But
till the middle of the first century of the common era the Alexandrian
and the Palestinian developments of Jewish culture were complementary:
on the one side there was legal, on the other, philosophical
expansion. Moreover, the Judaeo-Alexandrian school, though, through its
abandonment of the Hebrew tongue, it lies outside the main stream of
Judaism, was an immense force in the religious history of the world,
and Philo, its greatest figure, stands out in our annals as the
embodiment of the Jewish religious mission, which is to preach to the
nations the knowledge of the one God, and the law of righteousness.
* * * * *
II
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO
"The hero," says Carlyle, "can be poet, prophet, king, priest, or what
you will, according to the kind of world he finds himself born
into."[39] The Jews have not been a great political people, but their
excellence has been a peculiar spiritual development: and therefore
most of their heroes have been men of thought rather than action,
writers rather than statesmen, men whose influence has been greater on
posterity than upon their own generation. Of Philo's life we know one
incident in very full detail, the rest we can only reconstruct from
stray hints in his writings, and a few short notices of the
commentators.
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