In this conception,
no doubt, the influence of Greek philosophy is to be seen; the Jewish
interpreter keeps before him the "Republic" of Plato, and the "Polity"
of Aristotle. With him, however, the ideal state is not a vision
"laid up in heaven";[95] its foundation is already laid upon earth,
its capital is Jerusalem, and it is the mission of his people to
extend its borders till it embraces all nations[96]--an idea which
permeates the Jewish litany.
This commentary of the law is allegorical in the sense that beneath
the particular law the interpreter constantly reveals a spiritual
idea, but it is not allegorical in the sense that he makes an exchange
of values. He is not for the most part reading into the text
conceptions which are not suggested by it, but really and truly
expounding; and where he gives a philosophical piece of exegesis, as
when he explains the visit of the three angels to Abraham as a theory
of the human soul about God's being,[97] he does so with diffidence or
with reference to authorities that have founded a tradition. It is
quite otherwise with the last class of Philo's work, the fruit of his
maturest thought, with which it remains to deal.
Throughout the "Allegories of the Laws" he takes the verse of the
Bible not so much as a text to be amplified and interpreted, but as a
pretext for a philosophical disquisition.
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