least among the foremost in his own age. He owes most to Plato, for whom he has the highest reverence, but is also much influenced not only on the ethical but on the theological side of his philosophy by Stoicism, and has from the Pythagoreans his fondness for extracting wisdom from numbers. As a Jew, he accepts all the Scriptures as divine revelation; among them the Pentateuch holds the first rank by virtue of the comprehensiveness and profundity of the truth which it contains. On the other hand, by reason he is no less convinced of the truth of Greek philosophy. The truth of philosophy and revelation is in substance one; it is taught by the philosophers in abstract, intellectual form, while in the Bible it is presented concretely for the common mind. Yet although the substance of truth is the same, it is clear that the form in which it is presented in philosophy to the mind of intelligent and thoughtful men is higher than the symbol or example, the precept or object-lesson, in the Law. And since the truth in both is God's truth, it must be God's will that men should not remain on the level of the Bible, but proceed to the higher ground of philosophy, from which point of view alone it is possible fully to understand the biblical revelation. His task, therefore, as a philosophical interpreter of the Scripture was to show how in its own way it teaches the highest ethical and philosophical truth.

He accomplishes this by the application of the allegorical method, which had been already developed and employed with a somewhat similar end by the Stoics, and by this means has no difficulty in discovering in the seemingly irrational and trivial details of the ceremonial law the most elevated and inspiring lessons, or in developing out of the stories in Genesis a series of edifying psychological studies in character.

Philo's conception of God and of the world reflects the fundamental dualism of the Platonic philosophy. His God, when he speaks as a philosopher, is a metaphysical Absolute of whom nothing can be affirmed but that he is.

He is essentially nameless, and to predicate of him attributes or actions would be to circumscribe him and reduce him to the measure of finitude. The other pole of the universe is an eternal, inert, formless matter. This gulf between a God who by the very idea of godhead does nothing and matter which by its definition cannot do anything is the crux of Philo's metaphysics, as it was for the Neoplatonists who came after him and for the speculative Gnostics. In Philo's solution the influence of both Platonism and of Stoicism is recognisable. Between God and the material world he interposes the logoi, which corresponded to the Platonic ideas supposed immanent in God and to the Stoic forces (Svváμes), operative ideas immanent in matter. As Plato comprehends all the ideas in the one supreme idea, the Good, so does Philo find the unity of all the logoi in the one Logos. His premises demand on the one side that the Logos, as reason, should be eternally immanent in God, and, on the other, that as implicated in this material world it should be distinct from God. The vacillations and ambiguities in Philo's treatment of this subject should not be attributed to inability to think clearly, but, as so often in theology, to the necessity of thinking ambiguously.

Philo's dualism has its further consequence in philosophic alienation from the actual world. The soul of man can find its true happiness only in rising above the world and the body, ascending by reason or soaring in contemplation to the world of ideas, or rapt in ecstasy to God. This salvation by philosophy is by its very nature individualistic. Men may further one another in the quest by high communing, but the attainment must be solitary. It is easy to see, therefore, why Philo, with all his attachment to his people, has no interest in the national hope or the restoration of independence; the rule of a Messianic king could not be for him a religious end. The popular notions of retribution after death-the resurrection of the body, a dramatic world assize, a material heaven and hell-he ignores; the Platonic parallels he doubtless took figuratively.

It is an error to take Philo as a representative of Hellenistic Judaism. He is a figure of great interest in himself, but he had, so far as we know, no Jewish disciples, and we find no trace of his influence in the subsequent development of Judaism, or even of acquaintance with his writings, down to the Middle Ages. His importance lies on the one hand in his relation to the later schools of Greek philosophy, in particular to Neoplatonism, and on the other in his influence on the development of Christian theology from the Fourth Gospel and the Epistle to the Hebrews on.

Conceiving Judaism as revealed religion, whose Scriptures and tradition embodied the whole will of God for man's whole life, the task of the religious leaders was to educate the whole people in this religion. To this, besides their conviction of the truth of religion and its vital importance to the individual, they had an impelling motive in the belief that the fulfilment of the national hope, the coming of the golden age when the reign of God should be realised upon earth, depended upon the conformity of the entire people to the revealed will of God. In the centuries preceding the Christian era Judaism created in the synagogue and the school institutions excellently adapted to the accomplishment of this task. In all the lands of their dispersion, wherever Jews were settled even in small numbers, they had their synagogues, in which on the Sabbaths and twice in the week besides, they gathered for prayer and the study of the Scripture. The Pentateuch was divided for this purpose into lessons in such a way that it was read through in the course of three years.1 In Palestine, and doubtless in Babylonia, the lesson was read from the Hebrew text and accompanied piecemeal by an interpretative translation in the Aramaic vernacular. Among the Greekspeaking Jews the custom of reading the pericope directly from the Greek translation seems to have been early established. The reading from the Law was followed by a second lesson chosen from the historical books and the proph1 Later, the custom of reading it through every year prevailed.

ets. How early these prophetic lessons were fixed in a cycle corresponding to the Sabbath lessons from the Law is uncertain; probably not till some time after the Christian era. An exposition, or homily, based upon the lesson of the day, or at least taking it as a point of departure, was also customary. The services in the synagogue have often been compared to the worship of the Protestant Churches. There is, however, one notable difference: the synagogue had no ministry. There was no class of men whose special privilege or duty it was to read the lessons or to comment upon them. Any one who was qualified to do it might take part in the service in either way. Naturally the rabbis or their disciples who were members of the congregation or were present as visitors were preferred as preachers because of their greater fitness for instructive and edifying discourse, but their superior education and authority as teachers gave them no prerogative right.

Schools for elementary instruction were common in Palestine, in which boys learned to read in the Hebrew Bible, and the meaning was explained to them more or less fully by their teachers. In the higher schools the Law was methodically studied, following the rotation of the weekly synagogue lessons, and the unwritten Law was learned in connection with these lessons. The students not only memorised the traditions, but discussed with their teachers their meaning and application, their relation to the written Law and to other traditions. In striking contrast to the contemporary religions, in which theological learning was confined to the priesthood and often jealously guarded by them as an esoteric wisdom, the scribes and rabbis did their best to familiarise all classes of the community to the measure of their capacity, not merely with the form and ceremonial, or with the national legend and history, but with the higher lessons of religion and morals.

In the two or three centuries before the Christian era and the first century after it, a popular religious literature of considerable bulk and varied character was in circula

tion. There were short stories, such as Esther, Ruth, Judith, 3 Maccabees, Tobit, some originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, others in Greek. The primæval and patriarchal history was written over in a particular interest, as in Jubilees; the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs combine legend with moral lessons and predictions; there are hymns, like the Psalms of Solomon. One of the most abundant species of this literature are the apocalypses, revelations of the last days of the present epoch of history, the judgment, and the golden age to follow; they contain also visions of the unseen world or visits to heaven and hell, and disclose the mysteries of astronomy and meteorology.

The historical apocalypse is the successor of prophecy in one of its aspects. The predictions of judgment assume, in such transitional writings as Isaiah 24-27, Zech. 9-14, and Joel, an increasingly supernatural form. Later authors construct, out of ideas and imagery drawn from many sources, composite pictures of the great crisis and the Messianic times; they set themselves to answer the question how all this shall come about, and when. The Book of Daniel is one of the oldest of these apocalypses, and sets a pattern which its successors imitate and vary. The four great empires, for example, successive representatives of the kingdom of this world in its hostility to God and his people, and the destruction of this power to make way for the kingdom of the saints of the Most High, become a standing scheme. Similarly, the computation of the time when the rule of the heathen shall be overthrown and the golden age begin, operating with a cycle of four hundred and ninety years-seventy times seven, or, as in Enoch, ten times forty-nine-is, from the second century B. C. on, a recurring exercise in apocalyptic arithmetic.

The collection which goes under the name of Enoch contains pieces of various origin and character, comprising eschatology, cosmology, and angelic mythology. Jewish apocalypses underlie the Revelation of John in the New