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Lesson 3.2: Pax (Pt. II)
9 Plays4 days ago
A crucified rebel. A Jewish philosopher who read Genesis like Plato.
One challenged empire with parables; the other reimagined a faith without a temple.
Both helped ignite revolutions that would reshape the ancient world—and ours.
Topics discussed:- The World of Jesus: Political unrest, economic inequality, and Roman brutality shaped the world into which Jesus preached—and against which he rebelled.
- Jesus' Radical Vision: A coming Kingdom of God that would reverse earthly hierarchies, heal injustices, and bring hope to the oppressed.
- Philo of Alexandria: A Jewish thinker who blended Scripture with Greek philosophy, transforming Judaism into a rational, universal faith beyond Temple rituals.
- Allegory as Survival: Both proto-Christians and Jewish philosophers like Philo used allegorical interpretation to defend and reinterpret ancient traditions for a new, cosmopolitan world.
- The Birth of New Worlds: Out of trauma, exile, and conquest emerged new ideas of God, justice, and human destiny—ideas that would echo for millennia.
For more, go to theluxuryofvirtue.com.
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Transcript
Roman Conquest and Transition to Augustus
00:00:02
Speaker
In the last lesson, we discussed what was going on with the Roman Empire in particular. We told the story of how the Roman Empire slowly conquers all the Hellenistic kingdoms.
00:00:15
Speaker
And it itself slowly transitions into one man rule with Augustus being the first full blown emperor of the Roman empire.
Historical Context of the Levant
00:00:25
Speaker
Today we have to backtrack a little bit and discuss what was going on in the Eastern Mediterranean.
00:00:32
Speaker
Now this is known as the Levant region. And just so you know what the Levant is, if you want to think about it today, these are the nation states of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, right? Syria.
00:00:45
Speaker
But we want to know what was going on 2000 years ago. Okay.
Judea as a Roman Client State
00:00:50
Speaker
Maybe a good place to start is in Judea. Judea is a province where you can find the city of Jerusalem, of course, a very important city for Israel.
00:01:01
Speaker
religion for multiple religions and for you know maybe western history in general we could say now judea had been part of the hellenistic world it was one of the regions that was conquered by alexander the great and so of course it will be one of the regions also conquered by the romans this process begins in 63 bce
00:01:26
Speaker
that's when Judea becomes a client state of Rome. What this means is essentially that Judea is not directly controlled by the Romans. There is a local ruler that is part of the tradition of the Jewish people, and they just sort of do Rome's
Herod the Great's Impact on Jewish History
00:01:44
Speaker
bidding, right? So it's a local ruler, but Rome gets some you know taxes from them, and this local ruler really can't shake things up too much. They more or less have to do whatever Rome wants them to do.
00:01:58
Speaker
One historical figure that is important from this time period is Herod the Great. He reigns for almost 40 years, from 37 to 4 BCE.
00:02:09
Speaker
Some notable factoids about Herod the Great are that he expanded the second temple. If you don't know what the temple is, let me try to give you the cliff notes version of this. Judaism and this time period is centered around the temple, temple worship, rituals and all that being done at the temple.
00:02:29
Speaker
And this is the second temple. Why is it the second temple? Well, it's because the first temple was destroyed by the Babylonians. The Babylonians a couple of centuries earlier had conquered Jerusalem and part of their conquest until destroying the temple.
00:02:45
Speaker
This was later rebuilt when Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. That is, by the way, the exact same Persian Empire that was going to war with the Greek city-states couple of times. So they, when they conquered Jerusalem, they had a pretty soft policy regarding religion.
00:03:05
Speaker
And the Persians actually even funded the building of the second temple. So that second temple was around for a few centuries. By the time of Herod, it needed some you know refurbishing and maybe an expansion. And that's exactly what Herod the Great does.
Post-Herod Political Instability
00:03:20
Speaker
When Herod dies, though, there is some political instability, let's say. It's not that things were hunky-dory during Herod's reign either. But at least he was keeping things, you know, under wraps. He was not letting things get too out of control.
00:03:38
Speaker
Now we know that much of the problems began even before Herod died. But here's what we know about what some of these issues were. Apparently the main issue was economic inequality.
00:03:50
Speaker
There was lots of it in Jerusalem. There are archaeological excavations now that show that the priestly class was living... pretty luxurious lifestyles, right?
00:04:03
Speaker
and The priestly class, by the way, these are the descendants of biblical figures like Aaron, also the tribe of Levi, and they were living in a pretty lavish way.
00:04:14
Speaker
And apparently this began during the reign of Herod, and of course, continued afterwards. And one of the main problems with this is that there was now this rich landowning elite that was essentially living off the rents of all the things that they owned, right?
00:04:32
Speaker
And this seemed to be living in a way that just ran counter to the traditional communal ways of the Jewish people. So more traditional Jewish people, and of course, people that weren't super rich, just kind of had an issue with this.
00:04:50
Speaker
Now, you don't need to be told that there's plenty of historical examples where in time periods where there's a lot of economic inequality, um it's only a matter of time before the pitchforks come out, right? So this was what was going on in Jerusalem and Judea in general.
00:05:09
Speaker
And so let's just, you know, put it lightly here. There was causing quite a bit of social tension, just because Maybe you can look at the United States today, 21st century, increasing economic inequality.
00:05:21
Speaker
There is just a little bit of a sense that things are about to boil over, right? So this is probably a pretty good example of what was going on in Judea 2000 years ago.
00:05:33
Speaker
Well, if there's one thing that the Romans hate, it is instability. The Romans need their cash flow to remain untroubled, right? They need that continuous flow of resources.
Roman Direct Control over Judea
00:05:46
Speaker
And so in the year 6 CE, about a decade after Herod dies, Judea becomes a province of Rome. In other words, Rome has now more direct control.
00:05:59
Speaker
There is no longer a Jewish king running things in the name of Rome. It's just Rome, essentially. And so now a Roman governor is appointed. And then just because things were pretty tense, what this governor would do is choose or appoint a high priest.
00:06:18
Speaker
And this high priest would be sort of the face of Roman rule and would do a lot of the day-to-day things. But really, they had to keep the governor happy. What did the high priest do from day to day? Well, first of all, he presided over the Sanhedrin.
00:06:36
Speaker
The Sanhedrin is a council of elders who basically were, you know, if you recognize American government today as three branches, The Sanhedrin played these three branches, right? So they would make laws, that's the legislative branch.
00:06:52
Speaker
They would prosecute criminals, that's the executive branch. And they would interpret Mosaic law. So that would be the judicial branch. And the high priest, of course, presided over this body of of elders, this council of elders.
00:07:08
Speaker
Needless to say, it was a very difficult position to hold because On the one hand, you had to uphold traditional rituals and customs of Jewish people, right? You had to keep the people happy.
00:07:22
Speaker
Things were already tense, remember? So there was that. But at the same time, you had to appease your Roman overlords. So if you ask me, you know I wouldn't want to be the high priest. That sounds like you're getting pulled in two different directions.
00:07:39
Speaker
Likely a very stressful job. So my guess is because of the difficulty of the position, only fairly exceptional people probably thought they were capable of doing the job.
00:07:51
Speaker
Well, we do have one exceptional leader that does come to the position in the year 18
Jesus' Moral Message and Social Response
00:08:00
Speaker
This person is named Caiaphas and he was appointed by the Roman governor at the time, Valerius Gratius. Just so that you know where this story is going, a little bit after this time period, in the year 26 CE, there would be a new Roman governor of Judea.
00:08:21
Speaker
His name is Pontius Pilate. So you probably know where this story is going. So let's just get to the man of the hour then.
00:08:32
Speaker
Let's talk about a man named Yeshua, or of course, as he is better known today, Jesus. Jesus was born and Nazareth, which is a little town in the province of Galilee.
00:08:46
Speaker
Galilee, by the way, is not in Judea. Judea is a province that's just below the province of Samaria.
00:08:57
Speaker
So just south of Samaria. And Galilee is to the north of Samaria, which means that if you want to picture it, Galilee is the furthest north, then it's the province of Samaria, further south, and then the furthest south is the province of Judea.
00:09:15
Speaker
Well, that's what was going on in Galilee. But just as in Judea, there was a whole lot of economic inequality. And it seems like Jesus's ministry was a response to the social distress felt by those that were poor and, of course, also sick.
00:09:34
Speaker
That is to say, what Jesus was doing was fulfilling a need that people had. The economic and just social situation in general was becoming unbearable for many people.
00:09:45
Speaker
And Jesus was responding to that. He also had a moral and political message. And he had a real knack for conveying his moral teachings in the form of really memorable parables, right? So you can read the Bible and hear some of these parables.
00:10:04
Speaker
Beyond this, historians who focus on the historical figure of Jesus also note that there was also sort of an apocalyptic message to Jesus' ministry.
00:10:15
Speaker
In other words, something big was about to happen. All this inequality and oppression and suffering, it could not continue.
00:10:27
Speaker
And so what Jesus was likely saying is that the kingdom of God was about to be made manifest on earth. There was an imminent arrival of a political figure, typically known as a Messiah, that would, you know, first of all, liberate the Jewish nation.
00:10:48
Speaker
from its political oppressors and also just restore justice, economic justice, because there was a lot of economic injustice to be remedied. That was the vibe that was going on there.
00:11:02
Speaker
And you can hear this in, you know, the messages, ah the messaging of Jesus, right? The the rich will become poor. The first shall be last, that kind of stuff. And so this is one of the messages that really attracted people, perhaps, to Jesus.
Political Tensions in Judea Due to Jesus
00:11:19
Speaker
And his movement was really, really growing, right? Lots of people were liking what they were hearing. But Galilee wasn't where the real action was, right?
00:11:29
Speaker
The real action, the real direct Roman rule was in Judea. And so eventually Jesus crosses over into Judea.
00:11:40
Speaker
And at this point, he is entering territory that is directly ruled by, yes, the high priest and the Sanhedrin and also the Roman governor. And so at this point, Jesus was now stirring the pot in a region where things really were at a tipping point.
00:11:58
Speaker
And so from here, I'll let the historian of early Christianity, Charles Freeman, tell you what many historians think might have happened.
00:12:09
Speaker
Quote, Caiaphas had been shaken by the arrival in Jerusalem of Jesus and his followers. some of whom acclaimed him as a Messiah.
00:12:21
Speaker
The accolade Messiah had many connotations, not least an association with the royal lineage of David and the shattering of the godless nations through war.
00:12:33
Speaker
a new Messiah would offer a challenge to the status of the priesthood and to the traditional structure of society, possibly through the use of violence. Let me pause right here.
00:12:47
Speaker
What Freeman is telling us here is that if people had been calling Jesus a Messiah, this was... an indicator that things were probably gonna get really hot pretty soon.
00:13:01
Speaker
Because in the minds of most Jewish people, the Messiah is a political leader that is likely going to liberate the Jewish nation from you know whoever's oppressing them at the time, right? The shattering of the godless nations through war.
00:13:18
Speaker
So if Jesus really was thinking that he's the Messiah, or if people were saying that he's the Messiah, then you can imagine violent insurrection might have been on the minds of some people.
Crucifixion of Jesus by Roman Authority
00:13:30
Speaker
And Caiaphas did not want violent insurrection.
00:13:34
Speaker
Caiaphas' job was so, so difficult and he was just trying to keep things from boiling over. Someone like Jesus comes into town and he's just going to throw everything for a loop, right? So Caiaphas was probably very displeased that this movement was agitating the masses.
00:13:52
Speaker
So let me continue here with a quote. Jesus needed to be dealt with in some public way to show that any acclaimed messiahship was a sham. Let me pause again here.
00:14:03
Speaker
What Freeman is saying is that it's not the case that the Sanhedrin and Caiaphas just wanted to get rid of Jesus. They wanted to make an example of Jesus so that no one gets this hot idea to you know, say that they're the Messiah anymore.
00:14:21
Speaker
So they wanted something really public and violent, hopefully, to, you know, stamp out any, you know, trends about calling he yourself the Messiah.
00:14:34
Speaker
Continuing here with the quote, the Jews themselves had no right to order an execution, capital offense. But if the Romans crucified him, this would serve Caiaphas's purpose.
00:14:47
Speaker
Jesus would have been shown, and the most public and humiliating way possible, not to have been able to establish his own kingdom or threaten priestly authority.
00:14:58
Speaker
The priest needed to act fast. To ensure crucifixion, the interests of Pilate, the Roman governor, in the case had to be aroused. So, a political charge that Jesus claimed to be king of the Jews and was thus seditious was concocted.
00:15:17
Speaker
Let pause right here again. What Freeman is suggesting here, as well as some other historians of early Christianity, is that the high priest and the Sanhedrin basically made up some things about Jesus so that Pontius Pilate would say, okay, go ahead and crucify him.
00:15:37
Speaker
Perhaps suggesting that prior to this point, Pontius Pilate really didn't care about who this guy was and what he was doing. Just to finish out the quote here, Caiaphas and his supporters eventually succeeded.
00:15:51
Speaker
Jesus was crucified. So they convinced Pontius Pilate that this guy, Jesus, really was a threat to the established order.
00:16:02
Speaker
Pontius Pilate says, okay, go ahead and crucify him. And that is the end of Jesus. So they thought that What happens next is key.
00:16:15
Speaker
However, we don't really know exactly how it happened. Now you have to remember that Charles Freeman is a historian, right? So he can't say things like resurrections actually happened.
00:16:28
Speaker
He has to give a historical account that has no non-natural elements, right? That's what historians do. So Freeman here speculates for us as to what happened after the execution of Jesus. And of course, I should mention this,
00:16:45
Speaker
Jesus was executed by crucifixion, which is typically what you do to people who are guilty of insurrection. So here's what Freeman thinks happened after the crucifixion.
00:16:59
Speaker
Caiaphas wanted the followers of Jesus out of Judea. Just get out here. So what he does is he opens up the tomb where Jesus was, removes the
Aftermath of Jesus' Death
00:17:13
Speaker
corpse, the body,
00:17:15
Speaker
takes it who knows where, um and made sure that somehow the message was conveyed that Jesus would reappear in Galilee.
00:17:27
Speaker
Now, remember, Galilee is to the north of Judea, very far away from Jerusalem. Caiaphas must have been thinking to himself, I can get rid of these people this way.
00:17:40
Speaker
They think that their friend resurrected. They all go back to where they came from. um don't got to deal with them anymore. As far as historical accounts as to what happened after the crucifixion go, that's a pretty good story. Maybe that's what happened.
00:17:56
Speaker
We also, however, have several reports of appearances being made by the recently deceased Jesus.
00:18:07
Speaker
In other words, this man that had just died, people are saying that they are seeing him. And by people, I mean, of course, his followers.
00:18:18
Speaker
Charles Freeman also has some ideas as to why this was happening. And you can, by the way, check all of this out in his book, A New History of Early Christianity, published by Yale University Press.
00:18:32
Speaker
But here's what Freeman thinks. First of all, Freeman reminds us that in studies of trauma and sleep deprivation, it's not uncommon that people have hallucinations, right? If you don't sleep for a long time, maybe you start seeing things that aren't really there.
00:18:49
Speaker
If you have PTSD, you might start seeing things that aren't there. Well, given all that, think about what it must have been like for Jesus' followers at this time period.
00:19:02
Speaker
For starters, they just watched their friend and teacher get executed in a most brutal fashion. That might cause a little bit of PTSD.
00:19:15
Speaker
And on top of that, they were probably fearing that they must be next, right? This is a punishment doled out to people that did things that went against the state.
00:19:28
Speaker
And the Romans typically didn't take too kindly to that. And so they were probably on the run, Jesus' followers were. And that means they might have not been sleeping too well.
00:19:40
Speaker
And so given everything that we've just said, Freeman says that maybe it's not surprising that people who are probably suffering from PTSD and sleep deprivation started seeing things, right? Like their dead friend walking around, talking to them even.
00:19:57
Speaker
Well, of course, Freeman is a historian. He is not allowed to say that you know Jesus rose from the dead. But this is an account that sort of helps us see the most secular version of what was going on right around 30 CE in the Levant region of the Roman Empire.
00:20:53
Speaker
Now, it's not terribly interesting that a man was executed in the Roman imperial era. Lots of people get executed by the Romans. But this man in particular had a movement that only grew after his death.
Growth of the Jesus Movement
00:21:13
Speaker
So let's ponder this for a second. Why would the Jesus movement continue to grow after he died? Well, I've read multiple accounts as to why it is that the Jesus movement eventually grew to be a world religion.
00:21:30
Speaker
And I'm most persuaded by the accounts that really emphasize the role of Roman imperial methods. Because i think it clearly matters that Roman imperial policy is among the most brutal in the historical record.
00:21:52
Speaker
To read through what it was like to get conquered by the Romans is absolutely ghastly. It is savagery, right? It is awful. And so maybe it might be helpful to tell you a little bit about this.
00:22:05
Speaker
Beginning with the physical conquest itself, right? The Roman military beating your military. After the defeat... It was Roman policy to demonstrate their superiority in war to their defeated enemies.
00:22:24
Speaker
In other words, as a matter of course, the Romans brutalized the people that they conquered to let them know we're in charge now.
00:22:37
Speaker
This included some horrible things, by the way. And you know here's a quick trigger warning. Skip ahead a minute if you don't want to listen to this. First of all, and there was the rape of conquered peoples. This would be male and female.
00:22:53
Speaker
People would, of course, be enslaved. And this was more often than not for the building of public works. So that means they would enslave you and send you to some part of the empire where they're building something.
00:23:09
Speaker
Also having to do with the building of public works, is forced resettlement. Maybe the Romans might say to a whole group of people, you don't live here anymore. You live over here now.
00:23:19
Speaker
And of course, if you revolted or if you in any way got uppity with the Romans, they had a method for dealing with you. That was crucifixion.
00:23:32
Speaker
And a little bit after this time period, there was a Jewish revolt. And the Roman response was, even for the standards of the day, absolutely barbarous.
00:23:45
Speaker
The Romans crucified thousands of Jewish people and left their bodies hanging up to remind everyone that Rome is in charge.
00:23:58
Speaker
You don't get a choice in this. Welcome to the empire.
00:24:05
Speaker
And the trouble wasn't over after the physical conquest was done. Once you became either a client state or a province of Rome, the Romans imposed crushing taxation on you.
00:24:20
Speaker
So if you have regions like Judea that was already having a lot of economic inequality, and you place on top of that a new layer of Roman extraction, you're making things really unbearable for people.
00:24:38
Speaker
People are really, really suffering in multiple ways. And to add insult to injury, it was well known that Roman tax collectors were allowed to charge a little extra for themselves.
00:24:53
Speaker
So you're getting squeezed in multiple ways. And there's various levels of awfulness to this. So in light of this context, anyone who heard the story of Jesus, right, the guy that stood up to Rome, these people would have found that the message of Jesus really resonated with them.
00:25:13
Speaker
And you can really see this in the ethic of the early Jesus movement. Anyone who is part of this movement, let's call these Jesus groups, were just doing things that were clearly a reaction to Roman brutality.
00:25:31
Speaker
For example, people in the Jesus movement lived sometimes in chosen families. and they would have supper together. Why would they do this? Well, part of it is because many of them had been displaced from their ancestral homelands. Basically, they had been conquered.
00:25:51
Speaker
They had likely undergone a horrific experience. They were either enslaved or forcibly relocated. and so now they're in a strange place in a hostile new world without their family, without their friends.
00:26:07
Speaker
one really nice thing to have in this situation is some people that you can live with and or at least eat with right and so that's what some of the members of the jesus movement would do they would have new families sometimes they would live together sometimes they would just have dinner together either way that's a nice thing to have after being conquered by rome members of the Jesus movement also practiced charity and good works.
00:26:38
Speaker
And this makes perfect sense, right? People had been traumatized by Roman imperial methods. And so it's nice to get a little bit of charity from people, ah kind deed here and there.
00:26:51
Speaker
And of course, the Jesus movement talked about justice. They talked about people not taking more than what belongs to them, right?
00:27:03
Speaker
just like what the tax collectors were doing. I hope this helps you see that what the Jesus movement was doing was largely what Jesus himself was doing, responding to the needs of the people, right? They were in social distress and what they needed was help, some sort of respite from the unfriendly world they found themselves in.
00:27:30
Speaker
There's two, maybe three things that I want to say before i move on from the Jesus movement. First of all, I want to say that this is not an isolated phenomenon. It's not the case that the Jesus movement was the only movement that was doing things like this.
00:27:50
Speaker
Many people who came from, what do you want to call them, crushed nationalities, these people were looking for some kind of therapeutic release from the world they were living in.
00:28:03
Speaker
So in fact, this was actually a widespread social phenomenon. Now, I've already mentioned some of this last time, but this was a time period where the initiations to the mystery religions was growing.
00:28:18
Speaker
Things like the cult of Isis, the cult of Dionysus, the Ulyssinian Mysteries. These were all growing during this time period. And in fact, these mystery religions were growing at a faster rate than Jesus movement was at the time.
00:28:35
Speaker
I also mentioned last time that philosophers were sort of focusing a little bit more on more therapeutic elements, how to deal with negative thoughts,
00:28:48
Speaker
how to find happiness in a hostile world, how to overcome trauma. So I hope you can see here that there were many responses to the trauma that Roman imperial policy was causing in the mystery religions, in philosophy, and even in Jewish communities as in the Jesus movement.
00:29:12
Speaker
Here's a second thing that I want to say because it's going to help us understand why it is that the Jesus movement continued to grow and eventually became a world religion.
Structured Community Against Roman Oppression
00:29:24
Speaker
You have to remember that the Jesus movement was a Jewish movement. Jesus was a Jew. His followers were all Jews. This was a Jewish thing And that means that the Jesus movement had a shared cultural ground which they could invoke to sort of give structure to their movement. So what do I mean by this? let me give you some examples here.
00:29:46
Speaker
First of all, the Jews are, of course, monotheists. And they were among the few monotheists, right? Some philosophers were also monotheistic. But even they, like the Stoics, still practiced all the polytheistic pagan rituals, right? So they they didn't look too different from any other polytheist.
00:30:08
Speaker
But the Jewish people were unique and they were almost seen as sort of peculiar because they really only did worship one God. Well, during this time period, as everyone is being forced under one imperial banner, everyone is being forced to be a Roman, a part of the Roman Empire.
00:30:27
Speaker
At this point, the the notion of there being only one God, that sort of began to appeal to people sort of on a philosophical level. Yeah, one empire, one God. That sort of kind of made sense, right? So that's one thing that the Jewish people had going for them. These Jesus movements had going for them.
00:30:47
Speaker
Here's another thing. Even though the mystery religions had lots of converts, ah lots of new converts, they lacked some things that Jewish communities did have.
00:31:00
Speaker
For example, Yahweh, the Jewish God, gave his people commandments and not many other gods did so. And commandments are important because they help shape and forge communities.
00:31:16
Speaker
When you have rules for living, you have a more distinctive community and that's what people were looking for. Some sort of new community, new family to be a part of.
00:31:29
Speaker
So the fact that the Jesus movement could invoke these commandments wherever they were and to carve out a distinctive way of living, that goes a long way towards explaining why these communities would be more robust. They would just kind of stick together longer, right? They have a way of living. And I'll give you one more. The Jesus movement had holy writings that they could point to.
00:31:54
Speaker
Yeah, the mystery of religions had certain myths that they would you know invoke and all that. But once again, the Hebrew scriptures were just a little bit better.
Hebrew Scriptures and Inter-Ethnic Cooperation
00:32:05
Speaker
And part of that is because in these scriptures, there's actually, in at least some books of the Bible, talk of inter-ethnic cooperation. Inter-ethnic cooperation. That's something that we need now.
00:32:20
Speaker
Now you have all these, what did I say earlier, crushed nationalities all living together under one banner and then to figure out how to live with each other, um you know what would come in handy?
00:32:31
Speaker
Some scriptures, some writings that say there is a way that we can all live together. So those are two things that I wanted to say um that I think will help you understand why this movement will grow.
00:32:45
Speaker
I guess I should say one more thing here. And that's that I have not called this movement to Christianity yet. im i'm not calling them Christians. And I want to make sure it's clear why I'm doing this.
00:32:58
Speaker
For starters, no one would use the term Christian for at least a century until after Jesus died. So that's the first thing. it just seems anachronistic to use the word Christian at this point.
00:33:13
Speaker
Perhaps more importantly, At this time period, there is literally no uniformity of belief among the different Jesus groups.
00:33:25
Speaker
In the more technical jargon, there's no shared Christology. That is, there's no agreement about whether or not Jesus was divine. There's no agreement about what his mission was, what it was for, how do we continue it.
00:33:40
Speaker
There is no agreement on whether or not he actually resurrected. Why did he resurrect if he did resurrect? There is no agreement on what salvation is and when it would come and how it would come.
00:33:54
Speaker
Basically, there's nothing even resembling a belief system in this time period. So the only thing, the only label that I sort of feel comfortable using here is maybe proto-Christianity.
00:34:07
Speaker
So maybe I'll call it that here and there. But I sort of like the idea of just calling it the Jesus movement and the different groups, Jesus peoples, because they all had different ways of being a part of the movement.
00:34:25
Speaker
And it will be a long time before something like Christianity would arise. We're going to hear that story eventually. But to understand that story, we have to start in this way.
00:34:38
Speaker
We have to know that in the beginning, there was no real belief system to speak of. But I'm gonna beg of you here to be patient because we will see over several lessons spanning several centuries, how the Christian belief system materializes.
Philo's Transcendent Judaism
00:35:21
Speaker
So if we're telling the story of the eventual rise of Christianity, perhaps the next person we need to cover is Philo of Alexandria.
00:35:33
Speaker
Philo was born in 15 BCE e and he died around 45 CE, which means he lived about 15 years before Jesus was born and about 15 years after he died. So he sort of nicely bookends Jesus' life.
00:35:51
Speaker
In any case, Philo was from Alexandria and Philo was Jewish. In fact, there were many, many Jews in Alexandria. And this is sometimes called the Alexandrian Diaspora.
00:36:07
Speaker
due to the affluence of Alexandria during the Hellenistic Age, many, many people in general, not just Jews, but many people in general were sort of, you know, sucked into the the tractor pull of Alexandria. So you have a sizable Jewish community in that city and Philo is one of them.
00:36:30
Speaker
interesting factoid too, it might have been the case that Philo was in Jerusalem when Jesus was executed. so that's a, you know, it's possible. Why leave it out? Might as well mention it.
00:36:43
Speaker
And in addition to being from Alexandria and spending some time in Jerusalem, Philo also spent some time in Rome. So we'll get to all these tidbits and why they matter a little bit later.
00:36:54
Speaker
Let me begin by giving you a general overview of the sort of Judaism that Philo practiced. During this time period, the maybe the predominant form of Judaism, at least in the province of Judea, was temple Judaism.
00:37:16
Speaker
Essentially, it was a sort of Judaism where attending the temple and engaging in rituals there was sort of a big key aspect of what it means to be a practicing Jew.
00:37:31
Speaker
However, Philo didn't live near Jerusalem. He lived in Alexandria. And so he practiced a different kind of Judaism, one that did not require you know, constant involvement in the temple itself.
00:37:48
Speaker
And this, we can call it Philonic Judaism because it will ultimately be a sort of Judaism that's very unique to him. Maybe we can also call it biblical Judaism, but there's basically a focus more so on reading scripture and, you know, purifying your heart and your mind living according to the scripture.
00:38:09
Speaker
So it's more so a Judaism of the heart rather than a bunch of you know practices that are associated with with the religion at this time period at least. So this is one very interesting and important aspect of Philo's Judaism.
00:38:25
Speaker
Here is another. His method is somewhat different because he was sure interpreting the scriptures and perhaps several People from Alexandria, several practicing Jews from Alexandria were doing something like this.
00:38:40
Speaker
But Philo, maybe more than anyone else, was interpreting the scriptures through what he considered the most advanced and sophisticated system of thought of the era. um In other words, he was interpreting Hebrew scriptures through Greek philosophy, as well as some other Greek techniques that necessarily associated with a philosophical school.
00:39:04
Speaker
So we'll talk about that little bit more in a second, but I want you to get the general flavor first of what Philo was doing. One more thing so you can get that that vibe that he was going for.
00:39:16
Speaker
He, what he would essentially do is begin to read the Septuagint. That's the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. And he would just go line by line and write commentaries along the way.
00:39:31
Speaker
So he's taking the scriptures and providing his own interpretation for it in order as as he goes throughout the entire thing, right? Moreover, he is not doing ah literal reading, right? That's why there's interpretation involved.
00:39:49
Speaker
He is doing what we sometimes call an allegorical reading or more formally, allegorical exegesis. So that's ah you know some jargon there for you. But the general idea is he is doing non-literal interpretation.
00:40:07
Speaker
So just to give you one example of this, when one reads you know seven days, the creation took seven days, that's not supposed to be understood literally because if it were, it would be literally false, right? Because during the creation was when the sun was created, which is what defines what a day is, right? So you have to read scripture allegorically, non-literally.
00:40:34
Speaker
So that's Philo's general approach to Judaism.
Intellectual & Diasporic Judaism
00:40:38
Speaker
Let me give you now a little bit of historical context so you can really see why he was doing what he was doing.
00:40:46
Speaker
So I've already mentioned that the Romans established direct rule in Judea in 6 CE. Philo was over in Alexandria. along with many, many, many other Jews.
00:40:58
Speaker
And of course, Alexandria was already under Roman control. But the fact that Judea comes under Roman control is a big deal for the Jews because sort of their national identity is defined by their, you know, ways of life and their rituals.
00:41:17
Speaker
And the fact that the Romans are now imposing themselves on the Jewish nation really matters for Jews across the entire Mediterranean. So if you're Philo or you're someone in his generation and Rome has just brutally conquered Judea, you have a couple of responses that are available to you.
00:41:39
Speaker
Here's the first one, just throwing it out there. and If the Romans are gonna show up and impose their ways of life on Judea, maybe what you can do is just accept Roman rule there, accept Roman rule in Alexandria, accept that the Romans are just now in charge and just stop your ancestral practices. Just do what the Romans do, right? When in Rome.
00:42:06
Speaker
That's one approach, sure. That's one possible strategy. Another thing you can do being a Jew in Alexandria ah say, you know what, this is not okay. roman Romans should not be ruling Judea.
00:42:21
Speaker
And you know what, they shouldn't be ruling over here in Egypt either, right? So not in Alexandria either. So this is another option. This is known as revolt, right? And we know how revolts tend to go in the Roman Empire, but still,
00:42:35
Speaker
Maybe this is something that seems appealing to you. Indeed, we do know that some people did leave Alexandria to go to Jerusalem in order to participate in a rebellion. Now, I'll tell you about that much later, but this is definitely another option.
00:42:54
Speaker
And then there's a third option. How about this? How about you conceive of Judaism such that being a Jew, and being from Judea aren't really linked anymore.
00:43:09
Speaker
What if instead you conceive of a transcendent Judaism, right? One where Judaism is more about, you know, the heart and the mind, not these rituals that you perform in this particular city, in this particular temple.
00:43:22
Speaker
If you conceive of Judaism that way, then, you know, the Roman takeover of Judea kind of irrelevant for you, right? that's That's something that's happening over in some city somewhere.
00:43:36
Speaker
And sure, that city is of historical significance, but not spiritual significance. So this type of Judaism, as you can probably guess, is the one that Philo went for.
00:43:48
Speaker
And he's not alone. He's part of a ah whole you know generation of people who were thinking in similar ways. We just happen to have Philo's writings, and so we will be focusing on him.
00:43:59
Speaker
Not to minimize Philo, of course, it is the case that Philo perhaps gave us the most elegantly defended version of this more transcendent Judaism.
00:44:13
Speaker
I should mention that the diaspora, right? The the dispersion of of Jewish people across the Mediterranean definitely had a big role in this sort of Judaism coming about.
00:44:26
Speaker
So I'm taking this from book called the Cambridge Companion to Philo, published of course by Cambridge University Press. And you know it really gives you the feeling that it is the facts on the ground the social situation that many jews found themselves in that led them to sort of jointly create this sort of judaism so here's a quote from that book the facts of jewish life in the diaspora create a pressure for god to be conceived of as transcendent and universally available so
00:45:07
Speaker
The fact that you're so far away from Jerusalem, in other words, makes it almost like a spiritual necessity to conceive of God as still as available to you being really far away from Jerusalem as it is to anyone else.
00:45:22
Speaker
Another thing we can mention here is that many Jews in the diaspora actually no longer spoke Hebrew, right? So, Alexandria became a hub of intellectual and economic activity during the Hellenistic Age, which began you know a couple of hundred years before the time period we're talking about, when Alexander did all the conquering that he did.
00:45:47
Speaker
So many people had emigrated to Alexandria generations ago. Over time, you simply forget your ancestral language and you learn the language of the new nation that you're a part of.
00:46:02
Speaker
And the language in Alexandria was at the time primarily Greek. So there's already a disconnect between Jews in Alexandria and Jews in Judea.
00:46:15
Speaker
Even if you were to go to the temple in Jerusalem, maybe you wouldn't understand anything that's going on because it's all in Hebrew and you don't know how to speak Hebrew.
00:46:25
Speaker
So that's another pressure that that sort of gives rise to this more transcendent Judaism. Here's another thing. just being in contact with Hellenistic philosophy sort of makes you want to move towards this kind of Judaism.
00:46:43
Speaker
Let me explain why. For the Greeks, what made something important was its logos, right? And logos is abstract.
00:46:54
Speaker
It's not physical. It's not like a city. It's not like a building, like a temple. What makes something special is its abstract, rational nature. So if that's the case, by living you know in Alexandria instead of Jerusalem, you're almost having this intellectual pool away from a more physical, you know more temple-based Judaism towards a more abstract Judaism, ah non-physical kind of religious practice, one that's intellectual and mental, right? Right.
00:47:30
Speaker
And you can really see this in Philo's writings because he's really you know expressing his Judaism such that it's about living a philosophical or ethical life, not worshiping in the temple and doing the sacrifices that were you know the norm in the temple.
00:47:49
Speaker
None of that. So I have here another quote from the Cambridge Companion to Philo that shows you how all these different pressures including the pressure from you know Rome invading and conquering Judea, to come up with a different way of being a Jew. So here's the quote.
00:48:10
Speaker
Philo, in his manifold writings, bespoke a position that could have allowed for a modus vivendi, a way of life, with Rome by doing just that, making being Jewish a matter of no place, but within the heart and the mind.
00:48:29
Speaker
Such a position indeed allows easily for rendering unto Caesar as well as unto God, a separation of religion and state.
00:48:41
Speaker
So here you can really see that it's a heart and mind kind of thing. Being a Jew is a matter of of the spirit, not these practices that you do in some faraway city, in some faraway building.
00:48:55
Speaker
The way I kind of see this is it's almost a case that you would only get this kind of Judaism once Jews live in somewhere that's very far away from Jerusalem.
Greek Influence on Philo's Philosophy
00:49:08
Speaker
And of course, maybe there's a little bit of contact there with Greek philosophy. Let's talk about Philo's method because this is also influenced by the Greeks, although not necessarily Greek philosophical schools. So let me explain what I mean by this.
00:49:27
Speaker
Let's go back to the 500s BCE. Why not? Where we began this story. So we're back here in the times of Pythagoras and even then, sort of more philogic,
00:49:41
Speaker
philosophically oriented critics started raising questions and finding problems in Homeric poetry. So they would look at some theological issues in Homer, maybe some immoral aspects of this epic poetry.
00:50:00
Speaker
And they would, you know, sort of point out these inconsistencies and what what should we call these infelicities, right? When an epic poem says something that isn't necessarily inconsistent, but it's just ugly. Like, why would why would someone do that?
00:50:14
Speaker
I don't know. You can't really call it a contradiction, but it is not nice, right? An infelicity, let's call it that. An aesthetic infelicity. That's even better. So these critics from 500 BCE started to point out the problems in this ancient poetry.
00:50:31
Speaker
And also, here's the important part, started looking for little solutions here and there. And by solving these difficulties and writing about it and spreading their writings, they began a sort of genre.
00:50:47
Speaker
that we're going to call the genre of problems and solutions. So you look for problems in Homeric poetry, and then you come up with a solution. Perhaps, let me just mention this right now, by reading it in an allegorical way, by not just saying that, oh, literally this means this. No, but saying, no,
00:51:10
Speaker
there's a hidden meaning. We have to read this the right way. And once we read this in a more allegorical way, we can see, oh, here's what they really mean by that passage.
00:51:21
Speaker
So that's the Greek genre of problems and solutions. And guess what? The Bible, the Hebrew scriptures, Just like Homeric poetry, that's based on an age-old oral tradition that was eventually written down.
00:51:41
Speaker
Moreover, there are quite a few infelicities that we might find in the Hebrew Scriptures, and Pilate will talk about those in a second, but given these similarities,
00:51:53
Speaker
Some people thought that the Bible sort of lent itself to a similar treatment as Homeric poetry did. And so the genre of problems and solutions sort of spawned a Jewish version of itself. Some Jewish writers wanted to do something similar for the Bible.
00:52:17
Speaker
So let me say a couple of things about this. Maybe the first thing should be mentioning some of these inconsistencies and aesthetic infelicities that I mentioned earlier, because some people might feel a little pushback here by my saying that the Hebrew Scriptures has inconsistencies in it.
00:52:34
Speaker
So, you know, Philo himself says this, and let me give you another quote here from the Cambridge Companion to Philo. Philo often indicates that allegorical interpretation is necessary because the text does not make sense if it is understood literally.
00:52:53
Speaker
That is, it contains some difficulty that prevents us from accepting it in its literal meaning. A passage could appear to be absurd. but also impossible, morally noxious, or in contradiction with another passage.
00:53:11
Speaker
So Philo actually gives us these passages that, you know, after all, he does just go literally line by line in the and the Hebrew scriptures.
00:53:22
Speaker
So one example of this might be Genesis 2.8. In that verse, God plants a garden, but that seems to be inconsistent with the idea that God is not physical.
00:53:36
Speaker
How would God plant a garden if he, you know, doesn't have a A body, right? Or how about Genesis 3, verse 8? In that passage, Adam and Eve hide themselves from God.
00:53:50
Speaker
Well... That seems to be sort of incompatible ah with a couple of things we know about God. First of all, how do you hide yourself from someone that's not physical, right? You know, is hiding behind a wall gonna help if God is everywhere? That's one problem.
00:54:08
Speaker
But also God is supposed to be all knowing. He is omniscient in the technical jargon. How would you hide yourself from someone that's omniscient? And why would the Bible say that? That's confusing, right?
00:54:20
Speaker
Or I should say it's confusing if you read it literally, which is exactly Philo's point. And I'll just give you one more example. Genesis chapter 1 verse 26 says,
00:54:33
Speaker
Here, God says, let us make man in our image. Let us make man in our image. So the these are you know problematic um plural verbs and pronouns here.
00:54:49
Speaker
ah God is supposed to be you know one God, right? So monotheism. So why would there be these plural words in there? um So these are the kind of thing that Philo is talking about.
00:55:02
Speaker
And if you are already thinking to yourself, well, obviously you're not supposed to be reading it literally like that. Well, then you're already on Philo's side, right? That's exactly what Philo is saying.
00:55:13
Speaker
the literal reading is not only narrow-minded, but it's also going to lead to contradiction. So you have to sort of dig out its deeper philosophical meaning,
00:55:26
Speaker
That's the right way to read the Bible.
Philo's Allegorical Reconciliation
00:55:28
Speaker
So that's the first thing I wanted to say. ah second thing I wanted to say is why it is that Philo would do this to Hebrew scripture, or maybe I should say to the Greek translation of Hebrew scripture.
00:55:42
Speaker
Well, in the Greek world, the allegorical exegesis that was performed in the genre of problems and solutions, that was supposed to be a healing of myth.
00:55:55
Speaker
In other words, the people who engaged in that practice for Homeric poetry and They were trying to restore the myth. They're trying to show to people why it matters and that it's important and why we should read it in the right way and why we have so much to learn from it.
00:56:13
Speaker
And so this healing of myth sort of allows people to get as much as they possibly can from Homeric myth. Well, Philo felt that we needed the same thing for the Hebrew scriptures.
00:56:28
Speaker
If you read it narrow-mindedly and literally, you're not going to garner all the benefits, all that there is to learn from it. So you have to engage in this allegorical exegesis.
00:56:41
Speaker
Here's an interesting sidebar. Philo actually calls anyone who refuses to engage in allegorical reading of the Bible a micropolitan, right? Someone who only reads the Bible literally, right?
00:56:54
Speaker
Philo says, you're a citizen of a small community. That's ah another way of saying narrow-minded. So when I say that they' that's a narrow-minded way of reading it, and that's actually a philonic view that I'm giving you. Philonic, by the way, is the adjective coming from Philo, right? So that is a philonic comment.
00:57:12
Speaker
ah Last thing I wanted to mention about this, it's not the case that Philo was the only person doing this. I've sort of already mentioned this, but let me stress this real quick.
00:57:25
Speaker
Philo is probably coming at the end of a long tradition of Judeo-Hellenistic exegesis. In other words, lots of Jewish people from the Hellenistic world were probably engaging in this kind of thing on the Hebrew scriptures or translations of the Hebrew scriptures.
00:57:48
Speaker
It just happened to be the case that we know primarily about all this from Philo because his is perhaps the only one that survives and certainly the oldest that survives of this type of genre. So um there was probably other people doing what Philo was doing, but Philo survived and we'll explain why he survived a little bit later, but that's why Philo is such a big deal. He's among the few sources that we have on this.
00:58:20
Speaker
So hopefully we have an idea now as to what Philo's project was all about. And what I wanna do now is show you what the product really was, right? It was a ah wonderful synthesis of Greek philosophy with Judaic monotheism.
00:58:40
Speaker
And so I just kinda wanna give you some of Philo's comments that really show Greek influence. Let me start off with a two easy ones to kind of ease you into this way of looking at to Philo.
00:58:55
Speaker
And then I'll give you sort of a big one. So let's start with these two easy ones. Here's the first one. As I already mentioned, Philo was using the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the original Hebrew text.
00:59:11
Speaker
Now, Philo probably knew very little Hebrew, but he did maybe know some. Nonetheless, Philo didn't even really look at the Hebrew text.
00:59:24
Speaker
He based his commentaries predominantly on the Greek translation. And we might pose a question here as to like why? Why is it that you think that you can work off a translation and not the original text?
00:59:40
Speaker
Well, Philo actually gave us a very clear theory as to why it is that he trusts the Greek translation so much. In fact, he seems to think that the Greek translation of the Torah corresponds perfectly with the original Hebrew text.
01:00:01
Speaker
And where does he get this argument from? Well, it comes from none other than Stoic philosophy of language. In that lesson on Stoicism, maybe you remember that we talked about propositions and utterances and reference or the thing that our utterances refer to in the real world.
01:00:26
Speaker
Well, it is exactly that story that Philo says about the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. Basically, in a nutshell, he's saying the propositional content of the Septuagint is identical to that of the Hebrew Scriptures.
01:00:46
Speaker
And that's based off of how each of the propositions that you can find in these two different versions of the Bible have the same referent, basically the same thing in the world that they are about.
01:01:00
Speaker
And for that reason, Philo treats the Greek Septuagint as if it were the original. Because for all intents and purposes, the propositions, the thought behind the sentences was exactly the same.
01:01:15
Speaker
So there's an easy example of Greek philosophy having a pretty massive influence on Philo. Let me give you one more easy one here. Philo engages and what we can only really call some sort of utopian thinking.
01:01:34
Speaker
He imagines that in the near future, there might be a society that is characterized by careful observance of Mosaic law, right? There may even arise some Moses-like ruler who is very virtuous and would sort of, you know, get everyone to try to be their best selves and and live in accordance to law.
01:02:02
Speaker
And other people would be sort of infected by how great the lives of all these people are since they're following the Hebrew laws so closely. And so by admiration of these people, everyone would follow the Mosaic law.
01:02:20
Speaker
This is exactly the sort of thing that multiple philosophers that we've covered engage in. First of all, the most obvious one is is Plato. Plato and his student Aristotle both engage in utopian thinking.
01:02:34
Speaker
And you might remember that they actually wanted education for everyone and they thought that was the key to making sure that everything would be better. So those are two examples. The Cynics and the Stoics also engaged in utopian thinking.
01:02:50
Speaker
In fact, just like Plato laid out his perfect Republic in the dialogue called Republic, there's actually a Cynic version of Republic and a Stoic version of Republic.
01:03:03
Speaker
Now, we know they were written at some point. They just happened to be gone. right We lost them. we didn't we They didn't come down to us. But we do know that this sort of utopian you know thought experiment stuff was engaged in by basically all the schools of philosophy.
01:03:21
Speaker
mean, even the cynics were getting into this. So... Those there are two quick and easy examples of the influence of Greek philosophy on Philo. want to move on to now a more complicated example.
01:03:36
Speaker
And, you know, so put your thinking hat on here because this is sort of ah massive deal. I mean, yeah. All right, let's do it.
01:04:12
Speaker
Let's talk about divine law again.
01:04:17
Speaker
Let me try to summarize for you as quickly as I can the Judaic approach to God and divine law and the Greek approach to God and divine law.
Universalizing Judaic and Greek Thought
01:04:30
Speaker
So Judaism and something like Stoicism, right? Or some kind of Greek monotheism. So let's juxtapose these real quick. In Judaism, God is transcendent. That means that God is not a part of the physical world.
01:04:46
Speaker
God is also a person. He has feelings and desires and he gets angry sometimes. And so that's a person. Still on Judaism, the divine law is, we can say it's local or we can say it's particular.
01:05:02
Speaker
In other words, Mosaic law was originally prescribed to a particular group of people, God's chosen people, the Jews. So we say that divine law is local or particular. That's another word for it.
01:05:18
Speaker
Divine law is also in Judaism mutable. It could change over time. And if you read the Hebrew scriptures, you can actually see it changing over time. And I'll give you one more.
01:05:30
Speaker
and Judaism, the divine law simply is divine because it's what God told you to do. It's divine because it is an expression of God's will.
01:05:42
Speaker
And so that's where its divinity comes from. For the Stoics, things are very different. Let's start with God. God is imminent. Literally, God is physical. God is the universe, right? That's the opposite of being outside of the universe, right? Is the universe.
01:05:59
Speaker
God is also, according to the Stoics, a causal force. He's the thing that sort of keeps everything going, right? He is not a person.
01:06:11
Speaker
That's a big difference there between Judaism and Stoicism. Judaism, God is a person. In Stoicism, God is more like a force of nature, a power almost, right? So that's a big difference.
01:06:24
Speaker
In Stoic theory, the divine law is universal. It's not just for some people. We all have to live according to the divine law. Moreover, it is immutable. It does not change over time. And here's a third aspect of the Stoic take on divine law.
01:06:45
Speaker
The divine law is divine because it is rational. It isn't the expression of a person because there is no God person in Stoicism. It's divine because it is rational and rational things are divine.
01:07:01
Speaker
that There's just an equation there, right? There's an equal sign, divinity, rationality. That's what that's what it is. So these are two very different kinds of monotheism, Judaic monotheism and Greek monotheism.
01:07:14
Speaker
Enter Philo. What Philo is going to do is synthesize these two views. He's going to grab some aspects from Judaism, namely the ones about God, and some aspects from Stoicism or Greek philosophy, in particular, the stuff about divine law.
01:07:35
Speaker
So what does that mean? First, let's talk about what Philo keeps. Philo, of course, he's a Jew. God is still transcendent. He's not a part of the universe.
01:07:48
Speaker
He creates the universe and God is still a person, right? So that part remains the same for Philo. But here's what does change.
01:08:00
Speaker
Philo moves away from particularism. In other words, for Philo, the divine law is not just for the Jews. The divine law is for everyone.
01:08:12
Speaker
Another word for that is, of course, universal. In fact, I already mentioned this. Philo says that hopefully one day all humanity will adopt Mosaic law for themselves.
01:08:26
Speaker
Why? Because of the admiration for the Jewish way of life. If you truly learn the message of of scripture, the hidden message, right? The one you have to interpret out of it.
01:08:40
Speaker
and live according to its laws, then you will flourish and people will see this and they will want to follow the Torah as well. And so that's how Philo gives up on the particularism that was prevalent in Judaism before into a new take on the divine law.
01:09:00
Speaker
so that's one big change. He also pushes back against the idea that Mosaic law is mutable, that it changes over time. If you read in the Bible, this, you know, take, let's just say on slavery in one book of the Bible, and then something slightly different in a later book, it doesn't mean that it's changed over time. The problem is that you're reading it wrong.
01:09:29
Speaker
you're reading it too literally. You have to read it right, that is allegorically. And then you can see that there's actually a hidden message there that you're just not picking up on because you're too narrow-minded.
01:09:40
Speaker
So Mosaic law is not mutable. To this, he also adds, by the way, and that Moses was just an exceptional human being. And so when he gave the law, it was rational and it was true and it was rich.
01:09:56
Speaker
And there was so much there for us to discover in it. He couldn't just lay it all on you right at once, right? So you have to really, you know, use your mind and and dig out the hidden meaning of it.
01:10:08
Speaker
And so that's, you know, basically it isn't changeable over time. What we have to do is interpret it correctly. And the last thing, of course, is that Philo pushes back against this idea that the divine law is just whatever God said, right?
01:10:23
Speaker
There is this idea that, you know, the commandments that God gave in the Old Testament are essentially just what he decided to tell us is right and wrong, but it could have been different. There's a sense, in other words, in which it is arbitrary.
01:10:39
Speaker
But Philo is pushing back against that and he says, no, not really. Once you interpret the Torah allegorically, you'll see that every single Mosaic commandment is actually supremely rational.
01:10:54
Speaker
It is not arbitrary. It is rational and thus it is, course, divine, right? So it's a different sense of divinity, more the Greek sense of divinity.
01:11:05
Speaker
Let me just give you one example of this. Generations after Philo, lots of rabbis are gonna talk about food laws. So sometimes food laws are a great example of how God's commandments are arbitrary.
01:11:21
Speaker
In other words, some rabbis will say, yeah, these prohibitions on certain foods make no sense whatsoever, but it's what God says and we love God. so we're going to follow these completely arbitrary rules to show God how much we love him, to show him how loyal we are to him.
01:11:43
Speaker
that's what some rabbis say. And that's basically biting the bullet and saying, yeah, these food laws are kind of weird. They're arbitrary. and That's okay. We're going to follow them anyway. Well, Philo was not having any of that.
01:11:56
Speaker
Philo was saying the food laws are actually rational. And, you know, the problem is that you're reading them way too literally. You have to dig out its deeper meaning.
01:12:09
Speaker
So one of the food laws says you can't eat birds of prey. These are birds that are carnivorous and they hunt and kill other animals, right? So you're not allowed to eat that. So if you're one of these rabbis a couple of generations from this time period who says, yeah, you know,
01:12:24
Speaker
That law is kind of pointless, but we're going follow it anyways to show how loyal we are. That is to just, according to Philo, give up on the deeper meaning that is there.
01:12:35
Speaker
Philo says that the reason why Jews are not allowed to eat birds of prey is because God is trying to encourage humans to live ah in accordance with justice and not in, you know, according to the principle of brute force.
01:12:52
Speaker
If you wanted to, you know you could live according to the principle of brute force, right? Get things your way through violence. That's one approach, or you can live according to justice.
01:13:06
Speaker
And so according to Philo, birds of prey, if you were to eat that, and you would sort of you know get some of their morally questionable habits into you. You'll start doing things by brute force, but really you should do things in accordance with justice always.
01:13:22
Speaker
And so once you dig out that deeper meaning, that's how you make sense of this prohibition on eating birds of prey. So there is Philo's allegorical interpretation of that particular Mosaic commandment.
01:13:37
Speaker
So to recap, Philo is keeping the Judaic conception of God as transcendent and as a person, but he's borrowing Greek ideas about divine law.
Philo's Influence on Proto-Christianity
01:13:51
Speaker
The divine law is universal, it is unchanging, and it is rational. So now we have blended in the work of Philo, Judaic and Greek concepts about divine law.
01:14:04
Speaker
Now, it turns out that in Judaism, Philo is basically going to be ignored. But in proto-Christianity,
01:14:16
Speaker
a lot of people are gonna like Philo. And when they have to decide on you know what version of divine law they want, they have some choices.
01:14:28
Speaker
They can go with classic Judaism. They can go with something Greek like Stoicism. Or they can go with Philo's blend of the two.
01:14:41
Speaker
Well, I'm sure you can already guess which one they're gonna go with. And that's gonna impact the way we think about morality. So we'll get to that a few lessons down the road, but I'm just planting that seed now.
01:14:55
Speaker
Because through his grand synthesis, Philo changed the trajectory of our conception of morality. Not deliberately, of course,
01:15:09
Speaker
but in coming up with a new way of thinking about divine law.
01:15:16
Speaker
Let me switch now to a little more rapid fire delivery. So you can really see just a couple of more examples as to how Greek philosophy influenced Philo.
01:15:27
Speaker
Here's one. Philo refers to the Sabbath as a seventh day or sometimes just the number seven, right? Like he calls it the number seven. Well, so there's lots of ah divine value to the number of seven, according to the Pythagoreans, and of course, to according to Plato.
01:15:46
Speaker
And so there is a little bit of Pythagorean and Platonic influence on Philo. i already mentioned earlier his idea that people that only read the Bible literally are small-minded or micropolitan.
01:16:03
Speaker
That is his way of endorsing cosmopolitanism, being a citizen of the world. And that has resonance with Cynic philosophy as well as Stoic philosophy.
01:16:17
Speaker
Here's an interesting one. For Philo, The term Israel does not necessarily mean the city. For Philo, Israel means more like a title.
01:16:29
Speaker
So he uses that word, if I'm understanding this correctly, to refer to an elite group of sages who have achieved perfection in virtue.
01:16:41
Speaker
Basically, they've learned the lessons from Hebrew scriptures, lived in accordance with them, and reached maximal spiritual achievement or something like that.
01:16:52
Speaker
So the set of people that have done that, they are Israel. And here's an important little you know caveat. You don't have to have reached the peak of spiritual progress just through reading the Torah.
01:17:11
Speaker
You could also achieve it through living a philosophical lifestyle, just by you know reading Plato and Aristotle or whatever and living according to their values. So Philo here is basically saying that Even the very word Israel has to do more so with ethics than being from some particular ethnic group.
01:17:31
Speaker
And that you can be a part of Israel in this more expansive sense, even if you don't know anything about Hebrew scriptures, right? Just through practicing philosophy.
01:17:42
Speaker
That's a pretty big deal there. That's obviously some Greek influence. Here's a couple of more. Philo describes spiritual progress somewhat like Plato's, you know, man coming out of the cave.
01:17:59
Speaker
In the allegory of the cave, Philo talks about God as sometimes in physical terms, kind of like the Stoics. Philo's theory of the origins of the universe sort of comes from Plato.
01:18:16
Speaker
particular a dialogue called the Timaeus but he updates it a little bit and the Timaeus Plato says that the the shaper of the material world this is called the the demiurge in the technical jargon the demiurge creates the material world according to the model of the forms right so that's Plato Philo takes that theory and basically says yeah but God also made the forms so God created the world in accordance with the forms, but before that he had also created the forms.
01:18:51
Speaker
So there's Philo basically explaining the origins of the universe through a you know, Judaic version of Plato.
01:19:03
Speaker
And here's one more. Philo repeatedly uses the term pneuma in exactly the same way that the Stoics use the term. So pneuma is all over his writings.
01:19:16
Speaker
Let's switch now very quickly to Philo's ethics. In a nutshell, Philo is basically a little bit of Aristotle, a little bit Plato.
01:19:27
Speaker
So first of all, Philo stresses that maybe in the first portion of your life, your adult life at least, Be active in politics. Philo was very active in politics early on in his life. And that's what he counsels us to do, much like Aristotle, right?
01:19:45
Speaker
For Aristotle, the political life is maybe the second best way to live, right? The second most happiest form of life. And then later on in your life, you're supposed to live, according to Philo, the mystical contemplative life, right? So that sounds a little bit more like Plato.
01:20:05
Speaker
Now, we've already talked about how life in politics can lead to eudaimonia. So I will not rehash those arguments, but I can refer you back to the lesson on Aristotle's ethics.
01:20:18
Speaker
What we are going to cover, though, is this approach to ethics that is more ascetic and mystic. Now we have some passages from Philo that seem pretty obviously as having sort of a mystical bent to them. So let me just read this one to you.
01:20:39
Speaker
The mind in us is evicted when the divine spirit arrives, but when it departs, the mind returns once again.
01:20:51
Speaker
Philo calls this divine madness. And he says that the goal here is to lose oneself. That is very mystical, some sort of a communion with God, right? God literally enters you and you go away.
01:21:08
Speaker
So that's yeah different. So we will talk about the mystics in a subsequent lesson. And so Philo will come back and we'll chat about him some more. But those are Philo's ethics in a nutshell. First, be active in politics and then be a mystic.
01:21:25
Speaker
So there you go, cool. I want to close off this lesson by discussing what happens after Philo. As a reminder, Philo dies in 45 CE. Let's talk first about politics.
01:21:39
Speaker
I mentioned earlier that some Jews from Alexandria were just really upset about the Roman takeover of Judea. And they actually went back to Judea and participated in an insurrection eventually, right? so There is a revolt against Roman rule across the Levant region.
01:22:02
Speaker
And of course, the Romans absolutely crush it. And this is when, as I mentioned earlier, thousands of Jews were crucified and their bodies were left up as a message.
01:22:19
Speaker
After this, the Romans destroy the second temple. That is the year 70 CE. After the destruction of the second temple, there is a slow transition to, wouldn't you guess, a different kind of Judaism.
01:22:36
Speaker
Because without a temple, you can't have temple Judaism. So a new kind of Judaism is ushered in. Usually it's called Rabbinic Judaism. Now, I can't get into that too much, but basically the focus is much like that of Philo following the Torah, more so a heart and mind kind of thing.
01:22:58
Speaker
I should note though that in Philo, there's a whole lot of Hellenistic influence, right? A lot of Greek philosophy in there. Not so in Rabbinic Judaism. So there are some differences there with Philo.
01:23:10
Speaker
Speaking of Philo, how does Philo influence philosophy? The short answer is not much until a whole lot.
01:23:21
Speaker
So first of all, immediately after Philo's death, his work didn't really have any impact on philosophy in general. In fact, it might've gone away had it not been for proto-Christians. Proto-Christians really liked some of what Philo said, and they're the ones that preserved his writings.
01:23:43
Speaker
Well, some time after this, one person in particular is going to take some of Philo's ideas Ideas that, again, are only around because some proto-Christians, you know, sort of protected them and and kept spreading them.
01:23:59
Speaker
And this person, who is not a Christian, by the way, is going to take some of Philo's ideas and make a new version of Platonism. This person's name is, get ready for this one there's lots of pronunciations here. um I've heard his name pronounced as Plotinus, Plotinus, and Plotinus.
01:24:20
Speaker
I'm going to go with Plotinus. That's the one that I'm pretty familiar with. And the philosophy that he conceives of is usually referred to as Neoplatonism. So it's a new take on Plato.
01:24:36
Speaker
So we'll get into that in a few lessons. But the idea from Philo that Plotinus takes is this idea of the infinite. So before this time period, when people talked about the infinite, they typically meant something lacking ah boundary or something lacking a definition so that it goes on forever, right?
01:25:00
Speaker
But Philo thought about the infinite as being able to characterize a kind of power, right? In other words, in Philo, there's this idea of infinite power and Plotinus will take this idea and incorporate it into his take of Plato.
Philo's Legacy in Neoplatonism
01:25:17
Speaker
So that will be very important couple of centuries after Philo dies. But the most important thing that happens after Philo's death that involves the work of Philo is basically how much the proto-Christians appreciated his work.
01:25:37
Speaker
As already mentioned, Philo was basically ignored by Greek philosophers and rabbis in the decades after he died. And even while he was alive, I should add.
01:25:50
Speaker
But several proto-Christians really liked what he had to say. and you can actually see Philonic influence in some New Testament writings.
01:26:03
Speaker
The most obvious examples are the epistle to the Hebrews and the Gospel of John. Of course, the Gospel of John literally begins with, in the beginning was the Logos.
01:26:17
Speaker
Obviously, there's some influence there from Greek philosophy. And this influence comes through the influence of Philo. In fact, proto-Christians liked Philo so much that some of these proto-Christians actually thought Philo was a Christian himself.
01:26:36
Speaker
So there was some confusion here because, you know, Philo probably didn't know anything about the proto-Christian movements, even when he died. But his writings were so amenable to this proto-Christianity that some people were saying, you don't think, you know, he might be one of us? So that's kind of interesting.
01:26:56
Speaker
And I guess the question we should close with is this. Why was Philo so eagerly accepted in the proto-Christian tradition?
01:27:09
Speaker
Let me give you sort of a preliminary answer here. Here's what we have to understand. Proto-Christians were competing in what we might call the philosophical marketplace, as well as, by the way, the therapeutic community marketplace.
01:27:28
Speaker
So they were grappling with the schools of philosophy and with the mystery cults. And all of these were... were responses to the social distress that was felt by many in the Roman Empire.
01:27:44
Speaker
And so the proto-Christians in their movement saw it very useful to co-opt Philo into their work because Philo was a historian, and apologist, and an interpreter of Christian scripture.
01:28:01
Speaker
And so this alliance with Philo's work would pay a lot of dividends for Christians. Let me tell you about these. As a historian and an apologist, i'm not sure that everyone knows what an apologist is, but an apologist basically someone who offers a defense for something, right? So if you are a proto-Christian apologist, what you're really doing is defending proto-Christianity.
01:28:25
Speaker
Maybe some pagans are arguing against your religion and, you know, here's some responses to that. So that's what an apologist is. So Philo served as, first of all, both a historian and an apologist because what Philo is doing was establishing A, that Judaism is ancient, but more importantly, B, Judaism is respectable and rational and has a sophisticated philosophical underpinning.
01:28:54
Speaker
Of course, the key ah is that you have to read scripture in the right way, right? Allegorically. But Philo did this for the proto-Christians. he He provided the arguments so as to be able to defend Judaism, which is where the proto-Christian movement came from, from pagans and from the mystery religions and sort of prop it up to make it seem more respectable to the Roman world.
01:29:22
Speaker
So that's one thing that Philo did for the proto-Christians. Another thing is that Philo had some commentaries where he was advocating something called negative theology. That's when he only described God in negative terms.
01:29:38
Speaker
God has no limits to his power. God has no limits to his knowledge. That's called negative theology. And eventually, proto-Christians would use negative theology to defend the Judea conception of God to pagans or against pagans, maybe is a better way to put it.
01:29:57
Speaker
Finally, here's the most important way that proto-Christians would use the work of Philo. Proto-Christians would use Philo's allegorical methods to defend their views about Jesus' messiahship.
01:30:16
Speaker
Remember, the word Messiah was supposed to denote some political leader who would set the Jewish nation free. right That's what most people thought when they heard the word Messiah. That's what most Jews thought. But but Jesus was brutally crucified, right? That's the exact opposite of what most people expected from a Messiah.
01:30:43
Speaker
So how could proto-Christians defend the view that Jesus really was the Messiah? Well, change the meaning of what Messiah meant.
01:30:57
Speaker
Proto-Christians would argue that Jesus was a kind of suffering Messiah, a Messiah that would take on the sins of the world so that we could all be redeemed.
01:31:11
Speaker
And proto-Christians said, we have arguments for our views. It's right there in the scripture.
01:31:21
Speaker
You just have to read it right.