Philo of Alexandria also called Philo Judaeus, was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, in the Roman province of Egypt.
Background
Philo was probably born with the name Julius Philo. His ancestors and family were contemporaries to the rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty and the rule of the Seleucid Empire. Although the names of his parents are unknown, Philo came from a family which was noble, honourable and wealthy. It was either his father or paternal grandfather who was granted Roman citizenship from Roman dictator Gaius Julius Caesar. Jerome wrote that Philo came "de genere sacerdotum" (from a priestly family). His ancestors and family had social ties and connections to the priesthood in Judea, the Hasmonean Dynasty, the Herodian Dynasty and the Julio-Claudian dynasty in Rome.
Philo had two brothers, Alexander the Alabarch and Lysimachus. Through Alexander, Philo had two nephews Tiberius Julius Alexander and Marcus Julius Alexander. The latter was the first husband of the Herodian Princess Berenice. Marcus died in 43 or 44.
Education
Philo visited the Temple in Jerusalem at least once in his lifetime. Philo would have been a contemporary to Jesus of Nazareth and his Apostles. Philo along with his brothers received a thorough education. They were educated in the Hellenistic culture of Alexandria and Roman culture, to a degree in Ancient Egyptian culture and particularly in the traditions of Judaism, in the study of Jewish traditional literature and in Greek philosophy.
Philo's dates of birth and death are unknown but can be judged by Philo's description of himself as "old" when he was part of the delegation to Gaius Caligula in AD 38. Jewish history professor Daniel R. Schwartz estimates his birth year as sometime between 20 and 10 BC. Philo's reference to an event under the reign of Emperor Claudius indicates that he died sometime after AD 41.
Career
In Embassy to Gaius Philo describes his diplomatic mission to Caligula, one of the few events in his life which are known specifically. He relates that he was carrying a petition describing the sufferings of the Alexandrian Jews and asking the emperor to secure their rights. Philo gives a description of their sufferings, more detailed than Josephus's, to characterize the Alexandrian Greeks as the aggressions in the civil strife that had left many Jews and Greeks dead.
Philo lived in an era of increasing ethnic tension in Alexandria, exacerbated by the new strictures of imperial rule. Some expatriate Hellenes in Alexandria condemned the Jews for a supposed alliance with Rome, even as Rome was seeking to suppress Jewish nationalism in Judea. In Against Flaccus, Philo describes the situation of the Jews in Egypt, writing that they numbered not less than a million and inhabited two of the five districts in Alexandria. He recounts the abuses of the prefect Flaccus, who he says retaliated against the Jews when they refused to worship Caligula as a god. Daniel Schwartz surmises that given this tense background it may have been politically convenient for Philo to favor abstract monotheism instead of overt pro-Judeanism.
Philo considers Caligula's plan to erect a statue of himself in the temple of Jerusalem to be a provocation, asking, "Are you making war upon us, because you anticipate that we will not endure such indignity, but that we will fight on behalf of our laws, and die in defence of our national customs? For you cannot possibly have been ignorant of what was likely to result from your attempt to introduce these innovations respecting our temple." In his entire presentation, he implicitly supports the Jewish commitment to rebel against the emperor rather than allow such sacrilege to take place.
Views
Quotations:
FROM THE WRITINGS OF PHILO
• If a man has lost the use of his eyes, will the keen sight of his ancestors help him?
• If you see someone not taking food or drink when he should, refusing baths and oils, neglecting his clothes, sleeping on the ground, and imagining that in this way he is practicing temperance — pity his self-deception and disabuse him.
• It is the height of folly to take the arts as the standard of measurement for mankind.
• The whole heaven and the whole world is an offering dedicated to God, and He it is who has created the offering; and all God-beloved souls, citizens of the world, consecrate themselves. allowing no mortal attraction to draw them in the opposite direction, and they never grow weary of devoting and sanctifying their own imperishable life.