Philo’s account of the proceedings with the emperor survives in the treatise entitled Legatio ad Gaium.This remarkable document almost certainly tells less than the whole story about why friction arose between Jews and Greeks in Alexandria. But it provides an interesting portrait of the emperor, Caligula, and his attitude toward the problem of Jews and emperor worship. Whether through boredom at the length of the delegation's pleas or through genuine conviction, he observed of the Jews' refusal to worship him as a god, "I think that these people are not so much criminals as lunatics in not believing that I have been given a divine nature." The delegation, which had been understandably alarmed when Caligula brought up the question of emperor worship in his opening remarks, was heartily relieved when his concluding statement suggested merely pity and condescension rather than ill will.
Philo's major writings, however, consist largely of moral treatises and philosophical-theological essays on topics of scriptural interest. As a religious believer, he was convinced that the truth of things was to be found ultimately in the teachings of Moses; as a philosopher, he felt a need to express this truth in terms that were intelligible to a world imbued with the ideas of Greek philosophy. His works consequently suggest frequent tension between an attempt to interpret the Scriptures in the light of Greek philosophy and an attempt to criticize Greek philosophy in the light of scriptural truth.
The latter is particularly clear in Philo's doctrine of God. For Philo the believer, God is the only reality that is eternal; He is also totally "other" and unknowable. His providence is "individual,” manifesting itself in direct intervention in the universe, with suspension, if need be, of laws of nature for the benefit of meritorious individuals. Of His own goodwill, He endows the human soul with immortality. These views were strongly contrasted by Philo with Greek views, such as those found in Plato's Phaedo and Timaeus, in which both matter and the Ideas are said to be coeternal with God; Providence is said to be manifested in the basic laws of nature, and the human soul is said to be of its very nature immortal. In other words, Philo asserted that the human soul never dies.
Nonnegotiable dogma aside, however, Philo was more than willing to use the thought forms of Greek philosophy on those many matters on which honest disagreement among believers seemed to him allowable. The Greek philosophy in question is a philosophic eclecticism drawn from many sources. His stress on the symbolic importance of certain numbers suggests contemporary neo-Pythagorean influence. The views that causality is fourfold, that virtue lies in a mean, that God is to be seen as the prime mover of the universe, show the clear influence of Aristotle.
The spirit of Plato emerges clearly in Philo's general acceptance of notions such as the theory of Ideas, and the belief that the body is a tomb or prison, that life for man should be a process of purification from the material, that cosmic matter preceded the formation of the cosmos, and that the existence of God can be inferred from the structure and operations of the universe. The influence of stoicism emerges in his doctrines of man's "unqualified" free will, of the need to live in accord with nature, of the need to live free from passion, and of the "indifference" of what is beyond one's power.
Philo was one of the main philosophers of the transition period from Platonism to Neoplatonism. Philo is a representative of middle-Platonic philosophy, which combines Platonic doctrine with ideas of the Stoics and the Neo-Pythagoreans. In his writings, he endeavors to reconcile the world-view of Platonic philosophy with the principles of the Bible, and thereby pioneered in the attempt to forge a synthesis between Greek philosophy and Judaism. In his interpretation of Scripture, Philo seems to have adhered to its "spiritual" rather than to its literal truth. Thus the literal idea of a 6-day creation is rejected, and the story of Adam's rib is written off as mythical.
Philo's thought is of a deep religious and mystic character. According to Philo, God is a completely transcendent entity. Although God is beyond human apprehension, man must constantly strive to know Him. The logos, the Word of God, is the wisdom of God, different from God, yet not separate from Him. The logos is the force through which the world was created and it mediates between God and man. Following Plato, Philo distinguishes between the transient, material world and the eternal, spiritual world. Man, a creature composed of body and soul, partakes of both worlds and thus is given the possibility of choosing between them. The Church Fathers were greatly influenced by Philo's thought, including his allegorical mode of interpretation of the Bible and his doctrine of the logos, and they preserved his writings. The primary example in the Christian Bible (NIV), verses 1–18:
1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2. He was with God in the beginning.
3. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
6. There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.
10. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13. children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
14. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15. John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' " 16. From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. 17. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.
Although the Church Fathers were anti-Jewish in attitude, they were responsible for the preservation of the writings of the Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, Philo, who nearly fell into oblivion among the Jews. Philo's Logos (God's word) represents God's emanation, His active reason. However, with the Church Fathers this concept developed into the hypostasis (the substance, essence, or underlying reality) represented in the Godhead's third person as Holy Spirit and in the incarnation of God becoming man in JESUS, the pre-existent Christ. Such modes of thought illustrate the influence of Hellenistic Judaism (Philo) in the development of Christianity. At the same time, they stand in direct opposition to normative Judaism, to which the speculations of the Church Fathers and the Church councils remained completely alien.
The key influences on Philo’s philosophy were Plato, Aristotle, the Neo-Pythagoreans, the Cynics, and the Stoics. Philo’s basic philosophic outlook is Platonic, so much so that Jerome and other Church Fathers quote the apparently widespread saying: “Either Plato philonizes or Philo platonizes.”
