What the Greek philosophers
declared to be the privilege of the few, Philo declared to have been
imparted by God to His people as their law of life. Hence the Mosaic
legislation is the code of nature and reason, and the righteous man
directs his conduct in accordance with those rules of nature by which
the cosmos is ordered.[131] Obedience to the law should not be
obedience to an outward prescription, but rather the following out of
our own highest nature. The ideal which the Stoic sage continually
aspired for and never attained to--the life according to nature and
right reason--this Philo claimed had been accomplished in the Mosaic
revelation, handed down by God to Israel and through them to the
world.
Before we deal with Philo's treatment of the law in its narrower
sense, it will be as well to consider briefly his interpretation of
the historical parts of the Torah. Here likewise he finds ideas of
natural reason and eternal truths embodied. To Philo, as we have seen,
the Torah is a unity, and every part of it has equal validity and
value. He had to contend against certain higher critics of his day,
who declared that Genesis was a collection of myths ([Greek:
mython plasmata]).[132] Moreover, the long catalogues of
genealogies in Genesis and the longer recitals of sacrifices in
Leviticus and Numbers seemed to refute those who declared that every
part of the Pentateuch was a Divine revelation.
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