to be confided to the few, and gradually formed part of the national faith. This view is confirmed by the writings of all the prophets during and after the captivity, whilst the writings of Jeremiah prove, that even before this eventful epoch new elements of doctrine had been ingrafted on the national faith. The verbal law was added to the written law, not only as a supplementary charter, but as the standard of interpretation for the records of the past. These were edited at a time when it had become advisable, if not necessary, to harmonise the verbal with the written law. The second law, or Deuteronomy, seems to have been composed at some earlier period, probably in the time of Jeremiah, with a view to the attainment of so important an object. Only the record, and not the contents were new. What the Israelites could not have borne in the days of Moses; what the great prophet and lawgiver had secretly revealed to the chosen few; what the faithful guardians of secret tradition had transmitted ever since the days of Moses, of Abraham, and of 'Adam,' was gradually proclaimed to the people from the days of Josias to the days of Daniel and of Christ. The Aryan or Japhetic traditions being known to the people of the Chaldæans, the guardians of the secret Semitic tradition were forced to reveal the same to the people, and thus to show in how far the one agreed with the other. It is quite possible, and even probable, that to a certain extent the one tradition was enriched by the other. But both the Chaldæan as well as the Israelitic tradition went back to Abraham, the inhabitant of Ur of the Chaldees,' if not to Zoroaster, the Aryan reformer, and the Adam' of the Bible. Like the Divine glory, veiled by the cloudy pillar, the Divine grace and truth, veiled by secret tradition, has in all ages led the exodus of mankind. It is a necessary preliminary to the right understanding of the preaching of Jesus Christ, to trace out the gradual CHAP. II. II. CHAP. development of the Jewish reform, that is, of Jewish gnosticism, up to the time of Christ's advent. In order to complete the above investigations on apocryphal literature, we now proceed to point out the last pre-Christian development of Judaism in Egypt. The writings of Philo show to what contradictions the Jews of Alexandria were driven by the unscrupulous attempt to harmonise the old standard of 'it is written,' with the new standard of 'it is taught.' 121 CHAPTER III. PHILO OF ALEXANDRIA. DEVELOPMENT OF JEWISH GNOSTICISM. 'Keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith.'-1 Tim. vi. 20, 21. PHILO lived from twenty years before till fifty years after the commencement of the Christian era, and was therefore the contemporary and the survivor of Christ. By his numerous and distinguished works he has transmitted to us a comprehensive account of the last phase in the development of pre-Christian Jewish gnosticism. Born in Alexander's city, which soon after its foundation in the year 332 B.C. became the great city of the west;' this Jewish philosopher was a shining light among the descendants of the Hebrew race, which in Philo's time numbered nearly one million. Many circumstances had combined in remoulding the Jewish character on Egyptian soil. Living together with Greeks and Egyptians, and with representatives of almost every nation, they had abandoned the language of their fathers; and the new words of the Greek language, which they but imperfectly learnt, helped to convey to their minds new ideas. As it was, a great reformation in the faith of the Jewish nation had taken place in Babylon, and the new doctrines which CHAP. III. CHAP. Aristobulus. the forefathers of the Alexandrian colonists had imbibed in the East had been committed to writing in the emporium of the West several centuries before the time of Philo. The great forerunner of Philo was Aristobulus, an Alexandrian Jew, who lived in the second century before Christ. The Alexandrian Jews, who, like Aristobulus, begun that exchange of ideas between Judaism and Hellenism, which was to produce so great results, felt the want of explaining to themselves and to others the improbabilities and impossibilities of the law. Thus, the law attributed to the Divine power hands, arms, and a face, motion, work, and rest. These difficulties had to be answered. Without hesitation Aristobulus sacrifices the letter of the Divine books. Tradition is to be taken in its natural sense, and the Divine idea is to be held up to the level of the Divine Being. Otherwise the fall into a fabulous and entirely human representation will be inevitable. What is represented in the descriptions and accounts of Moses are often but types. Where imagination sees nothing great, there intelligence discovers the Divine truth. When Moses speaks of the hand of God, which has brought His people out of Egypt, and which strikes the Egyptians, it is the power of God which has done this. Likewise the descent of Jehovah on Mount Sinai cannot be taken literally, for God is everywhere. This apparition of the Highest in the midst of thunder and lightning is nothing else than the revelation of God by all its powers. Again, when Moses says that God rested on the sixth day, he does not mean that God did not any more create anything, for this would militate against His essentially active and productive nature. This word of rest, when applied to God, signifies only the perfect accomplishment of the work of creation. Aristobulus applies the same method of interpretation to the myths of the Greek religion. Thus, Jupiter is the power of God, considered in its universal expansion and action. It is in the writings of Aristobulus that we find for the first time the expression of that idea, which, absurd as it was, met with so much success in the schools of Judaism and (Alexandrian) Christianity, that the wisdom of the Greek flows from Holy Writ.'1 Aristobulus compiled supposed verses of Greek poets, partly fabricated by himself, in which he showed that the former had expressed themselves not only in favour of Monotheism, but especially of the religious tenets of the Jews. We find in our time hardly conceivable the audacity with which a Jew was able to let Orpheus speak of Abraham, of Moses and the Ten Commandments, and to let Homer speak about the final accomplishment of creation on the seventh day, and about the keeping holy of the Sabbath. But Aristobulus knew his people better. Not only did the vanity of his cotemporaries among the Jews come to meet him with implicit faith, but also learned Fathers of the Christian Church, like Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius, refer with unhesitating faith to his fabricated passages, containing such proofs.'2 "For some time the Jewish Church in Alexandria was in close dependence on that of Jerusalem. Both were subject to the civil power of the first Ptolemies, and both acknowledged the High Priest as their religious head. The persecution of Ptolemy Philopator3 occasioned the first political separation between the two bodies. From that time the Jews of Palestine attached themselves to the fortunes of Syria, and the same policy which alienated the Palestinian party gave union and decision to the Jews of Alexandria. The Septuagint translation which strengthened the barrier of language between Palestine and Egypt, and the temple at Leontopolis, which subjected the Egyptian Jew to the charge of schism, widened the breach which was thus opened. But the division, though marked, was not complete. At the beginning of the Christian era the Egyptian Jew still paid the contributions 1 Vacherot, 'Ecole d'Alexandrie.' 2 Strauss, 'Leben Jesu,' 1864, p. 45. 3 217 B.C. 4 161 B.C. CHAP. III. |