Musurillo, The Acts of Pagan Martyrs.
Chapter 2
Philo and His Time
Philo’s biography has shown him at the crossroad of Judaism, Hellenism, and Roman civilization. We now pose the question of discovering what he knew in these three areas. We begin by seeing how many tendencies collide in the Jewish world, whether Palestinian or Hellenistic. This late Judaism is simultaneously a period of messianic Zealots and cosmopolitan Herodians, of Pharisaic legalism and Essene pietism. We witness an apocalyptic strain flourish there at the same time as the Gnostic interpretation of Genesis. Similarly, many tendencies see the light of day in Greek philosophy. It is a time of eclecticism, as Cicero had shown half a century earlier: Stoicism, Platonism, and Aristotelianism combine in various proportions. Lastly, at the political level, this is a period when the imperial ideology is elaborated but also of republican revolts.
It would be an impossible task to attempt to draw of picture of such a complex world. Equally, it would be meaningless. What matters to us is what Philo in fact deemed important. Thus, as Wolfson has clearly shown, pagan religious trends affected him little. His Jewish faith makes him impermeable to them. He spoke of them only to criticize. To learn what he knew, the best thing is to query him. We ask ourselves which contemporary tendencies he discussed. It happens that there is a group of his works that precisely set out less his ideas than those of his time. These works will be our sources here. We will see what Philo tells us about Jewish pietism, Greek philosophy, and Roman politics.
Philo and the Essenes
The core of Philo’s thought is indisputably Biblical. Almost all of his output is Scriptural commentary. He uses the Greek Septuagint translation done at Alexandria itself during the previous centuries. These Biblical sources of Philo’s thought are not what interest us for the moment. We will devote a long study to them as well as to the exegetical methods that he found at Alexandria. Our goal is different now. We want to discover what Philo knew about contemporary Judaism. This is the question we put to him. Indeed Philo spoke of Judaism. He wrote an Apology for the Jews of which Eusebius has given us important fragments. In the book Every Good Man is Free, he presented his ideal of Judaism in contrast with the wise men of Persia, India, and Greece. He devoted two short works to the active and contemplative lives. In all these works, we come up against a massive reality: when Philo wants to present ideal Judaism, he talks about the Essenes.
Moreover, we are also shown the reverse of the coin. Philo’s works are very meager in their treatment of other tendencies within contemporary Judaism. We find no echo of the theology of history that was developing an apocalyptic vision, whether in Palestine with contemporary works like the Assumption of Moses or at Alexandria itself with Book II of the Sibylline Oracles, which is slightly earlier than Philo. Remarkably, we find very few traces of the tradition to which the Pharisees adhered that would lead to the Mishnah and the Midrashim. Heinemann has shown that Philo’s legal concepts come from the Greco-Roman environment rather than from the Scribes’ Halakhah. In Philo we find very few of the edifying elaborations of sacred history that constitute the Haggadah that fill a contemporary Jewish current that ranges from the Book of Jubilees to the book of antiquities of Pseudo-Philo.
Thus, for him, the Essenes represent the ideal of contemporary Judaism. We can say that his Judaism has three components: the Greek Bible with its Alexandrian exegesis, Herodian society, and Essene pietism. These three components constitute more of a whole than it might seem. Indeed, as we have already noted, the Herodian circle had geographical contact with the Essenes of Qumran and, furthermore, seemed to be more compatible with these pious monks than with Sadducee politicians or zealot agitators. At the end of his two reports on the Essenes, Philo himself notes that they were protected by even the most despotic of the princes. This is an evident reference to the Herods.
In the first chapter we spoke of contacts with the Herods. In the next one we will speak of Philo’s place in Alexandrian exegesis. What interests us here is his testimony about Essene pietism, and we will study this testimony first. Then we will contrast it with the testimony of the Qumran manuscripts. Lastly, we will ask whether Philo’s works shows Essene influence. But first we face a preliminary question about the value of Philo’s testimony. Indeed, certain authors judge that the depiction of an ideal Judaism in his report has no connection to a particular historical reality. Yet, since he is the first Greek author to speak of the Essenes and the first to give them that name, which is not found in the Dead Sea scrolls, his testimony is of great importance. We must examine the reasons why it is disputed.
The last author to have done so is Henri del Medico. “The Essenes, as Philo called them, would have lived in Palestine. What did he know about them? Philo was born in Alexandria about 30 B.C. [?], and although he did not know Hebrew [?], was named ethnarch [?] by his Greek-speaking coreligionists in Egypt. He left Egypt for the first time at the age of seventy [?], when he had to go to Rome to defend the interests of the community before Caligula. Philo was never in Palestine [?]. Even the short stay in Jerusalem upon his return from Rome is rather hypothetical. Philo seems to make up the virtuous Essenes out of the whole cloth [?]”32
In the passage I have marked all the inexactitudes with which the text abounds, the central point that concerns us is that Philo was only in Palestine after his return from Rome, therefore in 41 when he was seventy. Now the text that mentions his stay in Jerusalem is De Providentia II; it is related to De Animalibus, which is the work of Philo whose date is best established. It is situated around 35. Thus the voyage is earlier. Moreover, Philo, who was really born around 13 B.C., was about forty at the time. Let us add that there is no reason to believe it was his first trip to Jerusalem. Given the attraction Jerusalem exerted at the time of the great feasts, the proximity of Alexandria in relation to Ascalon, the great wealth of Philo, whose brother was a ship-owner, and his ties to the Palestinian Herods, it would be very strange that he should have had no occasion to go to Palestine.
There is no reason for us to question Philo’s testimony. This is the first point established. But not all the difficulties have been resolved in the identification of the Essenes whom Philo mentions with the Qumran Zadokites. We must, therefore, examine what Philo says. I take the reference of Quid Omnis Probus Liber Sit. It begins with three extraordinarily specific indications. The Essenes (Ἐσσαῖοι), as Philo calls them, number around 4000. This indication is valuable in regard to the situations of the Essenes in the time of Christ, which is what Philo describes. It is implausible that it is fictitious. Philo next explains that the name Ἐσσαῖοι that he gives them transcribes an untranslatable Hebrew word that indicates holiness (Quod Probus, 75). This indication is also very precise. In fact Ἐσσαῖοι seems to be the transliteration into Greek of the Aramaic hasa, which means pious, and corresponds to the Hebrew hasid.33 Essenes and Hasidim are parallel expressions that designate faithful Jews since the second century B.C. This incidentally allows us to observe that Philo certainly knew Hebrew, as Marcus observes.
Philo continues by observing: [they] “have shown themselves especially devout in the service of God, not by offering sacrifices of animals, but by resolving to sanctify their minds” (Quod Probus, 75).34 This passage is one of the most interesting of the report. It contains the observations that the Essenes did not offer bloody sacrifices in the temple but a spiritual sacrifice, which was their priesthood. We first note the last feature, which is an allusion to the priestly origin of the ascetics. What other allusions are there? It was thought that there was a similar condemnation of sacrifices in the Manual of Discipline, IX, 3–5. But a better reading of the text excludes this interpretation.35 There still remains Josephus’s affirmation that the Essenes abstained from offering sacrifices in the Temple (Antiquities of the Jews, XVIII, 1, 5). Consequently, two things must be distinguished in Philo’s text. On the one hand, he observes the fact that the Essenes do not offer sacrifices in the temple. That is completely certain. On the other hand, he interprets this fact as a spiritualization of the cult. That is his personal theory.
Philo
