texts from various sources brought together in the story of their growth will furnish the most fundamental texts which will come into play in the sub• sequent history of these problems. The section in each chapter of this book under the heading "Conclusion, Influence, Antici• pation" furnishes a brief forecast of the general lines of de• velopment of the essential points of the Philonic philosophy in later philosophies down to Spinoza. In the volumes to follow, the story of this development will receive a fuller and more formal treatment. The preamble of faith with which the philosophy of Philo begins, though no longer universally accepted unchallenged, PREFACE vii has not completely disappeared. It is still the preamble of the living philosophy of the greater part of mankind. At the present time, under the name of one of the most distinguished of me• diaeval Christian exponents of Philonic philosophy, a modern• ized version of that philosophy, in its metaphysical as well as in its ethical and social teachings, based upon the same principles of the same old preamble of faith, is ably defended by an organ• ized school of thought. While it is to be admitted that for one who believes, or is willing to believe, in the principles of the old preamble of faith, it is no more difficult to build up and defend a Philonic type of philosophy at the present time than it was for many a century in the past, we have not attempted here to modernize Philonic philosophy nor have we dealt with the attempts of others at its modernization. The purpose of this book has been to delineate and depict the philosophy of Philo as it shaped itself in his own mind and in its own setting and to indicate briefly how in its main features it was the most dominant force in the history of philosophy down to the seven• teenth century. We have not touched upon its fortunes after that century nor upon the story of its resurgence in recent times. The peculiar literary form in which the works of Philo are written has made him the subject of a variety of interpretations. In the presentation of our own understanding of him, with the ex• ception of a few instances when we have openly taken issue with certain views, either generally accepted or individually es• poused, and with the further exception of general references to the literature on Philo whenever they were necessary either as an acknowledgment of indebtedness or for the bibliographical guidance of the reader or to indicate the termini at which Phi• lonic studies halted and from which our own investigation pro• ceeded, we have refrained from entering upon an examination or comparison or criticism of the various current interpretations of Philo — a subject which, if dealt with at all, is to be dealt viii PREFACE with elaborately and with all the fullness it deserves. We have attempted here a fresh examination of Philo both in his relation to his predecessors and with a view to those who came after him — and this on the basis of texts which are fully deployed and studied. For their generous help and advice I am grateful to Pro• fessor Arthur Darby Nock, of Harvard j Professor Francis How• ard Fobes, of Amherst j Professor Milton Vasil Anastos, of Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard j and Professors Richard Peter Mc- Keon and Ralph Marcus, both of the University of Chicago. The publication of this work was made possible by the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation. HL A. W. CONTENTS
VOLUME I
CHAPTER I
HELLENISTIC JUDAISM AND PHILO 3 I. Hellenistic Jewish Attitude toward Greek Religion and Philosophy 3 The philosophy of the Hellenized peoples, Alexandrian Jewish philosophy, and Egyptian philosophy, 3. — Scriptural attitude toward heathen gods and worship and its manifestation in Alex• andrian Jewish literature, 8. — The wisdom of philosophy and the wisdom of Scripture, and the superiority of the latter, 17.
II. Philo on Polytheism, Mythology, and Mysteries ... 27 Philo's arraignment of the Greek and Egyptian popular religions, 27.— His arraignment of mythology, 34. — His arraignment of the mysteries, 36. — What use he makes of the terminology of popular religion, mythology, and the mysteries, 38. — Discussion of certain views alleging the existence of mysteries among Alex• andrian Jews or the influence of the mysteries upon the philos• ophy of Philo, 44.
III. Discordance, Conformity, Apostasy 55 The three tendencies among the Alexandrian Jews with regard to the interpretation of Scripture: (a) Philosophical allegorism, 55. —(b) Liberal traditionalism, 57. — (c) Extreme allegor• ism, 66.— The common underlying unity of these three tend• encies, 71. — Three types of apostates in Alexandrian Judaism: (a) The weak of flesh, 73. — (b) The socially ambitious, 77. — (c) The intellectually uprooted, 78. — General characterization of Alexandrian Judaism, 85.
CHAPTER II
HANDMAID OF SCRIPTURE 87 I. Behind the Allegorical Method 87 Classification of Philo's writings, 87. — His Jewish sources: