KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IN PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE

558 Pages·2013·3.21 MB·English

by  Bobby Jangsun Ryu

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IN PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE ALLEGORICAL COMMENTARY

- by -

Bobby Jang Sun Ryu

A dissertation presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
to the Faculty of Theology and Religion in the University of Oxford

Michaelmas 2012 University College, Oxford

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KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IN PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE ALLEGORICAL COMMENTARY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstracts 3

Thesis Outline 15

List of Diagrams 22

Chapter 1 24
Introduction

Chapter 2 65
Knowledge of God in the Allegorical Commentary

Chapter 3 153
Knowledge of God in the ‘Exposition of the Law’

Chapter 4 312
Scriptural Exegesis and the Language of Initiation
into Divine Mysteries in the Allegorical Commentary

Chapter 5 356
Scriptural Exegesis and the Language of Divine Inspiration
in the Allegorical Commentary

Chapter 6 433
Conclusion

Bibliography 461

Appendices 548
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KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IN PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE ALLEGORICAL COMMENTARY

BOBBY JANG SUN RYU
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
MICHAELMAS TERM 2012

ABSTRACT

This thesis is a context-sensitive study of key epistemological commitments and
concerns presented in Philo’s two series of exegetical writings. The major
conclusion advanced in this thesis is that two theological epistemologies, distinct yet
related, can be detected among these writings. The first epistemology is specific to
the Allegorical Commentary. The second epistemology is specific to the ‘Exposition
of the Law.’

The epistemology of the Allegorical Commentary reflects a threefold conviction: the
sovereignty of God, the creaturely contingency of the human mind and its
inescapable limitations. In conversation with key epistemological notions of his day,
Philo develops this threefold conviction in exegetical discourses that are grounded
in Pentateuchal texts portraying the God of Moses as both possessing epistemic
authority and aiding the aspiring mind to gain purification and perfection in the
knowledge of God. Guided by this threefold conviction, Philo enlists key metaphors
of his day – initiation into divine mysteries and divine inspiration, among others –in
order to capture something of the essence of Moses’ twofold way of ascending to the
divine, an approach which requires at times the enhancement of human reason and
at other times the eviction of human reason.

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The epistemology of the ‘Exposition’ reflects Philo’s understanding of the
Pentateuch as a perfect whole partitioned into three distinct yet inseverable parts.
Philo’s knowledge discourses in the ‘creation’ part of the ‘Exposition’ reflect two
primary movements of thought. The first is heavily invested with a Platonic reading
of Genesis 1.27 while the second invests Genesis 2.7 with a mixture of Platonic and
Stoic notions of human transformation and well-being. Philo’s discourses in the
‘patriarchs’ segment reflect an interest in portraying the three great patriarchs as
exemplars of the virtues of instruction (Abraham), nature (Isaac), and practice
(Jacob) which featured prominently in Greek models of education. In the ‘Moses’
segment of the ‘Exposition,’ many of Philo’s discourses on knowledge are marked by
an interest in presenting Moses as the ideal king, lawgiver, prophet and priest who
surpasses Plato’s paradigm of the philosopher-king. In keeping with this view, Philo
insists that the written laws of Moses represent the perfect counterpart to the
unwritten law of nature. The life and laws of Moses serve as the paradigm for Philo
to understand his own experiences of noetic ascent and exhort readers to cultivate
similar aspirational notions and practices.

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KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IN PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE ALLEGORICAL COMMENTARY

BOBBY JANG SUN RYU
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
MICHAELMAS TERM 2012

LONG ABSTRACT

I begin the thesis by situating this project in the present state of research and
offering an overview to the project (Chapter1). Following this introduction, I move
into the main interpretive chapters of the thesis. In Chapter 2 I explore the threefold
conviction that gets to the core of the theological epistemology of the Allegorical
Commentary: the sovereignty of God, the creaturely contingency of the human mind
and its inescapable limitations. From each one follows the next. The first
understands God as the uncreated cause and possessor of all things, including the
human mind. As such, Philo rejects outright the epistemological agenda espoused by
Protagoras of Abdera, a self-centric way of knowing associated with the doctrine
that anthropos is the measure of all things. Philo also urges restraint when it comes
to the role of the Logos, conceived as all-pervasive in the Stoic imaginations of his
day. In Philo’s reckoning, the Logos is the chief intermediary between God and
humanity, but nonetheless created, and on this basis, unequivocally inferior to the
uncreated God of Moses.

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A necessary corollary is that the human mind is a created entity, domiciled in the
non-rational soul and subject to the array of contingencies that attend human
existence. Philo trades on notions of spiritual impregnation and human assimilation
to the divine, enlisting these philosophical commonplaces to conceive of the human
mind as endowed with the potential to ascend to its divine creator. Equally clear is
Philo’s interest in blending this line of thought with Mosaic descriptions of the
varied gifts of knowledge which God out of his beneficence confers on the aspiring
mind. Such conferrals are part of the aspirant’s journey to the divine. Through his
various agencies, God wants the aspiring mind to gain purification and perfection
and thereby to experience therapy and transformation of knowledge.

A third necessary consequence is Philo’s insistence on the creaturely limitations of
the human mind. Even in the superlative paradigm case of Moses, the unmediated
knowledge and experience of the divine which he most longs for is the very thing he
cannot attain to full measure. A limited strand of contemporary scepticism can be
detected, confined to specific exegetical contexts which Philo sees as supporting the
Mosaic doctrine of divine incomprehensibility.

In Chapter 3, I examine the distinctive set of epistemological concerns that animates
the ‘Exposition.’ Philo underwrites his commitment to the Judaism of his day with a
wider batch of Mosaic material, presenting the particular character and content of
these Jewish ideas vis-à-vis the wider Graeco-Roman imaginations of his day.
Writing to a perhaps more mixed audience of Jews and non-Jews with little if any
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knowledge of Moses, Philo presents the Pentateuch as a perfect whole partitioned
into three distinct yet inseverable parts. In Philo’s reckoning, Moses’ excellence is
seen in how the first part of the ‘Exposition’ (the double creation account of Genesis
1-3) moves into a second part (the patriarchal accounts of Genesis), which then
feeds into the third and lengthiest part (the legislative material in the Pentateuch).

In recognition of these lines of partition, Philo writes about theological knowledge in
three distinctive ways. Because Philo, like other Jewish interpreters, identified in the
Mosaic testimony two separate accounts of the creation of humanity, his knowledge
discourses in the first part of the ‘Exposition’ moves in two primary directions. The
first direction is heavily invested with a Platonic reading of Genesis 1.27 while the
second invests Genesis 2.7 with a mixture of Platonic and Stoic notions of human
transformation and well-being.

The first Mosaic account of the creation of humanity (Genesis 1.27) prompts Philo to
envisage Plato’s intelligible world of being and leads him to employ the language
from Plato’s Timaeus and Phaedrus. Here, in his portrayal of noetic ascent, Philo
insists that the knowledge gained is apophatic in character. In this ecstatic state of
mind, the aspirant experiences vertigo, her intellect evicted in the face of
overwhelming divine realities.

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Philo sees the second Mosaic account of the creation of humanity (Genesis 2.7)
through the window of Genesis 1.27 and this provokes him to consider the
possibilities of noetic ascent in the world of becoming and constant flux. In this
context, Philo enlists the language of human assimilation to God from Plato’s
Theaetetus, a text he also exploited in the Allegorical Commentary. Here, the
knowledge gained is not apophatic in character. Rather, the aspirant’s state of mind
is marked by the full enhancement of human reason predicated on the recovery of
her self-taught nature. Compared to the mind’s ascent to the divine which Philo
derives from his reading of Genesis 1.27, this portrait of noetic ascent is more fully
conversant with mainstream Stoic and eudaemonistic approaches to human
transformation in Philo’s day.

Turning to the segment of the ‘Exposition’ concerned with the three great patriarchs
(Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), I explore how and why Philo draws on a longstanding
model of Greek education that featured the interlocking virtues of instruction,
nature, and practice. Philo presents the patriarchal exemplars, respectively and
relatedly, as unwritten laws who embody the best of Greek speculations on these
three virtues.

In addition, Philo shows his interest in more mystical imaginations of human
knowledge of God. In one striking instance which recalls the sort of language seen
more regularly in the Allegorical Commentary, Philo probes the non-literal
dimensions of Genesis 18, the account of Abraham’s encounter with the divine, in
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order to convey the possibility that God, as a plenipotentiary being, can reveal
himself to human minds in two ways: as a single entity to purified (initiated) minds
and as a pair of divine powers to less purified (uninitiated) minds.

Such mystical speculations, on balance, are few and far between in this segment of
the ‘Exposition.’ Philo instead tends to trade on the notion that the patriarchs
anticipate a reality signified by the life and laws of Moses, the recipient of the divine
Ten Words and the revealer of the particular human laws that fall under each of the
Words. In Philo’s attention to the primacy of laws, one can detect, at least in the
distance, the suggestion raised by Aristotle (Nichomachean Ethics Book 10) that the
triadic approach to human transformation – signified by the interrelated virtues of
instruction, nature, and practice – is secondary to the promulgation and practice of
divinely conferred human laws.

Having moved from the ‘creation’ segment to the ‘patriarchs’ segment, I turn to the
‘Mosaic’ segment of the ‘Exposition.’ Philo’s epistemological discourses are not easy
to ascertain, not least because of the scale and scope of the material which falls
under his purview. Yet, one can detect a connective thread, namely, the idea that the
written laws of Moses collectively represent the perfect counterpart to the
unwritten law of nature. On Philo’s testimony, these two sets of laws are presented
as divine in origin yet disclosed for the well-being of humanity. Philo’s approach to
laws as both universal and particular in scope and substance leads him to enlist one
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of Plato’s most famous epistemological constructs, his ideal of the philosopher-king
in Book 5 of the Republic.

The exact relationship between this Platonic ideal and Philo’s conception of Moses is
far from clear. What is offered more explictly, however, is Philo’s keen interest in
presenting Moses as the ideal king, lawgiver, prophet and priest, one whose fourfold
excellence signifies the paradigmatic philosopher whose quest to know and
experience God illuminates Philo’s account of his first-hand experiences of noetic
ascent. In this light, Philo exhorts some of his readers to cultivate similar kinds of
aspirational notions and practices. The basic idea here is not far removed from what
one finds in portrayals of Moses in related Hellenistic Jewish literature, notably
Josephus.

Returning to the threefold conviction that guides Philo’s epistemological discourses
in the Allegorical Commentary, it is striking that Philo enlists the language from two
key metaphorical fields of his day – initiation into divine mysteries and divine
inspiration of the human mind –to capture something of the essence of Moses’
twofold way of knowing the divine, an approach which requires at times the
enhancement of human reason and at other times the eviction of human reason. In
Philo’s view, Moses brings together human rationality and human non-rationality as
compatible ways of knowing and experiencing the divine. What is perceived as a
harmony in Moses, Philo insists, is not for everyone, however: it is to be understood
according to the aptitudes of Philo’s more advanced readers of the Allegorical
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