Talk:Philo

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This article states:

"Eusebius speculated that the Jewish group Philo describes in the Contemplative Life was in fact a Christian group."

And Eusebius links to a disambiguation page. So which Eusebius does this article refer to ?

Thanks in advance!

I'm assuming this is the same person as Philo Judeaus? --Tydaj 22:52, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] Philo and Logos

<Commenting on this phrase in Influence of Hellenism—The influence of Stoicism is unmistakable in the doctrine of God as the only Efficient Cause, in that of divine reason immanent in the world, in that of the powers emanating from God and suffusing the world. In the doctrine of the Logos various elements of Greek philosophy are united.>


From Dimont's "Jews, God and History"; ISBN 0451628667; Pg.122.

Philo, who was familiar with the Hebrew Bible only in Greek translation, decided to make it even more acceptable to Greek intellectuals by putting Greek clothing on Jewish revelation. This he did with the aid of allegory and the philosophy of Plato. Though God created the world, argued Philo, God did not influence the world directly, but indirectly through Logos, that is, through "the Word." {Strong's Concordance-Hebrew:1697 daw-vawr' -a word, a discourse; Strong-Greek:3056 Logos-a word, a teaching.}
Logos: We can see how this idea was taken directly by the Christians, for instance, in the Gospel According to Saint John the Apostle, which begins: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God {1 John 1:1}. Ironically, this opening sentence in John is now more a Jewish doctrine than a Christian one. The Christians made the "Son of Man" equal to God, whereas it was the Jews {Jesus, Moses, and Spinoza} who followed John's junction and made "the Word," that is, the Torah, equal to G-D. It is to the Jews that "the Word is G-D."
Because the human soul stems from the "Divine Source," continued Philo, it is capable of conceiving of the nature of divinity itself. This human ability to conceive of divinity, said Philo, could be done in two ways: through the spirit of prophecy, or through inner mystic meditation. Judaism, in Philo's opinion, was the instrument which enabled man to achieve moral perfection, and the Torah was the path to union with G-D. It was on the allegorical concepts of Philo's Logos and the inner mystic contemplation of God that Paul built his Christology. The Jews used the opposite poleof Philo's philosophy—the spirit of prophecy. They built their Judaism by searching the Torah for new meanings ..... {Modern Talmud}

Yesselman 22:56, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Flaccus

Quote ...

"Although we have no independent confirmation for most of his account, it is an account of mostly public events, so in its main points it would have been difficult for Philo to have misrepresented the situation."

I do not understand why Philo would have found it difficult to misrepresent "public events". He was a politician and an apologist for the Alexandrian Jewish community. Were public events rarely misrepresented by politicians and apologists in the first century? If so what evidence do we have for that?

Ray Elsom

I also have serious problems with that text. There are already several statements that are highly problematic, EG:
"The only event in his life that can be determined chronologically is his participation in the embassy which the Alexandrian Jews sent to the emperor Caligula at Rome for the purpose of asking protection against the attacks of the Alexandrian Greeks. This occurred in the year 40 CE."
The Alexandria riots involved some very nasty mutual killing. This had been going on for quite some time. Firstly the demographic costitution of Alexandria at this time included Egyptians, Egyptians converted or partially converted to Judaism, Jews, Hellenized Jews, Greeks, Greeks converted or partially converted to Judaism. The city had just a couple of years earlier passed from Ptolemaic to Roman overlords.
There were commerical conflicts. There were regular changes in which group might get a special stuatus on commerical dealings. Varying commercial concessions to varying groups, the fact that people where migrating between goups led to strife there for hundreds of years.
There was also the control of temples. Temples at this time were "civic" administered within districts and neighborhoods. The Ptolemaic and Romans of this time due to both their experience of empire tolerant of different religions (and of course themselves polytheistic) and had a very pluralistic view. To the romans in particular their mode across their dominions was each group could worship, have a niche in the temple. Also expected their secular leasders to be honored there. To the Jewish community that had not changed this was an anathema, an impurity in a temple, to Hellenized Jews who had adopted some Greek gods, Greeks, Egyptians etc they wanted their niche in the tmeples. This played out in places other than Alexandria as well.
thre was strife, competition, alternating petition to overlords from all sides. One side assertions by its selected petitioner survices and we should preserve and note it. but let's be careful about language that ingores known facts about interplay in the Near east cities. Philo's philosphy is is a treasure. his polemic is intersting, but it is a policial polemic. Philo certainly makes objectivly racist, biased and many false statemetns of his own. His relating of those others that are niether preserved in thei roriginal nor anything but polemics of others make them no better or worse than his own.06:43, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps, tying your reservations to quotes that show Philo's bias, you'd introduce this as context. --Wetman 11:53, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Greek text

Is it really necessary to use Greek fonts/characters in an encyclopedia article? For the Greek illiterate (me), a couple paragraphs in this article are little more than gobbledegook.

CaliforniaKid

Good idea. Don't have the time to do this myself just now, I'm afraid. Also: the problem is that the origins of this article lie in the online version of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia entry on Philo (http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=281&letter=P&search=Philo). The online version has numerous minor and a few major spelling mistakes, especially in the Greek. I corrected one really glaring error earlier on, but I really can't do it for the whole thing.
The bigger question is: is there a point in working on those parts of this wikipedia (en) article which are based on a 100-year old piece? Would it not be better to start from scratch? But then, I don't have the time to do this now either, so who am I to talk...
Any suggestions?

Cheers, Hs282 00:32, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Hundred-year-old scholarship concerning authors of classical antiquity holds up better than articles on technology: the recovery of the documents had in large part already been made. The Jewish Encyclopedia still makes a dependable base. There are modern ways of reading text that should be brought to bear here, without getting into personal interpretations. Many glitch errors introduced in getting old text on-line do need correcting, and Hs282's efforts have improved the article. --Wetman 03:03, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Better, but not well. We have learned much about Hellenistic Judaism in the last century. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Blueprints?

To him Logos was God's "blueprint for the world", a governing plan.

Where does this flaming anachronism come from? Blueprints were invented in 1842, not the first century BCE. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:25, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

De Opificio mundi 15-25, God consults Logos before creating etc. Blueprint is a schematisation, which may seem anachronic indeed —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.0.47.128 (talk) 06:04, 15 October 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps User:Pmanderson's objections could be better met by incorporating a quote into the text. --Wetman 07:46, 15 October 2007 (UTC)