The Art of Contextualizing Philo of Alexandria 3161640780, 9783161640780

Table of contents :
Cover
Title
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
Maren R. Niehoff — Contextualization as a Scholarly Art
Roman Contexts: Philosophy and History
Ludovica De Luca — Philo, Cicero and Vitruvius: God as Architect in Rome
Sergio Marín — A Conscience on Trial. Reading Ios. 47–48 against a Roman Background
Rebecca Langlands — Philo’s Barbarian Virtue and Roman Exemplary Ethics
Maren R. Niehoff — “God is my Ruler, but no Mortal”. Philo’s Paradox of Freedom in first century Rome amidst Demetrius, Seneca and Epictetus
Gretchen Reydams-Schils — Philo and Musonius Rufus
Gregory E. Sterling — Platonism between Alexandria and Rome: Philo and Seneca
Mischa Meier — Nero’s Persecution of the Christians, the Jews and a Possible “Philonic” Connection
New Testament Contexts
Loveday Alexander — Sailing to Caesar: Philo’s Embassy and Luke’s Paul in Rome
Matthias Becker — Philo’s Lives and Luke’s Gospel – Features of Hagiographical Discourse in Early Imperial-Era Biography
Joan E. Taylor — Another Look at the Logos Concept in Philo and the Gospel of John. Cerinthus as the Missing Link?
Philip Alexander — Philo of Alexandria and Hebrews in the Context of the Roman Empire. Revisiting the Question of their Relationship
Greek Literature and Philosophy as Context
Jason König — Human and Environment in Philo’s Life of Moses and Flaccus
Volker Henning Drecoll — Philo and Severus on the Unity of Soul
List of Contributors
Index of Names
Index locorum
Index of Subjects

Citation preview

Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism Edited by Maren Niehoff (Jerusalem) Annette Y. Reed (Cambridge, MA) Seth Schwartz (New York, NY ) Moulie Vidas (Princeton, NJ)

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The Art of Contextualizing Philo of Alexandria Edited by

Maren R. Niehoff

Mohr Siebeck

Maren R. Niehoff, born 1963; educated at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Free University in Berlin, Oxford University and Harvard University; Max Cooper Professor in the Department of Jewish Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

ISBN 978-3-16-164078-0 / eISBN 978-3-16-164079-7 DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-164079-7 ISSN 0721-8753 / eISSN 2568-9525 (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism) The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available at https://dnb.dnb.de. © 2025 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by Martin Fischer unsing Minion typeface, printed on non-aging paper by Stückle in Ettenheim, and bound by Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany.

Acknowledgements This volume is the product of my Martin Hengel Fellowship at Tübingen University in 2019–20. It is my great pleasure to thank the Philipp Melanchthon Foundation, chaired by Volker Drecoll, for its generous support during the fellowship, the ensuing conference and the copyediting of this volume. My stay in Tübingen benefited immensely from the warm welcome and generous hospitality of numerous colleagues, especially Volker Drecoll, Mischa Meier and Irmgard Männlein-Robert. Our daily and very fruitful conversations are still vivid in my mind. The Martin Hengel Lecture, which I had the honor of delivering in December 2019, is now published both in Hebrew and German (“Tracing Hellenistic Judaism. A Jewish Scholar of Psalms in a Gloss of Origen in the Context of Rabbinic Literature” [in Hebrew], Zion 87 (2022): 7–36; German version in ZAC 27 (2023): 31–76). The gracious discussion of the German translation of my recent monograph Philo of Alexandria. An Intellectual Biography (Yale 2018), which took place in Tübingen in January 2020, is now published as “Book under Discussion,” with contributions by Mischa Meier, Irmgard MännleinRobert, Holger Zellentin and Volker Drecoll, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 24 (2020): 606–31. As part of my fellowship, I organized an international conference in Tübingen in May 2022, one of the first academic gatherings following the removal of Covid restrictions. The atmosphere was consequently characterized by a special appreciation of face-to-face exchange. The conference also transcended traditional disciplinary boundaries and gathered both Philo experts and scholars of adjacent fields, some of whom worked on Philo for the first time. I thank everybody for accepting my invitation and venturing into new territory, thus reconstructing the place Philo presumably held in ancient debates. I also thank David Runia, who came especially from Holland to chair a session, and Thomas Schmitz, who arrived from Bonn to chair another session. The articles published here incorporate not only the individual discussions at the conference, but also the input of two anonymous readers, who were respectively approached for each contribution. One article was submitted at a later stage and, inversely, not all lectures given at the conference are incorporated here. All the contributions in this volume have been meticulously reworked and display the results of close academic cooperation. Thanks to Sarah Mandel, who edited the style of the essays, and to Sergio Marín, who took excellent care of the technical aspects of copy-editing and also compiled the indices. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem granted me a

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Sabbatical leave to accept the Martin Hengel Fellowship and has been a congenial home for all the subsequent stages of editing the volume. As usual, it has been a great pleasure working with the team of Mohr Siebeck, this time in close cooperation with Tobias Stäbler, the new editor of the series Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism. It is more than appropriate that this volume should appear in this series following David Runia’s collected articles on Philo of Alexandria, which span several decades of research. This context is significant and frames the diversity of approaches in the field as well as its development over time.

Table of Contents Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Maren R. Niehoff Contextualization as a Scholarly Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Roman Contexts: Philosophy and History Ludovica De Luca Philo, Cicero and Vitruvius: God as Architect in Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Sergio Marín A Conscience on Trial. Reading Ios. 47–48 against a Roman Background . . 53 Rebecca Langlands Philo’s Barbarian Virtue and Roman Exemplary Ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Maren R. Niehoff “God is my Ruler, but no Mortal”. Philo’s Paradox of Freedom in first century Rome amidst Demetrius, Seneca and Epictetus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Gretchen Reydams-Schils Philo and Musonius Rufus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Gregory E. Sterling Platonism between Alexandria and Rome: Philo and Seneca . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169 Mischa Meier Nero’s Persecution of the Christians, the Jews and a Possible “Philonic” Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

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New Testament Contexts Loveday Alexander Sailing to Caesar: Philo’s Embassy and Luke’s Paul in Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Matthias Becker Philo’s Lives and Luke’s Gospel – Features of Hagiographical Discourse in Early Imperial-Era Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 Joan E. Taylor Another Look at the Logos Concept in Philo and the Gospel of John. Cerinthus as the Missing Link? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 Philip Alexander Philo of Alexandria and Hebrews in the Context of the Roman Empire. Revisiting the Question of their Relationship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287

Greek Literature and Philosophy as Context Jason König Human and Environment in Philo’s Life of Moses and Flaccus . . . . . . . . . . . . 321 Volker Henning Drecoll Philo and Severus on the Unity of Soul . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341 List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361 Index of Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365 Index locorum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367 Index of Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369

Contextualization as a Scholarly Art Maren R. Niehoff Besides discoveries of new texts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls or the library of Nag Hamadi, new contexts have played a pivotal role in humanities research. Seminal discoveries have been made by introducing new hermeneutic frameworks. Jean Astruc, for example, revolutionized Biblical studies in the eighteenth century by applying the source-critical methods of Homeric scholarship to the Book of Genesis.1 Milman Parry, in turn, changed Homeric studies by comparing its poetics to that of oral cultures, which he studied especially in the former Yugoslavia.2 The Code of Hammurabi was adduced by John Sampey to throw completely new light on Biblical law.3 Until today, the study of the New Testament is characterized by lively debates about its proper context, namely Greco-Roman, Jewish or a combination of both.4 In the case of Philo, contextualization is a particular art, as this author falls between the departmental chairs of modern universities. As a Greek-speaking Jew of Alexandria he was not canonized by any of the fields to which he contributed, namely Jewish studies, Biblical studies, Classics, ancient philosophy, ancient history as well as New Testament studies and early Christianity. No firm disciplinary context exists for the interpretation of Philo. Much of Philonic scholarship has consequently been invested in situating him in relation to various disciplines. Classical philosophy has been a paramount reference point and scholars have identified Stoic, Platonic or Skeptical ideas.5 Another prevalent context was the New Testament, especially the Gospels and Paul’s letters.6 The chosen framework typically directed scholars to specific texts or passages within Philo’s vast œuvre, which is unsurpassed in antiquity in its variety of genres. The present collection of articles revisits the question of Philo’s contexts in the wake of Maren Niehoff ’s Philo of Alexandria. An Intellectual Biography (New Haven, 2018), which has prompted lively discussions within Philonic studies and beyond. This monograph analyzes all of Philo’s diverse writings and introduces 1

Astruc 1753. Parry 1987. 3 Sampey 1904a, 1904b. 4 The literature is too vast to be adequately represented here, see recent discussions by Sampley 2016; Zetterholm 2020; Niehoff forthcoming. 5 Brehier 1950; Reydam-Schils 1999; Weisser 2021; Dillon 1977; Runia 1986; Levy 2008, 2010. 6 Sterling 1999, 2003; Deines 2011; Cover 2015. 2

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the notion of his intellectual development, with an earlier Alexandrian and later Roman context. Initially, Philo addressed the Jewish community of Alexandria and offered systematic Bible commentary in the spirit of Alexandrian Platonism, which tended towards strong transcendentalism. Following the pogrom in Alexandria in 38 ce, Philo went to Rome as the head of the Jewish embassy and endeavored to assert the civic rights of the Jews. The Intellectual Biography argues for the first time that Philo’s diplomatic activity also had significant intellectual implications. Like other diplomats in Rome, Philo used his time to build new networks and even began to write for broader Roman audiences. His style became more Stoic and this-worldly, being attuned to history, biography, law, politics and gender. In other words, Philo engaged not only with Classical Greek philosophy, but also with a broad spectrum of contemporary discourses, including a distinctly Roman form of philosophy. The articles gathered here explore Philo’s various contexts in dialogue with the insights that emerged from the Intellectual Biography. The collection advances the field by experimenting with different hermeneutic frameworks and examining their potential benefit in explaining Philo. Not surprisingly, the first and largest section of the collection is devoted to Roman contexts and deals with Philo in view of authors and historical figures active in the imperial capital. Moving beyond the Intellectual Biography, the essays investigate new aspects of Philo’s participation in Roman discourses, including his engagement with ideas advocated by Cicero, Valerius Maximus, and Musonius Rufus, as well as his hitherto-overlooked Cynic tendencies. One essay furthermore treats Philo as an exponent of Alexandrian Platonism in Roman networks and another as a diplomat with close ties to the imperial administration, who may have noticed the emergence of Christ-believers in the Jewish community of Rome. The second section of this collection focuses on Philo in relation to the New Testament. Two of the essays apply a triangular perspective, taking Philo as a benchmark for Romanization, which illuminates New Testament texts such as Acts and the Letter to the Hebrews. Two others respectively investigate Philo’s hagiographical style of biography in view of the Gospel of Luke and his Platonically inspired Logos theory in view of the Gospel of John. The third section places Philo in the context of Greek literature and philosophy, one essay introducing ecocriticism in relation to Roman politics and the other drawing attention to Philo as a unique witness to inner Platonic debates which fully emerge in the second century ce. The first section opens with an essay by Ludovica De Luca, entitled “Philo, Cicero and Vitruvius: God as Architect in Rome.” De Luca revisits an icon of Philonic scholarship, namely the famous section in Philo’s creation account depicting the Jewish creator God as an architect. She reviews previous models of contextualizing Opif. 17–20 in Platonic and Stoic philosophy and then offers a new approach, namely to understand Philo in view of Cicero and Vitruvius, the Roman architect, whose opinions were widely known and thus likely to have

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come to Philo’s attention. De Luca shows how the motif of the architect developed in Roman discourses, ranging from proper philosophical treatises, such as Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods, to Vitruvius’ On Architecture, which displays especially close similarities with Philo. The motif of the architect thus emerges as a prime locus to negotiate the various philosophical traditions, enabling Philo to articulate his own innovative interpretation of the Jewish God for broader Greco-Roman audiences. Sergio Marín follows with the article “A Conscience on Trial. Reading Ios. 47– 48 Against a Roman Background.” He, too, initially reviews previous interpretations of Philo’s notion of the conscience in Classical Greek contexts and then proceeds to show that a particular passage in the Life of Joseph reveals a conspicuous congruence with the role played by conscientia in Latin sources. Philo’s rhetorical embellishments of LXX Gen 39:7–20 ascribe to the conscience the same forensic role in the exposure of Joseph’s hypothetical adultery, as Roman authors like Cicero attribute to conscientia in the retelling of court scenes. This becomes particularly evident in the physiognomic perspective that Philo adopts to describe how the workings of Joseph’s conscience are manifested in the body. Likewise, Philo’s dramatization of the encounter between Joseph and Potiphar engages with the wider Roman tendency to recreate vivid narratives that make use of visual cues and descriptions of physical appearance to induce the readers to visualize the scene. Marín concludes that Philo was deeply aware of legal practices and literary styles popular in Rome and prompts us to further investigate the connections between philosophy and law. Rebecca Langlands contributes a chapter entitled “Philo’s Barbarian Virtue and Roman Exemplary Ethics,” which analyzes Philo’s treatise Every Good Man is Free in light of Cicero and Valerius Maximus. She offers a survey of the whole treatise and stresses the importance of the exemplars alongside more theoretical definitions of freedom. The style and educational approach of the former correspond closely to the distinct tradition of Roman exemplarity. Langlands zooms in on a cluster of exemplars, namely Calanus the Indian gymnosophist as well as Zeno the Eleatic and Anaxarchus, who are all willing to die in their resistance to tyrants. She points to parallel interpretations of this cluster in Cicero and Valerius, highlighting that Philo is especially close to, but not identical with the latter. This correspondence between two authors writing in different languages in imperial Rome leads her to search for explanations, asking whether they independently used well-known anecdotes or directly depended upon each other. She concludes that Philo was probably aware of Valerius Maximus’ work, just as Plutarch was, and employed it for his specific purposes. Philo emerges as a participant in the ongoing ethical practice of reinterpreting key precepts and examples, aligning Roman and Jewish ethical traditions. Maren Niehoff also analyzes the Philonic treatise Every Good Man is Free in a chapter called “‘God is my Ruler, but no Mortal.’ Philo’s Paradox of Freedom in

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First-Century Rome Amidst Demetrius, Seneca and Epictetus”. She analyzes the Sophoclean saying quoted by Philo, and investigates the notion of man becoming God’s deputy in the context of Cynic philosophy. According to Philo, man shares Divine power and consequently enjoys freedom among men, thus assuming a role suggested in a famous syllogism of Diogenes of Sinope, the founder of the Cynic school. Moses is moreover interpreted in the same Cynic spirit as granting man assimilation to God and friendship with Him. These Philonic views are further investigated by comparison to three philosophers active in Rome, namely Demetrius the Greek Cynic, Seneca, the Stoic philosopher writing in Latin, and Epictetus, who arrived from the Greek East and taught Stoic philosophy in Rome. While none of them mentions the Sophoclean saying, they all address the issues Philo associates with it. Indeed, Philo emerges as an important link between Demetrius, whose work is extant only in highly fragmentary form, and Seneca and Epictetus. Philo’s testimony illuminates the different degrees to which Cynic ideals were integrated in Roman discourses, especially among Roman Stoics, a school known for its initial sympathy to Cynicism. Philo ultimately provides us a hermeneutic key to appreciate the distinct nature of Roman Stoicism in comparison to its Classical predecessor. This context, Niehoff concludes, also has potential implications for Paul’s notion of freedom in his Letter to the Romans. Gretchen Reydams-Schils’ chapter “Philo and Musonius” further illuminates the Roman context of Philo by introducing Musonius Rufus, a slightly later Stoic philosopher, as a benchmark of Roman Stoicism likely to have been available to Philo during his embassy. Reydams-Schils focuses on test-cases connected to modes of sociability and stresses Stoic contributions in comparison to the Cynic school, which shares numerous starting points of philosophical inquiry. The examples chosen here concern marriage, assimilation to God, the figure of Heracles and paideia, all being drawn from the Exposition and the treatise Every Good Man is Free. Reydams-Schils thus adds to the previous two chapters a further layer of inquiry into a particular Philonic treatise and freshly addresses the question of cross-fertilization between Stoics and Cynics. While Niehoff draws attention to the deep fascination of Roman Stoics with Cynic ideas and practices, Reydams-Schils emphasizes the Stoic domestication of Cynic excesses. In this scenario, too, Philo plays a significant philosophical role in first-century Rome. Gregory Sterling’s chapter “Platonism between Alexandria and Rome: Philo and Seneca” approaches the question of Philo’s Roman context from a slightly different angle. Rather than envisioning his engagement with Roman discourses, he interprets him as an Alexandrian Platonist, who visited Rome and may on that occasion have transmitted some elements of his philosophical tradition. This hypothesis is tested via a number of parallels between Philo and Seneca’s exposition of Platonic ideas in Letters 58 and 65, which seem to draw not only on the master himself, but also on his subsequent interpreters. Given that familiarity with Philo has been made plausible in the cases of Plutarch, Celsus, Numenius

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and Plotinus, Sterling asks whether Seneca may also have drawn on his work and, if so, how he became familiar with it. Following an analysis of the parallels pertaining to metaphysics and causation, Sterling considers three major options: that both authors developed the same views independently, that they drew independently from a common pool of traditions or, alternatively, that Seneca or some of his friends heard Philo in Rome and adopted his views. Dismissing the first option as improbable, Sterling concludes that the second and third are possible, the former being the most likely. The third option relies on the observation that both authors similarly diverge from standard positions within the Platonic tradition, and Sterling cautions that it should not be dismissed purely on the grounds that Philo was Jewish and thus supposedly isolated. The first section concludes with Mischa Meier’s article “Nero’s Persecution of the Christians, the Jews and a Possible ‘Philonic’ Connection.” Meier revisits the enigma of Nero’s persecution of the Christians, the historicity of which has been altogether denied in some recent scholarship. In his view, the crux of the question is whether Nero could have known that the people he persecuted were Christbelievers, given that the term only appears in the second century ce. Rather than completely dismissing Tacitus’ unique account of the events, Meier seeks to reconstruct different stages of Roman awareness of Christians as a separate group. In this process the Jews played a central role, both as observers of debates taking place within their communities and as victims of imperial policies restricting them on account of various political conflicts. It would thus have been in their interest to distance themselves from the Christ-believers, in order to safeguard traditional Jewish worship and avoid the suspicion of the Roman administration. Meyer concludes that even though Philo does not mention neither Jesus nor his followers, he may nevertheless have noticed early developments and started negotiations with the Roman administration, given the networks he developed in Rome during his embassy. The second section positions Philo in the context of New Testament writings, exploring different methods of comparison. Loveday Alexander’s essay, “Sailing to Caesar: Philo’s Embassy and Luke’s Paul in Rome,” argues that the widely attested first-century practice that Josephus calls “sailing to Caesar” offers an illuminating framework for understanding both Philo’s Embassy to Gaius and Luke’s account of Paul’s trials and journey to Rome. Philo is not on trial, and Paul is not an ambassador, but both experiences are shaped by the same agonistic framework, and the same underlying realities of political life in the empire, in which the emperor is regularly invoked as final court of appeal in disputes between local civic communities and their governing elites. Reading Luke’s account of Paul’s trial in tandem with Philo brings out the differences in their relative situations, but also many similarities, such as the importance of soliciting favor from those who hold political power, the appeal to wider principles of justice, the political acumen needed to play off one power-broker against another, the

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dangerous tendency of public discourse to slide from precise charges to critique of a whole way of life and, finally, the perilously thin boundary between embassy and trial. Alexander offers a detailed literary analysis of passages from Philo, Josephus and Luke to explore the dynamics between literature and politics in the shared cultural milieu of the Roman empire. Avoiding one-directional models, she points to complex dynamics and intricate entanglements of apologetics, historiography and construction of religious identity. Philo’s Legatio is used as a central witness to such negotiations, which illuminates the literary and political strategies of Acts. Matthias Becker follows with a chapter entitled “Philo’s Lives and Luke’s Gospel – Features of Hagiographical Discourse in Early Imperial-Era Biography.” This essay highlights hagiographical aspects of ancient biographies, focusing on Philo’s Lives of Moses and Abraham, on the one hand, and the Gospel of Luke, on the other. Hagiographical discourse is defined by four features, namely a focus on exceptional human individuals, who have a close relationship with God, a combination of factual and fictional components, multiple programmatic functions and, finally, overlaps with the concept of the “divine man.” These categories are then applied to a close reading of Philonic and Lucan passages, which emerge as engaging similar motifs and depicting their heroes as especially endowed divine men. They love God and are loved by Him, they show special compassion for God and obedience to Him, they leave their social environment to embark on their spiritual journey, they enjoy divine providence and perform miracles. Becker concludes by stressing that these features also characterize pagan Greek biographies, such as those of Plutarch, and were part of the profile of intellectuals in the imperial period. Joan R. Taylor contributes an article called “Another Look at Logos Theology in Philo and John,” which revisits an often-discussed issue from a new angle. After surveying the initial reception history of Philo in Alexandria and beyond, Taylor turns to the intellectual milieu of the Gospel of John, which she locates in Ephesus, another mediterranean city with close ties to Alexandria. The connection between Philo and John, she argues, is not one of direct dependence, but of indirect engagement. Taking seriously early Patristic insights that the Gospel of John counters the position of a certain Cerinthus, who was associated with Egypt, Taylor reconstructs his views from fragments in Tertullian and Hippolytus and argues that he represents a Logos theory close to that of Philo. She stresses that it is impossible to know if Cerinthus – for all his “Egyptian” education – used Philo primarily or whether Philo was simply one of many authors of the Alexandrian school, who were read by Christian Jews in the city of Ephesus and elsewhere. Regardless, Cerinthus can be understood better by reference to Philo and thus Cerinthus represents a reception of Philo more clearly than we see in the Gospel of John. The biggest Cerinthian innovation pertains to Philo’s Logos, and the Powers, which always remain as transcendent

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as the Father. An enfleshed Power of any kind – let alone the Logos – is not found in Philo. However, this concept was found in Cerinthus, apparently, who asserted that the Power “Christ” arrived and dwelt in Jesus, the human being made by the Maker, who exhibited goodness worthy enough to be accounted as his son. As such, while the Gospel of John does not have Philo directly in view, it addresses Philonic concepts as they were already adapted by Christian Jews in Ephesus, namely by those who followed Cerinthus. Philip Alexander concludes the second section with an essay on “Philo of Alexandria and Hebrews in the Context of the Roman Empire. Revisiting the Question of their Relationship.” Alexander starts with a detailed survey of modern research on the relationship between Philo and the author of Hebrews, showing that generations of scholars have not been able to offer conclusive evidence, since they focused on questions of direct dependence, which inevitably struggle in the face of significant similarities and differences between the texts. Alexander proposes instead a heuristic comparison of the two authors against the backdrop of first century Rome. This triangular approach enables us to put them into dialogue with one another, without becoming entangled in questions of literary dependence. The broad convergences of time, place, and idea would make that comparison worthwhile in its own right, but Alexander further recommends sharpening the comparison by exploiting the fact that both writers seem to be addressing a Roman audience. The essay concludes with an initial study of exemplarity as a text-case. Philo and Hebrews emerge as authors participating in wider, typically Roman efforts to depict a gallery of exemplary forefathers as a means of constructing identity. They even share some figures, such as Abraham, but put them to different uses, Philo soliciting empathy for Judaism in Rome, Hebrews inviting Roman readers to own the Biblical tradition as part of their new Christian identity. The third section of this collection contextualizes Philo in Greek literature and philosophy. Jason König opens with an essay entitled “Human and Environment in Philo’s Life of Moses and Flaccus,” which applies insights from postcolonial ecocriticism in the study of Greek literature. While such studies have thus far focused mostly on the Classical period, König investigates Philo as a Greek author in the Roman empire, next to Plutarch and others. Philo’s deep fascination with environmental themes, which departs from the Septuagintal Exodus story and its theme of Divine providence, results in imagery that has its best parallels in Greek and also Latin rhetoric and poetry. Some of the effects achieved by Philo are relatively familiar within Philonic scholarship, such as, for example, his portrayal of the naturalness of the Jewish religion, in contrast with what he views as the unnatural character of the Egyptians’ relationship with the world around them. König moves beyond these insights and shows how Philo’s exploration of the environment also contributes to a negative representation of imperial dominance. In the opening sections of the Life of Moses Philo em-

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phasizes the Jewish population’s vulnerability to the environment, alongside attempts by the Egyptians to exercise control over the natural world. Those images are then overturned later in the narrative, as the Egyptians are themselves exposed to environmental harm through the plagues, while Moses increasingly exercises a divinely sanctioned mastery over nature. The article concludes with a comparison to similar patterns in Philo’s Flaccus, which highlights the connections between environment, literature and politics in the Roman empire. Philo thus helps us to see the sophistication of ancient debates, which has often been overlooked in ecological investigations. Volker Drecoll concludes the third section with an essay on “Philo and Severus on the Unity of the Soul,” which analyzes Philo as an important witness to debates within the Platonic school which are not attested elsewhere in the first century ce, but fully emerge in the fragments of Severus, a second-century ce Alexandrian Platonist. Drecoll initially submits key-passages in the Allegorical Commentary from Philo’s earlier, more Platonic period and his later Roman works, showing that the tension between Plato’s references to the soul’s division and unity features prominently in the former. Philo suggests for the first time a kind of solution by claiming that only the rational and divinely inspired part of the soul can truly be called soul or man’s self. Philo’s significance is then illuminated by comparison to Severus, whose fragments are partly preserved by Eusebius and the newly discovered treatise On Principles and Matter by Porphyry. Their testimonies indicate that Severus polemicized against the position of Atticus, according to whom opposite parts of the soul were held together. Severus, by contrast, argued that the soul cannot be considered as truly composite, because that assumption would negate its immortality.

Bibliography Astruc, Jean. Conjectures sur les memoires originaux dont il paroit que Moyse s’est servi pour composer le livre de la Genese. Brussels, 1753. Brehier, Emile. Les Idées Philosophiques et Religieuses de Philon d’Alexandrie. Paris: J. Vrin, 1950. Cover, Michael. Lifting the Veil. 2 Corinthians 3:7–18 in Light of Jewish Homiletic and Commentary Traditions. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2015. Deines, Roland, ed. Neues Testament und hellenistisch-jüdische Alltagskultur: Wechselseitige Wahrnehmungen III Internationales Symposium zum Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti 21–24 Mai 2009. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011. Dillon, John M. The Middle Platonists: A Study of Platonism, 80 b.c. to a.d. 220. London: Duckworth, 1977. Levy, Carlos. “La Conversion Du Scepticisme Chez Philon d’Alexandrie.” In Philo of Alexandria and Post-Aristotelian Philosophy. Edited by Francesca Alesse, 103–120. Leiden: Brill, 2008.

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–. “The Sceptical Academy: Decline and Afterlife.” In The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Scepticism. Edited by Richard Bett, 81–104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Parry, Milman, ed. The Making of Homeric Verse. Collected Papers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Reydams-Schils, Gretchen. Demiurge and Providence. Stoic and Platonic Readings of Plato’s Timaeus. Turnhout: Brepols 1999. Runia, David T. Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato. Leiden: Brill, 1986. Niehoff, Maren R. “Reading Strategies in the Greco-Roman World. Grammar, Allegory and Exemplarity.” In Behind the Scenes of the New Testament: Cultural, Social and Historical Context. Edited by Shively et al. Forthcoming, Baker Academic. Sampley, J. Paul, ed. Paul and The Greco-Roman World. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Sampey, John R. “The Code of Hammurabi and the Laws of Moses.” Baptist Review and Expositor 1 (1) (1904a): 97–107. –. “The Code of Hammurabi and the Laws of Moses.” Baptist Review and Expositor 1.2 (1904b): 233–243. Sterling, Gregory E. “‘The School of Sacred Laws’: The Social Setting of Philo’s Treatises.” Vigiliae Christianae 53 (1999): 148–164. –. “‘Philo Has Not Been Used Half Enough’: The Significance of Philo of Alexandria for the Study of the New Testament.” Perspectives in Religious Studies 30 (2003): 251–269. Weisser, Sharon. Eradication ou modérations des passions. Histoire de la controverse chez Cicéron, Sénèque et Philon d’Alexandrie. Turnout: Brepols, 2021. Wendland, Paul. “Philo’s Schrift περὶ πάντα σπουδαῖον εἴναι ἐλεύθερον.” Archiv für die Geschichte der Philosophie 1 (1988): 509–517. Zetterholm, M. “The Paul within Judaism Perspective.” In Perspectives on Paul. Edited by S. McKnight and B. J. Oropeza, 170–193. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020.

Roman Contexts: Philosophy and History

Philo, Cicero and Vitruvius God as Architect in Rome* Ludovica De Luca 1. Introduction: Setting Opif. 17–20 in Rome By first placing in a Roman context the well-known Philonian image of De opificio mundi 17–20, in which God is compared to a “man skilled in architecture,” the present study proposes a new interpretation of this image in the light of not only Greek sources (Plato, the ancient Stoics and Aristotle), but also Latin ones, focusing in particular on the possible influence of Cicero and Vitruvius. We will see how Philo’s image of God as an architect is indebted to Cicero through his assimilated Stoicism, which comes into play in the choice of the metaphorical framework of the “great city of the world” and which, in synergy with Platonism, is crucial for the articulation of key concepts linked to the Philonian image, such as that of “providence.”1 Cicero’s testimony on Stoicism, expressed through the character of Balbus in De natura deorum, is important because he is one of the first authors to associate the figure of the architect with the metaphorical imagery of Stoicism, in which it is in fact mostly absent – with the exception of a frag* This study began as part of the Prin 2017 project “Racconti di creazione come luoghi d’interculturalità dinamica” – Principal Investigator Prof. Angela Longo, University of L’Aquila; and was completed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Einstein Center CHRONOI of Freie Universität Berlin in the context of the 2022–2023 Postdoctoral Fellowship on “Creationism and the Calculation of Time in Late Antiquity: Between Alexandria and the Land of Israel”Principal Investigator Prof. Maren R. Niehoff. Firstly, I would like to thank Prof. Niehoff for inviting me to the conference where an early version of this study was presented, and for the countless suggestions I have received from her. I am immensely grateful to her for giving me the opportunity to reflect again on Opif. 17–20 by broadening the research perspective expressed in the monograph I dedicated to these Philonian passages (De Luca 2021a). I am sincerely grateful to the conference participants, whose comments prompted me to think more deeply about some of the issues discussed. In particular, I thank Prof. David T. Runia, in whose wake my analysis of God as architect is based, and Prof. Irmgard Männlein-Robert, respectively, for their comments on the role of providence and the possible influence of Plato’s Respublica on Opif. 17–20. 1 As will become clear in this study and as I have already tried to show elsewhere (cf. De Luca 2020a, where the main bibliography on the subject is also discussed), Philo develops the concept of providence on the basis of both the Platonic and the Stoic tradition, that is, in accordance with the actual origins of the concept, which, as is widely known, can be traced back first to Plato’s Timaeus and the Stoics’ later interpretation of this dialogue (see esp. Reydams-Schils 1999: 16).

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ment doubtfully attributed to Posidonius.2 According to Balbus’ Stoic view, the architect coincides with nature, and it is precisely this identification that may have influenced Vitruvius’ theory of the science of architecture, according to which the architect’s task is to reproduce the power of nature. After all, as in Philo, also in Cicero and Vitruvius it is architecture – and not a simple manual art – that is closest to nature or a deity, because it is characterized by a design that is reminiscent of providence, understood as the care and preservation of the cosmic order and as foresight. In particular, we will see how Philo borrows Vitruvius’ emphasis on the two moments in which architecture comes to life, namely the architect’s rational and planning capacity and his practical ability to realize what he envisages. The Vitruvian treatise De architectura seems to have strongly influenced Philo’s image, where, on a metaphorical level, the very qualities that Vitruvius had praised in relation to the architect are attributed to the Jewish God. As we will see in the course of this chapter, Philo’s characterization of the Jewish God as an architect seems to reflect a dual communication strategy, used to address a presumably non-Jewish audience. Through the image of Opif. 17–20, which is developed in close relation to Plato’s Timaeus, Philo expresses his sympathy for Stoicism, which Cicero and Vitruvius had already used to present nature as an architect. At the same time, by describing God specifically as an architect rather than merely a craftsman, Philo shows that the Jewish cosmological position does not stand in isolation. He takes a stand in the debate between Platonists, Stoics and Epicureans, and responds in kind to the Epicurean criticism of divine demiurgy and the existence of providence (as is widely known, the same criticism already appears in Aristotle). The ridiculing of the Timaeus’ cosmology, and in particular of the demiurge’s work, which in De natura deorum finds expression through the character of Velleius, is never mentioned by Vitruvius, who seems to have deliberately omitted any reference to it. Philo instead implicitly revives it by contrasting the Timaeus’ model with his own PlatonicStoic view of the origin and preservation of the world. The guiding hypothesis of this chapter is that the Philonian image of God as architect may have been constructed for apologetic-polemical purposes from an anti-Aristotelian and antiEpicurean perspective, as a means of affirming a cosmology based on the concept of creation. Philo uses analogy to this end, adopting a “visual” language capable of reaching his audience: by speaking of God as an architect, Philo overturns Velleius’ anti-Platonic use of architecture, transforming it into an instrument for the dissemination of his own Jewish cosmology. The hypotheses that will be argued in this essay stem from the monograph that I devoted to Philo’s architect-God in 2021. They have been further developed by drawing upon the studies of D. T. Runia, G. Reydams-Schils and M. R. Niehoff. 2

Cf. F3a Theiler (= Strab. 1.1.13–15).

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Runia has dealt with Opif. 17–20 in a number of articles and books, highlighting many of its most important historical and philosophical aspects and showing the close relationship between Philo’s image – and the entire De opificio – and the Timaeus.3 Because of the weighty presence of this Platonic dialogue in De opificio, one could go so far as to consider this work in Middle Platonic terms, as a Spezialkommentar focusing on Tim. 27a1–31b3. According to Runia, however, such an operation runs the risk of under-emphasizing the Jewish tradition, to which Philo constantly refers, and the role of the Book of Genesis, which he interprets literally in De opificio.4 The relationship that Philo establishes with the Timaeus is also highlighted in Reydams-Schils’ Stoic and Platonist Readings of Plato’s Timaeus, in which Philo plays a central role for his Stoic interpretation of the Platonic dialogue from a Jewish perspective.5 One of this scholar’s merits has been to highlight the presence of Stoicism in Philo’s interpretation of the Timaeus, which he superimposes on the Book of Genesis in De opificio to justify philosophical concepts and construct literary images.6 In this work, Philo uses Stoicism, albeit in a non-systematic way, as a kind of “lingua franca” to mediate between Platonism and Judaism, expressing Platonic metaphysics in a Stoic language.7 Reydams-Schils has pointed out that similar Stoic readings of the Timaeus were common not only in Alexandria but also in Rome. In addition to the commentary that Posidonius may have written on the Timaeus, Cicero’s translation (though limited to Tim. 27d–47b) may be seen as evidence of the circulation of this dialogue in Rome.8 Significantly, Niehoff ’s Intellectual Biography describes Philo’s sojourn in Rome as ambassador for the Jewish community of Alexandria from ca. 38–41 ce as a kind of turning point in his literary output.9 Here Philo may have stayed long enough to be influenced by the new intellectual climate he 3 Runia 1986, 1989a, 1989b, 2000, 2001: 140–155 and 2003. On Opif. 17–20, see also Decharneux 2012 and 2017 and De Luca 2021a. On Philo’s relationship with the Timaeus, see also Radice 1989. 4 Runia 1986: 507–519, highlights the four main reasons why Philo cannot be regarded as a genuine “Middle Platonist:” the prominence given to Moses over Plato, differences in the techniques used, thematic divergences and, finally, divergent interests. For an up-to-date overview of Philo’s relationship with so-called “Middle Platonism,” see Yli-Karjanmaa 2017. 5 Reydams-Schils 1999: 135–165 and 1995. For an overview of the relations between Stoicism and Platonism in the 1st century bce and first century ce, see Engberg-Pedersen 2017. 6 On De opificio as a Platonic-Stoic reading of the Timaeus, see De Luca 2021a: esp. 191–236 and 2023a. On how, on the basis of the Timaeus, in De opificio Stoic echoes are combined with references to the Aristotelian tradition in relation to certain topics such as matter and time, see De Luca 2022 and 2024a. For an understanding of Philonian “eclecticism,” see Runia 2007. 7 See Long 2008: 139–140, who warns against overestimating the presence of Stoicism in Philo’s writings. 8 On Cicero’s Timaeus translation, see Lévy 1992: 567–571 and 2003; Aronadio 2008; Sedley 2013. 9 Niehoff 2018.

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found in the capital of the Empire. It is precisely in the wake of his embassy that the group of works on the Exposition of the Law, of which De opificio is part, was conceived.10 Contextualizing De opificio in a phase of Philo’s life following his embassy to Caligula could highlight how decisive his stay in Rome was for his choice of the Timaeus as a “second exegetical basis” for his work, along with the Book of Genesis. This Platonic dialogue continued to be the subject of discussion also in Rome, where a certain Stoic interpretation of this work was widespread, similar to that which Philo himself would give, yet with a focus on the Jewish tradition. In particular, Niehoff justifies her contextualization of the composition of De opificio in Rome by emphasizing the presence of Stoicism in the work and showing that Philo may have drawn not only on early and middle Stoicism, but also on Roman Stoicism. According to this scholar, Stoicism is especially crucial for the definition of Philo’s theology, since, besides the transcendent God, we can also discern in his works a certain idea of divine immanentism that is reminiscent of Stoic theology.11 Indeed, as we will see by analyzing the case of Opif. 17– 20, the architect God communicates with that which he creates, remaining there in the form of seminal reasons, and God coincides with the logos, which is the intelligible “plan” of the world city that he carries within himself and which he will then go on to realize. In a 2013 study, Niehoff extended the perspective highlighted by Runia in 2002, according to which Philo stands on the cusp between the end of Hellenistic theology and the beginning of the negative theology that was so popular in Middle Platonist circles. Niehoff highlighted how Rome and the Stoic tradition can be recognized as the context for the emergence of a “monotheistic creation theology,” which was adopted not only by Philo but also later by Flavius Josephus, and which may have led Philo to address the “dogma” of creation precisely in those years and precisely during his sojourn in Rome.12 The centrality of the theme of creation in De opificio, of which the analogy of God as architect is a “manifesto,” would be due to a change of perspective, stimulated by the contemporary Hellenistic-imperial debate and based on a theoretical approach that led Philo to provide a theological justification for Judaism. The concept of 10 Niehoff 2018: 96–102. Runia 2001: 4 also thinks that the composition of De opificio should be placed in the decade 30–40 ce when Philo was in his fifties. For a contrary point of view, see Reale 1978: 59 (a point of view also shared by Radice 1987: 3), who emphasizes the connection of the De opificio, part of the Exposition of the Mosaic Law, with the Allegorical Commentary (cf. Runia 2021). 11 Niehoff 2018: 99–100 observes: “Following his immersion in Stoic philosophy, Philo interprets Plato’s Timaeus with emphasis on divine immanence. […] Plato’s god remains separate from the world, enjoying a perfection that is impossible in the material realm. Philo’s creator God, by contrast, has become astonishingly close to humans and the world, sharing his very essence in the creation.” 12 Runia 2002: 292–296 emphasizes the weight of the onto-theological perspective in the philosophical theology reflected by Philo’s doctrine of creation (Opif. 7–25).

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creation lies at the heart of Philo’s theology, which is summarized at the end of his work in the five cornerstones of the doctrine of Moses. Here, in Opif. 171–172, Philo seems to refer explicitly to Stoic theology, possibly even evoking the slightly younger Seneca.13 The studies by Runia, Reydams-Schils and Niehoff that I have cited are a necessary starting point for the reading that I will give of Philo’s image of God as architect, since the latter, in my opinion, is fully in keeping with Philo’s attempts to reinterpret the Timaeus from a Stoic-Jewish perspective and his revival of that Stoicism was witnessed by Latin authors such as Cicero and which, probably through the mediation of the latter, also found its way into Vitruvius. The experiment proposed in this essay is to use these studies in order to provide a fresh interpretation of Opif. 17–20 in the light of Cicero’s De natura deorum and Vitruvius’ De architectura. A comparison with these two works has led us to embrace the hypothesis that the Jewish Philo did not develop this image by addressing a Jewish audience, as he was wont to do in other types of writing, but rather a Graeco-Roman audience, to whom he wished to present a cosmological position different from those commonly accepted in the Greek sphere: an antieternalist and creationist position, but one that is also inevitably removed from the Timaeus, since it is shaped by Judaism.14 The Platonic dialogue nonetheless remained a point of reference for Philo: Given its authority in the field of cosmology, Philo probably addressed and interpreted it to give De opificio a philosophical status. However, he does not seem to have relied on the Timaeus merely out of a desire to adapt it to existing “pagan” references. Rather, he seems to have been motivated above all by the goal of showing his audience that the only true explanation of the origin of everything was not to be found in the Timaeus itself but in his Jewish version of the dialogue in De opificio, where Plato’s words are used to express the revealed message of the Torah from a philosophical perspective. Moreover, as Niehoff has pointed out, speaking of a Graeco-Roman audience for the works of the Exposition, rather than a purely Greek audience, allows us to explain the Philonian allusion to Ῥωμαῖοι in Opif. 127.15 In this 13 Niehoff 2018: 101–102. Note also that the two authors share a common concern with providence, to which they devoted ad hoc works (both known as De providentia). In addition to the two lines of transmission of Philo’s works, one Syrian and the other Alexandrian, Radice 2002, adopting the hypotheses of Runia 1999a, stresses the need to assume a Roman line of transmission for Philo’s works, which nourished the thought of Ambrose and Augustine. This line of transmission includes the presence of Seneca as the “ferryman” for certain features of Philo’s Stoic Platonism, such as the concept of ideas as divine thoughts, assimilated in his presentation of the Platonic view of causes in Ep. 65.4. According to Radice, it cannot be ruled out that Seneca was even part of the Roman audience that may have flocked to the lectures possibly given by Philo in Rome, during his ambassadorship to Caligula (Radice 2002: 64). See also Radice 1989: 281–319. On Seneca and Philo, see the essay by G. E. Sterling and in this volume. 14 On Philo’s audience, see Sterling 1999; 2017a. On De opificio, see also De Luca 2021a: 35–46. 15 Niehoff 2018: 14; 93–170.

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paragraph, within the excursus on the hebdomad, Philo compares the linguistic skills of Greeks and Romans: a comparison in which the Greeks come out the losers.16 Calling the number seven ἐπτά, Philo accuses the Greeks of not having sufficiently emphasized the sacred character of the hebdomad, which, however, testifies to the presence of the Shabbat in the cosmological week. On the other hand, with the Latin word septem, the Romans, thanks to the introduction of the letter s at the beginning of the word, highlighted the divine dimension of the hebdomad, which Philo connects to the adjective σεμνός and the noun σεβασμός (respectively “august” and “venerability”).17 Within the corpus, the Romans are mentioned only in the historical-apologetical works, which were written in the context of the ambassadorship to Rome. It may be no coincidence that Philo also alludes to them in De opificio, if we assume that this work, like the Legatio ad Gaium and In Flaccum, was composed after 38 ce.18 It is to such an audience, a Graeco-Roman one, that Philo proposes his analogy of God as architect, in order to contextualize his cosmological view based on Genesis, within the contemporary debate to which Cicero had masterfully given voice a century earlier. Compared to what I have argued in my monograph on God the architect, this chapter goes one step further: as we shall see, an investigation of the Latin sources allows us to identify the apologetic and polemical character of the image, which is easily overlooked if one only considers the ancient Greek and Hellenistic sources. It seems no coincidence, then, that on this very occasion, Philo, with his eye on the Timaeus and Stoicism, speaks of God as an architect, rehabilitating –

16 Philo, Opif. 127: διὸ μοι δοκοῦσιν οἱ τὰ ὀνόματα τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἐπιφημίσαντες ἅτε σοφοὶ καλέσαι τὸν ἀριθμὸν ἑπτὰ ἀπὸ τοῦ περὶ αὐτὸν σεβασμοῦ καὶ τῆς προσούσης σεμνότητος· Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ καὶ προστιθέντες τὸ ἐλλειφθὲν ὑφ’ Ἑλλήνων στοιχεῖον τὸ Σ τρανοῦσιν ἔτι μᾶλλον τὴν ἔμφασιν, ἐτυμώτερον σέπτεμ προσαγορεύοντες ἀπὸ τοῦ σεμνοῦ, καθάπερ ἐλέχθη, καὶ σεβασμοῦ. “It seems to me, therefore, that those who in the beginning conferred names to things, because they were wise, called this number seven (hepta), on account of its venerability (sebasmos) and the august nature (semnotês) that it possesses. The Romans indicate this even more clearly by adding the letter S, which the Greeks leave out. They call the number septem and this name, which, as was just said, comes from semnos (august) and sebasmos (venerable), conforms more closely to its true nature” (trans. Runia 2001: 79). 17 On Opif. 127 and the version of the ms Laurentianus X 20, where the Romans are described with the participle ἀγνοοῦντες (ignorant), see De Luca 2024b. This lectio could emphasize how, according to Philo, this was an unintentional use of the term septem by the Romans: only the Philonian interpretation would be able to account for it. As Maren Niehoff has pointed out to me, Laurentianus X 20 is a manuscript which often reinterprets Philo in a later Christian sense, and the presence of the participle ἀγνοοῦντες could be seen as an attempt to make Philo a spokesman for Christian doctrine against Roman paganism. 18 Cf. Philo, Flacc. 40; Legat. 10, 28, 144, 155, and 219, where Philo’s knowledge of Roman customs is evident. In particular, note how in Legat. 155 he speaks of the Jewish people who lived in the district of Rome across the river Tiber (present-day Trastevere neighborhood). Philo tells us that they were originally freedmen, brought to Italy as prisoners of war and then enfranchised by their masters.

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as Vitruvius had already done before him – a figure that had been discredited in Epicurean circles in order to ridicule the idea of divine demiurgy.

2. The Main Greek Sources of Opif. 17–20: Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics If we enter in medias res and analyze the image of God the architect in its relation to Greek philosophical sources, we see how in Opif. 17–20 Philo emphasizes that it is not possible to locate the κόσμος νοητός in a particular place within its cosmic “geography,” since the only “place” where it could reside is God himself: To state or think that the cosmos composed of the ideas exists in some place is not permissible. How it has been constituted we will understand if we pay careful attention to an image drawn from our own world. When a city is founded, in accordance with the high ambition of a king or a ruler who has laid claim to supreme power and, outstanding in his conception, adds further adornment to his good fortune, it may happen that a trained architect comes forward. Having observed both the favorable climate and location of the site, he first designs within himself a plan of virtually all the parts of the city that is to be completed – temples, gymnasia, public offices, market-places, harbors, shipyards, streets, constructions of walls, the establishment of other buildings both private and public. Then, taking up the imprints of each object in his own soul like in wax, he carries around the intelligible city as an image in his head. Summoning up the representations by means of his innate power of memory and engraving their features even more distinctly (on his mind), he begins, as a good builder, to construct the city out of stones and timber, looking at the model and ensuring that the corporeal objects correspond to each of the incorporeal ideas. The conception we have concerning God must be similar to this, namely that when he had decided to found the great cosmic city, he first conceived its outlines. Out of these he composed the intelligible cosmos, which served him as a model when he completed the sense-perceptible cosmos as well. Just as the city that was marked out beforehand in the architect had no location outside, but had been engraved in the soul of the craftsman, in the same way the cosmos composed of the ideas would have no other place than the divine Logos who gives these (ideas) their ordered disposition. After all, what other place would there be for his powers, sufficient to receive and contain; I do not speak about all of them, but just any single one in its unmixed state? (trans. Runia 2001: 50–51)19 19 Philo, Opif. 17–20: τὸν δ’ ἐκ τῶν ἰδεῶν συνεστῶτα κόσμον ἐν τόπῳ τινὶ λέγειν ἢ ὑπονοεῖν οὐ θεμιτόν· ᾗ δὲ συνέστηκεν, εἰσόμεθα παρακολουθήσαντες εἰκόνι τινὶ τῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν. ἐπειδὰν πόλις κτίζηται κατὰ πολλὴν φιλοτιμίαν βασιλέως ἤ τινος ἡγεμόνος αὐτοκρατοῦς ἐξουσίας μεταποιουμένου καὶ ἅμα τὸ φρόνημα λαμπροῦ τὴν εὐτυχίαν συνεπικοσμοῦντος, παρελθὼν ἔστιν ὅτε τις τῶν ἀπὸ παιδείας ἀνὴρ ἀρχιτεκτονικὸς καὶ τὴν εὐκρασίαν καὶ εὐκαιρίαν τοῦ τόπου θεασάμενος διαγράφει πρῶτον ἐν ἑαυτῷ τὰ τῆς μελλούσης ἀποτελεῖσθαι πόλεως μέρη σχεδὸν ἅπαντα, ἱερὰ γυμνάσια πρυτανεῖα ἀγορὰς λιμένας νεωσοίκους στενωπούς, τειχῶν κατασκευάς, ἱδρύσεις οἰκιῶν καὶ δημοσίων ἄλλων οἰκοδομημάτων· εἶθ’ ὥσπερ ἐν κηρῷ τῇ ἑαυτοῦ ψυχῇ τοὺς ἑκάστων δεξάμενος τύπους ἀγαλματοφορεῖ νοητὴν πόλιν, ἧς ἀνακινήσας τὰ εἴδωλα μνήμῃ τῇ συμφύτῳ καὶ τοὺς χαρακτῆρας ἔτι μᾶλλον ἐνσφραγισάμενος, οἷα δημιουργὸς ἀγαθός, ἀποβλέπων εἰς τὸ παράδειγμα τὴν ἐκ λίθων καὶ ξύλων ἄρχεται κατασκευάζειν, ἑκάστῃ τῶν ἀσωμάτων ἰδεῶν τὰς σωματικὰς ἐξομοιῶν οὐσίας. τὰ παραπλήσια δὴ καὶ περὶ θεοῦ δοξαστέον,

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In order to highlight the main features of the intelligible world and to show how it came into existence, Philo resorts to an εἰκὼν τῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν (literally to an “image of the among us”), introducing what has been defined as a “parable.”20 The definition proves particularly appropriate, since Opif. 17– 20 expresses a παραβολή stricto sensu by drawing a “comparison” between the human and the divine architect. The God-architect juxtaposition is necessary to show “where” the intelligible cosmos can be placed, but also, more generally, to try to make more comprehensible to Philo’s audience how God’s creative process developed between the two noetic and sense-perceptible phases. The comparison between God and a man skilled in architecture seems to serve a didactic purpose: it almost performs the function of what A. Kamesar defines as a “paideutic myth,” which shows the truth through images.21 The figure of the architect attributes everything to a single Creator who has built this cosmos according to an intelligible plan, created and thought out by him. The noetic project includes ideas that, even after the creative process, remain in God just as thoughts remain in the minds of those who formulate them even after they have been expressed.22 In terms of his regal and directive functions, the Philonian Architect, who is also king (βασιλεύς) and ruler (ἡγεμών), is indebted to Plato’s Politicus, where political science, being considered as a royal science, is compared to architecture.23 Every politician is described as a king, because both politics and kingship are associated with authority. For this reason, the politician is presented as similar to an ἀρχιτέκτων who, by his nature, is not hard-working (ἐργατικός), but is the one who commands the workers (ὁ ἐργατῶν ἄρχων).24 The architect directs the craftsmen by providing knowledge (γνῶσις) rather than manual skill (χειρουργία). When Philo developed the image of the architect, he may also have had in mind Aristotle’s Ethica Nicomachea, which, like his Politica, takes up the Platonic association of politics and architecture.25 The Ethica Nicomachea emὡς ἄρα τὴν μεγαλόπολιν κτίζειν διανοηθεὶς ἐνενόησε πρότερον τοὺς τύπους αὐτῆς, ἐξ ὧν κόσμον νοητὸν συστησάμενος ἀπετέλει καὶ τὸν αἰσθητὸν παραδείγματι χρώμενος ἐκείνῳ. Καθάπερ οὖν ἡ ἐν τῷ ἀρχιτεκτονικῷ προδιατυπωθεῖσα πόλις χώραν ἐκτὸς οὐκ εἶχεν, ἀλλ’ ἐνεσφράγιστο τῇ τοῦ τεχνίτου ψυχῇ, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον οὐδ’ ὁ ἐκ τῶν ἰδεῶν κόσμος ἄλλον ἂν ἔχοι τόπον ἢ τὸν θεῖον λόγον τὸν ταῦτα διακοσμήσαντα· ἐπεὶ τίς ἂν εἴη τῶν δυνάμεων αὐτοῦ τόπος ἕτερος, ὃς γένοιτ’ ἂν ἱκανὸς οὐ λέγω πάσας ἀλλὰ μίαν ἄκρατον ἡντινοῦν δέξασθαί τε καὶ χωρῆσαι; 20 Kraus Reggiani 1979: 34 and Niehoff 2021: 30. 21 Kamesar 1998. 22 Radice 189: 229–344 and 1991. 23 Cf. De Luca 2021a: 161–173. On Philo’s use of command metaphors in De opificio, see De Luca 2021b: 177–181. In particular, on the idea of God as king in Philo, see Calabi 2002 and 2009 and Niehoff 2015. 24 Plat. Politic. 259e8–9. 25 Cf. Arist. Pol. 1.4.1253b38, where Aristotle considers architects in relation to their subordinates (ὑπηρέτες), and Pol. 1.13.1260a18–19, where it is stated that the one who commands

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phasizes a further metaphorical function of architecture however, going beyond the characterization in Plato’s Politicus. Whereas Plato compares architecture to politics because of its hegemonic and theoretical character, Aristotle highlights the presence of a third quality as a development of the architect’s ability to provide knowledge: the architect’s knowledge of the end (τέλος) to which the craftsmen’ work is directed.26 The architect knows the work plan in advance. These three factors, highlighted by Plato and Aristotle, come together in Philo’s portrait of the “man skilled in architecture” (ἀνὴρ ἀρχιτεκτονικός) in Opif. 17– 20, who, in envisaging and laying out the intelligible blueprint of the noetic city, knows in advance the final aim towards which his creative work is oriented.27 As Runia has shown, the image of God as architect is constructed in close relation to Tim. 27a2–31b3, whose lexicon and concepts Philo borrows.28 It is superfluous to note how the aside οἷα δημιουργὸς ἀγαθός recalls the good demiurge of the Timaeus or how the Philonian intelligible model, called κόσμος νοητός (noetic world), is elaborated on the basis of the Platonic model, which, is, however, pre-existent and independent of the demiurge.29 In contrast to Plato’s dialogue, Philo introduces the creatio ex nihilo of the model (παράδειγμα) and of the ideas it contains, and introjects the Platonic model into God, the Creator of all things.30 In De opificio, this idea of intelligible creation ex nihilo, which finds its counterpart in the idea of sense-perceptible creation ex aliquo, can, in my opinion, be inferred from Opif. 26–29. Here, following the hierarchy of the elements of LXX’s Gen 1:1–2, Philo describes the divine creation of certain ideas, including that of heaven, earth, air and void.31 Before God creates the first ideas, which as a whole constitute the noetic model, there seems to be nothing but God himself: neither void nor intelligible substance, which will find their counterparts in corresponding sense-perceptible elements, have yet taken shape. The concept of intelligible creation ex nihilo is not found in the Timaeus, but Philo is more faithful to it – although he rereads the dialogue through the filter of Stoicism and Aristotelianism – when he describes sense-perceptible creation ex aliquo by assigning a prominent role to matter, which will be perfected in substance.32 (ὁ ἄρχων) must possess the ἠθικὴ ἀρετή in its completeness, because his most proper task coincides with that of the architect, i. e. to command. The λόγος itself (here in the sense of “reason”) is also described as an ἀρχιτέκτων. 26 Arist. Eth. Nic. 1.1.1094b1–4, 6.8.1141b22–25. 27 Concerning Philo’s use of an architectural lexicon, see De Luca 2021a: 94–98. Philo speaks of God as an ἀρχιτέκτων a little later in Opif. 24. 28 Cf. Runia 1986: 85–176. 29 Cf. De Luca 2023a. On the expression κόσμος νοητός, see Runia 1999b. 30 De Luca 2022: esp. 121–125. Cf. Sterling 1992, 2017. 31 De Luca 2022: 115–121, which, with regard to the main secondary literature, draws a comparison with LXX, where there are no traces of creationism ex nihilo, and with Christian authors who support this idea on a sense-perceptible level. 32 See the Platonic passages on the chora (esp. Tim. 50c–52b). See also De Luca 2022: 126–130.

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In the background of Philo’s εἰκὼν τῶν παρ’ ἡμῖν we also find echoes of Plato’s Respublica and especially of Rep. 6.500c9–501c3, where Plato compares philosophers – the rulers of the ideal state – to painters (ζωγράφοι).33 They breathe new life into the city by redesigning it on the basis of a divine model (θεῖον παράδειγμα), which is represented by what is right, beautiful or wise by nature and what a human being can adopt as his own custom (ἦθος). Unlike the Timaeus, which – contrary to what U. Früchtel argued – remains, in my view, the foremost Platonic dialogue, and unlike the De opificio itself, in the Respublica the παράδειγμα has an ethical not cosmological character.34 The philosopherspainters, fixing their gaze on the divine model, imagine the ideal form that the city should take and the ἤθη that man should adopt.35 In De opificio, as in the Timaeus, the model is not a παράδειγμα for man but rather for the Demiurge, who uses it during the creation. The intelligible cosmos and the ideas it contains, according to Philo, represent a divine instrument and, as in Plato, were not created for anthropocentric purposes. Philo’s ideas become part of man’s cognitive process and the intellect is considered capable of accessing them through contemplation: however, man does not find a model for his own ἦθος in ideas.36 On the other hand, it is above all the Stoic tradition that provides Philo with the urban imagery that he substitutes for that of the ζῷα (living beings) in the Timaeus, with which the eternal model and the generated world were described.37 Before seeing how Philo is indebted to Stoicism in Opif. 17–20, it is worth recalling, in particular, what happens in the Timaeus when Plato resorts to biological imagery – rather than urban imagery, as Philo will do – to describe the relationship between model and copy. In Tim. 39e1 the model is described as a perfect, intelligible living being (τὸ τέλεον καὶ νοητόν ζῷον), whereas in Tim. 30c7; 31a5 the ideas are the νοητὰ ζῷα contained in the model and in Tim. 30b8 33 Later in the dialogue, however, Plato devalues painting in comparison with demiurgy (Rep. 10.596e5–598c4) because a painter is an imitator (μιμητής) of what appears, whereas a craftsman produces ideas. On Philo and the painters of the Respublica, see Calabi 2017b: esp. 77, 80–81. See also De Luca 2021a: 173–180. On the metaphorical use of painting in Philo, see Vasiliu 2021 and De Luca 2021b: 183–185. 34 See Früchtel 1968: 10 in comparison with Radice 1987: 242 and Runia 1986a: 169, note 32. 35 See the noetic city of Opif. 17–20 in comparison with the καλλίπολις of Plat. Rep. 7.527c2. Philo’s intelligible city, however, does not have a “utopian” character. The Platonic καλλίπολις and the Philonian νοητὴ πόλις, regardless of whether the former is feasible or not, have in common above all the fact that they are both “thought cities:” while in Plato the city is a human creation, in Philo God himself “thinks” the city. Moreover, whereas the former is an ideal model endowed with an ethical dimension (it is a beautiful city in the sense of a πόλις ἀγαθή), Philo’s noetic city is a cosmological model without any marked ethical nuances. 36 See Opif. 70–71, which recounts the intellect’s “journey” towards the contemplation of ideas and its (unsuccessful) attempt to go as far as the contemplation of God’s blinding light. Cf. Plat. Rep. 7.514a1–517a6, where the prisoners released from the cave are dazzled by the light of the sun. On divine unknowability, see Calabi 2007: 39–69. 37 See De Luca 2021a: 202–211.

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the universe is presented as a living being endowed with soul and intellect (ζῷον ἔμψυχον ἔννουν τε). In the Timaeus, however, the demiurge – metaphorically speaking – is only the “father” of this cosmos, not of the model that exists alongside him. Nevertheless, Plato speaks of ζῷα in both cases, and he seems to be driven above all by the need to show the correspondence between model and copy (they resemble each other), rather than to highlight the derivation of the ζῷον νοητόν from the demiurge-father. Following the Timaeus, Philo speaks of God not only as an architect and craftsman (in Platonic terms, as δημιουργός and ποιητής) but also as a father (πατήρ). Although the biological-naturalistic metaphorical baggage is by no means absent from De opificio, he never directly describes either the intelligible or the sense-perceptible cosmos as two ζῷα.38 As can be seen from Opif. 17–20, Philo shows the correspondence between the copy and the model by resorting not to the image of two living beings, but to the image of two cities or of the seal from which the corresponding imprint is stamped.39 Runia hypothesizes that the absence of the two Platonic ζῷα may be due to Philo’s desire to reject any concession to Stoic cosmobiology, which had led the ancient Stoics Zeno and Chrysippus to consider the existence of a universe continually subject to cycles of conflagration and rebirth.40 Unlike the Stoics, Philo maintains that the cosmos is generated only once, at the moment of creation, and that – much as in the Timaeus – it is incorruptible unless God decides otherwise.41 It should be borne in mind that in the Timaeus the biological imagery justifies not only the birth but also the incorruptibility of the cosmos, which is described as a living being that is not subject to old age or disease (ἀγήρως καὶ ἄνοσος, Tim. 32c5–33b). As Runia points out, and I agree, the absence of the two ζῷα in De opificio seems to be deliberate, since Philo gives ample proof of his knowledge of the Platonic passages in which the model, the ideas and the copy are presented as 38 See De Luca 2021b: 176–177, 185–187. In particular, on Philo’s reception of Plat. Tim. 28c3 and the Platonic description of the demiurge as ποιητὴς καὶ πατήρ, see Runia 1986: 107–111, 420–426. On the basis of a comparison with certain Middle Platonic sources (esp. Plutarch and Numenius), Ferrari 2021 has analyzed how in Philo’s De opificio the Platonic expression ποιητὴς καὶ πατήρ is accepted, with some variations. Indeed, in Opif. 21 the two nouns are reversed. According to Ferrari, this is due to the differentiation of two activities carried out by God, who is firstly the father of the model and secondly the maker of the sense-perceptible copy. For a comparison with what happens in Middle Platonism, see Ferrari 2006. 39 On these two images within Opif. 17–20, see De Luca 2021a: 145–161 and 246–261. In both cases, there is a strong indebtedness to the Stoic tradition, although, as is well known, when Philo speaks of the Architect’s soul as a mass of wax which has been imprinted (Opif. 18), he is also indebted, in particular, to Plat. Tht. 191a1–196c2 and Arist. De an. 2.1.412b7 and 12.424a19, which inspired the application of sphragistic imagery in the field of Stoic epistemology. 40 Runia 1986: 484. On Philo and the concept of conflagration, see esp. Niehoff 2023. 41 Cf. Philo, Aet. 13 where Plat. Tim. 41a7–b6 is quoted literally in order to summarize Plato’s cosmological position. The latter is considered to be the closest to the Mosaic position: for both Moses and Plato the world appears to be generated and incorruptible.

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living beings. It is precisely these passages that provide the background for the image of the architect God. I do not believe, however, that Philo’s silence on this matter should be understood as the expression of an anti-Stoic position, since I would argue that in De opificio the influence of Stoicism is dominant even in the cosmobiological sphere. One may recall, for instance, Philo’s explicit reference to seminal reasons in order to explain nature’s productive cycles.42 Moreover, in De opificio, unlike in other works, Philo does not mention the Stoics’ cosmological position when he addresses those who consider the cosmos to be eternal at the beginning and at the end of his work. The latter are not attacked, but their view of the role of providence in maintaining the cosmic order is addressed.43 Perhaps Philo felt that the image of the ζῷον to describe the two worlds was ill-suited to his cosmology, since it implies the idea of a spontaneous divine generation that does not include the possibility of the design of the Architect. A living being can be generated by the desire and choice of its parent, but the latter has no power to determine the characteristics of the unborn child, which by its very nature cannot be planned. Philo takes from the Timaeus the comparison of the divinity with a father, because in his view, too, the generation of the cosmos is intentional (Plato’s demiurge and Philo’s God desire to generate the world), but models, ideas and sense-perceptible copies are not ζῷα because they are not born spontaneously, but only after God’s careful planning.44 In Opif. 17–20, where Philo presents the sense-perceptible world as a megalopolis (μεγαλόπολις), the Stoic influence seems predominant, for – as far as we know – the Stoics, drawing on and redeveloping Cynic cosmopolitanism, used the image of the world city extensively to show how men and gods lived together in the universe.45 For Philo too, the world appears as a “great city” because God and man live together and a single law governs the entire cosmos. However, unlike the Stoic law of nature, Mosaic Law is divine only because it is “dictated” by God, and certainly not because it regulates the modus operandi of God and man: the Creator is above all laws, having issued them himself. It should be noted that the term μεγαλόπολις appears to be a neologism of Philo’s, who positions him42

Cf. Philo, Opif. 43 = SVF II 713. Cf. Philo, Opif. 7–8, 170–172. As we will see, one of Philo’s main polemical targets seem to be Aristotle and the Aristotelians, who had assumed the existence of an eternal cosmos (without generation or end) (cf. Aet. 9–12). 44 Cf. Philo, Opif. 10, which shows that God is the “father” because he cares for the cosmos as if it were his son. 45 Cf. De Luca 2021a: 151–155, 180–188. On the Philonian megalopolis, see Runia 1989b. On Stoic cosmopolitanism as an “interpretation” of Cynic cosmopolitanism, and its distinctive features, see Alesse 2019–2020; Goulet-Cazé 2017: 502–508; Moles 1993 and Schofield 1991: 57– 92. The cosmopolitanism that Philo champions plays a key role in De Luca-Mecci 2024, which analyzes the image of the world as a city in the three monotheisms. The Philonian world city represents an important precedent for applying the Stoic concept of megalopolis in a monotheistic sphere. On Philonian cosmopolitanism in De opificio, see Calabi 2024. 43

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self as an original author, expressing concepts of a Graeco-Roman origin in new words: those of Moses. As Cicero’s evidence will also show, while the concept certainly goes back to the Stoic tradition, the noun, used in a cosmological rather than geographical sense (Μεγαλόπολις was also the name of a city in the central Peloponnese), seems to be Philo’s invention. Furthermore, the “Stoic” passages in which the term μεγαλόπολις occurs coincide with parts of Philo’s own works or, in other examples, are later testimonies.46 The same applies to the term κοσμοπολίτης (citizen of the cosmos) that Philo uses in De opificio to describe man as a citizen of the city of the world (Opif. 3, 142–143). Again, the concept is originally Cynic (and then Stoic), but the term appears for the first time in passages by Philo, as the other accounts are later than his works.47 Think, for example, of the well-known passage in Diog. Laert. 6.63 testifying to the rootlessness of the Cynic Diogenes of Sinope, who, when asked about his city of origin, is said to have replied that he was κοσμοπολίτης because he did not feel at home anywhere except in the cosmos (= Diog. Sinop. V B 355 Giannantoni).48 The use of this terminology is a sign not only of Philo’s expressive creativity, but also of the fact that his assimilation of philosophical images and concepts from the ancient world is far from unoriginal: Philo does not simply borrow certain terms, but interprets them. In describing the world as a “great city” in Opif. 17–20, Philo take up this metaphor in its Stoic sense, but at the same time he adapts it to his own monotheistic theology, turning it into an expression of the universal coexistence of all human beings, not with the gods but with the one God.

3. Cicero on the “Stoic” Architectus While, as we have seen, Philo’s description of the world as a “great city” borrows from the ancient Stoics, this is not the case with his reference to God as an architect. Indeed, unlike Philo, the ancient Stoics do not directly associate the image of the cosmic megalopolis with the figure of an architect. For although many of the Stoics’ tropes are developed from the Timaeus, we do not even find the divine craftsman of the Timaeus and, as Proclus notes, instead of a demiurge who makes this world by looking at the eternal παράδειγμα, we find a single cause of the universe that cannot be disengaged from matter.49 As is well known, the Stoics do not speak of a demiurge but of a πῦρ τεχνικόν (artful fire) of which, according to Zeno, the stars are composed and which, unlike fire as an element 46

For example, see Philo, Spec. 1.34–35 (= SVF II 1010) or Ios. 29 (= SVF III 323). See Giannantoni 1990: vol. 4, 544. 48 Philo, moreover, also seems to have coined the term μεγαλοπολίτης, which in Opif. 143 is used to describe the stars as the first citizens of the great cosmic city. 49 SVF II 307.1 = F 315 Dufour = Procl. In Plat. Tim. I 266, 21–18 Diehl. On the Stoics and Plato’s Timaeus, see Alesse 2018; on the demiurge in particular, see Piazzalunga 2021. 47

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(which is instead ἄτεχνον, “uncreative”), determines the growth of plants and living beings.50 A similar idea has also been attributed to Chrysippus, according to whom nature is πῦρ τεχνικόν, ὁδῷ βαδίζον εἰς γένεσιν (craftsman-like fire, proceeding step by step on the way to generating life).51 The πῦρ τεχνικόν coincides with the θεός and, according to Aëtius’ testimony, it is more precisely that ὁδῷ βαδίζον ἐπὶ γένεσιν κόσμου (which proceeds step by step on the way to the generation of the cosmos). This occurs due to the fact that fire contains within itself all the seminal reasons (λόγοι σπερματικοί), whereby everything is realized in accordance with its own destiny.52 For Chrysippus, therefore, the craftsmanlike fire brings about the generation not only of particular entities, but also of the whole cosmos, in which it remains in the form of spermatic reasons.53 To see talk of architects in the Stoic sphere we have to wait for Posidonius, who is said to have used architecture as an example to portray the cosmos as the product of a “foreseen” work. In a fragment which coincides with a passage from Strabo’s Geographica and is considered dubious, Posidonius is said to have stated that those who attempt to describe the properties of places (τόπων), pay attention to astronomy and geometry, clarifying various factors including shape, size, distance, latitude, heat and cold, and atmosphere.54 To this end, he gives the examples of a builder building a house (οἶκον κατασκευάζων οἰκοδόμος) and an architect founding a city (πόλιν κτίζων ἀρχιτέκτων): both would foresee (ἂν προορῷτο) the house and the city in their building plans. They consider the house or the city as if they were the fully inhabited world, the latter being the object of their range of action.55 In Stoicism, however, we are still far from the affirmation of a cosmic producer operating as an entity outside the world, and

50 SVF I 120 = Stob. Eclog. I 25 5, 1–14 Wachsmuth (= Arius Didym. F33; 34 Diels). According to Cicero, Zeno identified the whole of nature with the πῦρ τεχνικόν, by describing it as ignis artificiosus, ad gignendum progrediens via (craftsman-like fire, proceeding methodically to generate). Cicero understands the artificiosus character of the craftsman’s fire-nature by stating that its main function is to create and generate (creare et gignere), to the point that it can be called a “teacher of the other arts” (magister artium reliquarum). This is why nature is not simply artificiosa, but specifically an artifex (craftsman), because it provides everything. Fire, nature and providence coincide in that mens mundi (the mind of the world) which, insofar as it foresees and provides for everything (it is prudentia vel providentia), makes the cosmos as fit as possible to endure. Moreover, the mind of the world not only ensures that the cosmos is devoid of nothing, but also that it contains the maximum beauty and every adornment. See Cic. Nat. D. II 57–58 Pease = SVF I 171–172. 51 SVF II 774 (= Diog. Laërt. VII 156 Dorandi = F 775 Dufour); 1133 (= Ps.-Galen. Definit. medic. XIX 4–9 Kühn = F 1131 Dufour); 1134 (= Clem. Strom. V 14 100, 4 Früchtel = F 1132 Dufour). 52 SVF II 1027.1 (= F 1034 Dufour = Aët. I 7, 24 Mansfeld-Runia = Ps.-Plut. 881f 8–882a 4 Lachenaud). 53 Cf. SVF II 307.1 = F 315 Dufour = Procl. In Plat. Tim. I 266, 21–18 Diehl. 54 Strab. 1.1.13, 1–6 Meineke. Posidonius fragment F3a Theiler was expunged in Kidd’s edition. 55 Strab. 1.1.13, 6–9 Meineke.

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the urban imagery is used to describe the product – the world city – rather than its architect or builder. After Posidonius, Cicero is the first author to attribute the figure of the architect to the Stoic urban imagination. Moreover, among the main sources for the Stoic μεγαλόπολις cited by von Arnim in his Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, it is precisely some Ciceronian passages on the existence of providence that are crucial.56 In De natura deorum Cicero states that, if the gods exist, they must be united in a kind of fellowship and society, ruling the cosmos as if it were a communis res publica atque urbs (“common republic and city”).57 Their reason does not differ in any way from human reason, although it is of greater intensity and is used for works of greater value, such as the founding of the cosmos. Gods and men, however, are united by the fact that, in both cases, only one law applies: the law that commands good and rejects evil. Later, the same concept is reiterated: est enim mundus quasi communis deorum atque hominum domus aut urbs utrorumque (“it is indeed as if the cosmos were a house common to gods and men or a city belonging to both”).58 This partnership is due to the fact that man differs from every other form of living being because he makes use of reason and lives according to law.59 In particular, De Legibus emphasizes how gods and men share the possession of reason and thought (ratio et cogitatio), which all other living beings lack. Here it again stresses how man and the gods share not only ratio itself, but also what is described as recta ratio (literally, “right reason”), which coincides with the law, understood as a decisive element in establishing their commonality.60 According to Cicero, those who share the same law also share the same ius, which is to say the same legal system, and if all this is shared and, above all, if the same decrees are respected, it must be believed that gods and men belong to the same civitas, that is the same world. This is also the case in Philo’s De opificio, where he emphasizes how reason is common to man and God and how the same constitution (πολιτεία) governs the conduct of man and the universe, since it consists in the ὀρθὸς λόγος of nature, which is to say Cicero’s recta ratio.61 Such a logos corresponds to the divine law, according to which each thing has been assigned what is appropriate for it.62

56

See Brouwer 2024. Cic. Nat. D. 2.31, 78–79 Pease = SVF II 1127 = F 1124 Dufour. 58 Cic. Nat. D. 2.53, 133; 61, 154 = SVF II 1131 = F 1128–1129 Dufour. 59 See also Cic. Fin. 3.19, 64 Rackham = SVF III 333 and Rep. I 13, 19 Keyes = SVF III 338. 60 Cic. Leg. 1.7, 22–23 Keyes = SVF III 339. 61 On the role of law in Philo and Cicero, see Horsley 1978. 62 Cf. Opif. 69 and 143. Lévy 1992: 509–521 has highlighted how both Cicero and Philo gave rise to a process of “identification” between universal law and particular laws, which is unusual in Greek philosophy, because they manifest the same need to show that the particular rites of the peoples to which they belong are in conformity with the νόμος φύσεως. On Philo and Cicero, see also Runia 1986: 547–548. 57

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It is perhaps no coincidence that Cicero himself gives us the clear image of the Stoic megalopolis, to which Philo also bears witness. Both are bearers of a Stoicism that they assimilate without failing to introduce some innovations, such as the figure of the architect. In De natura deorum, when Cicero reports the opinion of the Stoic Balbus, he has him express the need to see the presence of an architectus in order to justify the perfection of the world city. To show that the world is not the product of chance, but a rational work of nature, he has Balbus say that while the philosophers were at first perplexed by the sight of the world afterwards, having seen its definite and regular motions, and all its phenomena governed by a fixed system and unchanging uniformity, they inferred the presence “not merely of an inhabitant of this celestial and divine abode” (non solum habitatorem in hac caelesti ac divina domo), “but also of a ruler and governor: the architect, as it were, of this mighty and monumental structure” (sed etiam rectorem et moderatorem et tamquam architectum tanti operis tantique muneris).63 In the Stoic perspective, which is presented here, the world thus appears as the celestial and divine domus, governed by a divinity who is its rector, moderator and architectus.64 We have seen that Philo also highlights the architect’s leading role. For him, too, the architect is king (βασιλεύς) and ruler (ἡγεμών), because he not only designs and then builds the city of the world, but also governs and reigns over it, guaranteeing the order that he himself has established. As will also be the case in Philo’s De opificio, in Balbus’ speech the figure of the architectus is associated with the exercise of providence, which can be understood according to two main meanings: as “foresight,” since the architect must foresee what is to be done before it is done, and secondly as “care” for what is built, according to constant maintenance against the neglect of time.65 In Philo, who constructs the concept of πρόνοια on the basis of the Timaeus and Stoicism, the first meaning of providence as foresight must be understood in relation to that divine cosmic project, in which the creation of the intelligible world and ideas is anticipated. One of the reasons for the distinction between the Stoic and Platonic conceptions of providence is that in the Timaeus providence is an “instrument” of the demiurge, enabling him to generate the universe, whereas for Stoics such as Chrysippus providence does not have an instrumental character, but is valuable in itself, since it coincides with the whole of nature and represents an internal cohesive force within the cosmos.66 The Philonian conception of providence, developed in the context of the Judeo-Hellenistic 63

Cic. Nat. D. 2.35, 90. The three terms seem to be placed in an ascending order, in which the architect represents the highest definition of divinity by virtue of his design, without which he could neither govern nor direct the cosmos. 65 On providence in Philo, see Frick 1999 and Dragona-Monachou 1994: 4456–4461. See also De Luca 2020a. 66 Cf. Plat. Tim. 30b8–c1 and SVF II 634 = Diog. Laert. VII 138. 64

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tradition, is thus situated on the borderline between Platonism and Stoicism, expressing an intermediate position between God and the cosmos, since according to Philo πρόνοια not only emanates from God, but also represents what operates in the world.67 Philo acts as a mediator between Platonism and Stoicism, expressing a Platonic metaphysics in Stoic language. As is well known, the intelligible dimension of the noetic world, on the basis of which we should understand the first meaning of providence as foresight, tends to be absent in Stoicism, even if traces of it can be seen in those λόγοι σπερματικοί to which, moreover, Philo is also a witness.68 When Cicero reports Balbus’ point of view, he actually distances himself from the Stoic perspective because, within his depiction of the cosmos as a divine house inhabited not only by men but also by the gods, he adds the figure of the architectus. We have seen above that the latter appears only very marginally in Middle Stoicism, notably in a fragment doubtfully attributed to Posidonius, but it is not one of the concepts commonly attributed to the imagery of the ancient Stoics. In Philo, the ἀρχιτέκτων is the Jewish God, who, however, does not remain aloof and observe from above that everything conforms to his plan, but, as we have seen, is also the demiurge and ruler of the cosmos. Moreover, through the strong fusion with Stoicism, Philo’s God is presented as immanent in nature, which is enlivened by those seminal reasons that derive from him. Although God is transcendent, he descends into nature to communicate himself to the created beings, ultimately becoming part of them as logos. Reason in man and the seminal essences enclosing the obscure reasons of nature are both divine.69 Indeed, Philo presents a universe in which the transcendent God leaves traces of himself in the things generated, manifesting himself in the world city in the rituals of worship and in every mind that turns its spirituality towards him. For this reason, in Philo’s eyes, the world appears as a megalopolis so vast that it allows human beings to coexist with a God who not only designs, creates and governs the cosmic city, but also dwells in it and imbues everything with his presence. Cicero’s testimony is therefore particularly valuable because, on the one hand, it provides a clear representation of how the ancient Stoics understood the world city and, on the other hand, through the character of Balbus, it contextualizes in the Stoic urban imaginary the metaphorical figure of the architect, which we have seen to be absent in the ancient Stoics. A comparison with the Ciceronian 67

See De Luca 2020a: 75–76. Philo, Opif. 43. See Alesse 2011–2012: esp. 378–381, where it is conjectured that the Stoic λόγοι σπερματικοί – a concept that may have been derived from the Timaeus itself (cf. Alesse 2018: 50) – could be understood as the “thoughts” found in the divine mind, in a similar way to what will happen later with the ideas in Middle Platonism. As I have already mentioned, the concept of ideas as divine thoughts has also been attributed to Philo, who according to Radice could even be the originator of this concept (Radice 1991). 69 Cf. De Luca 2020b. 68

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passages we have analyzed can reveal new facets of the meaning of Opif. 17–20, showing that Philo is particularly close to the Stoic vision presented by Cicero, in which the metaphor of the architect is contextualized in the urban landscape of the cosmic city.

4. Architecture and Nature in Vitruvius and Philo Among the Latin sources, in addition to Cicero, we cannot overlook the influence that Vitruvius’ treatise on architecture may have had on the development of Philo’s image and his decision to describe God as an architect. Moreover, as we shall see, the Stoicism witnessed by Cicero seems to have influenced Vitruvius himself, who in his treatise does not fail to draw on Hellenistic philosophy to illustrate the constitution of the science of architecture. It seems no coincidence that Philo, in the parable of the architect, presents God as an ἀνήρ, albeit in an entirely analogical and metaphorical language, making himself the spokesperson for a kind of humanism that aims not only to bring man closer to the divine, but also to bring the divine closer to man. If we imagine De opificio as being addressed to a Graeco-Roman audience, Philo has the arduous task of presenting the invisible and incorporeal God of the Jewish tradition to polytheistic interlocutors accustomed to deities characterized by peculiar traits. He is addressing an audience that needs to visualize a God of whom there are no statues or images, due to the well-known prohibition of idolatry in the second commandment, and whose deeds – in this case creative deeds – Philo can only describe in his own words.70 To this end, Philo “humanizes” the Jewish God through metaphors that anthropomorphize him and translate his actions into more comprehensible terms. In this work of “mediation,” through which Jewish cosmology is communicated to a Graeco-Roman audience, Philo carries out a reverse procedure to that which Vitruvius had initiated a few years earlier by ennobling a profession that he himself had first codified and, as we shall see, making the architect, with his vast technical expertise, not only a personification of nature but also the expression of a divine mind capable of designing cities and buildings.71 With De architectura, composed at the end of the 1st century bce, a profession considered marginal, because it was an expression of “empirical technicality,” was elevated to the status of a science.72 The work begins by noting the complex nature 70

On the second commandment, see Pearce 2013 and Calabi 2017a: 83–84. On Philo and Vitruvius, see Niehoff 2021: 28–31 and De Luca 2021a: 158–160. 72 Gros 1997: XL–XLV; LII–LXII and Migotto 1999: XVI. Among his Roman predecessors, Vitruvius mentions Varro, who had devoted one of his nine Disciplinarum libri on the liberal arts precisely to architecture (Vitruv. 8 praef. 14 Granger). It should be remembered, however, that the technical language of architecture had not been codified before De architectura. Vitruvius was the first to establish it: a new language was necessary for a new science, in which for 71

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of the architecti scientia (the “science” of the architect), i. e. its constituent body of knowledge, which depends on many disciplines and notions developed within other arts.73 Architecture, in order to be such, requires the use of different forms of knowledge, which can be traced back to two spheres, the theoretical-planning sphere and the practical-technical one. Vitruvius affirms that it nascitur e fabrica et ratiocinatione (“is born of craftsmanship and reasoning”), immediately acknowledging his indebtedness to those who, like Plato and Aristotle, have defined the figure of the architect for metaphorical purposes, emphasizing the presence of theoretical and practical aspects.74 In particular, Vitruvius shows that the practical aspect of architecture consists in the continuous exercise of a manual activity that shapes matter and aims to realize a pre-established design. On the other hand, theoretical reflection accounts for and demonstrates that artefacts are created by technical skill through the calculation of proportions. It is only the coexistence of these two characteristics that makes the architect what he is, for only if he possesses the logical and rational ability to justify what he has designed, can he actually realize it in the correct way. The possession of fabrica and ratiocinatio (or rather, in order, of ratiocinatio and fabrica)75 renders the architect very close to a deity. For this reason, Dinocrates of Rhodes, who is regarded as the architect who designed the city of Alexandria, is represented almost as a god.76 In the preface to the second book, Vitruvius recounts that Dinocrates submitted to Alexander the Great his plan for the foundation of a city to be built on Mount Athos in the form of a male statue. According to Vitruvius, this project was rejected by the king because Mount Athos was considered too arid an area, unsuitable for cultivation. However, it the first time terminology that was originally Greek was translated into Latin (Romano 1997: LXXXII–LXXXVI). For Vitruvius and Varro, see Canali 2003 and Romano 2016: 347–349. On the audience of De architectura and its contextualization in the age of Augustus, to whom the work is dedicated, see Nichols 2017. 73 Vitruv. 1.1.1. Cf. Oksanish 2019: 119–123. The first meaning of scientia is “knowledge,” but in this case, like F. Granger, I prefer to translate it as “science,” since Vitruvius, by theorizing the way in which the architect knows and thus “urbanizes” the world, defines the canons of architecture, making it precisely a scientia. See Granger 1962: vol. 1, 7. 74 Vitruv. 1.1.1. On the coexistence of fabrica et ratiocinatio in the architect, see Callebat 2009 and Di Pasquale 2016: 49–51. On Vitruvius’ technical, literary and philosophical sources in particular, see Gros 1997: LXIII–LXXII. 75 In fact, it is not clear how we should understand the chronological order of fabrica et ratiocinatio, and most scholars tend to consider ratiocinatio mainly as a moment of reflection subsequent to fabrica. In my opinion, however, as can be deduced from a comparison with the philosophical sources previously analyzed, Vitruvius’ ratiocinatio has a dual function: on the one hand, it indicates the planning that necessarily characterizes the architect’s way of proceeding; on the other hand, it indicates the a posteriori reflection that also allows us to theorize about its characteristics. As has been noted, Vitruvius is interested above all in showing the indissoluble intertwining of fabrica et ratiocinatio, which testifies to the inseparability of theory and practice (Gros 1997: 65–66, note 31). 76 Vitruv. 2 praef. 1–4.

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seems that Dinocrates continued to work for Alexander and even ended up moving to Egypt, where he worked on the foundation of Alexandria. The tale of the founding of Alexandria shows Dinocrates and Alexander almost unified into a single figure, in which Alexander represents the “mind,” the one who orders and evaluates the project, while Dinocrates represents the “hands,” the one who actually carries out the project. In this story, in which the figure of the architect is almost split into its theoretical-directive and technical-manual functions, the close relationship between architecture and nature is evident. In order to found a city or construct a building, it is first necessary to investigate the natural conditions of the chosen site. As Vitruvius himself points out, the task of the architect seems to be precisely that of reproducing the “power of nature” (naturalis potestas), which in turn is described in the guise of an architect who, before performing an operation, plans it.77 Vitruvius speaks of the world as the “maximum system of nature, which includes everything” (omnium naturae rerum conceptio summa), since it also encompasses the sky and the stars, and he describes it as a sphere that constantly revolves around the earth and the sea, on the furthest poles of its axes.78 The naturalis potestas ita architectata est conlocavitque (“the power of nature has thus acted as an architect and placed”) the poles at these two points, one above the universe and the other in the southern regions, so that everything in its way follows a previously established rational plan. These poles are constructed like the rims of wheels around their centers, as in a lathe, around which the firmament rolls forever (sempiterno).79 Nature, proceeding as an architect, makes the mundus appear as an elaborate construction and, in this exchange between art and nature, the architect becomes nature as he artfully constructs buildings and cities.80 This is also visible in the Vitruvian treatment of how roads should be oriented according to the direction and intensity of the winds.81 An architect must know how to develop a city’s road network by organizing the streets in such a way that they are sheltered from winds that are too cold or too hot. The network of streets and thus the whole city, must be developed wisely (prudenter) by 77

Vitruv. 9.1.2. When Vitruvius speaks of the world as a conceptio, a term that translates the Greek σύστημα, he seems to be evoking the Stoic cosmos, which is presented as maximally inclusive because the world contains the totality of things. See, for example, SVF II 529 (= Cleomed. Caelest. 1.1.1–5 Todd = F 545 Dufour = Cleomed. Théorie élémentaire 2.7–12 Goulet), where the cosmos is presented as the σύστημα ἐξ οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς καὶ τῶν ἐν τούτοις φύσεων (“system of heaven, earth and the natures within them”). 79 As Di Pasquale 2016: 51–53 and Gross 1997: 1258, note 71, show, a mechanistic view of the universe, which is presented as an artfully constructed machine of nature, emerges from these passages of De architectura. Lucretius provides a precedent for the Vitruvian conception of nature, which he describes not only as machina mundi (“fabric of the world,” Lucret. 5, 96 Rouse), but also as daedala rerum (“skillful of things,” Lucret. 5.234). 80 Cf. Roby 2012: esp. 432–434 and Nichols 2021: esp. 52–57. 81 Vitruv. 1.6.2–3. 78

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the architect, so that each urban element can reflect practical understanding or wisdom, but also the presence of divine intelligence in the cosmos and its providence (prudentia).82 Through the collaboration of art and nature, based on the invention of ingenious instruments such as the aeolipile, with which it is possible to study the flow of the winds, the architect is able to grasp the “truth of divinity” (divinitatis veritas) expressed by celestial phenomena.83 By knowing and exploiting the immense natural rationes (ruling principles) of the sky and the winds, the architect becomes godlike, precisely because nature is the model for any artificial reproduction.84 Such an idea, underlying the Vitruvian theorization of architecture as a divine and natural science, may have been inspired by Cicero’s De natura deorum, which appears among the theoretical sources of De architectura, and in which Balbus equates the progress of nature with that of architects.85 Against the Epicurean Velleius, Balbus affirms the existence of a divine providence to which the order of the cosmos must be traced, and highlights how, in his opinion, there must be a providential plan that accounts for the perfection of the cosmos and those who are part of it.86 Focusing on man and how providence has provided each organ with a specific function, with regard to the most hidden areas of the body Balbus states that just “as architecti place the drains of houses at the back, away from the eyes and nose of the masters, since they would otherwise be somewhat offensive, so natura has banished the corresponding organs of the body far away from the senses.”87 For the Stoic Balbus, nature serves as a model for technology and, in particular, for the way architects conduct their work.88 82

Vitruv. 1.6.1. Vitruv. 1.6.2. The manuscripts diverge in reporting aeolipilae or aeoli pilae, and scholars have wondered what to make of the ambiguous term pilae. It may refer to bronze statuettes depicting the god of the winds Aeolus, but also to spheres reminiscent of the “motor” of Heron of Alexandria, a sphere that rotated thanks to jets of steam coming out of two small tubes placed at either end of the same diametrical axis. See Gros 1997: 95, note 238. 84 Vitruv. 1.6.2. 85 On Vitruvius and Cicero in particular, see Gros 1997: XXXII–XL and Romano 2016: 342– 347. 86 See Longo 2016 on the use of Epicurus as a “mask” concealing an opponent to be denigrated for an anti-providential position such as that held by the Epicureans. 87 Cic. Nat. D. 2.56.141: Atque ut in aedificiis architecti avertunt ab oculis naribusque dominorum ea quae profluentia necessario taetri essent aliquid habitura, sic natura res similis procul amandavit a sensibus. Interestingly, “for the comparison of God or nature and an architect,” A. S. Pease refers to Philo, Opif. 20, in his apparatus (Pease 1958: 918–919). 88 Balbus’ assertions are in line with Chrysippus’ belief that the arts which nature has taught us cannot be counted, since it is precisely by imitating nature that reason has produced the resources necessary for life (SVF II 1162 = Cic. Leg. 1.8 25–26 Keyes = F 1144 Dufour). Cf. SVF II 1044 (= Alexand. Aphrod. De mixt. P. 255, 18 Bruns = F 1052 Dufour), which, rather than the mimesis of art and nature, emphasizes the aspects in which art and nature differ. On the one hand, works of art have an external cause; on the other, the force that gives form and generation to natural beings is inherent in matter. . 83

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Both Cicero and Vitruvius, therefore, see architecture not as craftsmanship, but as an expression of divine nature, since architecture consists of a design phase that implies the presence of providence, understood not only as care for what is produced, but also as foresight. In Vitruvius, the idea of architecture as a divine art that imitates the perfection of nature leads to what will be recognized as Vitruvian “humanism” in the Renaissance. Through the constant exchange between microcosm and macrocosm, man – a symbol of the perfect harmony of proportions – becomes the measure of every proportionate construction and of the universe itself.89 In De architectura, Vitruvius does not fail to express his esteem for the ancients: in particular, he explicitly refers to Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus and Posidonius, but also to the slightly earlier Lucretius and Cicero.90 From a theological point of view, he seems to have been influenced by Stoicism, since the idea of the existence of a divina mens, to which Cicero also testifies, is very present in the treatise.91 Vitruvius does not hesitate to refer to a “divine mind,” which allotted to the Roman people an excellent and temperate region so that they could rule the world (Vitruv. 6.1.11); which has made it relatively easy to obtain things, especially those that were necessary for mankind but inaccessible or expensive (Vitruv. 8 praef., 3); which has arranged the celestial phenomena in such a way as to inspire great wonder (Vitruv. 9.1.1); and finally, which has given shape to the constellations in the firmament (Vitruv. 9.5.4). This divina mens presents itself in the guise of the Stoic universal intellect (ὁ τῶν ὅλων νοῦς), to which Philo also bears witness, and which, pervading everything, manifests itself in the form of providence.92 The presence of a divine mind justifies the Vitruvian idea of progress that can be inferred from the beginning of the second book of De architectura, in which 89 It would be superfluous to mention Leonardo da Vinci’s famous “Vitruvian man,” which – based on Vitruvius’ reception by Leon Battista Alberti – represents a human body inscribed both in a circle, symbolizing heaven, and in a square, symbolizing the earth. This figure is a model of ideal proportions. On Alberti and his sometimes contradictory take on Vitruvius’ De architectura, see De Mari 2003 and Thoenes 2016. 90 On Vitruvius as a doxographical source, see Vitruv. 2.2.1 (Thales, Heraclitus, Democritus, Epicurus and Pythagoreans on the omnium rerum principium); 3.1.5 (praise of the number 10 in Plato); 6 praef. 3 (Aristippus, Theophrastus and Epicurus on the self-sufficiency of the sage); 7 praef, 2 (Thales, Democritus, Anaxagoras, Xenophanes, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Zeno and Epicurus on the value of the ancients for physics and ethics); VIII praef., 3, 27 (Theophrastus and Posidonius on the characteristics of places and the distribution of water); 9 praef, 2–4; 17 (praising Greek thinkers such as Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato and Aristotle, but also Latin contemporaries such as Lucretius, Cicero and Varro for the value of their teachings, destined to endure over time). See Nichols 2017: 23–41. 91 Cf. Gros 1997: 880–881, note 59, who remarks that in De architectura Stoic providentialism seems to have been transposed into the political sphere, in line with Augustan culture, which envisages the existence of a heavenly will that promotes and determines the course of history. Cf. Mcewen 2003: 183–198. See, e. g., Cic. Nat. D. 2.32.58 = SVF I 172. 92 Cf. Philo, Opif. 8 (= SVF II 302). See Alesse 2004 and 2005.

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Vitruvius addresses the origin of architecture in order to show the development of building techniques and their evolution. Introducing building materials, Vitruvius shows their natural origin, due to the mimetic character of craftsmanship, which stems from the imitation of nature. He then illustrates the path that led man from the construction of a hut to that of a building. The story begins with a description of ancient times, when men were born like animals in forests and caves, and spent their lives eating the food of the fields.93 During a thunderstorm and a strong gust of wind, the rubbing of branches against each other sparked a fire. As soon as the storm had subsided, men realized the benefits of the fire’s warmth and, feeding it with more wood, kept it alive by tending to it.94 In these moments of social life – Vitruvius continues – men discovered the use of language, beginning to signify objects of common use and then to communicate with each other. In this early form of conviviality, they began to build huts and caves, and there were those who, imitating swallows’ nests, made shelters out of branches and mud. Observing each other, men developed their creativity and, in a constant confrontation with each other, began to erect walls of mud and branches, making them more and more resilient.95 Through daily practice, our ancestors refined their manual skills and techniques, until those who applied themselves with greater determination and interest became fabri (craftsmen).96 Over time, men began to conceive ever more ambitious projects ex varietate artium (“from the variety of their crafts”), no longer building only huts, but also houses on foundations.97 The “observations made in their studies led them from wandering and uncertain judgements to the assured method of symmetry” (observationibus studiorum e vagantibus iudiciis et incertis ad certas symmetriarum perduxerunt rationes). In this way, they went from being fabri to becoming architecti, because nature had not only endowed man with sense-perception like other animals, but had also equipped his mind with cogitationes et consilia (thoughts and intentions), so that he could pass from a savage and rustic life (e fera agrestique vita) to peaceful civilization (ad mansuetam humanitatem).98

93 Vitruv. 2.1.1. See Biraghi 2003, who highlights the accounts by Democritus (DK 68 B5 = Diog. Laërt. IX 41 Dorandi) and Lucretius (5 925–987 Rouse), as precedents for the idea of this early agrarian stage. Vitruvius may have been influenced by the spread of Epicureanism in the intellectual milieu surrounding Octavian and Maecenas in the early Augustan age (cf. Gros 1997: 171–172, note 18). However, any echoes of the theories in vogue among the Atomists and Epicureans must be contextualized in Vitruvius’ acceptance of the idea of a providence governing all things; these echoes should therefore be seen as limited to only a few key moments in the history of civilization proposed here by Vitruvius. 94 Vitruv. 2.1.2. 95 Vitruv. 2.1.3. 96 Vitruv. 2.1.6. 97 Vitruv. 2.1.7. 98 Vitruv. 2.1.6.

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In this manifesto on the progress of technology, Vitruvius sets out the dogmas of his architecti scientia, which is affirmed first and foremost as an art born of nature, just as it was a natural event, namely wind, that caused fire and stimulated the first forms of conviviality. However, it is an art that is constituted by the imitation of natura, as shown by the first shelters ever built, inspired by swallows’ nests and other types of animal shelter. Similarly to what we find in Philo’s De opificio, where God is the creator of the world and contains the noetic city within himself, in his “mind,” Vitruvius’ nature is presented as a “storm,” and this is what stimulates the establishment of art. On the other hand, like a “swallow’s nest” for early man, the natura presented by Vitruvius acts as a model representing the paradigm that every architect carries within himself when bringing construction into being. For Vitruvius, architecture, as opposed to the simple practice of building, is based on that variety of arts which, as we have seen, is highlighted from the very first pages of the treatise. Along with manual dexterity, thinking and planning are not only the prerequisites for erecting buildings, but also their rational justification. The Vitruvian description of man’s technical progress is far removed from what emerges from Philo’s De opificio, where we instead find the idea that early man, in an era before his fall from grace, lived in a state of bliss that his descendants will never regain.99 But the Vitruvian manifesto stands above all in contrast to what Seneca will state in Epistola XC, where he distances himself from the Posidonian Golden Age and the role played in it by the arts, which, according to Posidonius, were discovered by philosophy.100 Seneca, contra Posidonius, states that it could not have been philosophy that taught men to build houses, any more than the invention of keys and locks could have been an artifice of philosophy. Philosophers did not erect buildings that loomed dangerously over those who lived in them, since the occasional shelters existing in nature were quite sufficient in their view, without having to resort to art, the symbol of the birth of luxury. Emphatically, Seneca states: mihi crede, felix illud saeculum ante architectos fuit, ante tectores (“believe me, that was a happy age, before the days of architects, before the days of builders!”)101 For Seneca, philosophy cannot be reduced to an evolutionary concept of technical progress, because the task of the wise man is to investigate the secrets of nature and to exercise virtue. For this reason, he nostalgically misses the time when there were not yet architects to urbanize nature together with builders. 99 Cfr. Philo, Opif. 136 and 142. With regard to Opif. 142, Runia notes how Philo, by putting his finger on the security in which early mankind lived, expresses an Epicurean concern that led to the need to hypothesize the drafting of a social contract for the establishment of civil society. In addition to Hesiod. Opera et dies 109–201 (Solmsen), for some well-known descriptions of the “golden age,” see also Plat. Politic. 271e1–272b4 and Runia 2001: 340. 100 Sen. Ep. 90.7. 101 Sen. Ep. 90.8–9.

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The Philonian view of art and architecture clashes with that expressed by Seneca because, although there is no shortage of occasions on which Philo devalues art for its mimetic character, it represents one of the means by which the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, between man and the world, takes place.102 In analyzing one of the reasons why the human being was created last among the creatures, Philo shows how God, having planned “to harmonize” the beginning and the end of all things generated (ἀρχὴν καὶ τέλος τῶν γεγονότων ὁ θεὸς ἁρμόσασθαι διανοηθεíς), produced the heavens at the beginning of creation and the first man at the end, who appears to be a βραχὺς οὐρανός (Runia translates “miniature heaven”).103 This correspondence between heaven and man is justified by the fact that human beings have imprinted many star-like natures on themselves as divine statues and that this impression is made through arts (τέχναις), sciences (ἐπιστήμαις) and contemplations (θεωρήμασιν) (Opif. 141). The arts are the first type of human cognitive tool that Philo lists, showing the gradual detachment from the sense-perceptible sphere. Through these three types of knowledge (technical, theoretical and mystical), represented respectively by the τέχναι, ἐπιστήμαι and θεωρημάτα, the beginning and the end of creation are linked, symbolized by the first and the last of the created elements, the heavens and man. Art, therefore, which – together with science and contemplation – makes man shine like a star in the sky, is presented as a kind of knowledge that characterizes man’s way of acting. Philo, metaphorically speaking, elevates art to represent the whole of nature and says that nature, like a craftsman (οἷα τεχνίτης), or more precisely, like an “irreproachable art” (ἀνεπίληπτος τέχνη), molds living beings.104 For Philo, therefore, Seneca’s saeculum ante architectos, ante tectores cannot be a happy one, but the idea that art is constitutive of man himself emerges from De opificio. In Philo’s anthropology and theology, art and nature are unified and, by making possible the correspondence between God, macrocosm and microcosm, justify the parable of the ἀνὴρ ἀρχιτεκτονικός as the 102 Philo, Opif. 141. Cf. Plato, Rep. 10.598a1–b9, where painting is devalued because it makes use of a sense-perceptible model (natural entities). On Philo and the ζωγραφία, see Calabi 2017b. 103 Runia 2001: 254. In my opinion, Philo’s use of the adjective βραχύς in this context could be justified by the fact that heaven and man have in common the fact of being generated (γεγονότες), but differ in that the former is τὸν μὲν τῶν ἐν αἰσθητοῖς ἀφθάρτων τελειότατον (the most perfect of incorruptible beings in the sense-perceptible things), while the latter is τὸν δὲ τῶν γηγενῶν καὶ φθαρτῶν ἄριστον (the best of earth-born and corruptible creatures). As a “miniature heaven,” man is βραχύς (literally, “short”) because, unlike heaven, which is everlasting, he has a “short” life and is destined to perish. The background to the Philonian correspondence between macrocosm and microcosm is Platonic (cf. Plat. Tim. 47a–c; 90c–d). See Runia 1986: 276–278. 104 Philo, Opif. 62. Recall how in Opif. 20 it was God himself who was described as τεχνίτης. Nature, however, is not creative in the same way as God, because it does not deliberately forge things from without, but molds them from within in an immanent way. This is why Philo specifies that nature corresponds to a τέχνη, rather than a τεχνίτης.

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expression not of an anthropomorphization of God but of a humanism which presents God as nature and as a “man.” We do not know whether Philo was familiar with Vitruvius’ monumental work, if he had even heard of it, or whether he actually had access to it. What is surprising when comparing their divine architects, whether metaphorical or not, is the use of Stoicism. Vitruvius’ architect is nature: he is godlike because he appears as that divina mens which establishes all things. Philo’s architect, on the other hand, can be compared to God because he is the creator of that cosmic city – a reflection of the intelligible city – which is a megalopolis because God and man, sharing the possession of reason, live together in it. The comparison with Vitruvius, as well as the evidence we have from Cicero’s De natura deorum, helps to highlight the Stoic undertone of Opif. 17–20, which prima facie might appear to be a predominantly Platonic parable, given the constant revival of the Timaeus and the marked emphasis on the two urban dimensions, noetic and sense-perceptible. When characterizing the figure of the architect, Cicero’s Balbus, Vitruvius and Philo take up the Stoic tradition, where – as we have seen – references to a divine architect are lacking and where, rather than a deus ex machina, we find traces of the πῦρ τεχνικόν immanent in matter. But why, in an image with an immediate Platonic imprint, does Philo seem to privilege references to Stoicism, to the point of emphasizing them?

5. A Response to the Epicurean Mockery of the Divine Architect As we have seen, Vitruvius was certainly familiar with Epicureanism and he does not hesitate to mention Epicurus explicitly by name. Among the most relevant moments is his eulogy of Democritean atomism, which is relevant because it gives a reason for the presence of the primary elements in building materials.105 In his opinion, the theorization of the presence of atoms, which are insecabilia (unbreakable) and individua (indivisible), justifies the solidity and cohesion of building material, which can be used by workers without making mistakes.106 Di Pasquale notes that the Vitruvian image of nature operating as an architect, despite its primarily Stoic origin, “fits perfectly the atomistic view of the universe made of atoms (atoms are like bricks) and empty spaces, that is the basic

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Vitruv. 2.1–2. Vitruvius, in particular, in his description of atoms according to Democritus and Epicurus states that nostri insecabilia corpora, nonnulli individua vocitaverunt (“our ‘writers’ have called ‘the atoms’ unbreakable bodies, some ‘have called them’ indivisible”). Granger points out that for the former case we find a similar definition in the later Seneca and Quintilian, while for the latter he refers to Cicero, who, as we have seen, is among Vitruvius’ sources. Granger 1962: 88, notes 1 and 2. 106

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language of architecture.”107 It is perhaps precisely this sympathy with atomism that led Vitruvius to avoid any mention of the well-known Epicurean ridicule of the Platonic demiurge in the guise of an architect, which Cicero reports at the beginning of De natura deorum. We have seen how Vitruvius seems to know and take up Balbus’ presentation of the Stoic divine architect, who is nothing other than nature itself. Yet, he makes no mention of Velleius’ use of the image of the architect to ridicule the cosmology of the Timaeus: an image that must have seemed highly inappropriate in his eyes. Articulating the accusation on three levels, in Nat. D. 1.8 Velleius rails against Plato and the Stoics, who are assimilated according to a practice common at the time (a practice that, as we have seen, is also taken up by Philo himself ). First, Velleius criticizes the existence of a demiurge, that opificex aedificatorque mundi, Platonis de Timeo deus (“craftsman and builder of the world, a god in Plato’s Timaeus”). He then proceeds to attack the existence of an “old hag of a fortune-teller” (anus fatidica), namely the Stoics’ Pronoia, which – says Cicero – is called providentia in Latin.108 Finally, Velleius opposes a vision of the cosmos endowed with “soul and senses” (animo et sensibus) that was widely endorsed by ancient philosophers, with the exception of the atomists. As noted in a recent contribution by F. Verde, Velleius here expounds on some well-known Epicurean polemical leitmotifs, showing how the figure of the Platonic demiurge, representing the pinnacle of “creative” divinity, collides with the very notion of divinity.109 According to Epicurus, the gods are absolutely blissful beings who do not interact in any way with the world and even less with their generation, which is rather the result of atomic aggregation.110 Also famous is the Epicurean polemic against divine providence, due to the fact that these philosophers approach what exists from a physiological and aitiological (we 107 Vitruv. 9.1.2. Di Pasquale 2016: 52. Weiner 2016 emphasizes how Vitruvius, via Lucretius, also assimilates other Epicurean concepts (in addition to atoms and emptiness, the example of pleasure is given). Weiner also stresses, however, that Vitruvius cannot accept the Epicurean notion of (a) corruptible world(s), since in De architectura eternal monuments are presented as built with materials that allow them to endure over time. As can be seen from Vitruv. 2.2, 2, Vitruvius evokes the presence of atoms by showing that they retain an infinite solidity (infinitam soliditatem) within themselves forever (sempiterno). 108 The expression anus fatidica in itself has no derogatory connotation and literally means “old woman declaring destinies.” I reproduce Rackham’s translation precisely because it emphasizes the polemical tone of the Epicurean Velleius (Rackham 1933: 21). Pease 1958: 175 refers to Cic. Tim. 6–7 for opificex and aedificator as terms used to describe the demiurge. Furthermore, Pease points out that some editors have considered the use of opificex to be a devaluation of the demiurge, who in Tim. 6 is called artifex (Pease 1958: 175). 109 Verde 2023. I am very grateful to Prof. F. Verde for allowing me to read his chapter before publication. On the Epicurean critique of demiurgy, see also Sedley 2011 [2007]: 151–166. 110 Verde 2023: 83, 86. We should bear in mind that Epicureanism rules out any form of astral theology because the stars and their regularity do not depend on θεία φύσις. Cf. Epic. Ep. Pyht. 97.3–5 De Sanctis. See Verde 2022: 189–191.

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could say “scientific”) perspective, rather than a theological one: the aggregates of atoms depend on the laws that regulate the movements of atoms in a vacuum and their existence is not guaranteed and preserved by any divine πρόνοια.111 The worlds, then, are not regarded as living beings as is the case with the universe-ζῷον of the Timaeus and they are not regarded as endowed with a soul.112 Velleius also makes sure to criticize the concept of the “burning (ardens) world,” drawing attention to a feature that, as we have seen, refers explicitly to Stoicism, to the πῦρ τεχνικόν as well as to ἐκπύρωσις (ekpyrosis). Immediately afterwards, Velleius articulates his critique of Platonic cosmology in several rhetorical questions. Firstly, he asks his interlocutors: quibus oculis animi intueri potuit vester Plato fabricam illam tanti operis, qua construi a deo atque aedificari mundum facit? (“What power of mental vision enabled your master Plato to descry the vast and elaborate architectural process which, as he makes out, the deity adopted in building the structure of the universe?”)113 The vester shows how Plato is seen as a spokesman for the opinions not only of the academic Cotta but also of the Stoic Balbus. His oculi animi (“eyes of the mind”), however, are not seen by Velleius as sufficiently open to account for the presentation of the world as a fabrica (factory) built by the god: quae molitio, quae ferramenta, qui vectes, quae machinae, qui ministri tanti muneris fuerunt? (“What method of engineering was employed? What tools and levers and derricks? What agents carried out so vast an undertaking?”)114 For Velleius, the perfection of the universe cannot be justified by the handicraft analogy that the figure of the demiurge evokes, because it is taken for granted that the demiurge, as faber, had to resort to tools in producing the cosmos, as he could not build the world with his bare hands, which were therefore deemed insufficient. However, there were no tools, levers or machines that could be employed in the opificio mundi, even if one regards the four elements as the cosmic tools of the demiurge: quem ad modum autem oboedire et parere voluntati architecti aer, ignis, acqua, terra potuerunt? (“And how were air, fire, water and earth enabled to obey and execute the will of the architect?”)115 Velleius, therefore, ridicules the Platonic demiurge by presenting him as an inefficient architectus who fails to subject the creative instruments in his possession to his own voluntas. He speaks precisely of an architectus because the creative will comes into play, i. e. the intention to produce the cosmos, and thus the sphere of planning which the figure of the architect implies. Nevertheless, the four elements dominate the scene to the point that they supersede the architect’s will. 111

Verde 2023: 83. Verde 2023: 84–85. 113 Trans. Rackham 1933: 23. 114 Rackham 1933. 115 Rackham 1933: 23. 112

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In Velleius’ speech, the image of the architectus is used in the opposite way to that which we have seen in Philo. While the latter uses it to humanize the Jewish God and bring him closer to mankind, Velleius uses it in a derogatory sense to humanize the demiurge to the point of making him almost a homunculus, lacking the capacity to design and create the cosmos. Both use the figure of the architect in relation to the Timaeus’ demiurge, who in Velleius’ case is simply described and mocked, whereas in Philo’s case he is interpreted and incorporated into the presentation of the Mosaic cosmogony in order to make him a sort of “stand-in” for God. As we have seen, neither Plato in the Timaeus nor the ancient Stoics speak of the demiurge or the craftsman-like fire as “architects,” although it is Cicero himself, in Nat. D. 2.35.90, who attributes to the Stoic Balbus the need to envisage the presence of an architectus to account for the existence and preservation of the cosmic city. Both Cicero and Philo, when they speak of divine architects, do so by combining Platonic and Stoic elements, and even in the Epicurean perspective presented in Velleius’ speech we find a “Stoic” demiurge whose hallmarks include the exercise of providence and role as author of an ardens world.116 Returning to F. Verde’s article, it is interesting to note how the author highlights that Velleius’ polemical targets are a Platonism and a Stoicism, which are recognized as having so much in common that they even agree on their criticisms of others, such as those of the Epicureans like Philodemus of Gadara and Diogenes of Oenoanda.117 Analyzing some “technical” terms used in a fragment of Philodemus’ De providentia, C. Vergara also examines the word ἀρχιτέκτων.118 The latter is regarded as a key term in the Epicurean philosopher’s refutation of the Stoics, who are criticized for believing that the cosmos is governed by a higher principle. In order to restore the context of the use of the metaphor of architecture in the cosmological sphere and in connection with the Platonic demiurge of the Timaeus and Stoicism, Vergara cites, in addition to Cicero’s De natura deorum, passages from Philo’s De opificio. The latter author, who presents the Jewish God as an ἀνὴρ ἀρχιτεκτονικός, seems oddly unaware of the polemical purpose with which the lexicon of architecture had been used in the Epicurean sphere barely a century earlier, namely to criticize a Platonic-Stoic cosmological position. In contrast to the Epicurean milieu, Philo made apologetic

116 In the Timaeus too, as we have seen, the exercise of providence by the demiurge is important, and it is probably from the Platonic dialogue that the Stoic “version” is derived. In the Timaeus, however, as already noted, providence is presented not as a characteristic of a personal deity but of nature – a characteristic indicating the presence of God within it. Cf. De Luca 2020a: esp. 74–76. 117 Verde 2023: 86–88; 103–106. 118 In particular, see Vergara 2021: esp. 85–88 for an analysis of the lexicon of architecture in PHerc. 1577/1579, fr. 1 N and PHerc. 1670, fr. 24. My sincere thanks to Prof. Verde for bringing Vergara’s article to my attention.

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use of it for the opposite purpose: to defend the Platonic-Stoic perspective which was well suited to describing Jewish cosmogony. An analysis of the Latin sources, in particular De natura deorum and De architettura, suggests a possibly new way of interpreting Philo’s image of God as architect. It may be no coincidence that in Opif. 17–20 he speaks of God not only as a demiurge, but also as an architect, thus showing a strong sympathy with Stoicism, to which – as Cicero testifies and Vitruvius confirms – the representation of the divinity or nature as an architect was attributed. Speaking of God precisely as an architect reveals Philo’s double debt to Platonism and Stoicism, which represent the main philosophical influences of the work, in order to justify the architect’s foresight – i. e. planning – and providence (i. e. πρόνοια in its double meaning). Opif. 17–20 almost seems like a “commercial” for Philonian cosmology and provides a new perspective on the debate between Platonists, Stoics and Epicureans to which Cicero had already masterfully given voice. Philo enters this debate by presenting the Jewish view of the origin of the cosmos and its preservation. His position in this debate is decidedly antiEpicurean.119 On at least three occasions in his work, Philo asserts his cosmological position against the Epicureans, whose views are not infrequently equated with those of Aristotle.120 First of all, as has been noted, Epicurus (and the Epicureans) must have read the Timaeus – which is Philo’s indispensable point of reference – in a similar way to Aristotle’s reading, namely in literal and temporal terms.121 As Cicero shows, the spokesman of Epicureanism, Velleius, just like Aristotle, criticizes the asymmetry that the Timaeus proposes in the cosmological sphere by arguing for the existence of a generated but indestructible world.122 In Philo’s opinion, however, the distinction between the cosmological positions of Aristotle and Epicurus is clear: while the former argued for the existence of an eternal, ungenerated and incorruptible cosmos, the latter, like the Stoics, who are refuted for this reason, consider the cosmos to be generated and corruptible. For both, the cosmos does indeed have a beginning, but it is also presented as having an end due to a universal conflagration or atomic disintegration.123 In Opif. 7, Philo 119

On Philo and Epicureanism in particular, see Lévy 2000 and 2016. Philo also expresses opposition to the Epicureans from an anti-atomist and anti-hedonist perspective. See Alesse 2008. 121 Verde 2023: 5. 122 In Nat. D. 1.8.20, Velleius rhetorically asks: Hunc censes primis ut dicitur labris gustasse physiologiam, id est naturae rationem, qui quicquam quod ortum sit putet aeternum esse posse? Quae est enim coagmentatio non dissolubilis? Aut quid est cui principium aliquod sit, nihil sit extremum? (“Can you suppose that a man can have even dipped into natural philosophy if he imagines that anything that has come into being can be eternal? What composite whole is not capable of dissolution? What thing is there that has a beginning but not an end?” Transl. by Rackham 1933: 23). Cf. Arist. DC I 10, 280a10. 123 See Philo, Aet. 8 where the Stoic position is assimilated to the Epicurean one. 120

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specifies some differences which distinguish Aristotelians and Epicureans in the cosmological sphere. In general, he attacks τινὲς τὸν κόσμον μᾶλλον ἢ τὸν κοσμοποιὸν θαυμάσσαντες (“some people who have admired the cosmos rather than the maker of the cosmos”), turning against both the Aristotelians and the Epicureans. He distinguishes, on the one hand, those who have shown the world to be ἀγένητος τε καὶ ἀίδιος (both ingenerate and eternal), representing the Aristotelian position, and, on the other hand, those who have made the false claim of τοῦ δὲ θεοῦ πολλὴ ἀπραξία (a long inactivity of God).124 In the latter case, Philo is responding to a well-known derogatory motif of the Epicureans, which Velleius himself had also voiced. Indeed, in Nat. D. 1.9.21–22, again assimilating Platonic and Stoic perspectives, Velleius asks his interlocutors why the builders of the world (mundi aedificatores) suddenly (repente) came to life after sleeping for centuries and, addressing Balbus in particular, asks why Providence remained idle for so long: laboremne fugiebat? (was it in order to avoid fatigue?).125 In Opif. 7, Philo starts from the premise that the God of Jewish cosmology is not a lazy god who does not concern himself with human affairs: the moment when creation began is justified by his will, and neither inactivity nor drudgery are at all among his distinguishing features. Philo’s appeal to his interlocutors is to focus not on the world but on its Creator, whose presence justifies everything that has come into existence.126 Both Aristotle and Epicurus presented a perspective incompatible with Philo’s Platonic-Stoic Judaism because they criticized the notion of providence, which for Philo represents what is “most beneficial and necessary to all things in terms of piety” (τὸ ὠφελιμώτατον καὶ ἀναγκαιότατον τῶν εἰς εὐσέβειαν).127 As is shown at the end of the work, which presents the five doctrines (δόγματα) that summarize the Jewish-Philonian cosmological position, Philo clearly maintains that the cosmos is one, just as one is the Demiurge who made the world entirely like himself according to oneness.128 As Philo himself tells us, “there are those who suppose there to be ‘multiple’ (πλείους) cosmoi, and there are others who think their number is boundless (ἀπείρους), whereas they themselves are the ones who are really boundlessly ignorant (ἄπειροι) of what it is fine to know.”129 124

Cf. Runia 2001: 48, 111–113. Cic. Nat. D. 1.9.22 (ll. 2–3) Rackham. 126 On Opif. 7, see Trabattoni 2009. 127 Philo, Opif. 9: […] ὃν οἱ φάσκοντες ὡς ἔστιν ἀγένητος λελήθασι τὸ ὠφελιμώτατον καὶ ἀναγκαιότατον τῶν εἰς εὐσέβειαν ὑποτεμνόμενοι τὴν πρόνοιαν. […] Those who declare that it is ungenerated are unaware that they are eliminating the most useful and indispensable of the contributions to piety, the (doctrine of ) providence. Transl. By Runia 2001: 48. 128 For the five doctrines, which are summarized at the end of the work, see Niehoff 2013: 94–102. 129 Philo, Opif. 171. Transl. by Runia 2001: 93. Note the beauty of the Philo’s prose, in which he uses two identical terms (ἀπείρους and ἄπειροι), but with different roots, in order to indicate, on the one hand, being without boundaries (from πέρας) and, on the other hand, being without 125

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Philo specifies that they are ignorant of what it is good to know πρὸς ἀλήθειαν (in view of truth), namely what is expressed by Jewish theology and cosmology, which he supports and defends mainly by resorting to Platonism and Stoicism. These become the instruments for affirming an anti-Aristotelian and antiEpicurean position on the cosmological level and for taking the floor in the contemporary debate. The Philonian ἀνὴρ ἀρχιτεκτονικός, therefore, asserts himself in opposition to the Epicurean architectus and in agreement with the “Stoic” architect, whose echoes are also be found in Vitruvius’ theory of architecture and who appears as a synthesis of the demiurge of the Timaeus and the main agents of Stoicism: craftsman like fire, nature and providence.

6. Conclusion The analysis of Opif. 17–20 in relation to both Greek and Latin sources has shown how Philo fits into the debate between the various philosophical schools of his day regarding the presence or absence of a divine craftsman to justify the existence of the cosmos. It is no coincidence that Philo refers to an ἀνὴρ ἀρχιτεκτονικός to describe the Jewish God, resorting specifically to the figure of the architect, which had been ennobled by Vitruvius a few years earlier. The philosophical theorization of the ἀρχιτέκτων and the metaphorical recourse to such a figure originated in the Platonic and Aristotelian contexts (esp. the Politicus and Ethica Nicomachea) but in Philo’s time, as we have seen, the metaphorical figure of the architect was attributed to the Stoic sphere. This first occurred with Cicero, who, through the voice of Balbus, spoke of nature as an architect. As Cicero shows in De natura deorum, the metaphor of architecture becomes the ground on which the confrontation between the Platonic Cotta, the Stoic Balbus and the Epicurean Velleius over the demiurge of the Timaeus and other relevant concepts in the dialogue, such as providence, is articulated. As our analysis has shown, Velleius uses architecture from an anti-Platonic and anti-Stoic perspective to express his ridicule of the Platonic craftsman, who is presented in the guise of an architect incapable of handling the immense power of the four elements. Velleius mocks the demiurge by calling him “architect,” to emphasize how his will to construct the universe remains unfulfilled when confronted with the elements. In his theory of architecture, Vitruvius, who seems to have been influenced by Balbus’ Stoic portrayal of nature as an architect, may have deliberately omitted any reference to Velleius’ ridicule. The Vitruvian treatise, rich in philosophical as well as technical insights, may have influenced Philo not only because of the authority attributed to the figure of the architect, but also because of the link between architecture experience (from πεῖρα) and therefore ignorant. Runia 2001: 400 refers to Tim. 55c7–d1, where the same play on words is found.

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and Stoicism, already found in Cicero. Whereas according to Balbus, as we have seen, nature is a model for technology, the Vitruvian architect is nature because – in accordance with the Stoic perspective – he coincides with the divine mind. In speaking of God as an architect, Philo therefore resorts to a figure that had already been associated with a Stoic interpretation of the Timaeus and which, after Cicero and Vitruvius, must have seemed like a rather familiar way of describing the divine craftsman in a Roman context. Through the metaphorical use of architecture, Philo emphasizes the importance not only of God’s design of the cosmos, but also of his providential plan, by highlighting traits of the architect God that could be understood in an apologetical-polemical sense as having an implicit anti-Aristotelian and anti-Epicurean meaning. Opif. 17–20 testifies to Philo’s method of presenting the Jewish God to his Graeco-Roman audience by adopting a Platonic-Stoic perspective, thereby clearly taking sides in the philosophical field. To this end, he resorts to several rhetorical stratagems which were already standard in his day: the characterization of God with the typical traits of the Timaeus’ demiurge and the emphasis on the role of providence in the cosmos. The presence of the model in the divine mind thus allows Philo to present in an intelligible way what I would describe as a pioneering ex nihilo cosmogony. Given the type of audience he is addressing – one probably unfamiliar with Jewish theology – Philo proceeds by analogy. The compelling image of Opif. 17– 20, by which Philo sums up the Mosaic cosmogony “in a nutshell,” effectively reaches his audience, who are thus able to understand and philosophically contextualize the Jewish perspective of a demiurge-architect who, by planning, producing and providing, has generated this world of ours.

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Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile. “La contestation de la loi dans le cynisme ancien.” In Le cynisme, une philosophie antique. Edited by Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, 505–508. Paris: Vrin, 2017. Granger, Frank, ed., transl. Vitruvius. On architecture. Two volumes. London-New York: W. Heinemann, 1962 (first ed. 1931–1934). Gros, Pierre. Vitruvio. De architectura. Translation and Commentary by Antonio Corso and Elisa Romano. Torino: Einaudi, 1997. Horsley, Richard. A. “The Law of Nature in Philo and Cicero.” The Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 35–59. Jones, Horace L. transl. The Geography of Strabo. 8 volumes. London-New York: W. Heinemann, 1917–1954. Kamesar, Adam. “Philo, the Presence of ‘Paideutic’ Myth in the Pentateuch, and the ‘Principles’ or Kephalaia of Mosaic Discourse.” The Studia Philonica Annual 10 (1998): 36–44. Kraus Reggiani, Clara. Filone Alessandrino. De opificio mundi – De Abrahamo – De Josepho: analisi critiche, testi tradotti e commentati. Roma: Edizioni dell’Ateneo & Bizzarri, 1979. Lévy, Carlos. Cicero Academicus. Recherches sur les Académiques et sur la philosophie Cicéronienne. Rome, École Française de Rome, 1992. –. “Philon d’Alexandrie et l’Épicurisme.” In Epikureismus in der späten Republik und der Kaiserzeit. Akten der 2. Tagung der Karl-und-Gertrud-Abel- Stiftung vom 30. September – 3. Oktober 1998 in Würzburg. Edited by Michael Erler, 122–136. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2000. –. “Cicero and the Timaeus.” In Plato’s Timaeus as Cultural Icon. Edited by Gretchen Reydams-Schils, 95–110. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. Long, Anthony A. “Philo on Stoic Physics.” In Philo of Alexandria and Post-Aristotelian Philosophy. Edited by F. Alesse, 121–140. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2008. Longo, Angela. “La maschera di Epicuro sul volto dell’avversario in tema di provvidenza e piacere nello scritto di Plotino, Contro gli Gnostici: alcuni paralleli con Celso, Attico, Alessandro di Afrodisia e ‘Ippolito di Roma’.” In Formen und Nebenformen des Platonismus in der Spätantike. Edited by Helmut Seng, Luciana Gabriela Soares Santoprete, and Chiara O. Tommasi, 81–108. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2016. Mcewen, Indra K. Vitruvius. Writing the Body of Architecture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Moles, John L. “Le cosmopolitisme cynique.” In Le cynisme ancien et ses prolongements. Actes du colloque international du CNRS (Paris 22–25 juillet 1991). Edited by MarieOdile Goulet-Caze and Richard Goulet, 259–280. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1993. Nichols, Marden F. Author and audience in Vitruvius’ De architectura. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. –. “The Vitruvian Body in De architectura’s Third Preface: Architecture and Rhetoric between Nature and Art.” In Material World. The Intersection of Art, Science, and Nature in Ancient Literature and its Renaissance Reception. Edited by Guy Hedreen, 50–66. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2021. Niehoff, Maren R. “The Emergence of Monotheistic Creation Theology in Hellenistic Judaism.” In Jewish and Christian Cosmogony in Late Antiquity. Edited by Lance Jenott and Sarit Kattan Gribetz, 85–106. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013.

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–. “Accommodating the Political: Philo’s King Metaphor.” In The Metaphorical Use of Language in Deuterocanonical and Cognate Literature. Edited by Markus Witte and Sven Behnke, 331–344. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015. –. Philo of Alexandria. An Intellectual Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. –. “Figurative Speech in Philo’s De opificio mundi: from Allegory to Metaphor.” In Similitudini, metafore e allegoria nel De opificio mundi di Filone di Alessandria. Edited by Ludovica De Luca, preface of Angela Longo, 19–37. Storia e Letteratura: Roma, 2021. –. “The Conflagration of the World in Philo, Josephus and Rabbi Abbahu. Jewish Reflections on a Stoic Idea.” In a compilation edited by Rainer Hirsch-Luipold. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023 forthcoming. Migotto, Luciano, transl. Marco Vitruvio Pollione. De architectura. Roma: Edizioni Studio Tesi, 1999. Oksanish, John. Vitruvian Man: Rome Under Construction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pearce, Sarah. “Philo of Alexandria on the Second Commandment.” Journal of Jewish Studies Supplement Series 2 (2013): 49–76. Pease, Arthur S., ed. Cicero. De natura deorum. Two volumes. Cambridge, MS: Harvard University Press, 1955–1958. Piazzalunga, Arianna. “Un cosmo senza caos? Il modello dell’ordinamento demiurgico nello stoicismo.” Antiquorum philosophia 15 (2021): 85–104. Rackham, Harris, transl. Cicero. De natura deorum; Academica. Cambridge, MS: Harvard University Press, 1933. Radice, Roberto. Platonismo e creazionismo in Filone di Alessandria. Milano, Vita e pensiero, 1989. –. “Observations on the Theory of the Ideas as the Thoughts of God in Philo of Alexandria.” The Studia Philonica Annual 3 (1991): 126–134. –. “Filone Alessandrino e la tradizione platonica. Il caso di Seneca.” In Immagini e rappresentazione. Contributi su Filone di Alessandria. Edited by Francesca Calabi, 59–69. New York: Global Publications, 2002. –. ed., tr. Filone di Alessandria. Tutti i trattati del commentario allegorico alla Bibbia. Presentation by G. Reale. Milano: Bompiani, 2011 (first. ed. Milano: Rusconi, 1994). Reale, Giovanni, ed. La creazione del mondo; Le allegorie delle leggi, preface, translation and notes by Gianmaria Calvetti and Renata Bigatti. Milano: Rusconi, 1978. Reydams-Schils, Gretchen. Demiurge and Providence. Stoic and Platonist Readings of Plato’s Timaeus. Turnhout: Brepols, 1999. –. “Stoicized Readings of Plato’s Timaeus in Philo of Alexandria.” The Studia Philonica Annual 7 (1995): 85–102. Romano, Elisa. “Fra astratto e concreto. La lingua di Vitruvio.” In Vitruvio. De architectura. Edited by Pierre Gros, LXXIX–XCV. Torino: Einaudi, 1997. –. “Between Republic and Principate: Vitruvius and the Culture of Transition.” Arethusa 49.2 (2016): 335–351. Runia, David T. Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 1986. –. “The Image of the King and the Architect in Philo’s De opificio mundi.” Studia Patristica 18 (1989a): 133–136. –. “Polis and Megalopolis. Philo and the founding of Alexandria.” Mnemosyne 42 (1989b): 398–412.

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–. Filone di Alessandria nella prima letteratura cristiana. Translated by Roberto Radice. Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1999a (or. ed. Philo in Early Christian Literature. A Survey. Assen: Uitgeverij Van Gorcum, 1993). –. “The Brief History of the Term Kosmos Noetos from Plato to Plotinus.” In Traditions of Platonism: Essay in Honour of John Dillon. Edited by John J. Cleary, 151–172. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999b. –. “The Idea and the Reality of the City in the Thought of Philo of Alexandria.” Journal of the History of Ideas 61.3 (2000): 361–379. –. transl. On the Creation of the Cosmos according to Moses. Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2001. –. “The Beginnings of the End: Philo of Alexandria and Hellenistic Theology.” In Traditions of Theology. Studies in Hellenistic Theology, its Background and Aftermath. Edited by Dorothea Frede and André Laks, 281–316. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2002. –. “The King, the Architect, the Craftsman: A Philosophical Image in Philo of Alexandria.” In Ancient Approaches to Plato’s Timaeus. Edited by Robert W. Sharples and Anne Sheppard, 89–106. London: Institute of Classical Studies, 2003. –. “The Rehabilitation of the Jackdaw: Philo of Alexandria and Ancient Philosophy.” In Greek and Roman Philosophy 100 bc–200 ad. Edited by Richard Sorabji and Robert W. Sharples, vol. 2, 483–500. London: Institute of Classical Studies, 2007. –. “The Doctrine of Creation in Philo’s Allegorical Commentary.” In Similitudini, metafore e allegoria nel De opificio mundi di Filone di Alessandria. Edited by Ludovica De Luca, preface by Angela Longo, 3–18. Roma: Storia e Letteratura, 2021. Schofield, Malcolm. The Stoic Idea of the City. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Sedley, David. Creazionismo. Il dibattito antico da Anassagora a Galeno. Translated by Francesco Verde. Roma: Carocci editore, 2011 (or. ed.: Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. –. “Cicero and the Timaeus.” In Aristotle, Plato and Pythagoreanism in the First Century bc. Edited by Malcolm Schofield, 187–205. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Sterling, Gregory E. “Creatio Temporalis, Aeterna, vel Continua? An Analysis of the Thought of Philo of Alexandria.” The Studia Philonica Annual 4 (1992): 15–41. –. “‘The School of Sacred Laws’: the Social Setting of Philo’s Treatises.” Vigiliae Christianae 53 (1999): 148–164. –. “Philo’s School. The Social Setting of Ancient Commentaries.” In Sophisten in Hellenismus und Kaiserzeit. Edited by Beatrice Wyss, Rainer Hirsch-Luipold and SolmengJonas Hirschi, 123–142. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2017a. –. “The Most Perfect Work. The Role of Matter in Philo of Alexandria.” In Light on Creation. Ancient Commentators in Dialogue and Debate on the Origin of the World. Edited by Geert Roskam and Joseph Verheyden, pp. 243–257. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017b. Thoenes, Christof. “Vitruv, Vitruvianismus und die Anfänge der Renaissance-Architektur in Italien.” In Vitruvianism. Origins and Transformations. Edited by Paolo Sanvito, 85–99. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016. Trabattoni, Franco. “Philo. De opificio mundi 7–12.” In Origins of the Platonic System: Platonisms of the Early Empire and Their Philosophical Contexts. Edited by Mauro Bonazzi and Jan Opsomer, 113–122. Leuven: Peeters, 2009. Vasiliu, Anca. “Le sceau et le pinceau du logos. Conversion de la parole demiurgique chez Philon d’Alexandrie.” In Similitudini, metafore e allegoria nel De opificio mundi di

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Filone di Alessandria. Edited by Ludovica De Luca, preface by Angela Longo, 111–131. Roma: Storia e Letteratura, 2021. Verde, Francesco. “Portenta et miracula non disserentium philosophorum sed somniantium: Velleio contro la demiurgia del Timeo.” In Paradigmi della demiurgia. Studi sul lessico demiurgico nel pensiero antico e tardoantico. Edited by Emanuele Maffi, preface by Angela Longo, 79–117. Napoli: Bibliopolis, 2023. –. ed. Epicuro, Epistola a Pitocle. In collaboration with Mauro Tulli, Dino De Sanctis, and Francesca G. Masi. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag, 2022. Vergara, Claudio. “Un’analisi lessicale sul principio superiore nel De providentia di Filodemo.” Cronache Ercolanesi 51 (2021): 85–91. Weiner, Jesse. “Transcending Lucretius: Vitruvius, Atomism, and the Rhetoric of Monumental Permanence.” Helios 43.2 (2016): 133–161. Yli-Karjanmaa, Sami. “Philo of Alexandria.” In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Plato in Antiquity. Edited by Harold Tarrant, François Renaud, Dirk Baltzly, and Danielle A. Layne, 115–129. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2018.

A Conscience on Trial Reading Ios. 47–48 against a Roman Background* Sergio Marín In his biography of the Jewish statesman, the De Iosepho, Philo reconstructs the biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife (Gen 39:7–20) into a scene that resembles the language and dynamics of a courtroom. While the Septuagint text presents this episode as a mere domestic crisis, Philo paraphrases it in a distinctly forensic garb that lays a strong emphasis on the issue of detection and concealment of Joseph’s hypothetical adultery. As part of his retelling, Philo introduces the neuter τὸ συνειδός,1 his preferred term of use for conscience,2 and presents it as the main vehicle for the exposure of Joseph’s crime. According to Philo, Joseph’s guilt is discovered via the direct correlation between his inner disposition and his facial expression: the presence of a guilty conscience becomes outwardly manifested in the body through very concrete signs that reveal Joseph’s guilt to Potiphar.3 In this article, I argue that it is the Latin tradition that provides the most relevant examples to contextualize the forensic understanding * I wish to thank Maren Niehoff for her incisive comments on this material, Catharine Edwards and Rebecca Langlands for alerting me to the widespread use of physiognomic descriptions in Latin texts, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful observations. 1 Quotations from Philo’s texts follow the critical edition of Cohn and Wendland 1902. Translations are my own. 2 I am aware that our modern English term “conscience” is not identical in meaning to either the Greek συνειδός or the Latin conscientia. And yet, “conscience” is the most appropriate term at our disposal to refer to the reflexive knowledge (with oneself ) implied in both συνειδός and conscientia, for two reasons. First, because “conscience” is etymologically connected to conscientia, which itself mirrors the Greek (con-scire against συν-οἶδα). And second, because the term “conscience” is itself a noun, so its use better reflects the nominal aspect that both συνειδός and conscientia exhibit at the turn of the era. See note 42. 3 “Guilt” is a highly-charged term, especially in light of the existing scholarship on “shame” and “guilt” in the ancient Greek and Roman cultures, as well as the ongoing debate on whether the notion of guilt originated with Christianity. These discussions are certainly pertinent to the study of the ancient idea of conscience. Dodds 1951 already argued that the notion of shame “belongs to the world of external events” while the “internalizing of conscience […] appears late and uncertainly in the Hellenic world” (at 36–37). However, my interest in the term here is limited to the forensic sphere, that is, I employ “guilt” to refer to the fact of having committed an offense, and I explore only the physical signs in which such “guilt” might be manifested in the body. See Konstan 2003, 2006: 91–110, 2022: 1–32. On the development of the idea of conscience in Christianity, see Dupont 1948; Sorabji 2014: 37–58; McGuckin 2021: 57–70; and Torrance 2021: 93–111.

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of conscience and the physiognomic descriptions Philo includes in Ios. 47–48. In order to do so, I have divided my contribution into two sections. In the first one, I examine the biblical text that Philo employed as the springboard for his interpretation of the Joseph narrative. Establishing the meaning of this base text will help illumine the particular emphasis Philo introduces into his paraphrase and identify the forensic terms he introduces in his rewriting. I pay particular attention to the interaction between the noun συνειδός and certain physical signs of guilt, and demonstrate that such association cannot be traced back within Greek literature prior to Philo. In the second section, I compare the role that the συνειδός plays in the exposure of Joseph’s crime to the role ascribed to the noun conscientia in Latin texts of forensic rhetoric. I then read the episode in Ios. 47–48 against Cicero’s narration of various court scenes found in his judicial speeches. This analysis will reveal that conscientia – like the συνειδός in Ios. 47– 48 – is regarded as an important piece of forensic evidence that can facilitate the exposure of the criminal, precisely through its association with certain physical signs. It will also emerge that Philo’s descriptions of conscience rest on the belief shared by Republican and Imperial authors that the spiritual realm can be accessed through the physical. His attention to the demeanor of Joseph matches the importance that Roman authors attach to reading the face and the eyes as a means to access a person’s state of mind, and resorts to the same dramatical principles to rework the story in Gen 39:7–20 into a narrative that invites the readers to become spectators at Joseph’s trial. The comparative literary approach described above rests on two important methodological assumptions. First, I consider Philo to be an exemplar of a “migrant author” whose writings navigate Jewish, Greek, and Roman traditions.4 While Philo’s indebtedness to the first two has long been studied, it is only recently that his works have begun to be appreciated in the context of the Roman Empire. In her landmark biography of Philo, published in 2018, Maren Niehoff made the case for seeing Philo’s diplomatic activities in Rome as the hermeneutical key to reading the Exposition, the historical, and the philosophical writings.5 In her view, these series are the result of a fruitful encounter with Roman perspectives on philosophy and new genres of writing where Philo self-consciously addresses a broader Roman audience unfamiliar with the basic tenets of Judaism. Building on her insights, I further explore how the Life of Joseph, specifically the episode narrated in Ios. 47–48, paraphrases the biblical narrative in Gen 39 in a distinctly Roman garb that would have appealed to elite circles in Rome. Second, and relatedly, Philonic studies have barely considered the Latin tradition as a primary 4 “Migrant” is the term used by De Jonge 2022 to refer to various Early Imperial Greek writers like Philo of Alexandria, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Nicolaus of Damascus, or Paul of Tarsus, who moved between Greek, Roman and local traditions. 5 Niehoff 2018: 1–22.

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source to contextualize Philo’s notion of conscience. Although various authors pointed decades ago to the similarities with Roman judicial and philosophical texts,6 Philo’s doctrine of conscience is yet to be seriously examined against a Roman background. Philip Bosman’s superb study of the σύνοιδα word group in Philo’s writings,7 published in 2003, explicitly excludes Latin texts from the range of sources examined.8 In my exploration, I appreciate this Latin tradition in its own right, and I show how the descriptions of conscience found in Ios. 47– 48 find their closest parallel – in syntactical form and meaning – in Latin texts of forensic rhetoric. Philo might very well have accessed these literary sources during his time in Rome9 and thus become acquainted with the forensic use of conscientia and with the theatrical principles used by Latin authors which, as we are about to see, also shaped his reworking of Ios. 47–48.

1. Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife: From the LXX to Philo Let us begin by examining the text that Philo employed as the springboard for his interpretation of the story of Joseph. His command of the Hebrew language must have been meagre at best.10 Hence it is widely accepted that he resorted to a 6 Chiefly, the seminal study by Klauck 1994, who already noticed that Philo’s “forensic connotations of conscience have been widely overlooked” (at 108); Wallis 1974, who gives in the footnotes various references to the writings of Cicero, Seneca, and Polybius; and Schönlein 1969 who, while not examining any examples from Philo’s writings, notes that the forensic connotations associated with conscientia are the fruit of its distinct placement within the legal jargon used in lawsuits by Roman advocates and prosecutors. 7 Bosman 2003: 12, I borrow his expression of the σύνοιδα word group to refer to the “various derivations from the same word stem, in our case specifically from the compound verb σύνοιδα.” 8 He notes, at 71, that “the word conscientia and its features in Latin literature are not the focus of the present study.” 9 Niehoff 2011 already entertained the possibility that Philo resorted to bilingual assistants. 10 The question of Philo’s facility with the Hebrew language is an old one, with the camp being divided between those who, in light of the 166 etymologies of Hebrew names deployed throughout the Philonic corpus, argue that Philo must have had a decent command of the Hebrew language, and those who bring his quotations of biblical verses in support of his exclusive reading of the Greek bible. Among the first group, see Wolfson 1947, at 89, who assumes that the more learned Jews in Alexandria “had a knowledge of it [Hebrew].” Daniel 1967, who makes the case for Philo’s knowledge of Hebrew on the basis of his familiarity with the Palestinian halacha which, in her view, was transmitted at this stage in Hebrew. Studies on Philo’s use of Hebrew etymologies have been carried out by Amir 1961: 297ff, who did not find the evidence strong enough to prove Philo’s knowledge of Hebrew; and, more recently, by Rajak 2009, 2014; and Pearce 2021: 415, who, following Rajak, concludes that “the central place given by Philo to the Hebrew etymologies strongly indicates that the Hebrew original remained fundamentally authoritative for him.” Among those arguing that Philo only had access to the Greek Bible, see Nikiprowetzky 1977: 50–96; Sandmel 1978: 112, who concludes that “I have not found a single instance in which he reflects either the necessity or the reality of having so checked [the Hebrew text]” and Sterling 2012a.

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Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, and discussion revolves around which of the translations available at the time in Alexandria might have served as Philo’s Vorlage for the composition of his commentaries and biographies. Sterling has recently examined Philo’s use of the text in Genesis throughout the Legum allegoriae as a case in point of how difficult it is to make a general assumption about which version of the Greek bible Philo read.11 Yet, as Sterling also admits, this issue becomes less compelling for the analysis of the treatises in the Exposition of the Law and the biographies, which contain comparatively fewer biblical citations. That said, I rely throughout the present study on the LXX as the base text for Philo’s paraphrase of the Joseph narrative and examine the MT version only when a significant divergence arises between the two. The episode in Gen 39:7–9 reads as follows: καὶ ἐγένετο μετὰ τὰ ῥήματα ταῦτα καὶ ἐπέβαλεν ἡ γυνὴ τοῦ κυρίου αὐτοῦ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς αὐτῆς ἐπὶ Ιωσηφ καὶ εἶπεν Κοιμήθητι μετ᾽ ἐμοῦ. ὁ δὲ οὐκ ἤθελεν, εἶπεν δὲ τῇ γυναικὶ τοῦ κυρίου αὐτοῦ Εἰ ὁ κύριός μου οὐ γινώσκει δι᾽ ἐμὲ οὐδὲν ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ αὐτοῦ καὶ πάντα, ὅσα ἐστὶν αὐτῷ, ἔδωκεν εἰς τὰς χεῖράς μου καὶ οὐχ ὑπερέχει ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ ταύτῃ οὐθὲν ἐμοῦ οὐδὲ ὑπεξῄρηται ἀπ᾽ ἐμοῦ οὐδὲν πλὴν σοῦ διὰ τὸ σὲ γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ εἶναι, καὶ πῶς ποιήσω τὸ ῥῆμα τὸ πονηρὸν τοῦτο καὶ ἁμαρτήσομαι ἐναντίον τοῦ θεοῦ.12 And after a while, his master’s wife laid her eyes on Joseph and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he did not consent and said to his master’s wife: “Since, on account of me, my master does not concern himself with anything in this house, and has placed everything he owns in my hands; and since nothing surpasses me in his house and he has not withheld anything from me except yourself, since you are his wife, how shall I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?”

In the verses immediately preceding, Joseph has been described as handsome (ὡραῖος) and good-looking (καλὸς τῷ εἴδει), which serves to explain why Potiphar’s wife takes notice of Joseph and develops a sexual interest in him. Joseph rejects her advances, after which the narrative breaks off with Joseph explaining in his own words the rationale behind his decision. His argument is built on two premises. First, Potiphar has entrusted Joseph with the management of his household and has placed so much trust in him that he does not even con11 Sterling 2012b: 89, writes that “we only need to compare the Greek text of the Bible that Philo cited with the major manuscripts of the LXX as we know it to realize that there were differences in the Greek translations.” To illustrate this, he brings examples of agreement between the text of Philo’s manuscripts and the MT in contrast to the LXX (see 99, 104–105). For instance, while in Gen 3:9 the MT reads ‫( איכה‬God asks Adam where he is), the LXX adds the name Αδάμ to clarify to whom is God talking to and thus reads, Ἀδάμ, ποῦ εἶ. Philo’s manuscripts, however, omit this LXX expansion and simply read ποῦ εἶ; Sterling also notes five instances where Philo’s manuscripts include expansions that are neither recorded in the LXX nor constitute a closer rendering of the MT (see 97, 104, 109). He concludes that Philo might have known “a form of the Greek text that was different than the LXX [and] freer in its translation than the LXX as we know it.” (112). 12 The Greek text is that of Wevers 1974.

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cern himself with its affairs. And second, Joseph occupies such an important position – almost equivalent to Potiphar’s, his master – that nothing in the house surpasses him, that is, “nothing exists” (οὐχ ὑπερέχει […] ἐμοῦ) in the house that is not under his supervision. Joseph is thus aware that he would commit a misdemeanor, and consequently break Potiphar’s trust, if he were to take into his own possession that which belongs to his master alone: his wife.13 Philo must have followed this reading, for he also has Joseph declare (Ios. 46): πάντ’ ἐπιτέτροφέ μοι τὰ οἰκεῖα, οὐδὲν οὐ μικρὸν οὐ μέγα ὑπεξῄρηται τὸ παράπαν δίχα σοῦ τῆς γυναικός. He has entrusted to me all his household belongings, and nothing at all, big or small, has been put aside except you, his wife.

The use of the neuter οὐδὲν shows that Joseph’s authority is established above the entire household and everything it contains. This might well include the household slaves, but it definitely excludes his master’s wife (δίχα σοῦ). Lying with his wife would represent the opposite of honoring Potiphar, whom Philo’s Joseph regards not only as his master (δεσπότης) but also as his benefactor (εὐεργέτης). Going back to Gen 39:7–9, the climax of the argumentation comes in the last verse, as Joseph asserts that committing adultery is a wicked thing (τὸ ῥῆμα τὸ πονηρὸν τοῦτο) that would entail sinning against God (ἁμαρτήσομαι ἐναντίον τοῦ θεοῦ). It is impossible to discuss any forensic terms in this passage, since there are none. The Septuagint presents this episode as a domestic crisis between Joseph, Potiphar, and his wife, but it does not resort to any judicial jargon in doing so. Adultery is regarded as a sinful act, but the text does not allude to any legal considerations, nor does it specify what sort of punishment awaits the adulterer. 1.1. The Forensic Style of Ios. 47–48: Crime, Evidence, and Exposure In comparison to the short dialogue recorded in the LXX, Philo expands Joseph’s words into a long monologue (Ios. 42–48), consciously, it seems, since he brings Joseph’s address to an end by acknowledging the length of his speech (πολλὰ τοιαῦτα συνείροντος).14 It is significant that Philo inserts this long address precisely when Potiphar’s wife is attempting to drag Joseph into bed. His decision to freeze this dramatic action and allow Joseph a defense speech, relates to Philo’s use of anecdotes as a literary device to illustrate the protagonist’s per13 Adultery was indeed considered a matter of proprietary misdemeanor in Ancient Near Eastern culture. See Kornfeld 1950. The notion does not seem to have been completely foreign to Israel. In Deut 22:29, the raped woman is seen as “damaged goods”: the criminal is required to provide monetary compensation to the father, he then must marry the woman, and is not allowed to divorce her. See also von Rad 1973. 14 Philo, Ios. 49.

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sonality.15 By expanding the confrontation between Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, Philo creates an opportunity to emphasize the purity and virtue of the Jewish statesman. Throughout these paragraphs, Joseph is depicted as a figure that behaves according to the Roman codes of morality. Philo, for instance, expounds the reasons that led Joseph to reject the allurements of the Egyptian woman and thus illustrates his exceptional character. He is said to have “vigorously opposed” her (ἐρρωμένως ἐναντιουμένῳ) out of a sense of decency and “self-control” (σωφροσύνη) that nature had implanted in him. The ability to restrain one’s passions and desires features often in Roman discourses as one of the first traits which those who are born to rule over others must master. In his monograph on the Catilinarian conspiracy, Sallust presents continentia as one of the virtues of the military and political leaders that elite Romans should strive to acquire. When continentia is replaced by lubido – the indulgence of the appetite – governments fall and weaker hands assume power. As Niehoff has shown,16 Philo’s Life of Joseph follows the conventions of writing shared by Roman biographers like Cornelius Nepos or Cicero, who chose to depict their heroes in real-life situations17 as a literary device to represent their character,18 and provide moralizing examples – the exempla19 – that might stimulate the readers to imitate the portrayed deeds. Thus, Philo’s narration of Joseph’s exemplary response to the solicitations of the Egyptian woman can be compared, for instance, to Nicolaus of Damascus’ Life of Augustus,20 where the soon to become princeps senatus is de15 Examples include Mos. 1.51; Legat. 12, 14–17, 22–25, 42, 162–165; Flacc. 2–11, 78. On Philo’s use of anecdotes, see Niehoff 2018: 109–130. 16 Niehoff 2018: 109–130. 17 In Fam. 5.12.5, Cicero encapsulates the interest shared by Roman biographers in presenting how these viri excellentes navigated the vicissitudes of life: Etenim ordo ipse annalium mediocriter nos retinet quasi enumeratione fastorum; at viri saepe excellentis ancipites variique casus habent admirationem, exspectationem, laetitiam, molestiam, spem, timorem / “For the actual chronological record of events exercises no very powerful fascination upon us; it is like the recital of an almanac. But in the doubtful and various fortunes of an outstanding individual we often find surprise, suspense, joy, distress, hope and fear.” See also Plutarch, Alex. 1.2. On the Roman practice of setting exemplary models as a method for moral instruction, see Langlands 2011. 18 The literary interest in the character of excellent individuals crystallized in the proliferation of the genre of biography (βίος). See the classical studies by Leo 1901, who drew out a typology for the composition of ancient biographies; Stuart 1928; Pohlenz 1933, who made the character the focal point for the study of ancient biographies; and, more recently, Stadter 2007: 528–540, with a lucid introduction; Hägg 2011; and Schorn 2014: 678–733 with a very informative survey of Hellenistic material. 19 See Langlands 2018, and Roller 2018. 20 Nicolaus, a close friend of King Herod the Great, accompanied him several times to Rome. As an ambassador of the king of Judaea, he also paid frequent visits to Augustus and most likely spent his last years in Rome. On Nicolaus’s life, see Toher 2017: 1–21. Moreover, Nicolaus’ Universal History served as one of the sources for the composition of the Antiquities of the Jews as Josephus himself tells us (AJ, 1.7.2). On Nicolaus’ work as historian and its reception by Josephus, see Wacholder 1962: 58–64; and Toher 1989. The figure of Nicolaus, characterized by De

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scribed as a youth of goodly appearance (εὐπρέπεια, against Philo’s εὐμορφίᾳ in Ios. 40) and noble birth (εὐγένεια, see Ios. 106) who, “exhibiting excellence of nature” (φύσεως ἀκρότητα δηλώσας), did not give in to the many sexual allurements he was exposed to.21 As I shall examine in the next section, Philo’s investment in describing the physicality of Joseph’s hypothetical reaction after committing adultery engages directly with the use of physiognomics in Latin rhetorical texts. But it is also part of his strategy to portray Joseph to his Roman audience as an upright individual who would naturally feel ashamed of having defiled his master’s bed. Seneca, for instance, denounces to Lucilius that many men “do not blush” (non erubescunt) at adultery or theft.22 Philo’s Joseph, by contrast, does not regard adultery as a thing to boast of, but rather as an offense that would affect his countenance. In paraphrasing the biblical account, Philo also includes a long digression into the legal treatment of adultery which is missing in the Septuagint text. This expansion, too, taps into the social norms and expectations shared by his implied Roman audience. Joseph’s description of what is customary among other peoples, namely, to allow men to indulge in licentious practices past the age of fourteen,23 fits perfectly with the Roman practice to allow upper-class adolescents some time (ludus aetati) to give free rein to their passions and engage in activities like gambling, drinking, whoring, or love affairs.24 In a similar vein, the gravity attached to the crime of adultery (μοιχεία) and the legal provisions set against the adulterer, which Joseph mentions in his speech, must have struck Roman readers as familiar. He regards adultery as “the greatest of crimes” (τοῦ μεγίστου τῶν ἀδικημάτων), a statement somewhat surprising if one compares adultery to other offenses such as murder or pederasty. Joseph’s words make sense in the context of Augustus’ moral legislation and the seriousness with which Roman authors treated adultery at that time.25 In an attempt to restore the moral and political health of the res publica, Augustus passed the lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus in 18 bce,26 which sought to promote birth rates and legitimate unions. Against the background of this law, Joseph emerges as an ideal Jonge as a “migrant writer,” provides insight into Philo’s literary activity, which also navigates Greek, Roman, and local identities. See De Jonge 2022. 21 Nic. Dam. J 127 = M 99.64–71. The Greek edition is the recently published by Toher 2017. 22 Sen. Ep. 87.23. 23 Philo, Ios. 43. 24 It is Cicero who provides the locus classicus of the Roman leniency towards the behavior of the youth (Cael. 12.28). See also Varro Men. 87. On ludus, see Vesley 1996: 132–173. 25 Niehoff 2018: 145–147, 157–160. 26 The date is suggested by Cassius Dio (54.16.1). On the dating of the Augustan laws, see Arangio-Ruiz 1977. The law is mentioned by first- and second-century authors like Tacitus (Ann. 2.51), Cassius Dio (54.16.1), and Aullus Gellius (NA 2.15). In the Justinian legal sources, the law is discussed in Dig. 23, 24, and 38. See also the discussions Raditsa 1980; Corbett 1930: 31–39; Treggiari 1991: 60–80; and McGinn 2003: 129–135.

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member of the Roman upper class. He not only possesses the continentia that Sallust and other writers deemed necessary to guarantee political success and stability, but also makes clear to Potiphar’s wife that he would not engage in sexual intercourse “before the lawful union” (πρὸ δὴ σύνοδος νόμιμος), and stresses that the end which members of the Jewish nation seek within wedlock is not “pleasure but the begetting of legitimate children” (οὐχ ἡδονὴν ἀλλὰ γνησίων παίδων σποράν).27 Just a few months later,28 a companion law was passed by the Emperor, the lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis, which aimed to repress non-marital sexual relationships such as adultery (adulterium) and criminal fornication (stuprum).29 Strictly speaking, this law did not modify the customary punishment reserved for the adulterer who was caught in the act.30 Dionysius of Halicarnassus mentions that the wronged husband could judge his wife privately and eventually put her to death during the Rome of the kings,31 and Cato notes that during the Republican era the husband had the right to kill (ius occidendi) his wife if found in flagrante delicto.32 Regardless of how often Roman husbands did in fact exercise such a right, the lex Iulia continued to allow them to take justice into their own hands, while at the same time clearly delimiting who could and could not be slain.33 Thus, for instance, the husband was not permitted by the law to kill his wife if she was found guilty, but was allowed to kill his wife’s lover provided the lover was an infamis, that is, an individual who did not enjoy the legal protections 27 Philo, Ios. 43. In pointing to the begetting of children as the chief purpose of marriage, Philo engages with the position held by Roman Stoics like Musonius Rufus, who is said to have taught that Βίου καὶ γενέσεως παίδων κοινωνίαν κεφάλαιον εἶναι γάμου / “Community of life and the begetting of children are the primary end of marriage” (Muson. Diatr. 13.1). 28 See also the chronological chart for the Augustan leges Iuliae found in Treggiari 1991: 520–521. 29 On the provisions of the law, see Mommsen 1899: 688–699; Raditsa 1980: 278–339; Corbett 1930: 133–145; Treggiari 1991: 277–298, 454ff; McGinn 2003: 140–215; and Torrent 2016. 30 See Goodenough 1929; McGinn 1971; and Jacobs 2015. 31 Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.25, see also Suet. Tib. 35. 32 As recounted by Aulus Gellius, NA 23. 33 The extant sources consistently mention the certae personae whom the law permitted the husband to kill with impunity. The jurist Paul, for instances, writes (Coll. 4.3.1): Certae autem enumerantur personae, quas viro liceat occidere in adulterio deprehensa uxore, quamvis uxorem non liceat / “Certain persons are enumerated, whom it is lawful for a man to kill when caught committing adultery with his wife, although it is not lawful to kill the wife.” The Latin text is that of Hyamson 1913, which follows the Codex Berolinensis, one of the three manuscripts in which the work is preserved. On the manuscript tradition, see Schulz 1946, and, more recently, Frakes 2011: 35–51. In a similar vein, in the Iustinian Codex one finds allusions to the category of people the husband could legally slay: (9.9.4): Gracchus, quem Numerius in adulterio noctu deprehensum interfecit, si eius conditionis fuit, ut per legem Iuliam impune occidi potuerit, quod legitime factum est, nullam poenam meretur / “If Gracchus, whom Numerius killed in an act of adultery in the night, was one of those persons who could be killed with impunity under the Julian law, then, since the act was lawful, he deserved no punishment.” The Latin text is that of Frier & Blume 2016. The italics are mine.

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of a Roman citizen as was the case with slaves, gladiators, or prostitutes.34 The third-century jurist Paul explicitly lists slaves (servi) and freedmen (liberti) as two of the categories of men whom the lex Iulia allowed the husband to slay if found to be his wife’s lover.35 This legal provision illuminates Joseph’s confrontation with the Egyptian woman, for Joseph presents himself precisely as a slave (δοῦλος) who had been made a free man (ἐλεύθερος) by Potiphar.36 At first glance, Joseph’s digression into the legal provisions against adultery, namely, that “everyone in every place” (πανταχοῦ πάντες) is of the same mind when it comes to dealing with the adulterer and that it is customary to “deliver unjudged the individuals caught in the act into the hands of the those who have discovered them” (ἀκρίτους ἐκδιδόντες τοὺς ἁλόντας τοῖς πεφωρακόσι), could simply be taken to be a general allusion to the Greco-Roman practice. These words, however, are immediately followed by the praise Joseph directs to Potiphar for welcoming him into his house and making him a freedman. The proximity between these paragraphs in the speech of Joseph, one explaining the usual legal procedure to deal with the adulterer and the other describing how he first entered Potiphar’s house as a slave to eventually become a freedman, makes the whole scene congruent with the particular provision that the lex Iulia envisaged against the freedmen caught in the act of adultery. According to the law, a slave or freedman could immediately be put to death by the husband if caught committing adultery in the house,37 a scenario that matches the scene presented by Philo. While the Septuagint only informs us that “none of the household [servants] were inside” (καὶ οὐδεὶς ἦν τῶν ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ ἔσω), Philo is quick to specify that it was Joseph’s master – the only person who could have exerted the ius occidendi against Joseph according to Roman law – who was absent from the house in the market (ἐξ ἀγορᾶς). Then again, once Potiphar has returned home, the Septuagint phrases his wife’s complaint in the following way: εἰσήγαγεν ἡμῖν παῖδα ῾Εβραῖον (“He brought in with us a Hebrew lad”). Philo, however, is interested in stressing the inferior social status of Joseph vis-à-vis Potiphar and puts the term θεράπων in the mouth of the Egyptian woman: “ἤγαγες” ἔφη 34 On infamia, see Greenidge 1894; Edwards 1997. On the status of the infames under the Augustan law on adultery, see McGinn 1971: 21–69. 35 Paul, Coll. 4.12.3: Maritus in adulterio deprehensos non alios quam infames et eos qui corpore quaestum faciunt, servos etiam et libertos excepta uxore, quam prohibetur, occidere potest / “A husband may kill none of those caught in adultery but the infamous and those who make bodily gain, slaves and freedmen, with the exception of the wife, which is forbidden.” 36 Philo, Ios. 47. 37 Like Paul, Macer also includes the libertus and the servus among the list of persons of inferior status whom the husband could lawfully slay (Dig. 48.5.25): Marito quoque adulterum uxoris suae occidere permittitur, sed non quemlibet […] quive libertus eius mariti uxorisve, patris matris, filii filiae utrius eorum fuerit […] quive servus erit / “It is also permitted for a husband to kill his wife’s adulterer, but not just anyone […] whosoever shall be a freedman of his husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter of either of them […] whosoever shall be a slave.”

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“θεράποντα ἡμῖν παῖδα Ἑβραῖον […] (“You brought in with us, she said, a Hebrew lad as a servant”). As a matter of fact, the Septuagint makes no mention of Joseph’s transition from slave to freedman, which further indicates that Philo might have written this episode of adultery between the master’s wife and the master’s freedman with this particular Roman law in mind. After having detailed the legal consequences he would face if he were to commit adultery, Philo’s Joseph concludes his speech by envisioning how the events would unfold if he were to lie with Potiphar’s wife. Let us read now Ios. 47–48 and examine how this hypothetical confrontation is depicted by Philo in a distinctly forensic garb: τίνι ψυχῇ παραδεξάμενος τὸ ἀνοσιούργημα τοῦτο; προσβλέψω δὲ τίσιν ὀφθαλμοῖς ὁ σιδηροῦς ἐγώ; τὸ συνειδὸς ἐλλαμβανόμενον ὀρθοῖς ὄμμασιν οὐκ ἐάσει προσβλέπειν, κἂν δυνηθῶ λανθάνειν· λήσομαι δ’ οὐδαμῶς· εἰσὶ γὰρ ἐξετασταὶ μυρίοι τῶν λάθρα δρωμένων, οἷς οὐ θέμις ἡσυχάζειν. ἐῶ λέγειν ὅτι, κἂν μηδεὶς ἕτερος αἴσθηται ἢ συναισθόμενος μὴ κατείπῃ, μηνυτὴς οὐδὲν ἧττον αὐτὸς γενήσομαι κατ’ ἐμαυτοῦ τῷ χρώματι, τῷ βλέμματι, τῇ φωνῇ, καθάπερ μικρῷ πρότερον εἶπον, ὑπὸ τοῦ συνειδότος ἐλεγχόμενος· εἰ δὲ καὶ μηδεὶς κατερεῖ, τὴν πάρεδρον τοῦ θεοῦ δίκην καὶ τῶν πραγμάτων ἔφορον οὔτε δέδιμεν οὔτ’ αἰδούμεθα. With what soul would I have taken upon me (lit. accept) this unholy act? With what eyes will I look at [him], iron-hearted though I be? Conscience will seize [me] and not allow [me] to look [him] straight in the eyes even if I could escape detection. But in no way would I go unnoticed, for there are thousands of examiners of my secret doings who must not remain silent; and even if no one noticed or reported the knowledge which he shares with me, none the less I shall turn informer against myself through my color, my look, my voice, exposed as I said just now by [my] conscience. And even if no one denounces me, have we no fear or respect for justice, the co-adjutor of God, who surveys all our doings?

The attentive reader will have noticed that Philo introduces various terms – the nouns μηνυτής and δίκη; and the verbs λανθάνειν, ἐλέγχειν, κατεῖπον, and κατερέω – missing in Gen 39:7–9. These vocabulary items feature prominently in the Greek legal proceedings and court trials recounted by the Attic orators. The reason for their inclusion in these paragraphs relates to Philo’s decision to paraphrase this biblical episode in a language that is reminiscent of an actual court scene.38 As discussed, the assumption throughout Joseph’s speech (Ios. 42–48) is that Potiphar could not have detected the adultery in a straightforward manner for he had just returned from the market. Philo was well aware that this type of adultery needed to be forensically established before a verdict could be reached.39 38 As occurs elsewhere in the Life of Joseph. See, for instance, Ios. 214–215, where Philo paraphrases the detention of Joseph’s brothers by the steward (Gen 44:6–9) by recourse to technical verbs such as ἁλίσκομαι, ἀπολογέομαι, συναγορεύειν and judicial figures like the κατήγορος and the δικαστὴς that are missing in the Septuagint text. 39 In his discussion on adultery found in the third book of the legal treatise De Specialibus Legibus (3.52), Philo distinguishes between those adulteries detected on the spot (αὐτόφωροι) or established by means of confirmatory proof (ἐλέγχοις πιστουμένας) and those that remain

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For Potiphar, this would require conducting some sort of investigation, that is, to hear both parties, to interrogate any potential witnesses, to examine the evidence at hand, etc. Instead, Philo tells us, Potiphar blindly believed his wife’s accusation without inquiring any further into the matter. His decision to imprison Joseph was not the result of a fair judicial process, and so Philo declares: ἅπερ ἀληθῆ νομίσας ὁ δεσπότης εἶναι κελεύει τὸν ἄνθρωπον εἰς εἱρκτὴν ἀπαγαγεῖν δυσὶ τοῖς μεγίστοις ἁμαρτών, ἑνὶ μὲν ὅτι μὴ μεταδοὺς ἀπολογίας ἀκρίτως κατέγνω τοῦ μηδὲν ἠδικηκότος ὡς τὰ μέγιστα παρανομήσαντος.40 The master, deeming this to be true, orders him to be taken to prison and in so doing commits two great mistakes. First, without giving him any opportunity to defend himself, he convicted whom had done no wrong of having committed the greatest crime.

The point of Philo’s critique is clear: Potiphar did not make any provisions to have Joseph fairly tried and convicted him without listening to his defense or carefully examining the piece of evidence adduced against him: the woman’s robe (Ios. 52). This gives the hermeneutic key to Joseph’s speech in Ios. 47–48. Philo expands the short dialogue recorded in the LXX to allow his Joseph the defense speech he is originally denied by Potiphar. Such juridical intricacies also come to explain why these paragraphs are packed with forensic terms. Throughout these lines, Joseph envisions how that process of investigation would unfold and how his crime would eventually be detected once Potiphar returned home. As such, Philo puts in the mouth of Joseph many terms that are absent from the Septuagint text and whose primary semantic field is that of forensic oratory;41 Philo’s terms structure the reconstructed scene around the exposure and concealment of the crime. Thus, for instance, Joseph acknowledges that the odds of going undetected (κἂν δυνηθῶ λανθάνειν) are very slim: some external informer might report him (κἂν μηδεὶς ἕτερος αἴσθηται ἢ συναισθόμενος μὴ κατείπῃ) or denounce him (εἰ δὲ καὶ μηδεὶς κατερεῖ) before Potiphar. And, even if that were not to happen, Joseph himself would become his own informer (μηνυτὴς αὐτὸς γενήσομαι κατ’ ἐμαυτοῦ). Philo also introduces in his rewriting another term missing in the Septuagint account, namely, the neuter participle τὸ συνειδός. As a matter of fact, this term does not occur at all in the Septuagint.42 In the passage at stake, Philo employs a matter of conjecture (τὰς δὲ καθ’ ὑπόνοιαν). While those of the first type are condemned by the law – as Joseph also notes in Ios. 44 –, the truth about those which fall within the second category needs to be established before the judges (καταστὰς ἐπὶ τῶν δικαστῶν). 40 Philo, Ios. 52. 41 Examples from Greek judicial texts abound. The same cluster of forensic terms Philo employs in Ios. 47–48 also occurs frequently in the writings of Athenian rhetors. See, for instance, Lys. 4.10, 16.1; Antiph. 6.25; Isoc. 15.43; Dem. 49.56. More interestingly, this constellation of terms is also associated in these texts with the σύνοιδα word group. See Lys. 7.16 and Antiph. 5.52. As Bosman 2003 notes at 183, “forensic terminology has been part of the word group’s legacy.” 42 As for the verbal equivalent of conscience, σύνοιδα τι ἐμαυτῷ, it occurs only once in Job 27:6; while the other common synonym for συνειδός, συνείδησις, occurs only three times in

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τὸ συνειδός on two occasions and ascribes to it a central role in the detection of the adultery, as it is the bodily response triggered by Joseph’s conscience that becomes the main forensic device for the exposure of his hypothetical crime before Potiphar.43 Let us examine each of these formulations. In the first one, the neuter συνειδός is accompanied by a passive participle (ἐλλαμβανόμενον) and together they act as the subject of the clause. That is, it is the “seizing” or the “grasping” conscience which would prevent Joseph from looking Potiphar straight in the eyes (τὸ συνειδὸς ἐλλαμβανόμενον ὀρθοῖς ὄμμασιν οὐκ ἐάσει προσβλέπειν). The context makes clear that this συνειδός is, first and foremost, the consciousness of a crime, consciousness which, if the adultery is committed – hence the future tense ἐᾱσει – and Joseph is confronted about it, will affect his countenance. The syntactical role played by τὸ συνειδός as the subject of the clause also reflects the meaning of this expression: the συνειδός is described by Joseph almost like an autonomous force beyond his will (he is the implied object of οὐκ ἐάσει) that will prompt an unsolicited bodily reaction. Philo thus conceives of the conscience as a situational reflex,44 an inner discomfort that gets activated in specific situations, such as judicial confrontation, and which comes to the fore in the body of the accused.45 The choice of ἐλλαμβανόμενον as the participle modifying the noun also deserves some comment. The verb λαμβάνω is often employed in Greek literature to refer to the sudden seizure or turmoil brought about by the feelings and passions. In a passage from the Trachiniae, Sophocles describes Heracles as being overtaken (ληφθέντι) by a sickness (τῇ νόσῳ);46 and terror is said to take hold Eccl 10:20, Sir 42:18, and Wis 17:10. For a detailed analysis of the lexical history of the Greek forms for conscience, namely, the verbal expression σύνοιδα τι ἐμαυτῷ and its late nominal equivalents, συνειδός, συνείδησις, and σύνεσις, see Pierce 1955: 13–59; Maurer 1964: 899–913; Eckstein 1983: 35–71; Bosman 2003: 49–105. Other studies exist, but these are the ones that devote more attention to the lexical forms. Chadwick 1974 and Sorabji 2014: 11–36 also considered as expressions of conscience lexical forms that do not stem from the compound verb, συν-ειδέναι, such as Socrates’s δαίμων. Bosman provides the most comprehensive bibliography on the topic I have encountered (see Bosman 2003: 285–295). Contributions published after his landmark study that focus on Philo include Bosman 2006; Pastorelli 2011; Forschner 2020; and Niehoff 2022. 43 On the use of τὸ συνειδός in this passage, see Eckstein 1983: 125; Bosman 2003: 155–156; and Koskeniemi 2010: 140. The latter’s interpretation is somewhat misleading, as it blindly assumes that Philo’s usage is Stoic and declares, without any further explanation, that the term is introduced in his rewriting as a “link between Greek thought and early Christian religion.” 44 I owe this insight to Catharine Edwards, with whom I had the chance to discuss this article early in 2023. 45 Niehoff 2022: 379 has recently studied this forensic understanding of the conscience in the context of Philo’s treatise on freedom, the Probus. There, too, the συνειδός is also shown to physically inhibit the individual “allerdings erst durch eine Konfrontation von außen.” 46 Soph. Trach. 445–446. Sickness (νόσος) as a moral condition and the shame (αἰσχύνη) resulting from it are two recurrent themes that accompany some of the first occurrences of the σύνοιδα word group in the literature. See, for instance, Eur. Hipp. 38–40, 405, 418–422, and Ion. 288.

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of Diomedes’ heart (μένος ἔλλαβε θυμόν) in the face of battle.47 This upheaval is not confined to the realm of the mind but can also affect the body in very concrete ways. A guilty conscience, for instance, can “silence” and “put a bridle” to the tongue (ἐπιστομίζω).48 Philo, too, likes to employ the compound forms of the verb λαμβάνω to describe situations wherein a disturbance or feeling has overtaken the individual. In Ios. 211, for instance, Joseph’s brothers are suddenly halted by Pharaoh’s steward. This unforeseen turn of events catches them by surprise and leaves them in great distress (αἰφνίδιος καὶ ἀπροσδόκητος ταραχὴ καταλαμβάνει). Philo makes clear here that such distress is also felt in the body, for just a few lines afterward he tells us that Joseph’s brothers “were dumbstruck with their mouths shut tight” (ἀχανεῖς ἐπάγησαν). What these examples illustrate about the expression τὸ συνειδός ἐλλαμβανόμενον in Ios. 47 is that the knowledge that Joseph would hold about his supposed crime goes beyond a simple epistemic state. The awareness of guilt elicits an emotional response of distress that finds expression through the body. It is the disturbance of his conscience which would cause Joseph’s eyes to remain lowered and would impede him from looking straight into Potiphar’s face. The second occurrence of τὸ συνειδός found in this passage – ὑπὸ τοῦ συνειδότος ἐλεγχόμενος – follows a similar pattern to the previous one. Συνειδός is accompanied by a passive participle (ἐλεγχόμενος), and together they function as the agent of the clause, as indicated by the preposition ὑπό. That is, it is the “exposing conscience” (τὸ συνειδός ἐλέγχων) which will cause Joseph to become his own informer (μηνυτὴς αὐτὸς γενήσομαι κατ’ ἐμαυτοῦ). The nominal aspect of συνειδός comes again to the fore, as its syntactical role is that of the agent which endorses the action described by Joseph. In other words, the συνειδός operates as the causal agent of Joseph’s hypothetical self-betrayal before Potiphar: once activated, his conscience will trigger the appearance of certain signs upon Joseph’s face, thus turning him into his own informer. As with the first occurrence, conscience is shown to be an entity that only acts retrospectively, that is, once the crime has already been committed. The attentive reader, however, might notice that συνειδός is paired with a verb in the future tense – γενήσομαι – as Joseph is envisioning what his reaction would be if he were to lie with Potiphar’s wife. This should not lead to confusion. Joseph is only considering the consequences that would follow this act. The potential perpetrator is conscious of the future response of his conscience but, even in that hypothetical scenario, the συνειδός would only be activated once the deed is carried out. In this second instance, the role of συνειδός is also linked with the appearance of various physical signs upon Joseph’s face, as the scrutiny of his conscience is said to make him undergo a change in his color, his countenance, and his voice 47 48

Hom. Il. 23.468. Philo, Det. 23.

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(τῷ χρώματι, τῷ βλέμματι, τῇ φωνῇ). That this symptomatology is prompted by his conscience is explicitly acknowledged by Joseph, who declares that he would be convicted “as I said just now” (καθάπερ μικρῷ πρότερον εἶπον) by the συνειδός. This gives the key to understanding the workings of conscience at play in these paragraphs. The temporal marker πρότερον should be read as a direct allusion to the first description of συνειδός found in Ios. 47 (τὸ συνειδὸς ἐλλαμβανόμενον ὀρθοῖς ὄμμασιν οὐκ ἐάσει προσβλέπειν). This is the first occurrence of the σύνοιδα word group in the biography, and Joseph’s speech only begins in Ios. 42, which means there is no other previous occurrence Joseph could be alluding to. The term μικρῷ further indicates that Joseph is going back to the words he just uttered a few seconds ago. By connecting these two statements about the συνειδός, Philo’s Joseph makes clear that the two descriptions of conscience he has given in his speech should be read as examples of one and the same phenomenon: his knowledge of the crime – his συνειδός – will trigger the appearance of various bodily reactions – an evasive gaze, a faltering voice, the coloring of the face – which will eventually betray him before Potiphar. 1.2. The Σύνοιδα Word Group and the Physical Signs of Guilt in Ios. 47–48 Considering how much Philo invests throughout these paragraphs in explaining the forensic procedure that Potiphar should follow to deal with his wife’s accusation and in reconstructing Joseph’s words as some sort of defense speech, one ought to regard Philo’s description of Joseph’s appearance as serving the same purpose. The bodily symptoms Philo associates with the συνειδός are not just a literary device to visualize Joseph’s inner turmoil. They are regarded as a clear piece of forensic evidence and play a central role in the exposure of Joseph’s crime. Otherwise, if Philo had not intended to present these specific signs as the physical display of the guilty conscience of the accused, he could just as well have described Joseph’s distress without any reference to the συνειδός as he does elsewhere in the biography.49 Yet, the fact that the arousal of these signs is causally connected to the awareness of culpability bespeaks Philo’s intent to treat these signs as a type of physical evidence offered to the viewer whenever the accused – Joseph, in this case – is confronted in public. As such, Philo’s understanding of conscience in these paragraphs is akin to a situational reflex that 49 The Life of Joseph contains various instances where Philo conveys internal states of distress through concrete bodily descriptions without any reference whatsoever to conscience. In Ios. 225–226, for instance, Judah pleads with Joseph’s steward – who has just found the silver cup inside Benjamin’s sack – that their younger brother be allowed to return to his father and he himself be taken as a slave. If Benjamin were to be taken captive, Judah continues, he and his brothers would not be able to look their father straight in the eyes upon their return: τίσι δ’ ὀφθαλμοῖς αὐτὸν θεάσασθαι δίχα τούτου δυνησόμεθα; / “With what eyes could we look at him without the boy?”

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gets activated whenever the individual is confronted, and causes the criminal to undergo certain symptoms of physical inhibition. The συνειδός that Joseph dreads is not an allegorical device for the interpretation of guilt, it rather involves the vivid psychological reaction felt in the body that the criminal experiences when facing accusation. While the forensic terminology that accompanies the two σύνοιδα variants in Ios. 47–48 can hardly be regarded as a break from the Greek tradition, for it was the corpus of the classical orators that witnessed the first accumulation of occurrences of the word-group,50 the explicit association of the συνειδός with the physical signs of guilt listed by Philo in Ios. 47–48 finds no clear precedent in Greek literature. In fairness, the Greeks were already familiar with these types of psychosomatic signs, and a “physiognomic consciousness” – to borrow Evan’s words – can be detected already in Homer.51 Physiognomic descriptions, that is, descriptions that connect the individual’s inner nature with his physical features, are to be found in a wide range of fields like medicine, philosophy, drama, or rhetoric. Aristotle would often mention and reflect upon52 the influence that body and soul exert upon each other. In the Categories, for instance, he notes how the names of the different colors stem from the fact that they spring from passions and affections. Thus, “when men are ashamed, they blush” (αἰσχυνθεὶς γάρ τις ἐρυθρὸς ἐγένετο), and “when seized by fear become pale” (καὶ φοβηθεὶς ὠχρὸς).53 The most famous treatise on physiognomics of the Hellenistic period, the Pseudo-Aristotelian Physiognomica, notes that each of the forms (σχήματα) and the affections (παθήματα) displayed on the face (ἐπὶ τῶν προσώπων) correspond to a specific passion; one’s expression comes to resemble one’s inner disposition.54 This treatise even catalogues a wide spectrum of passions and affections according to the specific signs (σημεῖα) that accompany them. It identifies, for instance, the signs that the cowardly man display as “paleness on the face” (περὶ τὸ πρόσωπον ὕπωχρος), and “feeble and blinking eyes” (ὄμματα ἀσθενῆ καὶ σκαρδαμύττοντα); or the features of the shameless man as “hotblooded and thick eyelids” (βλέφαρα ὕφαιμα καὶ παχέα).55 As far as Ios. 47–48 is concerned, some of the terminology employed by Philo to describe the physical signs of guilt that Joseph might display finds a close parallel in the works of Greek tragedians and historians. Euripides puts the ex50 See the analytical index provided by Pierce 1955: 132–147, and the numerous citations from Antiphon, Isaeus, Isocrates, and Demosthenes discussed by Bosman 2003: 49–76. 51 Excellent treatments on the status of physiognomy in Antiquity include Evans 1969; BoysStones 2007; Stavru 2019. 52 Arist. Hist. An. 488b12–25, 491a20, 491b12, 492a1, 491b12–18 and 23–26, 492a1–4, 7–12 and 30–b3, 494a16–18, 497a7, 538b2, 588a, 608a11–21, 608a21–b18, 610b20–614b30, 629b5–10; An. pr. 70b7–32; De. an. 403a16–24; Eth. Nic. 1123b6, 1128a10; Gen. an. 769b18–20; 774a36. 53 Arist. Cat. 8.9b 54 Ps.-Arist. Phgn. 805a1, 806b29–30. 55 Ps.-Arist. Phgn. 807b5, 807b30.

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pression ὀρθοῖς ὄμμασιν in the mouth of Clytemnestra when she finds out that she has been fooled by Agamemnon into thinking that her daughter Iphigenia would marry Achilles.56 This moment of realization impedes her from looking Achilles directly in the eyes. Sophocles also has Oedipus reproduce this expression towards the end of the Oedipus Tyrannus. The Theban king has just discovered his true identity and realizes that it was he who slayed his father Laius. He now tries to console himself and wonders with what eyes he could have looked at his father if he had gone to Hades (ἐγὼ γὰρ οὐκ οἶδ᾿ ὄμμασιν ποίοις βλέπων πατέρα), or with what eyes he could have gazed at the city of Thebes (ὀρθοῖς ἔμελλον ὄμμασιν τούτους ὁρᾶν) if he had known that he was the source of its pollution.57 In his Hellenica, Xenophon has the Spartan king Archidamus harangue the assembled troops and exhort them to leave behind any shame so as to be able to look people in the face (ἀναβλέψωμεν ὀρθοῖς ὄμμασιν).58 The reasons that might impede an individual from looking someone directly in the eyes will inevitably vary across texts, as do the moral values and standards that society commends and the sanctions it sustains. For now, it suffices to show how this expression is also used in Greek literature to express physical inhibition. Prior to Philo, the closest example we have of an inhibited gaze in connection with the σύνοιδα word group is found in Demosthenes’s speech against his political adversary Aeschines. The rhetor lists several episodes that illustrate the vile character of Aeschines (192–200). In the preceding verses, he recounts how his enemy once attended a banquet hosted by Xenophron. Aeschines had asked a freeborn woman to dance in front of him and she had refused. Irritated, and in a drunken state, Aeschines had asked for a whip and, stripping the girl of her dress, had given her a number of lashes. Demosthenes then declared: Καὶ τοιαῦτα συνειδὼς αὑτῷ πεπραγμένα ὁ ἀκάθαρτος οὗτος τολμήσει βλέπειν εἰς ὑμᾶς.59 Being conscious of these facts, that filth will dare to look to you.

The reason why Demosthenes now derides Aeschines is precisely for his impertinent gaze at the jury, in spite of being “aware within himself ” (συνειδὼς αὑτῷ) of his past misdemeanor. Demosthenes’ words imply that anyone conscious of having committed such a crime should naturally refrain from looking people in the face. Strictly speaking, this is not a description of an inhibited gaze arising from a guilty conscience, but rather of someone who seems to have suppressed or disregarded that physical reaction and is now vilified for it. At any rate, Demosthenes must have been familiar with this reaction as the phenomenon he describes here represents the other side of the coin: it is despicable for an individual who knows he has committed a crime to dare (τολμάω) to 56

Eur. IT. 851 Soph. OT. 1371; 1385. 58 Xen. Hell. 7.30. 59 Dem. 19.199. The Greek text is that of Butcher 1903. 57

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look someone in the face60 instead of feeling inhibited by it. That being said, Demosthenes does not confer on the eyes the same forensic value that the expression ὀρθοῖς ὄμμασιν holds in Ios. 47–48. The fact that Aeschines shows no physical inhibition is brought to the attention of the jury to illustrate what type of man he is, more than to expose his crime. By contrast, Joseph’s inability to look Potiphar straight in the eyes is presented by Philo as a physical condition which could betray Joseph when facing his master. More importantly, the σύνοιδα variant employed by Demosthenes is a reflexive phrase, not one of its substantival equivalents.61 What this entails for the meaning of the passage is that physical inhibition – or lack thereof – in Aeschines is not directly attributed to his conscience. True, any individual who “shares with himself ” that type of knowledge should feel embarrassed, but the reflexive συνειδὼς αὑτῷ only informs us about the state of mind of the criminal, i. e., his “being aware with himself ” of the crime he has committed. The participle συνειδὼς only modifies the predicate, and ultimately it is Aeschines, not his conscience, who acts as the subject of the sentence and endorses the action. By contrast, in Ios. 47–48 it is the συνειδός specifically that impedes Joseph from looking Potiphar in the face (τὸ συνειδὸς ἐλλαμβανόμενον ὀρθοῖς ὄμμασιν οὐκ ἐάσει προσβλέπειν) and functions as the subject of the clause. The Greeks were thus well aware of what an elusive gaze signified. It is only the explicit inclusion of this phenomenon in a list of signs that accompany a guilty conscience that is wanting in the extant sources. As a matter of fact, if one excludes Philo’s passage in Ios. 47, one would have to wait until the third-century ce to find texts that interpret a physical disturbance located in the face (πρόσωπον) or the eyes (ὄμματα) as being caused by a guilty conscience (συνειδός), which might therefore serve some forensic purpose. Philostratus, a Greek sophist who settled in Rome, reconstructs in the seventh book of his Life of Apollonius of Tyana the dialogue between the Neopythagorean philosopher and the Cynic philosopher Demetrius. The sage, who had fled to Dicaearchia to avoid being arrested by Domitian (7.5–8), converses with Demetrius (7.9) and explains to him why he ought now to return to Rome and confront the emperor. Running away, he argues, would be tantamount to betraying his friends. So much so that, even if he were to escape to a distant region like India or Ethiopia, his conscience would not allow him to look people in the eyes: 60 Although Demosthenes only says here βλέπειν εἰς ὑμᾶς, elsewhere he makes explicit mention of the face in the same kind of context. Consider, for instance, the passage from 18.283: εἶτα σὺ τοίνυν οὗτος εὑρέθης. εἶτα σὺ φθέγγει καὶ βλέπειν εἰς τὰ τούτων πρόσωπα τολμᾷς;/“In that [crime] you were detected. And then you dare to open your mouth and look them in the face?” Interestingly, Demosthenes also includes the criminal’s lack of inhibition in the speech as a sign of insolence. 61 One should keep in mind that Demosthenes’ orations contain the first occurrence in Greek literature of the substantive συνειδός (18.110), so at the very least the rhetor was familiar with this form.

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οὐκ ἐᾷ τοῦτον ἡ ξύνεσις οὔτε ὄμμα ὀρθὸν ἐς ἀνθρώπων τινὰ ἀφεῖναι οὔτε τὸ ἀπ᾿ ἐλευθέρας γλώττης φθέγμα.62 Conscience will neither allow him to look at people straight in the eyes nor let him speak with a free tongue.

Apollonius, like Joseph, envisions what his life would look like if he were to get away with his crime. Living with such a burden on his shoulders would impede him – he has just told us a few lines earlier – from looking people in the face (πῶς μὲν ἂν ἐς αὐτὸν βλέψαιμι;) and now, like the Jewish statesman, he specifies that it would be his conscience (ξύνεσις) which would forbid him to look people straight in the eyes (ὄμμα ὀρθὸν). The wording is indeed very similar to Philo’s text. Both Philo and Philostratus make conscience (συνειδός against ξύνεσις) the subject of the clause, both resort to the verb ἐάω to state that conscience would not allow (ἐάσει against ἐᾷ) the sinner to look at people straight in the eyes (ὀρθοῖς ὄμμασιν against ὄμμα ὀρθὸν).63 In both texts, the inhibiting effects of a guilty conscience and the risk of being exposed by it act as deterrents to committing an unworthy deed. An analysis of the other terms employed by Philo to describe the physical turmoil experienced by Joseph (χρῶμα, βλέμμα, φωνή) reveals a similar picture. Prior to Philo, these words are nowhere to be found in semantic association with the σύνοιδα word group. Even texts which one would expect to confer some forensic relevance to these terms, like Aristotle’s Rhetoric or the pseudoAristotelian Rhetoric to Alexander, do not make physiognomic observations that might be relevant for prosecutors or rhetors. Their silence in this regard is indeed telling, for these works do contain several occurrences of the σύνοιδα word group64 – in most cases of the non-reflexive σύνοιδα τινί τι – but never associate them with these (χρῶμα, βλέμμα, φωνή) or similar terms that describe a psychosomatic reaction. Aristotle does note that men are quicker to feel shame in the presence of those who are privy (τοῖς συνειδόσιν) to their disgraces, but no mention of the face, the eyes, or the voice is made. What we do encounter in the Greek literature prior to Philo are descriptions of the inhibiting effects that the awareness of culpability has on the individual’s freedom of speech. This phenomenon, however, relates in most cases to the organ of speech and is conceptualized in terms of ἐλευθεροστομία, παρρησία, or θράσος.65 The awareness of culpability is presented as a source of weakness in the criminal, but the de62

Philost. VA. 7.14. The Greek text is that of Kayser 1870.

63 The similarities with Ios. 47–48 continue, as just a few lines later Philostratus has Apollonius

declare that ὡς μὲν δὴ ἐλέγξει με ἡ σύνεσις ἐς εἰδότας τε καὶ μὴ εἰδότας ἥκοντα / “Conscience will thus expose me whether they happen to know me or not.” Apollonius employs the verb ἐλέγχειν in the same forensic sense as Joseph. 64 Arist. Rh. 1382b8, 1384b21, 1385a28; Rh. Al. 1428a30–34, 1431b20, 1432a13, 1439b27. 65 Philo himself employs these terms in semantic connection with τὸ συνειδός. See Bosman 2006.

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scriptions of its symptoms lack the forensic maturity that the signs accompanying a guilty conscience acquire in later texts, and they are far less interested in the physicality of this phenomenon. Words like χρῶμα or βλέμμα receive significant attention in Galen’s treatises on medicine and anatomy,66 and in Polemon’s treatise on physiognomics67 but, once again, we must wait some centuries to encounter Greek texts which explicitly associate these terms with conscience. In his Apology to Constantius, Athanasius of Alexandria constructs an explanatory narrative to prove his innocence before the emperor against the charges put forward by Eusebius of Nicomedia and his followers. This fourth-century Church Father exhorts Constantius to question his detractors in order to discover their true intentions. In so doing, Athanasius adds, their guilty conscience will expose their scheme: Οὐκοῦν ὅλως ἐρώτησον, μαθέτωσαν οἱ κατειρηκότες ὅτι σοι μέλει περὶ τῆς ἀληθείας μαθεῖν. Καὶ εἰ μὴ τῷ χρώματι τοῦ προσώπου δείξουσι τὴν συκοφαντίαν· τοῦτο γὰρ τοῦ συνειδότος ἔλεγχός ἐστι […]68 Inquire then altogether, and let the accusers know that you desire to learn the truth. And see whether or not they will show their dishonest prosecution by the coloration of the face. For this is proof of a guilty conscience […]

He exhorts the emperor to arrange a confrontation between himself and Athanasius’ own accusers so that, in interrogating them, their vile purpose will be revealed through their countenance, more specifically, through the color of the face (τῷ χρώματι τοῦ προσώπου). If that were to happen, notes Athanasius, it should serve for Constantius as a clear sign of their falsehood. This wording closely resembles the text in Ios. 47–48 where τῷ χρώματι is also listed by Joseph as one of the incriminating signs that would betray him before Potiphar. The term ἔλεγχός is also employed by Athanasius in the forensic sense of irrefutable proof. If the complexion of his accusers were to undergo a change, it would constitute an elenchos of their awareness of guilt (τοῦ συνειδότος). This text is clearly reminiscent of the forensic descriptions of the συνειδός in the story of Joseph69 but, as we are about to see, a much earlier parallel to Philo’s understanding of conscience is found in the forensic role that conscientia exhibits in the Latin tradition. 66

Also connected to βλέμμα in Gal. Praen. 14.632.15. In connection with βλέμμα in Ps.-Arist. Phgn. 55. 68 Atha. Apol. Const. 12.18–21. The Greek text is that of Szymusiak 1958. 69 Athanasius might even be alluding to Philo’s De Josepho for, immediately after these words, he compares his accusers to those who plotted against Joseph, that is, his brothers. Just as his accusers will be exposed by their guilty conscience, so Joseph’s brothers were exposed by their conscience: οὕτω τοὺς μὲν ἐπιβουλεύσαντας τῷ ᾿Ιωσὴφ ἡ συνείδησις ἤλεγξε/“In this manner conscience exposed those who had conspired against Joseph.” To the best of my knowledge, Philo’s De Josepho is the only Greek text that portrays Joseph’s brothers as being convicted by their conscience (Ios. 215, 262). Neither the LXX, Josephus’ Antiquities, nor the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs contain such a formulation. 67

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2. Ios. 47–48 and the Latin Τradition: The Case for conscientia In the previous section, I examined how Philo introduces the σύνοιδα word group in Ios. 47–48 to rework the biblical narrative into a scene that reproduces the atmosphere of a court case. My analysis of the forensic terms Philo attaches to the σύνοιδα variants led to the conclusion that, while his use of the word group remains in line with the Greek judicial and rhetorical tradition, the decision to represent the inner workings of Joseph’s conscience through a set of physical signs pointing to guilt represents a novel motif in the lexical history of the σύνοιδα word group. In this section, I argue that it is the Latin tradition that provides the most relevant examples to contextualize the forensic understanding of conscience and the physiognomic descriptions Philo includes in Ios. 47–48. In order to do so, I first examine the role ascribed to the noun conscientia in Latin textbooks on rhetoric and in Cicero’s judicial speeches.70 This analysis will reveal that conscientia – like the συνειδός in Ios. 47–48 – is regarded as an important piece of forensic evidence that can facilitate the exposure of the criminal precisely through its association with certain physical signs. To the attentive eye, the face and eyes of the accused offer a set of readable signs that allow access to a wide range of internal states – fear, distress, shame, remorse, etc. – that can be instrumental in the course of a trial to prove the guilt or innocence of the litigant. Philo’s descriptions of the bodily response triggered by Joseph’s conscience, I argue, serve a similar purpose. I then read the episode in Ios. 47–48 against various historical narratives of Republican and Imperial authors where the term conscientia is also featured. Philo’s interest in describing Joseph’s demeanor will emerge as deeply in tune with the attention Roman authors draw to physical appearance as a literary device to help readers to visualize the character’s mental state. 2.1. Ios. 47–48 and the Forensic Role of the signa conscientiae The earliest occurrence of the noun conscientia attested in the literature is found in the anonymous Latin textbook addressed to Gaius Herennius,71 the Rhetorica ad Herennium,72 and reads: 70 On conscientia, see Mulder 1908; and Hebing 1922. Contributions that examine the Latin conscientia in conjunction with the Greek συνείδησις include Zucker 1928; Snell 1930; Schönlein 1969; Forschner 2020; and Sorabji 2010. Jahnel 1862 and Stelzenberger 1963 examine the terms from the second century ce up until the Middle Ages. Thematic studies also exist. On the use of conscientia by Roman historians, see Schönlein 1965. On the use of the term by Cicero, see Gildenhard 2011: 99–124. On conscientia in Seneca, see Molenar 1969; Hijmans 1970; Colish 2014; and Németh 2023. 71 On the basis of its resemblance to De inventione, the authorship of the treatise was ascribed to Cicero in the fourth century ce by Jerome, first in his Contra Rufinum (1.16) and then in the preface to his Commentarii in Abdiam (Dicit et Tullius tuus, adolescentulo sibi inchoata

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Consecutio est cum quaeritur quae signa nocentis et innocentis consequi soleant. Accusator dicet, si poterit, adversarium, cum ad eum ventum sit, erubuisse, expalluise, titubasse, inconstanter locutum esse, concidisse, pollicitum esse aliquid; quae signa conscientiae sint.73 For subsequent behavior we investigate the signs that usually attend guilt or innocence. The plaintiff would say, if possible, that his adversary, when confronted, blushed, paled, faltered, spoke uncertainly, collapsed, or made some offer; signs of a guilty conscience.

The first point that deserves explanation is the literary setting in which the term is found, namely, a textbook on rhetoric (as a matter of fact, the oldest Latin textbook on rhetoric that has come down to us). The Auctor brings up conscientia as part of an example of forensic nature, which already tells us about the book’s intended audience. Latin textbooks around this time contain numerous examples from the judicial arena, as court cases were seen as one of the main scenarios where professional speakers could put their skills to work.74 The quaedam et rudia excidisse. Si hoc ille tam de libris ad Herennium, quam de Rhetoricis, quos evo vel perfectissimos puto […] dicere / “Your Tullius also says that some of the things he had begun as a young man were cut off. If he could say this both about the books to Herennius, and of the Rhetorics, which I think are even the most perfect […]”). The text is that of Migne 1845. Its removal from the Ciceronian corpus was proposed already in the fifteenth century and today’s scholarly consensus ascribes it to an anonymous author. Cicero’s De inventione and our treatise indeed present remarkable similarities, but the fact remains that the treatise does not contain a single reference to Cicero nor the De Inventione to the Rhetorica. For a detailed explanation of the similarities and differences that lead most scholars to ascribe these manuals to different authors, see Chaplan 1968: xii–xxiv; and Corbeill 2002. Some scholars have advanced the view that both Cicero and the Auctor either had the same Latin teacher, but either attended his classes at different times or decided to incorporate different points in their treatises, see Thiele 1889, and, more recently, Kennedy 1972: 128–137; or that they both used the same Latin manual as their main source, see Herbolzheimer 1926. 72 If we take the historical references in the treatise to be representative of its date of composition (the Auctor could be making reference to these events years after they took place) we should assign the textbook to 80s bce. The death of the Roman politician Sulpicius (1.15.25), which took place in 88, and Gaius Marius’ seventh consulship (4.54.68), which he held in 86, provide a terminus post quem. See Chaplan 1968: xxvi; Kennedy 1972: 113. The terminus ante quem is more difficult to establish, and some scholars have advanced the view that the text could have been written a decade or more later. See Douglas 1960; and Winkel 1979. However, concentrations of references to events around the early 80s makes it more likely that the treatise was composed around that time. If that is the case, then the next occurrence of conscientia is found in Cicero’s legal speech Pro Roscio Amerino (24.67), composed in 80 bce. 73 Rhet. Her. 2.5.8. The Latin text corresponds to Marx 1923. 74 As Kennedy 1968, 1972: 7–18 explains, the development of Roman judicial oratory was largely influenced by the increasing sophistication of the court procedures. This process entailed the establishment of permanent commissions or quaestiones perpetuae (the first one established by the lex Calpurnia de reputendis in 149 bce) – which represent the first criminal courts, the increasing size of the juries, and, most importantly, the emergence of professional orators who would plead the cases in court. Cicero already lamented the loss of prestige of the legal profession and the decline of eloquence, and asserts that “not all – no, not even many – can be […] eloquent as pleaders” (omnes non possint, ne multi quidem, aut iuris periti esse aut diserti) (Offic. 2.19.67). Hence, the need to train advocates in the rhetorical art.

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Auctor introduces the term conscientia in the second book but, to fully grasp its forensic implications, we ought first to say a word about the overall structure of the treatise.75 Rhetorica ad Herennium opens with a distinction between three genres of speech (1.2.1): epideictic, deliberative, and judicial. Immediately after, the Auctor lists the faculties that every would-be rhetor should possess, namely, those of invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery (1.2.3). The Auctor then exemplifies how the first of these faculties, the inventio, is applied to the third type of speech, the iudiciale (1.3.4). Invention corresponds to the ability to make the discourse true or plausible in order to make the case convincing to the audience. When it comes to judicial speeches, the inventio is used throughout the six parts of the discourse: introduction, statement of facts, division, proof, refutation, and conclusion. Each of the three aforementioned genres of speech is subsequently divided into different types or issues (constitutiones). The type of speech that deserves our attention, the judicial, is divided into three issues (1.11.18): conjectural, legal, and juridical. The first part of the second book – in which the Auctor introduces the term conscientia – is devoted to the conjectural type of judicial speech, that is, to the type of judicial discourse that deals with facts and seeks to establish the truth by conjecture. There, the Auctor explores how the faculty of invention can be applied to the parts of the judicial discourse dealing with proof and refutation, i. e., with the parts where the speaker is occupied with the presentation and refutation of arguments. When the inventio is concerned with the conjectural speech, the speaker can turn to six different strategies to prove or disprove the arguments brought by his adversary (2.2.3): probability (probabile), comparison of facts (conlatio), signs (signa), presumptive proof (argumentum), subsequent behavior (consecutio), and confirmatory proof (approbatio). Conscientia arises in the discussion of subsequent behavior, which investigates the “signs that usually attend guilt (signa nocentis) or innocence (et innocentis).”76 What the occurrence of the term in this particular section of the book reveals is its distinct connection with the forensic field. We still do not know what conscientia really means – the Auctor does not tell us and he somehow assumes that his audience is familiar with the word – but its literary setting indicates that it can serve a particular function in court cases.77 Conscientia or, to be more precise, the display of a particular set 75 This structure might be difficult to grasp at first as the Auctor introduces many divisions and subdivisions. The charts included by Chaplan in his introduction to the Loeb edition are very helpful in this regard. See Chaplan 1968: xlvii–l. 76 Rhet. Her. 2.5.8. 77 It is difficult to evaluate the significance of this first occurrence in Latin literature, for earlier sources that are no longer extant might have already employed the noun conscientia. However, if one examines the Latin sources composed around the first century bce and ce, one finds that conscientia, across the different literary settings where it appears, often retains a distinct forensic character and continues to appear in semantic association with judicial

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of signs in the face of the accused, the signa conscientiae, is regarded by the Auctor as a type of behavioral response that can be interpreted by prosecutors as a sign of guilt. In other words, the symptomatology the Auctor associates with the conscience, namely, the paleness, the blush, and the stammering, is presented as a reaction which temporally follows the crime, a consecutio of the crime itself, and points to the guilt of the accused. This role which conscientia is given in the Rhetorica ad Herennium coincides with the role which Philo devises for the συνειδός in Ios. 47–48, where the bodily response triggered by Joseph’s conscience is interpreted as the indicator of guilt which exposes his crime before Potiphar. Likewise, the appearance of these signs (τῷ χρώματι, τῷ βλέμματι, τῇ φωνῇ) is presented as a physical reaction which temporally follows the crime. Strictly speaking, Joseph does not commit adultery at all but, in the scenario he is envisioning, the crime has already taken place and the change in his demeanor only comes to the fore afterwards. Moreover, in both the example given by the Auctor and in the scene narrated by Philo, the arousal of these physical signs of guilt somehow requires a viewing audience. The Auctor explicitly notes that blushing (erubesco), turning pale (expallesco), and stammering (titubo) only occur after the accused has been confronted (cum ad eum ventum sit) by the prosecutor. In a way, it is the viewing audience scrutinizing the accused which causes his inner feelings of guilt to be physically manifested. The scene of Joseph is dominated by the same assumption. Right from the outset, Joseph’s inability to hold his gaze and his troubled expression are connected to his standing before Potiphar. Although the Auctor provides no definition of the term, the context makes clear that conscientia must refer to the knowledge of something punishable, for otherwise the accused would not be facing prosecution, and to a certain extent reprehensible, for otherwise the accused would not blush, falter, turn pale, in other words, become outwardly inhibited when confronted by the prosecutor. That such is the case is confirmed a few lines later, for the Auctor adds: Defensor, si pertimuerit, magnitudine periculi, non conscientia peccati se commotum esse dicet. The defense attorney, if [the defendant] has shown fear, would say that he was moved by the magnitude of the trial, not by the consciousness of his faults.

Although the previous occurrence of conscientia stood alone, the Auctor adds now a genitive qualification to the noun which specifies the content of the shared knowledge. It is the conscientia peccati, that is, the “consciousness of his faults” – his guilty conscience – which renders the criminal timid. This genitive modifier is added now to illustrate how the defense counsel could refute the argument terminology. See, among others, Cic. Leg. 2.43–44; Fin. 1.16.51, 2.16.53; Nat. D. 3.35.85; Quint. Inst. 5.11.41; Pub. Sent. 194; Sen. Ep. 43, 105.

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advanced by the prosecutor, namely, by trying to argue that what moved his client was not his guilty conscience but the menacing aspect of the trial itself. Interestingly, the counsel does not try to deny or conceal that his client has blushed or turned pale. In the context of a crowded courtroom or a public space where everybody can see the accused, that would be tantamount to denying the obvious. The text implies that both the prosecutor and defense take for granted that the conscientia at stake here is the conscientia peccati and regard it as a natural reaction that the accused will show signs of fear if he indeed knows himself to be guilty. What the defense would try to argue is rather that those signs of distress do not originate from a guilty conscience but from the frightening nature of the situation. In his eleventh letter to Lucilius, Seneca delves into the mechanism of these same facial expressions in a way that illustrates the underlying assumption in this passage. The Roman philosopher explains that bodily reactions such as the blush (rubor), the chattering of the teeth (dentes colliduntur), or the faltering of the tongue (lingua titubat) constitute a natural reaction that “comes and goes unbidden” (iniussa veniunt, iniussa discedunt).78 Their appearance, involuntary as it is, cannot be mastered and is not necessarily due to mental weakness (ab infirmitate mentis) but to the novelty of a situation (a novitate rei). What Seneca reflects upon, the Auctor applies to the context of deciphering the signs exhibited by the criminal. While the pallor, the rubor, and the titubatio may very well be pointing to the guilt of the accused, it might also be the case that these signa are being caused by the suddenness and the novelty of the situation in which the defendant finds himself. The episode described in Ios. 47–48 reveals an identical picture. The συνειδός at stake in the scene comprises the knowledge of something bad, of the unholy act which Joseph is being drawn to commit. It is the kind of knowledge which would impair Joseph’s speech and bring about a change in his countenance were he to be confronted by Potiphar. Unlike the Auctor, however, Philo does not consider the possibility that the bodily response suffered by Joseph might have been caused by the suddenness of the event. The scene is retold from the point of view of the hypothetical accused, Joseph, who envisions his stance and facial expression before Potiphar once the crime would have been committed. The reader is not ushered into the scene as an impartial onlooker who is given 78 On rubor, see Barton 1999. Roman Stoics like Cicero and Seneca were interested in the distinction between the impressions which originate from the reality exterior to the self and “bite” the individual (mordeo writes Cicero in Tusc. 3.83) and the emotions strictu senso which require the assent of the mind (Nihil ex his, quae animum fortuito impellunt, adfectus vocari debet; ista, ut ita dicam, patitur magis animus quam facit / “None of these things which move the mind through the agency of chance should be called passions; the mind suffers them, so to speak, rather than causes them” writes Seneca in De Ira 3.1). What is worth noting here, is that those impressions are often accompanied by nonvolitional reflexes or movements in the body such as the ones listed by the Auctor (for rubor, see De Ira 2.1, for pallor De Ira 3.2). See Graver 2007: 85–108.

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the task of judging the intention lying behind Joseph’s visual appearance. Philo has already interpreted it for us. This does not mean, however, that Philo was not cognizant of the ambiguous interpretation these signs may support.79 In his retelling of the arrest of Judah and his brothers by Joseph’s steward, found some paragraphs later in the biography (Ios. 214–215), Philo builds the scene precisely around the double-sidedness of these signs. There, Joseph’s brothers are left paralyzed and speechless by the accusation brought forth by the steward. As Philo explains, their silence was due to the “unexpected” (ἀπροσδόκητος) nature of their detention, not to their own doing. Hence, Joseph’s brothers are quick to respond to their accuser in order to avoid their silence being interpreted as a sign of a guilty conscience (μὴ δοκεῖν ἁλισκόμενοι τῷ συνειδότι καθησυχάζειν). What Philo does assume in Ios. 47–48 is the involuntariness of the facial changes that Joseph would undergo. As we saw, Joseph is helpless in this respect. His conscience will inevitably affect his gaze the moment that Potiphar would confront him and, even if no one were to denounce him, Joseph still makes clear that his face, eyes, and voice would be visibly affected to an extent that would signal his guilt before his master. The passage discussed above likewise reveals the investment the Auctor has in describing the physicality of the signs that bespeak a guilty conscience. As discussed, the Auctor does not provide a definition of conscientia. Instead, he gives a list of its symptoms (erubuisse, expalluise, titubasse), that is, a list of the means available to the external observer for judging the presence of a guilty conscience. The reason for omitting any further explanation on the meaning of conscientia may very well be the familiarity with the term that the Auctor presumes his audience to have. I believe, however, that his silence in this regard is rather indicative of the physiognomic perspective he adopts in this passage. A textbook on legal oratory is not a suitable place for philosophical disquisitions. If the term conscientia ever made it into this book, it is because deciphering the signs through which a guilty conscience may come into the open constitutes a relevant skill for rhetors to have. In other words, the state of mind of the criminal is only of interest to students of rhetoric as long as it can be easily observed in concrete ways, and that is where physiognomics enters the picture. Physiognomy regards the human body and its visible manifestations as a text available to read for the properly discerning eye. In the judicial field, such a perspective allows prosecutors to make visible the invisible, that is, to interpret certain gestures and physical signs as the somatic expression of the inner – and hence unseen – process of thought, intention, and character. The interest the Auctor exhibits in 79 Philo, otherwise, seems to be familiar with the Stoic concept of προπάθειαι or pre-emotions. Even if one concedes, as Graver 1999 claims, at 300, that “Philo cannot have derived what he knows from Seneca (despite his visit to Rome in 39), nor from Cicero, who also mentions the point,” the fact remains that the testimony of these Roman Stoics illuminates the way Philo constructs the display of emotions in the De Josepho.

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conscientia, therefore, only extends to the emerging indicators – the paleness in the skin, the blush, the stammering voice – which prosecutors or counsels can interpret as signs of the defendant’s guilt or innocence. These types of signs are regarded throughout Latin texts on rhetoric as useful means to “exciting suspicion” (maxime suspicionem movent), as Cicero writes in De partitione oratoria. An inconsistent answer (responsum inconstanter), hesitation (haesitatum), stammering (titubatio), paleness (pallor), or trembling (tremor) are regarded as “silent evidence of guilt” (tacita sunt criminum testimonia),80 and calling attention to these visible signs constitutes a common strategy for prosecutors to discern and highlight mental states. The display of physical objects or bodily evidence in court can conjure an image of “great force” (ingens vis)81 on the audience’s imagination, and one can find Cicero often using the litigants’ bodies demonstratively to represent their pathos.82 The association between conscientia and these physical signs should thus be seen as part of the orator’s strategy to read the body and visualize for their audience the inner disposition of the accused. Cicero’s treatise on rhetorical theory, Topica, contains a parallel text to the passage discussed above which further illuminates the physiognomic interest in deciphering the mental state of the accused. Like the Auctor, Cicero invites the reader to pay attention to the evidence offered and to read the signs which are physically present: Ante rem enim quaeruntur quae talia sunt: apparatus, colloquia, locus, constitutum, convivium; cum re autem: pedum crepitus, strepitus hominum, corporum umbrae et si quid eius modi; at post rem: pallor, rubor, titubatio, si qua alia signa conturbationis et conscientiae, praeterea restinctus ignis, glaudius cruentus ceteraque quae suspicionem facti possunt movere.83 Before the event we investigate circumstances such as the preparation, conversations, the venue, the arrangement, a banquet; concurrent with the event: sound of feet, noise of men, and the like; after the event: paleness, blush, stammering, and any other signs of distress and a guilty conscience; and besides, an extinguished fire, a sword stained with blood, and other things that can arouse suspicion.

Cicero seems to have followed the Auctor’s treatment of subsequent behavior (consecutio) for both passages are nearly identical. Moreover, the corresponding discussion in Cicero’s earlier treatise on rhetoric, De inventione,84 thought to have been written just a few years before the Rhetorica ad Herennium, does 80

Cic. Part. or. 33.114. Quint. Inst. 6.1.30. 82 Cic. Cat. 3.10–13; Sull. 74–76; Q. Rosc. 20; Pis. I. 83 Cic. Top. 52. 84 Cic. Inv. rhet. 1.38–41. Although the exact date of composition remains dubious, in De oratore Cicero claims to have composed the treatise while he was still puer aut adulescentulus (1.2.5). Chaplan 1968: xxv–xxvii, following Marx 1923, assumes that Cicero must have put together his school notes around 91 bce, when he was fifteen years old, for the work contains no reference to the events that took place during the Marsic War (91–87 bce) in Italy. 81

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not contain the term conscientia, which makes it more likely that the Roman politician came across the Auctor’s discussion of conscientia and incorporated it into the Topica. Cicero clearly adopts the same physiognomic perspective we have encountered in the ad Herennium. The same symptomatology (pallor, rubor, titubatio) is interpreted again as signs (signa) of a guilty conscience (conscientia). Cicero, however, has explicitly warned in the preceding lines that the examples he is about to give are only of value for speakers (oratores), not for philosophers (philosophi) nor even for law scholars (iuris consulti).85 This confirms the picture we have just presented. A textbook on rhetoric is not the place for philosophical or legal discussions. Its intended audience is not scholars working behind their desks, but the professional speakers who would be hired to defend their client’s interests in court. As such, conscientia is only mentioned in these manuals to illustrate how the accused’s inner state – his guilty conscience – may often translate into a specific physical condition and trigger the display of very particular signs which can be used to prove the defendant’s guilt or innocence. Physiognomy thus emerges as an indispensable skill for the rhetor: it provides the language for reading the human body and exposing the state of mind that underlies human appearance. Cicero’s text is particularly illustrative in this regard for, in comparison to the excerpt from the Rhetorica ad Herennium, the Roman jurist classifies this symptomatology not only as signa conscientiae but also as signa conturbationis. The term conturbatio is relatively rare in Latin literature with less than a dozen occurrences attested, seven of which are found in Cicero’s writings. In his treatment of the disorders of the soul (perturbationes animi), found in the fourth book of his Tusculan Disputations, the term is listed within the subdivisions of fear, where it appears next to terms like terror or timor.86 A few lines later, conturbatio is explicitly defined as metum excutientem cogitata, that is, as a “thought-agitating fear,”87 which locates this type of convulsion within the realm of the mind, not the body. Cicero even employs the expression conturbatio mentis – the “agitation of the mind” – in his discussion of the sickness of the soul.88 This only comes to reaffirm the need for Cicero to explain, in the passage quoted above, how two phenomena otherwise pertaining to the mind and disposition of the defendant, conscientia and conturbatio, can be outwardly manifested through the body. These considerations shed important light on the descriptions of conscience found in Ios. 47–48. In his rewriting of this episode, Philo betrays an acute rhetorical awareness and incorporates the same physiognomic perspective we have encountered in these Latin textbooks. To begin with, Joseph’s response to the allurements of Potiphar’s wife is built on the premise that his crime will be 85

Cic. Top. 51. Cic. Tusc. 4.7.16. 87 Cic. Tusc. 4.7.19. 88 Cic. Tusc. 4.12.30.

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exposed once his guilty conscience is revealed through his facial expression and the look of his eyes. This is made clear right from the offset as Joseph declares: τίνι ψυχῇ παραδεξάμενος τὸ ἀνοσιούργημα τοῦτο; προσβλέψω δὲ τίσιν ὀφθαλμοῖς ὁ σιδηροῦς ἐγώ; With what soul would have I taken upon me (lit. accept) this unholy act? With what eyes will I look at [him], iron-hearted though I be?

These could perfectly well be the opening lines of a book on physiognomics. Joseph begins the description of his potential confrontation with Potiphar by establishing a direct correlation between his inward feelings and soul (ψυχή) and his eyes (ὀφθᾰλμοί). Joseph is not wondering whether his inner disposition would show in his facial expression. He is taking that for granted, hence the rhetorical question. He is well aware that, if he were to commit adultery, his own body would become a text that allows Potiphar access to the thoughts and feelings lying beneath his disturbed appearance.89 His statement is not just a rhetorical question Philo introduces to embellish the passage or a literary device used to exacerbate the theatricality of the scene.90 Joseph’s words provide the key to understanding the dynamics of concealment and exposure which run through these lines and betray a deep physiognomic awareness which echoes the forensic treatment of conscientia. Interior and exterior are envisioned by Joseph as parallel dimensions: his disturbed conscience will be revealed in his disturbed eyes. This is further confirmed by the specific symptomatology which Joseph associates with the συνειδός, namely, the inability to look straight in the eyes (ὀρθοῖς ὄμμασιν) and the change in his color, look, and voice (τῷ χρώματι, τῷ βλέμματι, τῇ φωνῇ). For the highly educated audience reading Philo’s biography in Rome, the symptoms associated in this passage with the συνειδός must have reminded them of the list given by both Cicero and the Auctor: Both texts mention the coloring of the face (τῷ χρώματι against rubor and pallor) and the affection of the voice (τῇ φωνῇ against titubatio). Moreover, Philo has chosen signs whose common denominator is that their appearance is located around the face of the accused. This interest in describing the change in Joseph’s expression is also congruent with the centrality Roman authors ascribed to this part of the body 89

I borrow the metaphor of the “body becoming a text” from Corbeill 2004: 140. Philo often inserts visual cues in the narrative which illustrate how the internal state of mind is manifested externally. See, for instance, his interest in describing the facial expression and eyes of Joseph’s brothers in Ios. 225, 239. Muehlberger 2008 has explored Philo’s use of the literary paradigm of theatricality in his Legatio ad Gaium, which relies on the same dynamics of concealment of the emotions and state of mind and their exposure through bodily responses. More recently, Bosman 2020b has analyzed Philo’s use of various literary topoi in his In Flaccum to represent the psychological symptomatology of the Roman prefect. Philo’s depiction of the mental distress of Flaccus is also related to the συνειδός, for Philo makes his readers know that it was Flaccus’ guilty conscience that caused his psychological afflictions. 90

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in conveying emotions. Facial expression is ubiquitously invoked by Republican orators, poets, and historians to indicate character and intention.91 A survey of these texts reveals that the face is regarded as the door to the soul (animi ianua)92 or the image of the soul (imago animi vultus),93 and the eyes as the abode of the soul (in oculis animus habitat),94 inasmuch as they provide the viewer with straightforward access to the person’s interior and expose his inner thoughts. Nature, writes Cicero, “has so formed man’s features as to portray therein the character (mos) that lies hidden deep within him; for not only do the eyes (oculis) declare with exceeding clearness the innermost feelings of our hearts, but also the countenance (vultus)”.95 In the context of oratorical training, the Auctor instructs the students to scrutinize the face (vultus) of the accused as a useful method for delineating his character.96 For the trained eye, facial expressions become trans91 See the excellent study Corbeill 2004: esp. 140–168, where he surveys the use of facial descriptions in Late-Republican and Imperial politics. On the use of physiognomic descriptions by Roman historians, see Canter 1928; and Evans 1935. 92 Thus writes Quintus to his older brother Cicero in the context of his candidacy for the consulship: Curaque ut aditus ad te diurni nocturnique pateant, neque solum foribus aedium tuarum sed etiam vultu ac fronte, quae est animi ianua; quae si significat voluntatem abditam esse ac retrusam, parvi refert patere ostium/“Make sure that there be access to you day and night, not only through the entrance of your house but also through your facial expression, which is the door to your soul. If your expression reveals that your will is hidden away, it makes little difference that your home is open.” The Latin text is that of Watt 1958. 93 Cicero, for instance, ascribes a central role to the face in rhetoric delivery (actio): Animi est enim omnis actio, et imago animi vultus, indices oculi; nam haec es una pars corporis quae quot animi motus sunt tot significationes et commutationes possit efficere/“For delivery is wholly the concern of feelings, and these are mirrored by the face and expressed by the eyes; for this is the only part of the body capable of producing as many indications and variations as there are emotions.” (De. or. 3.59.221). The Latin text is that of Wilkins 1902. In his Institutio oratoria, Quintilian also recognizes the centrality of the face (dominatur autem maxime vultus) and, in particular, of the eyes in conveying mental states and emotions: Sed in ipso vultu plurimum valent oculi, per quos maxime animus elucet / “In the face itself, the most important feature is the eyes, in which the mind especially shines through.” (Inst. 11.3.75). The Latin text is that of Winterbottom 1970. See also Sen. Ep. 52.12. 94 Pliny also points to the superiority of the eyes as an indicator of various emotions. He writes in Nat. 11.145: neque ulla ex parte maiora animi indicia cunctis animalibus, sed homini maxime […] profecto in oculis animus habitat / “No other part of the body supplies greater indications of the mind. This is so with all animals alike, but especially with man […] In truth, the eyes are the above of the mind.” The edition of Pliny used is that of Mayhoff 1905–1909. 95 Cic. Leg. 1.9.27: tum speciem ita formavit oris, ut in ea penitus reconditos mores effingeret; nam et oculi nimis arguti, quem ad modum animo affecti simus, loquuntur, et is, qui appellatur vultus. Interestingly, Cicero notes that “the Greeks are familiar with the meaning which this word “countenance” conveys, though they have no name for it” (cuius vim Graeci norunt, nomen omnino non habent). 96 Rhet. Herr. 4.63: Notatio est cum alicuius natura certis describitur signis, quae, sicut notae quae, naturae sunt adtributa […] “Iste,” inquies, “iudices, […] videte quo vultu nos intueatur / “Character delineation consists in describing a person’s character by the definite signs which, like distinctive marks, are attributes of character […] That person, men of the jury […] consider, first of all, how he looks at us.” For Cicero’s use of this oratorical technique, see notes 82, 123, 124, and 125.

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parent and allow access to the whole range of a person’s internal activities. The accumulation of these metaphors in the Late Republican and Early Imperial texts reveals the literary tradition with which Philo’s text also engages. Joseph resorts to this same notion that the eyes (ὀφθᾰλμοί) mirror the soul (ψυχή). Hence his concern over the visual appearance of his face when confronting Potiphar. I believe this is not just a coincidence, but part of Philo’s strategy to portray Joseph as an upper-class Roman politician who, like the political elite at that time, possesses a fine rhetorical education and knows what gestures and bodily movements follow what thoughts and mental states.97 As a matter of fact, that is precisely how Philo portrays Joseph in Ios. 234. At this point in the story Joseph has not yet revealed his true identity to his brothers and is unsure whether their old animosity towards him still persists. In order to find out, Joseph invites them to join him at the table and, while dining, “he looked intently at each one of them to judge from their appearance whether they secretly hold a grudge” (ἀποβλέπων εἰς ἕκαστον καὶ τεκμαιρόμενος ἐκ τῆς ὄψεως, εἴ τις αὐτοῖς ὑποικουρεῖ φθόνος). The forensic theory around conscientia we have encountered in these textbooks is often put into practice in Cicero’s judicial speeches. His narration of various court episodes provides us with an illuminating parallel to further delineate the forensic connotations of the συνειδός in Ios. 47–48. In one of the earlier texts in his oratorical career, In Verrem, which contains the speeches made by Cicero in 70 bce during the extortion trial against Gaius Verres, the Roman jurist lays the charges against the former governor of Sicily, the main one being financial fraud concerning the naval duties of the city of Messana. As part of his preparation for the trial, Cicero had gone to Syracuse to examine the accounts of the naval company which were being kept by a man named Carpinatius (2.186). Upon discovering what looked like deliberate erasures in the book, Cicero had confronted Carpinatius, who in turn “hesitated, appeared to be disturbed, and blushed” (Haerere homo, versari, rubere).98 To further clear up the facts, Cicero had then summoned Carpinatius before the court (in ius Carpinatium voco) and demanded him to undergo questioning before the Roman praetor. The scene is narrated by Cicero as follows: Itaque illum in iure metu conscientiaque peccati mutum atque exanimatum ac vix vivum relinquo; tabulas in foro, summa hominum frequentia, exscribo.99 I thus leave him in court, agitated by the horror and the consciousness of his crimes, speechless and hardly alive; I make a copy of the accounts in the marketplace, crowded with people.

97 See Corbeill 2004: 107–139, where he argues that a rhetorical education that underlined the importance of interpreting bodily gestures and movement was part of the cultural acumen shared by the Roman elites as a means to maintain political and social boundaries. 98 Cic. Verr. 2.187. The Latin text is that of Peterson 1917. 99 Cic. Verr. 2.189.

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Much like the example in the Herennium (conscientia commotum), Cicero makes conscientia function as the agent of a passive clause. This is marked by the ablative declension which conscientia takes, followed by the passive participle exanimatum. When conjugated in the passive, the verb exanimo – literally “to deprive of air” – can take the figurative meaning of being deprived of life, being agitated or disturbed. The choice of verb is a fitting one to represent the workings of a guilty conscience. It conjures up in the mind of the readers the image of Carpinatius being deprived of air by his guilty conscience, hence his inability to speak (mutum). His conscience has put him out of his senses to the point of hardly resembling a living person (vix vivum). Silence, another clear indication of guilt, is portrayed by the Roman jurist as an eloquent sign of culpability and fear. What we found explained in the Latin textbooks on rhetoric we encounter now applied in the retelling of an actual prosecution: conscientia is manifested in the body through very concrete signs that point to the guilt of the accused. The expression conscientia exanimatum is syntactically parallel to the use of συνειδός in conjunction with the passive participle ἐλλαμβανόμενον, which, as we saw, is also connected by Philo with a specific physical symptom, namely, the inability to look straight in the eyes. The use of conscientia in the ablative case in conjunction with passive participles is a constant throughout Cicero’s judicial speeches, just as Philo repeatedly places the συνειδός preceded by the participle ὑπὸ and followed by the passive participle ἐλεγχόμενος in passages that deal precisely with the exposure of a crime.100 Thus, for instance, Cicero employs expressions like “being terrified by the conscience of his wickedness” (maleficii conscientia perterritus),101 “being disheartened by his guilty conscience” (abiectus conscientia),102 “being seized by his guilty conscience” (conscientia oppresus),103 or “being exposed by his guilty conscience” (conscientia convictus),104 to describe the physical reactions prompted by the conscience of the accused whenever he is confronted in court. Note how the last two expressions, conscientia oppresus and conscientia convictus, possess the same meaning as τὸ συνειδὸς ἐλλαμβανόμενον and ὑπὸ τοῦ συνειδότος ἐλεγχόμενος. In the context of a forensic interrogation, the verb opprimo takes the meaning of “to seize” or “to take by surprise,” which matches the use of λαμβάνω in Ios. 47–48 we have already discussed. Likewise, the verb convinco, like the Greek ἐλέγχω, takes the meaning of “to prove” or “to refute something incontestably.” In a court setting, this entails exposing the criminal’s guilt in a conclusive way. As such, the verb can also be taken to mean “to convict” someone, insofar as a convincing piece of evidence can conclusively expose the involvement of the accused in a crime. Cicero thus employs the expres100

Philo, Spec. 1.235–236, 3.54, 4.6; Virt. 206. Cic. Clu. 13.38. 102 Cic. Cat. 3.10. 103 Cic. Pis. 17.39. 104 Cic. Cat. 2.13 101

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sion conscientia convictus to refer to the particular instant in which the litigant’s guilt is exposed in court, in turn causing the appearance of a certain physical sign in his demeanor or gait. The fact that both Cicero and Philo articulate their descriptions of the conscience with identical linguistic expressions is no mere coincidence. It indicates that the term for conscience has acquired by this time a degree of nominal maturity that allows these writers to bestow upon it the role of the agent which disturbs the accused’s countenance. The similarity between Cicero’s treatment of conscientia and the role of the συνειδός in the story of Joseph is further evinced by the following excerpt from the Catilinarian Orations, which contain the speeches delivered by Cicero in 63 bce against the leader of the attempted coup d’etat against the Roman senate. In the third speech, Cicero presents evidence that all the leading supporters of the conspiracy – Lentulus, Cethegus, Volturcius, and others – confessed to their crime. At the request of Catiline, Cicero explains, these conspirators had approached the tribe of the Allobroges with the hope of persuading them to join the revolt with their troops. The Allobroges, however, had secretly decided to disregard their proposal and had informed Cicero instead of the plot that was afoot. Cicero had then asked the Allobroges to pretend to continue the negotiations with the conspirators with a view towards obtaining incriminatory evidence against them. In the section of the speech discussed below, Cicero narrates the interrogation process of Cethegus, Lentulus, and Volturcius before the senate. During this interrogation, Cicero produces the correspondence these men had with the envoys of the Allobroges and starts by reading out the letter written by Cethegus. This takes Cethegus by surprise, for Cicero writes that “when his letter was read out, being unnerved and disheartened by his guilty conscience, he suddenly fell silent” (recitatis litteris debilitatus atque abiectus conscientia repente conticuit).105 Cicero then proceeds to do the same with Volturcius, who “then, suddenly, losing his wits due to his guilt, showed how mighty of a force can a guilty conscience be” (tum ille subito scelere demens quanta conscientiae vis esset ostendit).106 Lentulus is then brought in and, after him, Gabinus, who both admit to the charges brought against them. Cicero then adds: Ac mihi quidem, Quirites, cum illa certissima visa sunt argumenta atque indicia sceleris, tabellae, signa, manus, denique unius cuiusque confessio, tum multo certiora illa, color, oculi, voltus, taciturnitas. Sic enim obstupuerant, sic terram intuebantur, sic furtim non numquam inter sese aspiciebant ut non iam ab aliis indicari sed indicare se ipsi viderentur.107 In my view, indeed, oh Roman citizens, completely convincing as seemed the letter, seal, handwriting and confession of each man as signs and proofs of their crime, still more convincing were their color, eyes, countenance, and their silence. They were so dazed, kept 105

Cic. Cat. 3.10. The Latin text is that of Clark 1905. Cic. Cat. 3.11. 107 Cic. Cat. 3.13. 106

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their eyes so fixed upon the ground and from time to time cast such furtive glances at each other that they were not exposed by others as much as they betrayed themselves.

Once more, Cicero puts into practice the rhetorical theory we have encountered in Latin textbooks, including his own. The physical signs listed in this passage were defined as forensic means for “exciting suspicion” (maxime suspicionem movent) and regarded as “silent evidence of guilt” (tacita sunt criminum testimonia) in his treatise De Partitione Oratoria.108 Moreover, the association which Cicero established in his Topica109 between this symptomatology and the conscientia came up, precisely, in the forensic discussion of the argumentum, the same term Cicero employs here. The argumentum, like the consecutio, corresponds to one of the six parts of the conjectural discourse and it represents a presumptive type of proof that seeks to strengthen suspicion about a crime.110 In the passage quoted above, Cicero makes the point that the physical signs that the conspirators exhibit – their color, eyes, countenance, and silence – constitute “more certain” (certiora) proofs of their guilt than the other pieces of evidence he has produced in the course of the interrogation. His claim rests upon the same physiognomic belief that informs the forensic treatment of the signa conscientiae, namely, that the accused’s state of mind can be judged on the basis of his outward appearance. A letter, a seal, or an eyewitness might be instrumental in arousing suspicion about the conspirators’ involvement in the plot, but, Cicero argues, it is their body language and behavior during the trial that betrays their guilt in a conclusive manner. The agitation and disturbance that stems from their guilty conscience becomes manifest in their facial expressions, gaze, and inability to speak, thus exposing them before Cicero and the viewers sitting in the senate. This is the same belief that informs the scene narrated by Philo in Ios. 47–48. As discussed, in his response to the Egyptian woman, Joseph takes for granted that the appearance of various physical signs – an evasive gaze, a faltering voice, the coloring of the face – will irremediably betray him before Potiphar. What is more, even if no external evidence is produced (κἂν μηδεὶς ἕτερος αἴσθηται ἢ συναισθόμενος μὴ κατείπῃ), says Joseph, the physical agitation he would suffer when being confronted by Potiphar would nevertheless expose his guilt in front of his master (μηνυτὴς οὐδὲν ἧττον αὐτὸς γενήσομαι κατ’ ἐμαυτοῦ τῷ χρώματι, τῷ βλέμματι, τῇ φωνῇ). The physical signs prompted by the συνειδός thus become for Joseph, like the signa conscientiae for Cethegus and his companions, the main device for the exposure of his crime.

108

Cic. Part. or. 33.114. Cic. Top. 12.52. 110 The Auctor defines the argumentum as (Rhet. Her. 2.5.8): Argumentum est per quod res coarguitur certioribus argumentis et magis firma suspicione / “By presumptive proof the affair is exposed by means of indications that increase certainty and strengthen suspicion.” 109

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I believe that these texts from the Latin rhetorical and philosophical tradition constitute an important source to contextualize Philo’s descriptions of συνειδός. My reasons for arguing for such a comparative analysis do not simply originate in an argument from silence, namely, that the symptoms described by Philo in Ios. 47–48 are never associated with the conscience in Greek literature. I believe that such a reading is also justified by the Roman setting in which the Life of Joseph was written. As we saw, Philo constructs the character of Joseph by tapping into the codes of morality and behavior sanctioned by the Roman cultural elite. This became especially evident in the Roman legislation he alludes to in his digression on adultery. Seeing how intertwined legal and rhetorical practice were at the turn of the first century ce, it is no surprise to see that Philo’s appreciation for Roman law is paired with a deep rhetorical awareness of the role that a guilty conscience can play in court proceedings. As such, the biblical confrontation between Joseph and Potiphar might have been modelled on the court cases recounted by Roman authors like Cicero.111 Even if one cannot rule out the possibility that Philo came across the writings of the Roman jurist, either in Alexandria or in Rome,112 my motivation for pointing out the similarities between their understanding of conscience is not to argue for literary dependence but to show that the episode in Ios. 47–48 engages directly with a notion of conscience whose forensic connotations are markedly Roman. The συνειδός performs in Philo’s story of Joseph the exact same function which Roman rhetors envisaged for conscientia: it becomes the main forensic device for the exposure of the crime. And it does so by triggering the appearance of bodily symptoms in the face, eyes, and voice of the accused, that is, the parts of the body Roman rhetors continually reminded their students to look at and taught them how to read as an important skill to have when stepping out in court. 2.2. Staging the Trial: Roman Theatrics at Play in Ios. 47–48 Cicero’s narration of court scenes also holds the key to understanding Philo’s theatrical elaboration of the biblical episode of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. As we saw, in comparison with the compact Septuagint original, Philo’s retelling extends for seven full paragraphs (Ios. 42–48) and completely transcends his Vorlage. This expansion is particularly surprising if one considers that the scene 111 See the discussion by Alexander in this volume, where she explores Philo’s knowledge of Roman law (legal processes and rhetorical strategies) in the composition of his Embassy. 112 Even though the accumulation of literary Latin papyri in the Eastern parts of the Empire only begins to be noticeable in the third century ce (following the Constitutio Antoniana in 212 which granted Roman citizenship to all the inhabitants of the Empire, thus promoting the study of Latin and Roman law), fragments of Cicero’s Verrines dating back to the Julio-Claudian age (27 bce – 68 ce), have been identified among the Latin literary texts from Egypt. See Pack 1965: 145; and Maffei 2023. On the date of the manuscript, see Cavallo 2008: 146.

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narrated in Gen 39 takes place in the intimacy of an empty house and only involves Joseph and the Egyptian woman. Why, then, would Philo have Joseph deliver a long monologue when there was no one in the house to listen? More importantly, what motivates Philo to represent Joseph pleading his case and fearing the bodily reaction prompted by his conscience when there was no one to judge him and no one to read these signs of guilt? The answer, I believe, lies in the physical setting of the Roman courtroom: Philo puts in the mouth of Joseph a long speech that only makes sense if the confrontation with the Egyptian woman is staged in front of an audience. As I shall demonstrate, the same dramatic principles that dominate Roman oratory also inform Philo’s retelling of the confrontation between Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. I also explore how the physical descriptions of the conscience Philo introduces in the scene constitute a common theatrical device found in Roman texts and engages with the wider literary convention of recreating a narrative that appeals visually to the reader. Recent studies have emphasized the overtness of Republican and Imperial Roman society and their conception of political life as a spectacle that turns rulers into actors and citizens into spectators.113 Much scholarly attention has also been devoted to studying Cicero’s ability to stage court scenes in an atmosphere that mimics the dynamics and language of the various types of performances that his Roman audience would have been familiar with, such as gladiatorial combats or theatrical plays.114 The particular aspect I am interested in is Cicero’s use of physical descriptions in his legal speeches, in which he uses the litigant’s bodies demonstratively to represent their character and intention. I believe that the occurrence of these types of visual cues and vivid descriptions in Cicero’s oratory is connected to the physical layout of Roman courtrooms, which propitiated this kind of attentiveness towards the body. As Cicero often notes, the venue for nearly all his court activity was a public space like a marketplace, the Senate, or the Forum Romanum.115 The latter furnished the place for both permanent courts (quaestiones) and public meetings (contiones). Court structures may be temporarily erected, with the jurors’ benches forming one side of a roughly rectangular space and the opposing litigant’s benches forming the two other sides.116 Groups of onlookers from the public audience would also attend 113 On the relationship between theatre and oratory in Roman society, see the studies by Dupont 1986: 17ff; Conolly: 2007: 198–261; Fantham 2011: 285–301; and the very informative chapter by Peters 2022: 55–88. On the conception of politics as a spectacle itself where the emperor and the citizens interchange the roles of actor and spectators, see Bartsch 1994: 1–35. 114 See Axer 1989; and, more recently, Hall 2014: 5–39. 115 Venues where theatrical plays (ludi) and gladiatorial combats (munera) would also take place. On the physical location for Cicero’s legal activity, see May 2002. See also Bablitz 2007: 13–50, who notes that, until approximately 2 bce, the Forum Romanum hosted the iudicia publica, after which some of these courts moved to the Forum of Augustus. 116 For a tentative reconstruction (with images) of the Roman courtroom, see Bablitz 2007: 51–70; and Kondratieff, 2010.

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the trials and gather behind these benches forming a corona.117 As May notes, the Roman courtroom was not a room at all, but an open and bustling space where competence of oratorical theatrics was imperative for the rhetors pleading the case.118 Prosecutors and advocates would have to captivate the attention of the crowded jury,119 shape the audience’s reactions, or even deal with heavy rain or wind.120 This spatial disposition also entailed that trials would take place before a whole crowd, in conspectu omnium, writes Cicero,121 making it possible for prosecutors to direct the audience’s attention to the physical aspect of the accused who stood in plain sight of everyone. This is the picture we encountered in the trial of Carpinatius discussed above. Cicero notes that the prosecution attracted the attention of the general public, as right after he had taken Carpinatius to court a “large crowd gathered” (fit maximus concursus hominum) to witness the trial and continued to interact and shout during the interrogation (clamare omnes ex conventu).122 This is the same audience that would have witnessed with their own eyes how Carpinatius was left “speechless and hardly alive,” agitated as he was by his conscientia. I believe it is the overt nature of the Roman courtroom that explains, then, why Cicero often uses the litigant’s bodies demonstratively to represent their pathos, enjoining the jurors to look (aspicite)123 and scrutinize (perspicite)124 the physical appearance of the accused to discover their guilt.125 Just by standing on the open space delimited by the jurors’ and the litigants’ benches, the accused would draw all eyes on him, making possible the type of physical examination Cicero calls for. The bodily descriptions of a guilty con117 Millar 1998 notes at 224 that as many as 20,000 people might have gathered in the forum to attend particularly important events. In Man. 15.44, Cicero describes the Forum Romanum as being completed crowded (cum universus populus Romanus). 118 Cicero refers to the Forum Romanum as a theatrum where skilled orators like Hortensius would display their talents (cum forum populi Romani, quod fuisset quasi theatrum illius ingeni). See Brut. 6. 119 The size of the jury varied according to the type of trial and could host between fifty and a hundred magistrates. Around Cicero’s time, the standard number for a jury seems to have been seventy-five, and thus Cicero speaks of 50 in the trial against Flaccus (Flac. 4), 75 in the trial of Piso (Pis. 96), and 60 in that of Gabinius (Q.fr. 3.4.1). In the Imperial period the number of jurors was standardized around 45. See Bablitz 2018. For the varying composition of Roman juries, see Greenidge 1901: 441–456; and Jones 1972: 45–85. Keeping the attention of such large juries was a difficult task, and so Cicero (Brut. 54.200) describes the jurors “yawning, talking to each other, sometimes even in groups, sending out to learn the time” (videt oscitantem iudicem, loquentem cum altero, non numquam etiam circulantem, mittentem ad horas). 120 Seneca the Elder and Quintilian encourage the orators to endure the dust, wind, and heat of the Forum when delivering their speeches. See Sen. Controv. 3 pr. 12; Quint. Inst. 10.1.33, 11.3.27. 121 Cic. Verr. 2.5.3. 122 Cic. Verr. 2.187–188. 123 Cic. Sull. 74: Aspicite ipsum, contuemini os, conferte crimen cum vita / “Look at him, examine his facial expression.” 124 Cic. Sull. 76: Perspicite etiam atque etiam, iudices / “Scrutinize them intently, oh, judges.” See above, note 82. 125 Or similar expressions such as considerate faciem. See Cic. Q. Rosc. 7.20.

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science we have discussed should therefore not merely be seen as a literary device to help readers to visualize the guilt of the litigants but, first and foremost, as a forensic device employed in court. In the retelling of court scenes, the theatricality of the text is preceded and anchored in the actual theatricality of the court. The biblical episode of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife is not a trial account, but Philo seems to treat it as such. Part of the reason, I believe, lies in the theatrical dynamics we encounter in the court scenes narrated by Cicero. Philo’s Joseph imagines himself standing in court, defending himself against the charge of adultery; fearing the presence of some informer or witness who could potentially expose his crime; and pleading his case in front of Potiphar, whom Philo harshly criticizes for blindly believing his wife’s testimony without giving Joseph the chance to defend himself (Ios. 52). In other words, Joseph assumes an audience for his hypothetical trial. And it is precisely the possibility of being seen and judged by others that explains why Joseph fears his bodily language becoming the forensic device for his exposure. The forensic relevance of the conscience in this episode lies in the specific signs that it prompts in the body of Joseph and in the presence of a viewing audience to interpret them as signs of guilt. True, Philo never presents this confrontation as a formal trial – he never employs the word δικαστήριον for that matter. That would deviate completely from the biblical story, which treats this confrontation as a domestic episode, and Philo is careful enough to paraphrase the scene in Ios. 47–48 only as the hypothetical scenario envisioned by Joseph. And yet, the way in which Joseph imagines the interrogation unfolding is built on the premise that anyone watching him, starting with Potiphar, would be able to detect his guilt by reading the signs offered by his body. While imagined court scenes of this type are not absent in Greek literature,126 they do not incorporate the visual cues and physical descriptions we encounter in Roman trial accounts. Philo’s description of the ways in which Joseph’s conscience can be manifested in his body thus connects directly with the overt nature of the Roman courtroom where these descriptions are frequently featured. 126 Niehoff already noted the similarities between Joseph’s portrayal of the ideal statesman (Ios. 67–68), who must not pay court to the mob and rejects all sorts of flattery and hypocrisy, and Socrates’s response to Callicles’ invitation for political office (Pl. Gorg. 521). There, Socrates envisions how his own trial (ἐάνπερ εἰσίω εἰς δικαστήριον) would unfold if he were to seek the gratification of the people. In Ios. 68, however, Philo explicitly mentions that the ideal ruler, whenever he is called to account in front of the people, will appear with his “conscience shining clear as illuminated by the sun or light” (τὸ συνειδὸς αὐγάζων ὡς ἐν ἡλίῳ καὶ φωτί). See Niehoff 1992: 76–77. The fact that in both Ios. 47–48 and Ios. 67–68, where Joseph undergoes some hypothetical prosecution, Philo introduces the συνειδός in the narrative, comes to show the congruence with the Roman understanding of conscientia. In the case of Ios. 47–48, as I have argued, this is evinced by the physicality of the descriptions of conscience. In the case of Ios. 67–68, Philo ascribes to the συνειδός the same role in making the statesman accountable in front of the people as Cicero does with conscientia in his discussion of the ideal statesman in Parad. 5.33–34.

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The scene narrated by Philo also partakes in the wider use of theatrical principles we encounter outside the realm of Latin forensic oratory. While the latter relied heavily on visual cues and physical descriptions to make the orator’s delivery more persuasive and convey mental states nonverbally, Latin texts that were written for a reading audience also “attempt to recreate a narrative that appeals to the reader’s use of the eyes.”127 In other words, in addition to the theatricality inherent to the Roman courtroom that runs through the judicial speeches we have examined, Latin texts of various genres also tend to exacerbate the visual aspect of characters and events and construct narrative portions as if they were being staged.128 It is no surprise, then, to find that physical descriptions of conscientia are also featured in these texts as a rhetorical device to bring into the visible realm the unseen disturbance and guilt which conscientia comprises. Sallust, for instance, describes in very graphic terms how the debauchery and guilty conscience of Catiline were readable on his face: Namque animus inpurus, dis hominibusque infestus, neque vigiliis neque quietibus sedari poterat; ita conscientia mentem excitam vastabat. Igitur colos ei exanguis, foedi oculi, citus modo, modo tardus incessus; prorsus in facie voltuque vecordia inerat.129 For his filthy soul, at odds with gods and men, could find peace neither in wakefulness nor in sleep; to such a degree did his conscience harass his frightened mind. Hence his pallid complexion, his haggard eyes, his gait now fast, now slow; in short, madness was present in his facial expression.

Sallust’s description goes beyond the strictly forensic use of the signa conscientiae we have encountered in rhetorical texts. The emphasis laid on the physical appearance of Catiline not only serves to point to the guilt of the conspirator, but also seeks to represent in graphic terms the depravity and iniquity of the enemy par excellence of the Roman Republic. This attention to the demeanor of the conspirator implicitly enjoins the readers to become viewers and judge by themselves Catiline’s state of mind. I want to emphasize the “Romanness” of these types of descriptions. It is not just that the physiognomic descriptions of a guilty conscience we have reviewed so far find no clear precedent in the Greek tradition. When compared to their Latin counterparts, Greek texts on rhetoric and judicial oratory are marked by an “almost complete absence of description of facial expression or gesture.”130 The attention that Philo devotes to the face, eyes, and voice as visual indicators of the disturbance caused by Joseph’s συνειδός matches the interest of late-Republican and Imperial authors in physically representing 127

Corbeill 2004: 145. Cicero, for instance, in translating Odysseus’ speech in Il. 2.299ff, twice adds the verb vidimus, to which the Homeric text has no clear equivalent. See Cic. Div. 2.63–64. The example is quoted by Corbeill 2004: 145. 129 Sall. Cat. 15. The Latin edition is that of Kurfess 1957. See also Tac. Hist. 4.72, where conscientia also causes the eyes (oculis) to remain fixed to ground as a sign of shame (pudor). 130 Evans 1969: 41. 128

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the mental weakness and distress inflicted by conscientia. The vivid descriptions Philo introduces in Ios. 47–48 render Joseph’s distress visible to his readers, who might have pictured the scene as if they were watching it on stage.131 Another illuminating passage can be found in the Historiae Alexandri Magni, the only extant work of the first-century Imperial historian Curtius Rufus. The scene narrates a key episode in Alexander’s campaign in Asia Minor, when the king fell sick after swimming in the waters of the Cydnus River. Alexander, lying in bed, drinks the cup offered by his trusted physician and childhood friend Philip. While doing so, he hands Philip the letter sent by Parmenion alerting him about the physician’s intention to poison him: Inter has cogitationes biduo absumpto, illuxit a medico destinatus dies, et ille cum poculo in quo medicamentum diluerat intravit. Quo viso Alexander, levato corpore in cubili, epistolam a Parmenione missam sinistra manu tenens accipit poculum et haurit interritus; tum epistolam legere Philippum iubet nec a vultu legentis movit oculos, ratus aliquas conscientiae notas in ipso ore posse deprehendere.132 After having spent two days in such considerations, the day designated by the physician dawned, and he [Philip] entered with the cup in which he had diluted the drug. Upon seeing him, Alexander rose in bed and, holding in his left land the letter sent by Parmenion, took the cup and drank it fearlessly. He then ordered Philip to read the letter and did not turn his eyes from his face as he read it, having thought that he would be able to detect some signs of a guilty conscience in his very facial expression.

As we saw in Latin rhetorical texts, the forensic relevance of conscientia is connected to the physical signs in which a guilty conscience might be outwardly manifested. The scene narrated by Curtius, however, does not take place in a courtroom but in Alexander’s tent, where nobody else save the king and the physician is found. And yet, the historian’s emphasis on the facial expressions of these characters, i. e., the intense gaze of Alexander scrutinizing his physician as he reads the letter (nec a vultu legentis movit oculos) with the hope of detecting some signs of guilt in his countenance (aliquas conscientiae notas in ipso ore), allows his readers to witness the scene as if they were physically present and could see the action with their own eyes. The episode narrated by Philo in Ios. 47–48 also shares this implicit invitation to the readers to become viewers and 131 As Colson 1935: 600–601 and Bosman 2020a: 290 already noted, the encounter between Joseph and the Egyptian woman, presented by Philo as a moralizing example of what an unrestrained passion can lead to, must have conjured up in the minds of the readers the figure of Phaedra who, like Potiphar’s wife, also personifies the association between love and madness (see Ios. 40: τῇ γὰρ εὐμορφίᾳ ἐπιμανεῖσα τοῦ νεανίσκου). Philo’s theatricalization of this scene must have appealed to a Roman readership, for we know of the success that Seneca’s Phaedra – written just a few years after Philo’s Life of Joseph in 54 ce – garnered at this time (as recounted by Paus 1.22.1). Colson rightly observes that Philo might also have had in mind “some similar passage in the earlier and lost Hippolitus of Euripides” whose lines were widely use in the imperial period. See Schramm 2020. 132 Curt. 3.6.8–9. The Latin text is that of Hedicke 1908.

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witness how Joseph’s face turns pale, his voice falters, and his eyes fail to meet Potiphar’s. Again, I have argued that Philo reshapes this confrontation in the language and style of a court scene but, at any rate, his rewriting of the biblical narrative is not the rewriting of an actual legal speech as is the case with Cicero. The biblical story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, like the encounter between Alexander the Great and Philip, is a scene that takes place with no audience. By reworking it into a distinctly visual and overt narrative that turns the readers into spectators,133 Philo engages with the wider literary convention shared by his Roman contemporaries of turning narrative portions into face-to-face scenes that the readers can visualize. In his Parallel Lives, Curtius’ close contemporary Plutarch also dramatizes the encounter between Alexander and Philip (19.3–5). The Greek biographer places equal emphasis on describing their facial expression, who kept “turning at the same time their eyes upon one another” (εἶτα ἅμα πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἀποβλεπόντων). Interestingly, Plutarch explicitly acknowledges the theatrical nature of this scene for he describes their encounter as “amazing and theatrical” (ὥστε θαυμαστὴν καὶ θεατρικὴν τὴν ὄψιν εἶναι). Plutarch’s version,134 however, differs from Curtius’ in one important respect that further confirms the “Romanness” of the physiognomic descriptions that accompany conscientia. In Plutarch’s retelling, Alexander never distrusts his physician. His trust in Philip becomes manifest in his “glad and open countenance, by which he displayed his good will and trust in him” (τοῦ μὲν Ἀλεξάνδρου φαιδρῷ τῷ προσώπῳ καὶ διακεχυμένῳ τὴν πρὸς τὸν Φίλιππον εὐμένειαν καὶ πίστιν ἀποφαίνοντος). Hence, he takes the cup handed to him and drinks the contents without any suspicion or intention to expose the guilty conscience – συνειδός is missing in Plutarch’s text – of his friend. Curtius, however, portrays Alexander immersed in a sea of doubts, vacillating between drinking the potion (Bibere persevere […]?) or distrusting his physician (Damnem medici fidem?). It is his suspicion that explains why conscientia is then introduced into the narrative: Alexander tries to discover (deprehendere) his physician’s true intentions by looking for any signs of guilt showing in his face (aliquas conscientiae notas). In other words, while Plutarch attributes no malicious intent to Philip, Curtius composes a slightly different 133 Since virtually all the accounts and literary traditions on the life of Alexander that Curtius might have relied on are lost, it is impossible to determine to what extent his rewriting of the scene between Alexander and Philip introduces new elements. That said, the comparison with Plutarch’s paraphrase of the encounter between Alexander and Philip suggests that the introduction of conscientia and the attention to the signs of guilt in the physician’s face is Curtius’ innovation. The oldest Greek version of the Alexander Romance – itself an expansion of an earlier account written around the fourth century ce – can be dated to the third century ce and omits any reference to the conscience of Philip’s facial expression. On the sources of Quintus Curtius, see Baynham 1998: 57–100. 134 I owe this insight to Maren Niehoff, who alerted me to the existence of this passage in Plutarch’s Lives.

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scene where Alexander suspects his friend and tries to discover his ulterior motive by scrutinizing his facial expression. The occurrence of conscientia in the latter relates precisely to the forensic atmosphere that dominates the scene. The fact that only Curtius’ paraphrase of this episode exhibits this forensic interest and introduces the term conscientia into the text illustrates the close affinity that Philo’s use of συνειδός in Ios. 47–48 has with the Latin rhetorical tradition. While Plutarch – an author who, like Philo, came to Rome as an ambassador and adopted the biographical style popular in the Roman Empire135 – omits any reference whatsoever to Philip’s conscience, Philo, on the contrary, is keen to import into his biography of Joseph a notion of conscience that is markedly Roman.

3. Conclusion Philo’s use of the συνειδός in Ios. 47–48 reveals a conspicuous congruence with the role played by conscientia in Latin sources. His rhetorical expansion of the compact Septuagint account in Gen 39:7–20 ascribes to the conscience the same forensic role in the exposure of Joseph’s hypothetical adultery as Roman authors like Cicero ascribe to conscientia in the retelling of court scenes. This becomes particularly evident in the physiognomic perspective that Philo adopts to describe how the workings of Joseph’s conscience can be manifested in the body, which matches the importance Roman speakers attach to the interpretation of facial expressions as a forensic means to read the litigant’s intention and mental state. Likewise, Philo’s dramatization of the encounter between Joseph and Potiphar engages with the wider Roman tendency to recreate vivid narratives that make use of visual cues and descriptions of physical appearance to induce the readers to visualize the scene. The analysis of this particular episode in the Life of Joseph reveals the deep authorial awareness Philo had for the legal matters and literary styles popular in the Roman Empire. It also shows the need to reassess Philo’s relation with the Latin tradition as a central hermeneutic key to obtaining a more comprehensive understanding of his notion of conscience. In this contribution, I have tried to show its specific entanglement with the legal and the rhetorical field. Yet, Philo’s descriptions of the συνειδός are not exclusively forensic, nor are the occurrences of conscientia limited to legal texts. Wider themes of philosophy and religion are often invoked in the writings of Cicero and Seneca to expound the role of conscience. Further investigations into the convergence of philosophical and legal 135 On Philo and Plutarch’s literary activity as biographers in Rome, see Niehoff 2012. On the impact that Rome exerted in Plutarch’s career, see Jones 1971: 48–66; Preston 2001; and Stadter 2013.

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ideas will illuminate Philo’s treatment of the conscience vis-à-vis his near-Roman contemporaries as well as the development of the idea of conscience at the turn of the era.

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Philo’s Barbarian Virtue and Roman Exemplary Ethics Rebecca Langlands 1. Introduction This chapter argues that Philo’s Probus, probably written during his residence in Rome, was strongly influenced by the Roman culture and philosophical ideas that surrounded him there.1 This is particularly evident in his extensive use of ethical examples, where he not only draws on, but actively participates in, the lively contemporary practice of Roman exemplary ethics, an aspect of Roman culture that has been the focus of significant recent scholarship.2 Part 1 explores how, despite writing in Greek and apparently adopting the conventions of Greek philosophy, Philo in fact positions his ideal philosophical education in direct contrast to that of the Greeks, aligning instead with a nonGreek “barbarian” philosophy that explicitly includes Jews, Indians and Persians. There is no mention of Roman philosophy,3 and yet, as I shall argue, we can see in this barbarian philosophy what Maren Niehoff has described as “the veiled presence of Rome” in Philo’s philosophical works. In particular, Niehoff has recently suggested that, although he barely mentions Roman culture, the parameters of the triangulation between Greeks, Jews and barbarians within which Philo negotiated the status of Jewish philosophy were provided by Roman culture in its own attempts to position itself in relation to Greek culture in the first century.4 My analysis will further substantiate this and show that Philo’s barbarian philosophy is implicitly aligned with Roman exemplary ethics. In Part 2 I argue that Philo is moreover an active participant in Roman exemplary ethics, and that Probus engages in and responds to the issues that were preoccupying Romans in this period.5 I develop this line of argument through 1 Building on recent work by Maren Niehoff (Niehoff 2018, 2023). See also in this volume the contribution of Gretchen Reydams-Schils on the possible influence on Philo of Stoicism in Rome, and on Probus in particular. 2 See especially Roller 2018 and Langlands 2018 for comprehensive accounts of exempla in Roman culture. 3 Indeed, the only explicit mention of Romans in the work positions them as an example of tyrannical cruelty in the figure of Brutus, assassin of Julius Caesar, whom the brave Xanthians resist (Prob. 118.) 4 Niehoff 2023: 231. 5 This would also fit with Niehoff ’s suggestion that Philo’s works were aimed at a Roman audience, with little background in Judaism. See Niehoff 2023: 230.

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a detailed comparison of Probus with the work of Philo’s close Roman contemporary, Valerius Maximus, whose Facta et Dicta Memorabilia was published in 30 ce, only a few years before Philo arrived in Rome. Valerius’ nine-volume work, which presents thematically-organized exemplary anecdotes interspersed with philosophical reflections and sententiae, is our richest surviving source for the lively culture of exemplary ethics in first century Rome.6 In this practice, familiar tales from history circulated widely throughout Roman society as a shared commemorative and ethical resource.7 Each tale or exemplary figure was associated not with a single moral message, but with a set of provocative themes and questions around which ethical discussion centered.8 Whether or not Philo read Latin or came across Valerius’ work directly, the Facta et Dicta is representative of a practice of using historical examples to explore philosophical issues, which flourished in Roman culture at that time, and which Philo would certainly have seen in action during conversations and debates with his Roman acquaintances. Ethical questions, formulations, lines of argument, sententiae and associated exempla were circulated widely within a culture of rhetorical training that encouraged people to keep returning to and redeploying familiar material to address ethical issues in new ways. Thus exemplary ethics thrives not only on intertextuality but also on engagement with surrounding oral tradition and practice, which is harder for us to recapture now, but also more conducive to the exchange of ideas and stories across linguistic and cultural boundaries.9 Regarding the subject of Greek vs. barbarian virtue, there are strong similarities between Philo and Valerius Maximus, especially in terms of the way they handle the themes of the inclusivity of virtue and the role of formal philosophy, and distance themselves from the elitism of Ciceronian philosophy, suggesting that they are working within a shared tradition.10 Here I focus particularly on each author’s engagement with the same specific cluster of exempla (Calanus and the gymnosophists, and the philosophers Zeno and Anaxarchus), as evidence that Philo’s work was shaped by the culture of exemplary ethics that he encountered during his stay in Rome, not merely in the content of his exempla and his mode of using exempla, but also in the fundamental philosophical questions that he used them to explore. 6 No other similar collections of exempla survive, although we know of works by Cornelius Nepos, Varro and a Pomponius Rufus mentioned by Valerius himself. See Bloomer 1997 on Valerius Maximus’ work, with particular reference to his relationship with possible sources, and Skidmore 1996 on the work as a moral handbook. In recent years there has been increasing acknowledgment of the literary and philosophical aspects of the work: Langlands 2011; Lawrence 2015, 2016; Wardle 2018; Pittard 2021; Langlands 2022. 7 Morgan 2007: 122–159; Roller 2004, 2018; Langlands 2018. 8 On this “controversial thinking” with Roman exempla, see Langlands 2018: 258–290. 9 There are parallels with the later Greek writer Plutarch, whose work was similarly deeply coloured by Roman exemplary ethics. See Langlands 2020. 10 See Lawrence 2021 on Valerius Maximus’ inclusive virtue.

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2. Greek, Barbarian and Roman The final lines of Philo’s Every Good Man is Free summarize the key precepts of the treatise. In a nutshell: Turn away from the “inane opinion” (τὴν κενὴν δόξαν) of the mainstream; reject the idea that true “citizenship or freedom” (πολιτείαν ἢ ἐλευθερίαν) belong to the so-called “citizens” with civic roles, or that slavery belongs to those who have the legal status of slaves; understand instead that one must examine “the nature of the soul” (ψυχῆς φύσιν) and that it is really souls which are either enslaved (to passions) or truly free (if they have conquered those passions). Finally, ensure that you nurture souls who have not yet been swayed one way or another (souls which he describes, significantly, as we will see, as “naked”) within the right kind of education system: γυμναὶ δέ εἰσιν ἔτι, καθάπερ αἱ τῶν κομιδῇ νηπίων, ταύτας τιθηνοκομητέον, ἐνστάζοντας τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἀντὶ γάλακτος ἁπαλὰς τροφάς, τὰς διὰ τῶν ἐγκυκλίων ὑφηγήσεις, εἶτ᾿ αὖθις κραταιοτέρας ὧν φιλοσοφία δημιουργός, ἐξ ὧν ἀνδρωθεῖσαι καὶ εὐεκτήσασαι πρὸς τέλος αἴσιον, οὐ Ζηνώνειον μᾶλλον ἢ πυθόχρηστον, ἀφίξονται, τὸ ἀκολούθως τῇ φύσει ζῆν. Souls which are still naked, exactly like those of infants, must be nourished by instilling first, replacing milk, the soft nourishment of instruction in the general curriculum, and then the stronger nourishment provided by philosophy. Through these, reared to manhood and health, they will reach the happy goal prescribed by the Pythian oracle no less than by Zeno: to live according to nature.11

This is the process that will produce a free and good soul who can, in Zeno’s injunction “live according to nature.” Taken by itself, this prescribed education is instantly recognizable as the conventional schooling (paideia) found across the ancient Mediterranean in every Greek city, starting with “the general curriculum” for younger boys (τὰς διὰ τῶν ἐγκυκλίων ὑφηγήσεις), followed by philosophy (φιλοσοφία). The reference to Zeno and his well-known Stoic precept firmly locates this vision in the Greek world. And yet, for anyone who comes to this passage after reading the entire preceding treatise, it is clear that a conventional Greek education is not at all what Philo advocates. The journey on which he has taken his reader, across the ancient ethical landscape (including India, Persia, Thrace, Sparta, Rome, Palestine and Syria) serves to reframe this apparently conventional scene of Greek paideia and philosophy, so that we see it as something new. Meanwhile, Philo is clear throughout the treatise that the right kind of education is vital if one is to attain goodness and freedom.12 Although he begins his treatise by asking us to reject the common opinion that is held by most people (Prob. 2), and goes on to acknowledge that good people are rare and that the 11 Philo, Prob. 158–160, with the quotation from 160. Translations of Philo by me unless otherwise indicated. 12 Indeed, he describes “lack of education” (ἀπαιδευσίαν) as a sickness of the soul (Prob. 12).

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cities are crammed with people who are ruled by their vices, he also asserts that the majority of humankind has potential for goodness, and is amenable to being taught. Even a tiny amount of education can make a positive difference.13 It is only because they are either completely uneducated or have been educated in the wrong way that they have not (yet) attained goodness and freedom. The implication is that education as most people experience it is not of the right kind. So, just as we have been explicitly required by Philo to reject the common definitions of key moral terms such as “citizen,” “exile,” “good,” “evil,” “slave” and “free” – and indeed to accept that these labels may be switched around entirely14 – we are also implicitly required to reject the common view of paideia, which is commonly understood to be the foundation of citizenship in the ancient Greek city. The reader is invited to recognize their own need for the proper education advocated by Philo, when they read the “paradoxes” with which Philo introduces his treatise. The subject of the treatise itself is identical to one of the core Stoic paradoxes – that only the good man is free, and all bad men are slaves.15 Conventionally, Stoic paradoxes are startling statements that seem to the uninitiated to be laughable and contrary to common sense, but make sense to an inner-circle of those educated in Stoic philosophy. In his Paradoxa Stoicorum of 46 bce, Cicero had explored six of these paradoxes, including this same topic of the Probus, in an attempt to make their significance accessible to a wider audience. Here, at the start of the Probus, Philo makes a similar move, at first presenting his opening paradoxes from the common-sense perspective of the uninitiated person, whose objections to them apparently make perfect logical sense:16 How can it be reasonable to claim that men who live in the middle of a polis and participate in all the activities of civic life should not be called πολίτας but rather “exiles,” and instead to apply the label πολίτας to men who have been chased out of the city as punishment (commonly called “exiles”)? (Prob. 6). The etymological link between πολίται and πολίς makes it especially clear that the perplexity of the imagined speaker is well-founded. This objection must seem reasonable to any reader, and yet to follow their reasoning is to align oneself with the benighted ignorant who dwell in Plato’s cave, who take the shadows cast on the wall to be reality. Plato’s analogy – a touchstone of Greek philosophy – is deployed here cleverly to warn that clear-sightedness is not easily achieved; those who are only able to perceive the shadows on the wall of the cave believe that what they see is 13

See Prob. 4, 15, 114, 136, and also 98 and 143 on value of literature. Philo, Prob. 6–10. 15 The fifth Stoic paradox treated in Cicero’s Paradoxa Stoicorum has the same theme as Philo’s Probus, that “Only the wise man is free, and every fool is a slave,” with the paradox rendered as the title in both Greek and Latin: Ὅτι μόνος ὁ σοφὸς ἐλεύθερος καὶ πᾶς ἄφρων δοῦλος. Solum sapientem esse liberum, et omnem stultum servum. 16 Cicero also uses the motif of the exile who is not an exile in Paradoxa 2 and 3. On the Paradoxa Stoicorum as Cicero’s attempt to bring these Stoic ideas to a mainstream audience, see Englert 1990. 14

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reality, and that it is the wise people in the sunlight who are being deceived by a puppet show.17 Even if the reader thinks they grasp the truth, they may well yet have something to unlearn. Right from the start of the treatise we learn that the majority of people – perhaps including ourselves – have been exposed to the wrong kind of education that has only compounded their ignorant misunderstanding of reality, leading them to follow the common opinion – precisely what you must avoid if you are to become truly free.18 What, then, is the nature of the education and the philosophy that Philo advocates, and how does his treatise prepare us to read correctly his final description of education? I shall argue that Philo’s vision of the type of ideal education that produces what Moses calls “wholefruits” (Prob. 71) – people who are truly good and free – is carefully presented in Probus. It is a vision infused with flavors of Roman exemplary ethics and its central components are: the important role of “communities of virtue,” where learners learn together and are affected by the virtues of other people they are exposed to;19 a focus on ethics; an insistence on the interdependence of word and deed; the centrality of everyday practice, both in terms of applied ethics and in the sense of training over time; and an inclusive approach to virtue which explicitly challenges social and political hegemonies. This model of a civic and educational community is set up in contrast to the Greek institutions that are evoked in the opening sections (Prob. 6). This distancing from Greek civic and philosophical traditions, and the emphasis on practice and on exempla, are also shared with Philo’s Roman contemporaries. The centrality of historical exempla to Roman culture has been well documented; Latin authors also regularly presented their wealth of exempla as a badge of honor that distinguishes them from the Greeks, who are characterized by speech rather than action.20 Valerius Maximus represents Greece as garrulous and boastful in contrast with Rome.21 17 Philo, Prob. 5, alluding to Plato’s famous allegory of the prisoners in the cave in Rep. 7.514a–520a. 18 See also Reydams-Schils in this volume on Philo’s deployment of the Stoic paradox in Probus. 19 On communities of virtue in modern philosophy see Zagzebski 2022; there are useful parallels with Philo’s articulation of communities in this treatise. Zagzebski’s work is “deeply concerned with how one should live the Christian life.” As well as academic work she “also models how to do philosophy in a way that is connected to the lived experience.” She considers “epistemic communities” to be key for an individual’s understanding of the truth. See ‘God, Knowledge, and the Good’, review of Zagzebski 2022 by Derek Christian Haderlie, in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2022.12.1. 20 On the centrality of exempla in Roman culture see Roller 2009, 2018, and Langlands 2018. For the contrast between Roman practical examples and Greek philosophical precepts, with the idea that the former are more effective in teaching virtue than the latter see e. g. Quintilian in his rhetorical handbook, echoing Valerius in his insistence on the centrality of ethics, Inst. 12.2.29–30. For Valerius Maximus distancing Rome from Greece, see e. g. Val. Max. 1.1.12, 1.1.ext 7, (cf. Phidias’ hubris in 8.14.6, and self-confidence of 3.7.ext 4); 2.1.10, 2.2.2 (where Greek volubility

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Niehoff ’s recent work has identified Philo’s Probus as among his “Roman” works, influenced by the stay in Rome that followed his participation in an embassy to the emperor Caligula in 38 ce. In her recent book Philo of Alexandria: An Intellectual Biography (2018), she has explored the intellectual implications of this life-changing stay in Rome, arguing that the political, cultural and intellectual climate at Rome had a profound effect on Philo and his moral thought. The influence of exemplary ethics is particularly evident in his work Every Good Man is Free, and through comparison with the work of Philo’s near contemporary, Valerius Maximus.22 Given that Valerius’ work was cited by name by authors such as Pliny the Elder, Frontinus, and the Greek Plutarch, it is not far-fetched to suggest that Philo may have been familiar with the existence of this recently published Latin work, and its extensive presentation of exemplary anecdotes and philosophical reflections. As I shall show, both Valerius and Philo espouse a similar practical ethics, which makes use of Stoic moral ideas and exempla where these are useful, along with those of other philosophical systems, but makes use of them within their own composite ethics rather than adhering closely to a single theory. Both works treat the same themes as those discussed by Cicero in Tusculan Disputations: pain, endurance, virtue and freedom. Both deviate in similar ways from Cicero’s presentation of these themes, in the service of a more capacious ethical approach, which, to a certain extent at least, opens up the possibility of philosophy to a wider audience. With his concluding admonition that the true philosophical education involves the teaching of “naked souls” (Prob. 160), Philo is drawing a final contrast with the naked bodies of the gymnasium in the typical Greek city, and thereby re-emphasizing certain key distinctions of the treatise: between the body and the soul, and between the vice-ridden city and the community of virtue that Philo is advocating.23 The gymnasium is one of the core institutions of Greek education (paideia), which focuses on the training and cultivation of the male body through regular communal exercise. The gymnasiarch – the official who runs this training program in a gymnasium – has been mentioned by Philo early in his treatise as one of the important civic roles that people undertake in the city and that the uneducated masses would mistakenly consider to be part of citizenis regulated by Roman insistence on replying to Greeks in Latin and speaking through interpreters, so as to protect Roman imperium from the “seduction and temptation of their literature,” (illecebris et suavitati litterarum); 3.2.22, 4.3.6, 4.7.4, 5.4.ext.6, 6.1.ext.1, 8.7. See also below note 30. 21 E. g., in the contrast between the well-known Cynegirus of Athens and the braver but less well-known anonymous Roman soldier (3.2.22). 22 In this volume Reydams-Schils makes a similar comparison between Philo and the later Stoic writer Musonius Rufus, showing the possible Roman influence on Philo’s handling of Stoic ideas. 23 On Philo’s contrast between body and soul and the exhortation to attend to the latter rather than the former, see Prob. 17, 26–27, 55–56, 146.

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ship;24 Philo will show over the course of his treatise that such activities do not constitute the true citizenship that belongs to the truly free. In contrast, at the center of the treatise is an extensive description of the Essenes, a community of Jews in Palestinian Syria who are presented as an exemplary community (Prob. 72–91). Within this description the term gymnasmata, usually used to refer to physical exercises in the gymnasium, is used to describe the “exercises of the soul” that they use to learn goodness. Philo depicts a scene of synagogue study, where it is through communal discussion that members reach knowledge of the truth about what things are good, bad and indifferent. Their education is described as producing “athletes of virtue” who are the psychic equivalent of the physical athletes produced by the typical Greek gymnasium: τοιούτους ἡ δίχα περιεργίας Ἑλληνικῶν ὀνομάτων ἀθλητὰς ἀρετῆς ἀπεργάζεται φιλοσοφία, γυμνάσματα προτιθεῖσα τὰς ἐπαινετὰς πράξεις, ἐξ ὧν ἡ ἀδούλωτος ἐλευθερία βεβαιοῦται. Such are the athletes of virtue which a philosophy produces when it distances itself from the superfluousness of Greek names, when it offers praiseworthy deeds as its exercises, which establish freedom that cannot be enslaved.25

This comparison to athletes picks up on a theme running through the treatise: that philosophy is a daily practice that requires one to “labor […] with incessant care” over virtue (Prob. 69). The term διαπονοῦσιν used at 81 suggests that the Essenes labor diligently in ethics, cultivating their goodness over time. There is an emphasis on long term cultivation of lifestyle, within a community. Philo characterizes the virtuous as ἐμπείροι “practiced” or “experienced” in the practices of goodness and life matters.26 The notion of repetitive training and exercises is transposed from the gymnasium of the body to the gymnasium of the mind, which can lead to the “freedom which cannot be enslaved.” Thus, the Greek gymnasium provides both a negative example of an educational institution focusing on the wrong thing,27 and a positive model for understanding how Philo’s ideal education of the soul should work: just as exercises and diligent daily training refine the body, so too for the soul.28 24

Philo, Prob. 6. Philo, Prob. 88. 26 Virtue is knowing how men ought to live, according to nature: in Prob. 49–50, Philo tells us that “all virtuous men are proficient in life practices,” (οἱ δὲ σπουδαῖοι πάντες ἔμπειροι τῶν κατὰ τὸν βίον πραγμάτων εἰσίν). 27 See also the dismissive comparisons with wrestlers later in the treatise, Prob. 110–113, 146. 28 The “naked philosophy” practiced by Moses (Prob. 43) could similarly be understood as the soul equivalent of the gymnasia, which are run as educational establishments by the true philosophical communities, to educate the naked souls rather than the naked bodies of their young. Reydams-Schils in this volume notes a similar attention to the parallels between body and soul and the exercises required for each in the work of Musonius Rufus. 25

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However, Philo does not labor the contrast between the synagogue and the gymnasium as institutions dedicated respectively to the soul and the body, but chooses instead to underline the distinction between the Greek and Essene philosophies themselves. Although the Essene philosophy has a Stoic aspect – especially the distinction between the good, bad and indifferent – Philo explains that the Essene community rejects key elements of Stoic philosophy (namely logic and most of physics) to focus primarily on ethics (Prob. 80–81). Similarly, the Indian Calanus, who is a member of another of Philo’s exemplary philosophical communities, the gymnosophists, protests their dissimilarity with the Greek philosophers, saying: “We are not like the philosophers of the Greeks, many of whom have practiced words for public gatherings. For us, by contrast, deeds follow words and words follow deeds.”29 The philosophy of the Greeks is perceived to be tainted by the περιεργίας Ἑλληνικῶν ὀνομάτων, “the superfluousness of Greek names,” while the philosophy of the Essenes sets “praiseworthy deeds” as practical exercises (Prob. 88). The contrast between names or labels (ὀνομάτα) and actions (πράξεις) is highly evocative of the Roman treatment of Greek philosophy. The Romans too are keen on the idea that they act while the Greeks merely theorize. For the Romano-centric Valerius, for instance, the Greeks are characterized as loquacious and boastful, in contrast to the Romans who are especially well-endowed with exempla and especially associated with action as opposed to talk.30 For Philo the contrast is between Greeks, characterized as focused on words alone, and other global communities (barbarians), among whom the Essenes are mentioned alongside the Persian Magi and the Indian gymnosophists. Just as Calanus claims that, for gymnosophists, deeds follow words and words follow deeds, so too do these barbarians understand that words and deeds must be intimately bound together: Κατὰ δὲ τὴν βάρβαρον, ἐν ᾗ πρεσβευταὶ λόγων καὶ ἔργων, πολυανθρωπότατα στίφη καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν ἐστιν ἀνδρῶν· 29 Philo, Prob. 96: Ἑλλήνων δὲ φιλοσόφοις οὐκ ἐξομοιούμεθα, ὅσοι αὐτῶν εἰς πανήγυριν λόγους ἐμελέτησαν, ἀλλὰ λόγοις ἔργα παρ’ ἡμῖν ἀκόλουθα καὶ ἔργοις λόγοι. 30 Philo’s term ὀνομάτα, which can mean “names” or “reputations,” also evokes the Roman notion that Greeks are especially boastful about their deeds, and tend to spread their fame far and wide, in contrast with the Romans whose deeds are often relatively unknown, but far more impressive in reality. On the Greeks as garrulous and boastful, see Val. Max. 3.2.22: verbosa cantu laudum suarum; “with the wordy singing of their own praises;” 4.7.4: “Let Greece boast of Theseus … a tale told by liars and believed by fools” (trans. Shackleton 2000), loquatur Graecia Thesea […] vani est istud narrare, stulti credere; 5.3.3: “a crafty and garrulous people,” ingeniosum et garrulum populum; 6.1.ext.1 Hippo: “Greece celebrating with their own praises,” Graecia laudibus suis celebrando. Meanwhile the Romans excel in practical examples: 2.7.6, “but our city, which fills the whole world with amazing exempla of every kind,” at nostra urbs, quae omni genere mirificorum exemplorum totum terrarium orbem replevit; 3.8. ext.1: “many Roman exempla remain,” complura […] Romana exempla superant; 7.2.ext.1a: “there is not enough time to relate all the Roman examples,” tempus deficiet domestica narrantem.

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In the barbarian realm, where there are advocates of words and deeds together, we find the most numerous associations of good and excellent men […]31

Philo emphasizes several times the need for harmony between words and deeds. Calanus himself wins admiration from all by combining words and deeds (λόγοις ἐπαινετοῖς σπουδαῖα ἔργα συνυφήνας).32 We may note the resonance with the title of Valerius Maximus’ own work, Facta et Dicta Memorabilia. Philo and his Roman peers share a rejection of rhetoric without action, which they associate with the Greeks and with Greek philosophy. Indeed, Philo himself ultimately seems to reject the primacy of logical reasoning as established in Greek rhetoric and philosophy. At first sight, he structures his treatise in the conventional format where illustrative examples follow, and are subordinate to, logical exposition.33 The opening part of Probus is devoted to abstract reasoning, proving through logic the assertion that every good man is free (Prob. 1–62.)34 It is only at section 62, roughly a third of the way through the treatise, that he turns to the exempla, and furthermore they seem to be introduced as the medium of persuasion for those who are not well-educated enough to follow the bare logic of his preceding argument, (Prob. 73). The rest of the treatise – which will introduce us to such key exemplary figures as Calanus and Diogenes the Cynic – is introduced with the implication that it is a concession to the less well-educated:35 Ἐπεὶ δέ τινες τῶν ἥκιστα κεχορευκότων Μούσαις λόγων ἀποδεικτικῶν οὐ συνιέντες, οἳ τὰς καθόλου τῶν πραγμάτων ἐμφάσεις παριστᾶσιν […]

31

Philo, Prob. 74. Translation slightly adapted from Niehoff 2023: 235. Philo, Prob. 3. In addition to the examples cited in the main text and to the footnote below, see also Prob. 3: “neither in words nor deeds ought we to use the popular well-trodden route,” μήτε λόγοις μήτ᾿ ἔργοις δημώδεσι καὶ πεπατημένοις χρῆσθαι; Prob. 68: the “wise law-maker of the Jews,” ὁ σοφὸς τῶν Ἰουδαίων νομοθέτης, says virtue is in mouth, heart and hand which means ιὰ συμβόλων λόγους, βουλάς, πράξεις, “words, wishes, deeds.” Towards the end of the treatise (155–156), Philo asserts that “the straightforward, the genuine, the unreserved, is when words are in harmony with decisions and decisions with words” (τὸ εὐθὺ καὶ ἄπλαστον καὶ ἀνύπουλον, λόγων βουλεύμασι καὶ βουλευμάτων λόγοις συνᾳδόντων). 33 In Greco-Roman rhetorical argument and persuasion such as those found in the genres of consolation and philosophy, it is usual for the logical precepts to come first, and the examples to be cited afterwards. See e. g., Seneca, Cons. Marc. 2.1. Cf. Roller 2015: 135, note 15; Quint. Inst. 12.4.1–2 exempla within rhetoric. 34 He is explicit that he is expecting his reader to learn this assertion’s truth by reading through his exposition of the argument (Prob. 41). At points along the way he seems to envisage different kinds of readers: those who value wealth, reputation and social status, those can’t follow logical thinking, those who don’t believe that communities can be virtuous and require individual exempla, those who are spurred on by the success of those they perceive as inferior to them etc. On Philo’s use of logical proofs and comparison with Musonius Rufus, see ReydamsSchils in this volume. 35 This idea that exempla are for the weaker minded who can’t follow logical argument is found in Roman literature as well; see again Seneca, Cons. Marc. 2.1. 32

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But among those who have kept little company with the Muses, there are some who have no understanding of the methods of logical deduction, but make general statements based on appearances […]36

I do not wish to place too much weight on the significance of its ambiguity, however the phrase οἳ τὰς καθόλου τῶν πραγμάτων ἐμφάσεις παριστᾶσιν, has caused some discussion among scholars as to its meaning. The Loeb translation of this phrase cited above, “make general statements based on appearances,” captures the dismissive meaning that makes sense in this context of the use of exempla to persuade the less well-educated. Compare Yonge’s “some persons, who have paid but very little attention to literary pursuits, not understanding demonstrative arguments, which establish only general principles of action.”37 And yet, if one were not committed to seeing the use of exempla as inferior, one could also interpret the words in a more positive sense, with a translation such as, “those who have general recourse to the significance of deeds.” There is a case for making this a moment of ambiguity in the work, which enables a pivot away from Greek conventions to a different form of ethics that integrates exempla as part of ethical practice and is more aligned with Roman practice. Despite the explicit articulation of the idea that exempla are for the weak-minded, and despite the conventional structure of the treatise, in what follows Philo treats exempla as something much more than mere rhetorical tools, and his deployment is infused with the nuances of Roman exemplary ethics, as we shall see. As the treatise develops, we are given more and more reason to think positively of the kinds of people who use exempla. Indeed, there has already been a key moment earlier (in the logical exposition section) when Philo asserted that a certain key philosophical precept (that a virtuous person will never submit to doing anything contrary to his judgement) will be inconceivable to anyone who has not themselves come into contact with virtue, even though it is the truth: “But this declaration will seem incredible to those who have not been exposed to virtue,” (ἀλλ᾿ ἄπιστον ἴσως τοῖς μὴ πεπονθόσιν ἀρετὴν ὸ λεγόμενον).38 For this reason, exposure to people who are wise and practice virtue is invaluable. Philo says that if we really are keen to “improve” ourselves, we ought to seek out the wise men of our own day who have withdrawn from the iniquity of city life (63–64; cf. Prob. 76) and beg them to return and serve the community with their infectious virtue. One must act, but one must also be exposed to the actions of others through exempla, whether living or remembered. According to the rest of the work, the best way to move away from ignorance and to train one’s judgement to be stable and sure is to associate with wise people.39 36

Philo, Prob. 62. Translation here from the Loeb edition by Colson 1941. Yonge 1993 ad loc. 38 Philo, Prob. 27. 39 See Prob. 12, 62, 145. 37

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The implication is that theory and exposition are no use without the exposure to virtue in practice. Words without deeds are ineffectual, and this is one of the senses in which the communities of virtue that Philo describes as his central exempla all consider words and deeds to be inseparable.40 One may understand logically that a good man is free and a man who is driven by his passions is a slave, but this intellectual grasp of the situation is a far cry from being able to achieve that freedom for oneself, or even to be able to develop the skills to master one’s own passions. Roman writers too understood that theory alone was not enough; what was needed was practice alongside theory, repetition, and integration into everyday life. So, although Philo first introduces exempla as a tool to support the learning of the less educated, he swiftly moves from the idea of exempla as a rhetorical tool of persuasion to the representation of exempla as a form of ethical practice and vital component of philosophical education. Philo’s deployment suggests that while exempla may have a secondary and lesser role in the context of rhetorical argument, when it comes to practical ethics, they are indispensable. It is notable that Philo avoids the Greek rhetorical term paradeigmata to describe his examples; it is almost as if he is deriving his idea of them from the Roman definitions of ethical exempla, such as we find in Cicero De officiis, Valerius Maximus or Seneca. Philo describes exempla in the following way: “In our own time too, there are those who are like copies made from of the archetypal image of the excellence of those wise men” (καὶ ἐφ᾿ ἡμῶν αὐτῶν ἔτ᾿ εἰσὶν ὥσπερ εἰκόνες ἀπὸ ἀρχετύπου γραφῆς, σοφῶν ἀνδρῶν καλοκἀγαθίας, τυπωθέντες).41 In Latin the term imagines (equivalent term to the Greek εἰκόνες) can refer to the portraits of exemplary ancestors who inspire Romans to achieve a similar greatness, and can be used in this sense interchangeably with exempla.42 Philo’s phrase πραγμάτων ἐμφάσεις – “the appearances of actions” – encompasses both the visual aspects of Roman exempla and attendant anxieties about their potentially deceptive or superficial nature; both Cicero and Seneca beautifully nuance the idea that when it comes to understanding goodness we are all weak-minded, and reliant upon the appearance of things, which can often be misleading.43 By offering the figure of Calanus as an individual exemplum who at the same time stands as a representative of the exemplary community of gymnosophists, Philo also engages with another key aspect of Roman exemplary ethics, the uneasy tension between the exemplum’s status as both exceptional and representative.44

40

See above and note 32; Prob. 97 (the gymnosophists); 88 (Essenes); 74 (all barbarians.) Philo, Prob. 62–63. 42 See the famous passage in Sallust Iug. 4.5, which also evokes “the idea of exempla as facilitating the continual reproduction of values through the ages,” Langlands 2018: 94; see also 99–100. 43 Cicero De officiis with Langlands 2023; Seneca Ep. 120.4–9 with Langlands 2018: 102–110. 44 See Langlands 2018: 39–41 on this tension in Roman thought. 41

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We might also see the encounter between the Indian Calanus and Alexander the Great, which is related as the central exemplum of the work, as addressing the distinction between the Greek and Roman ideas of mimesis or imitation within ethics.45 Philo has described the contemporary exempla as εἰκόνες ἀπὸ ἀρχετύπου γραφῆς “images of the archetypal picture.” Similarly, Alexander wishes to display Calanus to the Greeks as ἀρχετύπου γραφῆς ἀπεικόνισμα καὶ μίμημα, “portrait and copy of the archetypal picture,” which sounds very similar. Inspired by Calanus’ exceptional wisdom, he wants to take him back to Greece to show the Greek people what wisdom is: “He wished to show to Greece the wisdom available in the barbarian realm as an image and copy of the archetypal picture.”46 However, whereas Philo uses the idea of the “archetype” to refer to the exempla of the past – the seven sages of Greece – Alexander seems to be using the concept in the Platonic mode (and this is emphasized by his use of the term μίμημα, “copy”) in which the imitation is an inferior copy of the original, and the original is the ideal Platonic form.47 In contrast, in the context of Roman exemplary ethics mimesis (or imitatio in the Latin) is something different; those who emulate virtue are able to fully instantiate virtue themselves, and are not mere images or copies of an original but rather become true models of virtue in themselves, of the same order as their own model.48 This idea is reflected in Philo’s description of exempla, where he describes the living exempla of his own day as modelled on past exempla rather than on abstract ideals, and as becoming in themselves the archetypes for future generations. This ties in with the beginning of this section, where Philo introduces exempla as proof that complete virtue can be found in individuals and is not merely an abstract idea. Alexander becomes here a case-study for mistaken exemplary ethics; his aspiration to show off Calanus is a case of empty display – and he is striving for kleos rather than for freedom, so that words are not matched to deeds. Alexander thinks he only needs to “show” the sage to the Greeks and they will learn, but in fact they need to be exposed not to the sight of the man himself, but rather to the sight of his virtue. And as Calanus explains, the Greeks will not be exposed to his virtue if they see him coerced by Alexander. Philo contrasts Alexander as representative of the Platonic notion with Calanus as representative of the Roman model.

45

On this distinction, see further Langlands 2018: 99–100, 2020: 84–90.

46 Philo, Prob. 94: βουλόμενος ἐπιδείξασθαι τῇ Ἑλλάδι τὴν ἐν τῇ βαρβάρῳ σοφίαν καθάπερ

ἀπ’ ἀρχετύπου γραφῆς ἀπεικόνισμα καὶ μίμημα. In this scenario Alexander is cast as a Greek, as Niehoff argues, in contrast to the later Greek tradition, where he is seen as a benevolent ruler. 47 On Platonic mimesis, see Plato Rep. 10; Whitmarsh 2001: 47–89; Halliwell 2002; Blondell 2002. 48 On mimesis in Roman exemplary ethics, see Langlands 2018: 99–100, White 2023. On this model as influential on Plutarch’s thinking in the next century, see Langlands 2020.

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3. Philo and Valerius Maximus – Shared Ethics Valerius Maximus’ work is a collection of exemplary anecdotes and vignettes, with occasional passages of general philosophical reflection in declamatory style, whereas Philo’s is a focused expositional treatise making the case that every good man is free, and deploying extensive exemplary material within his argument. Nevertheless, despite the very different genres and forms in which the works are written, a comparison of some key passages of philosophical reflection show how closely they correspond to one another, both in their philosophical interests and in the manner in which they articulate them. 3.1. Stoicism Take Philo’s central description of the philosopher and free man: ὁ δὲ πρὸς τὸν παρόντα καιρὸν ἁρμοζόμενος τὰ οἰκεῖα καὶ ἑκουσίως ἅμα καὶ τλητικῶς ἐγκαρτερῶν τοῖς ἀπὸ τύχης καὶ μηδὲν καινὸν τῶν ἀνθρωπίνων εἶναι νομίζων, ἀλλ᾿ ἐξητακὼς ἐπιμελῶς, ὅτι τὰ μὲν θεῖα αἰωνίῳ τάξει καὶ εὐδαιμονίᾳ τετίμηται, τὰ δὲ θνητὰ πάντα σάλῳ καὶ κλύδωνι πραγμάτων διαφερόμενα πρὸς ἀνίσους ῥοπὰς ταλαντεύει, καὶ γενναίως ὑπομένων τὰ συμπίπτοντα φιλόσοφος εὐθύς ἐστι καὶ ἐλεύθερος. ὅθεν οὐδὲ παντὶ τῷ προστάττοντι ὑπακούσεται, κἂν αἰκίας καὶ βασάνους καί τινας φοβερωτάτας ἀπειλὰς ἐπανατείνηται, νεανιευσάμενος δὲ ἀντικηρύξει. He who adapts his circumstances and actions to the present occasion, and who voluntarily and in an enduring spirit bears up against the events of fortune, not looking at any aspect of human affairs as extraordinary, but having by diligent consideration fully assured himself that all divine things are honored by eternal order and happiness; and that all mortal things are tossed about in an everlasting storm and fluctuation of affairs so as to be subject to the greatest variety of changes and vicissitudes, and who, from those considerations, bears all that can befall him with a noble courage, is at once both a philosopher and a free man.49

According to Philo, a philosopher and free man is one who adapts himself to the requirements of each occasion as it arises, and endures the vicissitudes of fortune, as part of the natural order of things.50 The first part of this description briefly alludes to the same principle of situational ethics – central to Roman exemplary ethics – that is articulated by Cicero in De officiis and taken up in response by Valerius Maximus.51 The commonplace image of humans tossed about by the tempest of fate is also found in Valerius Maximus’ work, in a program49

Philo, Prob. 24–25. Translation of this passage from Yonge 1993. On phronesis in Philo as correct judgement about how to act in a particular situation, see Tops 2023: 81. 51 On situational ethics in ancient Roman moral thought, see Morgan 2007: 179–182; as central to Roman exemplary ethics, see Langlands 2018: 112–140; on Valerius Maximus and his response to Cicero on the subject, see Langlands 2011. 50

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matic passage of philosophical reflection that concludes Book 6 of his work.52 Unfortunately the text breaks off mid-sentence, but it is clear enough that this image of fluctuating fortune and human frailty is integrated into a Stoic framework similar to that found in Philo’s treatise. caduca nimirum et fragilia puerilibusque consentanea crepundiis sunt ista quae vires atque opes humanae vocantur. adfluunt subito, repente dilabuntur, nullo in loco, nulla in persona stabilibus nixa radicibus consistunt, sed incertissimo flatu Fortunae huc atque illuc acta quos sublime extulerunt improviso recursu destitutos profundo cladium miserabiliter immergunt. itaque neque existimari neque dici debent bona quae, ut inflictorum malorum amaritudine desiderium sui duplicent […] Certainly the so-called power and wealth of humankind are fleeting and fragile and like children’s toys. They flood in suddenly; abruptly they fall apart. In no place or person do they stand fixed on stable roots, but driven here and there by the highly unpredictable breath of Fortune, they plunge those whom they had raised to sublime heights miserably, destitute, into the depths of disaster, with an unexpected withdrawal. Therefore they should neither be considered to be “goods” nor labelled thus, those things that with the bitterness of evils inflicted craving for their return in order to double […]53

Like Philo, Valerius emphasizes that the aspects of human life that are commonly labelled (vocantur) “power and wealth” (vires atque opes) are in fact insubstantial and uncertain, and should not be considered or described as “good things” (bona).54 The phrase caduca et fragilia (“fleeting and fragile”) is a formulaic one in relation to human fortunes, also used by Valerius Maximus at 1.6.ext. 3, and widely in Roman ethical thought.55 Both Philo and Valerius urge a correct grasp of the truth of what is really “good,” and both acknowledge the role of “craving” things that are incorrectly valued as good (desiderium) as the cause of misery. Philo and Valerius Maximus promote an ethics that is underpinned by the basic Stoic framework of emotions as the way of understanding vice and virtue. For Philo, true freedom is freedom from the dominion of one’s own passions of desire and fear: “So also in the case of men; those who are under the dominion of anger, or appetite, or any other passion, or of treacherous wickedness, are in every respect slaves.”56 Luis Pallara has shown that Valerius Maximus too sets up 52 For Valerius Maximus’ reflections on humans as subject to the whim of nature and fate, see also 1.8.ext 18; and Wardle 2018 on his alignment with Stoic ideas. 53 Translation here adapted from Shackleton 2020 for the Loeb Classical Library. 54 See also the end of Cicero’s fifth paradox (which has close parallels with Probus in theme and argument) where he urges his reader to consider material wealth as children’s toys rather than as the fetters for men (Parad. 38). 55 By Cicero e. g. Amic. 102: “human affairs are fragile and fleeting,” res humanae fragiles caduaceque sunt; Fin. 2.27; Leg. 1.24; by Seneca the Elder Contr. 2.1.1: “happiness is fragile and fleeting,” fragilis et caduca felicitas est; by Seneca the Younger Ep. 66.10; and see also Ben. 1.5, Cons. Marc. 21; by Pliny the Younger, Ep. 2.10, 3.10.6. 56 In Prob. 21, Philo describes the vices that are the obstacles to freedom for the bad person; similarly, it is desires – covetousness of money, the desire of glory, the love of pleasure, and so on – that are the emotions that prevent a person from being free from care, in the Stoic light. Cf.

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a coherent framework of emotion in his work, which corresponds to the Stoic framework of emotion that we found laid out by Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations. Philo and Valerius are working with a similar, Stoic-influenced model of vices as passions that arise from mistaken perceptions of what things are good, bad and indifferent.57 3.2. Exempla More strikingly, Philo follows both Valerius Maximus and Cicero in citing the same cluster of examples, juxtaposing the Indian gymnosophists with the Greek philosophers Zeno and Anaxarchus as exempla of endurance. My 2021 study argued that Valerius Maximus’ chapter on the subject of endurance (patientia) (Val. Max. 3.3), constitutes a philosophical response to Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations II, where Cicero is discussing Stoic attitudes towards the endurance of pain and suffering. Both Cicero and Valerius Maximus cite these same examples as part of their philosophical discussion of pain and how to endure it, and it is precisely in the particular similarities and differences in their treatments of these examples that we can see that Valerius is responding to issues raised by Cicero writing about seventy-five years earlier.58 I will show that Philo too participates in this same process, citing the same cluster of examples to develop his own response to the same philosophical questions: does virtue or moral wisdom have to be taught, or can it be innate? Who can attain virtue? Is it accessible to all kinds of people? In addition, the case of a community like the gymnosophists, flourishing far from the center of Greco-Roman philosophy, raises further questions about what the differences are between different communities around the world and what these differences might tell us about virtue and moral education. Where did philosophy originate? Is it fundamentally Greek? Inevitably these questions are of special interest to Philo – a writer interested in ethics, working within Jewish

fear of “poverty, and want of reputation, and pain” (Prob. 23). The treaty concludes with this: “For if it is driven to and fro by appetite, or if it is attracted by pleasure, or turned out of the way by fear, or contracted by grief, or tortured by want, it then makes itself a slave, and makes him who possesses such a soul the slave of ten thousand masters. But if it has resisted and subdued ignorance by prudence, and intemperance by temperance, and cowardice by bravery, and covetousness by justice; it then adds to its indomitable free spirit, power and authority” (Prob. 159). All translations here from Colson 1941. 57 This is the subject of Luis Pallara’s doctoral thesis (Pallara forthcoming). See also Langlands 2021 on the relationship between the depiction of emotion in Valerius Maximus and Cicero Tusculan Disputations; and Graver 2007 on Cicero, Stoicism and the emotions. The idea that cupido – misguided “desire” for such fleeting goods as glory, money, sex or food – arises from mistaken opinio is prevalent in Valerius’ work, as a force for bad; see e.g 4.3.pr. and 9.1.pref. for the idea of vice as arising from a “mental error.” On Stoic ethics more broadly, see further Long 1970; Annas 2007; Wildberger 2014. 58 Langlands 2021.

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tradition, drawing on Greek tradition while also standing outside it, while also being influenced by Roman ideologies. Both Cicero and Valerius Maximus, writing from a Roman-centric perspective, cite the gymnosophists as inspirational examples for their Roman readers who are striving to bear their own pain. Valerius describes them as an exceptional instance of endurance: “Indeed it is believed that among the Indians, the practice of patientia is pursued so obstinately that there are those who spend the whole of their lives naked, now hardening their bodies in the icy cold of the Caucasus mountain, now holding them in flames without a single groan. And they are endowed with no small glory for this contempt for pain, and they are given the title of wisdom, (3.3.ext.6). Meanwhile, Cicero had cited “Callanus,” one of the gymnosophists, as an individual example of the type who was able to bear extraordinary pain, in contrast to the Romans of the present day: “The Indian Callanus, uneducated and barbarian, born at the foot of the Caucasus, was burnt alive of his own free will; we, if our foot hurts, if we have toothache … cannot bear it.”59 However, while Cicero and Valerius Maximus both cite the Indian example as an instance of exceptional “endurance” (patientia), they characterize it differently in relation to its educational status, and the rhetorical force of the exemplum works differently in each case. In Cicero’s case it is an example of the “argument from the greater”60 – if even “an untutored barbarian” (indoctus ac barbarus) is able to exhibit endurance, all the more so should we expect it from “ourselves” as educated Roman men. For Valerius, on the other hand, the gymnosophists are “highly educated” (pectoribus altis et eruditis) and emphatically not barbarian (they are also explicitly contrasted with the uneducated “barbarian slave” (servus barbarus) of the following exemplum.61 For Valerius the gymnosophists provide an example of a philosophically enhanced transcendence of the physical that a student of ethics should aspire to. Clearly Philo is much more closely aligned with his contemporary Valerius in this respect. Philo certainly does not use the 59 Cic. Tusc. 2.52 : Callanus Indus, indoctus ac barbarus, in radicibus Caucasi natus, sua voluntate vivus combustus est; nos, si pes condoluit si dens […] ferre non possumus. 60 The rhetorical technique a fortiori described by e. g., Cicero in Top. 23, 68–71; Aristotle in Rh. 1397b12–19. See Demoen 1997 on exempla in Greco-Roman rhetoric. 61 For Valerius, barbarians (barbari) are fierce savages among whom virtue is unexpected; the category includes Carthaginians (“raised in the barbarian midst” in media barbaria ortus, 1.1.ext.2–3; “the wild characters of the barbarians” efferata barbarorum ingenia 5.1.ext.6; “barbarian savagery,” barbaram feritatem 9.2.ext 1), Scythians (5.4.ext.5, “monstrous and barbarian race,” immanis et barbara gens), Persians (6.3.ext.3), Thracians, (“savagery of the race itself,” gentis ipsius feritas, 9.2.ext.4; and Lusitanians, (7.3.6, “that barbarian race, harsh and difficult to rule,” ita gens barbara, aspera et regi difficilis). We may occasionally find virtue even among such uneducated groups: e.g, the Thracians (2.6.12, “with no teaching from the learned,” sine ullis doctorum praeceptis); the Scythians (5.4.ext.5, nature is a better teacher of piety than doctrine); the untutored Lusitanians of the Spanish town Cinginna (contrasted with Socrates, the pinnacle of Greek learning, 6.4.ext.1–ext.2).

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gymnosophists as a rhetorical example from the greater to the lesser, as Cicero does. Like Valerius, Philo is perfectly able to use this rhetorical technique elsewhere, and indeed he follows Cicero in citing thus the endurance of women, athletes, children and animals. Philo’s generic wise man rallies himself with, “am I inferior to a boxer or to a wrestler?” (Prob. 146), and Philo comments explicitly that, “there is nothing that so creates incitement to improvement as the virtuous action of those who do not appear to have better expected of them.”62 However, he does not include “barbarians” among these groups of naturally inferior beings of whom less is expected, as Cicero does. Instead, like Valerius, Philo counts the gymnosophists among the philosophers. In the light of Roman exemplary ethics Philo’s repetition of this group of exempla is therefore even more significant than might at first appear. For such repetition of exemplary stories and the reworking of exempla constitutes a significant philosophical practice in exemplary ethics. So, what is the philosophical act that Philo is practicing when he cites this same configuration of exempla that we find in Cicero and in Valerius Maximus? What can we conclude from the way that he “re-works” these same exempla in his own philosophical works? Both Philo and Valerius Maximus identify the gymnosophists as philosophers. However, the significance of this status differs in the two works in ways that reflect the authors’ different global ethical perspectives. Whereas for Valerius Maximus the gymnosophists are aligned with Greek philosophy, and practice abstracted virtue which has no social benefit, for Philo the gymnosophists are explicitly aligned with barbarian philosophers, who are superior to the Greeks in that they are pragmatic and community-spirited; they represent the excellence of a virtuous community, aligned with the Jewish community of the Essenes, which is developed in his treatise as a model community. Valerius does lay primary emphasis on the importance of social utility of virtue,63 but his gymnosophists do not exercise their virtues to the greater good of the wider community, in contrast to other examples in his chapter – the Roman heroes Mucius Scaevola 62 Prob. 133–134: προτροπῆς γὰρ εἰς βελτίωσιν οὐδὲν οὕτως αἴτιον, ὡς ἡ τῶν ἀφανεστέρων ἐλπίδος μείζων κατόρθωσις. Compare Prob. 110 to Cicero Tusculans on the athletes: If dimwitted women and fragile boys can be brave and choose death over enslavement, so surely people who have drunk deep of wisdom should be able to, Prob. 117–118. The cockerels who have endurance and courage without any reason, and are therefore inspiring to Miltiades’ soldiers. “Is it not absurd to imagine that the souls of young and nobly born men will turn out inferior to those of game-cocks in the contest of virtue, and will be barely fit to stand in the second place,” 133–134. And again 146, the wise man: “These bugbears do not scare me; I am not inferior to boxers or pancratiasts, who though they see but dim shadows of true excellence, since they only cultivate robustness of body, yet endure both bravely. For the mind within me which rules the body is by courage so well-braced and nerved, that it can stand superior to any kind of pain.” Cicero Tusculan Disputations expresses similar ideas and uses many of the same reference points, e. g., 2.34, 40–41, with Graver 2007 ad loc. 63 In his De officiis Cicero too will lay this emphasis on societas as the measure of genuine virtue and benefit, but in Tusculans he does not do this.

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and Pompeius and the Greek philosophers Zeno and Anaxarchus, all of whom resist the oppression of tyrants. The gymnosophists thus represent a kind of pure philosophy that is not applied, cultivating virtue for its own sake, like the followers of more theoretical Greek philosophies. Valerius then, uses the ultraphilosophical gymnosophists in order to displace the Greek philosophers from the more valued practical ethics. Philo, on the other hand, moves the gymnosophists into the same category as Zeno and Anaxarchus through his own development of the story of Calanus within an extended exemplary narrative, in which he is shown standing up to Alexander the Great. As Niehoff has shown, Calanus displays the irreverent wit of a Cynic hero, exercising his parrhesia, and his case brings the gymnosophists too into the dominant exemplary form of the treatise, embodied by Diogenes the Cynic, and evoking the contemporary Roman world in which Philo found himself.64 When Calanus boldly responds to Alexander the Great, “you can do what you like with our bodies but you cannot compel our minds to do what they do not want to do … We are superior to fire, we burn ourselves alive. There is no king or ruler who is able to make us do what we do not wish to do” (Prob. 96), Philo immediately comments: “This sort of saying and attitude makes us speak of Zeno […]” (Prob. 97). The speech is also evocative – at least for those familiar with Roman exemplary ethics – of the story and speech of the famous Roman exemplum of Mucius Scaevola, which is prominently cited at the start of the same chapter of Valerius Maximus (3.3) where we find Zeno, Anaxarchus and the gymnosophists,65 as well as some further reflections that are similar to Philo’s. Moreover Moses himself, the law-giver of the Jews, an important recurring figure in the treatise, is said to exhibit this same quality of quick witted “boldness” (νεανικώτερον) in his cultivation of “naked philosophy” (γυμνῆς φιλοσοφίας),66 again promoting an alignment with the gymnosophists.67 Philo thus reworks the familiar example of the gymnosophists to develop his own contribution to the questions of what philosophy is, how one attains it, what kinds 64 Terms related to the Greek νεανικός (“bold”) bind together several of Philo’s exemplary figures in relation to their freedom of speech in the face of political power: Zeno (νεανικώτερον, Prob. 53), Moses (νεανικώτερον, Prob. 43) and Diogenes (ἐπινεανιευόμενος, Prob. 123), as well as the free man in general (νεανιευσάμενος, Prob. 25). With its root meaning of “youthfulness,” this term conveys a sense of the boldness of the socially disempowered in the face of those who hold political power, where the latter are exposed as less powerful when the social structures are stripped away; this is comparable to the scenario of the asylum described by Philo (Prob. 148–152), where the usual hierarchies between slaves and slave-owners, rich and poor, high and low-born are discarded, leaving virtue to wield its own power. 65 See Livy 2.12. On the prominence of Mucius Scaevola in the Roman tradition, see Langlands 2018: 206–217. 66 Philo, Prob. 42–43. 67 This gives Jewish tradition a key role in the story of human philosophy. See Niehoff 2018 at 56, “Josephus cites Clearchus, On Sleep, in stating that Jews are in fact descended from Indian philosophers called Calani [Joseph. Ap. 1.179]; cf. Socrates as the Greek Moses.”

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of education are valuable, whether virtue is innate or cultivated, and whether it is open only to those who have studied traditional philosophy.68 By aligning Moses, Calanus, Zeno and Anaxarchus, and indeed the Essenes, who also stand up to tyranny (Prob. 89–90), he invites his reader to reflect anew on the status of Greek philosophers and philosophy, just as Valerius had done to different ends. Philo emphasizes through the juxtaposition of all these exempla the similarities between Jews, Greeks, Romans and Indians as part of a wider global ethical tradition in which Jewish ethics plays an important role. Philo’s treatment of the gymnosophists, and of this individual Calanus who is one of their community, is informed by Roman exemplarity, and he uses these exempla, as his Roman contemporaries do, to explore major issues about positioning in philosophical tradition.69 Indeed, Philo’s handling and reinterpretation of this same exemplary material illuminates both his positioning in relation to the Roman ethical tradition and his own newly synthesized ethical approach. In the context of exemplary ethics, the example of the gymnosophists is an ideal tool for addressing the issue of the relationship between virtue, philosophical education and human diversity, and showing how one stands in relation to this issue. Both Philo and Valerius Maximus are interested, from their different perspectives, in the universality of virtue and in the extent to which different types of community facilitate the development of virtue. It is not merely that one can discern the influence of the Roman ethical tradition, and particular the exemplary tradition, but that Philo draws on that tradition specifically so as to challenge the Hellenocentricity of philosophy. He does not merely synthesize the Jewish, Greek, Roman and other strands, he does so in a way that positions Greek philosophy as an incomplete and inadequate practice when compared to other examples of ethical practice. 3.3. Inclusive Virtue We have seen that Valerius and Philo make use of the same Stoic framework to think about virtue and freedom, and both deploy the very same cluster of exempla to explore similar questions about the nature of philosophy, the status of the Greeks and the accessibility of virtue beyond the elite. In relation to this question of the inclusivity of virtue, there is also a striking correspondence 68 While Bosman 2003 asserts at 115 that “Philo tends to reserve freedom from passions for those who have received philosophical training, that is, the domain of education exclusive to the social elite”, Tops has recently argued contra that Philo represents even slaves as able to control their passions, see Tops 2022: 79. 69 Note that Philo is following the Roman strand of tradition about the gymnosophists, which differs from the Alexander tradition strand; see Petit 1974 and Stoneman 1995 on the Alexander tradition; and Wallach 1941 on the Hebrew tradition. There is a comparable situation with Plutarch’s use of Themistocles’ exemplum, a Classical Athenian exemplum which he finds filtered through a recent Roman tradition (Langlands 2020: 92).

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between Philo’s description of Wisdom and Valerius’ description of Virtue as accessible to all. As with the Stoic motifs, it is notable that the two authors do not just share similar ideas about virtue and wisdom, but also express them in very similar ways. Philo writes that wisdom is κοινωνικώτατον, “exceptionally communal;” some translators render this term into English as “community-minded,” following the personification of the quality in the following passage, but it also means “widely shared.” The passage characterizes Wisdom as a teacher whose school is open to all-comers who seek her out and “thirst” for her: θειότατον δὲ καὶ κοινωνικώτατον σοφία, συγκλείει μὲν οὐδέποτε τὸ ἑαυτῆς φροντιστήριον, ἀναπεπταμένη δὲ ἀεὶ δέχεται τοὺς ποτίμων διψῶντας λόγων, οἷς ἀκράτου διδασκαλίας ἄφθονον ἐπαντλοῦσα νᾶμα μεθύειν τὴν νηφάλιον ἀναπείθει μέθην. Wisdom is most divine and most communal, she never closes her school, and, wide open always, welcomes those who thirst for the rivers of words, pouring on them an unstinted stream of undiluted teaching, and persuades them to be drunk with a sober drunkenness.70

Very similar is the resonant programmatic passage from Valerius Maximus about the personified Virtus welcoming all-comers that we find, once again, in his chapter 3.3: Non ergo fastidioso aditu virtus: excitata vivida ingenia ad se penetrare patitur, neque haustum sui cum aliquo personarum discrimine largum malignumve praebet, sed omnibus aequaliter exposita quid cupiditatis potius quam quid dignitatis attuleris aestimat, inque captu bonorum suorum tibi ipsi pondus examinandum relinquit, ut quantum subire animo sustinueris, tantum tecum auferas. quo evenit ut et humili loco nati ad summam dignitatem consurgant. Virtue is not, therefore, fastidious about who approaches her: when strong characters are stirred up she allows them to come right up to her, and she provides generous or stingy portions to each person without any discrimination according to status; rather she is available to all equally on the basis of how much desire you bring rather than how much social standing, and on the assessment of your good qualities she hands over to you the weight that is to be borne, so that you can carry away as much as your soul is capable of bearing. So it happens that those born in humble circumstances rise to the highest dignity.

Both passages describe the qualities in similar terms as open and welcoming to all who approach them with desire, and use the same drinking metaphor (haustum, “draught,” διψῶντας, “thirsting”) – although whereas Valerius’ Virtue is careful to dole out the portion of virtue according to the capacity of each, Philo’s Wisdom is less measured – she is described as urging a spiritual version of “drunkenness” on her followers.71 Elsewhere Philo also uses a similar Greek 70

Philo, Prob. 13. Both writers also allude to the metaphor of wine-drinking, although Valerius’ Virtus is a responsible symposiarch, while Philo’s Sophia is a generous and uninhibited one. The draughts the latter pours down the throats of those who come to her are “undiluted,” like the dangerously pure wine that needs to be watered down before drinking. While Valerius’ virtue sounds like 71

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term, κοινωφελὲς, to characterize Virtue (ἡ ἀρετή),72 like Valerius. However in Philo’s work these two abstract ethical qualities are further associated thereby with the real practice of life among real communities of people; Philo twice emphasizes that the community spirit (κοινωνία) of the Essenes is beyond the power of words, “greater than any logos,” asserting the inadequacy of logical reasoning when it comes to virtue.73 Once again, this repetition of the idea that λόγος cannot suffice to express the nature of the Essenes’ generous love of humanity sets them in opposition to the “wordy” Greeks. Meanwhile, we may read Valerius’ representation of Virtue’s welcome as a version of the Roman institution of the morning salutatio, where a patron welcomes clients into his home and doles out financial handouts,74 while Philo figures Wisdom as a Greek professor running a philosophical school. In both cases, a contrast may be implied: whereas the real houses and schools were open only to the wealthy and elite, true virtue and wisdom do not discriminate according to social class in the same way. Philo and Valerius Maximus share a conception of philosophy that is more capacious than Cicero’s; theirs goes beyond the narrow confines of elite education, to encompass in addition daily practice, repetition of maxims, sharing of exempla, discussion in the community, exposure to the virtuous practices of the wise members of the community and general accessibility. “Philosophy” is not restricted to a formal Greek education and a “philosopher” can be made in the humblest of circumstance, as long as there is the right kind of exposure to a virtuous person: “What need is there, either of long journeys over the land, or of long voyages, for the sake of seeking out virtue?”; Moses tells us that virtue lies in “in thy mouth, in thy heart and in thy hand,” meaning in words, thoughts and actions (Prob. 68). When he cites the biblical exemplum of Jacob and Esau, Philo represents the philosophical training that Esau undergoes in order to “improve his disposition” as nothing more than servitude to his more virtuous brother (Prob. 57). One learns through proximity and exposure to virtuous people; virtuous figures from the past “infected those who came into contact with them with the spirit of freedom,” (τοὺς πλησιάζοντας ἐλευθέρου φρονήματος ἀναπιμπλάντες).75 A true philosopher from whom one may learn goodness need not be the kind of person recognized as a philosopher of standing by common opinion. Presumably you could just as well associate with a virtuous a courtesan, Philo’s wisdom sounds like a wild host. Their representations of these key moral qualities share a quality of ambiguity, where generosity is tinged with licence. On wisdom as “sober drunkenness,” see also Reydams-Schils in this volume. 72 Philo, Prob. 63. 73 Philo, Prob. 80–81: τοῦ δὲ φιλανθρώπου εὔνοιαν, ἰσότητα, τὴν παντὸς λόγου κρείττονα κοινωνίαν; Prob. 91: καὶ τὴν παντὸς λόγου κρείττονα κοινωνίαν, ἣ βίου τελείου καὶ σφόδρα εὐδαίμονός ἐστι σαφέστατον δεῖγμα. 74 Langlands 2018: 214–215. 75 Philo, Prob. 62.

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slave and learn from them. Philo comes close to saying this when he writes: “And in the same way it would become the virtuous man to say to anyone who appeared inclined to purchase him, ‘Therefore you will be able to learn wisdom’” (Prob. 145). Similarly, Valerius Maximus allows that anyone can achieve virtue, regardless of social status.

4. Philosophical Interactions How do we explain these close correspondences between these two works, both written in the same period and perhaps in the same city, but in different languages and within different literary traditions? Is Philo, writing a few years later, drawing directly on Valerius’ work? On the one hand, these are well-known anecdotes and ethical commonplaces that were in broad circulation and they constitute a philosophical medium that existed beyond and outside the texts as well as within them.76 Use of the same exempla is by no means evidence that an author is directly citing an earlier work or is even aware of its existence; they may be drawing on a shared body of material. In the case of Valerius Maximus however, I have argued that, given that his treatment of the philosophical themes appears to be a response to the influential treatment of those themes in Cicero’s work, it seems very likely that Valerius was aware of Cicero’s philosophical works and of Cicero’s specific use of exemplary anecdotes as a tool for developing his philosophical arguments. It likewise seems probable that Philo would have been aware of Valerius Maximus’ work and its contents, and Philo’s treatment of this shared content is certainly closer to that of Valerius Maximus than it is to that of Cicero. Yet it is also significant that in Philo’s version it is Zeno who gnaws off his own tongue (Prob. 108), whereas in Valerius’ account it is Anaxarchus. Specific details of these famous anecdotes move easily between the different exemplary figures. This may suggest that it is unlikely that Philo was writing with a text of Valerius before him, though we would not have expected this in any case – it is not clear how much Latin Philo read. This does not, however, rule out a significant relationship between the two texts, one that is based not on direct quotation, but rather on participation in the same tradition.77 This is the tradition of Roman exemplary ethics, in which core precepts are intended both to be integrated with examples, and to be reiterated over and over again as prompts for ethical discussion and learning, philosophical debates that can be sparked anew whenever 76

On the “extratextuality” of exemplary ethics, see Langlands 2018: 166–225, 2020, 2023. For an approach to the study of interactions between difference cultures in antiquity, including Greek, Roman and Jewish traditions, see the introduction to König et. al. 2020, with the case-studies included in the volume. 77

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they are evoked. It is true that the Stoic ideas shared and similarly articulated by Valerius and Philo can be seen as philosophical commonplaces, but that does not mean that their expression is merely a derivative exercise; this is precisely what this ethical practice requires – the continuous reinterpretation of key precepts and examples which in itself constitutes philosophical practice. This also corresponds to the tradition of Jewish exegesis, which the Essenes seem to be practicing, aligning once again Roman and Jewish ethical traditions. In many ways Philo’s work looks very Greek: it is written in Greek, of course, and it employs many Greek rhetorical techniques. Philo draws on Greek philosophical schools; he references Pythagoreanism in his opening lines; he begins with a discussion of “forms” and perception of the good which evokes Plato’s cave; he cites Sophocles, Euripides and Homer; he draws on Stoic concepts and teachings; he holds up the Cynic philosopher Diogenes as a key exemplum, he cites the Greek philosophers Zeno and Anaxarchus; he ends his treatise with the Stoic injunction to live according to nature. However, his treatise also decenters these Greek philosophical traditions, and positions at its heart a barbarian Jewish community which is gently but insistently described in contrast to the Greek model of philosophy and education. Like his Roman contemporaries, Philo is steeped in Greek philosophical traditions and like them he both finds them valuable in addressing the ethical challenges he faces and at the same time wants to make room for a less Hellenocentric view of virtue. In his deployment of the exemplum of Calanus and the gymnosophists, of the gymnasium and the synagogue, Philo is joining the Roman writers in exploring ways of displacing Greek philosophy from the center of an ethical tradition which they find both immensely useful and interesting, and at the same time a little narrow in its conception of humanity.

Bibliography Annas, Julia. “Ethics in Stoic Philosophy.” Phronesis 52 (2007): 58–87. Blondell, Ruby. The Play of Character in Plato’s Dialogues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Bloomer, Martin W. Valerius Maximus & the Rhetoric of the New Nobility. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Bosman, Philip. “Conscience and Free Speech in Philo.” The Studia Philonica Annual 18 (2006): 33–47. Colson, Francis H. ed. Philo. Vol. 9. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941. Demoen, K. “A Paradigm for the Analysis of Paradigms: The Rhetorical Exemplum in Ancient and Imperial Greek Theory.” Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 15 (1997): 125–158. Englert, W. “Bringing to the Light: Cicero’s Paradoxa Stoicorum.” Apeiron 23 (1990): 117– 142.

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Graver, Margaret. Stoicism and Emotion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Halliwell, Stephen. The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. König, Alice, Langlands, Rebecca, and Uden, James, eds. Literature and Culture in the Roman Empire, 96–235: Cross-Cultural Interactions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Langlands, Rebecca, “Roman Exempla and Situation Ethics: Valerius Maximus and Cicero de Officiis.” Journal of Roman Studies 101 (2011): 100–122. –. Exemplary Ethics in Ancient Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018a. –. “Extratextuality: Literary Interactions with Oral Culture and Exemplary Ethics.” In Roman Literature under Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian: Literary Interactions ad 96–138. Edited by Alice König and Christopher Whitton, 330–346. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018b. –. “Plutarch and Roman Exemplary Ethics: Cultural Interactions.” In Literature and Culture in the Roman Empire, 96–235: Cross-Cultural Interactions. Edited by Alice König, Rebecca Langlands, and James Uden, 75–94. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. –. “Valerius Maximus’ Engagement with Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations on Virtue and the Endurance of Pain, in 3.3 de patientia.” In Reading by Example: Valerius Maximus and the Historiography of Exempla. Edited by Jeffrey Murray and David Wardle, 167–196. Leiden: Brill, 2022. –. “Sites of Exemplarity and the Challenge of Accessing the Cultural Memory of the Republic.” In Cultural Memory in Republican and Augustan Rome. Edited by Martin Dinter and Charles Guerin, 261–280. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. –. “Seeming, Being and Exempla in Cicero’s De Officiis 3.’ In Cicero: De officiis. (Klassiker Auslegen 78). Edited by Philipp Brüllmann and Jörn Müller, 183–199. Berlin / Boston: De Gruyter, 2023. Lawrence, Sarah. “Dead on Time: Valerius Maximus 9.13 and Stoicism.” Antichthon 49 (2015): 135–155. –. “Putting Torture, And Valerius Maximus, To The Test.” Classical Quarterly 66 (2016): 245–260. –. “And Now for Something Completely Different …” In Reading by Example: Valerius Maximus and the Historiography of Exempla. Edited by Jeffrey Murray and David Wardle, 47–72. Leiden: Brill, 2021. Long, Anthony A. “The Logical Basis of Stoic Ethics.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 71 (1970): 85–104. Niehoff, Maren R. Philo of Alexandria: An Intellectual Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. –. “Entangled Jewish Identities in Rome. The Case of ʻBarbarians,’ in Philo and Josephus” In What Makes a People? Edited by Dionisio Candido, Renate Egger-Wenzel and Stefan C. Reif, 229–246. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2023. Pallara, Luis. L’approche des émotions dans les Facta et Dicta Memorabilia de Valère Maxime (Ier s. après J.-. C.) : défis méthodologiques, recueil commenté et étude socio-historique. Diss. Université de Fribourg, forthcoming, 2024. Petit, Madeleine. Philon D’alexandrie. Quod omnis probus. Introduction, texte, traduction et notes par Madeleine Petit. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1974. Pittard, Andrea. “Exemplary Negotiations of Patientia.” The Classical Journal 116 (2021): 331–354.

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Roller, Matthew B. “The exemplary past in Roman historiography and culture.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians. Edited by Andrew Feldherr, 214–230. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. –. “Precept(or) and Example in Seneca.” In Roman Reflections: Studies in Latin Philosophy. Edited by Gareth D. Williams and Katharina Volk, 129–156. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. –. Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Shackleton, Bailey D. R. Valerius Maximus. Memorable Doings and Sayings. Edition and Translation by D. R. Shackleton Bailey. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. Skidmore, Clive. Practical Ethics for Roman Gentlemen: The Work of Valerius Maximus. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1996. Stoneman, Richard. “Naked Philosophers: The Brahmans in the Alexander Historians and the Alexander Romance.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 115 (1995): 99–114 Tops, Thomas. “A Historical-Comparative Study of the Authorization of παρρησία in Philo’s Quis rerum divinarum heres sit and Quod omnis probus liber sit.” Journal for the Study of Judaism 54 (2022): 63–86. Wallach, Luitpold. “Alexander the Great and the Indian Gymnosophists in Hebrew Tradition.” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 11 (1941): 47–83. Wardle, David. “Valerius Maximus (9.2.ext.11) on Questioning Nature?” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 161 (2018): 22–28. White, Georgina. “Emulation and Moral Development in De Officiis.” In Cicero’s De Officiis. A Critical Guide. Edited by Raphael Woolf, 139–160. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2023. Whitmarsh, Tim. Greek Literature and the Roman Empire: The Politics of Imitation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Wildberger, Jula. “Wisdom and Virtue.” In Brill’s Companion to Seneca. Edited by Andreas Heil and Gregor Damschen, 310–322. Leiden: Brill. Yonge Charles D. trans. A Treatise To Prove That Every Man Who is Virtuous is Also Free. Hendrickson Publishers, 1993. Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus. God, Knowledge, and the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.

“God is my Ruler, but no Mortal” Philo’s Paradox of Freedom in first century Rome amidst Demetrius, Seneca and Epictetus* Maren R. Niehoff This article draws attention to the Sophoclean saying “God is my ruler, but no mortal,” which is quoted by Philo in his treatise Every Good Man is Free (Probus). I have identified the latter as one of his later Roman writings, probably the first extant one written in the context of his embassy to Gaius Caligula (38–ca. 41 ce), when he dropped his earlier style of systematic Bible commentary for an intimate Jewish audience in Alexandria and began to address broader Roman audiences.1 My objective here is to analyze Philo’s use of the tragic line for the purposes of his philosophy of freedom and to interpret it in its immediate context, namely contemporary Roman debates. The latter can be reconstructed via the fragments of Demetrius, a Cynic philosopher from the Greek East active in Rome under Gaius Caligula, as well as the œuvre of Seneca, the known Stoic philosopher, who began his career under Gaius and later became powerful at Nero’s court, and, finally, Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher from the Greek East, who taught in Rome until his banishment by Domitian between 89–95 ce.2 Interpreted in this context, Philo illuminates the distinctly Roman inflection of Greek philosophy in the first century ce, especially the contacts between Cynicism and Stoicism, which were conditioned by Roman politics and culture. Philo’s contribution is precious * The original version of this article was given at the conference in Tübingen. It focused on the figure of Heracles and will be published in A Companion to Hercules, edited by George Harrison, forthcoming at Wiley Blackwell. The research for this study was generously supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 1346/21) and benefitted from discussions of an earlier version at the Cambridge New Testament seminar in 2023, hosted by George van Kooten, and the SNTS seminar on Philo and the New Testament in Vienna in 2023, chaired by Gregory Sterling. I thank Tim Whitmarsh for generously hosting me as a Beaufort Visiting Scholar at St. John’s College, Cambridge, during the lent term of 2023. Thanks also to Malcolm Schofield for productive conversations over lunch in St. John’s college, which alerted me to the importance of Epictetus as a source of Cynicism, and his encouraging comments on a draft of this article. Margalit Finkelberg, Richard Hunter, and Sergio Marín offered helpful comments on a draft of the article. Stephen Menn kindly discussed one Philonic passage. 1 Niehoff 2018: 1–18, 69–84, 2022, forthcoming in 2024. 2 On Demetrius, see Billerbeck 1979; Brancacci 2018: 184–185; Chouinard 2021: 163–178; on Seneca, see Griffin 1976, 2008; Edwards 2019; on Epictetus, see Long 2002; Schofield 2007; Alesse 2016.

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as the Cynic movement saw a revival in first century ce Rome, even though it lacked the regular institutional structures of a philosophical school.3 Philo sheds light on the intricate entanglement of Cynicism and Stoicism, which has been overshadowed by a prevalent tendency, both in antiquity and modernity, to domesticate the Cynics among the Stoics.4 To be sure, I am not claiming Philo’s historical influence, on which we can hardly say anything more than that Josephus briefly mentions him and some later Christian authors occasionally quote from his works.5 I rather suggest a comparative method, which investigates each author’s contribution to broader debates. Such an approach has been fruitfully applied in the study of Latin literature and adjacent fields.6 I will thus take the Probus as a significant starting point, as a compass so to speak, for inquiries into the variety of views that developed on the topic of freedom in the first century ce. Philo provides important insights into intellectual developments in Rome for which we lack other intact sources in the late thirties and early forties. He enables us to reconstruct lively debates on freedom, conducted in both Greek and Latin, which revolved around the degree to which radical Cynic ideas were acceptable. Following the analysis of Philo, we see that the Greek-speaking philosophers in Rome entertained strong ties with Cynicism, while Seneca was fascinated by Demetrius, but ultimately retained more traditional Stoic positions. All of them, however, addressed the same issues and participated in distinctly Roman discourses, even if the Greek speakers did not advertise their deep immersion in Roman culture.7 This argument requires overcoming prevalent scholarly tendencies to frame philosophy written in Greek by an exclusive focus on Classical Athens. Plutarch is an exemplary case. While historians pointed to his Roman context and Latin sources, scholars of his philosophy have maintained a consistent orientation towards Classical philosophy.8 Tellingly, the Companion to Plutarch (Beck 3

For details, see Brancacci 2016. On the difficulties of disentangling Cynic and Stoic philosophy, which begins with Diogenes Laertius’ tendency to depict the Cynics as congenial forerunners of the Stoics, see Brancacci 1992; Griffin 1999; see also Reydams-Schils’ contribution in this volume, which compares Philo’s and Musonius Rufus’ Stoic interpretations of Cynic motifs. 5 Joseph. AJ 18.259–260; see also Runia 1993; Sterling 2013; Niehoff 2015. 6 See esp. König and Whitton 2018; König, Langlands, and Uden 2020. 7 Greek speakers in the imperial period are known both for their lack of quotations from Latin literature and their lack of Latin loanwords, both of which have supported the traditional focus on Classical Athens (on the resistance of the Greek language to foreign loanwords, especially Latin, see Dickey 2003, 2012, 2018). Both Philo and Epictetus, however, used Latin words in their philosophical treatises, which must not be overlooked. Philo, for example, calls his hometown by the name used in the Roman administration, namely “Alexandria by Egypt” ( Ἀλεξάνδρεια ἡ πρὸς Αἰγύπτῳ), and applies the traditional Greek terms “wrestlers and pancratists” to the distinctly Roman phenomenon of gladiators, thus testifying to the Latinization of the Greek language (Prob. 110, 125). On Epictetus’ Latin loanwords and Roman examples, see below. 8 For historical studies of Plutarch, see Jones 1971; Pelling 1979, 1984, 2011; Scheid 2012; 4

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2014) draws a bifurcated picture of his personality. While the historical contributions document Plutarch’s deep involvement in Roman affairs, the philosophical papers depict him as a man aloof from contemporary debates and absorbed in the distant past of the Athenian world. This curious imbalance may also have arisen from the scholarly prejudice that Greek philosophy represents the ultimate achievement of the human mind, while Rome had nothing new to offer and therefore engaged in unproductive or even decadent eclecticism.9 Such prejudices, however, which one might have thought long overcome, crumble in view of vigorous studies of Roman philosophy in recent decades.10 An expert in Roman culture and ethics, Langlands 2020 has been able to shed new light on Plutarch by discussing his work in the context of Roman exemplarity. The study of Philo’s Probus is likely to accelerate such scholarly developments because it addresses Roman audiences in the Greek language and treats a neuralgic theme at that time in Rome, the central platform of intellectual exchange in the empire. Written in the context of Philo’s embassy to Gaius Caligula, the Probus relates to topical issues that were not yet on Philo’s mind in his earlier Alexandrian writings. In particular, it engages with new interest in Cynicism and testifies to its revival under Demetrius in Rome as well as to its contacts with Stoicism.

1. A Sophoclean Saying in Philo’s Argument about Freedom A stepchild in Philonic scholarship, the Probus has often been seen as a juvenile work, which copies a Stoic school treatise and conveys common knowledge, such as would have been known already from Cicero’s Stoic Paradoxes.11 However, when the treatise is properly studied in its own right and placed in its immediate Roman context, it yields precious insights into Cynic debates of the first century ce. Already at first sight, the Probus fits neither the category of a youthful writing nor the characteristics of a Stoic school treatise. It opens with Philo’s confident self-reflection as a paradoxical author, who will offer “strange and astonishing” Stadter 2014. For philosophical studies of Plutarch, see Ferrari 1995, 1996; Duff 1999; Opsomer 2005, 2014, 2017; Hirsch-Luipold 2016, 2021. 9 See the critical discussions by Dillon and Long 1988; Long 2003; Hatzimichali 2011. 10 See esp. Griffin 1976, 2013; Edwards 1993, 1996, 2007; Reydams-Schils 2005, ReydamsSchils et al. 2023; Inwood 2005; Langlands 2008, 2018, 2022; Bartsch 2015, Bartsch and Wray 2009; Roller 2018. See also the progress that has been made in the study of Greek literature in the Roman empire, Goldhill 2001; Whitmarsh 2001; Hunter and De Jonge 2019. 11 Wendland 1888 argued that the Probus is a youthful treatise of Philo, which closely follows a lost Stoic source, thus dismantling Ausfeld’s 1987 argument for its inauthenticity. Even though Wendland offered no proofs in support of his thesis, his interpretation has often been embraced. Two influential handbooks adopted the idea of a Stoic school treatise (Morris 1987: 856; Royse 2009: 55–56) and the English translator Colson 1941: 2 adopted the notion of a juvenile treatise. However, Runia 1981, 1986: 546 questioned the latter assumption.

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perspectives, even ideas that are “absurd and full of much impudence or madness” (Prob. 6–8). Such confrontational parrhesia is foreign to the Allegorical Commentary of his earlier years when he presents his own views far more hesitantly. The style is rather more typical of Cynic modes of expression and resonates with the lively anecdotes preserved in the later parts of the Probus concerning Diogenes of Sinope, the founder of the school, and his imitators, who all dare to confront people at every rank of society, including kings and powerful personalities.12 Moreover, Philo’s portrait of Heracles, the “saint” of the Cynics, is too boisterous to fit Stoic categories and conveys a strong sense of subversion of social conventions, the main concern of Cynicism.13 Finally, the Probus lacks robust Stoic theory and even its most characteristic terms, such as apatheia, rational assent, the hegemonikon, preconceptions and rational judgement of external impressions. Philo instead treats his readers to shocking questions and describes alarming situations in real life, which question the most familiar structures of civic society. Education is described in terms used in Cynic plays with phrases such as “unlearn[ing] lack of learning,” while people who “wore themselves out in an unlivable life” are dismissed (Prob. 14, 12). All these lively appeals to the reader deserve our attention and invite serious investigation sensitive to Philo’s particular voice in his later Roman context. The Sophoclean saying plays a significant role in Philo’s discussion of freedom and resonates with the perspectives of Demetrius, Seneca and Epictetus, thus lending itself to comparative analysis. Here is the relevant Philonic passage: 19

Having left behind pretentious quibbles and terms, which are alien to Nature but attached to opinion, such as “home-born slave” or “acquired slave” or “prisoners of war,” let us examine the truly free person, to whom alone belongs independent sovereignty (τὸ αὐτοκρατὲς), even if thousands register themselves as his masters. The following Sophoclean saying (τὸ Σοφόκλειον), which differs nothing from the Pythian oracle, will articulate14 this: “God is my ruler, but no mortal.” 20 In fact, only the person, who uses only God as his leader is free, while in my understanding he is also the leader of others (κατ’ ἐμὴν δὲ διάνοιαν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἡγεμών), as he is entrusted with earthly things, such as those of the Great King, and he, the mortal, is a deputy of the immortal (θνητὸς ἀθανάτου διάδοχος). But let the treatment of the wise man’s rule be postponed to a more appropriate occasion, while the topic of freedom must now be carefully investigated (my translation based on the critical text of Cohn 1915).15 12 Diogenes and his imitators are presented in Prob. 121–126; on Cynic methods of teaching, see Brancacci 1992: 2015; Branham 1996. 13 The demi-god Heracles is depicted in Prob. 98–104; on his role as a saint among the Cynics, see Hoistad 1948: 33; cf. Diog. Laert. 6.41, 6.71. The Stoics, by contrast, interpreted Heracles as an allegory of the extirpation of the passions (Cic. Fin. 2.118; Corn. Gr. Theol. 31; Sen. Constant. 2.1–2). 14 Ms F reads the present tense of the verb (ἀναφθέγγεται) rather than the future (ἀναφθέγξεται). Yet the future tense is probably Philo’s own formulation, which alerts the reader to what he is about to hear from Sophocles. 15 Philo, Prob. 19–20: ἀνελόντες οὖν ἐκποδὼν τὰς προφασιστικὰς εὑρεσιλογίας καὶ τὰ

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The above Sophoclean saying is uniquely attested by Philo. Its precise wording has been debated in light of evidence from Aristotle and Ambrose. Cohn 1915: 5 suggests that “perhaps […] Philo wrote Ζεὺς,” seeing that Ambrose, who may have quoted the saying from Philo, translates “Jupiter is my ruler, but no human being.”16 Cohn argues that Ambrose is unlikely to have mentioned Jupiter unless he found Zeus already in Philo’s text. Moreover, Aristotle mentions the first part of the saying and also reads Zeus rather than god (Ζεὺς ἐμὸς ἄρχων), following two lines of completely different content, which are missing both in Philo and Ambrose. Radt 1977 reconstructs Sophocles’ fragment on the basis of Aristotle as a three-liner, with Zeus in the final line, adding Philo’s last words (“but no mortal”), which are missing in Aristotle.17 This maximalist reconstruction is based on earlier scholarship and not supported by fresh explanations. It is alarming, however, that Aristotle, the main source of the fragment, does not even allude to Sophocles. Moreover, he shares only three words with Ambrose’s Sophoclean saying and two words with Philo’s. Caution is thus called for and a minimalist approach seems more appropriate. Focusing on Philo and his one-line Sophoclean saying, we ask, in view of Ambrose’s version, what its original wording might have been. This question is especially acute in view of the fact that the word “Zeus” fits the meter, while “God” or theos challenges it. Cohn solved this problem by suggesting that Philo emended a pagan line about Zeus and rendered it more monotheistic. This solution, however, is anything but self-evident. Initially, Ambrose, Cohn’s prime witness, does not refer to Philo for the quotation, as he does on other occasions in the epistle, but rather says that he quotes Sophocles (“Sofoclea,” Ep. 37.28). This may well suggest his independent familiarity with the saying. Moreover, the assumption that the word Zeus entirely dropped out of Philo’s text and the manuscript tradition is rather unlikely, as the Greek god is mentioned three times in the Probus within quotations from Pagan literature. In these cases the text was emended neither by Philo himself nor by the scribes.18 It is therefore implausible to assume that Zeus would have been corrected here. Philo rather seems to quote φύσεως μὲν ἀλλότρια δόξης δ’ ἠρτημένα ὀνόματα οἰκοτρίβων ἢ ἀργυρωνήτων ἢ αἰχμαλώτων τὸν ἀψευδῶς ἐλεύθερον ἀναζητῶμεν, ᾧ μόνῳ τὸ αὐτοκρατὲς πρόσεστι, κἂν μυρίοι γράφωσι δεσπότας ἑαυτούς. ἀναφθέγξεται γὰρ ἐκεῖνο τὸ Σοφόκλειον οὐδὲν τῶν πυθοχρήστων διαφέρον· “θεὸς ἐμὸς ἄρχων, θνητὸς δ’ οὐδείς”. τῷ γὰρ ὄντι μόνος ἐλεύθερος ὁ μόνῳ θεῷ χρώμενος ἡγεμόνι, κατ’ ἐμὴν δὲ διάνοιαν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἡγεμών, ἐπιτετραμμένος τὰ περίγεια, οἷα μεγάλου βασιλέως, θνητὸς ἀθανάτου, διάδοχος. ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν περὶ ἀρχῆς τοῦ σοφοῦ λόγος εἰς καιρὸν ἐπιτηδειότερον ὑπερκείσθω, τὸν δὲ περὶ ἐλευθερίας τὰ νῦν ἀκριβωτέον. 16 Sen. Ep. 37.28: Iupiter mihi praeest, nullus autem hominum. 17 Fragm. 755: Arist. Eth. Eud. 1242a35–39: “That (friendship) between brothers is principally the friendship of comrades, as being on a footing of equality – for never did he make me out a bastard, but the same Zeus, my lord (Ζεὺς ἐμὸς ἄρχων), was called the father of both” (ed. and tr. Rackham). 18 Philo, Prob. 102, 127, 130. The ms M on Prob. 102 is an exception; for additional examples of the word Zeus in Philonic quotations from Pagan literature, see Aet. 81; Prov. 2.7, 2.24.

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the Sophoclean saying as he received it. Different versions must have been circulating in antiquity so that Philo could quote one of them and Ambrose another. Such a variety of text versions or even outright tempering with canonical lines for philosophical purposes, is attested by Plutarch. A prime example is Zeno, the founder of the school, who “corrected” (ἐπανορθούμενος) Sophoclean lines about slavery. According to Plutarch, he “rewrote” (μετέγραφεν) the phrase “whoever comes to traffic with the king, is a slave of him, however free he arrived.” Zeno instead rendered Sophocles as: “Whoever comes to traffic with the king is not a slave, if only he arrives free.”19 Plutarch places the two versions of the Sophoclean line besides each other and uses the terminology of Homeric scholarship to describe Zeno’s adaptation of the text, which radically changes its meaning. A politically subversive saying is turned into an instruction for conformity, which relies on merely internal or mental freedom. The poetic prooftext, which lends authority to the philosophical argument, is wittily rewritten to serve Zeno’s purpose.20 Plutarch comments that Zeno teaches fearlessness and highmindedness in untoward situations, recommending the Stoic ideal of inward freedom. The complex relationship between poetic prooftexts and philosophical arguments is also highlighted by Seneca’s pithy exclamation, “how many poets say things which either are said or should be said by philosophers!”21 Turning to the content of Philo’s Sophoclean saying, we see that it challenges civic conventions and suggests that a subordination to the deity liberates from human domination. In the Allegorical Commentary from his earlier Alexandrian period Philo already expresses part of this message, saying: “The wise men take God for their guide and teacher (ὑφηγητῇ καὶ διδασκάλῳ χρῶνται θεῷ), while the less perfect turn to the wise man” (Her. 19). The Sophoclean saying in the Probus adds a subversive political dimension to the earlier argument, introducing the idea of the wise man as a deputy of God, who rejects human rulers. Philo moreover stresses his own understanding that Sophocles implies also the servant’s rule over his fellow human beings. This bold interpretation may rely on a creative reading of θεὸς ἐμὸς ἄρχων as “my god is ruler,” who can appoint one 19

Plut. Mor. 33d; the saying is also quoted in Plut. Mor. 172b–208a, Pomp. 78.4. For similar insights into the fabrication of moral exemplars, see Roller 2019. 21 Sen. Ep. 8.8: Quam multi poetae dicunt, quae philosophis aut dicta aut dicenda. On the use of tragic lines, especially from Euripides, in the imperial period, see Schramm 2020; Becker 2020. See also Prob. 98 where Philo says: “Witnesses to the freedom of the righteous are poets and prose writers, on whose maxims Greeks and barbarians alike are raised virtually from the cradle, thus improving their characters, and reforming all such things in their souls as have been twisted because of wrong upbringing and lifestyle.” Seneca sheds further light on this issue, concluding his letter on the Brevity of Life with a saying of Euripides: “I shall easily reach the goal at which I am aiming. For as that tragic poet says: ‘the language of truth is simple’” (Ep. 49.12, referring to Eur. Phoen. 469). Seneca, like Philo, uses a tragic line to promote his philosophical argument. Rejecting verbosity, which he associates with Greek rhetoric, Seneca draws a prooftext from within Greek culture. His readers are expected to be familiar with Euripides to whom he merely alludes as ille tragicus. 20

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human being over others. As Philo indicates, he only introduces the theme of the servant’s sovereignty, which he will fully develop in Prob. 42–44. In the meantime, Philo outlines his overall objective. Using the political terminology characteristic of his later Roman works, he says that the sage becomes a diadochos, namely a deputy of the immortal deity and receives material goods.22 The term diadochos, translated here as deputy, predominantly means successor, either in the political sense, such as the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kings inheriting Alexander’s empire, or in the philosophical sense of successive heads of schools, who were also entitled to their predecessor’s wealth (Oliver 1977). In the present case, however, the immortal God is involved and therefore a deputy or co-existing representative must be meant. In his earlier Alexandrian writings, Philo uses the term diadochos in the sense of successor in Biblical contexts of family affairs, especially inheritance (Deus 5, 113; Agr. 156). In his later Roman writings, the term is used in the context of political succession based on congeniality of personalities, which is implied also in the above passage in the Probus. In the Legatio Philo comments on the rivalry at the Roman court between Gaius Caligula, Tiberius’ adopted son, and his cousin, Tiberius’ biological son and natural heir.23 The latter was in his view far better suited to succeed Tiberius. While Moses was raised as a prince to succeed Pharaoh, he preferred his biological family as ethically more akin (Mos. 1.32). He is appointed by God rather than by a human ruler to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and towards the end of his life has to find a successor for himself (Virt. 63–64). Committed to the welfare of society, he does not promote his own sons, but scrutinizes Joshua as a candidate.24 For a long time he “carefully tested the nobility of his character in words and deeds” but remained hesitant, “fearing that he might be deceived in thinking him good when he was not really so”. God is entreated to examine the invisible soul and to “choose on the basis of merit (ἀριστίδην) the most suitable man for rule, who will care for his subjects as a father” (Virt. 56–57). Moreover, the act of succession is 22 The reception of material goods as positive assets diverges from the Stoic distinction between good, bad and indifferent, which is traced by Stobaeus back to Zeno, while Diogenes Laertius ascribes it to the Stoics in general (Ecl. 2.7.5a; Diog. Laert. 7.102–109; see also Long and Sedley 1987: 354–359; Rist 1969: 45–49; Menn 1995; Inwood and Donini 1999: 690–699; Forschner 2018: 177–197). The distinction of the three categories is based on an intellectual approach, which stresses the correct perception of the good and prizes intention. Rational judgement of external impressions prompts a person to assent to what is truly good for its own sake, such as prudence and courage, while dismissing their opposites. According to the Stoics, the passions result from wrong judgements in the hegemonikon and are thus within the realm of rational control rather than inevitable parts of the human soul (Plut. Mor. 446e–447d). Contrary to Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 2.6.1–7.16, the Stoics attribute no intrinsic moral value to intermediate values, such as wealth for the purpose of philanthropy, but recognize only the morally good as beautiful (Diog. Laert. 7.101). At the same time, however, some indifferent things are appreciated as preferrable, among them health and social duties. 23 Philo, Legat. 23. Other occurrences of the term include Flacc. 9; Ios. 136.; Flacc. 9; Legat. 23. 24 Philo, Mos. 1.150, Virt. 56.

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transformative and assimilates the successor to his predecessor. Moses not only instructs Joshua, but also serves as “archetype and model” for all subsequent generations (Virt. 70). A gradual process of assimilation emerges: the man most suitable and similar is chosen as successor and through his appointment becomes even more identical. Applied to the substitution of God by man, this idea is radical and implies full assimilation. A Sophoclean prooftext is required to legitimate it and make it sound commonplace. Philo’s argument that true freedom lies in becoming God’s deputy resonates with a famous maxim of Diogenes of Sinope, who says: “All things belong to the gods, the wise are friends of the gods and friends hold things in common; therefore all things belong to the wise.”25 Here, too, assimilation of man to the gods is implied and results in a sharing of possessions and responsibilities. As if fulfilling the second part of Philo’s Sophoclean saying, Diogenes also mocks Alexander the Great, the paradigmatic human ruler.26 The Cynic tradition illuminates the background of Philo’s philosophy, communicated via the Sophoclean saying, and explains his assumption of the close proximity between man and God, which has mundane and potentially subversive implications in society. The difference between this approach to freedom and that advocated by Zeno’s Sophoclean maxim is evident. The latter suggests that the wise man feels inwardly free even at the table of an oppressive king, yet without challenging his authority or having any concrete impact in society. The full dimensions of man’s proximity to God are spelled out in Prob. 42–44: 42

In addition, should one not say that the friends of God are free? Unless it would be appropriate to concede to the friends of kings, who share in supervision and participate in rule, not only freedom but also sovereignty, while ascribing slavery to the friends of the Olympian gods, who through their love of god immediately become god-beloved. They are in return honored by equal affection and, according to the truth, who serves as a judge, become rulers of all and kings of kings, as the poets say. 43 Yet the lawgiver of the Jews surpassed them greatly, inasmuch as he is, according to tradition, a practitioner of pure philosophy. He dared to say that the one possessed by divine love and serving the existent only, is no longer a human being, but a god (οὐκέτ’ ἄνθρωπον ἀλλὰ θεὸν ἀπετόλμησεν) – a god of men, to be sure, not of the elements of nature, so that he would leave to the father of all to be the king of gods and god. 44 Now is it appropriate to consider the one who has obtained so great a privilege to be a slave or the only free person? If he was not deemed worthy of the divine portion on account of himself, but certainly on account of his use of God as a friend, he is absolutely bound to be happy. The protector is neither weak nor negligent of his righteous friends, God being a guardian of associates and overseer of His friends’ affairs.27 25

Diog. Laert. 6.37, 6.72; Ps.-Diog. Ep. 10.2. Diog. Laert. 6.38, 60.60, 6.68, 6.72; see also Moles 1996. In 7.122 the Stoics present the sage not only as free, but also as a king enjoying independent rule. This passage, however, is unique in Diogenes’ review of Stoic philosophy and comes in the context of Cynicizing Stoics, a clear sign that some of them adopted the well-known Cynic ideal. 27 Philo, Prob. 42–44: πρὸς τούτοις τίς οὐκ ἂν εἴποι τοὺς φίλους τῶν θεῶν ἐλευθέρους εἶναι; 26

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Here, too, we initially have to verify the precise wording and the author of the text, as von Arnim 1978–1979 isolates the first paragraph from the sequel about Moses and identifies it as a fragment of Chrysippus. This is a rather surprising editorial decision, as there is no hint either to Chrysippus or other Stoics in this or the adjacent paragraphs.28 The separation of the paragraphs into two sources, one Classical Stoic and the other Jewish, is therefore artificial and ultimately reflects modern agendas. We see here a case of circular reasoning: a general phrase in the Probus is identified as being authored by Chrysippus and then “Chrysippus” is used to prove the traditional Stoic nature of Philo’s argument.29 In light of the above it is clear that this Philonic paragraph should be removed from the collection of Chrysippus’ fragments. Instead, Philo himself must be appreciated as an author expressing his own ideas about friendship and freedom in first century ce Rome. Philo addresses a broader, non-Jewish audience, introducing Moses as the lawgiver of the Jews, who is favorably compared to the Greek poets. He once again gestures to Diogenes of Sinope’s syllogism, which we saw above, namely: “All things belong to the gods, the wise are friends of the gods and friends hold things in common; therefore all things belong to the wise.”30 Philo’s allusion to the Cynic saying confirms the impression that he continues the argument promised in Prob. 19–20. In the present context he applies the notion of a reciprocal relationship between men and God to the realm of Judaism. Moses is depicted in Cynic spirit as bolder than others, proclaiming the servant of God to become Divine himself. This statement is not only surprising in the context of modern notions of monotheism, which are regularly associated with ancient Judaism, but also in view of Philo’s earlier Alexandrian writings. In the Allegorical Commentary Philo has offered a different interpretation of LXX’s Exod 7:1, εἰ μὴ τοῖς μὲν τῶν βασιλέων ἑταίροις ἄξιον οὐ μόνον ἐλευθερίαν ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀρχὴν ὁμολογεῖν συνεπιτροπεύουσι καὶ συνδιέπουσι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν, τοῖς δὲ θεῶν τῶν ὀλυμπίων δουλείαν ἐπιφημιστέον, οἳ διὰ τὸ φιλόθεον εὐθὺς γενόμενοι θεοφιλεῖς, ἴσῃ ἀντιτιμηθέντες εὐνοίᾳ παρ’ ἀληθείᾳ δικαζούσῃ, καθάπερ οἱ ποιηταί φασι, πανάρχοντές τε καὶ βασιλέες βασιλέων εἰσί νεανικώτερον δ’ ὁ τῶν Ἰουδαίων νομοθέτης προσυπερβάλλων, ἅτε γυμνῆς ὡς λόγος ἀσκητὴς φιλοσοφίας, τὸν ἔρωτι θείῳ κατεσχημένον καὶ τὸ ὂν μόνον θεραπεύοντα οὐκέτ’ ἄνθρωπον ἀλλὰ θεὸν ἀπετόλμησεν εἰπεῖν· ἀνθρώπων μέντοι θεόν, οὐ τῶν τῆς φύσεως μερῶν, ἵνα τῷ πάντων καταλίπῃ πατρὶ τὸ θεῶν εἶναι βασιλεῖ καὶ θεῷ. ἆρ’ ἄξιον τὸν προνομίας τοσαύτης τετυχηκότα δοῦλον ἢ μόνον ἐλεύθερον εἶναι νομίζειν; ὃς εἰ καὶ θείας οὐκ ἠξίωται μοίρας καθ’ αὑτόν, ἀλλά τοι διὰ τὸ φίλῳ θεῷ χρῆσθαι πάντως ὤφειλεν εὐδαιμονεῖν· οὔτε γὰρ ἀσθενὴς ὁ ὑπέρμαχος οὔτε φιλικῶν ἀμελὴς δικαίων θεὸς ἑταιρεῖος ὢν καὶ τὰ κατὰ τοὺς ἑταίρους ἐφορῶν. 28 Fragm. 359, SVF 2.451. 29 Garnsey 1996: 159 was probably inspired by von Arnim to read this paragraph in light of Classical Stoic philosophy and supports it by reference to Plutarch’s report of Stoic theology in Mor. 1076a, which mentions Chrysippus. Yet that fragment conveys a rather different message from that of Philo, focusing on physics: “For Zeus does not excel Tom in virtue and Zeus and Tom, being sages, are benefited alike by each other whenever one encounters the movement of the other.” 30 Diog. Laert. 6.37, 6.72; Ps.-Diog. Ep. 10.2.

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adumbrated also here, where God installs Moses as “god to Pharaoh.”31 As a young exegete in Alexandria, Philo problematizes this verse on the assumption of an utterly transcendent God in a Platonic sense. He adduces LXX’s Exod 3:14 “I am He that Is” and stresses that only God is truly existent. Moses’ appointment does not actually turn him into a god: “He did not become such in reality, but by convention is only supposed to be such.”32 In the Probus from his later Roman period, by contrast, Philo embraces the notion of substantial assimilation to God and supports it by a reference to a poetic expression, which can no longer be identified.33 What is more, Moses’ appointment is generalized and his status applied to any friend of God, who can become God-beloved or, to use the expression from the previous passage, a deputy of the immortal. The convergence of Pagan and Jewish notions is conspicuous in the attributes of God as “guardian of associates and overseer of His friends’ affairs,” which are characteristics traditionally applied to Zeus.34 What prompted Philo to replace his early Platonic transcendentalism by a bold theory of friendship with God, which leads to man’s freedom and share in Divine power? I suggest that Roman politics and culture played a significant role. Philo’s approach in the Probus is an inverse mirror-image of the Roman emperor’s claim to Divine status. Heracles is key to understand both the political language and its ethical inversion. As Galinsky 1972, Stafford 2012, and Gersht 2013 have shown, Heracles was a model for many rulers, gaining special attention in Augustan Rome. Virgil compared Augustus to Heracles/Hercules, indicating that he outstripped him by his acts of beneficence (Aen. 6801–6803). The Roman emperor deserved in his view immortality on account of his good deeds and his resemblance to the savior Heracles.35 Following his victory at Actium, Augustus gestured to his Heraclean powers by a calculated program of images in public places of strategic importance.36 Besides images of Victory, he set up a painting 31 θεὸς τοῦ Φαραώ, rendering ‫ ;אלהים לפרעה‬see also Runia 1988. Note that subsequent rabbis and Targumists attenuate the meaning of the expression by translating it into human roles, such as that of a judge. 32 Philo, Det. 161; on Philo’s transcendental orientation in the Allegorical Commentary, see Niehoff 2018: 192–241. 33 The saying attributed to the poets is not attested in the extant Greek literature, as far as a search in the digital Thesaurus Linguae Graecae can establish, and therefore Philo’s source remains unknown. The Attic form βασιλέες, kings, instead of βασιλεῖς, is a hapax in Philo’s œuvre and points to an ancient, but now lost source (on the linguistic transition, see the ancient grammarian Herod. Gram. 3.2). The participle πανάρχων, literally ruling over all, instead of πάναρχος, all powerful, is also a hapax in Philo and rare in ancient Greek literature. 34 See the following expressions: “Zeus guardian of associates and protector of the company in associations” (ἑταίρειος Ζεὺς ὁ ἔφορος τῆς ἐν τῇ ἑταιρίᾳ κοινωνίας, Ael. Her. Gr. 3.1.137, ed. Lentz 1867: 547) and “Zeus … guardian of associates and protector of the family” (Ζεὺς […] Ἑταιρεῖος καὶ Ὁμόγνιος, Dio, Or. 1.39). Note also that Wis 10.20 similarly applies the epithet “protector” (ὑπέρμαχος) to the hand of the Jewish God. 35 Aen. 138; see also Hor. 3rd Ode. 36 Levick 2010: 202–203.

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of Nemea, the personification of the Nemean Forest, with himself sitting on a lion (Pliny, HN 35.10). Heracles gained further significance in Philo’s lifetime. As he is the first to document, Gaius “initially began to liken himself to the so-called demi-gods, Dionysius and Heracles and the Dioscuri” (Legat. 78). This involved, “as in the theater, […] adorning himself as Heracles (διακοσμούμενος εἰς Ἡρακλέα),” wearing the lion’s skin and holding the club.37 In the Legatio Philo echoes the Roman interpretation of Heracles and agrees that “virtues provide immortality (ἀθανατίζουσιν ἀρεταί)” but denies that Gaius was morally qualified to share Heracles’ status and ascend to heaven (Legat. 91).38 The embassy to Gaius thus brought Philo into direct contact with Roman politics, culture and religion as well as their intricate entanglements. As a result of his new encounters in the capital of the empire, Philo began to develop a philosophy of freedom, which involved the idea of becoming God’s deputy and ruling over other men. His philosophy turns out to be the ethical mirror image of the Roman emperor’s imitation of Heracles. While it is grounded in a Sophoclean saying and the Biblical story of Moses’ role vis-à-vis Pharaoh, it also breathes the political categories of the time. The impression that political images are translated into philosophical and theological categories is further supported by the image of Heracles in the Probus. The demi-god features here as a powerful exemplar, who inspires human beings to perform exceptional deeds of courage and show endurance in oppressive situations (Prob. 99–105). The philosophers, “who imitate the courage of Heracles,” are in a sense even superior to him, because their virtue is based only on their ethical will and owes nothing to descent from Zeus (Prob. 120, 109). Philo himself seems to identify with this ethics of imitation. In the Legatio, which describes the embassy to Gaius Caligula, he fashions himself along the lines of his Sophoclean maxim by invoking God’s help at the beginning of the negotiations and boldly confronting the emperor.39

2. Demetrius Our contextualization of Philo in contemporary Rome starts with the enigmatic figure of Demetrius even though none of his writings, if he ever wrote any, has 37

Philo, Legat. 79; see also Cass. Dio 59.26. Note also that Seneca makes Heracles say from heaven above: “My virtus has borne me to the stars and to the gods” (Her. O. 1942–1943). In the Apocolocyntosis, however, Seneca imagines Heracles as rejecting Gaius at the gates of heaven and mocking his aspirations to immortality. According to Josephus, the Greek historian Megasthenes compared Nebuchadnezzar favorably to Heracles, insisting that he was superior in courage and achievement (Apocol. 1.144). The Alexandrian author Apollonius humorously suggested that Heracles was an outdated hero, now replaced by a new type of protagonist, namely Jason (Apoll. Argon. 1.340–350, 1.531–533). 39 For details, see Niehoff 2018: 34–45. 38

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survived.40 Demetrius was a Cynic philosopher from the Greek East, active in Rome at the time of Philo’s embassy. While Philostratus briefly describes him as a teacher in Corinth “combining all the strength of Cynic philosophy” (VA 4.25), Rome was the center of his activity under Gaius Caligula, Nero and Vespasian until the latter expelled him in 71 ce.41 According to Tacitus, Demetrius was an associate of the senators Thrasea Paetus and Barea Soranus, defending the Stoic philosopher Publius Egnatius Celer at a trial in which Musonius Rufus took the opposite side.42 These biographical snippets show that Demetrius not only taught informally in Rome, perhaps in open spaces, but also managed to integrate himself among the leading intellectuals close to the court, with all the manners that such socialization would have involved. Seneca is our main source for Demetrius’ philosophy and “semi-nude” style of teaching in circumstances of extreme frugality, which, however, does not seem to have included begging.43 Scholars debate the value of his testimony, given that we have virtually no comparative material. Seneca may have translated Demetrius’ ideas not only from Greek into Latin, but also from genuine Cynic to Stoic notions. The expression “our Demetrius” (Demetrius noster, Ep. 20.10) reflects Seneca’s identification with him and indeed indicates that he may have adapted his ideas to the tenets of his own school, namely Stoicism. Scholarly views on this issue vary considerably. Billerbeck 1979: 12–43 detects many Stoicizing traces, which she attributes to Seneca’s revision, while Goulet-Cazé 2010: 2771– 2772 concludes that the amalgamation of Cynic and Stoic elements belongs to Demetrius himself, and Chouinard 2021: 140–141 argues that we lack the necessary comparative material to reach any firm decision, but often shows that Seneca adopts views complementing those of Demetrius. We must also consider the possibility, earlier advocated by Chaumartin 1985: 148–151, that Demetrius inspired large parts of the seventh book of Seneca’s On Benefits, where he is mentioned several times.44 The adoption of Cynic elements emerges as a hallmark of Roman Stoicism, which echoes the dynamics of the school at its beginning, when Zeno was a student of Crates and allegedly wrote his Republic “on the tail of the dog” (Diog. Laert. 7.1–5, 7.121–122). 40 Stobaeus, Flor. 3.8.20 attributes to him a dialogue that has been dismissed as inauthentic by modern scholars, while it is acknowledged that it may have been among Demetrius’ drafts, which a student edited posthumously (Billerbeck 1979: 11; Brancacci 2018: 184). Kindstrand 1980: 93 warns us not to rule out the possibility that Demetrius also composed treatises, seeing that other Cynics combined informal teaching in public places with writing; see e. g. Diog. Laert. 6.80 where the works of Diogenes of Sinope are listed together with reports on ancient debates about their authenticity. 41 Epict. Diss. 1.25.22; Suet. Vesp. 13; Tac. Ann. 16.34–35; Cass. Dio 66.13.1–3. See also Billerbeck 1979: 10–11; Kindstrand 1980: 84–89; Levick 2017: 100, 162; Goulet-Caze 2014: 21–22; Brancacci 2018: 184–185. 42 Tac. Ann. 16.34–35, Hist. 4.40; see also Moles 1983; Inwood 2005: 12; Griffin 2013: 320–322. 43 Sen. Ep. 62.3; see also Billerbeck 1979: 12–43; Chouinard 2020: 125–141, 2020a: 206–207. 44 On the date of the treatise between 56–64 ce, see Griffin 2013: 91–96; Lentano 2014.

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The following passage from Seneca provides precious insights into Demetrius’ teaching in first century ce Rome and is quoted here at length as it is less known to readers of Philo: (7.8.2) I will not mention Socrates, Chrysippus, Zeno, and others, great men to be sure – all the greater, in fact, because envy does not get in the way of praise for the ancients. I mentioned Demetrius a while back; it seems to me that nature brought him forth in our age to make the point that he could not be corrupted by us any more than we could be castigated by him. Though he might deny it, he is a man of superb wisdom, with an unbending consistency in carrying out his intentions and the kind of eloquence that suits the most serious matters, rather than the ornamental kind that frets over the niceties of diction – an eloquence determined to pursue its subject with passionate commitment, with true greatness of mind. (8.3) I am certain that providence gave him the way of life he has and the rhetorical skill he possesses so that our age would have an example to follow and a rebuke to heed. If some god wanted to give our wealth to Demetrius to keep, on the condition that he not be allowed to give any of it as a gift, I venture to claim that he would reject the offer, saying as follows: (9.1) “I certainly will not tie myself to that inescapable burden, nor will I send my disencumbered self into the deep sewers of wealth. Why do you foist on me the very things that harm all peoples?” […] (11.1) And so when Gaius Caesar offered to give him two hundred thousand, Demetrius laughed and refused it, thinking that it was not even worth boasting about rejecting that amount. Great gods and goddesses in heaven! How small-minded Gaius was, whether he was trying to honor him or to corrupt him. (11.2) Let me bear witness to this outstanding man; I heard him say something magnificent when he was expressing surprise that Gaius was crazy enough to suppose that he could be swayed by that amount. He said, “if he really wanted to put me to the test, he should have tempted me by offering the entire empire!” (12.1) Therefore a sage can be given something even though all things belong to the sage. Similarly, there is no reason why something cannot be given to a friend, even though we say that friends have all things in common (trans. Griffin and Inwood 2011).45

This dense paragraph concludes with a gesture to Diogenes of Sinope’s saying about man’s friendship with the gods, which we saw in the previous section in the context of two Philonic passages. It is presented here as something “we” say, perhaps alluding to the Stoics or reaching out to various implied readers. Diogenes’ saying seems to have become commonplace. Seneca’s reference to it as a comment on Demetrius’ saying indicates common grounds with Philo’s exposition of freedom. Demetrius, as filtered through Seneca, addresses the same issues and participates in debates that were peculiar to Rome around the midfirst century ce. In the above passage Seneca offers the most detailed portrait of Demetrius that is available from antiquity. He initially refers back to his introduction of Demetrius in Ben. 7.1.3–2.1 and then presents him as a “man of superb wisdom” (sapientiae firmaeque), who deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Socrates, Chrysippus and Zeno. While Socrates was the paradigmatic philosopher 45

Sen. Ben. 7.8.2–12.1.

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of Classical Athens, who was co-opted by the Stoics, Zeno founded the Stoic school and Chrysippus was its influential third head, often dubbed its “second founder.”46 Elsewhere Seneca calls Demetrius “a great man” (vir magnus), a description associated in his writings also with Socrates, Zeno, Chrysippus and Quintus Sextus.47 Demetrius’ standing as a prominent philosopher is corroborated by Lucian and Philostratus, who mention his students.48 Demetrius appears to have become so well-known in first century ce Rome that Seneca mentions various interpretations of him, just as he discusses diverse views of Plato, Epicurus, Zeno, Rutilius, Cato and Diodorus the Epicurean. Some people, he reports, are not satisfied with Demetrius’ extreme degree of poverty, even though he is the “boldest of heroes” fighting against all the desires of Nature.49 In Ep. 62.3 he calls him the “best of men” (virorum optimum) and boasts that he continuously takes him with him in his mind, “half-naked as he is,” the two of them figuratively engaged in discussion, with Seneca holding him in high esteem. In Ep. 20.9 Seneca adds that Demetrius shunned a cloak, even rugs to lie upon, and was a “witness” (testis) to the truth rather than teaching it. Elsewhere he speaks of his witty style as eleganter and his utterance as “spirited.”50 He summarizes: “I have found that he lacks nothing. It is in the power of any man to despise all things, but of no man to possess all things. The shortest cut to riches is to despise riches. Our friend Demetrius, however, lives not merely as if he has learnt to despise all things, but as if he has handed them over for others to possess.”51 In the above-quoted passage Demetrius emerges as the leading philosopher “in our age,” who was sent by Nature and providence on a special ethical mission and cannot be corrupted thanks to the singular consistency of his intentions. While Seneca conveys this image in his own words, I suggest that it also reflects Demetrius’ self-image. This possibility is likely because of the general character of the seventh book of On Benefits, which refers several times to Demetrius. Moreover, we may reconstruct Demetrius’ self-image in the triangle between Seneca, Philo and Epictetus. The image of Demetrius being guided by providence resonates with Philo’s Sophoclean saying, which presents the righteous as God’s servant and deputy. Epictetus confirms this line of thought and probably renders explicit what his slightly older contemporary in Rome had in mind.52 The true Cynic, he explains, is “a messenger sent by Zeus” (ἄγγελος 46

Long 1988; Dorandi 1999: 37–43. Sen. Ben. 7.8.2, 1.4.1; Ep. 6.6, 66.13, 90.20. See also Billerbeck 1979: 31–35; Chouinard 2021: 127–130. 48 Luc. Dem. 3; Philostr. VA 4.25; contra Chouinard forthcoming, 11–12, who stresses Seneca’s unique role in collecting Demetrius’ anecdotes and publicizing them. 49 Sen. Brev. Vit. 18.1–3. 50 Sen. Ep. 91.19; Prov. 5.5. 51 Sen. Ep. 62.3. See also Ep. 73.14 where Jupiter is said to have handed over all his possessions to others. 52 Epictetus quotes Demetrius once for a witty saying to Nero (Diss. 1.25.22). 47

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ἀπὸ τοῦ Διὸς ἀπέσταλται).53 Schofield 2007 has identified this motif as a piece of authentic Cynic tradition. We may now add that it most likely reflects Demetrius’ philosophy and self-understanding. Seneca furthermore explores Demetrius’ attitude towards gifts, including gifts from the Roman emperor. He initially imagines his negative response to the suggestion of receiving wealth on the condition that he cannot distribute any of it as gifts. A long speech, which I have abbreviated, is put into Demetrius’ mouth, without a clear claim that he actually said these things. Seneca instead freely captures the strong moral appeal of Demetrius’ personality, his adamant resistance to the corruption of wealth. Turning himself into Demetrius’ mouthpiece, Seneca vivifies his teachings and assumes that Cynics and Stoics share the ideal of frugality. Seneca then offers an anecdote about Demetrius confronting Gaius Caligula, which Billerbeck 1979: 26 considers historically plausible, while Chouinard 2021: 132 stresses that it is “not necessarily a historical event.” However, Seneca’s distinction between his own preliminary words reflecting the spirit of Demetrius’ teaching and the incident with Gaius, for which he relies on personal hear-say (audivi), strengthens the historicity of the anecdote. The Cynic was apparently reputed to have challenged Gaius Caligula, just as Diogenes of Sinope was famous for confronting Alexander the Great.54 Demetrius shows his lack of respect for the human ruler by “laughing” (ridens) at Gaius and bemoaning that he is “small-minded” (pusillo animo). Seneca’s overall portrait of Demetrius corresponds to the two-fold message of Philo’s Sophoclean saying, namely the wise man as a divine messenger and opposition to human authority. While the tragic line is not mentioned, a remarkably similar ideal of freedom is conveyed in an explicitly Cynic context in first century ce Rome. Seneca not only admires Demetrius’ strength of character and parrhesia vis-àvis Gaius, but also adopts his methods of teaching by giving a speech in his stead and serving as a witness to his exemplary behavior. These features resonate with the Probus, which lacks robust theory and focuses on “witnesses” (μάρτυρες, Prob. 98). Demetrius’ concise and effective rhetoric, which avoids long-winding formulations, is also shared by Philo, who praises the Essenes, a group of Jewish philosophers in Palaestina, for advocating a “philosophy devoid of the fastidiousness of Greek words” and attaining “invincible freedom” (Prob. 88). Parrhesia and witty replies in untoward situations are central elements in the Probus, with Heracles, Diogenes, Chaereas and Theodorus the Atheist as noteworthy heroes.55 Demetrius’ confrontation with Gaius Caligula is of special significance in the context of Philo’s embassy, which also led to confrontations with this emperor, as reported in the Legatio.56 One can hardly avoid the impression that 53

Epic. Diss. 3.22.23. Diog. Laert. 6.38, 6.60. 55 Philo, Prob. 102–104, 121–130. 56 For details, see Niehoff 2018: 34–43.

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Philo found in Demetrius a philosophically and politically congenial ally, whose mother tongue and Eastern background he shared. Finally, the most controversial fragment of Demetrius must be assessed. Seneca mentions him as an example of a sage, who is not dragged by fortune but voluntarily follows and even calls upon the gods for assistance. Seneca recalls that he has heard (audisse me memini) Demetrius’ very words asking the gods to make known their plans so that he can “reach sooner the condition in which, after being summoned (vocatus), I now am” (Prov. 5.5). According to Seneca, Demetrius stresses his willingness to surrender anything the gods may request, even his body and life, so that no force need be applied. This passage has often been identified as Stoic, either a result of Seneca’s editing or an original amalgamation of Cynic and Stoic elements on the part of Demetrius.57 The debates have been exacerbated by the dispute over the question of whether the Cynics shunned any form of religiosity, as Goulet-Cazé 1996 argues, or merely criticized conventional forms of religion, while eagerly exploring individual religiosity, as Moles 1996: 113–114 concludes. Whatever may have been the case in Classical antiquity, in Rome Cynicism and religion went hand-in-hand. Tellingly, the first thing Epictetus says about the proper Cynic is that he acts under Divine guidance (Diss. 3.22.2). The Cynic wholly devotes himself to “the service of God” (πρὸς τῇ διακονίᾳ τοῦ θέου), being “the messenger, the scout, the herald of the gods” (Diss. 3.22.70). Epictetus further says: “To a Cynic what is Caesar or a proconsul or any other rather than Zeus, who has sent him down [from heaven] and whom he serves? Does he invoke any other than him?” (Diss. 3.22.56). He also counters the ancient allegation that Diogenes of Sinope was an atheist by quoting his witty reply: “How can that be, as I consider you to be hated by the gods?”58 While Epictetus offers these explanations after Philo’s embassy to Gaius Caligula, they capture the spirit of Roman Cynicism, which characterizes also Philo and Demetrius. The self-image of Demetrius as vocatus or being summoned by god must be taken seriously as an expression of Roman Cynicism, which is confirmed by Seneca’s description of him being sent by providence, Philo’s Sophoclean saying and Epictetus’ remarks about the ideal Cynic, who is modelled on Demetrius. While Demetrius’ thoughts on true freedom only reach us via the fractured images of his two Roman contemporaries, namely Seneca and Epictetus, it has become clear that he, like Philo, conceives of the wise man as a divine messenger, who has moral authority over human rulers. He thus engages in the same Roman debates as Philo during his embassy and implicitly addresses the two-fold message of freedom, which is expressed in the Probus via the 57

See also Brancacci 2018: 185; Chouinard 2021: 127–130. Epict. Diss. 3.22.91; cf. Diog. Laert. 6.42 where the reply is presented as authored either by Diogenes or Theodorus the Atheist. 58

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Sophoclean maxim. Given that Philo’s Cynic orientation is novel in his later Roman writings and differs from his earlier Alexandrian positions, we may conclude that it was inspired by Demetrius and reflects, at least to some degree, his particular philosophy. When Philo’s Sophoclean saying is interpreted in the context of Demetrius, as featured by Seneca, and Epictetus, as preserved by Arrian, the contours of Cynic philosophy in mid-first century ce Rome emerge rather clearly. Not only are Greek and Latin speakers closely connected and address the same philosophical issues, but their thoughts are enmeshed with politics. Paradoxically, true philosophical freedom emerges as a mirror image of political power, interpreted with moral emphasis.

3. Seneca In the previous section we saw Seneca’s deep fascination with Demetrius and Cynic philosophy. He clearly understood the paradoxes of Cynic freedom, associating it with Diogenes of Sinope’s maxim about friendship with the gods. It now remains for us to investigate the degree to which Seneca adopted such views in his own philosophy and formulated a notion of freedom similar to that of Demetrius and Philo. A first indication of his more traditional Stoic approach is the fact that none of his numerous treatises and epistles is dedicated to the topic of freedom, which Diogenes of Sinope identified as the most precious human achievement (Diog. Laert. 6.69, 6.71). Moreover, his epistle On the Philosopher’s Task shares Cynic methods of teaching by live examples, but then withdraws to the tradition outlined by Socrates, Plato, Zeno and Cleanthes, suggesting that their principles and prescriptions must now be adapted to the specific circumstances of current life (Ep. 64.1–10). Nevertheless, Seneca asks “how then can I free myself ?” in his epistle On Allegiance to Virtue, one of his shortest pieces written during Nero’s reign, but after his own retirement as his advisor.59 The key to true freedom, Seneca argues, lies not in trying to escape the necessities of life, but to overcome them by the right attitude of mind. His recommendation is the following: Turn to philosophy, if you wish to be safe, untroubled, happy, in short, if you wish to be – the most important thing – free … Proceed with steady step and you will have all things under your control, put yourself under the control of reason; if reason becomes your ruler, you will become ruler over many (trans. Edwards 2007).60

59 Sen. Ep. 37.3; see also Edwards 2009: 139, who identifies the theme of freedom as “a preoccupation to which Seneca returns again and again.” 60 Sen. Ep. 37. 3–4: Ad hanc te confer, si vis salvus esse, si securus, si beatus, denique, si vis esse, quod est maximum, liber … si vis omnia tibi subicere, te subice rationi; multos reges si ratio te rexerit.

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Seneca begins by equating freedom with self-control and an untroubled or happy state of mind. The sequel of his epistle further shows that he speaks about a certain state of consciousness, instructing his readers not to blunder into things. He warns them not to be driven by impulse and lack of awareness, arriving at a situation when they ask, “how did I get into this condition?” (Ep. 37.5). Moreover, subordination to reason is the main tool to attain freedom. While this instruction seems to correspond to the first message of Philo’s Sophoclean saying, it resonates more closely with his own, distinctly Stoic explanations about control over the passions, as expounded for example in De Ira. Tellingly, the process is internal and does not involve submission to God. At the same time, Seneca points to a similar paradox of ruling as Philo, assuming that authority over others is based on one’s own subordination to a higher principle. Given the lively debates in Rome concerning the paradox of freedom, to which Seneca is a precious witness, as we saw in the previous section, he may have translated a Cynic version of it into more traditional Stoic categories. We may ask why Seneca’s fascination with Demetrius did not lead to a more comprehensive adoption of his ideas? Is his more conservative Stoic position related to the fact that he is a Latin speaker and the only one of the philosophers investigated here who held an important public post? As a teacher and advisor of Nero, he assumed the kind of power in the Roman administration that none of the others attained. Unlike Philo and Demetrius, he did not openly challenge the Roman emperor and question his imitation of the gods. Composing the epistles during his retirement, when the relationship with Nero had already become seriously troubled, Seneca cautiously treads the ground still available to him.

4. Epictetus Born in Greek-speaking Phrygia, modern Turkey, Epictetus was sold as a slave to Epaphroditus, a famous freedman and secretary of Nero in Rome. He was trained there in Stoic philosophy under Musonius Rufus before he was emancipated.61 Following his banishment by Domitian between 95–98 ce, Epictetus removed to Nicopolis in Greece and founded his own school, which counted among its students the Cynic Demonax.62 Through Musonius Rufus and Epaphroditus, whom he depicts as a man of philosophical wit, Epictetus was connected to the highest echelons of society.63 The city of Rome is vividly present in his Discourses, even in the titles of some of them, and provides the often-overlooked context of 61 Epict. Diss. 1.1.20, 1.8.32–33, 1.9.29–30, 2.12.25; see also Fuentes 2000; Long 2002: 10–17; on the possibility that Epaphroditus was also Josephus’ patron, see Barclay 2007: 3–4. 62 Luc. Dem. 3.55. 63 Epict. Diss. 1.19.19–20, 1.1.26–27.

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his philosophy.64 Epictetus’ discourse On Freedom, for example, opens with the case of someone who has been consul twice and considers himself as a friend of the emperor (Diss. 4.1.6–10). Even Epictetus’ language shows his immersion in Roman culture, as he uses not only common Latin loanwords, such as Caesariani (Καισαριανοί), the men of Caesar’s household, but also rare ones, such as ordinatio (ὀρδινατίων) appointment (Diss 3.24.117). Teaching in Rome after Philo’s embassy and Demetrius’ activity in the city, Epictetus expresses a congenial Stoic voice that is deeply indebted to Cynicism. He marks a form of Roman Stoicism that goes beyond Seneca in accommodating Demetrius. His Discourses, retroactively written down by his student Arrian, lack robust Stoic theory and logic, while emphasizing Cynic parrhesia and personal testimony.65 Epictetus puts himself forward as a witness of ethical choice and shows via personal examples how to deal with things “not up to us” (Diss. 3.24.112–113). His own history as an emancipated slave will have added rhetorical effect to his arguments. His students were expected to learn from him not by listening to theoretical or historical expositions, but rather by observing him as he lived his true self in daily actions and adverse circumstances. Action (ἔργον) is central and the reader is invited to watch and imitate.66 In the spirit of Demetrius and perhaps alluding to him, Epictetus adds that “God has sent us the man who will show by his action” what true freedom is even in poverty (Diss. 3.24.112–113). Epictetus’ discourse On Freedom is the third extant treatise of its kind, following Cicero’s fifth Stoic Paradox and Philo’s Probus, and its very title indicates his proximity to the Cynic school. Following the analysis of Seneca, we ask to what extent this discourse, which expresses his own perspective, continues the line of On Cynicism, which we explored in previous sections. To appreciate the transfer of ideas from the report about the Cynics to Stoic philosophy, it is worthwhile reviewing some features of On Cynicism. Epictetus describes the philosopher there as “a friend and servant of the gods,” who shares “in the government of Zeus” (μετέχων τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ Διός, Diss 3.22.95). This statement corresponds to the message of Philo’s Sophoclean saying and is supported by a quotation from the Iliad: “Lead me on, oh Zeus, you and destiny” (Il. 23.42). Sharing divine power results in “overseeing” the actions of men and serving as a leader, like the queen bee in nature (Diss. 3.22.97–99). Such as philosopher can say: “Who when he looks at me does not think that he is seeing his own king and master?”67 Yet he is also a “servant of Zeus” (ὑπηρέτης τοῦ Διός), the father of us all or “a friend and servant of the gods, of one who shares in the government of Zeus” (ὡς φίλος τοῖς 64

Epict. Diss. 1.10.1, 1.1.19, 2.24.109, 3.9.1, 3.24.25. Even Barnes 1997: 24–125 admits to finding hardly any study of logic in Epictetus. 66 ἰδοὺ, Epic. Diss. 3.22.45–46; ἴδετε, Epic. Diss 3.22.47. 67 Epic. Diss. 3.22.49: τίς με ἰδὼν οὐχὶ τὸν βασιλέα τὸν ἑαυτοῦ ὁρᾶν οἴεται καὶ δεσπότον. 65

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θεοῖς, ὡς ὑπηρέτης ὡς μετέχων τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ Διός).68 All of these statements reflect the Cynic ideas we encountered in Philo and Demetrius, completing the picture of Roman discourses in the first century ce. The discourse On Freedom expresses similar, yet not identical ideas. Epictetus’ choice of title already indicates his Cynic perspective, prioritizing a value highly prized by Diogenes of Sinope, and later in the discourse explicitly states that it is the “greatest good.”69 While he deals also with traditional Stoic issues, such as assent to the impressions of the mind and freedom from the passions, he shifts the focus to questions of “authority” (ἐξουσία) and spheres of competence, which resonate with notions of Roman private law.70 In line with Philo and Demetrius, but distinct from Seneca, Epictetus associates freedom with surrender to Zeus: “I have submitted my freedom of choice to God; he wills that I shall have fever, it is my will too; he wills that I should desire something, it is my will too” (Diss 4.1.89). Attaching oneself to God guarantees a safe passage through life and the world, as if one were in the company of a powerful traveler who fends off pirates (Diss 4.1.98). One should not pride oneself in doing philosophy, but rather recognize one’s emancipator from slavery (Diss 4.1.113). Diogenes of Sinope is mentioned twice, once for his advice to attain freedom by preparing to die cheerfully and once for his recognition that Antisthenes freed him from slavery, guaranteeing that he would never submit to another human being (Diss 4.1.30, 4.1.114). These statements show Epictetus’ orientation towards Zeus, which moves beyond a purely internal evaluation of freedom associated with traditional Stoicism. They convey a similar message as Philo’s Sophoclean maxim and Demetrius’ fragments. What is lacking though is an overt rejection of human rulers and a bold assumption of authority over others. When Epictetus speaks for himself, he shows more respect for social convention and political hierarchy than Demetrius and Philo, who both confronted Gaius Caligula. The impression of Epictetus internalizing Cynic ideas to a greater extent than Seneca is confirmed by other works. Elsewhere he speaks of God counselling the wise man to take up his moral office “and examine and confute men” (Diss. 3.21.18). It was Diogenes’ responsibility “to rebuke men in a kingly manner,” while Zeno laid down doctrines (Diss 3.21.19). Moreover, in the Enchiridion, Epictetus compares life to participation in a symposium. The art of living consists in receiving the various dishes with tranquility, without trying to grasp what does not come one’s way. The objective is to become worthy of the gods’ feast: “Then you will not only be a fellow-symposiast of the gods, but also their fellow-ruler (συνάρχων); by doing thus Diogenes and Heraclitus and men like 68

Epic. Diss. 3.22.82. Epic. Diss. 4.1.52; for Diogenes’ view on freedom, see Diog. Laert. 6.69, 6.71. 70 Epic. Diss. 4.1.69–75, 4.1.84–85, 4.1.82; on relevant Roman law defining the legal person, see Lamberti 2023. 69

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them became divine and were worthy of the name” (Ench. 15). The kind of freedom and leadership originally associated with Diogenes is embraced here by Epictetus and integrated in Stoic philosophy, even including the component of sharing divine power. The discourse On the Duty Not To Incline Towards Things That Are Not Up To Us provides further background by pointing to the central role of a Cynicized Heracles in Epictetus’ thought. The demi-god is introduced as someone traversing the entire world to examine men’s behavior, chastising those falling short (Diss. 3.24.13–16). Himself a son of Zeus, he invites his readers to recognize the latter as their father, who cares for them and empowers them to live a happy life. Seneca, by contrast, confirms the Stoics interpretation of Heracles as an allegory of man’s inner struggle against the passions (Const. 2.1–2). At the same time, he distances himself from an overly enthusiastic adoption of the Greek demigod as a symbol of physical prowess, as Cato the Elder was in his view mentally more impressive.71 Epictetus furthermore devotes several paragraphs of his discourse to Diogenes of Sinope, his avowed source of inspiration for the distinction between things that are up to us and those that are not. The legal term “authority” (ἐξουσία) is used to challenge the idea that political figures, such as Alexander, have power over the philosopher (Diss. 3.24.70). Only towards the end is freedom defined in Stoic terms as the “right use of impressions” (χρῆσις φαντασιῶν, Diss. 3.24.69). Fantasia is a technical term of Stoic philosophy, which provides the icing on an otherwise overtly Cynic discourse. Epictetus’ open admiration for Demetrius and Cynicism have left deep traces in his Stoic philosophy. He not only devotes a discourse to explaining proper Cynic philosophy, as opposed to its trivial and often despised form, but also pays special attention to freedom in his own teaching. Epictetus goes beyond Seneca and adopts the idea of the wise man as subordinating himself to Zeus and attaining authority through association with him. The bold challenge of political hierarchy, however, is mitigated also by Epictetus.

5. Conclusion Philo’s Sophoclean saying has served us as a compass to unlock philosophical debates about the paradox of freedom in first century ce Rome. Philo himself uses the saying in a Cynic spirit, presenting man as God’s deputy, who shares his power and consequently enjoys freedom among men. Philo not only expresses criticism of human authority and confronts Gaius Caligula, but also interprets Moses as granting man assimilation to God and friendship with Him. While none of the other philosophers investigated here explicitly mention the 71

On Seneca’s strategy of upgrading traditional exemplars, see also Roller 2018: 265–268.

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Sophoclean saying, they all address aspects of it, sometimes in direct association with Diogenes of Sinope’s maxim about the friendship between men and gods to which Philo also gestures. Demetrius emerges here from the fragments and testimonies provided by Seneca as a Cynic philosopher congenial to Philo, who not only shares his reservation against Gaius Caligula, but also his notion of the philosopher as a divine messenger. Despite his deep respect for Demetrius, Seneca offers a more traditional Stoic perspective with emphasis on inner freedom from the passions. Yet he, too, points to the paradox of subordinating oneself to a higher principle in order to rule over others. Finally, Epictetus features in our analysis as a deeply Cynicized Stoic in first century Rome, who complements the discussion we started with Philo. He not only describes Cynic philosophy in detail, probably taking Demetrius as his model, but also pays special attention to freedom and adopts the idea of the philosopher as a servant of Zeus. In comparison to Philo, it is remarkable that Epictetus remains more reluctant to adopt the second part of the Sophoclean saying, namely the rejection of political hierarchies and human rulers.72 A rather more explosive implication of these remarkable Roman discourses may be entertained by considering the possibility that Paul’s Letter to the Romans also contributes to them. This Pauline epistle is written approximately ten to fifteen years after the Probus, during Nero’s reign, when his close associates Aquila and Priscila were back in Rome following their banishment under Claudius.73 Romans addresses a loosely organized community of Christbelievers not founded by Paul, who plans to travel to Rome “to see you so that I may give you some spiritual gift in order that you may be strengthened” (Rom 1:11).74 Chapter thirteen of the epistle instructs the readers to submit to “the prevailing authorities,” warning them that “he who opposes the authority resists the order of God.”75 The readers should recognize that the appointed ruler “is a servant of God,” who is beneficent and therefore demands respect rather than fear. In this distinctly imperial context, Paul speaks about liberation from sin and enslavement to God, promising his readers eternal life (Rom 6:18–22). Did Paul, 72

On Stoic adaptations of Cynic ideas, see also Reydams-Schils in this volume. Regarding the date of Romans between 54–59 ce and its likely place of composition in Corinth, see Jewett 2006: 18–23; Wolter 2019: 1.28–30. On the circumstances and the nature of Claudius’ banishment of some, but not of all Christians, see Suet. Claud. 25.4: Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit (GLAJJ 2.113–117). Acts 18.2, by contrast, speaks about Claudius’ expulsion of “all the Jews” (πάντας τοὺς Ἰουδαίους), which has, however, long been recognized as an exaggeration; see Pervo 2009: 446–447; Van der Lans 2015; Van der Lans and Bremmer 2017; Meier in this volume. 74 Tobin 2004: 34–44. Rom 16:3 lists some friends and acquaintances of Paul in Rome, most importantly Aquila and Prisca, his “co-workers in Jesus Christ,” who set up a church in their house (κατ’ οἶκον αὐτῶν ἐκκλησία) both in Rome and in Ephesus, where they had previously cooperated with Paul (1 Cor 19:16); see also Wolter 2019: 2.468–471; contra Lampe 2003: 189– 193, who insists on highly speculative grounds on the low social status of Aquila. 75 Rom 13:2. See also Jewett 2004: 781–784; Krauter 2009; Van Kooten 2007. 73

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like other philosophers active in first century Rome, imply full assimilation to God and assume that subordination to Him results in sharing His qualities and powers? Indeed, to what extent was his notion of freedom enmeshed in Roman discourses?

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Lentano, Mario. “De Beneficiis.” In Brill’s Companion to Seneca. Philosopher and Dramatist. Edited by Gregor Damschen and Andres Heil, 201–206. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014. Lentz, A. Grammatici Greci. Three volumes. Leipzig: Teubner, 1867. Levick, Barbara. Augustus. Image and Substance. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2010. –. Vespasian. London and New York: Routledge, 2017. Long, Anthony A. “Socrates in Hellenistic Philosophy.” CQ 38 (1988): 150–171. –. Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002. –. “Roman Philosophy.” In Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Philosophy. Edited by David Sedley, 184–210. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Long, Anthony A. and David Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers. Two volumes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Malherbe, Abraham J. The Cynic Epistles. A Study Edition. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 1977. –. Paul and the Popular Philosophers. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1989. –. Light from the Gentiles: Hellenistic Philosophy and Early Christianity. Collected Essays, 1959–2012. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014. Menn, Stephen. “Physics as Virtue.” PBACAP 2 (1995):1–25. Moles, John L. “Honestius Quam Ambitiosus: An Exploration of the Cynic’s Attitude to Moral Corruption in his Fellow Men.” JHS 103 (1983): 103–123. –. “Cynic Cosmopolitanism.” In The Cynics. The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and its Legacy. Edited by R. Bracht Branham and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, 105–120. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996. –. “Cynics and Politics.” In Justice and Generosity: Studies in Hellenistic Social and Political Philosophy – Proceedings of the Sixth Symposium Hellenisticum. Edited by André Laks and Malcolm Schofield, 129–158. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Morris, Jenny. “The Jewish Philosopher Philo.” In Emil Schürer. The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ. Edited by Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and Martin Goodman, 809–889. Vol. 3, part 2. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1987. Niehoff, Maren R. “Philo and Plutarch on Homer.” In Homer and the Bible in the Eyes of Ancient Interpreters. Edited by id., 127–154. Leiden: Brill, 2012. –. “Eusebius as a Reader of Philo,” Adamantius 21 (2015): 185–194. –. Philo of Alexandria. An Intellectual Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. –. “First Century Rome as a Philosophical Context for Philo. The Introduction to the Treatise Every Good Man is Free (Probus 1–15).” In Philo of Alexandria and Philosophical Discourses. Edited by Michael Cover and Lutz Doering. Göttingen: VanDenHoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming in 2024. Oliver, James H. “The Diadoche at Athens under the Humanistic Emperors Author.” AJP 98 (1977):160–178. Opsomer, Jan. “Demiurges in Early Imperial Platonism.” In Gott und Götter bei Plutarch. Götterbilder – Gottesbilder – Weltbilder. Edited by Rainer Hirsch-Luipold, 51–99. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005. –. “Plutarch and the Stoics.” In A Companion to Plutarch. Edited by Mark Beck, 88–103. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014.

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–. “Is Plutarch really hostile to the Stoics?” In From Stoicism to Platonism? The Development of Philosophy, 100 bce–100 ce. Edited by Troels Engberg-Pedersen, 296–321. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. –. “Plutarch and the Epistemic Authority of Euripides.” In Michael Schramm, ed. EuripidesRezeption in Kaiserzeit und Spätantike, 275–300. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020. Pelling, Christopher B. R. “Plutarch’s Method of Work in the Roman Lives.” JHS 99 (1979): 74–96. –. “Notes on Plutarch’s Caesar.” RhM 127 (1984): 33–45. –. Plutarch. Caesar. Translated with an Introduction and Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pervo, Richard I. Acts. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009. Radt, Stefan. Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (TrGF). Sophocles. Vol. 4. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1977. Reydams-Schils, Gretchen. The Roman Stoics: Self, Responsibility, and Affection. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Reydams-Schils, Gretchen et al., eds. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Rist, John M. Stoic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969. Roller, Matthew B. Models from the Past in Roman Culture. A World of Exempla.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. –. “Selfhood, Exemplarity, and Cicero’s Four Personae: On Constructing Your Self after Your Model and Your Model after Your Self.” In Self, Self-Fashioning and Individuality in Late Antiquity. Edited by Maren R. Niehoff and Joshua Levinson, 51–70. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019. Royse, James R. “The Works of Philo.” In The Cambridge Companion to Philo. Edited by Adam Kamesar, 32–64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Runia, David T. “Philo’s De Aeternitate Mundi: The Problem of Interpretation.” VC 35 (1981): 105–151. –. “God and Man in Philo of Alexandria.” JThS 39 (1988): 48–75. –. Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato. Leiden: Brill, 1986. –. Philo in Early Christian Literature. A Survey. Assen and Minneapolis: van Gorcum and Fortress Press, 1993. Scheid, John. A Rome sur les Pas de Plutarque. Paris: Vuibert, 2012. Schofield, Malcolm. “Epictetus on Cynicism.” In The Philosophy of Epictetus. Edited by Theodore Scaltsas and Andrew S. Mason, 71–86. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Schreiber, Stefan. “Die Chronologie der paulinischen Briefe.” In Paulus Handbuch. Edited by Friedrich W. Horn, 158–165. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. Schramm, Michael. Euripides in der kaiserzeitlichen Stoa, Skepsis und im Neuplatonismus. In Euripides-Rezeption in Kaiserzeit und Spätantike. Edited by id., 301–332. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020. Stadter, Philip A. Plutarch and His Roman Readers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Stafford, Emma. Herakles. New York: Routledge, 2012. Sterling, Gregory E. “’A Man of Highest Repute’: Did Josephus know the Writings of Philo?” The Studia Philonica Annual 25 (2013): 101–113. Thom, Johan C. “Don’t Walk on the Highways”: The Pythagorean Akousmata and Early Christian Literature.” JBL 113 (1994): 93–112. –. “Popular Philosophy in the Hellenistic-Roman World.” EC 3 (2012): 279–295.

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–. “Paul and Popular Philosophy.” In Paul’s Graeco-Roman Context. Edited by Cilliers Breytenbach, 47–74. BETL 277. Leuven: Peeters, 2015. Thorsteinsson, Runar M. Roman Christianity and Roman Stoicism. A Comparative Study of Ancient Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Tobin, Thomas H. Paul’s Rhetoric in its Contexts. The Argument of Romans. Peabody MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004. Von Arnim, Johannes. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. Three volumes. Stuttgart: Teubner, 1978–1979. Van der Lans, Birgit. “The Politics of Exclusion. Expulsion of Jews and Others from Rome.” In People Under Power. Edited by Michael Labahn and Outi Lehtipuu, 67–71. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015. Van der Lans, Birgit and Jan N. Bremmer. “Tacitus and the Persecution of the Christians: An Invention of Tradition?” Eirene. Studia Graeca and Latina 53 (2017): 301–304. Van Kooten, George. “The Aniconic, Monotheistic Beginnings of Rome’s Pagan Cult – Romans 1:19–25 in a Roman Context.” In Flores Florentina: Dead Seas Scrolls and Other Early Jewish Studies in Honour of Florentino García Martínez. Edited by Anthony Hilhorst et al., 633–651. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007. Weisser, Sharon. Eradication ou modérations des passions. Histoire de la controverse chez Cicéron, Sénèque et Philon d’Alexandrie. Turnout: Brepols, 2021. Wendland, Paul. “Philo’s Schrift περὶ πάντα σπουδαῖον εἴναι ἐλεύθερον.” Archiv für die Geschichte der Philosophie 1 (1988): 509–517. Whitmarsh, Timothy J. G. W. Greek Literature and the Roman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Wolter, Michael. Der Brief an die Römer. Evangelisch-Katholischer Kommentar zum Neuen Testament. Two volumes. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2019. Zetterholm, Magnus. “The Paul within Judaism Perspective.” In Perspectives on Paul. Edited by Scot McKnight and B. J. Oropeza, 170–193. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020.

Philo and Musonius Rufus Gretchen Reydams-Schils In this article I intend to revisit the possible connections between Philo and the later Musonius Rufus, Epictetus’ teacher (ca. 30–101 ce), regarding the kind of Stoicism in Roman circles which Philo might have encountered during his embassy to Rome. As Maren Niehoff has argued, this embassy functions as a watershed moment in Philo’s development, and the resulting shift towards a more Stoic perspective allows us to make most sense of the chronology of his literary activity.1 Our extant evidence of Musonius’ teachings consists of, on the one hand, a set of lectures allegedly recorded by a certain Lucius, and, on the other, a group of shorter sayings and anecdotes preserved in a range of sources, one of which is Epictetus, whose work has also survived second hand. The central question will be, then, whether some Stoic features of Philo’s works show traces of specific perspectives or views that are also attributed to Musonius Rufus. Paul Wendland, who about a decade earlier had drawn attention to the influence Musonius Rufus exerted on Clement of Alexandria,2 later also studied the potential connections between Philo and Musonius Rufus, under the heading of what he called the Cynic-Stoic diatribe.3 Wendland was careful enough, first, to distinguish between the diatribe in general (if such a thing existed) and its philosophical variant, and second, to rely not only on evidence from Musonius Rufus, but also to include material from Seneca and Epictetus, thereby acknowledging that Musonius Rufus belongs with the later Stoic tradition of the Roman imperial era. However, the greatest weakness in Wendland’s methodology for his assessment of the connections between Philo and Musonius, I would argue, lies in the fact that he focused primarily on commonplaces, because he started from the assumption that Musonius Rufus lacked originality. He thus missed what is distinctive about Musonius Rufus, and distinctly Stoic.4 With such an approach we cannot use Musonius Rufus as a witness to specifically Stoic views Philo may have encountered in Rome. 1

Niehoff 2018. Wendland 1886. 3 Wendland 1895: 68–73, in which he also briefly returns to the connections between Musonius and Clement. 4 Another but similar methodological issue affects Brad Inwood’s recent questioning of Musonius Rufus’ Stoic identity (Inwood 2017: 254–276, 2022: 166): He focuses too much on technical notions and arguments. For a response to Inwood, see Reydams-Schils forthcoming 2024a. The best assessment to date of Musonius’ Stoicism can be found in Laurand 2014. 2

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By contrast, in what follows I will focus on Stoic motifs in Philo’s writings, and especially in the series of works known as the Exposition of the Law and the biographies, that are best represented in Musonius’ and Epictetus’ views of sociability and ethics, with some parallels in Seneca too. Second, I will compare the role of Cynicism in Musonius Rufus and the other later Roman Stoics with Philo’s use in his Every Good Man is Free (Probus), another type of work, which focuses on a specific philosophical issue. Finally, I will turn to the topic of paideia in that same text.

1. Stoic Sociability in Philo and Musonius Rufus On the topic of Stoic sociability and ethics as reflected by Musonius Rufus and other later Stoics, let us start with two themes already discussed in previous scholarship on Philo: marriage and “becoming like God.” The first theme has been treated by Maren Niehoff.5 As Niehoff points out, in his On Abraham (245– 254) Philo presents a strikingly positive portrait of the relationship between Sarah and Abraham, and in the high esteem for Sarah, who shares in Abraham’s virtue and is his true partner in life, Niehoff detects an influence of the kind of Stoicism Philo could have encountered in Rome. Of these Stoics, it is in effect Musonius Rufus who endorses most strongly the view that women and men are equal in virtue.6 Perhaps following in the footsteps of Cleanthes, who wrote a no-longer-extant treatise On Marriage, Musonius Rufus presents marriage as a symmetrical and reciprocal affectionate relationship that expresses the life of virtue.7 So, as Niehoff too points out, he is in effect our best witness to that philosophical stance on women and marriage, whereas Wendland does not take the lectures on these topics into account at all.8 When Wendland does discuss Abraham’s moderate mourning after the death of his wife,9 he connects this point with the notion of μετριοπάθεια (“moderate emotion”) which he attributes to Crantor.10 Indeed, the Greek text mentions the “mean” as opposed to two “extremes” and the verb μετριοπαθεῖν (Abr. 257), whereas in other contexts Philo clearly prefers apatheia over metriopatheia, and sees the latter only as a second-best option for someone still making progress towards wisdom.11 But we should keep in mind here that Seneca too developed 5

Niehoff 2018: 131–148. III Hense: “That Women Too Should Study Philosophy;” IV Hense: “Should Daughters Receive the Same Education as Sons?” 7 XIIIA–B Hense: “What is the Chief End of Marriage?”; XIV Hense: “Is Marriage a Handicap for the Pursuit of Philosophy?”; Reydams-Schils 2005: 147–159. 8 Niehoff 2008: 134. 9 Philo, Abr. 255–261; see also QG 4.73. 10 Wendland 1895: 56–61. 11 As in Leg. 3.128–129; 1. For a fuller discussion, and an overview of the previous literature 6

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the idea of a kind of mourning that would be compatible with the wisdom and virtue of the sage.12 This passage from Seneca’s Letter 99, in which he explicitly tackles the charge of insensitivity leveled against Stoicism and thus responds to potential critics, is especially relevant here: One can be tranquil and composed even in the midst of tears. The wise have often shed tears without detriment to their moral standing and with such restraint as to maintain both dignity and humanity. I repeat: one can be obedient to nature and still maintain one’s decorum. I have seen people who command respect even at the funeral of a family member, when love showed on their faces without any false semblance of grieving, and all that was there was stirred by genuine emotion. There is seemliness even in grief, and that is something the wise person must preserve. Enough is enough, in tears as in everything else. Excessive griefs, like excessive joys belong to the foolish (trans. Long and Graver).13

Without having explicit recourse to an Aristotelian notion of the mean, in line with his own explicit rejection of metriopatheia,14 Seneca too enjoins his reader to follow a middle course for grief between insensitivity (or inhumanity) and excess, and like Philo, who describes the mourning of Abraham’s household as “a quiet sober air of sorrow” (εὐσταθῆ καὶ νηφάλιον κατήφειαν), Seneca emphasizes the importance of dignity in grief, with mourning that is “tranquil and composed” (placidis atque compositis). Standard Stoic doctrine had claimed that there is no good emotion (εὐπάθεια) corresponding to the passion grief, as there is for elation, desire, and fear, because a sage would no longer have any reason for grief whatsoever. By contrast, in this rendering of a sage’s mourning, Seneca comes very close to positing a good emotion as a counterpart to the passion of grief. And as it so happens, so did Philo (QG 2.57),15 except that the Armenian version suggests that he most likely refers to “bitings” and “contractions,” which in other contexts are terms used for the so–called pre-passions, that is, initial reactions not yet endorsed by reason, not full-fledged emotions that require such an endorsement.16 So, for his rendering of both the close relation between Abraham and Sarah and Abraham’s on this issue, see Weisser 2012. She revisits this issue of the relation between apatheia and metriopatheia in Philo in Weisser 2022: 265–368. 12 Reydams-Schils 2005: 135–141; Graver 2007: 99–101, 2009: 235–252. 13 Sen. Ep. 99: 20–21: Ire autem possunt [tears] placidis atque compositis. Saepe salva sapientis auctoritate fluxerunt tanto temperamento, ut illis nec humanitas nec dignitas deesset. Licet, inquam, naturae obsequi gravitate servata. Vidi ego in funere suorum verendos, in quorum ore amor eminebat remota omni lugentium scaena, nihil erat nisi quod veris dabatur adfectibus. Est aliquis et dolendi decor: hic sapienti servandus est et quemadmodum in ceteris rebus, ita etiam in lacrimis aliquid sat est: inprudentium ut gaudia sic dolores exundavere. 14 As in Ep. 85 and Ep. 116, discussed by Weisser 2012: 255–256, or in his general approach to anger in De ira. 15 Graver 1999. 16 See also Philo, QG 4.73, on Abraham’s mourning, discussed by Graver 2007: 103–105. For a comparison between Abr. 255–261 and QG 4.73, see now also Weisser 2022: 320–322 and 325– 327. There, she reads the metriopathein of the former passage in light of the latter as dealing not

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mourning after his spouse’s death Philo could have drawn material from the later Stoics of the Roman imperial era. The second theme under the heading of the influence of Stoic ethics and sociability on Philo that leads us, again, specifically to Musonius Rufus, is one that I myself have explored already in a different context: What does it mean for Philo that human beings should imitate God?17 Given that humans cannot know the divine in itself, Philo enjoins his readers to imitate the powers of God. But those powers represent the providential aspect of God, or the divine’s relation with the world, as in the following passage which Philo attributes to Moses: When then you have received strength from the most powerful, give of your strength to others and do to them as has been done to you, that you may imitate God by bestowing freely boons of the same kind (παραπλήσια χαρίζεσθαι). For the gifts of the Chief Ruler are of universal benefit (κοινωφελεῖς), given to some, not to be hidden by them when received, nor misused to harm others, but thrown into the common stock (εἰς μέσον προενεγκόντες) so that as in a public banquet they may invite as many as they possibly can to use and enjoy them (trans. Colson).18

Here human beings are meant to imitate the generosity of God; the divine gifts are to be enjoyed by all, to “be thrown into the common stock,” even if they are bestowed on specific individuals. Thus, humans are not intended to imitate just any divine excellence, but rather specifically the social dimension of its beneficence (such a notion stands in contrast with the Platonic version of “becoming like God” that focuses on the sensible/intelligible distinction and is prevalent in the Allegorical Commentary).19 This aspect of imitating God is also attested most clearly, and primarily, for the later Stoics Musonius Rufus and Epictetus, because in Stoicism rationality, divine and human, entails sociability (but not the other way around, given that animals can also display certain social behaviors, such as the care for off-spring). This is how Musonius Rufus puts it: In general, of all creatures on earth man alone resembles God (μίμημα θεοῦ) and has the same virtues that he has, since we can imagine nothing even in the gods better than prudence, justice, courage, and temperance. Therefore, as God, through the possession of these virtues, is unconquered by pleasure or greed, is superior to desire, envy, and jealousy; is high-minded, beneficent, and kind to mankind (μεγαλόφρων δὲ καὶ εὐεργετικὸς καὶ φιλάνθρωπος) – for such is our conception of God – , so also man as an imitation of with an Aristotelian or Peripatetic notion, but rather with something along the lines of the Stoic pre-passions, yet here too with crucial differences from the Stoic stance. 17 Reydams-Schils 2016, 2017. 18 Philo, Virt. 168–169: ἐπειδὴ τοίνυν, φησίν, ἔλαβες ἰσχὺν παρὰ τοῦ δυνατωτάτου, μετάδος ἄλλοις ἰσχύος διαθεὶς ὃ ἔπαθες, ἵνα μιμήσῃ θεὸν τῷ παραπλήσια χαρίζεσθαι. κοινωφελεῖς γὰρ αἱ τοῦ πρώτου ἡγεμόνος δωρεαί, ἃς δίδωσιν ἐνίοις, οὐχ ἵν’ ἐκεῖνοι λαβόντες ἀποκρύψωσιν ἢ καταχρήσωνται πρὸς ζημίαν ἑτέρων, ἀλλ’ ἵν’ εἰς μέσον προενεγκόντες ὥσπερ ἐν δημοθοινίᾳ πάντας ὅσους οἷόν τε καλέσωσιν ἐπὶ τὴν χρῆσιν καὶ ἀπόλαυσιν αὐτῶν. 19 Niehoff 2008: 192–208.

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Him (ἐκείνου μίμημα), when living in accord with nature, should be thought of as being like Him (ὁμοίως ἔχειν), and being like Him, being an object of emulation (ζηλωτόν), and being an object of emulation, he would forthwith be happy, for we feel emulation to none but the happy. Indeed it is not impossible for man to be such, for certainly when we encounter men whom people call godly and godlike (οἵους ὄντας αὐτοὺς θείους καὶ θεοειδεῖς ὠνόμαζον), we do not have to imagine that these virtues came from elsewhere than from man’s own nature (trans. Lutz, slightly modified, emphasis added).20

The first thing to note here is that Stoicism developed its own model of becoming like God, and Philo combines Platonist and Stoic elements in his renderings, with the Platonic version emphasizing the flight from the world as the sensible realm and the Stoic position focusing on imitating divine involvement in the world. According to Musonius Rufus, the divine is not so radically transcendent as to rise above the moral virtues altogether, but rather possesses prudence, justice, courage, and temperance perfectly. Whereas Philo does not ascribe the virtues to his hyper-transcendent God in Himself, the connection between the passages from Philo and Musonius resides in the fact that the divine itself exemplifies the beneficence humans are meant to bestow on one another. One very specific way in which humans can imitate the divine is by being a “living law” (νόμος ἔμψυχος). Musonius mentions this theme in a lecture allegedly addressed to a Syrian king on the reasons why rulers should be philosophers:21 In general it is of the greatest importance for the good king to be faultless and perfect in word and action, if, indeed, he is to be a “living law” as he seemed to the ancients, effecting good government and harmony, suppressing lawlessness and dissension, a true imitator of Zeus and, like him, father of his people (trans. Lutz).22

20 XVII Hense: καθόλου δὲ ἄνθρωπος μίμημα μὲν θεοῦ μόνον τῶν ἐπιγείων ἐστίν, ἐκείνῳ δὲ παραπλησίας ἔχει τὰς ἀρετάς· ἐπεὶ μηδ’ ἐν θεοῖς μηδὲν ὑπονοῆσαι κρεῖττον ἔχομεν φρονήσεως καὶ δικαιοσύνης, ἔτι δὲ ἀνδρείας καὶ σωφροσύνης. ὥσπερ οὖν ὁ θεὸς διὰ τὴν παρουσίαν τούτων τῶν ἀρετῶν ἀήττητος μὲν ἡδονῆς, ἀήττητος δὲ πλεονεξίας, κρείττων δὲ ἐπιθυμίας, κρείττων δὲ φθόνου καὶ ζηλοτυπίας, μεγαλόφρων δὲ καὶ εὐεργετικὸς καὶ φιλάνθρωπος· τοιοῦτον γὰρ ἐπινοοῦμεν τὸν θεόν· οὕτω καὶ τὸ ἐκείνου μίμημα τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἡγητέον, ὅταν ἔχῃ κατὰ φύσιν, ὁμοίως ἔχειν, καὶ οὕτως ἔχοντα εἶναι ζηλωτόν· ὢν δὲ ζηλωτὸς εὐθὺς ἂν εἴη καὶ εὐδαίμων· οὐ γὰρ ἄλλους γέ τινας ἢ τοὺς εὐδαίμονας ζηλοῦμεν. καὶ μὴν οὐκ ἀδύνατον γενέσθαι τοιοῦτον ἄνθρωπον· οὐ γὰρ ἑτέρωθέν ποθεν ταύτας ἐπινοῆσαι τὰς ἀρετὰς ἔχομεν ἢ ἀπ’ αὐτῆς τῆς ἀνθρωπείας φύσεως, ἐντυχόντες ἀνθρώποις τοιοῖσδέ τισιν, οἵους ὄντας αὐτοὺς θείους καὶ θεοειδεῖς ὠνόμαζον. See also Cleanthes Hymn to Zeus, Epict. Diss. 2.14.11–13; Seneca in On Benefits (on the latter, see especially Graver 2009). 21 Ramelli 2006 has studied in greater detail the connections between this theme and both the Platonist and (ps.-) Pythagorean traditions. On Musonius Rufus and Philo, see especially 89–102. On rulers imitating divine beneficence in Philo, see for example Spec. 4.187–188. 22 VIII Hense: Καθόλου δὲ τὸν μὲν βασιλέα τὸν ἀγαθὸν ἀνάγκη πᾶσα καὶ λόγῳ καὶ ἔργῳ εἶναι ἀναμάρτητον καὶ τέλειον· εἴ περ δεῖ αὐτόν, ὥσπερ ἐδόκει τοῖς παλαιοῖς, νόμον ἔμψυχον εἶναι, εὐνομίαν μὲν καὶ ὁμόνοιαν μηχανώμενον, ἀνομίαν δὲ καὶ στάσιν ἀπείργοντα, ζηλωτὴν δὲ τοῦ Διὸς ὄντα καὶ πατέρα τῶν ἀρχομένων ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνον.

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Musonius Rufus presents this theme as belonging to an old tradition, but it is Philo who actually brings out its potentially Stoic resonances.23 Succinctly put, it is by reflecting natural law or “right reason” (ὀρθός λόγος) that Abraham and Moses can be said to be the “living law.” Philo’s attribution of this designation to the patriarchs occurs in the very text of which I have already discussed a number of themes, his On Abraham (Abr. 4: οἱ γὰρ ἔμψυχοι καὶ λογικοὶ νόμοι ἄνδρες ἐκεῖνοι γεγόνασιν). As I have argued elsewhere, the series of works known as the Exposition of the Law and the biographies show a noticeable shift towards a more positive evaluation of Stoically inspired natural philosophy as the study of the ordered world.24 In the On Abraham the entire section of Philo’s account up to Abraham’s move away from Chaldea has very strong Stoic overtones. In this work Philo talks about the world as the most perfect and complete of things. Abraham as a living rational law also represents natural law (Abr. 6). He is described as someone “[…] who contemplates the order in nature and the constitution enjoyed by the world-city whose excellence no words can describe […]” (Abr. 61: […] θεώμενος γάρ τις τὴν ἐν τῇ φύσει τάξιν καὶ τὴν παντὸς λόγου κρείττονα πολιτείαν, ᾗ χρῆται ὁ κόσμος), so that he can be said now to be at home in the world-city. Moreover, at the very end of this work, after the section on Abraham and his spouse discussed above, Philo returns to the theme of Abraham himself being the law and an unwritten statute (Abr. 276: νόμος αὐτὸς ὢν καὶ θεσμὸς ἄγραφος). Thus, the entire frame of this work by Philo has strong Stoic overtones.25 Similar features of Stoicism can be detected in Philo’s rendering of Moses as “living law” (Mos. 1.162, again combining both λογικός and ἔμψυχός; see also Mos. 2.4). The first time Philo uses this designation for Moses occurs at the end of a long section about Moses’ leadership (Mos. 1.148–162). In an echo of the Stoic paradox that only the sage can be said to be rich, Moses is said to have been deemed worthy by God to share in His own possessions (Mos. 155) and as a world-citizen to have owned the entire world (Mos. 157). The second time Philo brings up the designation (Mos. 2), it is in a similar context as we have in Musonius Rufus’ lecture, namely in a more general reflection about a king being the “living law.” Philo’s depiction of Moses already takes us to the text I would like to focus on next, the Probus, which belongs with a different set of Philo’s writings, on specific philosophical themes. This account could be read as providing an explanation, in Philo’s distinctive combination of Platonic and Stoic elements, for how someone could be a “living law:”

23

Najman 1999. Reydams-Schils, forthcoming 2024b. 25 For an overview, see Birnbaum and Dillon 2021.

24

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[…] right reason is an infallible law engraved not by this mortal or that and, therefore, perishable as he, nor on parchment or slabs, and, therefore, soulless as they, but by immortal nature on the immortal mind, never to perish (trans. Colson).26

2. Stoicism and Cynicism In addition to looking for themes that Philo and Musonius Rufus have in common, we can also compare their use of Cynic motifs, in Philo’s case in the Probus – to which Maren Niehoff has drawn renewed attention in her study of the connections between this account and Cynicism as well as other cultural movements in Rome at the time of Philo’s embassy.27 Once again we need to return to one of the main issues with Wendland’s methodology when he examines the material from Musonius Rufus together with the Cynic tradition but focuses only on commonplaces. We need to keep in mind that the coopting of both Cynic and Socratic material is a defining trait of Stoicism, which, in effect, goes back to the very beginning of the school in the era of Zeno and is attested not only for Musonius Rufus, but also for later Stoics such as Seneca, Epictetus, and to some extent even Marcus Aurelius.28 In other words, we need to take this issue to a deeper level of analysis, and start from the question what role Cynicism plays in these later Stoic accounts. Marie-Odille Goulet-Cazé29 has provided us with the fullest and most plausible analysis of what looks like a debate within the Stoic school about how far Cynicism could be coopted by Stoicism. At stake were the more shocking and provocative aspects of this way of life. As a result of this debate, a compromise position seems to have been achieved, whereby Cynicism came to be described as “the short route to wisdom.” Diogenes Laertius attributes this position to Apollodorus of Seleucia (7.121).30 This is exactly, I suggest, how we find Cynic motifs being used by Musonius Rufus and Philo. Such usage involves a cleanedup version of Cynicism that still tries to put some of its potential shock value to good use. To put the matter succinctly in this context, for later Stoics such as Musonius Rufus, Cynic motifs both have a protreptic function and are part and parcel of the life of virtue. They are protreptic insofar as they help students of philosophy to detach themselves from the wrong values. For instance, wealth and status are only 26 Philo, Prob. 46: νόμος δὲ ἀψευδὴς ὁ ὀρθὸς λόγος, οὐχ ὑπὸ τοῦ δεῖνος ἢ τοῦ δεῖνος, θνητοῦ φθαρτός, ἐν χαρτιδίοις ἢ στήλαις, ἄψυχος ἀψύχοις, ἀλλ’ ὑπ’ ἀθανάτου φύσεως ἄφθαρτος ἐν ἀθανάτῳ διανοίᾳ τυπωθείς. 27 Niehoff forthcoming 2024. See also her contribution to this volume. 28 On this topic, see also Reydams-Schils forthcoming 2024c. 29 Goulet-Cazé 2003. 30 See also Diog. Laert. 6.104; SVF 3.636=Stobaeus 2.7.11s, p. 114 Wachsmuth.

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apparent goods, whereas poverty, social obscurity, and death are merely apparent evils. The Cynic practice of unmasking false values also plays a central role in Marcus Aurelius’ writings, under the heading of “straight speech”, which he attributes to Diogenes (11.6).31 When for instance, Marcus Aurelius presents sex as a rubbing together of body parts leading to the release of bodily fluid, or reduces purple – a status symbol par excellence – to the mere blood of snails, his objective (6.13), I claim, is to employ a bit of shock therapy to deflate the importance people tend to accord to such matters. Or, in his own words: “Such are the perceptions that allow one to get to the bottom of the way things really are,”32 Marcus avers, and he goes on to state the purpose of the exercise as follows: “[…] whenever we attribute too much value to something, we should strip it down, realize how cheap it is, and take away the basis for this overestimation.”33 Once a student has realized that such things are not what they seem, the path is cleared for an investigation of what counts as truly good and evil. It is on the latter process of discovery that Stoicism brings its own intricate conceptual apparatus to bear, complete with exercises in argumentation and logic (more on this below), to shore up the foundational claim that only virtue as the correct functioning of reason counts as good and leads to happiness, and only vice counts as evil. Thus the “unconventional” nature of Cynicism starts the process of questioning conventional value judgments about what does and does not matter. In the “austerity” version of Stoicism, however, as attested particularly in Musonius Rufus and Epictetus, and present in Marcus Aurelius’ reflections as well, Cynicism becomes part and parcel of the good way of life itself. Once one has realized the true value of things, one can also reduce one’s material needs to a minimum and bypass the need for recognition and status altogether. Attachment to the wrong things could not only pose a threat to one’s freedom – the topic of Philo’s Probus – but always undermines one’s progress towards virtue. Stoicism posits two main causes of going astray (διαστροφή): one resides in the misguided influence of others and the other in the pull inherent in things themselves.34 In the case of food Musonius, for instance, argues that the exhalations from heavy food such as meat impede reasoning, and that humans should imitate the gods who are fed by exhalations from earth and water.35 If we suppose that a modified version of Cynicism appears in the later Stoic authors, we may ask which Cynic anecdotes and sayings are used and how? 31

Aubert-Baillot 2015.

32 […] οἷαι δὴ αὗταί εἰσιν αἱ φαντασίαι καθικνούμεναι αὐτῶν τῶν πραγμάτων καὶ διεξιοῦσαι

δι’ αὐτῶν, ὥστε ὁρᾶν οἷά τινά ποτ’ ἐστιν. 33 […] καὶ ὅπου λίαν ἀξιόπιστα τὰ πράγματα φαντάζεται, ἀπογυμνοῦν αὐτὰ καὶ τὴν εὐτέλειαν αὐτῶν καθορᾶν καὶ τὴν ἱστορίαν ἐφ’ ᾗ σεμνύνεται περιαιρεῖν. 34 Graver 2012. 35 XVIIIA Hense.

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Musonius Rufus integrates a reference to Crates’ “marriage” into his claim that the philosopher too should marry, because marriage is the cornerstone of human sociability and itself an expression of the life of virtue.36 Anecdotes about a Cynic copulating in public would not have served his purpose. Similarly, we can ask which anecdotes Philo uses in his Probus. We find Diogenes the Cynic demonstrating his “freedom” in the midst of his captivity as a slave (Prob. 121–124), or cutting a self-important freedman down to size, against that person’s false pretensions and mistaken notion of freedom (Prob. 157). Philo’s portrayal of Heracles, however, seems to be more in line with burlesque aspects of original Cynicism which, like Stoicism, claimed this hero for itself.37 He mentions an anecdote in which Heracles ends up killing the finest bull of his new master Syleus, having a lavish meal, drinking wine in huge quantities, and provoking Syleus by challenging him to a drinking competition, all this to demonstrate that the slave owner has no control over him whatsoever (Prob. 102–103). This behavior hardly seems to be in line with Stoic virtue, as Niehoff rightly points out.38 The Stoic Epictetus, however, does not strip the hero Heracles of all his excessive behavior either (nor does he erase completely the obscene behavior of the Cynic Diogenes, for that matter, see Diss. 3.2.11). He draws attention to Heracles’ fathering children left and right, and casually entrusting the care of these to Zeus, who in this context is presented as the father not only of Heracles but of all human beings (Diss. 3.14–16), to register the point that the hero could live happily wherever and with whomever he found himself. But more importantly, there could be, on some level at least,39 also a philosophical background to Philo’s choice of this depiction of Heracles. Cynics would not have been the only ones to draw attention to a hero or sage’s ability to hold his liquor. In his Symposium Plato twice represents Socrates as the last man standing after a drinking bout in which he took part (220a; 223c–d), and the Stoics too entertained the notion that the sage could drink without getting drunk.40 Philo appears to be aware of the philosophical debate about the question whether the wise man will get drunk.41 This debate in turn leads us to Philo’s own allegorical transposition of drinking onto the notion of “sober drunkenness,” to indicate wisdom or closeness to God. This is a key motif for Philo to which he alludes in Every Good Man is Free too (13–14).42 36

XIV Hense. Niehoff 2022; forthcoming 2025. 38 See also Friesen 2019. 39 Niehoff forthcoming 2025, suggests that Philo also attempted to walk a fine line between Roman emperors’, and especially Gaius Caligula’s, identification with Heracles and the politically dangerous Stoic cooptation of this mythical figure. 40 For an overview, see Bénatouïl 2006. 41 Philo, Plant. 142–172, as discussed by Benatouïl 2006. 42 See also the phrase akratos sophia (σοφίας ἀκράτου) in Prob. 117: “undiluted” is a term commonly used for unmixed wine. On the importance of the theme of “sober drunkenness” for 37

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However, Philo does not attach an allegorical transposition to the Heracles episode. Instead, he goes on to downplay the importance of this example by claiming that acts of philosophers, in this case of Zeno of Elea and Anaxarchus (Prob. 106–109), which demonstrate true freedom and show no trace of the burlesque, are superior to those of heroes. The latter can rely on their divine inheritance, whereas “the glory of the philosophers rests upon achievements of virtue, freely willed by themselves”.43 Thus Philo ends up distancing himself from using Heracles as a model. If the later Stoics preferred a modified version of Cynicism, stripped of obscene behavior, they nevertheless were still interested in putting the shock value of certain sayings and anecdotes to good use. After all, as Philo himself points out in Every Good Man is Free (Prob. 6, 8, 54), the paradoxes which the Stoics used to get their views across themselves relied on a shock effect in their counterintuitive approach to values. Philo opens his treatise with a number of these, that it is not the people commonly considered such who count as true exiles and true citizens. In fact, those in literal exile can be true citizens, and citizens in the traditional sense can be the true exiles, and the same reasoning applies to the question of who is truly rich, and who is poor (Prob. 6–10). Turning to his main topic, Philo then discusses what counts as true freedom and enslavement (Prob. 16 f.). Similarly, the Stoic practice of “frank speech” (παρρησία), as in the case of the Diogenes anecdotes which Philo integrates into his account, serves to subvert traditional notions of status, authority, and power. Musonius Rufus (IX Hense) and Epictetus (Diss. 2.13.24; 3.21.19) use similar anecdotes as Philo does to underscore Diogenes’ true freedom. Epictetus even coopts the Cynic for the argument that real freedom resides in judgment (which Epictetus renders as dealing with impressions, Diss. 3.24.66–69; see also 4.1.112), a claim Philo echoes (Prob. 23– 24).

3. Paideia I would like to close these observations with one more important parallel between Musonius Rufus and Philo’s exposition in Every Good Man is Free, one that pertains to education or paideia (on this topic, see also Rebecca Langland’s contribution to this volume). In his lecture “On Training” Musonius Rufus distinguishes between two types of exercises, one for the body in its relation to the Philo, see Ebr. 147–148; Opif. 71. In his description of the community of the Therapeutae, Philo criticizes cultural practices associated with symposia (including the one described by Plato, see Philo, Contempl. 59) to contrast these with the celebrations of the Therapeutae; see especially Contempl. 85–89 on their sober drunkenness. See also Bénatouïl 2006: 281, for a discussion of Plant. 142–172. 43 Philo, Prob. 109 (trans. Colson): τῶν δ᾿ ἐν ἑκουσίοις ἀρεταῖς.

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soul, and the other for the soul itself.44 Scholars have discussed possible parallels with exercises attributed to the Cynic Diogenes (by Diog. Laert. 6.70).45 But in the account attributed to the Cynic there is no counterpart to the exercises which Musonius Rufus recommends for the soul. The latter consist first of training in logic, and second of putting these insights into practice. The exercises in logic are demonstrations (ἀποδείξεις) that allow students to distinguish between the merely apparent good and the true good, and between the merely apparent evil and the true kind. Such arguments form the subject of the first lecture, which discusses the number of demonstrations needed to make a point and, as in the lecture on training, the demonstrations serve ethics by examining what counts as good or evil. They come in the form of compact syllogisms, of which Musonius Rufus gives two examples, the first aiming to unmask something commonly considered good as not truly good, and the second pertaining to an apparent evil: (a) i. Every good is desirable [always and under all circumstances is implied], ii. some pleasures are not desirable, iii. pleasure is not a good. (b) i. Every evil is a thing to be avoided [always and under all circumstances], ii. many forms of toil are not to be avoided, iii. toil is not an evil.46

In this context Musonius argues that the number of demonstrations needs to be adapted to the condition of the pupil; those who are quicker of wit and have received a better education would need fewer proofs; others who are less gifted or have received the wrong kind of education would need more. This teaching practice attributed to Musonius, I would argue, is the best background for understanding the section of Philo’s Every Good Man is Free that is devoted to a rapid succession of such “proofs” (Prob. 58–61).47 Like Musonius, Philo compares the use of proofs to a physician’s healing art. In this case, the need for proofs is not governed by the disposition and educational background of the student, on which Musonius focuses, but by the unusual, unfamiliar nature of a philosophical position. For Philo the challenge in question is the paradoxical nature of the claim that every good man is free, which, as in Musonius’ examples pertaining to good and evil, runs counter to popular opinion and thus needs to be shored up with a series of demonstrations (ἀποδείξεις). The demonstrations

44

VI Hense. For a full discussion, see Goulet-Cazé 1986. Goulet-Cazé considers the possibility that this account of the exercises may in itself already betray an influence of Stoicism (218); see also Sellars 2023. 46 I Hense. 47 Madeleine Petit in her French translation of the treatise (Petit 1974) draws attention to this parallel with Musonius Rufus. 45

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in question have a more complex structure, but the method is the same. For example: (1) One who cannot be compelled to do anything or be prevented from doing anything, cannot be a slave, (2) the good man cannot be compelled or prevented, (3) the good man, therefore, cannot be a slave.48

The account then claims that it is clear (δῆλον) that the good man cannot be compelled nor prevented, and goes on to substantiate this claim, first, by a syllogism arguing that the wise man cannot be prevented in attaining his purpose, and, second, through an analysis of how he cannot be compelled either, which examines an exhaustive list of actions pertaining to good, to evil, or to indifferents. I therefore suggest that Philo presents a more complex version of the very same method Musonius invokes, of arguing from claims that are clearer and more obvious to those that are less so, as endorsed by the Stoics.49

4. Conclusion To sum up, we can indeed find significant parallels between a form of Stoicism Philo could have encountered in Rome during his embassy and the lectures attributed to Musonius Rufus. Some of these parallels pertain to a social ethics that is anchored in divine Providence and natural law, others to the role of demonstrations in teaching ethics and to a certain mode of appropriating Cynicism. Regarding the latter, the analysis I presented here is not meant to preclude the possibility that in Rome Philo might also have encountered a Cynic tradition that was not confined to Stoic accounts such as Seneca’s portrait of the Cynic Demetrius. But the parallels discussed here are distinctly Stoic, and do not merely reflect a tradition of commonplaces.

Bibliography Aubert-Baillot, Sophie. “Un cas particulier de franc-parler (παρρησία): le parler droit (εὐθυρρημοσύνη) des Stoïciens.” Rhetorica 33 (2015): 71–96. Benatouïl, Thomas. Faire usage: la pratique du stoïcisme. Paris: Vrin, 2006. Birnbaum, Ellen, and Dillon, John, eds. Philo of Alexandria, On the Life of Abraham. Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Leiden: Brill, 2021. Friesen, Courtney. “Heracles and Philo of Alexandria. The Son of Zeus Between Torah and Philosophy, Empire and Stage.” In Philo and Greek Myth: Narratives, Allegories, and 48 49

Philo, Prob. 60. See Diog. Laert. 7.45 and Sext. Emp. PH 2.135, 143.

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Arguments. Studies in Philo of Alexandria (10). Edited by Francesca Alesse and Ludovica De Luca, 176–199. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Goulet-Cazé, Marie-Odile. Les “Kynika” du stoïcisme. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2003. –. L’ascèse cynique: un commentaire de Diogène Laërce VI 70–71. Paris: Vrin, 1986. Graver, Margaret. “Philo of Alexandria and the Origins of the Stoic προπάθειαι.” Phronesis 44.4 (1999): 300–325. –. Stoicism and Emotion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. –. “The Weeping Wise: Stoic and Epicurean Consolations in Seneca’s 99th Epistle.” In Tears in the Graeco-Roman World. Edited by Thorsen Fögen, 235–252. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009. –. “Cicero and the Perverse: The Origins of Error in De Legibus 1 and Tusculan Disputations 3.” In Cicero’s Practical Philosophy. Edited by Walter Nicgorski, 113–132. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. –. “Interiority and Freedom in Seneca’s De Beneficiis. Acts of Kindness and the Perfected Will.” In Self, Self-Fashioning and Individuality in Late Antiquity. Edited by Maren Niehoff and Joshua Levinson, 71–88. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019. Inwood, Brad. “The Legacy of Musonius Rufus.” In From Stoicism to Platonism: The Development of Philosophy, 100 bce–100 ce. Edited by Troels Engberg-Pedersen, 254– 276. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. –. Later Stoicism 155 bc to ad 200. An Introduction and Collection of Sources in Translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Laurand, Valéry. Stoïcisme et lien social. Enquête autour de Musonius Rufus. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014. Najman, Hindy. “The Law of Nature and the Authority of Mosaic Law.” The Studia Philonica Annual 11 (1999): 55–73. Niehoff, Maren R. Philo of Alexandria. An Intellectual Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. –. “L’Idea Filoniana della Paideia. Tra Alessandria e Roma, tra stoicismo, platonismo e cinismo.” Adamantius 28 (2022): 10–22. –. “First Century Rome as a Philosophical Context for Philo. The Introduction to the Treatise Every Good Man is Free (Probus 1–15).” In Philo of Alexandria and Philosophical Discourses. Edited by Michael Cover and Lutz Doering. Göttingen: VanDenHoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming in 2024. –. “Heracles in Philo of Alexandria, Epictetus and Early Christianity. A Contribution to the Study of Cynicism in First Century ce Rome.” In A Companion to Heracles. Edited by George W. M. Harrison. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, forthcoming in 2025. Petit, Madeleine, ed. Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit. Introduction, texte, traduction et notes. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1974. Ramelli, Ilaria. Il basileus come nomos empsychos tra diritto naturale et diritto divino. Spunti platonici del concetto et sviluppi di età imperiale et tardo-antica. Naples: Bibliopolis, 2006. Reydams-Schils, Gretchen. The Roman Stoics: Self, Responsibility, and Affection. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. –. “‘Unsociable sociability:’ Philo on the Active and the Contemplative Life.” In Pouvoir et puissances chez Philon d’Alexandrie. Edited by Francesca Calabi et al., 305–318. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016.

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–. “‘Becoming like God’ in Platonism and Stoicism.” In From Stoicism to Platonism: The Development of Philosophy, 100 bce – 100 ce. Edited by Troels Engberg-Pedersen, 142– 158. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. –. “Musonius’ Philosophical Affiliation”, forthcoming 2024. –. “Natural Philosophy and Stoicism in Philo’s Oeuvre”, forthcoming 2024. –. “Cynicism in Musonius Rufus and the Roman Stoics.” In Philo of Alexandria and Philosophical Discourse. Edited by Michael Cover and Lutz Doering. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, forthcoming in 2024c. Sellars, John. “Marcus Aurelius and the Tradition of Spiritual Exercises.” In The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy. Edited by Myrto Garani, David Konstan, and Gretchen Reydams-Schils, 74–86. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023. Weisser, Sharon. “Why Does Philo Criticize the Stoic Ideal of apatheia in On Abraham 257? Philo and Consolatory Literature.” Classical Quarterly 62.1 (2012): 242–259. –. Éradication ou modération des passions. Histoire de la controverse chez Cicéron, Sénèque et Philon d’Alexandrie. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2022. Wendland, Paul. “Philo und die kynisch-stoische Diatribe.” In Beiträge zur Geschichte der Griechischen Philosophie und Religion [Festschrift Hermann Diels], 1–75. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1895. –. Quaestiones Musonianae, De Musonio Stoico Clementis Alexandrini aliorumque auctore. Dissert. Philolog, 1886.

Platonism between Alexandria and Rome Philo and Seneca* Gregory E. Sterling The history of ancient philosophy changed significantly when Sulla sacked Athens in March of 86 bce.1 Athens had made the mistake of following the lead of a Peripatetic philosopher named Athenion, and an Epicurean philosopher named Aristion, who backed Mithridates VI against Rome.2 The chaos of the siege and the damage done during the assault led to the dispersion of philosophers from the city and effectively brought an end to the dominance of Athens as the philosophical center of the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, opening the door for other cities to emerge as important locales of philosophical discourse.3 Alexandria and Rome developed as major centers of philosophical activity. Even regional cities like Tarsus became important. Philo of Larissa, the head of the Academy, moved to Rome following the sack of Athens and may have taken the library of the Academy with him. Sulla took a number of volumes from Athens back to Rome, including the library of Appelicon that contained Aristotle’s works.4 In this contribution, I would like to explore the possible interaction between Alexandria and Rome through the work of two significant figures in the philosophical tradition. The specific question that we will explore is the source for Seneca’s Platonism. There are two letters in which Seneca rehearses the views of Plato and his school. The first is Letter 58 where he offers a metaphysical/ ontological analysis of the meaning of “being” ranging from τὸ ὄν (quod est) to “what only seems to be” (quae quasi sunt).5 The second is Letter 65 where the * I am grateful to Maren Niehoff for the invitation to participate in the conference and to contribute this piece to the conference proceedings. Among her numerous accomplishments in Philonic scholarship, she has done more than anyone to emphasize the importance of Rome for Philo. 1 See the treatment of Sedley 2003: 24–32. 2 On the Mithridatic War (89–84 bce) see Plut. Sull. 11.1–14.7 and App. B Civ. 1. 3 Plut. Sull. 12.3, reports that Sulla ravaged the Academy and Lyceum, by cutting down the trees. 4 Strab. 13.1.54, provides a history of the transmission of the Aristotelian library down to Appelicon, whose works Sulla carried to Rome. Plut. Sull. 26.1–2. 5 Seneca, Epistulae morales 58.8–22 (hereafter Sen. Ep.). Seneca prefaced his account of Platonic categories with the Stoic distinction between genus and species (8–15). He then offered six Platonic categories of being (16–22): universals, god, ideas, form, individuals, and quasithings like the void and time. The juxtaposition between the Stoic and the Platonic led Boys-

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Stoic provides an account of causes, including the Stoic, the Aristotelian, and the Platonic views.6 While the Roman knew the works of Plato and appears to have drawn from the Phaedo and the Timaeus in Letter 65,7 the specific treatments in these two letters suggest that he also knew later interpretations of Plato. There have been many identifications of this later source, including Poseidonius,8 Antiochus of Ascalon9 or Eudorus10 or Alexandrian Platonism,11 Arius Didymus,12 unknown Aristotelian commentators,13 unknown Platonic commentators,14 an early Platonic handbook,15 or the larger conversations about Stones 2013: 134, to say: “Letter 58 is, by all traditional accounts, a real headache, and no one has ever really given a satisfactory account of the contradictions and unclarities it contains.” Others are not as pessimistic about explaining the Platonism in Seneca, e. g., see the analysis of Inwood 2007a: 107–136, esp. 111 where he says: “Perhaps the most striking feature of the letter’s general strategy is the way it draws an essentially Stoic conclusion on the basis of a fundamentally Platonic metaphysical discussion.” 6 Sen. Ep. 65.2–10. On the larger argument of the letter, see Lowenstam 1998: 63–78 and Inwood 2007b: 136–155. 7 On the Phaedo and Ep. 65 see Boys-Stones 2013: 139–142 and 144–146, who maintains that Seneca argued against Plato. On the Timaeus in Ep. 65, see Setaioli 1985: 133–137; and Chaumartin 1993: 103–115, esp. 114, who suggests that Seneca had recently reread the Timaeus and had it fresh in his mind. 8 Norton 1913: 348, who suggested that both Philo and Seneca drew from Poseidonius’s commentary on the Timaeus (see Sext. Emp. Math. 7.93) for Ep. 65. It is not entirely clear that Poseidonius wrote a commentary on the Timaeus as we think of one. See Bickel 1960: 1–20, esp. 8–11 and Rist 2012: 1993–2012, esp. 2010–2011. 9 Theiler 1964: 34–55; Donini 1979: 149–300, esp. 275–279. Rist 2012: 2010–2011, challenged this view since Antiochus is not a likely source for the distinction between forms and immanent ideas in Ep. 58 and there is no evidence of his influence on Seneca. 10 So Whittaker 1969: 185–192, esp. 192. Cf. also id., 1975: 142–148, esp. 144–146, where he suggested that Ep. 58.8–22, is a translation of a Greek commentary on the Timaeus probably written by Eudorus, to which Seneca added his own comments. 11 Dillon 1977: esp. 139: “In the fragmentary state of our knowledge, we cannot be sure that the system (prepositional metaphysics) does not go back even further, to the New Academy. We have seen that Carneades was not averse to such scholastic formulations, which Antiochus in turn gladly borrowed from him. But at any rate we can see here the visible origins of what was to become a most popular formula in later Platonism.” 12 So Rist 2012: 2010–2011, although he recognized that Arius may have cited Eudorus. 13 Bickel 1960: 14: “Solche Stellen dienen auch schon zur Feststellung, daß alles, was Seneca im Paragr. 4 über die αἴτιον–Lehre des Aristoteles sagt, am einfachsten auf die Lektüre des Aristoteles der amici Senecas bzw. deren Vertrautheit mit Kommentaren zu Aristoteles zurückgeführt werden kann. Die Kommentierung des Aristoteles war zu Ende des 1. Jahrh. v. Chr. und zu Anfang des 1 Jahrh. n. Chr. glänzend emporgeblüht.” 14 Setaioli 1988: 18–39; and Chaumartin 1993: 103–115, who suggested that they may have had an Aristotelian bent. 15 Gersh 1986: 1:194–195: “While the great creative thinkers of the generations immediately before Seneca’s were busily reinterpreting Plato’s texts in the light of the best recent physical theory – Antiochus’ predominately Stoic revision of the ancient system is the most noteworthy example – the bare summaries of Platonism which filled the handbooks helped to keep the more armchair form of the doctrine alive even if barely so. These two Senecan texts are a testimony to the existence of this tradition, and behind his descriptions one can just discern the presence of a more authentic Platonism.”

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Platonism in Rome including Seneca’s conversations with friends that take into account their views as well as Seneca’s own.16 In recent work, Seneca has been read not simply as a source for other traditions but for Seneca’s own creativity and contributions – even when reporting the views of others.17 This still leaves us to ask about the source of the Platonic traditions. One source that has been mentioned but which deserves fuller consideration, especially in light of recent work, is Philo of Alexandria. I would like to consider whether Seneca might have become acquainted with some of the views of Philo of Alexandria. More specifically, I will explore whether Seneca learned about Philo indirectly through his amici, with whom the Roman held conversations. I ask this question as part of a larger effort to explore the possibility that a number of Platonists betray an awareness of Philo’s works, including Plutarch,18 Celsus,19 Numenius,20 and Plotinus.21 The case of Seneca is quite different since he is not intellectually committed to Plato and these letters turn the reader away from Platonism – at least Letter 65 does so – rather than towards it. While it is possible to debate whether in an age of eclecticism the lines between Platonism and Stoicism were always as sharp as has been traditionally posited,22 Seneca’s 16 Inwood 2007a: 108–110, esp. 110: “A widely read and discerning man like Seneca could have derived these views on the basis of diffuse reading of Plato and Platonists over a long period of time; lectures by philosophers are another obvious source; and it is always possible that the truth about the sources for 58 and 65 is exactly what Seneca says it is: conversations with friends.”; id., 2007b: 149–167, esp. 152: “What this will show, I hope, is that there is no good reason to approach Seneca in the first instance as evidence for doxographical and technical school works, that his letters are much more plausibly to be taken as evidence for the nature of the living philosophical environment in which he worked and as evidence for the oral conduct of philosophy in Rome in his day. If some of this reported oral philosophical activity happens to overlap in part with school doctrine known from later texts, that shouldn’t be surprising to us; those later texts must have had a background in earlier discussions and in earlier writings and the entire tradition was shaped by direct reaction to Plato’s works, on this issue especially the Phaedo and the Timaeus.” Inwood emphasizes the importance of the Phaedo for Ep. 65, especially for the first half of the letter and has a different reading than Boys-Stones 2013. 17 See Schönegg 1999: 87: “Doch Seneca übersetzt nicht einfach seine Quellen (contra Bickel – my addition). Für ihn kommt es überhaupt nicht in Frage, platonisches Gedankengut, sei es aus Platons Werken (dann noch am ehesten) oder aus zweitrangigen exegetischen Schriften, ungefiltert zu übernehmen: dafür war er zu stolz, mochte er zu stark auf seine eigene Kreativität, seine Fähigkeit zum Selbstdenken und seine selbstbewusste Haltung, die er der Tradition gegenüber einnahm.” Similarly, Reydams-Schils 2010: 196–215, argues that Seneca gives Platonic concepts a Stoic twist when using them. 18 Sterling, forthcoming. See also Sterling 2022: 109–124. 19 Sterling 2023: 186–201. 20 Sterling 2015: 71–85. 21 Sterling 2022: 37–63. 22 Sedley 2005: 117–142, argues for a degree of eclecticism on the part of Seneca; Boys-Stones 2013: 128–146, esp. 129, argues that Ep. 58 and 65 are polemical: “These letters, dealing as they do with Platonic notions of being and causality, have been singled out as especially important indices of how far Stoics felt able to go in opening a dialogue with Platonism. But they rather seem to me to be – and to need to be – highly polemical: a bullish response to the challenge

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loyalties are clear.23 Our question is not primarily about Seneca’s stance towards Platonism, but about how we should explain the rather striking parallels between the Platonizing Jewish commentator and the Roman Stoic.

1. Methodology Let me begin with two preliminary observations that will contextualize the question. The first is to remember that Philo’s works circulated in multiple locales in the early Roman empire.24 The main line of the transmission of his works to us has come through Origen, who carried Philo’s writings (and others) from Alexandria to Caesarea where they were preserved in the episcopal library.25 This does not mean that his works ceased to circulate in Egypt. We have papyri from a third century codex that included eight treatises of Philo. The Philo codex attests the continued presence of Philo’s works in Egypt and suggests that his works circulated beyond the Jewish community in Alexandria prior to its destruction in 115–117 ce26 – when presumably all of the Jewish structures of note (including houses of prayer and the private homes of significant Jews, i. e., the places where Philo’s writings might be preserved in Jewish circles) were destroyed.27 While the codex could have been based on the copies in Caesarea, the presence of works that were lost in Caesarea (On Drunkennes 228 and On Piety) in the papyri suggest that they came from within Egypt. There is also relatively good evidence that Philo’s works circulated in Syria. This is based on the use of Philo by several authors, including the unambiguous citation of Philo, Mos. 2.195 in Heliodorus, Aethiopica 9.9.29 Finally, there is good evidence that Philo’s works – at least some of them – circulated in Rome. Josephus knew several of posed to Stoicism by the new Platonist movement; and ultimately a rejection of Plato too.” I think that this is truer for Ep. 65 than it is for Ep. 58. 23 Seneca can use “we” when referring to Stoics. 24 For a recent survey of the preservation of Philo see Sterling 2019: 299–316. 25 For details see Runia 1993: 16–22. 26 See P. Oxy. 9.1173, 11.1356, 18.2158, 82.5291; PSI 11.1207; and P. Haun. 1.8. For a discussion see Royse 1980: 155–165. For the most recent publication and a helpful discussion about provenance, see Nongbri 2018. 27 Horbury 2014: 222–235, suggests that there was a limited Jewish presence in Alexandria following the revolt. 28 Euseb. Hist. eccl. 2.18.2, indicates that Philo wrote two volumes of De ebrietate. We are missing one of the two; the question is, are we missing volume 1 or volume 2. Philo, Sobr. 1, refers to a preceding work that dealt thoroughly with drunkenness and nakedness (Noah’s). This must be the second and lost volume of De ebrietate since De sobrietate 1 opens with a reference to five topics but only covers the first three. The statement in Sobr. 1 assumes a completed treatment. The papyrus credits the material to volume 2, but I think that it must be volume 1 since it matches the contents of our volume 1. 29 For an analysis see Sterling 1999: 1–30, esp. 20–21.

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Philo’s treatises: On the Creation of the World, On the Life of Moses 1–2, On the Virtues, and possibly others.30 It is also likely that the Latin translation of Philo came from copies of Philo’s works in Rome.31 Maren Niehoff has made the intriguing case that Philo composed the Exposition of the Law, one of his three major commentaries, in Rome or under the influence of his visit to Rome.32 If she is correct, it would explain how a text like On the Creation of the World would be present in Rome; however, it would not explain how a treatise like On the Cherubim from the Allegorical Commentary would have been there. While I agree that the Exposition is later than the Allegorical Commentary,33 it is not clear to me that Rome is the primary place of its composition or that the Exposition is necessarily after the embassy. Her major argument for post-dating the embassy is that Philo shifted his philosophical framework from Platonism to Stoicism as a result of his Roman experience. However, this is difficult to square with treatises like On the Creation of the World or The Life of Abraham which are deeply indebted to Platonism.34 I certainly think that she is on terra firma when she emphasizes the importance of Rome for Philo, even if I disagree with her specific argument about the impact on his philosophical thought.35 Wherever and whenever the Exposition was composed, it seems reasonably certain that some of Philo’s works circulated not only in Palestine, but also in Egypt, Syria, and Rome. Two of these are the areas where both Philo and Seneca (b. ca. 1–65 ce) lived and worked.36 Born in Corduba into a wealthy equestrian family, Seneca was educated in Rome37 where he was influenced by Quintus Sextius who declined Caesar’s offer of a senatorial career to devote himself to philosophy.38 In addition to Sextius, Seneca was particularly fond of some of his students, especially Papirius Fabianus39 and Sotion.40 He learned Stoicism initially through Attalus 30 Sterling 2013: 101–113. Royse 2013: 75–100, esp. 82–86, is less sure. I agree with Royse that Philo’s works were written but not published, but am more confident that Josephus knew some of them. In my view, Philo’s works were for members of his school (see below). 31 For a discussion with bibliography, see Sterling 2019: 309–311. 32 Niehoff 2017. See also id., 2011: 1–21. 33 Sterling 2012: 55–76. 34 De opificio mundi is heavily indebted to Plato’s Timaeus. See Runia 1986. De Abrahamo is also heavily Platonic in orientation. See Forschner 2020: 169–191. 35 One other factor that needs to be taken seriously is that Antiochus of Ascalon had incorporated Stoicism into Platonism well before Philo, e. g., Sex. Emp. Pyr. 1.235: “Antiochus introduced Stoicism into the Academy so that it was even said about him, ‘He practices Stoic philosophy in the Academy.’” He explained: “For he showed that the teaching of the Stoics already existed in Plato.” Reydams-Schils 2013: 40–51, esp. 43–51, argues that Antiochus made the Stoics appear more Platonic than they were in an effort to criticize them. 36 On Seneca’s life, see the classic treatment of Griffin 1976: 29–128 and the more recent essays in ANRW 2.36.3:1545–2012 and Dingel 2008: 271–278. 37 Sen. Ep. 108. 38 Sen. Ep. 98.13. On Seneca’s assessment of Sextius see 64.2–5. 39 Sen. Ep. 40.12. 40 Sen. Ep. 49.2.

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whom he held in high esteem.41 This is a short way of saying that for Seneca the center of philosophy was not Athens but Rome. He may have spent time in Egypt with his aunt, his mother’s stepsister, where her husband was prefect.42 After his aunt returned to Rome, she assisted Seneca in obtaining the quaestorship, probably during the principate of Tiberius.43 Seneca and Caligula (Gaius) shared a mutual dislike for one another, a political reality which may have made Seneca more open to others who shared his political perspective.44 Shortly after Claudius came to power, Seneca was exiled to Corsica for his alleged adultery with Julia Livilla, Gaius’s sister who had returned to Rome after her brother’s assassination.45 Seneca came back to Rome ca. 49 and became praetor and tutor to the young Nero. He eventually became Nero’s advisor but was forced to commit suicide by Nero when he was implicated in a conspiracy (65 ce).46 Seneca’s sojourns in Alexandria and in Rome opens the door to the possibility that he might have become familiar with Philo directly.47 While there is no evidence that the two ever met, they certainly shared a common alienation from Caligula (Gaius) while both were in Rome: Philo as a member of the Jewish embassy and Seneca as a resident. On the other hand, Seneca was not friendly towards Jews.48 If he knew Philo or his works, it would have been the philosophical material that would have interested him, not his Jewish identity.49 It is also possible that Seneca learned about Philo’s views indirectly through his amici who visited him and engaged in a philosophical debate about causes, as David Sedley and Brad Inwood have suggested. It is intriguing that Seneca did not name the friend in Letter 5850 or his friends in Letter 65.51 This is not unusual in the 41

Sen. Ep. 108. Cf. also Ep. 9.7, 63.5, 67.15, 72.8, 81.22, and 110.20 Sen. Dial. 12.19.2. His uncle was C. Galerius who was prefect in Egypt for sixteen years (16– 31 ce). It is possible that Seneca could have learned something about Alexandrian Platonism while he was in Egypt. 43 Sen. Dial. 12.19.2. 44 Cass. Dio 59.17.7. See also Tac. Ann. 12.8.3, 13.42. 45 Cass. Dio 60.8.5. 46 Memorably told by Tac. Ann. 15.62–64. 47 Niehoff 2017: 18, suggests that Philo met Seneca in Alexandria and later renewed his acquaintance in Rome. 48 Seneca mentioned Jews or Judaism in four texts. Stern 1974–1984: 1:429–434, collected these (hereafter abbreviated GLAJJ). They are: Sup. (GLAJJ 186 [1:431–32]); Nat. Quest. 3.25.5 (GLAJJ 187 [1:432]); Ep. 95.47 (GLAJJ 188 [1:432–33]); and Ep. 108.22 (GLAJJ 189 [1:433–34]). 49 Seneca had broad philosophical interests and thought independently. For a helpful summary see Inwood 2005: 7–22, esp. 16–18. 50 Sen. Ep. 58.8: “Our friend, a most learned person, was saying today that this (quod est) was expressed in six ways by Plato.” Bickel 1960: 8, suggested that this was Annaeus Amicus. Sedley 2005: 132, suggests more reasonably that this was someone from “the more Aristotelian wing of Platonism.” 51 Sen. Ep. 65.1: “[…] at that point friends interrupted me who were prepared to use force on me and coerce me as if I were a uncooperative patient.” Sedley 2005: 135, suggests that the friends in Ep. 65 and 58 are from the same group of Platonists with Aristotelian leanings. In42

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Epistles.52 Who were these friends? While speculation about specific identities is possible,53 we cannot identify specific individuals with any confidence. It is more helpful to consider whether Seneca was referring to a circle of friends with whom he met to discuss philosophy. If we use the contents of Letter 65 as an indicator of their views, some of the friends must have been Platonists and others possibly Peripatetics or Platonists with Peripatetic sympathies. Even if the specific occasion for Letter 65 is a literary conceit rather than a historical event, it is probable that the discussion envisioned in Letter 65 reflects conversations that were taking place in Rome. The question is whether Philo served as a conduit for Alexandrian Platonism while he was in Rome. The second observation is that it is helpful to use a graduated scale of probability when drawing conclusions about matters of ancient history, including literary or philosophical dependence. I use a scale that runs from certainty to probability to possibility to improbability to impossibility. In a study like this, certainty requires that someone introduce a citation with an explicit attribution that can be documented or that the agreements are so extensive that some form of direct relationship must be at play. There is not a single example of a pagan philosopher who explicitly cited Philo, nor is there an example of a philosopher who has an unambiguous literary relationship with Philo, which means that we have no certain evidence. Probability requires that Philo serve as the most likely source from which a concept may be derived. The evaluation of the evidence is often complicated since our knowledge of Hellenistic philosophy is fragmentary. The most difficult decisions arise when a philosophical position is first attested in Philo and later used by others. Is Philo the source of the view or simply the first extant witness to a more widely held position? The prevalence of the view among later authors and the extent of their agreements in specifics are two criteria to help us address this, i. e., the greater the agreements in later witnesses, the more likely it is that we are dealing with a common pattern. Possibility suggests that Philo and another philosopher share a concept, but that this concept is not uniquely attested in Philo prior to the author in question. We have to weigh the specifics of the similarities between two authors to judge whether such an instance is a viable possibility. Improbability suggests that Philo is only one option among many. Prima facie, it is improbable that a pagan philosopher who is known to be affiliated with a given philosophical tradition(s) would turn to someone from a non-Roman or non-Hellenic background – no matter how sophisticated – for a philosophical view that is common among other Hellenistic philosophers. We will not consider any cases of impossibility. In nuce, the issue wood 2007a: 136, does not think that they need to be the same group, but that some could be Peripatetics. See also p. 115. 52 See, for instance, Sen. Ep. 64.1, “certain friends”; 77.7, “our Stoic friend.” 53 Seneca can certainly name friends, e. g., Claranus in Ep. 66.1, 2, 4.

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is whether there is enough evidence to move what is improbable to possible or even probable. We will explore three places in Letter 65 where the similarities between Philo and Seneca invite consideration. In this famous letter, Seneca invites Lucilius to serve as the arbiter of a debate that he had with some of his friends over the issue of causation.54 The first half of the letter is largely devoted to this dispute in which it is clear that Seneca hopes Lucilius will side with the Stoics.55 The second half asks whether such debates contribute to the moral progress of a person or are a waste of time.56 Seneca contends that they are valuable since the contemplation of the cosmos offers freedom to a soul enchained to a body. The first two agreements occur in the first half of the letter and the third in the concluding half. In each case I will set out the view of Seneca, then the perspective of Philo, and finally make a comparison.

2. Prepositional Metaphysics Seneca. As is now well known, Hellenistic philosophers applied prepositional phrases to Aristotle’s theory of causes.57 In Letter 65, Seneca offered an overview of the debate over causation in three major Hellenistic philosophical traditions: the Stoic, the Peripatetic, and the Platonic – the Epicurean position is noticeably missing.58 He arranged them in ascending order according to the number of causes, moving from one to four to five. He began with the Stoic and explained that the Stoa held that there were two principles from which everything else derived: the cause (causa) or the active principle that makes things and matter (materia) or the passive principle out of which things are made. Since the active principle is the agent that produces change, it is a cause; the passive principle cannot create change and is not a cause.59 Seneca used the illustration of a statue – made famous in Cicero’s Orator60 – to elucidate the principles: bronze is the passive matter and the artist is the active cause.61 54

Sen. Ep. 65.2, 10, 15. Sen. Ep. 65.3–14, esp. 11–14. 56 Sen. Ep. 65.15–24. 57 The most important discussions of prepositional metaphysics are: Theiler 1964: 17–34 and Dörrie 1969: 217–228. I have also addressed this in Sterling 1997: 219–238. For a more recent treatment of Philo’s prepositional metaphysics see McFarland 2015: 87–109, esp. 89–93. 58 Sen. Ep. 65.2–4a, 4b–6, and 7–10, respectively. 59 The Stoics were well known for holding that there were two principles or ἀρχαί, e. g., Diog. Laert. 7.134. There was, however, only one cause as Seneca states plainly in § 4. 60 Cic. Orat. 5–10. Aristotle had used the figure of a statue in his discussion of causes (e. g., Phys. 2.3 [194b–195b]), but Cicero had used the image in a Platonizing context which appears to have appealed to Seneca. 61 Sen. Ep. 65.3. 55

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The Roman next contrasted the single cause of the Stoics with Aristotle’s theory of four causes: the material, the agent, the formal, and the final causes.62 Once again, he employed a statue as an illustration: bronze is the material, the artist is the agent, the specific shape is the form (e. g., a lance-bearer), and the reason why the artist made the statue (payment, fame, piety) is the final cause.63 Finally, Seneca came to the Platonic tradition and claimed that Plato added a fifth cause to Aristotle’s four, “the model (exemplar) which he calls an idea (idea).”64 After explaining the model, Seneca enumerated the five causes: “Therefore there are five causes, as Plato says: the from which (id ex quo), the by which (id a quo), the in which (id in quo), the according to which (id ad quod), and the for which (id propter quod). Last of all is that which comes from them (id quod ex his est).” It is worth noting that Seneca has listed six rather than five causes, although the last is probably his contribution and not the scheme he learned from his Platonizing source(s) or friends.65 As he had illustrated the Stoic and the Peripatetic positions with a statue, so Seneca explained that “the from which (id ex quo) is the bronze, the by whom (id a quo) is the artist, the in which (id in quo) is the form that is adapted to it, the according to which (id ad quod) is the pattern (exemplar) which the craftsperson imitates,66 the for which (id propter quod) is the purpose of the craftsperson, and the result of all these is the statue itself.” Seneca then turned from the statue to the cosmos and explained: “the agent is God, the out of which (ex quo) it becomes is the material (materia), the form is the contour and arrangement of the visible universe, the pattern (exemplar) is unquestionably the according to which (ad quod) God made this enormous and most beautiful work, and the purpose is the for which (propter quod) he made it.” The Stoic explained: “Do you ask what was God’s purpose? It was goodness.” Seneca then quoted the famous line from the Timaeus: “What was the cause that led God to create the world? He was good and there is no begrudging good for a good person. He thus made it as good as possible.”67 Philo of Alexandria. It is intriguing that Seneca introduced prepositional metaphysics in his description of the Platonic position, but not in his ex62 On Aristotle’s theory, see Phys. 2.3–9 (194b–200b), esp. 2.3 (194b–195a); 2.7 (198a). Cf. also Metaph. 1.3.1 (983a–b); 5.2.1–3 (1013a–b); and An. post. 2.11 (94a 20–24). For a scholarly discussion see Todd 1976: 319–322. 63 Sen. Ep. 65.5–6. 64 Sen. Ep. 65.7. 65 I think that Seneca added the sixth since he attacks the multiplicity of causes in the Peripatetic and Platonic systems (65.11) and backhands the sixth in his critique (65.14). It is also worth noting that while Seneca maintained the sixth cause in the image of the statue (65.8), he dropped it when he applied the scheme to the cosmos (65.9). and only reintroduced it to dismiss it in his refutation (65.11–14, esp. 14). On the issue of the sixth cause see Sedley 2005: 136–137, note 49 and Inwood 2007a: 144, 147–148. 66 This is the fifth cause; it is the model or paradigm which the artist has in his/her mind and uses as a basis to give shape or form to the statue. On the distinction in Seneca, see Ep. 58.19–21. 67 Plat. Tim. 29E.

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planations of the Stoic or Peripatetic views. Where did he derive his understanding? The practice became commonplace among later Platonists; however, the closest analogy from this time period is found in the works of Philo of Alexandria. Philo offered his analysis of prepositional metaphysics on three different occasions.68 The Jewish exegete offered the fullest explanation in On the Cherubim, one of the treatises in his Allegorical Commentary.69 Philo was commenting on a main biblical lemma (Gen 4:1) when he introduced the discussion. He understood the speaker of the text to be Adam rather than Eve – the natural reading of the LXX – who said: “I have gained possession of a person through God (διὰ τοῦ θεοῦ).”70 Philo faulted Adam for his use of prepositions: “God is the cause (αἴτιον), not the instrument (ὄργανον). That which comes into existence comes not through an instrument (δι᾽ ὀργάνου), but by a cause (ὑπὸ δὲ αἰτίου).” To help a reader appreciate the distinction, Philo laid out the basic schema of prepositional phrases: “For many things must come together for the generation of something: the by which (τὸ ὑφ᾽ οὗ), the from which (τὸ ἐξ οὗ), the through which (τὸ δι᾽ οὗ), and the for which (τὸ δι᾽ ὅ).” He went on to identify each prepositional phrase with a cause: “The by which (τὸ ὑφ᾽ οὗ) is the cause (τὸ αἴτιον), the from which (τὸ ἐξ οὗ) is the matter (ἡ ὕλη), the through which (τὸ δι᾽ οὗ) is the tool (τὸ ἐργαλεῖον), the for which (τὸ δι᾽ ὅ) is the purpose (ἡ αἰτία).” He then applied these causes to a house or a city: the builder is the by which (ὑφ᾽ οὗ), the stones or wood are the from which (ἐξ ἧς), the instruments are the through which (τὰ δι᾽ ὧν), and the shelter and safety of the inhabitants are the for which (τὸ δι᾽ ὅ). Finally, he applied these causes and prepositions to the cosmos: the cause (αἴτιον) is God by whom (ὑφ᾽ οὗ) it came into existences, its material (ὕλη) is the four elements out of which (ἐξ ὧν) it has been composed, its instrument (ὄργανον) is the Logos of God (λόγος θεοῦ) through whom (δι᾽ οὗ) it was constructed, the purpose (αἰτία) of its construction is the goodness of the Demiurge.”71 Philo is clearly drawing from an established philosophical tradition that he introduced as a rationale for his critique of Adam. The phrase “through God” (διὰ τοῦ θεοῦ) invited the discussion but did not demand it. This is a case where Philo’s knowledge of the philosophical tradition created a problem for his reading of the biblical text: it was not acceptable to speak of God as an instrument rather than the cause. Philo interpreted Gen 4:1 again in the Questions and Answers on Genesis 1.58 where he offered only the first three causes. He returned to the schema one last time in On Providence 1.23, where he again listed four causes, but made the

68

Philo, Cher. 124–127; QG 1.58; Prov. 1.23. Philo, Cher. 124–127. 70 Philo also credits the statement to Adam in Sacr. 10. 71 Philo, Cher. 124–127. 69

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fourth cause the pattern instead of the final or purpose cause or the fifth cause in Seneca’s treatment (πρὸς ὅ instead of δι᾽ ὅ). Comparison. What should we make of these statements by Seneca and Philo? There are some striking similarities. Both use prepositional metaphysics to set out the Platonic position; in fact, as we noted, the Platonic tradition is the only tradition in which Seneca used the prepositional phrases. Why did Seneca use prepositional phrases exclusively for the Platonic tradition? Like Philo, he appears to be drawing from an established scheme. The two authors come together again at the end of their discussions when they apply prepositional metaphysics to the cosmos. Here they are quite close. They agree that God is the efficient cause, matter is the material cause, the Logos or the Idea is the Instrument or model, and the goodness of God is the final cause. Cause

Philo

Seneca

Efficient Material Formal Instrumental / Model Final

God Matter

God Matter Arrangement Idea Goodness of God

Goodness of God

It is also worth noting that both made Plato’s statement in the Timaeus the basis for the final clause. What about the differences? Let me set out the prepositional phrases they use to highlight these. Philo

Seneca

τὸ ὑφ᾽ οὗ τὸ ἐξ οὗ τὸ δι᾽ οὗ

id ex quo id a quo id in quo id ad quod id propter quod

τὸ δι᾽ ὅ

Seneca’s account differs in three ways from the treatment in Philo. First, the Roman has an inverted order for the first two, hardly a significant variant. Second, Seneca adds a cause that Philo does not have (id in quo); this is the most significant difference. Seneca maintained Aristotle’s formal clause while Philo omitted it. This may be due to Seneca’s desire to inflate the number of causes: it is in Seneca’s interest to expand the causes in order to be able to dismiss them. He carefully set up his presentation by violating the chronological order of the schools (i. e., the Peripatetic is before the Platonic) and by presenting the causes in ever greater numbers, expanding from one cause to four to five (or six). He opened his refutation with these words: “This crowd of causes which are set out by Aristotle and Plato embraces either too much or too little.”72 Philo, on the other hand, left the Aristotelian schema in place; his rhetorical purposes were 72

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quite different: he needed to demonstrate the distinction between τὸ ὑφ᾽ οὗ and τὸ δι᾽ οὗ in order to make his exegetical point. Third, Seneca has the Platonic form (id ad quod) rather than the instrument (τὸ δι᾽ οὗ) or Logos of Philo. The distinction between the latter two is more apparent than real since for Philo, the Logos is the world of the Platonic ideas.73 It is worth noting that Philo used the same prepositional phrase that Seneca did in another treatment of prepositional metaphysics.74 In a context in which he commented on Gen 4:1, Philo needed to use the instrumental cause since it was used in the main biblical lemma (διὰ τοῦ θεοῦ). Finally, in addition to the differences among the prepositions, it is worth noting that the two writers apply these to different entities initially: Seneca to a statue and Philo to a house or city. While there are differences, the agreements are close enough to ask whether the Stoic knew the Platonic version of causation through Philo or through another source. Here we turn to the criteria of subsequent usage. The use of prepositional metaphysics became commonplace in the philosophical tradition. The earliest three witnesses agree in attributing three causes to Plato. The first is Varro (116–27 bce) whose views are preserved in Augustine’s City of God: “He [Varro] maintains that the sky is Jupiter, the earth Juno, and the ideas Minerva; the sky by which (a quo) something is made, the earth from which (de qua) something is made, the pattern according to which (secundum quod) something is made.”75 Around the middle of the first century ce, Aetius also suggested that Plato had three principles/causes: “God, matter, the Idea; by which (ὑφ᾽ οὗ), from which (ἐξ οὗ), and according to which (πρὸς ὅ).”76 In the second century ce the Middle Platonist Alcinous similarly argued that there were three principles. In one of his arguments for the Platonic ideas, he explained their role in the creation of the cosmos: “In addition, if the cosmos is not what it is spontaneously, it not only came into existence from something (ἔκ τινος), but also by something (ὑπό τινος), and not only this, but also according to something (πρός τι).”77 Later witnesses added additional causes. In either the second or third century, the Sceptic Sextus Empiricus added a fourth cause to the established pattern of three: “Just as there exists the something from which (τὸ ἐξ οὗ) something comes into existence, the by which (τὸ ὑφ᾽ οὗ) something comes into existence, the on account of which (τὸ δι᾽ ὅ) something comes into existence, so also there will exist something in which (τὸ ἐν ᾧ) something comes into existence.” He then 73

Philo, Opif. 20. Philo, Prov. 1.23. 75 August, De civ. D. 7.28.18–21. 76 Aët, Plac. 1.11.2. I have used the edition Manseld and Runia 2020: 1:483–495. Mansfeld and Runia’s collection of sources and other parallel texts (494–495) provides a convenient collection of the texts that use prepositional metaphysics to illustrate the Platonic theory. 77 Alcin. Didask. 9.3. Cf. also 4.1, where he uses prepositional metaphysics for epistemology. In this case, he distinguishes between τὸ ὑφ᾽ οὗ and τὸ δι᾽ οὗ. 74

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explained: “There exists the ‘from which’ (τὸ ἐξ οὗ) something comes into existence, which is matter, and the ‘by which’ (τὸ ὑφ᾽ οὗ) which is cause, and the ‘on account of which’ (τὸ δι᾽ ὅ) namely its purpose; therefore there is also the ‘in which’ (τὸ ἐν ᾧ) something comes into existence, which is place.”78 It is not until Proclus in the fifth century ce that we have a scheme that is as full as the one that we find in Seneca: “They are accustomed to call the final cause ‘on account of which’ (δι᾽ ὅ), the paradigmatic cause ‘facing which’ (πρὸς ὅ), the active cause ‘by which’ (ὑφ᾽ οὗ), the instrumental ‘the through which’ (δι᾽ οὗ), the formal ‘according to which’ (καθ᾽ ὅ), and matter ‘out of which’ (ἐξ οὗ) or ‘in which’ (ἐν ᾧ).”79 In the next century, Philoponus similarly suggested that Plato had six causes: “He calls matter ‘in which’ (ἐν ᾧ), the idea ‘which’ (ὅ […]), the active ‘by which’ (ὑφ᾽ οὗ), the instrumental ‘through which’ (δι᾽ οὗ), the paradigmatic ‘facing which’ (πρὸς ὅ), and the final ‘on account of which’ (δι᾽ ὅ).”80 We can summarize all these views as follows: Cause

Varro

Aetius

Alcinous

Sextus

Proclus

Philoponus

Efficient Material

a quo de quo

ὑφ᾽ οὗ ἐξ οὗ

ὑπό τινος ἔκ τινος

ὑφ᾽ οὗ ἐξ οὗ

ὑφ᾽ οὗ ἐξ οὗ ἐν ᾧ δι᾽ οὗ καθ᾽ ὅ

ὑφ᾽ οὗ ἐν ᾧ δι᾽ οὗ ὅ

πρὸς ὅ δι᾽ ὅ

πρὸς ὅ δι᾽ ὅ

Instrumental Formal/Idea secundum πρὸς ὅ quod Model Final Place

πρός τι δι᾽ ὅ ἐν ᾧ

How do Philo and Seneca relate to the larger tradition? The presence of prepositional metaphysics over this range of authors demonstrates that it was a widespread feature of the theory of causation among Platonists. The variety in the tradition suggests that it was not completely fixed. There appears to have been a relatively fixed tradition of three causes in the early period of Middle Platonism from the first century bce into the second century ce, which gave way to more numerous causes in Neoplatonism. Philo and Seneca are the exceptions in the early period by moving beyond the three principles. The relatively close agreement of the two is worth noting. They have more agreement with one another – especially if we consider the explicit cosmological application – than either has with a later representative. It is this unusual concurrence that makes us ask about the possibility of dependence.

78

Sex. Emp. Math. 10.10. Proc. In Ti. 1.357.12–16. 80 Philop. Phys. 5.7–12. 79

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3. The Ideas as the Thoughts of God Seneca. The second parallel between Seneca and Philo also occurs in the first half of the Letter and may help us to think further about the most significant difference in their prepositional metaphysics: Seneca’s use of the formal cause and Philo’s use of the instrumental cause. Seneca introduced the Platonic idea as a new or fifth cause (model). He explained it as the object the artist gazes on or conceives when shaping a piece of art/statue. The Stoic explained that while the idea may be either in an artist’s mind or an external object, “God holds these patterns of all things within himself and embraces in his mind the categories and measures of the entirety of things that must be produced; he is full of these shapes that Plato calls ideas – immortal, immutable, and forever energetic.”81 This is a clear and unambiguous articulation of the Platonic ideas as the thoughts of God, which became celebrated in later Platonism.82 Seneca certainly did not invent this concept. What was his source? Gretchen Reydams-Schils argued that this was already present in Stoicism.83 The strongest piece of evidence is the allegory in Varro (cited above) which is based on the myth of Minerva springing from the head of Jupiter. This demonstrates that the framework that generated the concept is present. At the same time, it is worth noting that neither Varro nor any Stoic spoke of the ideas as “the thoughts of God” prior to Seneca. It may have been circulating in Stoic understandings of Platonism, but Seneca is the first Stoic to offer a clear formulation. Philo of Alexandria. The concept is attested in one Platonic source prior to Seneca. Philo is the very first witness to the language of the “ideas as the thoughts of God,” a fact that has led to a debate whether he created the concept or is merely the first witness to it.84 In On the Creation of the World, the Jewish philosophical exegete introduced the concept by comparing God’s creation of the cosmos to the work of an architect who first envisioned a city and then built it based on the pattern he created in his mind. He then made his point: “It is necessary to hold the same about God. After he had decided to found the megapolis, he first had in mind the models of its parts, then he constituted the intelligible cosmos and then completed the sense-perceptible cosmos using the former as a model.” The Alexandrian went on to locate the intelligible cosmos in the divine Logos.85 81

Sen. Ep. 65.7 It is possible that Seneca would have understood Plato’s ideas as logoi spermatikoi. See Reydams-Schils 2010: 198–199. 83 For details see Reydams-Schils 1999: 145–156 and id., 2006: 81– 94, esp. 84–87. 84 Radice 1989: 229–308, id., 1991: 126–134, argued that Philo is the source of the concept. Inwood 2007b: 160–161, thinks that it is possible that Philo developed this concept: “The idea that Philo developed an adaptation of the craftsman model to the needs of biblical monotheism is all that we need to explain what we find here.” Those who argue that Philo is only a witness include Dillon 1993: 94–95 and Runia 2001: 151–152. 85 Philo, Opif. 19–20. 82

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The placement of the ideas in the mind of God is a clear statement of the identity between the Platonic ideas and God’s thoughts. Is this Philo’s contribution or is he incorporating a well-known Platonic position that is simply unattested prior to him? The strongest argument for Philo’s originality is the contextual function of the concept. As we noted, Philo elected to introduce the creation of the cosmos in conjunction with the image of an architect, an image that is probably an allusion to the foundation of Alexandria.86 Philo introduced the simile as a means of explaining the relationship between the intelligible cosmos and the senseperceptible cosmos or between “day one” (Gen 1:1–5) and the second through the sixth days (Gen 1:6–31). The Alexandrian Jewish commentator argued that God first created the intelligible cosmos and used it as a basis for the creation of the sense-perceptible cosmos. The metaphor explains the relationship between the two. This suggests that Philo used the metaphor not simply as rhetorical embellishment, but as a means of explaining the relationship between “day one” and “the second through the sixth days” of Genesis 1. This is a very different exegetical move than the one that Philo made for prepositional metaphysics when his knowledge of the philosophical tradition posed a problem for his reading of the text. In the case we are now considering, his reading of the biblical text raised an issue for Philo: How was he to relate the intelligible cosmos to the sense-perceptible cosmos within a unified account of creation? Philo’s use of the architect who first conceived of the city in his mind, made the formulation of the ideas as the thoughts of God a logical step. Cicero used the same framework in his presentation of a sculptor in the Orator (i. e., the sculptor has the image in his mind), but did not make the next step to the identification of the form and God’s thought in his comments.87 Philo, who was explaining the creation of the cosmos, made the step. This is the strongest argument for Philo’s originality.88 The argument is not airtight since others – as Reydams-Schils has pointed out – prior to Philo had the same framework of three principles and the need to relate the ideas to the matter, making us wonder whether they also made the same connection. However, the fact that Philo appears to work from the biblical text to the philosophical concept rather than starting with a philosophical concept and reading the biblical text through it, makes a case for originality.89 The strongest argument against originality is the same as it was in the case of prepositional metaphysics: The concept of the ideas as the thoughts of God became a common concept in the Platonic tradition. For example, in his Didaskalikos or Handbook on Platonism, the second century ce Middle Platonist 86 Runia 1989: 398–412. On the philosophical import of this text in the debate about Philo’s understanding of creation, see De Luca 2022: 105–137, esp. 122–123. 87 Cic. Or. 7–10. See above. 88 So Radice 1989: 281–308. 89 It is, of course, possible that he saw the two as completely compatible.

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Alcinous presented the concept as a standard feature of Platonism. He began his discussion of the “ideas” or “forms” by addressing the relationship of forms to different entities. He started with God: “Idea (or form) is in relation to God, his thinking.”90 After working through other relationships, he offered a definition, “they define the idea as the model of things according to their eternal nature,” and concluded with the statement: “For the ideas are the eternal and perfect thoughts of God.”91 He returned to the concept later in his important discussion of God. He wrote: “Since the first intellect (νοῦς) is supremely beautiful, it is necessary that its thought be supremely beautiful; nothing is more beautiful than the first intellect. Therefore, it must always be thinking about itself and its own thoughts and this activity is the idea.”92 How do we weigh these opposing arguments? While I would not argue that it is impossible for Philo to have created the concept of the “ideas as the thoughts of God,” the presence of the intellectual framework of the three principles that led Philo to the formulation existed well before he made the connection and the fact that this became a standard concept in the later tradition is a strong argument for his inheriting it from Alexandrian Platonism. The evidence is simply not sufficient to permit us to make a definitive claim. Based on the evidence that we have, I would neither rule out the possibility that Philo created the concept nor insist on it. In other words, it is possible that he formulated it, but I would not argue that this is probable. Comparison. If Philo could be shown to have invented the concept of the ideas as the thoughts of God, it would be a compelling argument that Seneca learned this from the Alexandrian Jewish thinker. If, on the other hand, Philo learned this concept from Platonists in Alexandria, it still does not mean that Seneca could not have learned about the concept via Philo. The Alexandrian Jewish philosophical commentator could have been the transmitter of the concept without being its originator. There is, however, a complicating factor that we should keep in mind: the locus classicus for the ideas as God’s thoughts in Philo is in On the Creation of the World rather than in On the Cherubim, where his fullest discussion of prepositional metaphysics is found. Philo’s cosmological work was available in Rome – at least Josephus appears to have known it93 – although we do not know when it began circulating there. The simplest explanation – but not the only one – is that Philo brought it with him or composed it in Rome.94 The treatise, On the Cherubim, 90

Alcin. Didask. 9.1 (163.14–15). Alcin. Didask. 9.2 (163.30–31). The definition is in 9.2 (163.23–24). 92 Alcin. Didask. 10.3 (164.27–31). In two articles Loenen 1956: 296–319 and id., 1957: 35–56, argued that Alcinous (he still follows Freudenthal in attributing the work to Albinus) gave an original interpretation of this by combining the self-thinking Mind of Aristotle with Platonism. 93 Sterling 2013: 102–104. 94 See above. 91

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is from the Allegorical Commentary and was probably intended for advanced students in Philo’s school in Alexandria and was in all likelihood composed prior to the embassy. We do not have any evidence for its circulation in Rome at this early date. It also seems unlikely that Seneca or a member of his circle would have read multiple treatises of Philo, especially treatises coming from two different commentary series in Philo’s corpus. It is more likely that Seneca or one of his amici heard Philo give a lecture on cosmology in which the Jewish thinker set out the place of the ideas as God’s thoughts and included a discussion of causation through prepositional metaphysics.95

4. The Macrocosm and the Microcosm Seneca. The third and final parallel that we will consider occurs at the conclusion to the second half of the letter. As he wrapped up his argument that metaphysics have ethical value, Seneca compared God and humanity in the following way: “The place that God holds in this cosmos is the same as the spirit in a human being. What matter is in the former, our body is in us. Therefore, let the lesser serve the better.”96 The Stoic has set up a comparison between the macrocosm and the microcosm: God is to matter what the spirit is to the body. In both cases, mind or reason is superior to the material. Philo of Alexandria. Philo makes the same comparison in On the Creation of the World, where he drew the analogy in connection with his most famous flight of the mind text. The Alexandrian introduced the comparison in his explanation of the imago Dei: “The image refers to the ruler (ἡγεμών) of the soul, the mind. The mind in each individual was modeled on that one mind of the cosmos as its archetype, since it is in a certain way god of the one who carries it and carries it around as a divine image.” He then explained: “For the role the Great Ruler (ὁ μέγας ἡγεμών)97 has in the cosmos, this, it seems, the human mind has in the human.”98 Philo has made the same comparison that we just saw in Seneca: God is to the cosmos what the human mind is to a human being. Comparison. Once again there are several factors that we need to keep in mind as we compare the two thinkers. Cicero had already suggested that humans had a divine nature. He wrote: “For the person who knows himself, will recognize, in 95 This assumes that Philo combined prepositional metaphysics and a conception of ideas as God’s thoughts, in a lecture on cosmology, which is not unreasonable. Niehoff 2017: 11–18, suggests that Philo was fully engaged in the intellectual life of Rome while he was in the city, a reasonable assumption. 96 Sen. Ep. 65.24. 97 This is an allusion to Plat. Phdr. 246E, where Zeus is ὁ μέγας ἡγεμών. 98 Philo, Opif. 69. This is part of his larger “flight of the mind” text in Opif. 69–71. Cf. also Det. 79–90, esp. 83, where Philo makes the same point about the mind; and Migr. 192–194; Abr. 74. For a full treatment of Philo’s flight of the mind texts, see Sterling 2018: 155–166.

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the first place, that he has a certain divine element within himself and will consider his own nature as if it were a dedicated image.”99 In this statement, Cicero drew the second half of the macrocosm/microcosm comparison (the mind is to the body), but did not offer the full analogy (there is no comparison between God and matter). His statement can serve as a potential base for the larger comparison, but it does not draw it. This means that the similarity between Philo and Seneca is worth noting.

5. Conclusion These three comparisons do not exhaust the parallels between the two thinkers,100 but they occur in the same letter of Seneca and are the most striking. Do they suggest that Seneca was familiar with Philo’s views? There are three major possibilities: Both developed the same views independently from the tradition, both independently drew from a common pool of traditions, or Seneca or some of his friends heard Philo and Seneca repeated these views in Letter 65. The first view strikes me as improbable. It is true that both Seneca and Philo knew Plato’s treatises, but it seems beyond the realm of probability that both would have independently developed these three traditions that became commonplace in later philosophical thought. The number of agreements and the extent of the agreements in their scheme of prepositional metaphysics are too great to posit that both came to these conclusions independently.101 This leaves us with the second and third alternatives. How do we discern between positing a common tradition or literary/oral dependence? It is entirely possible that Philo and Seneca independently drew from a single or multiple common sources within the Platonic tradition. While the traditions they share are unattested among their predecessors or contemporaries, they are well attested in later periods – as we have seen. The case for an unattested common tradition is strengthened by the fact that the basic components or frameworks for each of the three areas of agreement were present in the tradition prior to Philo and Seneca – a point that those who have argued for an earlier source or sources have made. These factors place us on firm ground to argue that the Alexandrian and Roman drew from a common but unattested tradition. This must be considered a strong possibility.

99

Cic. Leg. 1.59. The two both share flight of the mind texts. Compare Sen. Ep. 62.32–35 and Helv. 20.1–2 with Philo, Det. 87–90, esp. 89–90; Opif. 69–71; Spec. 1.37–40, 207, 2.44–45, 3.1–6; Praem. 36– 48, esp. 63–67; and Legat. 5. Again, there are parallels in other authors, e. g., Maximus of Tyre, Dialex. 11.9–10. 101 Although for an alternative view, see Inwood 2007b: 161–162. 100

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What about the third option? The extent of the agreements and the fact that the three common elements (prepositional metaphysics, the ideas as the thoughts of God, and the macrocosm/ microcosm comparison) are all related to cosmology, raise the possibility that a friend of Seneca’s (or Seneca himself ) heard Philo in Rome. Perhaps the strongest argument for this is that the dominant tradition about prepositional metaphysics in this period is different than the understandings in Seneca and Philo. Their agreement in moving beyond the three principles could be an accident of history, but the fact that they largely concur in their basic divergence from the standard position should make us think twice. As we noted above, it is improbable that Seneca or one of his Platonist friends would have read multiple treatises of Philo from different parts of the corpus Philonicum, but it is not improbable that Philo lectured while in Rome. Given the status of his family, he could have had occasion to participate in some exchanges beyond the confines of Jewish synagogues. We are thus left to decide between the argument that they drew from a common source or that Seneca had knowledge of traditions attested in Philo. Both are possible. Is the latter probable? If we had this much agreement between two Roman authors or a Hellenistic and Roman author, we would judge it probable. Why should we demur because one author is Jewish? I think that we can say with strong confidence that it is possible – and with weak confidence – that it is probable that Seneca learned some of the views in Letter 65 from Philo indirectly through his Platonizing friends and that the Jewish Alexandrian was a – not the – conduit for passing aspects of Alexandrian Platonism to Rome.102

Bibliography Bickel, Ernst. “Senecas Brief 58 und 65: Das Antiochus-Posidonius-Problem.” Rheinisches Museum 103 (1960): 1–20. Boys-Stones, George. “Seneca against Plato: Letter 58 and 65.” In Plato and the Stoics. Edited by Anthony A. Long, 128–146. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Chaumartin, François-Régis. “Sénèque et le platonisme: à propos des lettres 58 et 65.” In Contre Platon I: Le platonisme d’voilé. Edited by Monique Dixsaut, 103–115. Paris: Vrin, 1993. De Luca, Ludovica. “La materia e la creazione del mondo nel De opificio mundi di Filone di Alessandria.” Elenchos 43 (2022): 105–137. Dillon, John. The Middle Platonists 80 b.c. to a.d. 220. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977. –. Alcinous. The Handbook of Platonism. Clarendon Later Ancient Philosophers. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Dingel, Joachim. “Art. L. Annaeus Seneca [2].” In Brill’s New Pauly, 13 (2008): 271–278.

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–. “The Roman Stoics on Divine Thinking and Human Knowledge.” In Eriugena, Berkeley, and the Idealist Tradition. Edited by Stephen Gersh & Dermot Moran, 81–94. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006. –. “Seneca’s Platonism: The Soul and its Divine Origin.” In Ancient Models of Mind: Studies in Human and Divine Rationality. Edited by Andrea W. Nightingale and David Sedley, 196–215. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. –. “The Academy, the Stoics, and Cicero on Plato’s Timaeus.” In Plato and the Stoics. Edited by Anthony A. Long, 29–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Rist, John. “Seneca and Stoic Orthodoxy.” In Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.36.3: Philosophie, Wissenschaften, Technik. Edited by Wolfgang Haase, 1993–2012. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989. Royse, James R. “The Oxyrhynchus Papyrus of Philo.” The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 17 (1980): 155–165. –. “Did Philo Publish his Works?” The Studia Philonica Annual 25 (2013): 75–100. Runia, David T. Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato. Philosophia Antiqua 44. Leiden: Brill, 1986. –. “Polis and Megalopolis: Philo and the Founding of Alexandria.” Mnemosyne 42 (1989): 398–412. –. Philo in Early Christian Literature: A Survey. Compendia Rerum Iudaecarum ad Novum Testamentum 3.3. Assen: Van Gorcum/ Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993. –. Philo of Alexandria, On the Creation of the Cosmos: Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series 1. Leiden/Boston/Köln: Brill, 2001. Schönegg, Beat. Senecas epistulae morales als philosophisches Kunstwerk. European University Studies 578. Bern: Peter Lang, 1999. Sedley, David. “The School, from Zeno to Arius Didymus.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics. Edited by Brad Inwood, 1–32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. –. “Stoic Metaphysics at Rome.” In Metaphysics, Soul, and Ethics in Ancient Thought: Themes from the Work of Richard Sorabji. Edited by Ricardo Salles, 117–142. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Setaioli, Aldo. “Citazioni da Platone in Seneca.” Bolletino di Studi Latini 15 (1985): 18–39. –. Seneca e I Greci: Citazioni e traduzione nelle opera fiolosfici. Testi e manuali per l’insegnamento 26. Bologna: Patron, 1988. Sterling, Gregory E. “Prepositional Metaphysics in Jewish Wisdom Speculation and Early Christian Liturgical Texts.” The Studia Philonica Annual 9 (1997): 219–238. –. “Recherché or Representative? What is the Relationship between Philo’s Treatises and Greek-Speaking Judaism?” The Studia Philonica Annual 11 (1999): 1–30. –. “‘Prolific in Expression and Broad in Thought’: Internal References to Philo’s Allegorical Commentary and Exposition of the Law.” Euphrosyne 40 (2012): 55–76. –. “‘A Man of the Highest Repute:’ Did Josephus Know the Writings of Philo?” The Studia Philonica Annual 25 (2013): 101–113. –. “The Theft of Philosophy: Philo of Alexandria and Numenius of Apamea.” The Studia Philonica Annual 27 (2015): 71–85. –. “Dancing with the Stars: The Ascent of the Mind in Philo of Alexandria.” In Apocalyptic Literature and Mysticism. Edited by Pieter G. R. de Villiers, Adela Collins, and John Collins, 155–166. Exstasis: Religious Experience from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2018.

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Nero’s Persecution of the Christians, the Jews and a Possible “Philonic” Connection Mischa Meier One might think that everything has been said about the persecution of Christians under Emperor Nero in 64.1 Possible causes have been explored, contexts have been noted, the course of events has been meticulously reconstructed, and presumed legal aspects have been considered. The short-term consequences and long-term effects of the events continue to be the subject of extensive debate, and of course, our most important testimony, the short account in the Annals of Tacitus (15.44), has been in the focus of controversial analyses for decades. More recently, Brent Shaw has once again addressed the Neronian persecution of Christians and set a new, deliberately provocative tone when he concluded that such a persecution “never happened.”2 Thus the file on the year 64 could have been closed for the time being and Nero’s role within the history of Christianity as a whole should have been redefined – but although Shaw found sporadic agreement,3 the controversial debate continues: Birgit Van Der Lans and Jan Bremmer have drawn further arguments for the historicity of the persecutions from a renewed analysis of the Tacitean narrative complex on the fire of Rome and the Christians, as well as from early Christian tradition.4 Christopher P. Jones has pointed out that Shaw, in deconstructing the Peter-Paul martyrdom to prove a lack of historicity in the events described by Tacitus, is in turn engaging in an improper conflation of several unrelated events.5 Wolfram Kinzig, despite the uncertainty, “as to how the anti-Christian measures in Rome are connected to the fire that devastated large parts of the capital,” sees no reason to generally doubt the historicity of a pogrom under Nero.6 Anthony Barrett has discussed the his1 This article is drawn from parts of my monograph Meier 2021, where I have also listed the most important contributions that deal with the Neronian persecution. 2 Shaw 2015: 74: “The simple argument of this essay, deliberately framed as a provocative hypothesis, is that this event never happened and that there are compelling reasons to doubt that it should have any place either in the history of Christian martyrdom or in the history of the early Church.” 3 Cf. Öhler 2018: 286–289. 4 Van Der Lans/Bremmer 2017. 5 Jones 2017. 6 Kinzig 2019: 29: “[…] inwiefern die antichristlichen Maßnahmen in Rom mit dem Feuer zusammenhängen, welches weite Teile der Hauptstadt verwüstete”.

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torical context of the fire in Rome.7 And, lastly, stark objection was raised once again against Shaw’s proposal to simply delete the events reported by Tacitus from the history of the persecutions of Christians. John Drinkwater formulated the objection that such a rigorous approach would mean “to underestimate Tacitus’ capacity for personal research.” Like Van Der Lans and Bremmer, he continues to see sufficient reasons to hold on to the historicity of the account; the persecution of Christians by Nero, which thereby becomes the premise of his further considerations, is “a […] historical fact.”8 John Granger Cook made the point “that Christians, Christianus, and Χριστιανός are not anachronisms of the second century and that Roman officials were probably aware of the Chrestiani in the 60s,”9 and Jan Bremmer even argued that “the name Chrestiani must have sounded normal to the inhabitants of Rome” in Neronian times.10 Recent summaries of the current debate can be found in Meier 2021 and Städele 2022. However, Shaw is able to support his thesis by a line of arguments that seem to be quite convincing at first glance, by first showing that the death of the apostles Peter and Paul can hardly be connected with a possible persecution of Christians by Nero.11 Similarly problematic are the alleged measures against Christians in the year 64: Tacitus alone reported them, and later sources that – as he does – link the great fire in Rome with anti-Christian measures (e. g., Sulpicius Severus, Orosius)12 are based solely on his account. In Rome, however – and this is the point where Philo comes in – Christians had not even been identified as a separate group in the 60s, but corresponding labels by Tacitus and almost simultaneously by Suetonius13 were to be regarded as retroactive projections from 7

Barrett 2020. Drinkwater 2019: 244. 9 Cook 2020: 263. 10 Bremmer 2021b: 68–73, the citation at 73. 11 Cf. Shaw 2015: 74–78, on Peter, “Compelling, if not definitive, arguments have been made that there is no good evidence to demonstrate that Peter was ever in Rome. It seems more probable that he died, perhaps even peacefully in bed, in Judaea in the mid-50s” at 76, and Paul, “No matter how it was seen and interpreted by later Christian sources, Paul’s hearings and his execution were subject to normal Roman judicial procedures. He was not executed on the charge of being a Christian, but as a man who had been found guilty of creating unlawful and seditious disturbances in the province of Judaea. And there are no specific links of Paul with Nero” at 78. 12 Sulp. Sev. Chron. 2.29.1: Interea, abundante iam christianorum multitudine accidit, ut Roma incendio conflagraret, Nerone apud Antium constituto. sed opinio omnium inuidiam incendii in principem retorquebat, credebaturque imperator gloriam innouandae urbis quaesisse. neque ulla re Nero efficiebat quin ab eo iussum incendium putaretur. igitur uertit inuidiam in christianos, actaeque in innoxios crudelissimae quaestiones: quin et nouae mortes excogitatae, ut ferarum tergis contecti laniatu canum interirent, multi crucibus affixi aut flamma usti, plerique in id reseruati, ut cum defecisset dies, in usum nocturni luminis urerentur. Oros. Hist. 7.7.4–10: denique urbis Romae incendium uoluptatis suae spectaculum fecit; […] nam primus Romae Christianos suppliciis et mortibus affecit ac per omnes prouincias pari persecutione excruciari imperauit nomen exstirpare conatus beatissimos Christi apostolos Petrum cruce, Paulum gladio occidit. 13 Suet. Ner. 16.2: afflicti suppliciis Christiani, genus superstitionis nouae ac maleficae. 8

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the early second century. What seems to have happened under Claudius and then again under Nero is the temporary banishment of some Jewish sectarians from the city of Rome, but not, in any event, persons who would logically have been labelled at the time as representatives of “a new and evil superstitio,” words which were used only much later by Roman officials to identify Christians.14 According to Shaw, there were significant convergences between Pliny, Suetonius, and Tacitus. These indicate that the projection of the term Christiani/ Chrestiani, which is only documented at the beginning of the second century, back onto Nero’s measures took place in a specific senatorial or senate-related milieu. Nero himself, on the other hand, had never persecuted Christians as such, but had merely attacked a group of Jewish troublemakers, without any connection to the fire of Rome being demonstrable with certainty. A connection between the fire, Nero’s action against a deviant group and the Christians was only constructed from the second century onwards, when the latter had gained a stronger presence in the general perception and at the same time – especially in the Greek East – a popular Nero myth had developed, which gained additional power through Jewish apocalypticism and Christian eschatology.15 The idea of a Neronian persecution of Christians was therefore “completely anachronistic.”16 At this point Drinkwater’s criticism becomes relevant. In his view, “though the term is not literary before the second century, its use by Tacitus for the Neronian principate is not necessarily anachronistic. In Tacitus’ words, it was vulgar usage, which would have taken time to be adopted by educated writers” – vulgus […] appellabat.17 Drawing on older research, Drinkwater suggests that Tacitus’ account should be taken seriously and applied to a group “on the margins of Christianity and Judaism”, namely converted Jews. Because of their social seclusion and specific peculiarities, these Jews were easily used as scapegoats after the burning of Rome. Moreover, they were not mentioned in the Christian tradition that was later shaped in the East, as they had not been part of it. Tacitus, however, was able to find the events concerning the group of the Roman Christiani/Chrestiani in his sources.18 Drinkwater indeed touches the central weakness of Shaw’s argument: the general questioning of the Tacitean report, which only seems too monolithic because we lack a parallel tradition. However, Drinkwater and Shaw are both unable to solve the riddle of who may have been able to identify the Christiani/Chrestiani as a separate group in Rome in the 60s. In my opinion, there can be only one plausible answer to this question: those from whom the early Christians had to separate themselves and to distinguish themselves in a special way – the Jews. 14

Shaw 2015: 84. See Shaw 2015: 85–96. 16 Shaw 2015: 96. Contra: Cook 2020. 17 Tac. Ann. 15.44.2. 18 Drinkwater 2019: 245. See, similarly, already Malitz 1999: 72–74.

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In the following, I develop the thesis that the Neronian “persecution of Christians” must be seen in the context of tensions between Jews and Jewish Christians, and that these tensions initially prompted Claudius to take action.19 The imperial government may have become aware of the group of Chrestiani or Christiani through hints from Jewish circles; presumably, they hoped to contain the activities of the small group, which from a Jewish perspective was sectarian, by appealing to the ruler and thereby avert a threat to their own communities. This thesis also raises the question of possible networks and intermediaries, which of course can only be answered speculatively; but the possibility exists that Philo could have played a role in this context. I will address this question in my following considerations. My approach is based on the old idea, recently repeated by Shaw, Drinkwater and Barrett, that the persecuted persons under Nero must have been the same Chrestiani that Claudius, probably in 49,20 had already expelled from Rome21 – a supposed Jewish group that permanently caused trouble at the instigation of a certain Chrestus (Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit [sc. Claudius]).22 Orosius claims to have read in Josephus about similar events in the ninth year of Claudius’ reign (= 49/50 ce) and directly connects them with the expulsion of Chrestus’ supporters noted by Suetonius.23 The couple Aquila and Priscilla (Prisca), who according to Acts had to leave Rome and met Paul in Corinth, may have been among them.24 John Malalas mentions, possibly in the same context, “a great persecution against the apostles and their followers” by the Jews as well as Jewish plans for a rebellion in the eighth year of Claudius’ reign (48/49).25 Furthermore, there is Cassius Dio, who reports earlier measures 19

In principle, this thesis is not new, cf. e. g. Keresztes 1984. Botermann 1996: 54–57, however, considers this dating – just because it is suggested by Orosius – to be uncertain. See also Lampe 1989: 7 f. 21 Lampe 1989: 4–9; Tobin 2004: 20; Cook 2010: 14 f., 2020: 252–257; Shaw 2015: 84; Drinkwater 2019: 246. Comprehensively: Botermann 1996. On the expulsions of Jews from Rome in the early principate, see, for example, Gruen 2002: 15–53; Van Der Lans 2015 (examining the expulsion of Jews in the context of the banishment of other groups: actors, philosophers, astrologers); Wendt 2015. 22 Suet. Claud. 25.4 (taken up by Euseb. Hist. eccl. 2.18.9: Ἰουδαίους Ῥώμης ἀπελαύνει Κλαύδιος). On a broad basis of manuscripts, Boman 2011, esp. 375 f., has proven that Chresto is the correct reading. See now Niehoff 2024: 97, “may reflect the earliest attested Jewish reactions to the teachings of Jesus.” 23 Oros. Hist. 7.6.15: anno eiusdem nono expulsos per Claudium Vrbe Iudaeos Iosephus refert. sed me magis Suetonius mouet, qui ait hoc modo: Claudius Iudaeos inpulsore Christo adsidue tumultuantes Roma expulit. However, this cannot be verified in the preserved work of Josephus, see Cook 2010: 22–25. 24 Acts 18:2, with Botermann 1996: 44–49; Cook 2020: 254. Paul arrived in Corinth, where Priscilla and Aquila had been for a short time, in the winter of 49/50 or spring of 50. Lampe 1989: 156–164. 25 Malalas 10.25 p. 187,5–7 Thurn: Τῷ δὲ ὀγδόῳ ἔτει τῆς βασιλείας τοῦ αὐτοῦ Κλαυδίου Καίσαρος διωγμὸν μέγαν ἐποίησαν οἱ Ἲουδαῖοι κατὰ τῶν ἀποστόλων καὶ τῶν μαθητῶν 20

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of Claudius – specifically, a ban on assemblies – against “Jews who had again increased so greatly” (τοὺς Ἰουδαίους πλεονάσαντας αὖθις)26 – presumably to be dated to the first half of the year 41.27 The manuscript tradition in Codex Mediceus 68 II28confirms that the Tacitean account for the year 64 must also refer to the followers of Chrestus (=.), as it renders Tac. Ann. 15.44.2 as chrestianos. The term christianos is only a second hand “correction.”29 Chrestiani were thus perceived by the authorities in early imperial Rome as troublemakers, as a Jewish group whose impulsor Chrestus stood for permanent turmoil. According to Helga Botermann and John G. Cook, it is difficult to doubt that this group should be identified with the adherents of Jesus Christ. Such an identification is documented for the first time in Orosius.30 The Jews Aquila and Priscilla, who were expelled from Rome by Claudius and professed Christ, make this equation nearly certain. It was therefore probably the widespread use of the name Chrestus, which could have caused Suetonius’ informants to change the more unknown name Christus accordingly or to adapt it.31 However, the Roman authorities cannot yet have recognized in the Chrestiani an independent group, separate from the Jews. For the Romans, as Shaw rightly notes, even in the 60s of the first century did not yet have a precise term for the new phenomenon – no vocabulary and thus no concrete idea.32 In Latin, αὐτῶν καὶ τυραννίδα κατὰ Ῥωμαίων ἐμελέτουν. It is uncertain whether the entry of Malalas refers to Rome, since in the following he speaks of Judaea. If the passage refers to Judaea, the riots brought about by the so-called Egyptian could be the context, cf. Acts 21:38 (Paul was considered to be the “Egyptian”); Joseph. BJ 2.261–263; AJ 20.167–172; Euseb. Hist. eccl. 2.21. In the tradition based on the “original” Malalas, however, the revolt of the “Egyptian” and the expulsion of the Jews from Rome are separated (cf. Kedren. p. 347.3–8, 347.10 Bekker = 235.4 p. 367.13–17; 235.5 p. 367.18–19 Tartaglia), and therefore it is more plausible that Malalas points to the context of the city of Rome (and in the original text the revolt was dealt with independently). 26 Cass. Dio 60.6.6. 27 Cf. Botermann 1996: 104–107; Cook 2010: 25–27; Shaw 2015: 84, note 53; Barrett 2020: 161 f. 28 Codex Laurentianus Plut. 68,2, 11th cent, 29 Fuchs 1950: 69–74; Hanslik 1963: 100 f.; Koestermann 1967: 457, 1968: 253 f.; Cook 2020: 245 f.; Städele 2022: 268–277. See also Koestermann: 356. 30 Cf. Botermann 1996: 57–102 (who also proves at 101 that impulsor needs by no means to refer to persons who were currently present); Cook 2010: 15–22, esp. 19, “I think the preponderance of evidence is that Suetonius intended to refer to Jesus Christ and not to an unknown troublemaker by the name of ‘Chrestus’ whom he would have specified with quodam (a certain Chrestus);” most recently also Pollini 2017: 223; Bremmer 2021b. In contrast, among others (cf. the discussion in Botermann 1996: 57–87), Koestermann 1967; Gruen 2002: 39; Lund 2008: 256, note 16; and Bosman 2011 have questioned a connection between Chrestus and the Christians. See Oros. Hist. 7.6.5–16. 31 This is the assumption of Van Der Lans/Bremmer 2017: 321. 32 Shaw 2015: 87–89, concludes at 89: “It, therefore, seems improbable that the persons who were executed by Nero were a specific social group whom the mass of the common people of Rome knew well enough to call Christians or Chrestianoi;” similarly already Malitz 1999: 73, “Für die meisten Beobachter werden die Christen damals als jüdische Sekte gegolten haben, die sich im großen und ganzen ähnlich verhielt wie die Juden Roms.” Contra: Cook 2020. The

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word formations with the suffix -(i)anus in the political sphere stand for dependencies on other persons or dedicated followers as well as political partisanship.33 Caesar’s followers were called Caesariani, those of Pompeius Pompeiani. The claqueurs who accompanied Nero at his performances were called Augustiani (“followers of Augustus”).34 The terms Chrestiani or Christiani – as attributions from outside – may thus have initially merely denoted affiliation with a Chrestus/Christus, a political rebel put to death.35 Since Christianity spread mainly in the Roman East in the first decades, it can be assumed that the corresponding term arose there as well, first in Greek (Χριστιανοί/Χρηστιανοί – η and ι were indistinguishable in pronunciation),36 then diffusing into Latin. Furthermore, it is likely that this politically charged term emerged in contexts where the new movement was confronted by Roman authorities and a term was required to capture it. Hearings or court proceedings against followers of the convicted rioter before Roman officials may have played a special role.37 Thus, Herod Agrippa II is said to have already used the term “Christian” after Paul had confronted him about his faith around the year 59.38 However, it is clear from Acts that at that time the missionary was not accused of being a Christianos, but a “Nazorean.”39 Accordingly, the designation “Christians” had not yet established itself on the

sources on the word history of Χριστιανοί/Christiani have recently been reviewed again by Van Der Lans/Bremmer 2017: 317–322; cf. also Taylor 1994; Botermann 1996: 142–177; Nodet 2014. 33 Bickerman 1949: 116–124, at 118, “All these Greek terms, formed with the Latin suffix -ianus, exactly as the Latin words of the same derivation, belong to the person to whose name the suffix is added.”; Peterson 1982; Schmitt 2011: 523 f. The dependency relationship expressed by the suffix -(i)anus was originally probably connoted with loss of freedom, which is why word formations on -(i)anus were probably initially made with polemical intent. Soon, however, the dependence could also be understood in the sense of a dedicated following, so that -(i)anus could be used as a self-designation. 34 Suet. Nero 25.1; Cass. Dio 61.20.4–5. 35 Cf. Vittinghoff 1984; Lund 2008: 255; Schmitt 2011: 524, “Der Name Christiani muss wie ‚Christus-Armee-Fraktion‘ geklungen haben. Er bezeichnete politische Verbrecher oder Terroristen, die sich auf einen Christus beriefen.” 36 Thus, already Tert. Apol. 3.5. Cf. Botermann 1996: 90–95. 37 In this sense, see also Shaw 2015: 87, “The logical context that suggests itself is the need for a formal Latin-form term in Greek that would be useful in an official context, and the one that logically suggests itself is for use in designating ‘bad persons’ before the tribunals of Roman governors.” Similarly, Van Der Lans/Bremmer 2017: 322, “From this survey it can be concluded that the name Christian was a designation invented by the Roman authorities, which only gradually was taken over by the Christians themselves;” Schnelle 2019: 73 f., note 8. 38 Acts 26:28: ὁ δὲ Ἀγρίππας πρὸς τὸν Παῦλον· ἐν ὀλίγῳ με πείθεις Χριστιανὸν γενέσθαι. 39 Acts 24:5: πρωτοστάτης τῆς τῶν Ναζωραίων αἱρέσεως. Cf. still Tert. Adv. Marc. 4.8.1 (Nazaraeus uocari habebat secundum prophetiam Christus creatoris. Vnde et ipso nomine nos Iudaei Nazarenos appellant per eum); Euseb. Onom. 138.24–25; Koestermann 1967. Critical of this argument, however, Jones 2017: 149, “But this does not show that ‘Nazorean’ was the only possible word to designate Christians, and that ‘Christian’ had not yet come into existence”. Luomanen 2005, on the term “Nazoräer/Nazarener;” see also Mimouni 2014.

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Roman side.40In other words, Roman authorities did not know then what Chrestiani/Christiani meant. By the early second century, the situation had changed. Tacitus as well as Suetonius and Pliny know the term Christiani,41 but the phenomenon designated by it still seems to have required explanation, at least in senatorial milieus. Tacitus explicitly notes that the broad masses spoke of Chrestiani (vulgus Chrestianos appellabat),42 and then feels obliged to briefly explain to his senatorial audience that this group goes back to Christus, who was executed under Tiberius by order of Pontius Pilatus.43 Because of their “shameful deeds” (flagitia) the Christians 40 When it is claimed in Acts that the members of the young Antiochian church were addressed as Χριστιανοί for the first time (Acts 11:26 [χρηματίσαι τε πρῶτον ἐν Ἀντιοχείᾳ τοὺς μαθητὰς Χριστιανούς], cf. Leppin 2018: 58: “Sie wurden zum ersten Mal öffentlich als Christianer bekannt;” Cook 2020: 260 f.), this may have reflected a parallel development on the Christian side. Admittedly, this testimony was written from a retrospective perspective, when the term “Christians” had already established itself; moreover, it is unclear whether it should be understood in the sense of a self-designation (cf. the opposing views of Bickerman 1949: 115 [an outwardly directed self-designation of Christians] and Peterson 1982: 69–75 [designation by the Roman authorities]; Botermann 1996: 146, argues in the sense of a self-designation; Taylor 1994; Trebilco 2012: 272–297; Jones 2017: 149; Van Der Lans/Bremmer 2017: 320; Schnelle 2019: 72; Cook 2020: 261–263, tend toward Peterson’s view in light of more recent papyrus and inscription finds). The testimony of Acts 11:26, anyway, has no significance for the use of the term “Christians” in early imperial Rome. On the problem, cf. Taylor 1994; Trebilco 2012: 276–278; Shaw 2015: 87, note 71, “And even if the contemporaneity of the reference could be guaranteed, which it cannot, the use of the term still appears to be highly localized and internal to the community itself ”. The same applies to 1 Peter 4:15–16, the dating of which is hardly possible before 90 ce (cf. Vahrenhorst 2016: 37–51, esp. 50 f.: “[…] die späteren Jahrzehnte des 1. Jahrhunderts bzw. […] Anfang des 2. Jahrhunderts […] ein Zeitfenster von etwa 40 Jahren ab dem achten Jahrzehnt des 1. Jahrhunderts […]”), but where possibly “der Übergang von der Fremd- zur Selbstbezeichnung” becomes apparent (Leppin 2018: 58; cf. also Horrell 2007), for the so-called Testimonium Flavianum (Joseph. AJ 18.64, 20.200), whose authenticity is doubted and which in any case cannot be dated before the beginning of the 90s of the 1st century (cf. as an overview Horn 2007; Trebilco 2012: 274 f.; Bremmer 2021b: 70 f.), and for Didache 12.4, which is to be dated around 100. The term “Christian” as a self-designation appears regularly not before the writings of Ignatius of Antiochia (2nd c.), cf. Hartmann 2013: 140–163; Van Der Lans/Bremmer 2017: 318, “In short, the term ‘Christian’ as an insider designation took off slowly and did not become more widely used before the second half of the second century”; Leppin 2018: 59, “Er ist der Erste, der das Wortpaar Christianismós und Ioudaismós gebraucht – wenngleich nicht im Sinne von ‚Christentum‘ und ‚Judentum‘. Die Begriffe bezeichneten vielmehr bestimmte Lebensweisen unter christlichen oder jüdischen Vorzeichen, unter welchen die christliche ihm einfach als die richtige galt”; Schnelle 2019: 72 f.; Bremmer 2021b. 41 Suet. Nero 16.2; Plin. Ep. 10.96–97. See, however, Lund 2008: esp. 261, who assumes that also Tacitus was really still referring to Jews, “von denen die Chrestiani/Christiani eine winzige Teilmenge, eine kleine Bande von politischen Unruhestiftern, bildeten.” 42 Tac. Ann. 15.44.2: […] quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Chrestianos appellabat. 43 Tac. Ann. 15.44.3: auctor nominis eius Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat. By using the designation procurator Tacitus undertakes a modernization oriented to the circumstances of his own time; in fact Pontius Pilatus held the title praefectus Iudaeae, but see now also Städele 2022: 278 f., arguing that Pontius Pilatus was both procurator (in a less technical sense) and praefectus.

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were hated by the people, their characteristic was an abominable superstition (exitiabilis superstitio). Pliny and Suetonius also attribute such a superstition to the Christians,44 and this convergence indicates an increase of attention to the phenomenon of Christianity at the beginning of the second century in senatorial milieus or those close to them.45 The word used by Tacitus in the early second century is in any case, as Shaw rightly concludes, anachronistic.46 However, this does not mean that the events as such are to be questioned.47 Of course, Nero persecuted certain persons and had them cruelly executed. He, however, was himself hardly aware of the fact that he had not attacked a Jewish group, but a movement that was about to break away.48 Indeed, as mentioned above, Nero was not the first emperor to act against followers of Chrestus/Christus. Claudius had already expelled Jews who referred to Chrestus from Rome in 49/50. He tightened some regulations, which he had already laid down shortly after his accession to power in 41 – because at that time he had “only” imposed a ban on assemblies, given the large number of Jews in Rome.49 But what was the trigger for this measure right at the beginning of his reign? Sporadically, but in my opinion probably rightly, reference has been made to a peculiar formulation in Dio’s report on the year 41. The emperor had ordered (ἐκέλευσε) the Jews to stop assembling (μὴ συναθροίζεσθαι), while maintaining their inherited way of life (πατρίῳ βίῳ χρωμένους).” Even in the emperor’s view, this way of life was threatened in some way – yet not at all, as Helga Botermann has shown, by external affliction, such as the simultaneous riots at Alexandria. On the contrary, it must have been threatened from within – otherwise the Jews would not have been ordered to maintain their way of life, but would have had to be supported against external aggressors. The pátrios bíos of the Jews was thus 44 Cf. Plin. Ep. 10.96.2 (flagitia), 10.96.8 (superstitio prava immodica), 10.96.9 (superstitionis istius contagio); Suet. Nero 16.2 (Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis nouae ac maleficae). 45 Shaw 2015: 89f; Barrett 2020: 151 f. 46 Shaw 2015: 87, “a manifest anachronism”. Differently, for example, Vittinghoff 1984: 339; Botermann 1996: 142 f. who concludes from Tac. Ann. 15.44.2 that in 64 the term chrestiani was used by Roman authorities. In the sense of the older position also Tobin 2004: 35, “[…] by the mid-60s ‘Christians’ were perceived by the emperor and the public alike as a separate group with no connection to the Jewish community of Rome. They even had their own name. There is not the slightest hint that Nero confused these Roman Christians with Roman Jews”; Horrell 2007: 366; Green 2010: 51; Trebilco 2012: 273; Frenschkowski 2013: 868; Koch 2014: 465. 47 Thus also Van Der Lans/Bremmer 2017: 302, “Does Tacitus’ anachronistic use of the term Chrestiani for a group that was supposedly not sufficiently distinctive yet to be blamed for the Fire make the persecution historically implausible?” 48 Some scholars assume that Nero was made aware of the Christians by Tigellinus and the astrologer Balbillus (on him see Suet. Nero 36). See Gray-Fow 1998: 615; Fiedrowicz 2016: 254; Merker 2019: 89 f. But this is pure speculation, which is not in line with the sources. 49 Cass. Dio 60.6.6: τοὺς δὲ Ἰουδαίους πλεονάσαντας αὖθις, ὥστε χαλεπῶς ἂν ἄνευ ταραχῆς ὑπὸ τοῦ ὄχλου σφῶν τῆς πόλεως εἰρχθῆναι, οὐκ ἐξήλασε μέν, τῷ δὲ δὴ πατρίῳ βίῳ χρωμένους ἐκέλευσε μὴ συναθροίζεσθαι. See Botermann 1996: 114.

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in danger of being subverted, most likely by the machinations of the Chrestus/ Christus people.50 Their missionary activities, including proclamations of the incarnate Messiah, had caused unrest to such an extent that news about it had reached the emperor and evoked countermeasures.51 We know from Acts and the Pauline Corpus that the preaching of the early Christians could indeed lead to violent reactions in the synagogues.52 Tertullian and Justinus Martyr also record that persecution of Christians had started from the synagogues.53 But could these conflicts alone, which were still very limited in the first century, be enough to prompt the imperial government to react? Given the small number of Christians that one must assume were in Rome in the 40s–60s of the first century54 – despite Tacitus’ exaggerated rendering multitudo ingens – this seems rather unlikely. As assidue tumultuantes (Suetonius) or instigators of ταραχή (“turmoil” / “riot,” Cassius Dio), i. e. as a serious potential for unrest, they are unlikely to have caught the attention of Roman officials, unless someone had specifically pointed out the Christ-followers.55 Against this background, it seems significant that Paul and his followers were confronted by the Jews with exactly those accusations that Suetonius and Cassius Dio refer to in the context of the city of Rome. In Thessalonica, for example, they were accused of setting the world in turmoil (οἱ τὴν οἰκουμένην ἀναστατώσαντες) and creating chaos (ἐτάραξαν [… ]),56 and in Caesarea the apostle was defamed before the governor as a “plague and provocateur of sedition” (λοιμὸν καὶ κινοῦντα στάσεις)57 – a very dangerous accusation in Roman ears. It is easy to imagine that in the same way that Paul was accused in Caesarea before the procurator M. Antonius Felix, Christ-followers in Rome were also accused of sedition and rioting by their opponents among the Jews and dragged before the officials, possibly even to the emperor. This does not necessarily imply – as has been indicated in the past – possible close contacts of the Empress Poppaea Sabina with individual Jews, 50

Thus, also Schnelle 2019: 22 f. For this interpretation, see Botermann 1996: 130 f.; Schnelle 2019: 23 f. 52 See Acts 6:8–15, 12:1–5, 13:50, 14:5–6, 14:19, 17:5–9, 18:12–17; 2 Cor 11:24–25; 1 Thess 2:2, 2:15–16. Vittinghoff 1984: 340; Lampe 1989: 6; Pollini 2017: 225, 227, 229; Schnelle 2019: 57–64, at 61, “Paulus (und seine Mitarbeiter) waren wiederholt massiven Attacken der Synagoge, der lokalen Bevölkerung und Gerichtsbarkeit ausgesetzt.” 53 Just. Dial. 16.4, 17.1, 17.3; Apol. 31.6; Tert. Scorp. 10. 54 Tac. Ann. 15.44.4. For an attempt at an overall calculation for the Roman Empire, see Hopkins 1998. 55 In this sense, see also Botermann 1996: 131, “Es ist klar, daß das Motiv des kaiserlichen Eingreifens nicht die Sorge um die überkommene jüdische Religion war, sondern die Belange von Ruhe und Ordnung. Alles, was Unruhe verursachte, zumal wenn es neu war und die Tradition bedrohte, war verdächtig. Unklar ist, wie die kaiserliche Administration überhaupt auf die Vorgänge aufmerksam geworden ist. Die Streitigkeiten sind ja vermutlich nicht auf der Straße, sondern in einer Synagoge ausgetragen worden. Es ist deshalb am ehesten davon auszugehen, daß der Anstoß von jüdischer Seite erfolgte.” 56 Acts 17:6, 17:8. 57 Acts 24:5. 51

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involving sinister backroom deals, which in the end only encourages anti-Semitic prejudices.58 The accusations may have been made quite openly. In any case, the Jews in Rome will have been well aware of the danger posed to them by the new movement and will have demanded protection from the emperor in the form of targeted measures. The fact that the first of these accusations falls in the year 41, should not be a coincidence. For the princeps Claudius, ruler of the Imperium Romanum as Caligula’s successor since January 25, the year 41 presented serious upheavals among the Jews directly after his accession to the throne. In Alexandria in 38, civil warlike riots had occurred between the Greek-Egyptian and Jewish populations.59 Aulus Avilius Flaccus, the praefectus Aegypti at that time, had not only tolerated severe pogroms against the Jews, but had also declared them strangers in the city. Herod Agrippa I, who had landed in Alexandria in August 38 on his way to Judaea, had endured anti-Jewish insults. Greek elements of the population had erected images of emperors in the synagogues in order to win over the Roman officials to their cause. Jews had been maltreated and lynched.60 The Alexandrian Jews consequently sent a delegation to Caligula, led by the scholar Philo, which was competing with a counter-delegation of Greeks led by the grammarian Apion, who agitated wildly against Judaism in Rome.61 While the debate about the Alexandrian pogroms still continued in Rome, around the middle of the year 40, disturbances broke out in Judaea, in the course of which Jews tore down an altar of the emperor’s cult in Jamnia, which had been erected only to provoke them.62 Caligula now reacted harshly and demanded the highest possible proof of loyalty from the Jewish population63 by announcing his intention to have his 58 Poppaea’s alleged closeness to Judaism and the Jews is inferred from brief remarks by Jose-

phus, who mentions two occasions when the empress intervened on behalf of the Jews. In the first case, she intervened in a dispute between the Roman client-king M. Iulius Agrippa II and the governor of Judaea, Porcius Festus (60–62), on the one hand, and the high-ranking Jews of Jerusalem on the other. She prompted Nero’s decision in favor of the Jewish delegation (Joseph. AJ 20.189–196). In the other case, in the year 64 ce, she accepted Josephus’ request and obtained the release of Jewish priests, whom Antonius Felix had brought to Rome in chains, and, moreover, released the historian with rich gifts to his homeland (Joseph. Vit. 16). From these hints it was concluded that Poppaea also moved Nero to act against the Christians, cf. Smallwood 1959: 333 f.; Hanslik 1963: 99 f.; Frend 1965: 164 f.; Gray-Fow 1998: 606; Pollini 2017: 234; this conclusion is rejected by Holztrattner 1995: 20 f. Griffin 1984: 133, mentions the Poppaea thesis without comment. On Poppaea’s relationship to Judaism see Smallwood 1959; Williams 1988; Cook 2010: 44 f.; Grüll/Benke 2011. 59 On these events cf. Bergmann/Hoffmann 1987; Barclay 1996: 48–71; Gruen 2002: 54–83; Clauss 2003: 155–159; Bringmann 2005: 218–225; Green 2010: 8 f.; Bremmer 2021a. 60 Philo Legat. 119–139; Flacc. 53–57. 61 Cf. Montanari 1996 and Bringmann 2005: 219, “intellektueller Wortführer des alexandrinischen Antijudaismus.” 62 Philo Legat. 200–202; Joseph. BJ 2.184–203; AJ 18.261–309. Theissen 1989: 149–161; Bringmann 2005: 225. 63 Hence, the plausible reconstruction of the events by Winterling 2003: 147 f.

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own statue erected in the Jerusalem temple.64 In doing so, he drew a huge wave of indignation. Philo now also explicitly declared the emperor “mad.”65 Jews were indeed under massive pressure when Claudius ascended the throne, and the conflicts played out primarily in Rome within in the emperors’ diplomatic milieu. Claudius renounced the erection of the imperial statue in the Jerusalem temple. He tried to solve the Alexandrian problems in a letter of November 10, 41, addressed to the praefectus Aegypti L. Aemilius Rectus, in which he continued to grant the Jews those rights they had held since Augustus, but at the same time issued decisive warnings.66 While the emperor “implored” (διαμαρτύρομε) the Greek populations not to interfere further with the Jews, who had inhabited the city for a long time, he “ordered” (κελεύωι) the latter to be content with the rights already granted, They were henceforth ordered to send no more delegations of their own, not to interfere in the municipal games, and not to increase their community by further immigration from Syria or Egypt (μηδὲ ἐπάγεσθαι ἢ προσείεσθαι ἀπὸ Συρίας ἢ Αἰγύπου καταπλέοντας Ἰουδαίους). Could the latter possibly refer to the arrival of Christ-followers, whose preaching was causing unrest in the Jewish community?67 This seems at least a plausible interpretation, but unfortunately the question cannot be answered with certainty. In any case, the emperor concluded with a warning: should the Jews not comply with the instructions, he would act against them as against people who arouse a general disease of the oikoumene (καθάπερ κοινὴν τεινα τῆς οἰκουμένης νόσον ἐξεγείροντας). When Claudius formulated this reply for the Alexandrians, the Philonian delegation may still have been in Rome.68 They could not have been satisfied with the result of their efforts, especially not with Claudius’ threat to potentially act against Jews as “pathogens.” At that time, it must have been in the interest of the Jews to emphasize their own peacefulness and loyalty to the Romans and the emperor. Thus, they may have labelled as “pathogens” – as a “disease” – the alleged troublemakers in the vicinity of their synagogues, namely people like Paul, who was a “plague and a provocateur of sedition” (λοιμὸν καὶ κινοῦντα στάσεις),69 64

Philo, Legat. 203; 207–348. Bringmann 2005: 225 f. Philo, Legat. 76; 93. 66 CPJ II (1960) Nr. 153, 36–55; Smallwood 1967: 99–102. Gruen 2002: 79 f. questions the usual reading of the papyrus, according to which the emperor’s sympathies lay with the Greeks and not the Jews of Alexandria. A literary variant of Claudius’ edict is offered by Joseph. AJ 19.280– 285; this text describes the emperor’s relationship to the Jews far more positively, but it may have been developed from the original letter, which is preserved on papyrus, with a harmonizing intention, cf. Botermann 1996: 111. 67 This is the thoughtful assumption of Taylor 1994: 88. Dibelius 1971: 77, however, is skeptical. 68 Cf. Schwartz 2009: 10; Niehoff 2019: 5. 69 According to Dibelius 1971: 78, the simultaneous use of the disease motif in both contexts means “gar nichts.” However, what I am pointing to is not a matter of conscious adoption or allusion, but of a common horizon of imagination. 65

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and possibly also those immigrants from Syria and Egypt mentioned in the edict. What could be more natural in this situation than to draw the emperor’s attention explicitly to the new Christ movement, to distance oneself sharply from it, and to clarify that it was the real source of unrest. The Jews themselves, of course, wanted to maintain their traditional way of life, which the emperor had explicitly asked the non-Jewish Alexandrians to tolerate (ἀλλὰ ἐῶσιν αὐτοὺς τοῖς ἔθεσιν χρῆσθαι). The success of this strategy was apparently minimal. Claudius and his advisors seem to have continued to perceive the conflict between Jews and Christians as an internal Jewish problem concerning isolated sectarians, and so they merely called on them to maintain the Jewish pátrios bíos and imposed a ban on assembly.70 It was not until 49 when a further advance was possibly made by the Jews71 and the rebellious potential of the new movement was once again pointed out (assidue tumultuantes). Then the emperor seems to have reacted by simply banning the weaker group in order to create peace within the Jewish community for the time being.72 One may speculate about who specifically directed imperial attention onto the Chrestus followers in Rome in the year 41 and thus set in motion the chain of measures that finally culminated in Nero’s persecution. Helga Botermann suggested Herod Agrippa I, since members of the Jewish upper class would have had a particular interest in friendly relations with Roman authorities. Yet even for her “someone from his environment” is also a possibility.73 This undoubtedly included Philo74 and the other members of the Jewish embassy from Alexandria. Maren Niehoff has clearly charted how skillfully Philo must have networked within the upper class of the Urbs during his stay on the Tiber and how his diplomatic mission drew him into Roman politics and Roman discourses.75 His brother, the alabarch Tiberius Iulius Alexander, had the closest of connections to the highest circles76 – Josephus even calls him an “old friend” (φίλον ἀρχαῖον) of Claudius.77 Alexander’s son of the same name, in his younger years probably one of Philo’s companions in Rome,78 later rose to the highest offices.79 Seneca, 70

Cf. Botermann 1996: 131 f. Even in 49, the Christian community in Rome could not yet have been large enough to generate greater visibility for Roman officials than the unrest among the Jews that emanated from it. If Christians were nevertheless accused of behaving assidue tumultuantes, this can only be due to accusations of their direct opponents, i. e. members of the Jewish community. 72 See now Niehoff 2024: 97–99. 73 Botermann 1996: 132, “jemand[…] aus seiner Umgebung”. 74 Niehoff 2019: 35. 75 Niehoff 2019: 1–53. 76 Cf. Niehoff 2019: 34. 77 Joseph. AJ 19.276. 78 Niehoff 2019: 7. 79 Cf. Bringmann 2005: 222. 71

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who had spent parts of his youth in Alexandria, may also have belonged to Philo’s network in Rome.80 I therefore do consider it quite possible that the hints addressed to Claudius to investigate the activities of the Chrestus people came from the circle of Philo’s delegation or those around it, maybe even from Philo himself. They served to redirect the considerable political pressure on the Jews in 41 ce towards a group that seemed suspicious and threatening to them anyway. In any case, Philo’s legation would have had both a religious and a political interest in such a report.81 It must have been the same Chrestus/Christus followers who again attracted imperial interest under Nero, since there was no substantial change in the situation until the year 64 ce. It remains irrelevant whether this was preceded by a further alarm from the Jewish community – Melito of Sardis (in Eusebius), albeit with a strong anti-Jewish stance, claims that the emperor’s decrees of persecution were a reaction to malicious denunciations82 – or whether Antonius Felix, the procurator of Judaea, had agitated accordingly after his return to prevent possible accusations of his despotic leadership.83 Perhaps Nero’s entourage simply remembered the events of the years 41 and 49/50.84 What is important for me is that Nero, in continuation with Claudius, probably did not yet have his own idea of Christians and Christianity and thus certainly believed that he was acting against a Jewish group, whose members caused trouble in Rome and had to be reduced. Thus, Nero persecuted the Christians while believing that his measures were directed against a small group among the Jews. And whether Nero’s persecution of Christians had anything to do with the Great Fire of Rome, or how he made the persecutions a great spectacle in order to publicly enact his own ambitions as a mythical artist, is a topic for another article.

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Niehoff 2019: 21, “ziemlich wahrscheinlich”. It should not go unmentioned that Commodian Apol. 825–864 says about the Neronian persecution that Jews had expressly asked the Roman Senate to act against the Christians. Here, however, anti-Jewish polemics have to be considered, so that the value of this testimony – according to Kienast 1994: 430, an “abenteuerliche Version” – remains highly limited. 82 Euseb. Hist. eccl. 4.26.9. Cf. however also Kienast 1994: 430, who considers denunciation by the Jews as background for the Neronian persecution of Christians to be impossible. In contrast, Schnelle 2019: 29, “Spätestens mit der neronischen Verfolgung war aus jüdischer Perspektive klar: Sie mussten alles daransetzen, nicht mit dieser traditions- und kulturfeindlichen, geheimnisumwitterten Gruppe der Christen identifiziert zu werden, denn dann würden sie ihre Privilegien und Gewohnheitsrechte gefährden. Zumal gegen die Christen Vorwürfe erhoben wurden, die von römischer Seite auch gegenüber dem Judentum gemacht wurden.” Already Meyer 1923: 502 f., had considered accusations from the Jewish side but sought the actual accusers of the Christians in the urban Roman population. 83 Gray-Fow 1998: 600. 84 Keresztes 1984: 410 f., assumes that the missionary activity of the apostles Peter and Paul in Rome could have triggered conflicts between Jews and Christians, which caused Nero to take his measures. 81

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Bibliography Barclay, John M. Jews in the Mediterranean Diaspora. From Alexander to Trajan (323 bce – 117 ce). Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996. Barrett, Anthony A. Rome is Burning. Nero and the Fire that Ended a Dynasty. Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press, 2020. Bergmann, Von Werner and Hoffmann, Christhard. “Kalkül oder Massenwahn? Eine soziologische Interpretation der antijüdischen Unruhen in Alexandria 38 n. Chr.” In Antisemitismus und jüdische Geschichte. Studien zu Ehren von Herbert A. Strauss. Edited by Rainer Erb and Michael Schmidt, 15–46. Berlin: Wissenschaftlicher Autorenverlag, 1987. Bickerman, Elias J. “The Name of the Christians.” Harvard Theological Review 42 (1949): 109–124. Boman, Jobjorn. “Inpulsore Chrestro? Suetonius’ Divus Claudius 25.4 in Sources and Manuscripts.” Liber Annuus 61 (2011): 355–376. Botermann, Helga. Das Judenedikt des Kaisers Claudius. Römischer Staat und Christiani im 1. Jahrhundert. Stuttgart: Steiner, 1996. Bremmer, Jan. “The First Pogrom? Religious Violence in Alexandria in 38 ce?” In Alexandria. Hub of the Hellenistic World. Edited by Benjamin Schliesser, 245–259. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021a. –. “Ioudaismos, Christianismos and the Parting of the Ways.” In Jews and Christians. Parting Ways in the First Two Centuries c.e.? Edited by Jens Schröter et al., 57–87. Berlin/ Boston: de Gruyter, 2021b. Bringmann, Klaus. Geschichte der Juden im Altertum. Vom babylonischen Exil bis zur arabischen Eroberung. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2005. Cook, John Granger. Roman Attitudes Toward the Christians. From Claudius to Hadrian. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010. –. “Chrestiani, Christiani, Χριστιανοί: a Second Century Anachronism?” Vigiliae Christianae 74 (2020): 237–264. Dibelius, Martin. “Rom und die Christen im ersten Jahrhundert.” In Das frühe Christentum im römischen Staat. Edited by Richard Klein, 47–105. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971 (orig. 1956). Drinkwater, John F. Nero. Emperor and Court. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Fiedrowicz, Michael. “Die Christenverfolgung nach dem Brand Roms im Jahr 64.” In Nero. Kaiser, Künstler und Tyrann. Edited by Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier et al., 250– 256. Darmstadt: Theiss, 2016. Frend, William H. C. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church. A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus. Oxford: Blackwell, 1965. Frenschkowski, Marco. “Nero.” RAC 25 (2013): 839–878. Fuchs, Harald. “Tacitus über die Christen.” Vigiliae Christianae 4 (1950): 65–93. Gray-Fow, Michael J. G. “Why the Christians? Nero and the Great Fire.” Latomus 57 (1998): 595–616. Green, Bernard. Christianity in Ancient Rome: The First Three Centuries. London/New York: T&T Clark, 2010. Griffin, Miriam T. Nero. The End of a Dynasty. London: B. T. Batsford, 1984.

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Gruen, Erich S. Diaspora. Jews amidst Greeks and Romans. Cambridge, MS: Harvard University Press, 2002. Grüll, Tibor and Benke, László. “A Hebrew/Aramaic Graffito and Poppaea’s Alleged Jewish Sympathy.” Journal of Jewish Studies 62 (2011): 35–53. Hanslik, Rudolf. “Der Erzählkomplex vom Brand Roms und der Christenverfolgung bei Tacitus.” WS 76 (1963): 92–108. Hartmann, Nicole. Martyrium. Variationen und Potenziale eines Diskurses im Zweiten Jahrhundert. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2013. Holztrattner, Franz. Poppaea Neronis potens. Studien zu Poppaea Sabina. Graz/Horn: Berger, 1995. Hopkins, Keith. “Christian Number and Its Implications” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998): 185–226. Horn, Friedrich Wilhelm. “Das Testimonium Flavianum aus neutestamentlicher Perspektive.” In Josephus und das Neue Testament. Wechselseitige Wahrnehmungen. Edited by Christfried Böttrich and Jens Herzer, 117–136. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007. Horrell, David G. “The Label Χριστιανός: 1 Peter 4:16 and the Formation of Christian Identity.” Journal of Biblical Literature 2 (2007): 361–381. Jones, Christopher P. “The Historicity of the Neronian Persecution: A Response to Brent Shaw.” New Testament Studies 63 (2017): 146–152. Keresztes, Paul. “Nero, the Christians and the Jews in Tacitus and Clement of Rome.” Latomus 43 (1984): 404–413. Kienast, Dietmar. “Der Brand Roms und die Christen.” In Dietmar Kienast. Kleine Schriften. Edited by Raban von Haehling, Otfried von Vocano, and Ruprecht Ziegler, 425–441. Aalen: Scientia, 1994. Kinzig, Wolfram. Christenverfolgung in der Antike. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2019. Koch, Dietrich-Alex. Geschichte des Urchristentums. Ein Lehrbuch. 2nd Edition. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014. Koestermann, Erich. “Ein folgenschwerer Irrtum des Tacitus (Ann. 15,44,2 ff.)?” Historia 16 (1967): 456–469. –. Cornelius Tacitus. Annalen, Bd. 4: Buch 14–16. Erläutert und mit einer Einleitung versehen. Heidelberg: Winter, 1968. –. ed. Cornelii Taciti Libri qui Supersunt, Tom. 1: Ab Excessu Divi Augusti. Leipzig: Teubner, 1971. Lampe, Peter. Die stadtrömischen Christen in den ersten beiden Jahrhunderten. 2nd Edition. Tübingen: Mohr, 1989. Van Der Lans, Birgit. “The Politics of Exclusion. Expulsion of Jews and Others from Rome.” In People under Power. Early Jewish and Christian Responses to the Roman Empire. Edited by Outi Lehtipuu and Michael Labahn, 33–77. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015. Van Der Lans, Birgit and Bremmer, Jan N. “Tacitus and the Persecution of the Christians: An Invention of Tradition?” Eirene 53 (2017): 299–331. Leppin, Hartmut. Die frühen Christen. Von den Anfängen bis Konstantin. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2018. Lund, Allan A. “Zur Verbrennung der sogenannten Chrestiani (Tac. Ann. 15,44).” ZRGG 60 (2008): 253–261. Luomanen, Petri. “Nazarenes.” In A Companion to Second-Century Christian “Heretics.” Edited by Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen, 279–314. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2005. Malitz, Jürgen. Nero. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999.

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Meier, Mischa. Die neronische Christenverfolgung und ihre Kontexte. Heidelberg: Winter, 2021. Merker, Raimund. Tigellinus. Im Dienste Kaiser Neros zwischen Genuss und Gewalt. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019. Meyer, Eduard. Ursprung und Anfänge des Christentums, Bd. III: Die Apostelgeschichte und die Anfänge des Christentums. Stuttgart/Berlin: J. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1923. Mimouni, Simon Claude. “Les établissements nazoréens, ébionites et elkasaïtes s’après les hérésiologues de la Grande Église.” Annali di storia dell’esegesi 31.2 (2014): 25–39. Montanari, Franco. “Apion.” Der Neue Pauly 1 (1996): 845–847. Niehoff, Maren. Philon von Alexandria. Eine intellektuelle Biographie. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019. –. “Jews and the Emergence of Christianity.” In The Routledge Handbook of Jews and Judaism in Late Antiquity. Edited by Catherine Hezser, 95–110. London: Routledge, 2024. Nodet, Étienne. “Herodiani (Mc 3,6), Christiani (Actes 11,26).” Revue Biblique 121 (2014): 112–123. Öhler, Markus. Geschichte des frühen Christentums. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018. Peterson, Erik. “Christianus.” In id., Frühkirche, Judentum und Gnosis. Studien und Untersuchungen, 64–87. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1982. Pollini, John. “Burning Rome, Burning Christians.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Nero. Edited by Shadi Bartsch, Kirk Freudenburg, and Cedric Littlewood, 213– 236. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Schmitt, Tassilo. “Die Christenverfolgung unter Nero.” In Petrus und Paulus in Rom. Eine interdisziplinäre Debatte. Edited by Stefan Heid, 517–537. Freiburg/Basel/Vienna: Herder, 2011. Schnelle, Udo. Die getrennten Wege von Römern, Juden und Christen. Religionspolitik im 1. Jahrhundert n. Chr. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019. Schreiber, Stefan. “Die Chronologie der paulinischen Briefe.” In Paulus Handbuch. Edited by Friedrich Wilhelm Horn, 158–165. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. Schwartz, Daniel R. “Philo, His Family, and His Times.” The Cambridge Companion to Philo. Edited by Adam Kamesar, 9–31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Shaw, Brent D. “The Myth of the Neronian Persecution.” The Journal of Roman Studies 105 (2015): 73–100. Smallwood, Edith M. “The Alleged Jewish Tendencies of Poppaea Sabina.” Journal of Theological Studies 10 (1959): 329–335. –. Documents Illustrating the Principates of Gaius, Claudius and Nero. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967. Städele, Alfons. “Die Christenverfolgung nach dem Brand Roms im Jahre 64 (Tac. ann. 15,44) – eine Bilanz. ” MH 79 (2022): 268–294. Taylor, Justin. “Why Were the Disciples First Called ‘Christians’ at Antioch? (Acts 11,26).” RB 101 (1994): 75–94. Theissen, Gerd. Lokalkolorit und Zeitgeschichte in den Evangelien. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition. Freiburg/Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989. Tobin, Thomas. Paul’s Rhetoric in Its Contexts: The Argument of Romans. Peabody, MS: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004.

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Trebilco, Paul. Self-Designations and Group Identity in the New Testament. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Vahrenhorst, Martin. Der erste Brief des Petrus. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2016. Vittinghoff, Friedrich. “’Christianus sum’ – ‘Das Verbrechen’ von Außenseitern der römischen Gesellschaft.” Historia 33 (1984): 331–357. Wendt, Heidi. “Iudaica Romana. A Rereading of Judean Expulsions from Rome.” Journal of Ancient Judaism 6 (2015): 97–126. Williams, Margaret H. “‘Θεοσεβὴς γὰρ ἦν’ – The Jewish Tendencies of Poppaea Sabina.” Journal of Theological Studies 39 (1988): 97–111. Winterling, Aloys. A. Caligula. Eine Biographie. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2003.

New Testament Contexts

Sailing to Caesar Philo’s Embassy and Luke’s Paul in Rome Loveday Alexander In this article I will seek to contextualize Philo in his contemporary Roman world by comparing and contrasting his embassy to Gaius with the “embassy” of Paul to Rome as described in the New Testament Book of Acts. The comparison will be primarily on a literary level – text compared to text – but it will be illuminated by the legal and political realities of the time. I will argue that both texts – Acts no less than Philo’s Legatio – whether in every detail historical or not, strongly reflect the real world, as revealed by inscriptions and other documentary sources. Both Acts and the Legatio illustrate how Jews (in the case of Acts a Jewish “sect,” in the case of Philo a community in Alexandria) tried to negotiate their relationships with their fellow Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors within the legal and political framework of an imperial power which set itself up as the final arbitrator of their disputes. We will find strong convergences between Philo and Luke (particularly in the realia of the legal processes and the rhetorical strategies each deploys to make his case), but also, within the same broad framework, subtle but significant differences – differences which only become apparent when we set the two accounts side-byside.

1. Destination Rome: Paul and the Ending of Acts The book of Acts tells a story whose destination is Rome. Rome is the dramatic location for the final scene of the book, elaborately prepared for in the final eight chapters out of twenty-eight. Paul’s arrival in Rome has been predicted since Acts 19:21. It is heralded by the voyage and shipwreck described in vivid detail in chapters 27–28, and by the ceremonial welcome Paul receives on his arrival (Acts 28:15). Luke’s phraseology subtly highlights this sense of Rome as the destination of the text. “And so we came to Rome” (Acts 28:14) is a rhetorical sigh of relief that implies that Rome was the intended goal from the outset: “So that’s how we got to Rome!” This effect is reinforced by a subtle sense of homecoming in ch. 28, as the narrative slows down to take note of local landmarks like the Forum of Appius and the Three Taverns – familiar staging-posts on the Via Appia which

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signal to regular travelers “You’re nearly there!”1 Luke uses the local Italian name for Puteoli (unlike Josephus and Philo, who generally prefer the Greek name Dicaearchia).2 Rome is not only Paul’s ultimate destination in Acts, but also the final location of the implied author: the use of the first person implies that he is one of Paul’s companions on his final voyage (Acts 27:1, 28:1–16). Whether or not this implied author is Luke, the “beloved physician” and loyal prison companion of the later Pauline letters,3 this is the clearest indication we have within Acts of the implied location of the author. In Luke’s narrative, the legal mechanism for bringing Paul to Rome is the “appeal to Caesar” (Acts 25:11–27), and the juridical aspects of this have been comprehensively studied by Roman historians.4 Less attention has been paid to the political dimensions of this trial narrative, and to its function within the overall plot of Acts. Why does Luke devote so much narrative space to a trial (or a series of trials) which is ultimately unresolved? In Acts 21–26, Paul undergoes a series of hearings, from the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem to the Roman governor in Caesarea, culminating in a grand set-piece speech before the Jewish king Agrippa II (ch. 26). But when he gets to Rome, there is no climactic trial scene before Caesar – nor do we ever find out what finally happened to him. Did his case ever come to trial? Was he released to continue his mission in Crete or Spain? Or did he perish with Peter (as tradition has it) in the Neronian persecution of 64 ce? We do not know.5 The outcome of Paul’s trial is never resolved in Acts: the apostle is left hanging around in Rome, waiting in Kafkaesque fashion to present his case to Caesar. Yet after all this elaborate preparation, the final chapter of Acts seems remarkably little concerned about Paul’s preparations for his coming appearance before Caesar. Instead, Luke shows him building bridges with the local Jewish community. Paul’s final self-defense (ἀπολογία) in Acts is addressed not to Caesar but to his own people: “I had done nothing against my own people or the customs of our ancestors” (Acts 28:17). The appeal to Caesar (he concedes) may look like a hostile move, but Paul insists that he had no choice (Acts 28:19 “not as though I had any charge to bring against my own people”). And given all that has happened in Acts, the equable response of the Jewish community leaders is equally surprising: “We have received no letters from Judaea about you, nor have we had bad reports about you from any of the brothers coming 1 For Jewish settlement around the Via Appia, see Lampe 2003: 19–47. For the locations, see Thompson & Wilson 2023. 2 Cf. Joseph. Vit. 16: “Dicaearchia, which the Italians called Puteoli;” Philo, Legat. 185. Schwartz sees the Latin name as an indication of a Roman source: Schwartz 1990: 7, note 8. 3 Phlm 24; 2 Tim 4:11; Col 4:14. 4 See especially Sherwin-White 1963; Tajra 2010; Omerzu 2002 (and the literature there cited). 5 On the conflicting views (ancient and modern) about Paul’s fate, see Puig i Tarrech et al. 2015.

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from there. But we would like to hear from you what you think, for regarding this sect (αἵρεσις) we know that everywhere it is spoken against” (Acts 28:21–22). If Acts is an apologia pro Paulo – or pro ecclesia – addressed to a Roman audience, why does Luke’s Paul spend so much of his time in this final scene (and indeed throughout the narrative) addressing Jewish audiences?6 If the intended audience of Acts is a Roman court official, why does the narrative contain so much of what C. K. Barrett once called “theological and ecclesiastical rubbish”?7 I want to suggest in this essay that the answer to these questions lies in a better understanding of the political dynamics of the first-century practice which Josephus calls (in a neatly ironic Greek phrase) “sailing to Caesar” (πλεῖν ἐπὶ Καίσαρα).8 Acts is a text which purports to describe real-world events: even if that description is skewed or fictitious, we cannot understand the represented world of the text without some understanding of the real-world situations it purports to represent. Despite extensive studies of the legal aspects of Paul’s appeal to Caesar, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the wider framework of embassies and referrals to Caesar – and indeed to the place of Rome itself – within the intersecting political networks that dominated the Jewish experience of empire in the first century. Surprising, given that Philo and Josephus give us two contemporary but independent first-century Jewish reflections on the Jewish experience of “sailing to Caesar.” It is worth noting, too, that at least one late first-century Christian writer chose to present the imprisoned apostle Paul as an “ambassador in chains:” “Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains.”9 In a first-century imperial context, this metaphor recalls not the ambassadors of the Greek city-states of the fifth century bce, free and autonomous political entities exchanging embassies to negotiate terms of peace or war, but the “embassies” sent to Rome by subject communities to intercede or to argue a case before Caesar. These are the embassies described by Philo and Josephus, and attested in the epigraphic record as a source of civic pride, a vestige of political independence under empire. But as both literary and epigraphic sources make clear, in this imperial world the boundaries between embassy and trial, between ambassador and plaintiff, are much more ambiguous than we might expect.

6

As argued more fully in Alexander 1999. Barrett 1961: 63, “No Roman official would have filtered out so much of what to him would be theological and ecclesiastical rubbish in order to reach so tiny a grain of relevant apology.” 8 See Joseph. BJ 2.181–182. Compare also BJ 2.244. 9 Eph 6:19–20 NRSV. See also Phlm 9, where presbutes is sometimes translated “ambassador” (RSV, though NRSV renders “old man”). For the ambassador metaphor in Paul, see Bash 1997. Bash too quickly dismisses the emendation presbeutes in Phlm 9 (a. a. O. 117–119); see the discussion in Lightfoot 1879: 338–339; O’Brien 1982: 289–290. 7

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2. Philo’s Embassy to Gaius10 Philo’s Legatio ad Gaium is one of the most important literary sources for the operation of civic embassies in the imperial world of the first century. In this text, part apologetic, part autobiographical, Philo gives us a vivid account of his journey to Rome in 38–41 ce as an ambassador to Gaius, sent to plead on behalf of the Jewish community in Alexandria. It was this experience of serving on an embassy which (on his own account) winkled him out of his philosophical seclusion in Alexandria and catapulted him into the heady and dangerous world of imperial politics (Spec. 3.1–3).11 Maren Niehoff describes Philo’s embassy to Rome as “a turning point in his life,” which had a dramatic effect on his thinking and his literary output: it was “a crucial experience, not only politically, but also intellectually,” which “had an immediate effect upon his choice of literary genre, Jewish identity, and philosophical orientation.”12 Philo’s embassy to Rome has to be understood within the broader political framework of Alexandrian politics, shaped by the triangulation between Rome, the Jewish community in Alexandria, and the local Alexandrian elites.13 In this debate, Rome is essentially invoked as arbitrator in a local dispute about Jewish citizen rights in Alexandria – a case whose repercussions were still reverberating more than fifty years later when Josephus wrote the Contra Apionem.14 Philo’s depiction of the embassy is centered on an ideal vision of Roman justice. He describes with approval the emperor’s role as independent arbitrator: For this is what a judge would do: he would sit with assessors selected for their high merit, as the case under examination was of the greatest importance …; the opposing parties would stand on either side of him with the advocates who would speak for them, and he would listen in turn to the accusation and the defense for the space of water-time allowed! Then he would rise and consult with his assessors as to the verdict which in full accordance with justice they would publicly declare.15

Here the judgement of the emperor is invoked, not in a prosecution under Roman law, but in a community dispute between rival civic communities. Behind the Legatio lies a three-cornered arbitration process in which Caesar (or his representative) stands at the apex of a triangle, with the two opposing parties facing each other to argue their case before him, each flanked by one or more supporters.16 In the event, however, the promised hearing threatens to turn 10

Some of this material appears in a shorter form in Alexander 2012. On the events in Alexandria which triggered Philo’s embassy, see Smallwood 1976: 220– 250; Schwartz 1990: 96–106; Gruen 2002; Van Der Horst 2003: 18–37. 12 Niehoff 2018: 11, 3. 13 Niehoff 2018: 28–34. 14 Joseph. Ap. 2.2; Barclay 2013: 167–173. 15 Philo, Legat. 350 16 Compare Flacc. 106: “For on these occasions the emperors showed themselves impartial 11

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into a farce. After keeping the ambassadors of both sides waiting for a hearing, Gaius summons them to make their case while he is surveying a couple of villas which he plans to renovate, forcing both sides to dance attendance, “mocked and reviled by our adversaries, as they do in the mimes at the theatres” (Legat. 359–368). Philo’s account highlights both the adversarial nature of the appeal process, and its essentially arbitrary character. Getting the emperor on your side is as much about soliciting favors as about seeking justice – a point that Luke makes with equal force in his account of Paul’s trial (cf. Acts 24:27, 25:3, 9, 11, 16). In the confusion, the ambassadors’ carefully-prepared arguments go unheard (Legat. 365), and Gaius’ final good-humored response to the Jewish delegation is, for Philo, a testimony not to Roman justice but to the grace of God (Legat. 367). What is striking here is that (though neither the Jewish ambassadors nor the Alexandrians are on trial), Philo makes no distinction between community arbitration and criminal prosecution. The forensic language of accusation and defense remains the same, whether the hearing in question is a criminal prosecution under Roman law, or an imperial tribunal giving a judgement between rival parties.17 What Philo describes is a heavily-populated hearing at the imperial court, with advocates speaking on both sides, and a council of “assessors” called in to advise the emperor: but beneath it all, the essentially agonistic structures of forensic rhetoric are clearly visible. Securing a hearing before the emperor was a risky strategy (as more than one Herodian princeling found to his cost).18 A successful plea could ensure the emperor’s favor: but an unfavorable judgement could lead to imprisonment, exile or death. Philo complains that his Jewish embassy encountered “a combination of a theatre and a prison in place of a tribunal” (Legat. 368–369), with an emperor of the attitude “not of a judge but of an accuser more hostile than those arrayed against us” (Legat. 349).19 In the practical experience of Rome’s subjects, the line between embassy and trial was perilously thin – as even King Agrippa I was to discover.20 Philo’s account also reveals the importance of influential supporters in securing a favorable outcome before the emperor. He notes the value of cultivating good relationships with the emperor’s household, and the malign influence of Helicon and Apelles (Legat. 166–178, 203–206). The Jewish community in Rome plays no judges; they listened equally to both the accuser and the defender, making it a rule to condemn no-one off-hand without a trial, influenced neither by hostility nor favour but by what actually was the truth.” 17 Cf. Josephus’ use of juridical language in Ap. 2.4–7: Barclay 2013: 172, note 18. 18 Cf. Josephus’ account of the “false Alexander” (BJ 2.101–110). BJ 2.181–183 provides another example: Herod Antipas, incited by his wife Herodias to petition the emperor for the title of king, is outflanked by his nephew Agrippa (who was much better connected at the imperial court) and ends up exiled to Gaul. 19 Cf. Philo, Legat. 180, 183. 20 This is the easiest way to explain the puzzling episode of the so-called “trial” of Agrippa I: Schwartz 1990: 96–99.

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part in Philo’s account of this embassy (though it does play a role in other firstcentury embassies, as recounted by Josephus). But the Herodian King Agrippa I, childhood friend of Gaius and counsellor to Claudius, made (or attempted to make) a number of significant interventions in the Alexandrian dispute and in the subsequent debacle over Gaius’ attempt to install his own statue in the Jerusalem Temple (Flacc. 103; Legat. 179, 261–333). Agrippa plays a central role in Philo’s presentation of the embassy and its afterlife, making a highly rhetorical plea to the emperor in the words of a letter (almost certainly fictitious) which Philo quotes in full.21 Through this device, Niehoff suggests, Philo fashions Agrippa as an influential spokesman for the Jewish cause, “turning the historical Agrippa into his own mouthpiece,” and exploiting Agrippa’s “exceptional popularity” among the Jews.22 Estimates of Agrippa’s popularity may vary;23 but the fact is that throughout the first century, irrespective of its standing with the Jewish communities in Judea and Alexandria, the Herodian dynasty, because of its social position in Roman society, played a significant role for Jews trying to secure a favorable hearing with the emperor in Rome.24 Philo’s account of the Embassy blurs the boundaries between the primary forensic setting of the speech for the defense (ἀπολογία) and the literary genre of apologetic.25 In the Legatio, the apologist is not an individual speaking in his own defense, but a group of ambassadors speaking for “the many myriads of the Alexandrian Jews” (Legat. 350), and implicitly for the whole Jewish nation: Surely it was a cruel situation that the fate of all the Jews everywhere should rest precariously on us five envoys? For if he should decide in favor of our enemies, what other city will keep tranquil or refrain from attacking its fellow inhabitants, what house of prayer will be left unscathed, what kind of civic rights will not be upset for those whose lot is cast under the ancient institutions of the Jews?26

So when the Jewish delegates speak, they use the first person plural to speak for a whole community. The charges, too, expand outwards from precise political issues (claims about citizenship: Legat. 363) to general matters of religious practice (the Jewish refusal to eat pork: Legat. 361). Philo’s presentation also highlights the inherent duality of the apologetic audience, which is embedded in the public structures of forensic rhetoric. The ambassadors (like any defendant in court) have to answer accusations emanating from the Alexandrians; in this sense, they are responding to their opponents. But the ambassadors’ plea is addressed not 21

Philo, Legat. 276–329; Niehoff 2018: 43–45. Niehoff 2018: 44. 23 See Goodman 1996: 749; Schwartz 1990: 157–171. 24 On the role of Agrippa in the Alexandrian dispute, see Schwartz 1990: 93–106. For the role of the Herodians in Flavian Rome, see Bowersock 2005; Schwartz 2005. 25 Alexander 1999, 2012. 26 Philo, Legat. 370–371; cf. Legat. 355 “And when I say ‘they’ I include also the other Jews.” 22

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to the Alexandrian opponents, but to the tribunal of justice, the Roman emperor and his council.

3. Embassies to Rome: Inscriptions and Josephus Philo’s Embassy provides valuable literary testimony to a practice that was widespread in the Roman world. There is considerable epigraphic evidence for the habit of dispatching civic embassies from subject communities to the emperor in the first century.27 Embassies from the Greek cities of the empire, or from communities within them, travelled to Rome at their own expense to ask the emperor to resolve judicial disputes, inheritance disputes, and disputes about civic status between rival local communities. These embassies dealt with a range of topics, including “greetings and congratulations, expressions of loyalty, grief or attributions of honor,” which might “raise judicial or quasi-judicial matters, or ask a question, inform, complain about an official, or seek to establish, regulate or confirm the rights of the sending community.”28 Many of them express the subject communities’ anxiety to convey expressions of loyalty to the ruling elite, especially the emperor Gaius.29 Like Philo, they invoke an ideal paradigm of Roman justice, with the emperor at the apex of a justice system dispensed by his surrogates and as a last resort by Caesar himself.30 Embassies and referrals to Caesar play a surprisingly large role in Josephus’ account of first-century Jewish history.31 The habit of referring Judean disputes to Caesar for resolution is already well established in the tortuous dynastic politics of the Herod family, recounted in Books 1 and 2 of the Jewish War.32 Indeed BJ 1.452–457 sets out what is in many ways the quintessential scenario for such an appeal, when Herod’s son Alexander is sent to Caesar on a charge of plotting against his father, but uses his rhetorical skills to convince Augustus of his innocence and to engineer a reconciliation with his father and a grudging tribute 27 Usefully collected in the “Appendix of Greek Inscriptions,” in Bash 1997: 165–263. For the practice, see Millar 1966: 156–166; further in Millar 1992; Lintott 1993. 28 Bash 1997: 58–59. 29 E. g. IG VII 2711; SEG XI (1954) 992 (Bash 1997: 177, 212). These inscriptions shed light on Philo’s concern about Flaccus’ failure to convey to Gaius the congratulatory decree of the Jewish community in Alexandria: Flacc. 97–103. 30 For embassies on judicial concerns, cf. e. g. SIG3 II 780 (Bash 1997: 186–187); SEG IX (1944) 8 (Bash 1997: 200). 31 Cf. the story of Josephus’ own embassy to Rome in Vit. 13–16. In a story that shows some striking parallels with Paul’s journey to Rome in Acts 27 (complete with shipwreck), Josephus undertakes the arduous journey to Rome as an act of solidarity with a group of priests referred to Caesar by the procurator Felix. In the event, Josephus does not appear before the emperor in person, but relies (successfully) on achieving his goal via the backstairs influence of the actor Aliturus and the pro-Jewish empress Poppaea. 32 Cf. e. g. Joseph. BJ 1.451–457, 510, 524.

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to the concordia (ὁμόνοια) of Caesar. After Herod’s death, Caesar plays a key role in resolving the long-running disputes between Herod’s heirs over the disposal of Herod’s kingdom (BJ 2.15–100). Archelaus travels to Rome in order to further his claim to the kingdom, accompanied by Salome and other family members, “ostensibly to support (συναγωνιούμενοι) the claims of Archelaus to the succession, but in reality to accuse him (κατηγορήσοντες) of the recent illegal proceedings in the Temple” (2.15–18). Archelaus is not on trial: he travels to Rome voluntarily to make his case before Augustus. But Josephus, like Philo, frames the narrative as a forensic contest (ἀγών) of charge (ἔγκλημα) and accusation (κατηγορία), with witnesses, orators and supporters on both sides (2.23–38). When dispatches arrive from Varus, the Legate of Syria (2.39–79), Archelaus faces a new suit (δίκη) against an embassy of fifty ambassadors from Judaea making a plea for national autonomy, supported by a large crowd (πλῆθος) of eight thousand Roman Jews (2.80–81). Once again, Caesar summons a council (συνέδριον) “composed of the Roman magistrates and his friends.” The two parties in the dispute stand before him: on the one side “Archelaus with his friends,” and opposite them his “accusers” (κατήγοροι), i. e. the Judean embassy supported by the Jews of Rome (2.82–83). There is an air of theatricality about all this: this is a public occasion, where everything hangs on how the various parties are seen to position themselves. The dispute follows essentially the agonistic structure described by Philo in Legat. 350. The plaintiffs (κατήγοροι) state their case against Archelaus and plead for direct rule from Rome (2.84–92). Nicolaus, speaking for the defense, rebuts the charges (ἀπελύσατο τὰς […] αἰτίας) and brings countercharges (κατηγόρει) against the Jewish national character. After listening to the charges and countercharges on each side, Caesar consults his own council before announcing his decision (2.93–100). In this agonistic atmosphere, neither side feels any compunction about broadening out the issues from particular charges to ethnic characteristics. So the Jewish ambassadors claim on behalf of their whole nation that “calumniated though they were as factious (στασιώδεις) and always at war, they knew how to obey equitable rulers.” In response, Nicolaus (himself a Syrian) retorts by describing the Jewish national character as “impatient of all authority and insubordinate towards their sovereigns” (2.92) – a damaging (and racist) charge that was to haunt Roman-Jewish relations for decades to come.33 Standing before Caesar was a high-stakes game in which the long-term loss could far outweigh the possibility of short-term gain. The habit of referring disputes to Caesar continues to play a major role in Josephus’ account of the years of procuratorial rule leading up to the outbreak of war in Judaea in 66 ce. Both the procurator and the legate of Syria, in virtue of their imperium, had the power as Caesar’s delegate to resolve local disputes; Josephus records that the procurators expected such disputes to be referred to their 33

On Nicolaus, see Toher 2017.

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judgement.34 Sometimes the governor himself might choose to refer a difficult case to the emperor: in AJ 20.161 Felix put many brigands to death, but referred (ἀνέπεμψεν) the ringleader Eleazar to Rome; or BJ 2.270 (both sides sent to Rome “as embassies” in a community dispute over civic rights in Caesarea). Dissatisfied provincials could send an embassy to petition Caesar in person but had to request the procurator’s permission first (AJ 20.6–9; cf. Philo, Flacc. 97). And once in Rome, other interested parties might intervene to put pressure on Caesar: cf. AJ 20.10–14, where Caesar grants the petition of a Jewish embassy against the governor as a favor to “my friend Agrippa.”35 The complex dynamics in these cases – and the paper-thin boundaries between embassy and trial – are illustrated well by the Samaritan-Galilean controversy, which Josephus recounts at great length in BJ 2.232–246/AJ 20.118–136. The story starts with a local quarrel between Galileans and Samaritans over the murder of a Galilean pilgrim en route to Jerusalem. When militants on both sides threaten to take the law into their own hands, the Jewish leaders (οἱ γνώριμοι) appeal first to the procurator Cumanus and then to Quadratus, the legate of Syria, to resolve the dispute. After two full hearings, with the leaders on each side accusing the other, Quadratus decides to refer the whole case to Caesar.36 He sends the high priests Jonathan and Ananias in chains to Rome “to give an account before Claudius Caesar” and “orders” the procurator Cumanus, with Celer the military tribune and the Samaritan leaders, to “sail to Rome” (πλεῖν ἐπὶ Ῥώμης) to get a decision in the imperial court.37 Once in Rome, everything depends on amassing collateral support: the Samaritans rely on their supporters among Claudius’ freedmen, but the Jews are saved by the influence of Agrippa II, who “happened to be in Rome” and (through the agency of the empress Agrippina) “persuaded Caesar to give the case a thorough hearing (διακούσαντα) in a manner befitting his respect for law” (AJ 20.135). The result is a complete reversal of fortunes. The intervention of Agrippa II results in a triumphant vindication of the high-priestly party: sent to Rome in chains, they return in triumph, and it is their accusers (including two Roman officials) who face exile and death. The Herodians’ role as power brokers in Jewish affairs was not limited to Rome. The younger Agrippa, though he never acceded to the kingdom of Judea, seems to have inherited his father’s desire to intervene when it suited him in the complex political relationships between Jewish leaders and Roman officials in the pre-war years, whether in Rome or in Judea. Having taken over from his uncle Herod of Chalcis the authority to appoint the High Priests, he used it more 34

Joseph. AJ 20.2–3, 20.113–117, 20.173–177; BJ 2.270.

35 Contrast AJ 20.182, where Jewish leaders from Caesarea go to Rome to accuse the departing

governor Felix. Felix is pardoned as a favour to his brother Pallas, a favourite of the emperor’s. 36 Joseph. BJ 2.243; “in chains” according to AJ 20.131; see also AJ 20.161. 37 Joseph. BJ 2.243–244; AJ 20.131–132.

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than once in the turbulent politics of the early 60s.38 Two brief episodes from this period illustrate how Caesar acts as ultimate point of reference in the constantlyshifting alliances between the Roman governor, the High Priests, and Agrippa. In AJ 20.189–196, Josephus recounts how Agrippa’s “arrogant, patronizing behavior” sparks off a row with the high priests, who erect a high wall to block his view of the temple sacrifices – thereby also blocking the view of the Roman soldiers patrolling the temple precincts.39 When the governor Festus orders the wall to be demolished, the priestly leaders petition for leave to send an embassy (πρεσβεῦσαι) to Caesar. Somewhat surprisingly, Nero allows the wall to stand “as a favor” (χαριζόμενος) to Poppaea, who (according to Josephus) was a “Godfearer” and thus favored the Jews. A couple of years later, Agrippa intervenes again in the aftermath of the judicial murder of “the brother of Jesus the so-called Messiah, James by name, and certain others” (AJ 20.200–203). In the interval between Festus’ death and the arrival of the new governor Albinus, the high priest Ananus seizes the opportunity to accuse James and others of (unspecified) offences against Jewish law at a specially-convened council, and to have them sentenced to death by stoning.40 To Josephus, this action is a blatant perversion of due legal process, rightly condemned by the more fair-minded (ἐπιεικέστατοι) and law-observant residents of Jerusalem – i. e. the moderate priestly class to which Josephus himself belonged by birth and inclination.41 The moderates’ protest follows two well-trodden paths: a secret approach to Agrippa, and a petition to the incoming governor Albinus. Josephus’ story clearly reflects the interests of his own class: he uses the story as an illustration of the potential for corrupt government and of the degeneration of the high-priestly office in the early 60s. On this occasion, Agrippa II and the Roman governor act in concert: Albinus reproves Ananus for acting ultra vires, and Agrippa deposes him as high priest. This last case never got as far as Caesar’s court. Decisive concerted action by Albinus and Agrippa brought the affair to a swift conclusion, nipping Ananus’ power-play in the bud. But had Ananus wanted to take the risk of mounting an appeal to Caesar, he would have had to take the same route as his predecessor Ishmael, petitioning the governor for leave to send an embassy, then defending his actions before Caesar against the accusations of Albinus, who could doubtless have reckoned (at least in this case) on the support of Agrippa.

38 Joseph. AJ 15.407, 18.132, 20.9–12, 20.16, 20.104, 20.138, 20.159, 20.179, 20.194, 20.354. On the importance of this role, cf. Schwartz 1990: 64–65, 69–73, esp. 69, note 9. 39 Horsley 1986: 43. 40 Mason 2003: 236–248. 41 Rajak 1973: 358. See also Rajak 2001: 161–176.

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4. The Trials of Paul (Acts 21–26) Josephus’ account of the death of James (which Luke does not mention) brings us back full circle to Luke’s account of Paul’s trials in Acts 21–28.42 It is clear that Luke’s story belongs in the same world as Josephus’ account of pre-war Jerusalem. It deploys a similar cast of characters, exploring the triangulation between the local authorities, the Roman governor, and the Jewish king.43 Of course the story also reveals instructive differences in scale and authorial perspective. For Josephus, James is just a footnote in history, a regrettable casualty of a corrupt political system: the whole focus of his story is on the wisdom and moderation of his own class, appalled at a political system spinning out of control. For Luke, by contrast, Paul is always center stage, a fully-fledged Christian martyr speaking with full philosophic “boldness” (παρρησία) on behalf of the faith he is prepared to die for. Nevertheless, Luke’s lengthy description of Paul’s hearings in Jerusalem, Caesarea and Rome reflects very well the kind of tensions that Josephus describes in the pre-war years. Whenever we date Acts, reading Luke’s narrative alongside Josephus’ account of the pre-war years proves surprisingly illuminating, revealing unsuspected layers of irony and political realism in Luke’s account. Moreover, Luke’s narrative shares with both Josephus and Philo what we might call a representational likeness, a sense that this material is both interesting and important. The kind of detail Luke gives – the absorbing detail of trials and arguments and the political jockeying behind the scenes – is exactly what interests Josephus and Philo: it is supremely “worth recounting” (αξιόλογος). Despite their different perspectives, Luke, Philo and Josephus share a common perception that this is what history is made of. Thus in Acts 21–26, Paul is progressively distanced from the Jerusalem Temple, with its riotous crowds and scheming high priests, and brought step by step under the protective umbrella of Rome. Luke tells the story in four stages, each of which offers Paul an opportunity to make his case before a different audience: the Temple crowd (ch. 22), the high-priestly council (ch. 23), the Roman tribunal (ch. 24), and the Herodian audience with Agrippa II and his sister Berenice (ch. 26). At the center is the great set-piece courtroom scene of the trial before Felix (following exactly Philo’s ideal description), a full-blown rhetorical contest (ἀγών) with defendant and accusers making their speeches before the representative of imperial justice (ch. 24). After Felix’s prevarication leaves the issue of the trial unresolved, the arrival of the new governor Festus precipitates 42 As Heike Omerzu 2015 observes at 188, “Methodologically one must distinguish between the Lukan portrayal of the proceedings and the reconstruction of the historical trial of St Paul”. It is the former that concerns me throughout this section, i. e. Paul’s trials as represented in Acts. The historicity of Luke’s account is a different question which I will not pursue here. 43 The key legal difference is that in Luke’s narrative, Paul (unlike James) is a Roman citizen, who is able to use the mechanism of appealing to Caesar to secure his own passage to Rome.

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a new trial (ch. 25). This is the trigger for the appeal to Caesar (25:10–12), which brings Paul to Rome – and brings Agrippa into the picture as a powerful potential ally (ch. 26). After an action-packed shipwreck narrative (chs. 27–28), the story ends in Rome with Paul preparing for his appearance before Caesar by canvassing support from the local Jewish community (ch. 28). Luke’s story comes to life when we read it against the pervasive patterns of “sailing to Caesar” identified by Philo and Josephus. Although the details are specific to Paul’s case, the underlying political structure is immediately recognizable. In effect, Luke portrays Paul’s case as a local dispute between Paul and the highpriestly authorities in Jerusalem, sent up to Caesar for adjudication when the local governor fails to resolve it. But this means that (like Philo in the Embassy) Luke has to address two audiences at once, the charges emanating from the local community, and the Roman tribunal which has been called in to adjudicate: and both are addressed in this sequence of speeches. The inciting incident (as so often in Josephus) is a riot in the Temple (Acts 21:27–36), which brings Paul into confrontation with the increasing militance of popular religious feeling in Jerusalem.44 Religious zeal (δεισιδαιμονία) is often precisely the instrument (ὄργανον) that Josephus identifies as destabilizing the careful balancing act between the priestly aristocracies, the Herodians, and Rome in the run-up to the war (BJ 2.230). This is why Luke carefully characterizes Paul’s speech to the Temple crowd as a speech in Aramaic (Acts 21.40), stressing Paul’s “zeal for the law” (Acts 22:3) and the continuity between his Damascus-road vision and his ancestral faith (Acts 22:14). In the event, Paul is expelled from the Temple on the double charge of “teaching everyone everywhere against our people, our law, and this sanctuary,” and defiling the temple by bringing in a “Greek” (i. e. Gentile: Acts 21:28). Only the second charge was directly relevant under Roman law: bringing Gentiles past the boundary into the Temple precincts was a capital offence against Jewish law, upheld by Roman authority.45 The threat of mob violence brings the Roman tribune Claudius Lysias onto the scene (Acts 21:31).46 Since Paul was charged with an offence against Jewish law, it was appropriate to summon “the high priests and the whole council (συνέδριον)” in an attempt to clarify the charges (Acts 22:30, 23:28).47 Luke shares Josephus’ awareness of sectarian tensions with44 Cf. James’ warning that there are now “many thousands” of Jewish Christians who are “zealots for the law” (Acts 21:20) and the popular rumour that Paul was teaching Diaspora Jews “apostasy from Moses” (Acts 21:21). 45 Joseph. BJ 2.341, 5.193–194; AJ 12.145, 15.417; Ap. 2.103; Philo, Legat. 31.212. Tajra 2010: 65–66. 46 For Roman vigilance at festival times, cf. AJ 20.106. To readers who knew the fate of his predecessor Celer, Lysias’ caution would be understandable: cf. BJ 2.244–246; AJ 20.131, 136. 47 Joseph. AJ 20.202 appears to imply that the high priest was not empowered to summon the Council without Roman consent: but see Mason 2003: 246. The high priest Ananias (Acts 23:2) had himself been “referred to Caesar” in chains by the previous procurator, only to be saved by

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in the Sanhedrin (Acts 23:6: cf. AJ 20.199). But Paul’s appeal to the Pharisaic belief in resurrection (repeated in Acts 24:15, 26:8) is not merely a cynical political move. It is part of the wider apologetic message of Acts, presenting Pauline Christianity as a legitimate Jewish option among the “sects” of Second Temple Judaism. So Paul’s transfer to Caesarea (Acts 23:12–30) marks a significant transition, rescuing the apostle from a dangerous situation in an out-of-control Jerusalem. Luke’s account of the plot to assassinate Paul may be fictitious, but it fits well with Josephus’ account of the virtual breakdown of law and order in the city of Jerusalem in this period.48 From this point on, Paul is effectively under the protection of the Roman governor in Caesarea, and does his best to ensure that he remains there. Whatever Felix’s limitations as a governor (AJ 20.162; Tac. Ann. 12.54), in Paul’s situation he is the representative of imperial justice, and it is important that he promises Paul a thorough hearing.49 This sets the stage for Paul’s formal trial, where the defendant has the opportunity to make his own defense (ἀπολογία) before the procurator (Acts 24:10–21) in the presence of his accusers. Like Philo, Luke stresses the importance of the framework of Roman justice to his narrative (Acts 25:16).50 The charges are now re-stated in terms calculated to appeal to a Roman audience. Paul is accused of being the ringleader of the Nazorean sect, a “plague” (λοιμός) stirring up dissension (στάσις) “among all the Jews throughout the inhabited world,” as well as attempting to defile the Temple (Acts 24:5–6). These are serious charges. Had Paul been found guilty of profaning the Temple, he would have been executed, Roman or not (which is why Luke makes it clear that this charge was based on mistaken identity: Acts 21:29). The charge of fomenting civil dissension (στάσις) or “tumult,” (θόρυβος; cf Lat. turba), which had dogged Paul all through his travels in Acts, was much harder to prove.51 It is striking how this echoes the charges brought against the Jewish community in Alexandria.52 Both before and after the Jewish war, Rome was constantly vigilant against the threat of civil dissension, especially if it seemed likely to spread from Judea to the worldwide Jewish community. Paul’s speech in response simply denies all the charges, focusing on the alleged the intervention of Agrippa (BJ 2.243; AJ 20.131, 161). The same verb is used of Paul in Acts 25:21. Is it possible that Paul’s comment “I did not know that he was the high priest” (Acts 23:5) is an ironic reference to this episode? 48 Joseph. AJ 20.165, 180–181; Horsley 1986: 42–46. 49 Διακούσομαί (Acts 23.35) implies a full legal hearing: cf. AJ 20.129, 130, 135, 195. 50 Festus’ statement could be read as irony, implying a subtle critique of the deficiencies of Felix’s hearing (Acts 24.19) – and possibly of the imperial court itself: cf. Joseph. AJ 20.135–136 with Feldman’s note b ad loc. 51 Alexander 2015: 153–173. 52 Cf. the Letter of Claudius (P.Lond. 1912; CPJ 153, 99–100) which warns the Alexandrian Jewish community against “fomenting a general plague (noson) infecting the whole world” (Smallwood 1976: 214, note 41).

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Temple incident (to which the prosecution has no witnesses), and insisting that his “sectarian” belief is a perfectly legitimate form of Judaism (Acts 24:14). In other words, he consistently steers the conversation away from Roman-oriented political issues towards Jewish-oriented religious issues, what Gallio in Corinth had called “disputes about words and names and your own law” (Acts 18:15). Felix creates an effective stalemate by dismissing the accusers and adjourning the trial sine die, keeping Paul in custody in the hope of receiving a bribe (Acts 24:26).53 Felix’s panic-stricken reaction to Paul’s discourses on the Stoic virtues of “righteousness, self-control and moderation” (Acts 24:25) would resonate with Roman audiences, and is paralleled by Josephus’ wry comment on Felix’s annoyance at the “incessant rebukes” of the high priest Jonathan (AJ 20.162). Josephus tells us that on his return to Rome, Felix himself was to face charges from the leaders of the Jewish community of Caesarea (AJ 20.182). So it is consistent with this political situation that in Acts, when Felix departs for Rome, he leaves Paul in prison “as a favor to the Jews” (Acts 24:27): Felix needed all the goodwill he could get. It is left to his more energetic successor Festus (whose short term of office incurs only neutral or positive comments from Josephus) to resolve the situation by re-opening Paul’s case.54 This is effectively a new trial, with the procurator seated on his tribunal and the accusers present in person to bring “many serious charges” against Paul (Acts 25:6–7). Luke’s narrative focus is now on the political pressures behind the scenes, with the high-priestly party pressuring Festus “as a favor” to move Paul’s retrial to Jerusalem (Acts 25:3, 9). As we have seen, the language of “favor” for one side or the other is familiar from the accounts of imperial trials in Philo and Josephus. For a new governor embarking on an energetic program of law-enforcement, it would seem only reasonable to utilize the expertise of a Jewish court as the governor’s consilium.55 Moreover, this was a local judiciary with powerful connections at the imperial court, as the affair of the Temple wall was to prove (AJ 20.189–195). Paul’s only recourse against being sent back to Jerusalem (and almost certain execution) is to exercise his right as a Roman citizen and appeal to Caesar.56 After a formal consultation with his consilium, Festus agrees. The stage is set for Paul to follow the well-travelled but inherently risky route of “sailing to Caesar.” This brings us finally to Paul’s closing speech before Agrippa II (ch. 26). In legal terms, this final scene is redundant: Paul has already made his appeal to Caesar, and Festus has already decided that Paul has committed no offence (Acts 25:18, 25). If Luke had just wanted to convey Festus’ legal opinion, he could have done it more simply by quoting his letter to the emperor. But Agrippa’s ceremoni53

A practice attributed by Josephus to Albinus (BJ 2.273). On Festus, cf. Joseph. BJ 2.271; AJ 20.182, 185–196. 55 Sherwin-White 1963: 67. 56 Acts 25:10–12, 21, 23–27, 26:32. Cf. Frier 1996: 976–977.

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al visit to greet the new governor, and his reputation as an expert in Jewish affairs (Acts 25:13–22) creates the dramatic opportunity for Paul’s speech, one of the longest in the book, and effectively his swansong. It marks the point in the book where dramatic (intradiegetic) audience and rhetorical (extradiegetic) audience come closest together, and forms a summary of Luke’s apologetic presentation of Paul.57 Rather as Philo does with Agrippa I, Luke uses the real-world figure of Agrippa II to create a bridge between Caesarea and Rome, exploiting his role as informal power-broker in Jewish affairs to set up an ideal prefiguration of the confrontation with Caesar which never actually happens in Rome. It is easy to dismiss Agrippa II as a lightweight, a playboy king who was fated never to inherit his father’s kingdom of Judea and failed signally to prevent the outbreak of war in 66.58 But (as Josephus testifies) Agrippa was actually playing quite a significant role in Judean politics at the time of Paul’s trial. The title of king, awarded by Claudius in 53, carried with it the royal prerogative of exercising judgement.59 The existence of a Jewish king (even without the kingdom of Judea) added a significant extra dimension to the power dynamics between the high priests and the Roman governors of Judea (cf. AJ 20.189–196). But Agrippa’s role as a power-broker in Jewish-Roman relations was not limited to Judea. One of the striking political features of this period is the remarkable and public constancy of Roman favor to Herod and his descendants.60 The Agrippas in particular, father and son, benefited from close personal connections with the imperial family, based on “skill at court intrigue and the friendship of a Roman prince.”61 As we have seen, Agrippa II had an impressive history of using these connections to secure favors for Jewish litigants at the imperial tribunal in Rome. Moreover, Agrippa continued to be a name worth citing in post-war Flavian Rome.62 Like Josephus, he had built up timely personal connections with the new imperial dynasty, and his sister Berenice (who as Goodman observes had “no formal powers at all”) achieved her own notoriety and influence through a long and public affair with Titus.63 Josephus, writing in Flavian Rome, finds it worthwhile to invoke Agrippa as an active patron and supporter of his literary endeavors (Vit. 362–367; Ap. 1.51–52). For writers on Jewish affairs, Agrippa functions effectively as the ideal Roman reader, securely embedded in imperial society but with a sympathetic ear attuned to Jewish concerns. 57

As Tajra 2010: 63 observes. Rajak 1991: 122–134. Also in Rajak 2001: 147–160. 59 On the kingdom of Agrippa II, cf. Joseph. AJ 20.138; BJ 2.247; Nero later added four cities in Peraea and Galilee (BJ 2.252). Philo’s account of the mock-king Carabas (Flacc. 38) underlines the popular perception that one of the principal functions of a king was dispensing justice. 60 Goodman 1996: 746. 61 Goodman 1996: 745. 62 Schwartz 2005. 63 Goodman 1996: 746. Berenice is mentioned briefly in Acts 25:13, 23. 58

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Establishing a positive connection with Agrippa thereby contributes on two levels to Luke’s dramatic representation of Paul as a prisoner about to present his case in Rome. Agrippa’s opinion adds nothing to Paul’s legal situation in Caesarea, but it could add crucial support for Paul’s upcoming defense in Rome (which lies beyond the horizon of the text). Luke consistently portrays Paul’s trials as a form of cognitio extra ordinem, with the accusations against Paul coming from the provincial authorities (in Judea and elsewhere), and the Roman governor (and behind him the emperor whose authority he wields) called in to determine whether Paul has committed any offence against Roman law.64 He carefully has Festus cite the Roman legal principle that the accusers (κατήγοροι) must be present to bring their charges in person against the accused (Acts 25:16; cf. 23:35, 24:19). This presumably implied that if Paul’s trial was transferred to Rome, his high-priestly accusers would be obliged to travel to Rome to make their accusations in person, while the defendant would have a last chance to make his defense before the emperor. It was a high-risk strategy: but it gave both sides the opportunity to air their views in public, and either side could hope for ultimate vindication. Given the acknowledged importance of gaining the emperor’s “favor” in this process, both sides would have an interest in canvassing support wherever they could find it. Thus, within the dramatic scenario of Acts 21–28, the favorable verdicts Luke records from both Festus and Agrippa add valuable literary support for Paul’s case. Furthermore, Paul’s discussions with the Jewish community in Rome (Acts 28:17–28) make excellent sense in this context: previous litigants had found it helpful to get the support of the local Jewish community for their appearance at the imperial tribunal (BJ 2.80–81). But although the audience for Paul’s defense is Roman (Caesar’s tribunal and the emperor’s consilium), the charges he has to answer are still those brought by his Judean accusers. Attempts to present those charges in terms of Roman law had been (according to Luke) dismissed both by Felix and by Festus: what remains is a charge of infringement of Jewish law. This explains (I would suggest) what often seems a mismatch between the Roman setting of Paul’s trial and the Jewish content of the apologetic speeches in Acts, which are predominantly addressed to Jewish audiences and Jewish concerns.65 Thus like the address to the Temple crowd in Acts 22, Paul’s speech to Agrippa focuses entirely on his Jewish identity: his Pharisaic training and belief in the resurrection; the “zeal” evidenced by his persecution of the followers of Jesus; his vision on the Damascus road; his calling to preach to the Gentiles; and the continuity between his Christian message and the message of the prophets. Here speech and narrative join forces, summing up the whole argument of Acts to make a powerful, persuasive plea to Agrippa 64 Sherwin-White 1952: 199–213; Barnes 1968: 32–50; Tajra 2010: 114–116; Omerzu 2002: 61– 64; Alexander 2015: 155. 65 See further Alexander 1999.

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(bolstered by an appeal to “believe the prophets”). In this intensely personal self-defense, the Roman framework of Paul’s trial recedes into the background. The speech becomes a personal manifesto for Paul’s mission to the Gentiles, frankly aimed at persuading “not only you [Agrippa] but all who are listening to me today” to become “such as I am – except for these chains” (Acts 26:29). Just as Philo fashions Agrippa I as his own mouthpiece in the Embassy, Luke’s use of Agrippa II reaches out across the proscenium arch to invoke an ideal reader, “almost persuaded” to join the Christian sect.66 Agrippa is an intradiegetic foil for the extradiegetic dedicatee Theophilus (Acts 1:1), expanding the horizon of Acts from narrowly-focused Pauline apologetic to a giant act of persuasion on behalf of a whole community – much as Philo’s speech before Gaius in the Legatio slides seamlessly from a narrow political question about citizen rights in Alexandria to a wholesale defense of the Jewish way of life.

5. Philo and Luke: A Literary Afterlife I have argued in this article that the widely attested first-century practice that Josephus calls “sailing to Caesar” makes an illuminating framework for understanding both Philo’s Embassy to Gaius and Luke’s account of Paul’s trials and journey to Rome. Philo is not on trial, and Paul is not an ambassador: but both experiences are shaped by the same agonistic framework, and the same underlying realities of political life in the empire, in which the emperor is regularly invoked as final court of appeal in disputes between local civic communities and their governing elites. Reading Luke’s account of Paul’s trial in tandem with Philo brings out the differences in their relative situations, but also many similarities: the importance of soliciting favor from those who hold political power (both before and behind the scenes); the appeal to wider principles of justice; the political acumen needed to play off one power-broker against another; the dangerous tendency of public discourse to slide from precise charges to critique of a whole way of life; and the perilously thin boundary between embassy and trial. Can this parallel reading shed any light on the literary context in which both writers were operating? Formally speaking, Philo’s Legatio and In Flaccum are not apologetic works; but they illustrate well the concrete political situations in which the need for apologetic could arise, and they exploit many of the key apologetic themes invoked in its own defense by a community apparently at odds with the ethos of the empire: its loyalty to Rome, its willingness to sacrifice for (if not to) the em-

66 The King James Version has “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian” (Acts 26:28). NRSV has “Are you so quickly persuading me to be a Christian?”

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peror (Legat. 356–358), its superiority to rival groups within the city (polis).67 But for Philo and his readers, the tribunal of justice has itself proved corrupt, and much of the Legatio functions as political invective, a denunciation of Gaius which could not have been published in his lifetime. Similarly, In Flaccum is not an ἀπολογία (speech of self-defense) addressed to Flaccus but an invective denouncing the governor for his crimes against the Jews: Flaccus is not the addressee but the accused. In so far as both are historical works, they belong within a sequence describing the realpolitik of Jewish life in the empire, the triangulation of Jewish life between Alexandria and Rome, and the eventual discomfiture of the enemies of the Jewish community.68 In so far as they are philosophical (as the title De Virtutibus suggests), the long section on the virtues of Tiberius and Augustus (Legat. 140–161) suggests a plausible link with the Hellenistic Peri Basileias literature, foreshadowing Seneca’s De Clementia.69 But what is the relationship between the embassy itself and the literary text in which it is embedded? If the primary apologetic of the embassy is addressed to the emperor, to whom is the Legatio itself addressed? There is an element of defensiveness in the Legatio which invites the question whether Philo wrote partly out of a need to justify his own performance to the Jewish community in Alexandria and Rome. The Jews of Alexandria had already experienced the disastrous failure of the prefect Flaccus to pass on their congratulatory messages to Gaius on his accession.70 The faithful accomplishment and successful outcome of an embassy is regularly recorded in a “report back on an embassy” (ἀποπρεσβεία) – often supported by a letter from the emperor.71 The outcome of Philo’s embassy was not so happy: the issue of Alexandrian citizenship was swallowed up in the unfolding drama of Gaius’ plans to install his own image in the Jerusalem temple (Legat. 194). In fact some might have argued that the Jewish delegation from Alexandria had exacerbated the situation by drawing Gaius’ attention to the Jews’ refusal to accept his divinity.72 Arguably the net result of Philo’s embassy was an imperial edict which protected the rights of the Jews to practice their own religion in private but without endorsing their claims 67

Van der Horst 2003: 16–18, 24–33. Philo, Legat. 373; Flacc.191; Van der Horst 2003: 5–6; Sterling 2022: 225–226. 69 The oldest testimonies assign Flaccus and other “historical” works to a work “On Virtues”: Smallwood 1961: 36–43; Colson 1962: xiv–xviii; Morris 1987: 859–864. On the Peri Basileias literature, see Murray 2007: 13–28; Alexander 2007: 92–109. 70 Philo, Flacc. 97–103. Cf. Schwartz 1990: 76; Smallwood 1976: 236–237. For the practice, see Bash 1997: 175–183, 209, 223, 235, 241, 244, 257, 263. 71 Ἀποπρεσβεία as “a report back on an embassy:” Bash 1997: 226, 229. Inscriptions recording the successful completion of an embassy: Sardis VII.1, 8; IGR IV 914; F. Xanthos, VII, 75; SEG XVII (1960), 315; SEG XXXIX (1989), 910 (Bash 1997: 215, 220, 222–233, 234, 263). Imperial letters recording the successful delivery of an embassy: IG VII 2711 (bis); SIG3 II 780; IGR IV 1042; SEG XI (1954) 992; Sardis VII.1, 8; SEG 1 (1923) 329; IGR IV 1693; IGR IV 1124 (Bash 1997: 175, 177, 186–187, 195, 212, 225, 238–240, 246, 254). 72 Philo seems to forestall this criticism in Legat. 162–165, 198, 439–453. 68

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to political rights in Alexandria (or by implication in other Greek cities), foreshadowing a gradual shift in the Roman approach to the Jews which gathers momentum under the Flavians.73 The community disputes recorded by Philo must also be set within the literary context of the intense and vicious pamphlet wars that accompanied political upheavals in the great cities of the Empire.74 Almost uniquely, as a result of papyrus finds, we actually have documents from three sides of the long-running dispute between Jewish and Greek communities in Alexandria. The Letter of Claudius gives the official imperial response to the situation in Alexandria in 41 ce.75 And the rubbish-heaps of Oxyrhynchus yielded an even more surprising find in the so-called “Acts of the Alexandrian Martyrs,” a series of fragmentary pamphlets in the form of a courtroom protocol describing (in terms both antiJewish and anti-Roman) the trials of Philo’s Alexandrian opponents, Isidorus and Lampo.76 What is intriguing is that these accounts, in which the Greek ringleaders of the anti-Jewish riots figure as models of philosophic boldness (παρρησία) and martyrs to the cause of Hellenism, were still being read a couple of centuries after the events, not in Alexandria but up-river in Oxyrhynchus. The purely accidental survival of such texts among the papyri raises the possibility that inter-community political conflict in major urban centers like Alexandria and Rome could well have spawned a quantity of such ephemeral political pamphlets in the first and second centuries, most of which have not survived. But we can also set Philo’s indictment of Roman misgovernment within the long biblical and post-biblical tradition of part-fictional, part-historical narrative detailing the relationships of Jewish communities with the rulers of pagan empires. Daniel, Nehemiah, Esther, Judith and the Maccabean literature all explore this theme in different ways and in very different narrative styles. But common to all of them are the linked themes of the corruption of power, the hybris of the pagan monarchies, and the vindication and miraculous deliverance of a faithful Jewish community by a merciful and all-powerful God.77 The threat of martyrdom provides a note of seriousness (even when it is miraculously evaded); and in the latest of the series, 4 Maccabees, there is a clear convergence with the Socratic tradition of martyrdom “for philosophy.”78 Martyr-literature and apologetic indeed are inextricably linked, with the trial of the martyr providing 73 On the political consequences of Philo’s embassy, see Schwartz 1990: 99–106; Niehoff 2018: 41–45, 256–257, esp. note 33. For the Flavian situation, see Schwartz 2005; Rives 2005: 145–166. 74 Philo, Legat. 165 refers to “the periodical notifications which were sent [to Gaius] at the instance of some persons in Alexandria.” Legat. 170 characterizes this literature as anti-Jewish. 75 CPJ 153 (P.Lond. 1912): Smallwood 1976: 248–249; Van der Horst 2003: 9–10. 76 CPJ 154–156; Musurillo 1954. 77 Van der Horst 2003: 13–15. For references to this theme in Philo, cf. Philo, Legat. 220, 336– 367; Flacc. 117–124, 125, 146–147, 169–171, 189, 191. Legat. 268–333 appears to cast Agrippa I in the role of Daniel. 78 Rajak 1997: 39–68. Also in Rajak 2001: 99–133.

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a major dramatic location for apologetic speech. The multiple ambivalences of this literature appear already in the biblical book of Daniel, which combines the symbiotic ethos of the court tale (loyal Jew achieves exalted position in pagan court) with the heroic resistance of the martyr (loyal Jew risks life in opposition to idolatrous values of pagan court).79 All of this confirms that Philo is an expert at touching chords which resonate both with Jewish and with Roman audiences. Piet van der Horst argues that Philo had a dual audience in view for In Flaccum (and by implication for Legatio): Philo’s work is a mixture of historiography, pastoral theology, apologetics and theodicy. […] He describes events but does so in such a way that his Jewish readers are called upon not to doubt God’s providence. While trying to demonstrate to his Roman audience that no people under the sun is more faithful to the Roman imperial family and stands closer to the values of the Roman elite of their time, at the same time Philo tries to console his co-religionists for the calamity that has befallen them by arguing that there has been no moment that God has abandoned them.80

If he is writing in Rome (as Maren Niehoff plausibly suggests), he is writing as much for the Jewish community (in Rome and in the wider Diaspora) as for a Roman audience. In fact, as we have discovered, this duality of audience is built into the apologetic scenario of “sailing to Caesar.” In sum, we could describe the literary context of Philo’s Legatio as a tangle of interwoven literary threads. Like the Socratic literature, it uses the framework of an actual trial (here the hearing before Caesar) as a literary vehicle for the apologetic arguments which surface in that encounter, as well as an opportunity for political invective against a corrupt (and presumably dead) representative of imperial power.81 For a Roman audience, it asserts the political innocence and goodwill of worldwide Jewry within the empire, combined with philosophical reflection on the proper virtues of imperial power as exemplified by previous emperors.82 For a Jewish audience, it provides a report and vindication of an embassy faithfully discharged in the face of extreme provocation. It offers historiographical reflection on the Realpolitik of Jewish life under the empire, with an emphasis on the careful negotiation of relationships between local communities and imperial overlords. It offers a Jewish contribution – or perhaps a response – to the pamphlet wars spilling out from the communitarian conflict 79 Some of the ambivalence is resolved if the persecuting monarch is shown to be acting against his own better judgement (Gruen 2002: 220). For a penetrating political analysis of these tales, see Hazony 2016. 80 Van der Horst 2003: 15–16. 81 For the Socratic literature and its afterlife, see Doering 1979; Alexander 1993: 57–63. 82 Eusebius tells the story of Philo reading his work before the Roman Senate under Claudius (Hist. eccl. 2.18.8). Whether or not it is true, this story is a recognition that Philo’s denunciation of Gaius and his laudatory account of the imperial virtues of Augustus would be politically acceptable in Claudian Rome. See further the essay by Philip Alexander in this volume.

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in Alexandria. And it taps into a well-established biblical tradition of using vivid dramatic narrative to reflect theologically on the dangers and ambivalences of Jewish life under pagan empires, combining pastoral encouragement (God will not abandon his people) with theodicy (God will punish those who seek to do you harm). And Philo’s Embassy in turn offers fruitful ways to reflect on the literary context of Luke-Acts. Luke sees Paul’s voyage to Rome as a golden opportunity to present a case for the Christian gospel before the imperial tribunal.83 In order to do that, it is necessary for Paul to enlist the support of the local Jewish community, both to reassure them that he has no charge to bring against his own people, and to set the record straight on behalf of a sect which is everywhere “spoken against” (Acts 28:19, 22). Like Philo, Luke uses his dramatic narrative of Paul’s trials as a literary vehicle to present a defense (ἀπολογία) for Paul’s Gentile mission both for Jewish and for Roman audiences, demonstrating both Paul’s political innocence under Roman law and his faithfulness to his Jewish heritage. Luke too shapes his narrative to demonstrate his hero’s faithful discharge of a divinely authorized commission (Acts 26:19; cf. 20:18–24). Luke too – though from a more sectarian perspective – is interested in creating a historiographical record of the details of community politics under the empire, with an emphasis on the careful negotiation of relationships between local communities and their imperial overlords. And like Philo, Luke taps into the biblical tradition of narratives of resistance and survival under pagan empires, offering to his own community both pastoral encouragement for faithful witness (cf. Acts 23:11) and the reassurance that God will punish the θεομάχοι who oppose him (cf. Acts 5:34–39, 12:20–24). Far from being “theological and ecclesiastical rubbish,” Paul’s story in Acts, with all the scriptural proof-texts that form part of the argument, is exactly what a Roman audience – and more specifically a Roman Jewish audience – would expect to hear. How Luke tells that story, and how well he succeeds, are questions for another day.

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Morris, Jenny. “The Jewish Philosopher Philo.” In Schuerer, Emil. The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ. Edited by Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and Martin Goodman, 809–889. Vol. 3.2, rev. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1987. Murray, Oswyn. “Philosophy and Monarchy in the Hellenistic World.” In Jewish Perspectives on Hellenistic Rulers. Edited by Tessa Rajak, 13–28. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Musurillo, Herbert. The Acts of the Pagan Martyrs. Acta Alexandrinorum. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954. Niehoff, Maren R. Philo of Alexandria. An Intellectual Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. O’Brien, Peter. Colossians, Philemon. Word Biblical Commentary 44. Waco: Word Books, 1982. Omerzu, Heike, Der Prozess des Paulus. Eine exegetische und rechtshistorische Untersuchung der Apostelgeschichte. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 115. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002. –. “The Roman Trial Against Paul according to Acts 21–26.” In The Last Years of Paul. Essays from the Tarragona Conference, June 2013. Edited by Armand Puig i Tarrech, John Barclay, and Jörg Frey, 187–200. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 352. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015. Puig I Tarrech, Armand, Barclay, John, and Frey, Jörg, eds. The Last Years of Paul. Essays from the Tarragona Conference, June 2013. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 352. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015. Rajak, Tessa. “Justus of Tiberias.” Classical Quarterly 23.2 (1973): 345–368. –. “Friends, Romans, Subjects: Agrippa II’s Speech in Josephus’ Jewish War.” In Images of Empire. Edited by Loveday Alexander, 122–134. Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 122. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991. –. “Dying for the Law. The Martyr’s Portrait in Jewish-Greek Literature.” In Portraits. Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire. Edited by Mark J. Edwards and Simon Swain, 39–68. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. –. The Jewish Dialogue with Greece and Rome. Studies in Cultural and Social Interaction. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Rives, James. “Flavian Religious Policy and the Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple.” In Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome. Edited by Jonathan Edmondson, Steve Mason, and James Rives, 145–166. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Schwartz, Daniel. Agrippa I. The Last King of Judaea. Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum 23. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990. –. “Herodians and Ioudaioi in Flavian Rome.” In Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome. Edited by Jonathan Edmondson, Steve Mason, and James Rives, 63–78. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Sherwin-White, Adrian N. “The Early Persecutions and Roman Law Again.” Journal of Roman Studies 3 (1952): 199–213. –. Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963. Smallwood, Mary E. Philonis Alexandrini Legatio Ad Gaium. Edited with an introduction, translation and commentary. Leiden: Brill, 1961. –. The Jews Under Roman Rule from Pompey to Diocletian. Leiden: Brill, 1976. Sterling, Gregory. “A Human sui generis: Philo’s Life of Moses.” Journal of Jewish Studies 73.2 (2022): 225–250.

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Tajra, Harry. The Trial of St Paul. A Juridical Exegesis of the Second Half of the Acts of the Apostles. Oregon: Wipf & Stock 2010. (German Edition. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1989). Thompson, Glen L. and Wilson, Mark. In This Way We Came to Rome: With Paul on the Appian Way. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2023. Toher, Mark. Nicolaus of Damascus. The Life of Augustus and the Autobiography. Edited with Introduction, translations and Historical Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Van der Horst, Pieter. Philo’s Flaccus: The First Pogrom. Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Society of Biblical Literature Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series. Leiden: Brill, 2003.

Philo’s Lives and Luke’s Gospel Features of Hagiographical Discourse in Early Imperial-Era Biography Matthias Becker 1. Philo, Luke, Biography, and Hagiographical Discourse As recent studies suggest, while Philo’s works De Abrahamo, De Iosepho, and De vita Mosis, may convey biblical interpretation in the broad sense of allegorizing and rewriting biblical narratives,1 they first and foremost present their author as a biographer.2 In portraying the lives of Abraham, Joseph and Moses, Philo relied on biographical hints provided in his source text.3 On the other hand, it seems obvious that his shift in genre from biblical commentary to biography was significantly inspired by Greco-Roman life-writing in the Hellenistic and the early imperial periods. If one studies the Lives in this particular context of cultural production and leaves matters of political intentions aside,4 it is especially worthwhile to compare Philo’s literary technique and his use of motifs with the canonical Gospels. This comparison is justified because the Gospels, although they were composed later, not only fit within the biographical genre of GrecoRoman literary culture,5 but also share characteristics with Philo’s Lives that bear witness to a very special type of biography.6 One of the striking characteristics of the “christobiography”7 of the canonical Gospels and of Philo’s Lives, is that they present their respective biographical subjects in overtly religious, 1 Damgaard 2014 interprets De vita Mosis as a piece of “rewritten Bible,” whereas Böhm 2005: 116, 118–120 suggests that the Lives of Abraham, Joseph and Moses are not to be classified as “rewritten Bible,” but should be contextualized within the genre of Greek biography. 2 On Philo’s biographical artistry, see Niehoff 2012, 2018: 109–130, 2020; Geiger 2020: 62–67. 3 The Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint contain quite a number of biographically grounded narratives (e. g. on Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, David, Elijah, Elisha etc.) which could be read as miniature biographies; see Baltzer 1975. 4 On the polemical and apologetic undertones in Philo’s biographies, see Niehoff 2018: 109– 110; on political motifs in Luke, see Loveday Alexander in this volume. 5 Dihle 1983; Frickenschmidt 1997; Dormeyer 1999; Wördemann 2002; Burridge 2018; Reiser 2019; Bond 2020, 2022; Walsh 2021: 170–194; John 2022; Schorn 2022: 758–761. 6 Even though it is true that in the context of first-century literary culture Philo “is the first author to use biographies for broader moral, cultural, and religious purposes” (Niehoff 2018: 130), there is no evidence of literary dependence between his Lives and the Gospels. 7 “Christobiography” is the title of a monograph by Craig S. Keener 2019.

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even hagiographical terms. To be sure, religious beliefs, issues of cultic practice, aspects of philosophical theology, personal reverence for the gods (εὐσέβεια), and people surrounded by an aura of divinity occasionally occur in texts that broadly pertain to ancient biographical literature, including early examples such as Isocrates’ Evagoras or Xenophons Agesilaus, Cyropaedia, and Memorabilia.8 Judging by the extant fragmentary material of Hellenistic biographies, literary lives of philosophers, most notably of Empedocles and Pythagoras, included some of the (pagan) hagiographical features that (re)occur in imperial-era and late antique accounts, e. g. in Porphyry’s Vita Pythagorae or in Iamblichus’ fourth-century text De vita Pythagorica.9 However, as far as the extant non-fragmentary material is concerned, it seems that extensive religious characterization of the hero and features of hagiographization are particularly typical of early and late imperial-era βίοι and vitae. In a number of groundbreaking publications, Marc van Uytfanghe refers to such imperial-era texts as “spiritual biographies” and argues that their strategic religious depiction and typification bear witness to and belong within a larger “hagiographical discourse.”10 Instead of defining hagiography as a fixed literary genre which evolved in late antiquity to portray (only) Christian saints, van Uytfanghe places the relevant material in a much broader literary, cultural, and interreligious context as well as in a wider chronological framework, ranging from the early imperial period to late antiquity. In his view, while selected features of the discourse, such as the motif of the “divine man” (θεῖος ἀνήρ), can be found in texts predating the imperial period, it was not until the first century ce that Jewish, Christian, and pagan authors established a broad and coherent hagiographical discourse that inspired the writing of spiritual biographies. Although βίοι and vitae of philosophers, poets, and rulers were of special significance,11 other literary forms also contributed to and shaped the discourse, such as encomiastic speeches, funeral orations, laudatory sections in historiographical works, biblical texts beyond the four canonical Gospels, novels, aretologies, 8 The significance of those works for the (pre)history of Greek biography is discussed by Dihle 1956: 29–34; Reichel 2007: 28–39; Schorn 2014: 698–701. On the (possible) reception of Plato’s idea of “assimilation to God” (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ) as an encomiastic and biographical device in Isocrates’ Evagoras, where the protagonist is presented as “a god among men or a mortal divinity” (Evag. 72: θεὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἢ δαίμων θνητός), see Hessler 2022: 163–166. Themes of philosophical theology and piety play an important role in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, as Jantsch 2017: 492–502 rightly demonstrates. 9 The pre-Christian material that influenced late antique biographies of Empedocles and Pythagoras is presented and discussed by Bidez 1973: 21–81, esp. 60–73; Staab 2002: 49–74, esp. 63–69; Scharinger 2017: 15–19; Hartmann 2018: 1821–1822. 10 Van Uytfanghe 1988, 1993, 2001, 2005: 243–248, 2009, 2011 (translations throughout are mine). 11 For more discussion on how hagiographical discourse influenced imperial-era biographies of philosophers, see Van Uytfanghe 2009; Becker 2013: 51–68; Hartmann 2018: 1819–2088.

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miracle stories, and anecdotes, to name but a few.12 At its core, the hagiographical discourse consists of four main elements.13 First of all, the texts in which the discourse is manifested deal with exceptional human individuals who have a close relationship with God, with deities or, more generally speaking, with the divine. Second, while claiming to tell the historical truth, these texts are evidently stylized, because they combine factual and fictional components.14 Third, the hagiographical discourse has multiple programmatic functions, such as “apology,” “idealization of the hero,” “representation of an ideal type,” “instruction” as well as “moral” and “spiritual edification of the readers.”15 Fourth, the discourse partly overlaps with the concept of the “divine man” (θεῖος ἀνήρ),16 especially when it comes to the virtuousness of the depicted individuals. For this virtuousness has both an “ethical and a spiritual dimension,” comprising “excellent virtues” as well as “supernatural powers and wonder-working abilities.”17 Van Uytfanghe not only includes Philo’s biographical works as well as the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John18 among the texts participating in the discourse. He also claims that, judged against the background of the extant literary sources, Philo’s De vita Mosis and the canonical Gospels are the earliest literary examples in which the hagiographical discourse of the imperial era comes fully to the fore.19 Apart from the Septuagint,20 Philo’s hagiographical impetus is strongly influenced by Greco-Roman Platonic and Stoic philosophy, which acquired an increasingly religious imprint throughout the imperial era.21 Writing 12 Van Uytfanghe 1988: 159–177, 2001: 1092–1329. Gemeinhardt 2014: 312–317, at 313 adds “non literary genres, like funerary inscriptions or hymns.” 13 On the following, see Van Uytfanghe 1988: 155–157; cf. also Van Uytfanghe 2001: 1341–1349. 14 Even apart from hagiographical discourse proper, the intertwining of fact and fiction is characteristic of ancient biographical narrative; for further discussion, see the collected volumes edited by De Temmerman and Demoen 2016; Brunhorn, Gemeinhardt, and Munkholt Christensen 2020. 15 Van Uytfanghe 1988: 156; cf. Van Uytfanghe 2001: 1343–1345. 16 On the ancient motif of the θεῖος ἀνήρ, see Bieler 1967/I–II; Du Toit 1997; Alviz Fernández and Hernández de la Fuente 2023. Of course, “holy women” also figure in ancient biography, both in pagan biographies of philosophers (e. g. Aidesia, Hypatia or Sosipatra) and in Christian hagiography (Becker 2013: 287–323; Tanaseanu-Döbler 2013; Hartmann 2018: 2021–2038). 17 Van Uytfanghe 1988: 157. 18 Whether the Johannine Jesus fits van Uytfanghe’s definition of the first element of the hagiographical discourse, is somewhat debatable. However, although the Gospel of John provides a much stronger deification of Jesus than the Synoptic Gospels (cf. Litwa 2016: 67–90), the evangelist clearly and repeatedly refers to Jesus as a “human being” (John 4:29, 7:46, 8:40, 9:11, 9:16, 10:33, 11:47, 11:50, 18:14, 18:17, 19:5). In his monograph entitled “Christotheologie,” which is still worth reading today, Johann Bade explores how the Gospels express Jesus’ divinity (Bade 1870: 56–185). Many of his findings bear relevance to the study of spiritual biography and hagiographical discourse. 19 Van Uytfanghe 2011: 54–57, 67. 20 For a collection of hagiographical elements in the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint, see Van Uytfanghe 2001: 1130–1138; cf. also Bieler 1967/II: 3–29. 21 Görgemanns 2009: 50–59; Speyer 2001: 31–35; Hirsch-Luipold 2009: 124–135.

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in a polished yet accessible Greek, he shows himself to be an educated philosopher and creative philologist engaged openly in Greco-Roman debates.22 As such, he makes use of the biographical genre to tackle philosophical, “moral, cultural, and religious”23 issues. His Life of Moses, which presents its protagonist through a clearly hellenized lens and as a “divine man,”24 has rightly been compared with ancient biographies of philosphers.25 However, even if we grant that Philo is the first biographer in whose works we can fully grasp a coherent hagiographical discourse, it is quite remarkable that a great deal of similar hagiographical features that we find in his Lives also appear in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Although the evangelists express their education and erudition differently from Philo, they were equally influenced by the Scriptures of Israel, by contemporary Hellenistic-Jewish discourses and by the Greco-Roman debates of their day. Due to the “double-coding” (Doppelkodierung) of his work, Luke stands out from the other evangelists in his sophisticated literary and theological strategy to simultaneously address a Jewish Christian audience familiar with the Holy Scriptures and an educated Christan audience from a pagan background.26 Moreover, as Catherine Wright argues, Luke is particularly interested in presenting Jesus as an example of spiritual practices for his audience to imitate, especially with regard to “prayer” and the ideal of “simplicity.”27 Therefore, in order to explore methods of literary hagiographization, it will be expedient to compare his Gospel with Philo’s Lives.28 Since it was beyond the scope of Van Uytfanghe’s work to systematically interrelate Philo’s biographies and those of the evangelists, this issue largely remains a desideratum for the study of early imperial-era biography. Of course, textual comparison of this kind could lead to different results depending on where the focus lies. On the one hand, in light of the idiosyncrasies of Philo and Luke with regard to content, language, style, and theological reflection,29 one could juxtapose their biographical works in order to make visible the differences and peculiar characteristics in their use of hagiographical devices. On the other hand, while acknowledging the uniqueness of each βίος, scholars could focus only on those motifs of the hagiographical dis22

For a thorough analysis, see Niehoff 2018. Niehoff 2018: 130. 24 Bieler 1967/II: 30–36. 25 Schorn 2022: 747–750; Bieler 1967/II: 34. 26 Feldmeier 2014: 552–553, 2017; Becker 2020: 25–35. In a similar manner, Marguerat 1999: 78–80, in a French publication, describes Luke’s literary and theological approach as “double signification.” 27 Wright 2023: 1. The ideal of the simple life is especially popular among Stoic and Cynic philosophers of the Hellenistic and early imperial periods, including Seneca, Musonius Rufus, and Dio Chrysostom (Vischer 1965: 60–88, 153–170). 28 This way, a new field of study is opened up in the already existing research devoted to comparing Philo and Luke as biographers (see, e. g., Niehoff 2018: 130, 2020: 167–168). 29 Cf. Wilk 2017: 232–243, who reflects on the methodological problems of comparing Philo’s writings with texts of the New Testament. 23

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course which the texts under consideration broadly share.30 Of course, the latter approach, which I will choose in this article, does not insinuate that, even if authors use identical or similar words, terms, or motifs, they always use them in just the same way. Instead, as ancient Greco-Roman, Jewish, and early Christian literatures abundantly show, identical or similar words and themes are mostly used in different frameworks, with divergent intentions or altered meanings. In the following, taking a bird’s eye view, it is my goal to engage in a nongenealogical and mostly synchronistic31 literary comparison of Philo’s De Abrahamo, De vita Mosis,32 and the Gospel of Luke in order to present a general survey of selected hagiographical features.

2. Common Elements of Hagiographical Discourse 2.1. Holiness: Consecration and Dedication to God The first common hagiographical feature is the ascription of holiness. Interestingly, all three biographical subjects are explicitly presented as “holy” men. The intention behind this use of holiness language is to characterize the heroes’ close relationship with God as both a consecration and a dedication to God. Philo describes Abraham and Moses as ἅγιος (“devoted to God, holy”) or ὅσιος (“pious, devout, religious”),33 and mentions their ethical virtue of ὁσιότης.34 While the Gospel of Luke provides semantic analogies, the evangelist takes a slightly different approach to depict Jesus as holy.35 Most importantly, he ascribes Jesus’ conception to the work of the “Holy Spirit” and the “power of the 30 As Jonathan Z.

Smith 1990: 51 rightly argues, there is no comparison without the “scholar’s mind:” “Similarity and difference are not ‘given’. They are the result of mental operations. (…) In the case of the study of religion, as in any disciplined inquiry, comparison, in its strongest form, brings differences together within the space of the scholar’s mind for the scholar’s own intellectual reasons. It is the scholar who makes their cohabitation – their ‘sameness’ – possible, not ‘natural’ affinities or processes of history”. 31 Needless to say, both Philo and Luke use sources such as the Septuagint or (in Luke’s case, also) the Gospel of Mark (and other matrial). In some cases, these sources contain or have shaped the use of hagiographical features. Nevertheless, diachronistic analysis is not my goal in this contribution. While presupposing Markan priority in the study of Luke’s Gospel, parallels from the other canonical Gospels are given only for the sake of a synchronistic literary comparison. 32 Due to limited space, De Iosepho will not be discussed in this study. 33 Philo, Abr. 52 (Abraham among “the holy men” along with Isaac and Jacob,); Mos. 2.192 (Moses as “the holiest (ὁσιώτατος) of men who were ever born”). In Abr. 181, Philo calls Moses “the most holy” (ἱερώτατος). 34 Philo, Abr. 172, 198, 208 (Abraham); Mos. 1.198 (Moses). 35 Although Luke knows the adjective (ὅσιος; Acts 2:27, 13:34–35) and the noun (ὁσιότης, Luke 1:75), he does not apply them to Jesus in his Gospel. In Acts, however, the phrase “your holy one” (ὁ ὅσιός σου), a quote from LXX’s Ps 15:10, (prophetically) refers to Jesus in his special relationship to God (Acts 2:27, 13:35).

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Highest” (Luke 1:35). This way, he divinizes Jesus as the Son of God and declares that his earthly life was sanctified even from its prenatal beginnings. In the Annunciation scene, the angel Gabriel also decidedly indicates that the Spirit-begotten embryo of Christ is “holy” (Luke 1:35: τὸ γεννώμενον ἅγιον).36 In Luke 2:22–24, the evangelist underscores Jesus’ holiness by narrating how Jesus was presented to the Lord in the temple of Jerusalem and that he was consecrated as the firstborn son in accord with Exod 13 where it says that “Every male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord (πᾶν ἄρσεν διανοῖγον μήτραν ἅγιον τῷ κυρίῳ κληθήσεται)”.37 Later on, during his baptism, the Holy Spirit descends upon him from heaven (Luke 3:21–22). This way, Luke presents Jesus as being “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Luke 4:1: πλήρης πνεύματος ἁγίου; cf. Matt 4:1) and as bearing the Spirit (Luke 4:18). Because of his pneumatic connection with God that endows him with divine “power” (Luke 4:14), a demonpossessed man calls Jesus by the rather rare christological title “the holy one of God” (ὁ ἅγιος τοῦ θεοῦ) in the context of an exorcism (Luke 4:34; cf. Mark 1:24).38 In its specific context, being the “holy one of God” means to stand in opposition to the demonic realm that is hostile to God. Finally, in Luke 10:21 Jesus is said to have “rejoiced greatly (ἠγαλλιάσατο) in the Holy Spirit” which caused him to pray to his father. This verse shows that the impact of the “Holy Spirit” not only results in rejoicing,39 but that the Spirit connects Jesus with his father, creating a deep communicative union that shows how closely connected he is with his divine father.40 2.2. Reverence towards God and Spiritual Practices Another hagiographical device consists of referring to reverence and the practice of piety. Philo repeatedly emphasizes Abraham’s and Moses’ reverent conduct towards God, making use of the Greek terms εὐσέβεια and εὐσεβής as well as

36 The Son of God motif also figures in pagan biography as a hagiographical element, see Plutarch, Alex. 2.1–3.4 (Alexander’s supernatural conception); 27.1–11 (Alexander as the son of Zeus-Ammon). In Num. 4.6, Plutarch relates the Egyptian idea that a mortal woman can be made pregnant by the “spirit of a god” (γυναικὶ μὲν οὐκ ἀδύνατον πνεῦμα πλησιάσαι θεοῦ καί τινας ἐντεκεῖν ἀρχὰς γενέσεως); cf. Gunkel 2015: 309–310. 37 Luke 2:23; cf. Exod. 13:2, 13:12, 13:15. 38 In John 6:69, Peter says the same about Jesus, but not in an exorcistic context. Other christological titles, which are an important and partly even specific Christian element of firstcentury hagiographical discourse (e. g. κύριος, Son of God, Christ or Messiah, Son of Man), are not attested in Philo’s Lives as means of hagiographization. 39 Considering that rejoicing and joy (χαρά) are closely linked in Luke’s thought (Luke 1:14; cf. 1 Pet 1:8), the Lukan connection of the Holy Spirit and joy (Luke 10:21; Acts 13:52) is reminiscent of Pauline pneumatology (1 Thess 1:6; Gal 5:22; Rom 14:17). 40 Gunkel 2015: 101–104.

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θεοσέβεια.41 In εὐσέβεια, Philo even sees the highest and most important of virtues (Abr. 60). While neither Luke nor the other Gospel writers use this explicit terminology, they refer to the practical expressions of spirituality to underscore their hero’s reverence towards God, a strategy we also find in Philo. In this regard, prayer plays an important role as a means to communicate with God: Abraham and Moses are both depicted as cultivating prayer,42 and within the context of the four canonical Gospels Luke is more interested than the other evangelists in portraying Jesus as praying and endorsing prayer.43 He also presents more material on Jesus’ teaching on prayer than Matthew does (Luke 11:1–13, 18:1–8; cf. Matt 6:5–15). In the case of Moses and Jesus, Philo and Luke also mention the offering of thanks in order to highlight their protagonists’ personal gratitude to God.44 The practice of cultic piety also figures in the biographies under discussion, but only in the case of De vita Mosis does it really gain importance. This has a simple reason: Philo is careful to differentiate between the four offices of Moses (king, lawgiver, high priest, prophet) and attaches great value to his priesthood (Mos. 2.3). In a lengthy section, Moses the high priest is presented as responsible for the cultic institution of the tabernacle which was divinely revealed to him, including the use of sacred items, vestments for priests and the offering of sacrifices (Mos. 2.66–186). Compared to Moses’ cult founding activities, De Abrahamo and the Gospels provide only scarce evidence of the cultic piety of their heroes. The only relevant remark about Abraham is that he built an altar because he was ready to sacrifice his son Isaac (Abr. 173, 176). Regarding Jesus, besides attending and observing Jewish feasts in Jerusalem such as Pesach (Luke 2:41, 22:1–15),45 he pays general respect to the Temple in Jerusalem as a place of worship by expelling the merchants and money changers from the temple (Luke 19:45–46).46 Furthermore, he tells cleansed lepers to show themselves to the priest(s) and to act in accordance with the law of Moses (Luke 5:12–16, 17:14).47 Compared with the other evangelists, Luke is especially eager to stress that Jesus was born into a devout family, because Joseph and Mary are depicted as faithful to the law of Moses (Luke 2:22–24), and they take Jesus along to travel to Jerusalem to attend 41 εὐσέβεια/εὐσεβής: Philo, Abr. 60–61, 98, 171, 177, 198–199, 208, 268; Mos. 1.198, 2.66, 2.284; θεοσέβεια: Abr. 114. 42 Philo, Abr. 6, 95; Mos. 1.125, 1.173, 1.184–185, 1.216, 2.5, 2.166, 2.177, 2.218, 2.228–229, 2.279. 43 Wright 2023: 5–7; Luke 3:21, 5:16, 6:12, 9:18, 9:28–29, 10:21, 11:1, 22:41, [22:44,] 22:45; cf. Mark 1:35, 6:46, 14:32, 14:35, 14:39; Matt 14:23, 26:36, 26:39, 26:42, 26:44. 44 Philo, Mos. 1.180, 2.256–257; Luke 22:17, 22:19; cf. also Mark 8:6, 14:23; Matt 15:36, 26:27; John 6:11, 6:23, 11:41. The singing of hymns (Mark 14:26; Matt 26:30) is not mentioned in Luke’s Gospel, only in Acts with regard to Paul and Silas (Acts 16:25). 45 Cf. Mark 14:1–16; Matt 26:2–19; John 2:13, 2:23, 6:4, 11:55–12:1, 13:1–2. In the Gospel of John, in which religious feasts are of special significance (Felsch 2011; Wheaton 2015), Jesus also attends Sukkot (John 7:1–10) and Chanukka (John 10:22–39; unspecified feast: John 5:1). 46 Cf. Mark 11:15–17; Matt 21:12–13; John 2:13–16. 47 Cf. Mark 1:40–45; Matt 8:2–4.

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the Pesach feast (Luke 2:41–42). On the other hand, Luke’s Jesus relativizes Sabbath laws (Luke 6:6–11, 13:11–17),48 he does not even address the rules of religious purity that the Markan and Matthean Jesus criticize (Mark 7:1–23; Matt 15:1– 20), and he attacks the religious elites (esp. the Pharisees, experts in the law, and scribes) in matters of religious practices (Luke 11:37–54, 20:45–47; cf. Matt 23:1– 36). As it seems, in Luke’s eyes, this clearly shows that true reverence towards God does not culminate in cultic expressions of spirituality nor in the outward observance of religious rites and laws. 2.3. Loving God and Being Loved by God A third hagiographical feature concerns the connection with God as a relationship of mutual love. Introducing his biographical triad of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,49 Philo argues that “all of them were both God-lovers and loved by God, because they loved the true God and their love was returned by him” (πάντας φιλοθέους ὁμοῦ καὶ θεοφιλεῖς, ἀγαπήσαντας τὸν ἀληθῆ θεὸν καὶ ἀνταγαπηθέντας πρὸς αὐτοῦ). Since they excelled also in virtuous behavior, as Philo puts it, God even allowed his name to be called “God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob” (Abr. 50–51). Throughout De Abrahamo, Philo uses the term θεοφιλής (“dear to God, loving God”)50 and phrases like “passionate heavenly love” (Abr. 66: ἔρως οὐράνιος) or “passionate divine love” (Abr. 170: ἔρως θεῖος) to underscore Abrahams identity as someone dear to God and loving God. This way, Philo makes it clear that Abraham’s love of God ultimately was a matter of priority for him and the driving force behind all his virtuous deeds. Examples cited include Abraham leaving his country, his home and his relatives upon God’s word (Abr. 66, 89) as well as his willingness to sacrifice his own son, Isaac (Abr. 167, 170, 196). Despite this focus on God, Philo repeatedly refers to Abraham’s kindness towards mankind, presenting piety and “philanthropy” (ἡ φιλανθρωπία / τὸ φιλάνθρωπον) as two sides of the same coin (Abr. 208; cf. 107, 109). As for Moses, Philo states early on in the first book of De vita Mosis that God “admired his character which loved goodness and hated evil” (Mos. 1.47: ἀγάμενος αὐτοῦ τὸ φιλόκαλον ἦθος καὶ μισοπόνηρον). Later, Philo portrays Moses as a “friend of God” (Mos. 1.156: φίλος θεοῦ) and states that “he loved God and was loved by him as few others have been, because he was inspired by a passionate heavenly love, honoured the ruler of the universe in an exceptional way and was honoured in return by him” (Mos. 2.67). As in the case of Abraham, Moses – according 48

Cf. Mark 3:1–6; Matt 12:9–14; John 5:1–18, 9:14–16.

49 According to Abr. 48–51, 60, Philo intended to write biographies about all three patriarchs.

While the prologue of his Life of Joseph suggests that he did so (Ios. 1), only De Abrahamo is extant. Philo praises the virtuousness of the three patriarchs (vgl. Praem. 57) at length in Praem. 24–51; see Böhm 2005: 214–217. 50 Philo, Abr. 89, 167, 196, 247.

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to Philo – united in himself the love of God and the love of mankind (Mos. 2.163: θεοφιλὴς ὁμοῦ καὶ φιλάνθρωπος). In the Gospels, Jesus’ relationship to God is generally framed as a father-son relationship. Although Philo is familiar with the concept of divine fatherhood, which also figures in De Abrahamo and De vita Mosis,51 he does not apply the notion of divine sonship either to Abraham or to Moses. He does get close to it, however, in the context of Moses’ assumption into heaven by God the “father” (Mos. 2.288). Mark, Matthew, and Luke (Luke 1:35, 4:3, 4:9, 4:41, 8:28, 22:70)52 portray Jesus not only explicitly as “God’s son” (υἱὸς [τοῦ] θεοῦ), but also – and this is relevant to the hagiographical motive of love – as his “beloved son” (Luke 3:22, 20:13: υἱὸς ἀγαπητός).53 This love of God is obviously reciprocal, because the Lukan Jesus agrees with the answer of an “expert of the law” (νομικός) who says that, in order to attain eternal life, it is necessary to “love the Lord your God (ἀγαπήσεις κύριον τὸν θεόν σου) from all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself ” (Luke 10:27; cf. Mark 12:30, 12:33; Matt 22:37). For Luke’s audience, this appeal to love God implies that Jesus himself loved God in an exemplary way. Although he never puts it as clearly as Philo does with regard to Abraham and Moses,54 his colourful portrait of the praying Jesus ultimately serves the purpose of expressing the son’s love for the divine father with whom he wishes to relate and converse.55 2.4. Leaving one’s Home and Abandoning one’s Family The fourth element of hagiographical discourse concerns the breakup with earthly relatives. In the cultural memory of the imperial era, a number of sages and poets figure prominently who are said to have left their home town or their relatives. According to Luke’s contemporary Dio Chrysostom, it was “the opinion of all philosophers that life in their native land was hard,” and besides himself he makes mention of Homer, Pythagoras, Zeno, Chrysippus, and Cleanthes to illustrate this point.56 In hagiographical discourse, however, the reason why 51 In both texts, God the creator and ruler of the universe is identified with God the father; see Philo, Abr. 75, 118, 121, 204, 207; Mos. 1.158, 2.24, 2.48, 2.88, 2.134, 2.210, 2.238. For a detailed discussion of Philo’s understanding of divine fatherhood, see Wyss 2014. 52 Mark 1:1, 3:11, 5:7, 15:39; Matt 4:3, 4:6, 8:29, 14:33, 16:2, 26:63, 27:40, 27:43, 27:54; see also John 1:34, 1:49, 3:18, 5:25, 10:36, 11:4, 11:27, 19:7, 20:31. 53 Mark 1:11, 9:7, 12:6; Matt 3:17, 12:18, 17:5. In the Gosepl of John, the phrase υἱὸς ἀγαπητός does not occur. Nevertheless, Jesus is refered to as the son whom God the father “loves” (ἀγαπᾶν, φιλεῖν); see John 3:35, 5:20, 10:17, 15:9, 17:23–24, 17:26. 54 By contrast, John’s Jesus repeatedly says that he loves his divine father (John 14:23, 15:10), claiming even “to be one” with his father (John 10:30). 55 Feldmeier 2020: 121. Compared with Mark and Matthew, Luke’s Christology of prayer is much more elaborate and intense, because he also intends to depict the praying Jesus as an example for his audience to emulate (Wright 2023: 5–7, 9–10). 56 Dio Chrys. Or. 47.1–6 (quote at 47.6); Becker 2020: 534–535.

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individuals leave their home and relatives lies in their close relationship with God and their divine mission. Because Abraham “strove to follow God” (Abr. 60: ἐσπούδασεν ἕπεσθαι θεῷ),57 he left “his homeland, his kinsfolk and the house of his father,” being “obedient” (καταπειθής) to what God had told him to do (Abr. 60, 62). For Philo, Abraham admirably resisted the natural affections for relatives and the love of country (Abr. 63, 67), and he was enabled to do so because his soul took initiative and “a passionate heavenly love (ἔρως οὐράνιος) overpowered his longing for mortal things” (Abr. 66). Later in the biographical narrative, the biographer once again juxtaposes Abraham’s “passionate divine love” or “love of God” (ἔρως θεῖος) and his fatherly affection for Isaac: after all, Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son (Abr. 170). In De vita Mosis, although Moses was separated from his family as an infant (Mos. 1.9–11) and later had to leave his birth country Egypt for Arabia (Mos. 1.5, 1.47), the Pentateuch texts do not provide any indication of a family breakup that Philo could have cited or amplified. In Luke’s Gospel, like in the other synoptic gospels, Jesus finds himself entangled between two rivalling conceptions of his identity. On the one hand his own true identity as the Spirit-filled son of God, which gives him a strong sense of mission,58 and on the other hand the external perception of both the population of his home town Nazareth and his earthly family.59 In the first narrated episode of Jesus’ public ministry, which begins in a synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4:16– 30), Jesus presents himself, using elegant and graceful language, as the anointed Spirit-bearer. His claim as well as his way of speaking lead to the astonishment of the crowd, because they see in Jesus (only) “a son of Joseph” (Luke 4:18–22, at 4:22). Following up, Jesus casts himself in the role of a prophet who is “not accepted in his hometown” (Luke 4:24: πατρίς), and he refers to the prophets Elijah and Elisha to underscore that he is sent to reach people (especially nonJews) outside of his “hometown” (Luke 4:25–27). As a result, the Nazarene synagogue audience shows contempt for his divine authority, gets angry, drives him out of town and tries to kill him by throwing him off the cliff (Luke 4:28–30).60 Compared with the other Gospels, Luke’s account of Jesus’ sermon in Nazareth 57 The maxim to follow God, which Philo refers to repeatedly (Migr. 131, 146; Decal. 98, 100, Spec. 4.187) is well attested in Greco-Roman philosophy (e. g. Plat. Symp. 197e; Sen. Vit. beat. 15.5; Ep. 16.5, 90.34; Plut. Sera num. vind. 550d; M. Aur. Med. 12,31). It has also been handed down as one of the sayings of the Seven Sages (Stob. Anth. 3.1.173 Hense/Wachsmuth). 58 Becker 2020: 522–528. 59 The fourth Gospel also makes mention of slight tensions between Jesus and his brothers (John 7:1–10). 60 The specific type of capital punishment mentioned in Luke 4:29 has notable parallels in the Life of Aesop, where the same manner of death interestingly serves to punish blasphemy (Froelich and Phillips 2019). That Luke draws on a literary motif is also made plausible by the fact that Nazareth was not located on a mountain (Wolter 2008: 198). Implicit reference to the accusation of blasphemy does not subvert the hagiographical discourse. Rather, it shows that the crowds do not grasp Jesus’ true identity.

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is special in many respects. One characteristic feature is that in the Gospel of Luke Jesus’ break with his hometown coincides with the beginning of his public ministry, which means that Jesus never returns to his hometown in Luke’s narrative.61 That is why Luke generally places great emphasis on depicting Jesus as the homeless Son of Man throughout his Gospel, especially, of course, in the travel narrative (cf. Luke 9:51–62, at 9:58).62 As far as Jesus’ alienation from his earthly family is concerned, Luke does not present as harsh a break as Mark does (cf. Mark 3:20–21), and he shows more respect for Mary.63 Nevertheless, the Lukan Jesus does not seek close company with his relatives, claiming that his real family consists of those who “hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8:19–21, at 8:21; cf. Mark 3:31–35; Matt 12:46–50). A similar devaluation of earthly origins that correlates with a strong focus on God’s word is attested in the Sondergut passage Luke 11:27–28: “As he was saying these things, a woman of the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!’ But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’” 2.5. Obedience towards God Obeying divine instructions can also be considered as an element of hagiographical discourse. Philo begins the biographical part of De Abrahamo by stating that “Abraham strived to follow God and to be obedient to what was commanded by him,” conveyed either by “speech” or by “writing” or by the “signs of nature” (Abr. 60). At the end of his biography, Philo summarizes Abraham’s lifestyle by calling him a “sage” who “practised the divine law and the divine commandments” with the help of “unwritten nature” (Abr. 275). More specific examples of obedience include, first, his readiness to leave his home and family (Abr. 62); second, his willingness to move away from Haran (Abr. 85: λογίῳ πάλιν πεισθείς; 88: πεισθέντα λογίοις); third, and most importantly, his readiness to sacrifice his son Isaac upon divine command (Abr. 169–170). For Philo, this deed reveals that Abraham “took special care […] to obey God” (τὸ πείθεσθαι θεῷ […] ἐν τοῖς μάλιστα ἐπετήδευεν). It also demonstrates that “he always paid regard to every command without ill-temper or displeasure, even if it brings hardship and pain” (Abr. 192). In De vita Mosis, the relationship between Moses and God is characterized by intensive communication. In several places, Philo mentions that Moses showed compliance with God’s directives (Mos. 1.77, 1.85, 2.178–179). Philo’s depiction of the Pharaoh serves as a counterexample that 61 This is different in Mark and Matthew, who narrate Jesus’ break with his hometown at a later point in the narrative structure of their Gospels (Mark 6:1–6; Matt 13:53–58). 62 Feldmeier 2017: 345–348; Becker 2020: 532–534. 63 On Luke’s special interest in Mary, see Roloff 1993: 194–195; Weidemann 2018: 112–123.

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even sheds more positive light on Moses, because his disobedience towards God is presented as an act of hybris (Mos. 1.88). In the Gospel of Luke, hearing and doing the word and will of God are an essential ingredient in Jesus’ teaching and his spiritual practices, although Luke does not devote as much attention to this hagiographical element as Matthew and John.64 As was already quoted above (section 2.4), Jesus not only claims that his true “mother and brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it” (Luke 8:21; cf. Mark 3:35; Matt 12:50), but he also pronounces as “blessed those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:28). As for Jesus himself, he commits himself to the will of God even in the face of death, because he does not seek to fulfill his own will (Luke 22:42; cf. Mark 14:36; Matt 26:42). A possible answer as to why Luke only rarely explicitly refers to Jesus as the obedient one must take into consideration three other aspects of the identity of the Lukan Jesus: Because he is presented as the praying Jesus, the Spirit-bearer, and the one who is led by divine providence (see below section 2.8), it is clear to the readers that he always acts out of prayerful union with God and by the inspiration and influence of the Holy Spirit. 2.6. Seeking Solitude By the imperial era, withdrawal from society and retreating from public activity (ἀναχωρεῖν, ἀναχώρησις, secede, recedere, secessus, recessus) was a subject often treated in a variety of genres, including philosophical essays and biographies of philosophers.65 Beyond matters such as the urban-rural contrast, the tradition of simple living,66 the ideal of a quiet life, and the philosopher’s (non)political role in imperial society, the literary representation of lonely places, the wilderness, and the countryside were replete with religious symbolism. Therefore, biographical portrayals of subjects seeking solitude can be seen as an element of hagiographical discourse. Philo and the evangelists incorporated them, but in contrast to the hermits of later Christian hagiography, the withdrawals from communal life presented in De Abrahamo, De vita Mosis and the Gospel of Luke are only temporary. While Abraham’s migration from Chaldea to Haran caused him to travel “from city to city” (ἐκ πόλεως εἰς πόλιν), as Philo puts it, his second divinely inspired change of location led him away from Haran “into 64 Matthew speaks more often of God’s or the heavenly father’s “will” than Luke (Matt 6:10, 7:21, 12:50, 18:14, 21:13, 26:42). In John’s gospel, doing the father’s will is an integral part of Jesus’ identity as God’s son, which he repeadely underscores in his speeches (e. g. John 4:34, 5:30, 6:38–39, 7:16–18). 65 See, e. g., Epicurus RS 14 (DL 10.143); Cic. Att. 9.4.1–3; Ovid, Tr. 1.1.41 (carmina secessum scribentis et otia quaerunt); Sen., Ep. 7; Tranq. 3.2, 4.1 (Athenodorus); Dio Chrys. Or. 20 (Περὶ ἀναχωρήσεως); Festugière 1954: 53–67; Becker 2011. 66 See Vischer 1965.

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the wilderness” or “into a desert region” (Abr. 85: εἰς χώραν ἐρήμην). Describing Abraham’s wanderings far away from city life, Philo praises Abraham because instead of returning home he decided to face the hardships of travel through impassable regions (Abr. 86). The reason the biographer gives is that Abraham “considered life without the multitude as the most pleasant kind of life” (Abr. 87: βίον ἥδιστον νομίζων τὸν ἄνευ συνδιαιτήσεως τῆς τῶν πολλῶν).67 Referring to the Platonic concept of assimilation to God,68 Philo goes on to claim that this fit Abraham’s character perfectly, “because those who seek and yearn to find God, love the solitariness which is dear to Him (τὴν φίλην αὐτῷ μόνωσιν ἀγαπῶσι), striving thereby first of all to assimilate themselves to his blessed and happy nature” (Abr. 87).69 In De vita Mosis, solitude also plays an important role in characterizing the hero’s relationship with God. Elaborating on Exod 2:15, where the Septuagint text interpretes Moses’ flight from Egypt as an “anachoresis” (ἀνεχώρησεν), Philo writes that Moses “withdrew (ὑπανεχώρησεν) into the neighboring country of Arabia” (Mos. 1.47). Instead of seeking human company, which he only did later (cf. Mos. 1.51–59), Moses devoted himself to prayer for the deliverance of the Israelites and he dedicated himself to the teachings of philosophy which he had learnt,70 “performing exercises under the influence of reason (λογισμός) to attain life in its highest forms, the theoretical and the practical” (Mos. 1.47–48). Later, when he was alone with his flock, tending the sheep of his father-in-law (Mos. 1.65), God or an angel of God appeared to him in the burning bush, calling him to assist in the liberation of the Israelites (Mos. 1.65–70). When he and God were there alone together like pupil and teacher, Philo writes, Moses was also “taught [as someone who is] solitary by [someone who is] solitary” (ὑπὸ μόνου μόνος ἐπαιδεύετο) the miracles he was supposed to work in Egypt (Mos. 1.80). And in the second book of De vita Mosis, Philo repeatedly draws attention to the “very high and most sacred mountain” which Moses “ascends” (Mos. 2.70, 2.161) to spend time with God for forty days (Mos. 2.70), to receive instructions from God about the tabernacle (Mos. 2.74), “to be alone” with God and to “have conversations with God, in which, being solitary, he talked with [someone who is] solitary” (Mos. 2.163: τὰς πρὸς θεὸν ὁμιλίας, ἃς ἰδιάζων μόνος μόνῳ διελέγετο). 67

Cf. Sen. Ep. 7.1: Quid tibi vitandum praecipue existimes quaeris? turbam. See also Philo, Fug. 63 (quoting Plato’s Theaetetus). On the reception of Plato’s concept of ὁμοίωσις θεῷ in the imperial era and late antiquity, see Männlein-Robert 2013. 69 Within the context of De Abrahamo, Abraham’s biographical withdrawal from society finds its counterpart in the Platonic notion of the mind’s (νοῦς) withdrawal from the senses (Abr. 30); see Plat, Phd. 83a, and Socrates’ example of mental concentration amidst other duties in Symp. 175a–d, 220c–d. On Philo’s notion of the mind’s withdrawal from the senses (and other bodily faculties) during sleep, see Migr. 190. In Leg. 2.85, Philo reflects on his personal experiences of physical isolation. 70 Cf. Philo, Mos. 1.23–24; Niehoff 2018: 116. Of course, the references to Greek παιδεία in the Life of Moses also reveal much about Philo’s own Greek education (Piccione 2004). 68

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In the synoptic Gospels, places of solitude and mountains also play a role in presenting the true identity of Jesus and his special relationship with God. Compared with the literary portrait of Jesus that we find in Mark and Matthew, Luke seems to be much more interested in this element of hagiographical discourse.71 Before his public ministry begins in the synagogue of Nazareth, Jesus is tempted in the Judean desert by the devil (Luke 4:1–13; cf. Mark 1:12–13; Matt 4:1–11). In a lonely and uninhabited place he has to deal with his identity as God’s son, which he has been familiar with since he was a child (Luke 2:49) and which was reassured to him as an adult during his baptism (Luke 3:22). In the wilderness, “being full of the Holy Spirit,” he is tempted by the devil to misinterpret his divine sonship as a means to exert power and to place his own will over God’s will. By resisting the temptation of self-empowerment and of accepting power from Satan (Luke 4:3–8), he shows his faithfulness towards God and presents himself as the obedient son who does not oppose the Holy Spirit that leads and strengthens him (Luke 4:1 [cf. Mark 1:12; Matt 4:1], 4:14 [diff. Mark 1:14; Matt 4:12]).72 While this episode shows that lonely places or desert regions can be modelled as ambiguous realms of supernatural spiritual encounters with either Satan or God, other evidence suggests that withdrawal from human company enables intense conversation with God. Thus, Luke presents a Jesus who seeks solitude, as the following examples suggests: “Early in the morning, he went out to a solitary (or desolate) place” (Luke 4:42; cf. Mark 1:35). “He (often or repeatedly) withdrew to solitary or desolate places, praying” (Luke 5:16; diff. Mark 1:45). “On one of those days it happened that he went out to the mountain in order to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12). Other passages show Jesus praying alone while (only) some of his disciples are present (Luke 9:18 [diff. Mark 8:27; Matt 16:13]; 9:28 [diff. Mark 9:2; Matt 17:1]; 11:1). 2.7. Divine Providence In imperial-era philosophy, the concept of divine providence (πρόνοια, providentia) is of outstanding importance, especially among Platonic and Stoic philosophers.73 Interestingly, the philosophers differentiate between cosmic providence on the one hand, which refers to the gods’ wise ordering of the universe, including earthly affairs, nature, and the life of humankind in general, and a more person-oriented kind of provindence on the other hand. The latter relates to 71 This holds true also for his portrait of John the Baptist: While all four Gospels locate John’s sphere of life and influence in the wilderness or desert when he was a grown-up (Mark 1:3–4; Matt 3:1, 3:3; Luke 3:2, 3:4; John 1:23), Luke also seems to insinuate that John, empowered by the Spirit, withdrew into deserted places when he was still a child or a young adult (Luke 1:80). 72 Edelmann 2021: 59–62. 73 Sen. Prov. (passim); Ep. 95.50; Plut. De Is. Et Os. 371e; De def. or. 436d; Epict, Diss. 1.6, 1.16, 2.14.11, 3.17, 3.26.28; Feldmeier 2008: 151–154; Fischer 2008: 16–21.

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divine guidance and the special care of gods in the lives of human individuals.74 In biographical literature, the idea of personal providence becomes an important element of hagiographical discourse. This is especially obvious in Philo’s De vita Mosis, where several instances occur of explicit providence language that is notably absent from the Greek Pentateuch. Due to “God’s taking care of the child” (κατὰ θεὸν προμηθούμενον τοῦ παιδός), the infant Moses was protected when his life was at stake (Mos. 1.12). Because “God kept” the infant “in mind” (ἐπινοίᾳ θεοῦ), he was breast-fed by his own mother (Mos. 1.17). Philo also ascribes the ordering of events that caused Pharaoh’s daughter to accept Moses as her child to be the will of God, because, as he puts it, “God makes easy all things that he wants, even those that can only be achieved with difficulty” (Mos. 1.19: πάντα δ’ ἐξευμαρίζει θεὸς ἃ ἂν ἐθελήσῃ καὶ τὰ δυσκατόρθωτα). As a result of God’s circumspect “prudence” or “thoughtfulness” (ἐπιφροσύνη), Aaron was prepared to support Moses when he was called to lead God’s people out of Egypt (Mos. 1.85). And only through God’s “providence,” Moses rose to become king, law-giver, high priest, and prophet (Mos. 1.162, 2.3). As is well known, the writers of the New Testament are quite hesitant to use the explicit philosophical language of πρόνοια or related terms when it comes to explaining divine providence. However, early Christians like Luke found ways to paraphrase the concept, which is why it would be wrong to claim that the authors of the New Testament writings do not participate in Greco-Roman discourses on divine providence.75 Among the evangelists, while Mark and Matthew provide some implicit76 and explicit evidence, Luke stands out as a theologian who argues that God’s will directed Jesus’ life to fulfill his earthly task.77 In Luke’s Gospel, as well as in the other Synoptic Gospels, recurrent δεῖ-phrases indicate that Jesus’ teachings, his deeds, his suffering, his death and his resurrection are caused by divine necessity.78 As a twelve-year-old boy, Jesus “must” be “about his father’s business” in the temple of Jerusalem (Luke 2:49). Later, he “must preach the kingdom of God, because for this purpose” he was “sent” (Luke 4:43). As the “son of man,” he “must suffer many things,” be “rejected,” “killed,” and “raised on the third day” (Luke 9:22).79 Jesus “must” travel to Jerusalem, where he is destined to die (Luke 13:33; cf. 9:31). Jesus “must” enter the house of Zacchaeus, with 74

Epict. Diss. 1.12.1–4. Feldmeier 2008; Becker 2020: 492–493. 76 An example of how God’s (protecting) providence can be expressed in implicit fashion is the account of Jesus’ rescue from Herod’s death squad when he was still an infant: After all, it was an “angel of the Lord” (Matt 2:13) who, in accordance with the prophetic scriptures (Matt 2:15), told Jesus’ family to flee to Egypt (Matt 2:13–21). This episode can be compared with Philo’s explicit depiction of God’s protection of the infant Moses. 77 On divine providence in Luke-Acts, see Cosgrove 1984; Squires 1993; Becker 2020: 503– 516. 78 Cosgrove 1984: 172–176; Squires 1993: 167–173. 79 Cf. also Luke 17:25, 24:7, 24:26; Matt 16:21; Mark 8:31. 75

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the result that “salvation” is bestowed upon the tax collector and his family (Luke 19:5, 19:9). Regarding Jesus’ passion, the scripture “must be fulfilled” (Luke 22:37) or, as Jesus himself puts it in Luke 24:44, “all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms about me.” All this evidence suggests that the evangelist firmly believed that divine providence ordered Jesus’ way and that the scriptures long ago had foreseen what God was about to do through his son. 2.8. Attribution of Wisdom In his Quis rerum divinarum heres sit, Philo claims that “all wise men are friends of God” (Her. 21).80 According to Wis 7:27 “wisdom, passing in every generation into holy souls, renders them friends of God and prophets. For God loves nothing except the one that lives together with wisdom” (κατὰ γενεὰς εἰς ψυχὰς ὁσίας μεταβαίνουσα φίλους θεοῦ καὶ προφήτας κατασκευάζει· οὐθὲν γὰρ ἀγαπᾷ ὁ θεὸς εἰ μὴ τὸν σοφίᾳ συνοικοῦντα). The idea of the sages’ friendship with God goes back at least to Plato and Xenophon.81 In the course of what Reinhard Feldmeier calls a sapientisation of biblical theology that occurred in the Hellenistic and the early imperial periods,82 it was also adopted in Hellenistic Judaism. Keeping the theological dimension of wisdom in mind, which we also find in the wisdom literature of the Greek Old Testament and early Jewish literature,83 it becomes clear why the attribution of σοφία in imperial-era biographies can become an element of hagiographical discourse. Throughout De Abrahamo, Philo calls Abraham a “sage”84 (σοφός) and in doing so, he moves his text closer to the genre of biographies of philosophers, showcasing his protagonist as an example of living the βίος φιλόσοφος.85 What is striking, however, is that Philo postulates an intimate friendship between Abraham and God (Abr. 273) and that he recurrently correlates Abraham’s wisdom with his piety and love for God. When he abandoned his family and left Chaldea out of reverence for God and as a result of obedience, Abraham also proved to be a “wise man” (Abr. 60, 62, 68, 77). For Philo, the greatest token of Abraham’s piety is the binding of Isaac, which he considers to be the deed of a wise man who loved God (Abr. 80 Cf. also Philo, Prob. 42; Sobr. 55–56; Mos. 1.156 (the “prophet” as the “friend of God”). For a more detailed version of the following section, see Becker 2025 (forthcoming). 81 Plat. Leg. 716d; Xen. Mem. 2.1.33. In imperial-era Stoicism, the idea was also embraced, see Epict. Diss. 4.3.9. For a thorough analysis of the ancient motif of the “friend of God,” see Peterson 1923. 82 Feldmeier 2009. 83 According to LXX’s Prov 1:7, “fear of God is the beginning of wisdom;” see also LXX’s Prov 9:10, 15:33; Sir 1:18, 1:27, 19:20. 84 Philo, Abr. 68, 77, 80, 83–84, 109, 115, 118, 131, 142, 168, 199, 202, 207, 213, 229, 255, 261, 272, 275. 85 Cf. Schorn 2022: 747.

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167, 199, 208). Twice, Abraham experienced divine epiphanies, and according to Philo his wisdom was one of the key reasons why this happened, underscoring that God keeps close company with the wise and honours their character (Abr. 80, 118; cf. 131, 142). When Philo says that Abraham “loved passionately prudence, wisdom and trust in God” (Abr. 271: φρονήσεως καὶ σοφίας καὶ τῆς πρὸς θεὸν πίστεως ἐρασθέντα), he clearly gives wisdom a hagiographical meaning. This is also the case when Philo elaborates on Abraham’s control of passions on the occasion of his wife’s death, which led the “chief men of the country” to conclude that Abraham was “a king from God among” them (Abr. 261). Philo interprets this kingship (cf. LXX’s Gen 23:6) to be the “kingship of the sage” (ἡ τοῦ σοφοῦ βασιλεία) which (only) “God grants” (Abr. 261). Again, by making mention of God in his reception of the Platonic philosopher-king concept,86 Philo presents σοφία as an important element of hagiographical discourse. Although in comparison with Abraham, Moses only rarely appears explicitly as a sage in De vita Mosis (Mos. 2.67), his “wisdom” (Mos. 1.4) is still an integral part of his relationship with God. Like Abraham, Moses also is presented as a philosopher-king, which is of hagiographical significance because Moses, in one and the same person, combined being a philosopher and king and being a high priest and prophet. Moreover, according to Philo, it was “God’s providence” that placed him in office in the first place (Mos. 2.2–3). As a “sage,” Moses “loved God” and “was loved by God,” and he was “inspired by a passionate heavenly love,” which caused him to “honour exceedingly the ruler of the universe and be honoured by him in return.” Furthermore, Philo says that it was an “honour befitting a sage to serve the Being that truly is,” which Moses did during his service as a priest (Mos. 2.67). Although the Jesus of the Gospels is never called explicitly a sage or a philosopher, he is doubtlessly called and presented as a “teacher” (διδάσκαλος).87 His portrait as a teacher does not, however, take the rigid shape of a Jewish rabbi: while the title is sometimes used by the disciples or by minor characters in the narratives, it is never used to depict Jesus through the authorial voice of the narrator. Furthermore, in some instances, it even gains a negative connotation (Matt 23:7–8), and Luke is the only evangelist who has decided to ignore the Jewish title “rabbi” (ῥαββί) altogether. Generally, the Gospels present their hero in such a way as to enable readers (also) to associate Jesus with past or contemporary pagan philosophical teachers involved in Greco-Roman discourses.88 86 Plat. Rep. 473c–e. The idea of the philosopher-king as a model of both virtue and spirituality also occurs in Plutarch’s Life of Numa (see Num. 20.8–12); according to Wright 2023: 3–5 it is likely that “Luke’s authorial audience” (3) was familiar with this concept and “may have approached Luke’s portrait of Jesus […] with similar expectations for transformation” (3–4). 87 Regarding the third Gospel, see, e. g., Luke 7:40, 8:49, 9:38, 10:25, 11:45, 12:13, 18:18, 19:39, 20:21, 20:28, 20:39, 21:7, 22:11. 88 Thorsteinsson 2018: 55–62.

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This is why the Gospels can rightly be placed in close proximity to the genre of the biography of philosophers.89 If we consider the philological evidence without drawing too many implicit conclusions, we find that already in the earliest Gospel, Jesus is “gifted” with a kind of God-given “wisdom” (σοφία) which is closely associated with three facets of his identity, namely his teaching, his miracle-working, and his inspired speech as a “prophet” (Mark 6:2–4 par. Matt 13:54–57). This wisdom clearly seems different from the kind of σοφία we encounter in Philo’s Lives, which is closely connected to philosophical virtuousness as a means to please God. Nevertheless, the literary treatment of Jesus’ wisdom in the Gospels also has a clear hagiographical purpose, because it is presented as part of his divine mission and it shows that Jesus’ work is closely influenced by God himself. Among the synoptics, it is Luke who shows the greatest interest in σοφία. As befits the intellectual precociousness of “divine men” in Greco-Roman biographies,90 Luke includes an anecdote about the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. Interestingly, he puts a σοφία-frame around this episode, because he refers twice to wisdom, once at the beginning and once at the end (Luke 2:40, 2:52). In these framing verses Jesus the child is said to be filled with wisdom and to make progress in wisdom, and the grace of God is also mentioned in both verses. Divine grace in this context can be understood as a causative element that presents God as the benign source of Jesus’ wisdom. This way, his intellectual activity in the temple is transformed into some kind of divinely inspired endeavor. This point is even made clearer when Jesus calls God his father, implicitly introducing himself as the son of God (Luke 2:49). Later in the Gospel, in a rather cryptic passage, Jesus talks about John the Baptist and himself, and overtly implies that they represent and proclaim wisdom, because those who hear and accept their teaching can become “children” of “wisdom” (Luke 7:35). Probably Luke equates “wisdom” here with “the plan of God” mentioned a few verses earlier (Luke 7:30), referring to the Old Testament concept of God’s personified wisdom inviting people to come to her and to accept her.91 Finally, in Luke 21:15, Jesus presents himself as someone who will give “mouth and wisdom” to his disciples should they be detained or have to face interrogations in future persecutions. This statement, uttered within the context of an eschatological speech, clearly implies the prolepsis of Jesus’ resurrection and exhaltation to heavenly glory. Since in biblical theology God is normally understood to be the giver of wisdom,92 Jesus is evidently deified. As a consequence, σοφία serves as an important element of hagiographical discourse. 89

Berger 1984: 1242, 1245; Schorn 2022: 759–760; Bond 2022. Bieler 1967/I: 34; cf. Philo, Mos. 1.21–22. 91 Wolter 2008: 288. 92 See, e. g., LXX’s 1 Kings 3:1–15; Wis 9:1–18; Acts 7:10.

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2.9. Miracles As opposed to late antique pagan and Christian hagiography, the depiction of miracles – judging from the extant sources – is rare in Greco-Roman biographies of the Hellenistic and early imperial period. Examples include portents,93 Suetonius’ account of the miraculous healing of a blind man and a lame man in Alexandria by the newly acclaimed emperor Vespasian,94 and – long after the Gospels – the literary portrait of the first-century philosopher Apollonius of Tyana by Flavius Philostratus in his Vita Apollonii.95 Where miracles do occur in biographies, they can be interpreted as an element of hagiographical discourse, because they contribute to either deify the hero or to characterize him in his close relationship with God, deities, or the divine. Compared to other Greco-Roman biographies, both the quantity of miracles narrated in the gospels and the great variety of different types of miracle stories is striking and unique, ranging from exorcisms to physical and spiritual healings, resuscitations or raisings from the dead, and the exertion of control over nature. As the evidence suggests, Luke’s Gospel is no exception when it comes to the importance of miracles.96 Like Mark and Matthew, he uses the term “deeds of power” (δυνάμεις) to label them (Luke 10:13, 19:37), and in several places he mentions that “power” or the “power of the Lord” works through Jesus (Luke 5:17, 6:19, 8:46). Furthermore, Jesus passes on healing power and exorcising power to his disciples (Luke 9:1). Hence, according to Luke, Jesus is ultimately empowered by God. This observation is supported by Jesus’ identity as the power-filled Spirit-bearer, which Luke is very careful to explicitly elaborate (Luke 1:35, 4:14, 4:18, 4:36).97 In addition, a special feature of Luke’s approach consists in placing more emphasis than Mark and Matthew on how people affected by Jesus’ miracle performances praise God to express their gratitude (Luke 5:25–26, 7:16, 13:13, 17:15, 17:18, 18:43).98 In this way, although Jesus’ miracles increase his authority as a teacher and a “divine man,”99 Luke makes clear that the deeds performed by Jesus ultimately point beyond themselves and beyond Jesus. Thus, the readers learn that it is not Jesus who is the source of his miraculous power, but God through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. 93

Berger 1984: 1216, 1321. Suet. Vesp. 7.2–3; see Spahlinger 2004. Many scholars have noted similarities between Vespasian and the Markan Jesus, see Eve 2008. 95 According to Philostratus, Apollonius performed exorcisms and a resuscitation of a young girl; see Philostr. VA. 3.38, 4.10, 4.20, 4.45. 96 In more than twenty places, Luke deals with mircales or related topics; see Luke 4:18–21, 4:33–36, 4:38–39, 4:40–41, 5:1–11, 5:12–16, 5:15, 5:17–26, 5:31, 6:6–11, 6:17–19, 7:1–10, 7:11–17, 7:21– 22, 8:2, 8:22–25, 8:26–39, 8:40–56, 9:10–17, 9:37–43, 11:14–23, 13:10–17, 13:32, 14:1–6, 17:11–19, 18:35–43, 22:50–51; see Zimmermann 2013: 513–655. 97 Gunkel 2015: 83–101. 98 Becker 2020: 283–284; cf. also Acts 3:8, 4:21–22. 99 On the miracle-working of θεῖοι ἄνδρες, see Bieler 1967/I: 80–97. 94

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While miracles are absent from De Abrahamo, Philo does present Moses as a miracle worker in accordance with the book of Exodus. The most detailed accounts deal with the “signs” (σημεῖα: Mos. 1.76–77, 1.95), “wonder-works” (θαυματουργήματα: Mos. 1.82; cf. 1.79) and “wonders” (τέρατα: Mos. 1.80, 1.90– 91, 1.95) that Moses had to perform before the Pharaoh and the Egyptian elite (Mos. 1.76–95), and with the ten plagues (Mos. 1.96–139). While the latter mainly serve the cause of punishment, the miracles worked before the Pharaoh are meant to confute the “disbelief ” (ἀπιστεῖν, ἀπιστία) of God’s people and the Egyptians in what Moses has to say (Mos. 1.74, 1.76, 1.90) and to change their “disbelief ” into “belief ” or “trust in his words” (Mos. 1.90: ἀπιστίας εἰς πίστιν τῶν λεγομένων μεταβαλεῖν). Crucial for Philo’s understanding of Moses as a miracle worker and for the question of hagiographical discourse is that he “was taught” (ἀναδιδάσκεσθαι, προδιδάσκεσθαι) by God himself how to perform the miracles (Mos. 1.76, 1.81, 1.90). As in the Gospel of Luke, the reference to the higher authority and power of God functions as an important element of hagiographical characterization. 2.10. Ascension to Heaven One last common feature of hagiographical discourse concerns the idea of ascension to heaven. The idea itself is quite old and widespread, attested in the Hebrew Bible and the Septuagint (e. g., Elijah)100 as well as in Greek and Roman mythology (e. g., Heracles) and religion (e. g., apotheosis of Roman emperors in the imperial cult).101 Interestingly, in early imperial-era biography, ascensions to heaven gain importance to deify selected individuals by stressing that they belong to and enter the realm of God or the gods. By way of example, Plutarch presents the tradition of Romulus’ sudden disappearance from earth through a Platonic lens as the return of Romulus’ purified soul to the domain of the gods.102 Philo also draws on this highly religious literary motif to make sense of Deuteronomy’s narrative on Moses’ death. The biblical text says that Moses died alone in God’s presence in the land of Moab and that God himself buried him, which is why nobody knows where his grave is located (Deut 34:1–6). Without a doubt, this manner of death and burial is very exceptional, because it creates an intimate relationship between Moses and God. Philo mentions this burial and attributes it to “immortal powers” (Mos. 2.291: ἀθανάτοις δυνάμεσιν), but he makes Moses’ death even more unusual by presenting it as a transition from mortality to immortality and as a journey to heaven: Depicting his earthly life as 100 101

1958.

102

2 Kings 2:1–18; Sir 48:9. A similar incident is narrated about Enoch (Gen 5:24). On Heracles, see Ov. Met. 9.251–272; Ps.-Seneca, Herc. Oet. 1696–1704 [Zwierlein]; Mühl Plut. Rom. 28; see also Liv. Ab urbe cond. 1.16; John 2022: 95–98, at 96.

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a “colony” (ἀποικία), an image which implies detachment from a heavenly home, Philo writes that Moses, who on earth was a “double being” (δυάς) that consisted of “body and soul” (σῶμα καὶ ψυχή), was “sent into heaven” (εἰς οὐρανὸν στέλλεσθαι) because he “was summoned by the Father” (μετακληθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρός). Being sent up to heaven is paraphrased as the process in which God transforms the dual being Moses into a “single-entity being” (μονάς) or “most sun-like mind” (νοῦς ἡλιοειδέστατος), which “flies away to go on a straight journey to heaven” (εἰς οὐρανὸν δρόμον διιπτάμενος εὐθύνῃ) when Moses is “taken up” (ἀναλαμβανόμενος) (Mos. 2.288, 2.291). Concerning hagiographical discourse, it is crucial to note that this highly philosophical ascension narrative underscores an extraordinary relationship between God and Moses, and it is because the divine father wants to have company even after his death that Moses is summoned into heaven. Turning to Luke, it is quite crucial to note that he is the only evangelist who explicitly depicts Jesus’ ascension.103 At the beginning of his travel narrative, he explains that when the “days of his assumption were fulfilled,” Jesus deliberately focused on his destination and began his journey to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). By contextualizing the reference to Jesus’ assumption within the beginning of the Gospel’s travel narrative (Luke 9:51–19:27), Luke, on the one hand, presents heaven as the ultimate destination of Jesus’ way and, on the other hand, he depicts the ascension as a journey to heaven that begins on earth. His “going up” or “ascending” (ἀναβαίνειν) to Jerusalem (Luke 18:31, 19:28) is, so to speak, the first step on his way to heaven. After narrating his death and resurrection, Luke goes on to give an account of the ascension: “And he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. And it happened, while he blessed them, that he parted from them (διέστη ἀπ’ αὐτῶν) and that he was carried up into heaven (ἀνεφέρετο εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν). And after worshipping him, they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple, blessing God” (Luke 24:50–52).104 While this narrative lacks explicit philosophical terminology and imagery, it is one of many Lukan texts that are characterized by a strategic “double coding” (Doppelkodierung). In other words, it simultaneously makes sense for readers influenced by biblical texts and the Jewish tradition and for readers with a pagan educational background who are not deeply acquainted with the Septuagint or Judaism in general.105 Similar to Philo’s focus on the divine father, Luke’s short account equally makes clear that Jesus is taken up into heaven because he belongs to his father. In Jesus’ last 103 Mark and Matthew do not mention the ascension, while John’s Jesus alludes to his “going up” (ἀναβαίνειν) to God the father (John 20:17). The reference to the ascension in the longer ending of Mark seems to be inspired by the Lukan account of Jesus’ assumption (Mark 16:19; cf. Luke 24:50–51; Acts 1:9–11). 104 Cf. the slightly different account of Jesus’ ascension in Acts 1:9–11. 105 Feldmeier 2011.

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words that he speaks before being carried up, he mentions that he would send the “promise of my father” (scil. the Holy Spirit) upon the disciples (Luke 24:49; cf. Acts 2:33). These words imply that Jesus is taken up into heaven because of his unique status of being the son of God. To show that Jesus’ relationship with God the father is extraordinarily close, he speaks of God as “my father,” whereas Philo more generally talks about “the father,” which does not primarily reflect a personal father-son-relationship, because Philo’s use of the term is generally influenced by the Platonic notion of the divine father as “creator and father” of the cosmos.106

3. Conclusion Even though there are many more elements of hagiograpical discourse to be explored in Philo’s Lives and Luke’s Gospel, such as the transfigurations of Moses (Mos. 2.66–76) and Jesus (Luke 9:28–36),107 I will now come to a conclusion. Interrelating imperial-era biographies with the intention to find out how they present their heroes in religious terms is a promising field of study. As we have seen, two of Philo’s biographies and the Gospel of Luke share quite a lot of similar features in this respect. The similarities bear witness to the fact that Philo and Luke participate in Greco-Roman discourses of the intellectual elites of their time, because in themselves the elements of hagiographical discourse are not specifically Jewish Hellenistic or early Christian. Of course, further study would also have to include pagan biographies and address the question of the cultural, religious, and literary specificity of hagiographical elements: Do Greek-speaking Jews, Christian Gospel writers, and pagan authors such as Plutarch use the same features as their contemporaries? Do they use the same features, but fill them with different content, as we have already seen in Philo and Luke? Are there different features to be detected in different periods of time (e. g. the early imperial period versus late antiquity), depending also on the language that is used (Greek or Latin)? In any case, if we compared a highly religious and hagiographical text such as Plutarch’s Life of Numa, we would encounter many of the features detected in Philo’s biographies and the Gospel of Luke. From the viewpoint of New Testament scholarship, there are two major branches of study related to the research topic: First, exploring hagiographical discourse can help to contextualize early christobiography within the context of a common imperial-era literary religiosity and religious biography writing. Second, in doing so, we can collect more evidence to prove that the gospel writers are – to varying degrees,

106 107

Cf. Plat. Tim. 28c. On Philo’s transfiguration account, see Wypadlo 2013: 326–382.

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but similar to Philo – familiar with the discourses and the literary culture of the intellectual elites of their day.108

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108 Prior to the conference held in Tübingen (May 22–24, 2022), an earlier draft of this paper was presented virtually via Zoom at the Oxford New Testament Seminar on the invitation of Markus Bockmuehl (March 4, 2022). I gratefully acknowledge feedback and suggestions from the audiences on both occasions. I also would like to thank Stefan Schorn (Leuven) for sharing insights relating to hagiographical elements in Hellenistic biography, and John van Maaren (Heidelberg) for proofreading my English.

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–. “Biographie II (spirituelle).” Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum Suppl. I (2001): 1088–1364. –. “L’hagiographie: Un ‘genre’ chrétien ou antique tardif ?” Analecta Bollandiana 111 (1993): 135–188. –. “Heiligenverehrung II (Hagiographie).” Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum XIV (1988): 150–183. Vischer, Rüdiger. Das einfache Leben. Wort- und motivgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu einem Wertbegriff der antiken Literatur. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965. Walsh, Robyn Faith. The Origins of Early Christian Literature. Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Weidemann, Hans-Ulrich. “‘Embedding the Virgin.’ Die Jungfrau Maria und die anderen jüdischen asketischen Erzählfiguren im lukanischen Doppelwerk.” In “Der Name der Jung frau war Maria” (Lk 1,27). Neue exegetische Perspektiven auf die Mutter Jesu. Edited by Hans-Ulrich Weidemann, 107–171. Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2018. Wheaton, Gerry. The Role of Jewish Feasts in John’s Gospel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Wilk, Florian. “De migratione Abrahami als Kontext des Neuen Testaments.” In Abrahams Aufbruch. Philon von Alexandria, De migratione Abrahami. Edited by Maren R. Niehoff and Reinhard Feldmeier, 219–244. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017. Wolter, Michael. Das Lukasevangelium. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. Wördemann, Dirk. Das Charakterbild im bíos nach Plutarch und das Christusbild im Evangelium nach Markus. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2002. Wright, Catherine. “The Power of Example: Following Jesus on the Path of Spirituality in Luke-Acts.” Religions 14.2 (2023): 161. Wypadlo, Adrian. Die Verklärung Jesu nach dem Markusevangelium. Studien zu einer christologischen Legitimationserzählung. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013. Wyss, Beatrice. “‘Vater Gott und seine Kinder und Frauen.’” In The Divine Father. Religious and Philosophical Concepts of Divine Parenthood in Antiquity. Edited by Felix Albrecht and Reinhard Feldmeier, 165–179. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014. Zimmermann, Ruben, ed. Kompendium der frühchristlichen Wundererzählungen. Band 1: Die Wunder Jesu. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2013.

Another Look at the Logos Concept in Philo and the Gospel of John Cerinthus as the Missing Link? Joan E. Taylor In studies of Philo and the New Testament writings, largely composed in the latter part of the first century, we enter the realm of the reception of Philo. A key question is whether any parts of the New Testament corpus show direct Philonic influence, so that we might presume that the author(s) knew Philo’s works. Alternatively, do they draw on the same wider intellectual milieu of Philo, in both being products of shared cultural trends of the Roman Empire? The Logos concept in the Gospel of John has been the subject of intense study, and its relationship to Philo’s Logos concept1 has been well explored.2 However, while there are parallels and also shared imagery,3 most commentators are wary of suggesting that the author of John directly relied on Philo. Daniel Boyarin has observed that the Gospel departs from both Philo and other Jewish writers in its notion of the enfleshed Logos in the person of Jesus.4 Nevertheless, it is often held that, in Philo’s concept of the Logos, he somehow paved the way for early Christian theology.5 1 For the foundational studies of Philo’s Logos concept, see Winston 1985; Goodenough 1940: 130–149. Philo is understood as synthetic, in combining within the Logos concept the Platonic hypostatic Demiurge and the Stoic world-governor by Thümmel 1997: 347–398. See further Zeller 2011: 119–128. 2 The more important studies include Dodd 1953: 54–73, 263–285; Borgen 1983: 115–139; Hofrichter 1986; Evans 1993; Attridge 2005: 103–117. 3 In John the Logos is divine Water (John 4:17), as we have in Philo (Leg. 2.86; Post. 127–129; Somn. 2.241–246), and bread from Heaven, manna (John 6:35), as likewise in Philo (Leg. 2.86, 3.51–52, 161, 169, 173–178; Det. 118; Her. 79, 191). For Philo this makes ordinary food and drink necessary only for basic sustenance (Leg. 3.129, 134, 147, 151), while the divine water and manna are the wisdom of God within the world. 4 Boyarin 2001. 5 See Kaufmann 1901–1906. Here there is after the main title a significant equation in brackets (= “Maamar” or “Dibbur,” “Logos”), and Kaufman goes on to sketch the prevalence of the concept of the personification of the Word in apocryphal and rabbinic literature, from Sir 43:15 and Wis 9:1 to Midrash (Lev. R. 1:4:5; Cant. R. 1:13), before listing a dense knot of references from the Targums. However, when it comes to Philo, Kaufman defines him as having a peculiar semi-Jewish philosophy: Philo’s “divine thought,” “the image” and “first-born son” of God, “the archpriest,” “intercessor,” and “paraclete” of humanity, the “archetype of man”, paved the way

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It is not possible here to do justice to the immense scholarly literature on the Logos in the Gospel of John, or even to explore the nooks and crannies of all other possible philosophical influences on the Johannine concept, such as Stoicism6 or the Targums.7 Rather, my purpose is to consider a fresh way of thinking of a relationship between Philo and John by considering whether there was an intermediate “Philonic” Christian position against which John reacted. Does this intermediate position demonstrate that Philo was read? The clue here is found in what is stated by Irenaeus, in the later second century: that the Gospel of John was written specifically to correct the Christological notions of an early “false apostle,” Cerinthus, who seems to have used the Logos concept himself. In order to consider whether Cerinthus or the author of the Gospel of John may have known Philo, we will begin by considering their reading contexts, in Alexandria and Ephesus, then focus on specific features of Cerinthus’ philosophy in the light of Philo, and thereafter reflect on how these features may be addressed in the Gospel.

1. The Reading Contexts of Philo of Alexandria Geographically speaking, initial reading (or hearing) contexts of Philo of Alexandria varied. As Maren Niehoff has shown, they could stretch between Alexandria and Rome, at different times of his career.8 In terms of his reach, as a member of a rich and important family and an eminent leader of the Jewish community in Alexandria during the 30s and early 40s ce,9 Philo’s work was known in his own time among other Jews, on the evidence of Josephus – living in Judaea and Rome – who knew Philo for his leadership and his philosophy (e. g. Joseph. AJ 18:257–260). Primarily, Philo’s readership would have been among those of the allegorical “school” of exegesis.10 The intellectual environment of Alexandria in Philo’s time was clearly rich and complex,11 indicated by Philo both when he refers to those with whom he disagrees (e. g. the “extreme allegorizers” of Migr. 86–93), for the Christian conceptions of the Incarnation (“the Word become flesh”) and the Trinity. See also: Runia 1993: 78–83. 6 Stoic influence was strongly advocated by Rendel 1917 and examined by commentators such as Barrett 1978: 34–36, though while asserting that John is no Stoic (at 36). EngbergPedersen 2017 argues that Stoicism can account for the Johannine Logos concept better than Philo. 7 Ronning 2010. 8 Niehoff 2018. 9 See Hadas-Lebel 2012; Kamesar 2009; Morris 1987. For Philo as a leader of the Jewish community in Alexandria, see Birnbaum 2004. 10 Dawson 1992. 11 Taylor 2003.

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and also by the confidence in which he can appeal to other allegorical readers in the city,12 including to those outside Judaism. Philo stood on the shoulders of predecessors who had pioneered allegorical interpretations of Scripture, in particular Artapanus13 and Aristobulus.14 When we consider Philo, despite the absence of his conversation partners in surviving literature, it is thus well to consider him inter alios, rather than a lone voice, though he was the prime exemplar of this school.15 After the disaster that befell the Jewish community of Alexandria in 115–117 ce,16 Philo’s philosophy was preserved (as with that of Artapanus and Aristobulus) within the community of Alexandrian Christians.17 It would be unlikely that the Christian preservation of Philo sprung from nowhere, but rather it points to an earlier time in which Christians (as Jews) were reading Philo. After all, Philo could even be remembered in Christian circles as a Hebrew (Jewish) Christian, partly thanks to his work on the Therapeutae being understood as describing Christians18 and a story that he met Peter in Rome.19 However, apart from Rome, and Jerusalem, do we know where else Philo was read? There is actually a strong likelihood he was read in Ephesus. Ephesus and Alexandria, two vibrant cities of the Roman Empire, were separated by but ten days travel by sea. These were extremely cultured Hellenistic cities with highly active trading ports, huge civic institutions including libraries, and both of these had large Jewish populations, as Josephus indicates.20 Early in the first century there was a visit to Ephesus from the Alexandrian philosopher Potamōn, founder of an “Eclectic” school and author of Elements of Philosophy (Diog. Laert. 1.21), who is recorded in an honorific inscription, implying he impressed people in the city.21 The Christian Jew Apollos came from Alexandria to Ephesus and was vital in establishing the church there (Acts 18:24–26; 1 Cor 1:12, 3:5–23, 4:6; 16:12). Philosophers (and even more so their works) travelled: in the second century, a Miletan philosopher T. Claudius Flavianus Dionysus is said by Philostratus to have visited many cities, including Alexandria and Ephesus (Philostr. VS 1.22, 524).22 The relationship between Ephesus and Alexandria was strong: 12

Hay 1979–1980. Collins 1985. 14 Collins 1985. 15 See also, Niehoff 2011. 16 Cass. Dio 68.32.1–2; cf. Euseb. Hist. eccl. 4.2.1–2; J.Sukkah 5:1 [55b]. 17 Clem. Al. Strom. 1.11.2; cf. Euseb. Hist. eccl. 5.1. See for discussion Paget 2010: 91–102; Runia 1993, 2002. 18 Taylor 2021. 19 Euseb. Hist. eccl. 2.16–17; see also Philip Alexander in this volume. 20 Murphy-O’Connor 2008: 78–84, summarizes what Josephus states about the Jewish community in the city. 21 I. Eph. 3:789; SEG 1988: 1177, see Runia 1988. 22 Van Tilborg 1996. 13

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Paul Trebilco, examining Ephesus and the early Christians there, notes special “concord” coins with Alexandria.23

2. The Origins of the Gospel of John For the origins of the Gospel of John the picture is complicated by the fact that the work likely developed in stages to reach its final form.24 Usually Chapter 21 is considered to have been a later addition,25 as well as editorial comments, the most obvious being one after John 4:1, when it is mentioned that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John the Baptist: “though in fact it was his disciples who baptized, not Jesus himself ” (4:2). Tertullian indicated the Gospel ended with 20:31, when he states: “And why does this conclusion of the gospel affirm that these things were written unless it is that you might believe, it says, that Jesus Christ is the son of God?”, and indeed there is a Sahidic Coptic manuscript (Bodleian MS. Copt.e.150[P]) which ends at 20:31.26 While it was the final (canonical) Gospel to be written,27 there were significant edits even after the composition was completed.28 The gospel is not anonymous: its authorship (or final redaction?) is invariably ascribed to a John.29 It seems likely that there was a confusion between the 23 Trebilco 2004: 27, note 105. On Apollos, see 115–116. Trebilco nevertheless thinks little should be made of Apollos’ Alexandrian origins as indicting a knowledge of Philo (at 115, note 56). 24 Bultmann 1964 famously presented a recipe of a signs source combined with a discourse source and a Passion story, on the base of a Gnostic Redeemer myth; Brown 1977, suggested five different stages of redaction. Fortna 1970, 1989 determines a prior narrative Gospel of Signs, combining an original Signs Source and Passion Source. Von Wahlde 2010 identifies that the Gospel has gone through three editions. Anderson 2011: 106–121, 141–153, has suggested developments based on a series of crises that led to three stages of composition: a. an oral Johannine tradition, b. a first edition and c. a second edition including supplementary material. The observation of layers and a final redaction is core in the work of Boismard and Lamouille 1993, and Siegert 2004. 25 Barrett 1978. 26 Schenke 2006: 893–904. 27 The Muratorian Fragment (late second-century) states: “[10] The fourth [book] of the Gospels is that of John [one] of the disciples. [11] When his fellow-disciples and bishops urged [him], he said: [12] Fast together with me today for three days [13] and, what shall be revealed to each, let us tell [it] to each other. [14] On that same night it was revealed to Andrew, [one] of the Apostles, that, with all of them reviewing [it], John should describe all things in his own name” (Theron 2009: 106–113). This indicates a sense that the Gospel was written last. Sundberg 1973 and Hahneman 1992 have suggested a later dating for the Muratorian Fragment. It has also been considered a fourth-century forgery by Rothschild 2018. For a review of the debate, response to Rothschild, and defence of second-century dating, see Guignard 2019. 28 The issues of the textual instability of the Adulterous Woman passage is a case in point. See Knust and Wasserman 2018. 29 For an argument against the supposition that the canonical Gospels circulated anonymously, see Gathercole 2018.

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apostle John and an elder or disciple John mentioned by Papias (Euseb. Hist. eccl. 3.39.15).30 Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna was a disciple of “John” (Hist. eccl. 5.20.6). An elder (not apostle) is identified as author of the Letters of John (2 John 1:1; 3 John 1:1). It is fairly unlikely that it was authored by the apostle John, because, on the evidence of the second-century bishop Papias, the apostle appears to have died quite early on.31 In terms of location, within the Roman world, Irenaeus places the composition in Ephesus (Adv. Haer. 3.1.2; cf. Euseb. Hist. eccl. 3.23). Clement saw the Gospel as written after the others by the apostle John (Clem. Al. Strom. 3.6,45; Quis div. 42.1) and in a passage by Clement quoted by Eusebius, he associates the apostle John with Ephesus (Hist. eccl. 3.23). There clearly was a John in Ephesus late in the first century or early in the second, who was credited with the authorship of the Gospel, who was identified (later) as the apostle, and who died and was buried there (cf. e. g. Hist. eccl. 5.18.13, 5.24.2). Eusebius assumes the location of the composition is Ephesus (Hist. eccl. 6.14). Jerome knew of a grave of an elder John in Ephesus, and attributed two of the letters to him (Vir. ill. 9). So, given the likelihood of Philo’s works being read in Ephesus, it would be appropriate to consider him as a possible influence. The Gospel was soon used by other Christian authors,32 though one should note that the supposed Nachleben is muddied when authors use “Johannine” ideas rather than direct quotes, for example in the case of Justin (1 Apol. 61.4–5), since the ideas may indicate common concepts or memories without specific employment of written source material.33 Nevertheless, to take a minimalist approach of looking for commentary or direct citation (alleged or extant), the earliest apparent evidence for the reading of (some version of ) John is found in Alexandria, with Basilides (active ca. 117–138 ce),34 who is said by Hippolytus to have quoted from the Gospel, viz. “He was the true light, which lights every human being that comes into the world” (John 1:9; Iren. Adv. Haer. 7.10). Valentinus,35 active in the 130s in Alexandria and then Rome,36 is said to have written on 30

Bauckham 2006. In George Hamartolos’ Chronicle (9th cent., preserved in the codex Coislinianus), there is: “[John] was worthy of martyrdom,” citing Papias: “he [John] was killed by the Judaeans.” Likewise, in the de Boor fragment of a fifth-century epitome of the Chronicle of Philip of Side, Papias is said to have written (in the second book of his work) that John the godly and James his brother were killed by the Jews. This explains why Mark 10:35–40 (= Matt. 20:20–23) predicts their martyrdom. Chapter 21 suggests that the beloved disciple (=John) had died, despite a statement by Jesus: “this saying then went out to the siblings that disciples would not die, but Jesus did not say to him he would not die, but ‘if I wish him to remain until I come, what’s that to you?’” (21:24). 32 E. g. Keefer 2006. Keefer himself is well aware of these issues, explored in his first chapter. 33 Gregory and Tuckett 2005; Nagel 2000; Batovici 2012. 34 Pearson 2008. 35 Dunderberg 2008. 36 Hill 2004: 216–218. 31

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the Prologue (Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.8.5–6). Valentinus’ disciple Ptolemy quotes John 1:3, in his Letter to Flora, as cited by Epiphanius (Pan. 33.3.6), and he wrote on the Prologue (so Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.8.5).37 Another of Valentinus’ disciples, Theodotus, who likewise taught in Alexandria (ca. 160–170 ce), cites John, as quoted by his compatriot Clement.38 Valentinus’ disciple Heracleon (Iren. Adv. Haer. 2.4.1) wrote an allegorical commentary on the Gospel sometime after Irenaeus wrote,39 which is known from the extensive quotations within the work of his fellow-Alexandrians: Origen’s Commentary on John, written around the year 230 ce, and by portions in Clement, already in ca. 190 ce.40 John was used in Naassene circles (ca. 130–180 ce), according to Hippolytus (Hipp. Ref. 5.7.2–9).41 As Charles Hill has argued, however, this use of the Gospel by “Gnostics” (in Egypt) does not necessarily imply “Gnostic” origins.42 There was widespread use of John in noncanonical Gospels, both “Gnostic” and non-“Gnostic,” as has been examined by Lorne Zelyck.43 Among the proto-orthodox, it is cited by Theophilus of Antioch (Ad Autol. 2.22), in the later second century, and it was a mainstay of Tatian’s Diatessaron (ca. 170 ce), which clearly marks it as one of the four authoritative Gospels for the proto-orthodox by this time.44 Closer to home, in Ephesus, it is not cited by Polycarp in his Letter to the Philippians (early second century), though it seems to be echoed, along with the Johannine epistles.45 This is quite curious given that Polycarp was remembered as a disciple of John, and Smyrna was only some 40 km from Ephesus. It also had nearby detractors: Irenaeus states that the Montanists (in Phrygia) set it aside (Iren. Adv. Haer. 3.11.9). From the above, we can see that the Gospel of John, or some form of it, had an early reading context within Alexandria. It has even been suggested that it originated there,46 though the early Church only links the Gospel with Ephesus.47 What this does show is that works travelled between the two cities, as Philo’s works would also have travelled. Ephesus and Alexandria were linked by an intellectual cord. 37

Hill 2004: 213–216. Rasimus 2010; Casey 1934; Sagnard 1948: 7; Ashwin-Siejkowski 2017. 39 Hill 2004: 207–208. 40 Pagels 1973; Bergland 2020; Dunderberg 2022: 49–66. 41 Lancelotti 2000: 285–287; Nagel 2000: 299–315. 42 Hill 2004, 2010. 43 Zelyck 2013. Zelyck examines the Egerton Gospel, the Gospel of Peter, P.Oxy. 840, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of the Saviour, Sophia of Jesus Christ, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Judas, the Dialogue of the Saviour, the Book of Thomas the Contender. 44 Perrin 2010. Marcion rejected it, if he even knew it (Tert. Adv. Marc. 4.5). 45 Sanders 1968: 34–35. 46 The proposal that the Gospel of John was composed in Alexandria was first made by Bretschneider 1820; and endorsed by Sanders 1943: 86–87; Gunther 1979, though see Chapa 2010. 47 See above. For a review of the traditions see Bruce 1977–1978. For a thorough study that situates John within a reading context of Ephesus, see Tilborg 1996. 38

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3. Cerinthus. Philo and the Concept of the Powers Ephesus, in Christian memory, was associated not only with the John who authored the Fourth Gospel, but with another disciple of Jesus: Cerinthus. Cerinthus is a mysterious but very early figure targeted by the proto-orthodox, who interpreted him in later centuries in the light of later controversies, primarily Gnosticism,48 but that later link is fundamentally anachronistic. More reliably, in the earliest testimonies of Irenaeus and Hippolytus, he appears as a first-century Christian Jew who espoused a Christology that held that a divine Power, “Christ,” descended upon Jesus at his baptism and departed at his crucifixion.49 There is therefore a temporary incarnation. While the man Jesus died and was raised, the Power “Christ” was impassable, and therefore did not suffer or die. Both John and Cerinthus were remembered as being active in Ephesus at the same time. Polycarp apparently told Irenaeus that when John went to the bathhouse in Ephesus and found Cerinthus there, he refused to enter it (Iren. Adv. Haer. 3.3.4). Cerinthus is also directly linked with Egypt. Irenaeus states that Cerinthus was “educated in the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Adv. Haer. 1.26). Hippolytus writes that “Cerinthus formed his opinion not from the scriptures, but from the opinions of the Egyptians” (Ref. 7.7), being “trained in the education of the Egyptians” (Αἰγυπτίων παιδειᾳ ἀσκηϑείϛ; 7.33.1), even “trained in Egypt” (Αἰγύπτῳ ἀσκηθεὶς; 10.21.1).50 In terms of what such “Egyptian education” means, Hippolytus notes of Valentinus’ Platonic and Pythagorean theory: “The origin, then, from which Plato derived his theory in the Timaeus, is (the) wisdom of the Egyptians. For from this source, by some ancient and prophetical tradition, Solon (?) taught his entire system concerning the generation and destruction of the world, as Plato says, to the Greeks, who were (in knowledge) young children, and were acquainted with no theological doctrine of greater antiquity (Ref. 6.17; cf. 4.43).”51 But Cerinthus’ “Egyptian” connection was also Jewish; his Jewish name “John”52 is implied by the suggestion that he was responsible for the Book of Revelation (Euseb. Hist. eccl. 7.25.2, sourcing the Roman presbyter Gaius), given the name “John” is the name of that author (Rev 1:4, 9, 22:8). As such, we should probably assume that John Cerinthus, as a first-century Egyptian Jew wielding Platonic notions in the reading context of both Egypt and Ephesus,53 was aware 48

For a fuller summary of the early evidence concerning Cerinthus, see Taylor 2022.

49 Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.26.1, 3.2.1, 3.11.1; Hippol. Ref. 7.33.1–12, 10.21.1–3; Ps. Tertullian, Adv. Omn.

Haer. 3; see also KliJohn and Reinink 1973. The Gnostic categorisation is favoured by Hill 2000 and 2004: 229–230; but see the more nuanced view of Myllykoski 2005. 50 See KliJohn and Reinink 1973: 111, 120. 51 See Runia 1995: 73. 52 Cerinthos was a nickname meaning bee-food. 53 It is usually Apollos (1 Cor 3:6, 4:6, 16:12; Acts 18:24–28) – who is also associated with Ephesus – that is called upon as a possible exponent of Alexandrian Jewish thinking in Chris-

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of Philo’s works, particularly Philo’s De Opificio Mundi, which is the prime example of a Jewish philosophical engagement with Platonic theory, as David Runia has well explored.54 From what is said by Irenaeus and Hippolytus, Cerinthus subscribed to a theory of divine Powers (Δυνάμεις). On the one hand, for Cerinthus, there was the aforementioned Power “Christ.” He apparently also believed the world was made by a certain good Power, but one that is a lesser agent than the “prime God” (πρὼτος θεός) who is “above all” (ὑπὲρ τὰ ὅλα).55 The Maker (Fabricator/ Δημιουργός) and the Father (Pater/Πατήρ) are distinguished (Iren. Adv. Haer. 3.2.1), but both are good. Important for our subject is the fact that Irenaeus asserted that the Fourth Gospel was written by John against Cerinthus (Iren. Adv. Haer. 3.11.1).56 In identifying the Gospel of John as being written to counter a creation theology identified with Cerinthus (3.2.1, 3.11.1), Irenaeus briefly and tantalizingly further describes Cerinthus’ errant theology (using Greek terminology) as: “indeed, the Monogenēs was the beginning; the Logos was the true son of the Only-Begotten” (initium quidem esse monogenem; logon autem verum filium unigeniti). Cerinthus then already espoused a Logos philosophy, prior to the Gospel’s articulation. The Monogenēs is the beginning as it is the first to be generated from the “prime God” (primus Deus), the principality that is above the universe (super universa, 1.26.11). The relationship between the Monogenēs, Logos, Creator and Father are unclear from these references in Irenaeus, but there are clues that enable an understanding of the generative flow. The Maker was “far beneath” the Father (Iren. Adv. Haer. 3.11.1). The Logos is not the same Power as “Christ.” “Christ” as a Power was the impassable son of the Father while Jesus was the son of the Maker, filius fabricatoris (3.11.1). The term filius fabricatoris, defines Jesus as having achieved this status while being human, because for Cerinthus Jesus was a man born normally: not the son of a virgin but the son of Joseph and Mary (1.26). While in the Gospel of John the divine Logos is the same as the Monogenēs (1.14), who is also Jesus Christ, in Cerinthian thought there is a striking differentiation, whereby the Monogenēs generates the Logos, and neither is “Christ.” tian circles. But Cerinthus’ “Egyptian” education likewise suggests he too expounded an Alexandrian Jewish philosophy that would ultimately provide the seedbed for Pantaenus, Clement and Origen’s forms of Christian philosophy: the community whose conservation of Philo’s writings was so vital. 54 Runia 1986, 2003a, 2003b. 55 Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 1.26.1) and Hippolytus (Ref. 7.33.1, 10.21.1). Irenaeus and Hippolytus also say that the Maker was ignorant of the supreme God, which is also a Valentinian understanding. For further on the ignorant Demiurge, see Obrien 2015. 56 Later, in the fourth century, Epiphanius notes there was a group dubbed the Alogi who asserted that the Gospel of John was written by Cerinthus (Pan. 51), but their designation implies a rejection of the concept of the Logos itself, as a way of besmirching the authority of the Gospel.

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It is here we are helped by Philo’s concept of the divine Powers.57 For Philo the Powers (Δυνάμεις) are dynamic divine ideas, or causes, by which Philo can affirm that “God” (composite) is actively the Maker (Δημιουργός), in line with Genesis.58 Usually there are two Powers, termed the Creative (Ποιητική) and the Regal (Βασιλική).59 The former can also be called by the term Goodness ( Ἀγαθότης), as Propitious (Ἵλεως), Beneficent (Εὐεργέτης) or Gracious (Χαριστική), while the latter is more often called by the name of authority (Ἐξουσία) or sovereignty ( Ἀρχή), as governing ( Ἀρχική) or legislative (Νομοθετική). They exist as divine and imperishable attributes. They can be distinguished by name, in that “God (Θεός) is the name of the Beneficent Power, and Lord (Κύριος) is the name of the Regal Power” (Somn. 1.163).60 The Powers are actual in the cosmos, because the whole world is held together by them (Migr. 181). The two Powers are symbolized by the cherubim on the Holy Ark,61 which divide up God’s role as Creator and King (QE 2.66). This is not simply an intellectual theory of origins. It is revealed to Philo by a “voice in my own soul,” when inspired, divining what his soul cannot know. This voice “told me that alongside the one true existing God there are two supreme and primary Powers, Goodness ( Ἀγαθότης) and Authority (Ἐξουσία); and that by Goodness he had created everything; and that by Authority he ruled all that he had created; and that a third, Logos, between the two, brings them together: for by Logos God is both ruler and good” (Cher. 27–28).62 The divine Logos is the place (τοπός) of the Powers (Opif. 20). Because the Powers are placed within the Logos,63 the Logos embraces the totality of the Powers.64 Yet the Logos can also be understood as “first-born” (πρωτόγονος; Conf. 63, 146; Plant. 51), or relational.65 The Logos relates to the Powers in that it was conceived in God’s mind before all things and is manifested in relation to all things.66 In Opif. 24 the Logos is thus the divine reason discernible in the created world. Elsewhere, the Logos is the charioteer that guides 57

See Decharneux 2017. Philo, Opif. 7, 10, 46, 72, 77, 135; Plant. 60; see also Wolfson 1962; Termini 2000; Bos 1998 sees Philo’s concept of the Powers as more indebted to Aristotle than Plato. For grounding in biblical concepts see Runia 2004. 59 Philo, Opif. 73; Cher. 27–28; Conf. 176; Gig. 7–8; Somn. 1.34, 135; Spec. 1.66; Her. 166; see also Wolfson 1962: 224; Radice 2009: 136–140. 60 In both Fug. 94–101 and Legat. 6–7 Philo speaks of five powers. 61 Exod. 25:18–20; cf. Philo, Cher. 27–28; QE. 2.62–64. 62 My translation. 63 In David Winston’s detailed examination of the Logos concept in Philo he notes: “The Logos is not identical with the Divine Essence as it is in itself was probably deduced from the fact that the process of self-intellection necessarily involves the duality of subject and object, and even though in this instance subject and object are identical, the absolute unity and simplicity of God … would thereby be compromised.” See Winston 1985: 15, note 7; likewise, Segal 1978: 165. 64 Wolfson 1962: 227. 65 For the relational aspect see Decharneux 1998. 66 See Urban Jr. and Henry 1979: 174–175. 58

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the Creative and Regal Powers (ποιητικῆς δὲ καὶ βασιλικῆς, Fug. 100–101). For Philo, the Logos also guides the human soul upwards to the divine.67 In doing so, human beings become the “children of the […] holy Logos” (Conf. 147, cf. Conf. 97; Migr. 174). The scant details about Cerinthus’ thought provided by Irenaeus and Hippolytus can be understood if we use Philo as a tool for interpretation. Cerinthus’ Power “Christ” corresponds to the Regal Power, given the designation (Χριστός) means “Anointed [King].” While Philo himself never made such an explicit equation of the Regal Power with the “Christ,” he did read the predicted ruler of the line of David as essentially a divine entity. He interpreted Zech 6:12, in line with the Septuagintal reading, as the incorporeal “man whose name is East” who is the image (εἰκών) of God (Conf. 62–63).68 Elsewhere the Logos is described as being God’s image (εἰκών, Conf. 97), but given that the Powers are understood as inherent in or steered by the Logos, this is the case for the Regal Power. For Cerinthus, Christ (=Philo’s Regal Power) is son of the Father, and the Father is at a higher generative point than the Maker. This makes sense by reference to Philo, who has the Regal and the Creative Power on the same generative level, which is the τοπός of the Logos. Given that for Cerinthus also the Logos is the son of the Monogenēs69 (who is thus Father to the Logos), we may suggest a generative flow model for Cerinthus’ concept as follows: Primal God ↓ Monogenēs = Father ↓ Christ ← Logos → Creator ↓ Jesus

For Philo, it is hard to create a model that takes account of his many iterations of divine Powers and generative elements. However, this pattern can be seen to replicate a Philonic model if we recognize his slightly different terminology, as follows: the Existent ↓ the Monad = Speaker/Father ↓ Regal Power ← Logos → Creative Power

67 Philo, Praem. 163; Fug. 91–92; Her. 69–74; Somn. 1.68–69, 86; see also Tobin 1990: 261–262.

68 Mowinckel 1956 thought there was a Son of Man concept in the Logos of Philo. Hamerton-

Kelly 1973 also saw the Son of Man in Philo’s heavenly Anthropos. 69 For the meaning of this term, see below.

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Instead of the designation of the “Primal God” (if indeed this is the term of Cerinthus and not Irenaeus/Hippolytus) Philo used the term “Being” or the Existent (τὸ Ὄν).70 For Philo, developing Plato, the Existent is superior to the Monad and/or One (Praem. 40; Legat. 5–6), which occupies a second generative level. In Spec. 2.176 Philo writes that the Monad is the “incorporeal image of God” (ἀσώματος θεοῦ εἰκών). As such, the Monad maps onto the Cerinthian μονογενής, given that μονογενής has an original meaning not of “only-begotten” (unigenitus), as translated by Irenaeus, but “unique,” “only” or “single.”71 In Quaestiones et Solutiones in Exodum, Philo defines something active prior to the Logos, in that above the Logos is the “Speaker” (ὁ λεγῶν).72 Since a word must be said by someone, and saying implies an action, the Speaker then would be somehow prior to what is spoken. This “speaker” would in Cerinthian terms then be understood as the Monogenēs/Father.73 One may raise a question though, about where to place the Father in Philo’s generative model. For Philo the Father and the Maker can be read as a team (Opif. 7–10, 20), in line with Plato’s Timaeus (28c, 37c), but, given the slipperiness of divine “causes”, a noetic distinction (and relationality/hierarchy) is also possible, given that at each stage there is a divine “fathering.” In fact, the “Father” aspect in Philo (via the Logos) is responsible for the intellectual immaterial side of creation, and the Maker (Demiourgos) for the physical. The human being’s body is molded by the Maker as a sense-perceptible thing but the human being’s soul is the immortal image of God breathed into the body (Opif. 134–135). As such the “Father” would indeed stand at a higher generative point, and flow through. Further correspondences between Cerinthus and Philo are also discernible. According to Hippolytus, Cerinthus asserted that the world was made “by a certain angelic Power” (ὑπὸ δυνάμεώς τινος ἀγγελικῆς, Ref. 10.21.1). To understand the Powers as angels is consistent with Philo, who identified them with the cherubim (Cher. 18–19). For Philo, the term “angel” can also be used for the Logos, the “second God” (QG 2.62), “archangel of many names” and leader of the heavenly host (taxiarch: corps-commander),74 perceived by spiritual vision.75 The Logos is a comforter given that, as ἄγγελος, he imparts sound advice (Fug. 70 Τὸ ὄν (Contempl. 2) or τὸ ὄντως ὄν (Spec. 4.192). See also Opif. 172; Leg. 3.181; Cher. 27; Det. 140, 160; Post. 167; Deus 11, 110, 162; Ebr. 83; Her. 70, 166; Congr. 51; Mut. 11, 21; Migr. 34; Somn. 1.231; Abr. 121; Legat. 6; QE 2.68. 71 Pendrick 1995. 72 Hoblik 2014: 261. 73 In Legum allegoriae, however, there seems to be no intermediate generative level between the Existent and the Logos: there is the top generative aspect of God, and the Logos is next to God (καὶ δεύτερος ὁ θεοῦ λόγος: Leg. 2.86) in terms of creation. Since Philo’s thought developed over time, we cannot obtain total consistency. 74 Philo, Conf. 15; cf. Leg. 3.177–178; Fug. 5–6; QE 2.23. 75 Deut. 30:19–20; cf. Philo, Gig. 23–9; Conf. 78–82.

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5–6). The Logos (like an angel) guides all seekers, as a messenger, until they obtain knowledge, in order that they become attendants of the all-leading God (Migr. 174–175), or rather “children of God” (Conf. 145). The Logos is thus a healer (like the angel Raphael?), in that he heals souls (Leg. 3.177–178). According to Ps.Tertullian, Cerinthus asserted that “the law was given by angels, bringing forth the idea that the God of the Jews is not the Lord, but an angel” (Adv. Omn. Haer. 3).76 Philo states that angels “convey the biddings of the Father to his children and tell the children’s needs to the Father”.77 Indeed, the Law could be understood as being given by angels, but this idea is wider than Philo: it is attested in the Book of Jubilees (1:29–2:1), Josephus (AJ 15.136), and the Apocalypse of Moses, Preface, and in LXX’ Deut 33:2, God on Sinai is accompanied by angels.78 We then turn to the Logos. In Philo the Logos is the creative and intrinsic reason/order in the universe, as in Plato’s Timaeus 30c–31a, 34a.79 The Logos can be the universal soul (Plat. Tim. 36–37, cf. Philo, Opif. 18). The Logos is also a tool: by means of the Logos God creates the universe (Leg. 3.95–96).80 When the substance of the universe was without form and void, God stamped it with his Logos (Somn. 2.46). The world was established on the Logos (Conf. 41, 146, Spec. 1.81). The Logos could be understood to precede (and unite) the two Powers (Creative and Regal), as we have seen. The Logos is not simply involved in creation but ever present. Philo defines the Logos in terms of not only an ordering of the material world, or even the model for the human mind,81 but (in Platonic terms) the conceptual framework of the world (the “intelligible cosmos”) as a whole that is discernible in the here and now (Opif. 24–25).82 As such the Logos is involved in the “Creative Power,” and yet also somehow prior, inherent in the generative entities preceding it. Indeed, in Legum Allegoriae 1.19–21 the perfect Logos, moving in accord with the number seven, is the primal origin and pattern of the mind and of self-perception. In Philo the Logos, symbolized by the high priest, enlightens human rationality (Somn. 1.215; Mos. 2.109–135). However, even here the creational aspects are clear. The Logos is the source of life.83 He is also the first Adam and the image of God: neither male nor female (Opif. 134).84 This οὐράνιος ἄνθρωπος is absolutely not enfleshed: “the heav76

KliJohn and Reinink 1973: 122–125. Philo, Somn. 1.141–143; see also Gig. 16, quoting Plato, Symp. 202e. 78 See also see Gal 3:19; Acts 7:73; Heb 2:2; and Callan 1980. 79 Philo, Opif. 24–25; Plant. 18–19; Fug. 94–102; see also Runia 1986: 174, 450–451. 80 Tobin 1990: 252–269, especially 258. 81 Philo, Plant. 18–19; Fug. 94–102; Her. 199; Leg. 1.24, 43, 65, 2.86; Fug. 97; Somn. 2.241–242. 82 Quoted from Runia 2001: 52–53 and see discussion 147–151. The concept of all creation being a seal imprinted with the Logos is found also in Fug. 12. 83 Philo, Fug. 101; Leg. 3.174–178; Post. 127–129; Somn. 2.241–246; Det. 118; Her. 79, 191. 84 George van Kooten has explored the concept of this Logos anthropologically as being “reason,” which forms part of a hierarchy in creation (1) God; (2) the image of God, i. e. archetypal Reason/Logos; and (3) the cast of that image, i. e. humanity, or more precisely, the 77

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enly man was generated in the image of God and has no part in any corruptible or earthy substance, but the earthly man is made of random material, which is called a lump of clay” (Leg. 1.31). Philo’s Logos seems most creational when it is combined with the creative aspect of Sophia (Hochmah): the Wisdom of God, as presented in the Wisdom of Solomon and Proverbs, where she is divine daughter.85 Philo quotes Prov 8:22 directly in Ebr. 31, when he states that Sophia is “the Mother and Nurse of all.” It would be very neat to see a simple equation of the Logos and Sophia in Philo – as a kind of dyad that could be the same with a bit of gender bending, but, as always, Philo’s language is elusive. The two may be one, sometimes.86 In terms of attributes, as with the Logos, Sophia, the “Wisdom of God” is “marked off from his Powers as highest and most primary” (Leg. 1.86), and out of Sophia he satisfies souls that are thirsty (Sophia as water) and manna (Sophia as food), for “the most fundamental is God and the Logos is second to God (τὸ δὲ γενικώτατόν ἐστιν ὁ θεός, καὶ δεύτερος ὁ θεοῦ λόγος).” As Logos is Light so is Sophia: “God’s archetypal luminary, of which the sun is an image and likeness” (Migr. 40). Yet alternatively the Logos is the actor, the masculine mover, while it is the Earth who is the female partner in the creation of life: “Mother and Nurse”.87 As with Cerinthus, Philo could speak of the “Father,” often in connection with the Maker (as noted above). Philo can also call Sophia the Mother “through whom the universe came to be”, partnering “God, who is also Father of all,” parents together of the divine Logos, who puts on the elements as garments, all the physical universe being the clothing of this intrinsic soul that holds everything together, which also is within the purified mind of the wise person.88 However, in Ebr. 30–31 the Maker (Demiourgos) of the universe is the Father, and the Mother is Understanding (Epistimē), who received the divine seed and bore the Human (Anthropos) as the “only beloved sense-perceptible son” (τὸν μόνον καὶ ἀγαπητὸν αἰσθητὸν υἰον), namely the world/universe. Here Understanding/Epistimē is also Wisdom/Sophia (hence Prov 8:22) but her child is not the Logos but the world itself.89 It is then not the case that in Philo a simple equation between the Logos and Sophia can be made, or that the Logos and Sophia are partners, as Son and Daughter of the Father, because they are not always on the same generative level. Philo might well say that all these collapse into the One, of course, ontologically, but the distinctions of the players among the divine causes/ mind of each person, “which is the true and full sense of the man” (Her. 231). Van Kooten 2008: 89. This follows a Philonic model in which there is no intermediate “Monad” generative level. 85 See especially Wis 7:22–8:8; Prov 8:22–30; for an extensive treatment, see Mack 1973. 86 Winston 1985: 201–204. 87 Philo, Plant. 14–17; see further Scott 1992. 88 Philo, Fug. 108, 112; cf. Prov 8:22–30; for the cladding of the Logos in garments of the High Priest, symbolic of the universe, see Barker 1991: 90–92. 89 In Leg. 1.65, Sophia is Eden, but the Logos is the river issuing from Eden (Gen 2:10–14).

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ideas, or Powers, are used in Philo’s exegesis in ways that defy perfect synthesis or modelling. Precisely how God performed the act of creation can be presented in different ways in different treatises of Philo, in which various unions between dimensions of God appear to occur and result in progeny. For Philo the Logos is also Light.90 This is the creational Light that is separated from the darkness (from Gen 1:3), but also a Light that is discernible to the soul or mind (Opif. 31).91 Here again the Logos appears not just in a theory of origins, or just as the template for the rational mind; it is now remade into something experiential. This reminds us that Philo’s concern in his writings is not simply about a philosophy of metaphysics or ethics but about the human journey to deep awareness, one might even say mindfulness, and enlightenment.92 Philo recognized this Light as a kind of central character of the God who is ultimately the goal of the balanced meditative and ethical existence (contemplative and active) in the life exemplified by Moses. This experienced Logos is spiritual illumination and the divine message. Given that Philo considered that the pinnacle of human achievement is to be accounted as the “child of the Logos” (Conf. 147; Migr. 174) or “child of God” (Conf. 145), it is interesting that Cerinthus understood that Jesus (as a human being) was initially considered “son of the Creator” (filius fabricatoris, Iren. Adv. Haer. 3.11.1), who is good, apparently because he was more able in righteousness, prudence and wisdom than other people (plus potuisse iustitia et prudentia et sapientia ab hominibus, 1.26.1). On this account, “Christ” (=Regal Power) came down in the form of a dove and dwelt in Jesus. Reading Cerinthus through the lens of Philo allows us to see that since Christ is situated within the τόπος of the Logos, Christ in Jesus embodied the Logos: the Logos was enfleshed by dwelling in a human body. Therefore, Philo helps us gain a better appreciation of Cerinthus’ thought, as briefly evidenced by patristic commentators. It is impossible to know if Cerinthus – for all his “Egyptian” education – used Philo primarily, or whether Philo was simply one of many authors of the Alexandrian school who were read by Christian Jews in the city of Ephesus and elsewhere in the mid to late first century. Philo himself was an inheritor of concepts within Alexandrian Judaism, which he then used effectively in biblical interpretation. Nothing in what he writes indicates that he believed he was innovating: “This is the doctrine of Moses, not my own,” he states (Opif. 24). Nevertheless, Cerinthus can be understood better by reference to Philo, for all Philo’s ambiguities, and thus Cerinthus represents a reception of Philo more clearly than we see in the Gospel of John. The biggest Cerinthian innovation pertains to Philo’s Logos, and the Powers 90

Philo, Opif. 31; Abr 47; Leg. 3.45. Translation in Runia, 2001: 53. 92 Goodenough 1935. 91

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(Creative and Regal), which always remain as transcendent as the Father. An enfleshed Power of any kind – let alone the Logos – is not found in Philo. However, this concept was found in Cerinthus, apparently, who asserted that the Power “Christ” arrived and dwelt in Jesus, the human being made by the Maker, who exhibited goodness worthy enough to be accounted as his son.93

4. The Gospel of John as a Corrective to Cerinthus The idea that elements of 1 John might target Cerinthus has been much mooted before, since the author affirms the fleshly unity of Jesus and Christ/Son of God, and affirms that Jesus Christ came in water (baptism) and blood (suffering) (1 John 2:22–23, 4:2–3, 5:1,6).94 Johann Ebrard long ago suggested that the Gospel itself was indeed meant to counter Cerinthus. As he wrote: As it would be very hard indeed to persuade oneself that St John, who past all doubt had to contend against the errors of Cerinthus, and who past all doubt declared the identity of Jesus with the Son of God, and the incarnation of Christ (1 John iv. 2, 3; v. 5) to be the corner-stone of the Christian doctrine, and the distinguishing test between Christianity and Antichristianity – as it would be very hard indeed to believe that this St John wrote down all those utterances of Christ without any consciousness of the force which lay in them as against the Cerinthian heresy – nothing remains but that we admit the conviction of St John’s having written all those sayings with this express design.95

While this view was for a long time influential, there are issues arising from the difficulty of pinning down Cerinthian concepts. Cerinthus has sometimes been classified as a Docetist, in asserting that the divine entity “Christ” did not suffer and die, but the human Jesus did so, though more correctly Docetism is the very opposite of what Cerinthus espoused, in suggesting that Jesus only appeared to be human.96 The notion that the Gospel of John argues against Docetism, as disparaging the full humanity of Jesus, has been presented by Udo Schnelle,97 who 93 See for Jewish understandings of “son of God” meaning someone particularly righteous and good: Vermes 1973: 192–196. See Sir 4:10; Wis 2:17–18; Jub. 1:24–25; Pss. Sol. 17:26–29. 94 1 John 2:22a, 23: “Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? […] Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who acknowledges the Son has also the Father;” 5:6: “This is the one who came by water and by blood: Jesus Christ. Not in water only, but in water and in blood.” It has been a widespread view that 1 John 5:6 is explained by the Cerinthian understanding of the Son/Christ coming to Jesus at baptism in water, and not being present at his shedding of blood. See Brooke 1980: xxxviii–xliii, xiv–xlix; for a full list of scholars who suggest Cerinthus as the opponent of the epistles, see Brown 1982: 65–67, Appendix 2: 766–771, though Brown himself does not identify the successionists with Cerinthians. Wengst 1976: 24–26 thought Cerinthian ideas were actually derived from the Gospel and then countered in 1 John. 95 Ebrard 1890: xx–xxi, and for further see 17–25. 96 See Clem. Al. Strom. 3.102.1–3, 102.3. See Ashwin-Siejkowski 2010: 103–110. 97 Schnelle 1992.

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separates out the Docetism that was of concern to the Johannine school with the later Gnostic forms, by defining it via the letters of Ignatius as being that of Satornilius, Cerdon or Marcion, who thought of the Saviour as only appearing like human being.98 Schnelle does not then classify Cerinthus as a Docetist, yet also does not see the distinctive cosmology of Cerinthus in the opponents of 1 John.99 These issues have been further addressed by Urban von Wahlde. who particularly engages with Schnelle’s thesis, but barely mentions Cerinthus. He does, however, well explore how Philo’s direct influence on the Gospel is hard to discern.100 Here, I suggest we agree with Ebrard in considering Irenaeus’ claim, that the Gospel of John (with its Jesus-Christ-Logos concept) aimed to correct Cerinthus, as plausible. Rather than Cerinthus’ claim that Christ (the Regal Power within the Logos) dwelt in Jesus for a time and then departed, there is the Christ-Logos who is enfleshed in Jesus, baptized with him, suffering and dying with him, and then raised again also. There is actually one more reason to suppose that the Fourth Gospel was indeed intended as a corrective to Cerinthus: it takes for its foundation the gospel that Cerinthians used. Irenaeus states that those who “separate Jesus from Christ” and “say that Christ remained impassable, but Jesus suffered” (i. e. the Cerinthians) preferred (praeferentes) the Gospel of Mark (Iren. Adv. Haer. 3.11.7). But, as Irenaeus explains, “reading it with the love of truth they can be corrected (cum amore veritatis legentes illud, corrigi possunt).”101 As Barrett proposed, the Fourth Gospel is essentially a reworking of Mark.102 While Barrett’s thesis was for a time challenged, it is increasingly recognized,103 though it is noted also that there are clear Lucan elements woven in besides.104 In this retelling, the author(s) of the Fourth Gospel used a kind of Midrashic technique.105 Midrash presumes an existing tradition can be re-worked to draw 98 Schnelle 1992: 63–69. Such Docetists deny the Lord was “flesh-bearing” at all (Ign. Smyrn. 5.2), claiming he only appeared to suffer (Trall. 10; Smyrn 2, 4.2). The “Lord Jesus Christ” was nailed to the cross in flesh and spirit and raised up from the dead (Smyrn. 1.1–2, 3.1; Trall. 9.1–2; Eph. 7.1–2, 20.1). They deny that the Eucharist is the “flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ who suffered for our sins and which the Father by his goodness raised up” (Smyrn. 6.2). For Satornilius: Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.24.2, and also Ps.-Tert. Haer. 1.4; Hippol. Ref. 7.28.1–5; for Cerdon: Iren. Adv. Haer. 2.32.4; Ps.-Tert. Haer. 6.1; Epiph. Pan. 41.1.7–8; for Marcion: Iren. Adv. Haer. 1.27.2; Hippol. Ref. 10.19.3; Tert. Adv. Marc. 3.8.4, 3.10.2, 4.42.7; Epiph. Pan. 42.12.3. 99 Schnelle 1992: 70. 100 Von Wahlde 2015; Cerinthus is mentioned at 64. 101 Ehrman 2006: 146; see also Taylor 2022. 102 Barrett 1978: 195–196. Smith 1980 traces the shifts in the debate. The ascription of distinctive features to oral tradition is explored by Dunn 1991. 103 Becker, Bond, and Williams 2021. 104 Smith 1992; Bailey 1963, identified many parallels, particularly in the Passion narrative. Though see Gregory 2006. 105 Boyarin 2001: 267–270.

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out certain interpretative elements.106 Hearers or readers are asked to fill in the gaps of the text by references to some kind of existing story which is not quoted or directly referred to but assumed. We can see an example of this in the assumed knowledge of the story of John the Baptist’s arrest and death: the Gospel of John never tells it, stating only that “John had not yet been thrown into prison” (John 3:24).107 Jesus washes the feet of his disciples (John 13:1–20), and yet the Eucharistic words declared as tradition “received from the Lord” (by Paul in 1 Cor 11:23–26) are absent; instead, we have the pronouncements: “I am the Bread of Life” (John 6:35); “I am the True Vine” (15:1). In this overt omission, the re-telling – the Midrashic character – appears particularly obvious.108 Therefore, with the Gospel of John in hand, readers of the Gospel of Mark were guided by truth, as Irenaeus saw it. In contrast to Cerinthus, the Gospel is concerned with Jesus precisely as Christ-Logos, and indeed Monogenēs, Son of God the Father, from baptism to death and resurrection. It is the identity of Jesus as Christ-Son – and suffering, dying and rising as such – that underlies the entire Christological narrative.109 Christ (not just Jesus as a human being) died and was raised physically. As stated absolutely plainly, regarding the “signs” Jesus did (including his death and physical resurrection): “these have been written down for you that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). When it comes to the Logos-concept, it is easiest to identify it in the Prologue (usually understood as John 1:1–18),110 though there has been a question about whether the Prologue was a pre-existing hymn111 or a later addition.112 However, that the Prologue is intrinsic to the narrative level of the cosmological tale of the whole Gospel, as it stands, has been well argued by Adele Reinhartz.113 Fundamental in this cosmological tale is how it all begins: “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God” (John 1:1). There is no differentiation between a Regal and Creative Power: the two are one. The Primal God appears as the Father. The works of the Son/Logos (the creative miracles) testify that “the Father is in Me and I am in the Father” (10:38; cf. 5:36). The Father abiding in the Son/Logos “does the works” (14:10) and loves the Son 106

For a helpful discussion of origins, see Mandel 2006. This has been interpreted as indicating that John assumed that his readers knew the Gospel of Mark. See Anderson 2011: 128. 108 Borgen has noted how there is an explicit parallel between the between the Gospel of John and midrashic elements in Philo in regard to the bread of heaven motif (John 6:31–58; cf. Philo, Leg. 3.162–168 and Mut. 253–263): Observations on the Midrashic Character of John 6, in Borgen 1963: 232–240. See also Gibson 2002; Neyrey 2009. 109 See Dodd 1953: 73. 110 See Ridderbos 1966: 180–201; but see De Boer 2015. 111 Bultmann 1964: 16–18; Brown 1982, 21–23. 112 For example, Harris 1916: 147–160, 161–170, 314–320, 388–400, 415–426; Tobin 1990. 113 Reinhartz 1992. See also Martyn 2003. 107

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before the foundation of the world (17:24) which was created through the agency of the Son/Logos. As such, while the Gospel does not have Philo directly in view, it addresses Philonic concepts as they were already adapted by Christian Jews in Ephesus: those who followed Cerinthus. The Gospel nevertheless points to a reception of Philo’s work in the reading context of Ephesus and speaks to concepts that would be further developed back in Alexandria within a Christian philosophy that knew and valued Philo’s work intimately.

Conclusion The Gospel of John was probably written some 60 or more years after Philo of Alexandria wrote his treatises, in Ephesus, in another port city on the coast of the Mediterranean, but there is reason to assume that there was a reading context in Ephesus in which Alexandrian works were copied and circulated. This is most clearly seen in reverse, in that the Gospel of John was soon known and used in Alexandria. The question of how Philo may have influenced the writer of the Gospel has been much studied, yet direct influence seems hard to define. While there are suggestive parallels between Johannine and Philonic language, the leap from the Philonic Logos concept to a Christ-Logos concept, with the Logos enfleshed in a human being, has seemed too great. In this discussion we have seen how the distance can be contracted if we bring Cerinthus into the picture. Cerinthus, allegedly educated in Egypt, is presented by Irenaeus as holding to a Powers concept, in which there is both a “Creator” and a “Christ.” “Christ” as a Power was enfleshed, in that “Christ” dwelt in Jesus from the time of his baptism to the point of his suffering. The “Creator” for Cerinthus appears as a Power stemming from the Logos, and the Logos and the “Christ” are not one. Philo can shed light on Cerinthus, if we consider the “Christ” as correlating with the Regal Power and Cerinthus’ “Creator” as correlating with the Creative Power. Therefore, the Gospel not only argues against Cerinthus, as Irenaeus specifically stated, but also implicitly against the prior Powers and Logos concepts of Philo, too.

Bibliography Anderson, Paul N. Riddles of the Fourth Gospel: An Introduction to John. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 2011. Ashwin-Siejkowski, Piotr. Clement of Alexandria on Trial. Leiden: Brill, 2010. –. “Clement of Alexandria’s Reception of the Gospel of John: Context, Creative Exegesis and Purpose.” In Clement’s Biblical Exegesis. Proceedings of the Second Colloquium on

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Clement of Alexandria. Edited by V. Cernuskova, J. L. Kovacs, J. Platova in cooperation with V. Husek, 259–276. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Attridge, Harold W. “Philo and John: Two Riffs on one Logos.” The Studia Philonica Annual 17 (2005): 103–117. Bailey, John A. The Traditions Common to the Gospels of Luke and John. Novum Testamentum Supplements 7. Leiden: Brill, 1963. Barker, Margaret. “Temple Imagery in Philo: An Indication of the Origin of the Logos.” In Templum Amicitiae: Essays on the Second Temple Presented to Ernst Bammel. Edited by William Horbury, 70–102. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1991. Barrett, C. Kingsley. The Gospel According to St. John. 2nd ed. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1978. Batovici, Dan. “The Second-Century Reception of John: A Survey of Methodologies.” CBR 10 (2012): 396–409. Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006. Becker, Eve-Marie, Bond, Helen K., and Williams, Catrin H., eds. John’s Transformation of Mark. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2021. Bergland, Carl Johann. Origen’s References to Heracleon: A Quotation-Analytical Study of the Earliest Known Commentary on the Gospel of John. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020. Birnbaum, Ellen. “A Leader with Vision in the Ancient Jewish Diaspora: Philo of Alexandria.” In Jewish Religious Leadership: Image and Reality. Edited by Jack Wertheimer, 57–90. New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary Press, 2004. Boismard, Marie-Émile and Lamouille, Arnaud. Un Évangile pré-johannique. Two volumes. Paris: Lecoffre, 1993. Borgen, Peder. “Logos Was the True Light: Contributions to the Interpretation of the Prologue of John.” NT 14 (1983): 115–139 –. “Observations on the Midrashic Character of John 6.” ZNW 54 (1963): 232–240. Bos, Abraham P. “Philo of Alexandria: a Platonist in the Image and Likeness of Aristotle.” The Studia Philonica Annual 10 (1998): 66–86. Boyarin, Daniel. “The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and the Prologue to John.” HTR 94 (2001): 243–284. Brooke, Alan E. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Johannine Epistles. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1980. Brown, Raymond. The Community of the Beloved Disciple. New York: Paulist Press, 1979 –. The Gospel According to John. 2nd ed. Anchor Bible Commentary. Two volumes. New York: Doubleday, 1977. –. The Epistles of John. Anchor Bible Commentary. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982. Bruce, Frederick F. “St. John at Ephesus.” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 40 (1977– 1978): 340–361. Bultmann, Rudolf. The Gospel of John: A Commentary. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971. Transl. of: Das Evangelium des Johannes. Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue Testament. Band 2. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964. Callan, Terrance. “Pauline Midrash: The Exegetical Background to Gal. 3.19b.” JBL 99 (1980): 549–567. Casey, Robert P. The Excerpta ex Theodoto of Clement of Alexandria. Studies and Documents 1. London: Christophers, 1934. Chapa, Juan. “The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Gospel of John in Egypt.” Vigiliae Christianae 64 (2010): 327–352.

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Christophe Guignard. “The Muratorian Fragment as a Late Antique Fake? An Answer to C. K. Rothschild.” RevSR 93 (2019): 73–90. Collins, Adela Yarbro. “Aristobulus.” In Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Edited by James H. Charlesworth, 831–842. Vol. 2. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1985. Collins, John J. “Artapanus.” In Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Edited by James H. Charlesworth, 889–903. Vol. 2. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1985. Dawson, David. Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992. De Boer, Martinus. “The Original Prologue to the Gospel of John.” NTS 61 (2015): 448–467. Decharneux, Baudouin. “Quelques chemins détournés de la parole dans l’œuvre de Philon.” In Philon d’Alexandrie et le langage de la philosophie, Monothéismes et Philosophie. Edited by Carlos Lévy, 313–326. Turnhout: Brepols, 1998. –. “Divine Powers in Philo of Alexandria’s De opificio mundi.” In Divine Powers in Late Antiquity. Edited by Anna Marmodoro and Irini-Fotini Viltanioti, 127–139. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Dodd, Charles H. The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953. Dunderberg, Ismo O. “Origen’s Dialogue with Heracleon and the School of Valentinus.” In The Oxford Handbook of Origen. Edited by Ronald E. Heine and Karen Jo Torjesen, 49–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. –. Beyond Gnosticism: Myth, Lifestyle, and Society in the School of Valentinus. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Dunn, James. “John and the Oral Gospel Tradition.” In Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition. Edited by Henry Wansbrough, 351–379. JSNTSS 64. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1991. Ehrman, Bart. “The Text of Mark in the Hands of the Orthodox.” In Studies in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. Edited by Bart Ehrman, 142–155. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Engberg-Pedersen, Troels. John and Philosophy: A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Evans, Craig A. Word and Glory: On the Exegetical and Theological Background of John’s Prologue. JSNTSS 89). Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. 1993. Fortna, Robert. The Fourth Gospel and Its Predecessor: From Narrative Source to Present Gospel. Studies in the New Testament and its World. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989. –. The Gospel of Signs: A Reconstruction of the Narrative Source Underlying the Fourth Gospel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Gathercole, Simon. “The Alleged Anonymity of the Canonical Gospels.” JTS 69 (2018): 447–476. Gibson, David. “Eating Is Believing? On Midrash and the Mixing of Metaphors in John 6.” Themelios 27 (2002): 5–15. Goodenough, Erwin. By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935. –. An Introduction to Philo Judaeus. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940. Gottlieb Bretschneider, Karl. Probabilia de evangelii et epistolarum Ioannis Apostoli indole et origine cruditorum. Leipzig: Jo. Ambos. Barthii, 1820. Gregory, Andrew. “The Third Gospel? The Relationship between John and Luke Reconsidered.” In Challenging Perspectives on the Gospel of John. Edited by John Lierman, 109–134. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006.

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Gregory, Andrew and Tuckett, Christopher. “Reflections on Method: What Constitutes the Use of the Writings that Later Formed the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers?” In The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers. Edited by Andrew F. Gregory and Christopher M. Tuckett, 61–82. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Gunther, John J. “The Alexandrian Gospel and Letters of John.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 41 (1979): 581–603. Hadas-Lebel, Mireille. Philo of Alexandria: A Thinker in the Jewish Diaspora. Transl. by Robyn Fréchet. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Hahneman, Geoffrey M. The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon. Oxford Theological Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992. Hamerton-Kelly, Robert G. Pre-Existence, Wisdom, and The Son of Man: A Study of the Idea of Pre-Existence in the New Testament. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. Harris, J. Rendel. The Origin of the Prologue to St. Johns Gospel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917. –. “Stoic Origin of the Fourth Gospel.” BJRL 6 (1921/1922): 439–451. Hay, David M. “Philo’s References to Other Allegorists.” The Studia Philonica Annual 6 (1979–1980): 41–75. Hill, Charles E. “Cerinthus, Gnostic or Chiliast? A New Solution to an Old Problem.” JECS 8 (2000): 135–172. –. The Johannine Corpus in the Early Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. –. “‘The Orthodox Gospel’: The Reception of John in the Great Church prior to Irenaeus.” In The Legacy of John: Second-Century Reception of the Fourth Gospel. Edited by Tuomas Rasimus, 233–300. Novum Testamentum, Supplements 132. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Hoblik, Jiří. “The Holy Logos in the Writings of Philo of Alexandria.” Communio Viatorum 56.3 (2014): 248–266. Hofrichter, Peter. Im Anfang war der „Johannesprolog:“ Das urchristliche Logosbekenntnis – die Basis neutestamentlicher und gnostischer Theologie. Biblische Untersuchungen 17. Regensburg: Pustet, 1986. Kamesar, Adam, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Philo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Kaufmann, Kohler. “Memra”. Vol. 8. The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–1906): 464–465. Keefer, Kyle. The Branches of the Gospel of John: The Reception of the Fourth Gospel in the Early Church. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2006. Klijn, Albertus F. J. and Reinink, Gerrit Jan. Patristic Evidence for Jewish-Christian Sects. Leiden: Brill, 1973. Knust, Jennifer and Wasserman, Tommy. To Cast the First Stone: Jesus, the Adulteress, and a History of John 7:53–8:11. Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press, 2018. Lancelotti, Maria Gazia. The Naassenes: a Gnostic identity among Judaism, Christianity, Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Tradition. Munster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2000. Mack, Burton L. Logos und Sophia; Untersuchungen zur Weisheitstheologie im hellenistischen Judentum. Studien zur Umwelt des Neuen Testaments 10). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973. Mandel, Paul. “The Origins of Midrash in the Second Temple Period.” In Current Trends in the Study of Midrash. Edited by Carol Bachos, 9–34. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Martyn, J. Louis. History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel. 3rd edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.

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Morris, Jenny. “The Jewish Philosopher Philo.” In The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 bc – ad 135). Edited by Emile Schürer; revised and edited by Geza Vermes, Fergus Millar, and Martin Goodman, 809–870. Vol. 3.2. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1987. Mowinckel, Sigmund. He That Cometh. The Messiah Concept in the Old Testament and Later Judaism. Transl. by G. W. Anderson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1956. Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome. St. Paul’s Ephesus: Texts and Archaeology. Collegeville, MI; Liturgical Press, 2008. Myllykoski, Matti. “Cerinthus.” In A Companion to Second-Century Christian Heresies. Edited by Antti Marjanen, and Petri Luomanen, 213–246. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Nagel, Titus. Die Rezeption des Johannesevangeliums im 2. Jahrhundert: Studien zur vorirenaischen Aneignung und Auslegung des vierten Evangeliums im christlicher und christlich-gnostischer Literatur. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2000. Neyrey, Jerome H. The Gospel of John in Cultural and Rhetorical Perspective. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009. Niehoff, Maren R. Jewish Exegesis and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. –. Philo of Alexandria: An Intellectual Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. O’Brien, Carl Sean. The Demiurge in Ancient Thought: Secondary Gods and Divine Mediators. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pagels, Elaine H. The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis: Heracleon’s Commentary on John. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1973. Paget, James Carleton. “Clement of Alexandria and the Jews.” In Jews, Christians and Jewish Christians in Antiquity. Edited by James Carleton Paget, 91–102. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010. Pearson, Birger A. “Basilides the Gnostic.” In A Companion to Second-Century Christian Heretics. Edited by Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen, 1–31. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Pendrick, Gerard. “MONOΓENHΣ.” New Testament Studies 41.4 (1995): 587–600. Perrin, Norman. “The Diatessaron and the Second-Century Reception of the Gospel of John.” In The Legacy of John: Second-Century Reception of the Fourth Gospel. Edited by Tuomas Rasimus, 301–318. Novum Testamentum Supplements 132. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Radice, Roberto. “Philo’s Theology and Theory of Creation.” In The Cambridge Companion to Philo. Edited by Adam Kamesar, 136–140. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Rasimus, Tuomas. “Ptolemaeus and the Valentinian Exegesis of Johns Prologue.” In The Legacy of John: Second-Century Reception of the Fourth Gospel. Edited by Tuomas Rasimus, 145–171. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Reinhartz, Adele. The Word in the World: The Cosmological Tale in the Fourth Gospel. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1992. Ridderbos, Herman. “The Structure and Scope of the Prologue to the Gospel of John.” Novum Testamentum 8 (1966): 180–201. Ronning, John. The Jewish Targums and Johns Logos Theology. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010. Rothschild, Clare K. “The Muratorian Fragment as Roman Fake.” Novum Testamentum 60 (2018): 55–82. Runia, David T. Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato. 2nd ed. Philosophia Antiqua 44. Leiden: Brill, 1986.

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–. “Philosophical Heresiography: Evidence in Two Ephesian Inscriptions.” ZPE 72 (1988): 241–243. –. Philo in Early Christian Literature: A Survey. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1993. –. Philo and the Church Fathers. Leiden: Brill, 1995. –. On the Creation of the Cosmos according to Moses: Introduction, Translation and Commentary. Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series. Leiden: Brill, 2001. –. “One of Us or One of Them? Christian Reception of Philo the Jew in Egypt.” In Shem in the Tents of Japheth: Essays on the Encounter of Judaism and Hellenism. Edited by James L. Kugel, 203–222. Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 74. Leiden: Brill, 2002. –. “The King, the Architect, and the Craftsman: A Philosophical Image in Philo of Alexandria.” Ancient Approaches to Plato’s Timaeus. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 78 (2003a): 89–106. –. “Plato’s Timaeus, First Principles, and Creation in Philo and Early Christian Thought.” In Plato’s Timaeus as Cultural Iconos. Edited by Gretchen Reydams-Schils, 133–151. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003b. –. “Clement of Alexandria and the Philonic Doctrine of the Divine Power(s)” Vigiliae Christianae 58 (2004): 256–276. Sagnard, Francois. Clement d’Alexandria, Extraits del Theodote: Texte grec, introduction traduction et notes. Sources Chrétiennes. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1948. Sanders, Joseph N. The Fourth Gospel and the Early Church. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1943. –. Commentary on John. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1968. Schenke, Gesa. “Das Erscheinen Jesu vor den Jüngern und der ungläubige Thomas: Johannes 20,19–31.” In Coptica – Gnostica – Manichaica: Mélanges offerts à Wolf-Peter Funk. Edited by Louis Painchaud and Paul-Hubert Poirier, 893–904. Presses de l’Université Laval, Québec: Éditions Peeters, 2006. Schnelle, Udo. Antidocetic Christology in the Gospel of John. Transl. by Linda M. Maloney. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992. Transl. of Antidoketische Christologie im Johannesevangelium. FRLANT 144. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1987. Scott, Martin. Sophia and the Johannine Jesus. JSNTSS 71. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992. Segal, Alan F. Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism. Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity 25. Leiden: Brill, 1978. Siegert, Folker. Der Erstentwurf des Johannes: Das ursprüngliche, judenchristliche Johannesevangelium in deutscher Übersetzung vorgestellt, nebst Nachrichten über Verfasser und zwei Briefen von ihm (2./3. Joh.). Münsteraner Judaistische Studien; Wissenschäftliche Beiträge zur christlichjüdischen Begegnung, 16. Münster: LIT, 2004. Smith, Dwight Moody. “John and the Synoptics: Some Dimensions of the Problem.” New Testament Studies 26 (1980): 425–444. –. John among the Synoptics: The Relationship in Twentieth-Century Research. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992. Sundberg, Albert C. “Canon Muratori: A Fourth Century List.” Harvard Theological Review 66 (1973): 1–41. Taylor, Joan E. “Gendered Space: Eusebius on the Therapeutae and the Megiddo Church.” In Patterns of Women’s Leadership in Early Christianity. Edited by Joan E. Taylor and Ilaria Ramelli, 290–301. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021.

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–. “Cerinthus and the Gospel of Mark: The Priority of the Longer Ending.” COMST Bulletin 8/2 (2022): 675–707. –. Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria: Philo’s Therapeutae Reconsidered. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Termini, Cristina. Le potenze di Dio: studio su dynamis in Filone di Alessandria. Studia ephemeridis Augustinianum 71. Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 2000. Theron, Daniel J. Evidence of Tradition: Selected Source Material for the Study of the History of the Early Church, the New Testament Books, and the New Testament Canon. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009. Thümmel, Hans Georg. “Logos und Hypostasis.” In Die Weltlichkeit des Glaubens in der Alten Kirche: Festschrift für Ulrich Wickert zum siebzigsten Geburtstag. Edited by Dietmar Wyrwa, 347–398. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 85. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1997. Tobin, Thomas H. “The Prologue of John and Hellenistic Jewish Speculation.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 52 (1990): 252–269. Trebilco, Paul. The Early Christians in Ephesus from Paul to Ignatius. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004. Urban Jr., P. Linwood and Henry, Patrick. “‘Before Abraham Was I Am’: Does Philo Explain John 8:56–58?” The Studia Philonica Annual 6 (1979): 157–193. Van Kooten, George. Paul’s Anthropology in Context: The Image of God, Assimilation to God, and the Tripartite Man in Ancient Judaism, Ancient Philosophy, and Early Christianity. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. Van Tilborg, Sjef. Reading John in Ephesus. Novum Testamentum Supplements 83. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Vermes, Geza. Jesus the Jew. London: Collins, 1973. Von Wahlde, Urban C. The Gospel and Letters of John. Eerdmans Critical Commentary. Three volumes. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. –. Gnosticism, Docetism, and the Judaisms of the First Century: The Search for the Wider Context of Johannine Literature and Why it Matters. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015. Wengst, Klaus. Häresie und Orthodoxie im Spiegel des ersten Johannesbriefes. Gütersloh: Verlagshaus G. Mohn, 1976. Winston, David. Logos and Mystical Theology in Philo of Alexandria. Hoboken, NJ: Hebrew Union College Press, 1985. Wolfson, Harry Austryn. Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962. Zeller, Dieter. “Philonische Logos-Theologie im Hintergrund des Konflikts von 1 Kor 1–4?” In id., Studien zu Philo und Paulus, 119–128. Bonn: V&R Unipress, 2011. Zelyck, Lorne R. John among the Other Gospels. The Reception of the Fourth Gospel in the Extra-Canonical Gospels. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013.

Philo of Alexandria and Hebrews in the Context of the Roman Empire Revisiting the Question of their Relationship Philip Alexander 1. Hebrews and Philo: The History of a Problem We know nothing about the reception of Philo’s œuvre among the Roman intellectuals for whom he seems so carefully to have crafted his post-embassy works. The earliest mention of Philo is by Josephus (AJ 18.259–260).1 This reference is not as informative as we would have liked. It can be read as a little dismissive – much depends on how we understand the litotes φιλοσοφίας οὐκ ἄπειρος – but it does offer evidence that Philo’s name and possibly some of his writings were known in Rome at the end of the first century when Josephus composed his Antiquities. It is unclear how well Josephus knew Philo’s work, but he knew the Legatio, and his apologetic attempt in the Antiquities to commend Judaism to an educated Roman audience shows broad similarities to Philo’s earlier attempts to do the same, and this may point to some influence. The next clear reference to Philo is in the writings of Christian thinkers of the late second/early third centuries – Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Didymus 1 Φίλων ὁ προεστὼς τῶν Ἰουδαίων τῆς πρεσβείας, ἀνὴρ τὰ πάντα ἔνδοξος Ἀλεξάνδρου τε τοῦ ἀλαβάρχου ἀδελφὸς ὢν καὶ φιλοσοφίας οὐκ ἄπειρος, οἷός ἦν ἐπ’ ἀπολογίᾳ χωρεῖν τῶν κατηγορημένων. διακλείει δ’ αὐτὸν Γάιος κελεύσας ἐκποδὼν ἀπελθεῖν, περιοργής τε ὢν φανερὸς ἦν ἐργασόμενός τι δεινὸν αὐτούς. ὁ δὲ Φίλων ἔξεισι περιυβρισμένος καί φησι πρὸς τοὺς Ἰουδαίους, οἳ περὶ αὐτὸν ἦσαν, ὡς χρὴ θαρρεῖν, Γαίου λόγῳ μὲν αὐτοῖς ὠργισμένου, ἔργῳ δὲ ἤδη τὸν θεὸν ἀντιπαρεξάγοντος. Feldman (LCL) translates: “Philo, who stood at the head of the delegation of the Jews, a man held in highest honour, brother of Alexander the alabarch, and no novice in philosophy, was prepared to proceed with the defence against these accusations. But Gaius cut him short, told him to get out of the way, and being exceedingly angry, made it clear that he would visit some outrage upon them. Philo, having thus been treated with contumely, left the room, saying to the Jews who accompanied him that they should be of good courage, for Gaius’ wrath was a matter of words, but in fact he was now enlisting God against himself.” Feldman’s “no novice in philosophy,” suggests he read the litotes positively, and this is how Eusebius seems to have understood it (see below). Whiston’s “not unskilful in philosophy” is more ambiguous. Philo’s words of comfort to the Jewish delegation, as reported by Josephus, could be taken as a fair summary of the argument of the Legatio, though the Legatio was written after the divine judgment on Gaius had been executed, whereas in context in Josephus, his words are a prediction.

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the Blind – who found his ideas useful as they tried to restate Christian doctrine in more philosophically acceptable terms, and to develop modes of exegesis that would allow Scripture to be adapted to contemporary thought. It was due to this emerging Christian interest that Philo’s works were preserved for posterity: if it had been left to the Synagogue they would have vanished without trace. It is something of a miracle that they survived the brutal suppression of the Jewish uprising in Alexandria in the time of Trajan (which led to widespread destruction of the Jewish areas of the city, and the decimation of the Jewish community), and that copies were still available in the late second century – to be picked up and read with appreciation by Christian writers.2 Some have argued that Christian interest in Philo goes back much earlier, and can be traced in a number of New Testament writings, notably in the Epistle to the Hebrews (probably to be dated to the 80s of the first century) and in the Gospel of John (probably to be dated to the 90s of the same century). If these do show knowledge of Philo’s thought, or even, perhaps, of his writings, then this would be the earliest evidence we have for the reception of Philo in the ancient world. This essay will focus on Philo and the Epistle to the Hebrews. Parallels specifically between Philo and Hebrews are occasionally noted in Patristic commentaries and catenae, but nothing much is made of them.3 At first sight this paucity of reference might seem odd. Philo was influential in early 2

See Runia 1993. It is natural to assume that the primary channel through which Philo’s works were disseminated into the Christian world ran through Caesarea Maritima, and that they arrived there from Alexandria. Eusebius attests the presence of a substantial collection of them in the Episcopal library at Caesarea (Hist. eccl. 2.18.1–8). But these do not represent the whole of Philo’s œuvre. Sterling 2021:125 estimates, that “approximately one-third of what Philo wrote has disappeared,” and, of course, works have been attributed to him (such as the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum) which are not his. Another channel of transmission through Rome into the Latin west should not be ruled out. Careful study of the existing manuscripts, translations, and testimonia may help to clarify the question. For a discussion of the Jewish Wars under Trajan, and their possible impact on the transmission of Alexandrian Jewish literature, see my essay, Alexander 2021: 341–346. 3 In the light of what is said below about Eusebius it is interesting that he himself draws one specific parallel between Philo and Hebrews. It is found at Hist. eccl. 2.17.10–12: he notes that the Therapeutae engage in allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures following the model set out in writings left by the founders of their sect. He continues: “This seems to have been said by a man [Philo] who had listened to their expositions of the sacred scriptures, and it is perhaps probable that the writings of men of old, which he says were found among them, were the Gospels, the writings of the Apostles, and some expositions of the prophets after the manner of the ancients, such as are in the Epistle to the Hebrews and many other epistles of Paul” (Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἔοικεν εἰρῆσθαι τῷ ἀνδρὶ τὰς ἱερὰς ἐξηγουμένων αὐτῶν ἐπακροασαμένῳ γραφάς, τάχα δ᾿ εἰκός, ἅ φησιν ἀρχαίων παρ᾿ αὐτοῖς εἶναι συγγράμματα, εὐαγγέλια καὶ τὰς τῶν ἀποστόλων γραφὰς διηγήσεις τέ τινας κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς τῶν πάλαι προφητῶν ἑρμηνευτικάς, ὁποίας ἥ τε πρὸς Ἑβραίους καὶ ἄλλαι πλείους τοῦ Παύλου περιέχουσιν ἐπιστολαί, ταῦτ᾿ εἶναι). On the one hand Eusebius clearly sees the parallelism between the use of allegory in Philo and its use in Hebrews, but, on the other, far from seeing Hebrews as dependent on Philo, he sees it as independent. Indeed, is there not a hint that Philo learned the allegorical method from Christians?

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Christianity, and if his influence on Hebrews – a part of the canon of the New Testament4 and regarded by some as written by Paul – had been obvious then this would surely have provided some justification for taking seriously such a Jewish writer. The dearth of explicit parallels might suggest that patristic writers failed to see any special relationship between the two authors, and this might suggest that the question of Philo and Hebrews is a modern question. But putting the matter in this way is misleading. It misunderstands the early Christian view of Philo, and it starts from the modern assumption that the nub of the question is why the Christian author of Hebrews relies so heavily on a Jewish author, and on what his borrowing – assuming there is borrowing – tells us about the Christian author’s background, and more broadly about the relationship between Christianity and Judaism at that time. In contrast, all references to Philo in early Christian sources must be read in the light of the Philo legend which seems to have been widespread in early Christianity. This made Philo a Christian, or at least a sympathetic fellow-traveler, who had been in close contact with Christians and absorbed some of their teachings. The earliest attestation of this legend is in Eusebius, but it is introduced there in such a way as to suggest that Eusebius is relying on an earlier source, though how far back that goes is impossible to say, and just what belongs to the source, and what are Eusebius’s elaborations of it is unclear. The core of the legend seems to have been the claim that Philo went to Rome to meet with Peter. Eusebius puts it this way: ὃν καὶ λόγος ἔχει κατὰ Κλαύδιον ἐπὶ τῆς Ῥώμης εἰς ὁμιλίαν ἐλθεῖν Πέτρῳ, τοῖς ἐκεῖσε τότε κηρύττοντι, “tradition has it that [Philo] went to Rome in the time of Claudius to consort with Peter, who at the time was preaching to the people there” (Hist. eccl. 2.17.1). The language implies a very deliberate act. The meeting was not a chance encounter, but planned. Lake (LCL) translates εἰς ὁμιλίαν […] Πέτρῳ as “to speak with Peter,” but this is too weak. It is “to consort with Peter,” as a pupil would with a master. Peter is being presented as a great sage who would attract students from far and wide to sit at his feet. The outcome of this encounter is not stated, but it would presumably have resulted in a knowledge of the Christian faith. Eusebius seems careful to avoid saying outright that Philo converted to Christianity, but this was claimed in other forms of the legend. The nearest he gets to stating the effect on Philo of his encounter with Christianity comes a little later in the same passage. In the context of the claim (a deduction of Eusebius himself and not part of the legend he inherited)

4 The basic argument here is this: There is a range of early Christian writers who quote Philo with approval, who also knew the Epistle to the Hebrews and would have regarded it as authoritative (canonic) (Eusebius is a case in point). If they had spotted the parallelism between Philo and Hebrews they could surely have exploited it to justify their acceptance of Philo. Philo appeared to be endorsed to a degree by Hebrews. I use “canon” in a rather looser sense than is usual in the scholarship. For a justification see my essay, Alexander 2017b.

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that the Therapeutae of the De Vita Contemplativa were a Christian community, Eusebius concludes: ὅ φαμεν αὐτὸ σύγγραμμα … σαφῶς τοὺς εἰς ἔτι νῦν καὶ εἰς ἡμᾶς πεφυλαγμένους τῆς ἐκκλησίας περιέχει κανόνας· ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸν βίον τῶν παρ᾿ ἡμῖν ἀσκητῶν ὡς ἔνι μάλιστα ἀκριβέστατα ἱστορῶν, γένοιτ᾿ ἂν ἔκδηλος οὐκ εἰδὼς μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀποδεχόμενος ἐκθειάζων τε καὶ σεμνύνων τοὺς κατ᾿ αὐτὸν ἀποστολικοὺς ἄνδρας, ἐξ Ἑβραίων, ὡς ἔοικε, γεγονότας ταύτῃ τε ἰουδαϊκώτερον τῶν παλαιῶν ἔτι τὰ πλεῖστα διατηροῦντας ἐθῶν. The treatise to which we refer [the De Vita Contemplativa] […] obviously contains the rules of the Church which are still observed in our own time. Moreover, from his [Philo’s] very accurate description of the life of our ascetics it will be plain that he not only knew but welcomed, revered, and recognized the divine mission of the apostolic men of his day, who were, it appears, of Hebrew origin, and thus still preserved most of the ancient customs in a strictly Jewish manner” (Hist. eccl. 2.17.2, trans. Lake LCL).

So Eusebius recognized that Peter and other such “apostolic men” were sent by God. Note, by the way, how Eusebius hedges his bets. He is aware from a Christian point of view that some of the practices of the Therapeutae as described by Philo are unusual. He nevertheless maintains that Philo’s account is “very accurate.” The divergences, he implies, are due to the fact that the converts were Jewish and so still maintained Jewish customs. This Christian community, he claims, was founded as a result of a highly successful mission of Mark to Alexandria, and it was their ascetic way of life that first piqued Philo’s interest: τοσαύτη δ᾿ ἄρα τῶν αὐτόθι πεπιστευκότων πληθὺς ἀνδρῶν τε καὶ γυναικῶν ἐκ πρώτης ἐπιβολῆς συνέστη δι᾿ ἀσκήσεως φιλοσοφωτάτης τε καὶ σφοδροτάτης, ὡς καὶ γραφῆς αὐτῶν ἀξιῶσαι τὰς διατριβὰς καὶ τὰς συνηλύσεις τά τε συμπόσια καὶ πᾶσαν τὴν ἄλλην τοῦ βίου ἀγωγὴν τὸν Φίλωνα. The number of the men and women who were there [at Alexandria] converted at the first attempt was so great, and their asceticism so extraordinarily philosophic, that Philo thought it right to describe their conduct and assemblies and meals and all the rest of their manner of life (Hist. eccl. 2.16.2, trans Lake LCL).

It is in this context that Eusebius rather abruptly introduces Philo’s journey to Rome to meet with Peter. The implication is that the journey was a direct outcome of the interest roused by the Therapeutae. Philo went to Rome to learn more about the “philosophy” which motivated this remarkable community. But why Peter and why Rome? Eusebius does not tell us how Philo knew of Peter, but surely we are meant to infer that he learned about him from Mark, who was widely regarded as a disciple of Peter and who could, therefore, have told him that Peter was a great Christian sage and that he could now be found teaching in Rome. Eusebius places the meeting in the time of Claudius. He was too good an historian to have put it in the time of Gaius. He knew the Legatio and so was aware that Philo had been in Rome in the time of Gaius, but he would equally have known that Peter could not have been in Rome at this early date. So, accept-

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ing the accuracy of the legend, he postulated a second visit of Philo to Rome in the time of Claudius, when Peter was there. His precise wording indicates he is thinking here of a second journey to Rome. It is not consonant with the idea that Philo may have stayed on in Rome for a few years, into the reign of Claudius, before heading back to Alexandria. We will return to this point in a moment. Eusebius records another set of traditions about Philo and Rome that are pertinent to our theme. These traditions are probably not part of the original Philo legend, but constitute a separate stream of information which he most likely received from his contacts in Rome, and which he has woven together with the Philo legend. This other stream of tradition attests to the great impression Philo made on Roman society: οὗτος μὲν οὖν κατὰ Γάϊον ἐπὶ τῆς Ῥώμης ἀφικόμενος, τὰ περὶ τῆς Γαΐου θεοστυγίας αὐτῷ γραφέντα, ἃ μετὰ ἤθους καὶ εἰρωνείας Περὶ ἀρετῶν ἐπέγραψεν, ἐπὶ πάσης λέγεται τῆς Ῥωμαίων συγκλήτου κατὰ Κλαύδιον διελθεῖν, ὡς καὶ τῆς ἐν βιβλιοθήκαις ἀναθέσεως θαυμασθέντας αὐτοῦ καταξιωθῆναι τοὺς λόγους. [Philo] came to Rome in the time of Gaius, and in the reign of Claudius is said to have read before the whole Senate of the Romans his description of the impiety of Gaius, which he entitled with fitting irony, ‘Concerning Virtues,’ and his words were so much admired as to be granted a place in libraries (Hist. eccl. 2.18.8, trans. Lake LCL).

This chimes with Eusebius’s earlier claim that Κατὰ δὴ τοῦτον Φίλων ἐγνωρίζετο πλείστοις, ἀνὴρ οὐ μόνον τῶν ἡμετέρων, ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς ἔξωθεν ὁρμωμένων παιδείας ἐπισημότατος. τὸ μὲν οὖν γένος ἀνέκαθεν Ἑβραῖος ἦν, τῶν δ᾿ ἐπ᾿ Ἀλεξανδρείας ἐν τέλει διαφανῶν οὐδενὸς χείρων, περὶ δὲ τὰ θεῖα καὶ πάτρια μαθήματα ὅσον τε καὶ ὁπηλίκον εἰσενήνεκται πόνον, ἔργῳ πᾶσι δῆλος, καὶ περὶ τὰ φιλόσοφα δὲ καὶ ἐλευθέρια τῆς ἔξωθεν παιδείας οἷός τις ἦν, οὐδὲν δεῖ λέγειν, ὅτε μάλιστα τὴν κατὰ Πλάτωνα καὶ Πυθαγόραν ἐζηλωκὼς ἀγωγήν, διενεγκεῖν ἅπαντας τοὺς καθ᾿ ἑαυτὸν ἱστορεῖται. In his reign [i. e. the reign of Gaius] Philo became generally known as a man of the greatest distinction, not only among our own people, but also among those of heathen education. He was a Hebrew by racial descent but inferior to none of the magnates in authority in Alexandria. The extent and quality of the labor he bestowed on the theological learning of his race is in fact patent to all, and it is not necessary to say anything of his position in philosophy and the liberal studies of the heathen world since he is related to have surpassed all his contemporaries, especially in his zeal for the study of Plato and Pythagoras (Hist. eccl. 2.4.2–3, trans. Lake LCL).

Eusebius may not be talking here specifically of Philo’s reputation in Rome but in learned, philosophical circles in general, but that would not exclude Rome, and this would help explain why he was honored by the invitation to address the Senate. The statement of his fame in the world of learning could hardly have been more ringing. And if “our own people” (τῶν ἡμετέρων) is a reference to the Christian community, then this is a clear claim to knowledge of Philo at this early date among Christians.

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Eusebius makes these assertions about Philo’s fame in the context of quoting Josephus’ remarks referred to earlier which, as we noted, could be taken to suggest that Philo was not that well known in philosophical circles (Hist. eccl. 2.5.4, see above). Eusebius does not, apparently, sense any tension between what he says and what Josephus says, nor does he present his claims as a correction of Josephus. It is probable, therefore, that he took Josephus’s φιλοσοφίας οὐκ ἄπειρος in a strong, positive sense. It is noteworthy that in this context he says nothing about a second visit of Philo to Rome. Rather his remarks are compatible with the idea that Philo stayed on in Rome into the reign of Claudius. This reinforces the impression that Eusebius is reliant on two separate strands of tradition, one that spoke about Philo’s visit to Rome to meet with Peter, another that spoke about the deep impression he made there. The latter is likely to be of Roman origin, the former may be Alexandrian, especially if the idea that Philo’s interest in Christianity was sparked by Mark’s mission to Alexandria, is part of the Philo legend, and not a plausible guess on Eusebius’ part. In Caesarea Eusebius would have been well placed to receive traditions from both Alexandria and Rome. His comments about Philo in Rome, whatever their origin, have commended themselves to few scholars, but they should not be too lightly dismissed. They may well show that the Christian community in Rome retained memories that Philo visited the city, and made a bit of a “splash,” and that, as a result, some of his writings were preserved there. By the De Virtutibus (Περὶ ἀρετῶν) Eusebius means the treatise we know as the Legatio ad Gaium, which was also known as the Περὶ ἀρετῶν. The title is very old and is used by Eusebius himself. The reference is not to the treatise also known as the Περὶ ἀρετῶν/De virtutibus which forms part of the Exposition of the Law. Why the Legatio, which is about the villainies of Gaius and others, should also have been called On Virtues, has occasioned debate.5 Eusebius himself noticed the problem, and explained it as “irony.” Whether or not this is plausible, it is hard to think of a treatise of Philo that would have received a more appreciative hearing in Claudian Rome than the Legatio. Eusebius was clearly able to envisage a receptive Roman audience for some of Philo’s works. Whatever the truth may be about these Eusebian traditions, it became widely accepted in the Christian world that Philo was close to Christianity.6 If he was 5

See, e. g., the discussion of the title by Smallwood 1961 and Morris 1987. For a survey of the evidence see Bruns 1973, who quotes at 142 an account of Philo’s baptism in the Acta Johannis of Pseudo-Pachorus. There, however, Philo is converted through an encounter with John! Might the choice of John in this case reflect, however dimly, a perception that there are striking parallels between Philo and the Johannine writings. Often when Christians claim someone not obviously of their faith as a homo naturaliter Christianus, there is, actually, some substantive similarity between that person’s thought and Christianity. Jerome, though acknowledging Philo as a Jew, still places him among the “ecclesiastical writers” (De vir. 6

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not a convert, he was a sympathizer. He had studied with admiration the early Christian communities in Alexandria and met Peter in Rome. There is no failure here to spot the similarities between Philo and the New Testament. Quite the reverse. These traditions only make sense if the parallels are recognized. But what these parallels show, it has been concluded, was not that the author of Hebrews and other New Testament writers were influenced by the Jew Philo, but rather that the Jew Philo was acquainted with Christian ideas. Bruns sees the Philo Christianus legend as the manifestation of an early Christian tendency to recruit famous non-Christians to the cause,7 but it is surely much more than that. It is based on a realization that there are close affinities between Philo and early Christian thought. If Philo was, in fact, “one of us,” then those affinities are not surprising. On the other hand, if what Philo is setting forth is Judaism, then that surely calls for an explanation and a justification. It is only when the Philo Christianus legend was debunked that the modern problem of Philo and Hebrews emerged, and that did not happen till the seventeenth century. Modern, critical study of Philo really begins with the publication by Adrianus Turnebus in Paris in 1552, of the bulk of Philo’s works in Greek, followed in 1558 by Sigismundus Gelenius’s Latin translation.8 Many scholars in this period still held to some form of the Philo Christianus legend. This became a bone of contention between Protestant and Catholic scholars, the latter being strongly inclined to accept its essential accuracy, because it came with good Patristic authority. Among the earliest Protestant scholars to attack it – and attack it in typically trenchant terms – was Justus Scaliger. Jews also started to reclaim Philo for Judaism. The most notable was Azariah de’ Rossi in his pioneering work of biblical scholarship, the Me’or Einayim (Mantua 1573–1575). De’ Rossi devotes a couple of chapters of his book to describing the contents of the writings of Philo (whom he read in the Latin of Gelenius), and to trying to work out what his significance for Judaism might be. Though he is somewhat scandalized by Philo’s ignorance of the Oral Torah, he was clearly fascinated by the Alexandrian Jewish thinker, and in no doubt that he was and remained a Jew. He even gives him a Hebrew name – Yedidyah. Judah Moscato, Simone Luzzato, and David Provenzali, Italian Jewish contemporaries of De’ Rossi, also showed an interest in reclaiming Philo for Judaism.9 Philo Judaeus finally prevailed over Philo Christianus and the ill. 11: Philo Judaeus natione Alexandrinus de genere sacerdotum idcirco a nobis inter scriptores ecclesiasticos ponitur), and this is where we find him in sixth- and seventh-century compilations of the early Church Fathers. 7 “Philo Christianus,” 144: “The legend is of interest as one further example of the eagerness with which the early Church appropriated to itself distinguished figures of the omnipresent non-Christian milieu.” 8 See Sterling 2021. 9 See Weinberg 1988. Prof. Weinberg tells me she has refreshed her views on this subject in a chapter, “The Jewish Rediscovery of Philo in the Italian Renaissance,” see Weinberg forthcoming. The volume in which this essay will appear will carry the reception of Philo down to

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modern problem of Philo and Hebrews was born. On the Christian side, specific parallels to the New Testament, including Hebrews, began to be noted by the Critici Sacri.10 This process reached a culmination in the remarkable work of Johann Benedict Carpzov (1720–1803), Sacrae exercitationes in S. Paulli Epistolam ad Hebraeos ex Philone Alexandrino (Helmstadt 1750). After a prolegomenon in which he offers an introduction to Philo and to Hebrews, and discusses for good measure the Philonic Logos in relation to John, Carpzov gives a verseby-verse commentary on Hebrews, citing parallels from Philo as he goes along. The Philonic texts are quoted fully in Greek with Latin translations, thus making them widely accessible. Carpzov is interested mainly in verbal parallels, but these inevitably pass over into parallels of substance. This work of immense industry and erudition, which is still worth consulting today, established in the mind of many New Testament scholars the idea that there was an unusually close link between the two writers.11 It was due primarily to Carpzov that throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it became almost axiomatic (though there were dissenting voices) to hold that Hebrews was to be read in the context of Hellenistic/Alexandrian Judaism as classically represented by Philo. Some saw the links as stronger than others, but the vast majority saw links. The most learned advocate of a strong link was Ceslas Spicq, who concluded that the author of Hebrews was an Alexandrian Jewish disciple of Philo who had converted to Christianity. He had not only read Philo’s writings, but had known him personally, and heard him expound the Torah in the synagogues of Alexandria.12

the present day, and promises to be the most wide-ranging treatment of the subject to date. I am grateful to Prof. Weinberg for sharing this information with me. Though linked, the Jewish reception of Philo should be treated as a different topic from the Christian reception of Philo. For Jewish scholars, once Philo’s Jewishness had been settled, the issue then became what was his place within Judaism. De’ Rossi classified him as an Essene. Samuel Sandmel tried to claim him for Reform, see Sandmel 1953. Samuel Belkin tried to claim him for Pharisaic-Rabbinic Judaism, see Belkin 1940. 10 Spicq 1952–1953: 1.39 states that the influence of Philo on Hebrews was first suggested in 1644 by Hugo Grotius: […] Philonem quem legisse videtur hic scriptor (i. e. the author of Hebrews). He gives the reference in Hebr. iv, 10, but I have been unable to find this in Grotius’s Annotations. 11 Carpzov’s contemporary, J. J. Wettstein notes in his Novum Testamentum Graecum, 2: 384, Comparantes scripta Philonis judaei et Epistolam ad Hebraeos deprehendimus magnam inter utrumque scriptum et rerum et verborum similitudinem. Nimirum potuit Paulus, qui imperante Nerone scripsit, libros Philonis, qui sub Caio floruit, legisse, iisque uti ad Hebraeos, apud quos Philo in maxima tunc erat existimatione. And he supports this claim by quoting Philonic parallels to Hebrews in his annotations. See, Wettstein 1752: 398, e. g., his note on τετραχηλισμένα in Heb 4:13. 12 See Spicq 1952–1953: 1.39–91. Spicq’s general conclusions are on 88–91. This study reproduces the substance of Spicq’s article, Spicq 1949/1950. Spicq was later to identify the author of Hebrews as Apollos (Spicq 1959); note also Spicq 1951.

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Ronald Williamson reviewed the whole subject again at length in his 1970 monograph Philo and the Epistle to the Hebrews.13 In a detailed reworking of the evidence he pushes back hard against what he sees as the excessive claims of Spicq. He surveys the similarities between Philo and Hebrews in language, in ideas, and in the use of Scripture, and concludes that there are no grounds for assuming that the author of Hebrews knew Philo or was drawing directly on him. There have been a number of briefer treatments of the subject since Williamson, by David Runia and Folker Siegert among others.14 Most critical commentaries on Hebrews, and there have been quite a few, have felt the need to touch, at greater or lesser length, on the subject.15 A review of all this literature suggests that the argument has reached an impasse. It hasn’t really advanced beyond Williamson,16 and it is hard to see how it can. The relevant data has been gathered. The chances that anything significant will be added that will prove conclusive one way or the other are slim. All that remains is for each successive scholar to review the evidence yet again, and then exercise a subjective judgement as to where the decision comes to rest on the spectrum between no influence at all and strong influence of Philo on Hebrews, with increasingly an agnostic, “not proven” judgement prevailing.

2. Parallels between Philo and Hebrews But what are the nature of the alleged parallels between Philo and Hebrews? A brief overview is in order. The parallels are extensive, and can, in the aggregate, appear compelling, but it is important to note in each case that significant similarities are counterbalanced by significant differences. 2.1. Style and Vocabulary The rhetorical sophistication of Hebrews and the high register of its language have long been noted as distinctive within the New Testament, and have reminded 13 Williamson 1970 did not deny that Alexandrian Judaism was the primary background against which to read Hebrews. What he rejected was the idea that the evidence pointed to close personal links between the author of Hebrews and Philo, or Hebrews’ direct knowledge of Philo’s teachings. Williamson was later to change his mind and suggest that Merkavah mysticism provided a better background to Hebrews than Alexandrian Judaism. See Williamson 1976. This was a perceptive suggestion. The importance of texts like The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice for understanding the thought-world of Hebrews can scarcely be over-emphasized. For an attempt to put this suggestion on firmer foundations see Barnard 2012, 2013: 469–479. 14 See Runia 1993: 74–78; Siegert 2009 (the discussion of Hebrews is on 177–183). Further, Deines 2004. 15 E. g. Attridge 1989. 16 See the balanced survey by Kenneth Schenck 2002.

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some of Philo. It shares with Philo vocabulary which can hardly be characterized as run-of-the-mill Greek, some of which it uses in similarly technical ways. Runia, on the basis of Williamson, notes the following: ἄθλησις, αἰσθητήριον, αἴτιος σωτηρίας, ἀμήτωρ, ἀπαύγασμα, γνόφος, δημιουργός, δυσερμήνευτος, ἰκετηρία, μετριοπαθέω, πανήγυρις, πολύτροπος, σκιά, τύπος, ὑπόδειγμα, and χαρακτήρ, and comments, “Surely an impressive list.”17 And its style, like Philo’s, is very consciously rhetorical – a fact signaled in its famous opening πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως sentence. Folker Siegert opines that “in literary quality, Hebrews is equal to the best of the Philonic treatises.”18 That is a rather sweeping judgement which some might contest, but the author of Hebrews does construct his sentences with care (note the rather mannered placing of the plosives at the beginning of the opening sentence). They reflect a writer who lays great store by rhetoric. And this reveals something about his education, and about the sort of readers whom he envisaged for his work. His training and perceived audience may be seen as broadly similar to Philo’s (though on this see further below), but we cannot, on the basis of this linguistic evidence alone, say much more. Hebrews also shares its language and style with other writings of Hellenistic Judaism such as Wisdom. On the one hand, we should not deny that there are linguistic and stylistic affinities between Philo and Hebrews, but on the other we should avoid making these too exclusive. The most we can say is that the language shows that the author of Hebrews, like Philo, belonged to the world of educated, Greekspeaking Jews. It is difficult to go much beyond this. 2.2. Exegetical Technique A second area where parallels have been alleged between Philo and Hebrews is exegetical technique – how each author interprets their shared Scriptures – and here pride of place is usually given to the fact that both employ allegory. Discussions of ancient allegory too often seem to assume that it is a clearly defined exegetical technique in antiquity. It is not: it is vague and undertheorized, as can be seen from a perusal of Heraclitus’s Homeric Problems, a first century ce work contemporary with Philo and Hebrews. There was no pre-packaged technique labelled “allegory” which Philo and Hebrews could take down from the shelf and apply. Allegory arose in the Greek world as a technique for saving the ancient Greek myths from being discarded by intellectuals as outdated and immoral. We can now trace its use back to the late fifth century, thanks to the Derveni papyrus, in which an allegorical meaning is attributed to an Orphic cosmogonical poem. The traditional mythical language used in the poem, argues the author of the papyrus, is stating allegorically scientific doctrine, specifically, 17 18

Runia 1993: 75. Siegert 2009: 178.

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it seems, the doctrine of the school of Anaxagoras.19 The Stoics later applied this approach to the myths of Homer, and while the reconciling of “Scripture” with “science” remained an aim, it tended to be in the context of an attempt to save Homer from the charge of impiety (ἀσέβεια) – of representing the Olympian gods as behaving in morally reprehensible ways. Stories like the hilarious tale of Ares and Aphrodite in Odyssey 8.266–369 (Heraclitus, Homeric Problems 69), were never meant to be taken literally, but were like extended metaphors which set out cosmological doctrines.20 Philo treats stories in the Torah in an allegorical fashion, but there are fundamental differences to the Stoic allegorizing of Homer. He doesn’t use the technique to save Torah from the charge of impiety, and he doesn’t deny that the events that Torah describes, which he allegorizes, literally happened. He is also careful not to allegorize the commandments of the Torah. He is aware that some wanted to use the technique to argue that the commandments (what he calls “the special laws”) are allegories, and this implied that they did not have to be observed literally, but he will have none of it. It is questionable whether this is allegory in the Stoic sense at all. The writer to the Hebrews agrees with Philo that the commandments of the Torah were meant to be taken literally and observed to the letter. In this he differs from his near contemporary, the author of the Epistle of Barnabas, but his sense of the surplus meaning in the text, where it is saying something more than it appears to be saying, is controlled by an idea for which Philo has no use – the doctrine of the two ages. The whole of the Old Testament is a praeparatio evangelica, a προπαιδεία for the revelation in Christ. Hebrews’ exegesis is typological. Now one can, if one wants, classify typology as a kind of allegory, but only in the rather trivial sense that both see a hidden meaning in the text: it is saying more than on the surface it appears to be saying. The story of Melchizedek is a case in point. The author of Hebrews sees Melchizedek as a type of Christ. 19 See Janko 2001. The author of the papyrus does not use the ἀλληγορέω word-group to describe what he thinks Orpheus is doing in his poem, but rather ἱερολογέω and ἱερολόγος. A ἱερολόγος, literally “one who tells a holy tale,” denotes “one who deliberately conveys hidden truths through a story about the gods” (Janko 2001: 19, note 76). So Orpheus was a ἱερολόγος. Col. VII of the papyrus sets out clearly the author’s position: “[I shall also prove that Orpheus composed a] hymn that says wholesome and permissible things ([ὑγ]ιῆ και θεμ[ι]τὰ). For he was speaking allegorically (reading with Janko [ἱερολογεῖ]το) with his composition, and it was impossible (for him) to state the application of his words and what was meant. His composition is a strange one, riddling (αἰνι[γμ]ατώδης) for human beings. But Orpheus did not wish to state with it unbelievable riddles (αἰν[ίγμα]τα), but important things in riddles ([ἐν αἰν]ίγμασ[ι]ν δὲ [μεγ]άλα). In fact, he is speaking allegorically (ἱερ[ολογ]εῖται) from his very first word right through to his last” (trans Janko 2001: 21). Note the concern about ἀσέβεια: this is never lost sight of. The scientific explanation not only reconciles “science” and “Scripture,” and gives “scriptural” support to “science,” but it saves “Scripture” from the charge of saying things that are not “wholesome and permissible.” 20 See Alexander 2017a.

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But in what sense? In the biblical account of Melchizedek he is depicted as “without father and without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life” (ἀπάτωρ, ἀμήτωρ, ἀγενεαλόγητος, μήτε ἀρχὴν ἡμερῶν μήτε ζωῆς τέλος ἔχων), and in this way he is “made like the Son of God” (ἀφωμοιωμένος τῷ υἱῷ τοῦ θεοῦ) (Heb 7:3). This is easily misunderstood. What Hebrews is saying here is not that Melchizedek was not a human being, nor that he did not live on earth as a man, nor that he did not have a father and mother, nor that he never died (here the angelic Melchizedek of Qumran is a distraction), but that he is depicted in this way in the biblical narrative, in order to provide a foreshadowing of the great high priest who would come at the end of days. Jesus serves after his resurrection and ascension as the high priest in the heavenly sanctuary as an exalted human. Hebrews has a very high view of Scripture: it contains oracles of God and every word of it conveys divine meaning. Philo, actually, would have agreed with this, but he does not apply the doctrine of the two ages as a fundamental tool for drawing that meaning out. 2.3. Ideas: The Logos A third area where parallels are alleged between Philo and Hebrews is the area of ideas. It has been argued, for example, that the Christology of Hebrews has borrowed from and adapted Philo’s concept of the divine Logos. The Logos is a key concept in Philo.21 Fundamentally it denotes an agent which mediates between God and the cosmos. It is the instrument through which God created the world, and at the same time, innate in humankind, it is the instrument by which the human mind can know God and his purposes. The Christology of Hebrews is high, among the highest in the New Testament. Christ was a preexistent divine being, who bears a unique relationship to God – a relationship defined as sonship (Heb 1:2, 5–8). He does not belong to the created order, but is himself the divine agent of creation (Heb 1:2). He is the intermediary between God and the world. Some of the language Hebrews uses of the pre-existent Christ is strikingly similar to that used by Philo of the Logos. The Logos has an origin: it was eternally generated in God’s mind as the firstborn of his thoughts, the first-begotten Son of the Uncreated Father: τοῦτον μὲν γὰρ πρεσβύτατον υἱὸν ὁ τῶν ὅλων ἀνέτειλε πατήρ, ὃν ἑτέρωθι πρωτόγονον ὠνόμασε. “For the Father of All has caused him [the Logos] to spring up as the eldest son, whom, in another passage, he [Moses] calls the firstborn”.22 Compare Hebrews’ description of Christ as “the Firstborn” (ὅταν δὲ πάλιν εἰσαγάγῃ τὸν πρωτότοκον εἰς τὴν οἰκουμένην, λέγει Καὶ προσκυνησάτωσαν αὐτῷ πάντες ἄγγελοι θεοῦ, Heb 1:6). Using similar imagery, both Christ in Hebrews and the Logos in Philo 21 22

See also Taylor in this volume. Philo, Conf. 63; cf. Conf. 146; Agr. 51; Somn. 1.215.

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are called God’s “heir” (κληρονόμος, Heb 1:2; cf. Philo, Mos. 1.155). Both Christ in Hebrews and the Logos in Philo function as cosmic high priest (Heb 4:14–16, 8:1–2; cf. Philo, Somn. 1.215, δύο γάρ, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἱερὰ θεοῦ, ἓν μὲν ὅδε ὁ κόσμος, ἐν ᾧ καὶ ἀρχιερεὺς ὁ πρωτόγονος αὐτοῦ θεῖος λόγος, ἕτερον δὲ λογικὴ ψυχή, ἧς ἱερεὺς ὁ πρὸς ἀλήθειαν ἄνθρωπος, “For there are, as is evident, two temples of God: one of them this universe, in which there is also as High Priest His First-born, the divine Word, and the other the rational soul, whose Priest is the real Man,” trans. Colson and Whitaker, LCL). This involves using the role of the Levitical high priest in the Torah to illuminate Christ’s and Logos’ role in the cosmos. Here the comparison becomes very suggestive. Philo assigns a cosmic role to the Levitical high priest. He sees him as mediating between the world and God. He gives him the role of bringing God and the world together. The Temple in which he functions is a model of the cosmos, the garments he wears reflect aspects of the cosmos which he represents.23 It would not be pushing it too far to see the high priest as acting out the role of the Logos, as the “incarnation” of the Logos in the world. Pretty much the same move is made by Hebrews with regard to Christ. His role in the world is modelled by the role of the high priest in the Levitical cult, particularly on the Day of Atonement, which was to reconcile the world to God. But there are differences as well as similarities. In the hierarchy of being Philo classifies the Logos as an angel: τὸν πρωτόγονον αὐτοῦ λόγον, τὸν ἀγγέλων πρεσβύτατον, ὡς ἂν ἀρχάγγελον, πολυώνυμον ὑπάρχοντα, “God’s First-born, the Word, who holds the eldership among the angels, their ruler as it were. And many names are his”.24 But Hebrews says explicitly that Christ is not an angel. Angels are, for Hebrews, created beings, servants of God, whereas Christ belongs to the godhead. He is a son of God, a view which he proves from Scripture (Heb 1:4–14). The difference here is intriguing. In the chain of being, both Philo’s Logos and Hebrews’ Christ actually occupy the same position, the position nearest to God, within the godhead. The difference is that Philo identifies that as the position occupied by the angels mentioned in Scripture, whereas Hebrews does not. Hebrews takes the same view as the Rabbis: the angels belong to the created order, and did not act in any way as God’s agents in the creation of the world. The Rabbis, following the lead of Genesis 1, are reluctant to interpose any mediating agents between God and the created world. The world came into being by the direct, unmediated, will and fiat of God. Whereas Philo, like the medieval Jewish philosophers who treated the angels as intelligences emanated by God, was reluctant to bring the transcendent God into direct relationship with the material world, and so interposed mediating agencies between them. This difference 23 24

Philo, Mos. 2.133–135; Spec. 1.66–68, 84–97. Philo, Conf. 146; cf. Somn. 1.228–239; Cher. 1–3.

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between him and Philo would not have been trivial in the eyes of Hebrews. Angels play an important part in his worldview: they are fundamental to his anthropology. His central claim is that humanity, through Christ, will achieve finally a status above the angels. For him it is fundamental that Christ is not an angel. The concept of Christ/the Logos as πρωτότοκος/πρωτόγονος is also used somewhat differently in Philo and Hebrews. In Philo the Logos is “firstborn” as chief of the angels, or in contrast to God’s “second-born” the world. Hebrews, however, uses it either to affirm Christ’s pre-existence, or to allude to his role as the “pioneer” (ἀρχηγός) who would lead many sons to glory. He was only the first of the many sons whom he would bring into a special relationship to God (Heb 2:10). Unlike John, Hebrews does not seem to refer to Christ as “Logos.” There are a number of suggestive references. Heb 4:12, a passage on which Spicq places great stress, reads: “For the word of God is alive and active, sharper than any doubleedged sword, penetrating even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Ζῶν γὰρ ὁ λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ ἐνεργὴς καὶ τομώτερος ὑπὲρ πᾶσαν μάχαιραν δίστομον καὶ διϊκνούμενος ἄχρι μερισμοῦ ψυχῆς καὶ πνεύματος, ἁρμῶν τε καὶ μυελῶν, καὶ κριτικὸς ἐνθυμήσεων καὶ ἐννοιῶν καρδίας). Here Spicq and others have seized on the fact that Philo famously describes the Logos as a “divider” (τομεύς), and presumably for that reason compares it to a sword (ῥομφαία),25 but the role of the Logos in Heb 4:12 is not to create the world, by separating the primaeval chaos into discrete objects, but to judge the human heart. It is more obvious to see the Logos here as a reference to Scripture as in 2:2 and 4:2. When Hebrews speaks of the role of “word” in creation he uses, rather pointedly perhaps, the word ῥῆμα (1:3, 11:3). Heb 1:3 is interesting. There the Son is said to “sustain all things by the word of his power” (φέρων τε τὰ πάντα τῷ ῥήματι τῆς δυνάμεως). The allusion here is surely to the use of speech in Genesis 1 as the instrument by which God willed the world into being. This rather suggests that Hebrews is hinting at an identification between Elohim in Genesis 1 and the Son. 2.4. Changing the Frame of Reference The comparison of Philo and Hebrews with regard to language, exegetical technique, and ideas is undoubtedly illuminating, but there is no “smoking gun” which will prove to everyone’s satisfaction the direct dependence of Hebrews on Philo. We end up in an irreducibly ambivalent position: there are significant similarities but there are also significant differences. At this point we might be tempted to see the way forward as lying through refining our methodology, but 25

For the references see Spicq 1950 and Williamson 1970: 390–395.

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in the present case it is doubtful if any amount of tinkering will suffice.26 Let us be clear: that Hebrews as directly influenced by Philo remains a possibility, Spicq’s view that the author of Hebrews studied with Philo in Alexandria may be correct. He would not have been the first or the last student to have garbled his teacher’s ideas, or changed them for his own purposes. But the evidence does not prove it, and there are other possibilities. There is no point “flogging a dead horse,” so I would advocate another way forward, and that is to change the frame of reference. The analysis so far has been dominated by a positivist mind set. The underlying question has been whether Hebrews borrowed from, or modified or rejected Philo’s ideas? That question has been shown, given the present state of our evidence, to be unanswerable. But let us not lose sight of the fact that what the exercise has abundantly demonstrated is that the comparison in itself has been illuminating. It has enhanced our understanding of both texts. That is a significant result. So why don’t we shift the terms of engagement from comparison for the purposes of proving or disproving influence, to comparison and contrast for heuristic purposes – to sharpen up our understanding of the thinking of both authors. Theoretically speaking one can compare aspects of cultures widely separated in time and space, cultures which have had little or no significant contact with each other. So one might compare the “marriage” customs of an Inuit people with those of a tribe from deep in the Amazon jungle. Anthropologists do this sort of thing all the time. The two cultures may not have been in contact, but they are not unconnected. They share a common humanity. “Marriage” is something that happens between human beings – human beings with the same fundamental physiology, needs and desires. What we learn from the comparison will throw light on human nature and human society. But if we want to use our heuristic comparison to illuminate the worldview of a specific historical period, then throwing light on our shared humanity is not going to get us very far. We are more likely to get useful outcomes the tighter we can restrict the parameters of space and time. In other words, the closer our comparanda are to each other in space and time – the more firmly we are able to locate them in a particular historical-cultural setting – the more likely we are to achieve historically interesting results, though such historical results are a by-product of the exercise and not its main point.

26 It is not for the lack of trying. Ever more theoretically sophisticated models for assessing parallels between texts have been proposed. Sandmel 1962 has been very influential in the field of Biblical Studies, and is still widely quoted. Smith 1990 was also widely quoted by previous generations of scholars. For a careful survey of the problem see Doering 2006. If parallelomania is being over-impressed by the similarities between texts, there is a related phenomenon, parallelophobia – a blindness to just how remarkable some parallels may be, and a reluctance to speculate how they might have come about.

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3. The Shared Roman Context of Philo and Hebrews There is just such a context within which our heuristic comparison of Hebrews and Philo can be usefully set, namely first century Rome. What happens if we read them together in that setting? 3.1. Jewish Texts with a First-Century Roman Context It is worth reminding ourselves that there are a number of Jewish writings with a first-century Roman context. The later works of Philo have become relevant – if Maren Niehoff is right that they have a Roman audience in mind, and are addressing from a Jewish standpoint issues and concerns that were exercising Roman intellectuals at the time.27 This has immediate implications for the question of Hebrews and Philo. Those who see a tight nexus between Hebrews and Philo, usually assume that Hebrews could only have come into contact with Philo’s ideas in Alexandria. But if they were known also in Rome, this opens up the possibility that he heard them there. This possibility is boldly embraced by Folker Siegert. “We may safely assume,” he writes, “that Philo was heard in Roman synagogues during his stay in approximately 38–40 ce. There is no direct influence of his writings in Hebrews. However, the author of Hebrews may have learned of Philo’s teachings orally, even from hearing him directly.”28 But we don’t have to assume that the author of Hebrews could have known Philo only though his preaching. If Philo wrote his later works in Alexandria in the 40s (he died around 49), but with a Roman audience in mind, then it makes little sense if he didn’t send copies of them to friends in Rome, to have them read in the philosophical salons there. Whether or not his writings were known in Rome, at the very least Philo can now be added to the list of writers who throw light on the intellectual history of that city in the first century. But Philo is not the only Jewish writer to do so. There is, of course, Josephus at the end of the century. That Josephus is addressing a Roman audience is clear. 27

Niehoff 2018. Siegert 2009: 178. The possibility that the author of Hebrews heard Philo in Rome, turns on assigning an early date to Hebrews. Siegert “confidently” dates it to pre-68, on the grounds that there is no reference to the destruction of the Temple. The chronology just about works. But if Hebrews was written in the 80s then it becomes strained. The lack of reference to the destruction of the Temple is not conclusive for an early date. Theologically what was needed was to demonstrate that the Temple had been permanently superseded in the purposes of God, and this is what Hebrews sets out to do. The Temple had once before been destroyed and restored, and it might be again. There may have been Jews who expected such a restoration to be imminent. It was only after a considerable lapse of time that the Christian argument that the destruction of the Temple was evidence of God’s rejection of Israel started to carry force, though even then normative Jewish eschatology still maintained it would be restored, and so evidence of its supersession still demanded a theological argument. Appealing to historical facts would not be enough, and the author of Hebrews was too good a theologian not to have realised that. 28

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His whole vast œuvre can be seen as an apologia for Judaism to a Roman readership, in which he picks up some of the apologetic strands that are latent in Philo’s work. He too argues that the Romans have nothing to fear from “true” Judaism. There is much within “true” Judaism that the Romans can admire. As we saw, Josephus knew of Philo, though how much he had read of his writings was unclear. It is striking how little overlap there is between Philo’s and Josephus’ retelling of the same biblical stories, though here their different hermeneutical approaches (allegory vs. rewritten Bible) provide a ready explanation for this. There may be two other Jewish texts linked with late first-century Rome, and contemporary with Josephus – 4 Ezra (written probably in the 90s) and 2 Baruch (written probably in the early 100s by someone who knew 4 Ezra). Neither is usually linked with the city, but a case for this can, I believe, be made. Suffice to say here that in the case of 4 Ezra it turns primarily on the peculiar nature of the pseudepigraphy of that work. “Ezra” does not function strictly as a pseudepigraph, but more as a nom de plume, and when the author says that he, Ezra, was in Babylon thirty years after the destruction of the temple (4 Ezra 3:1; cf, 3:27–29) he is surely rather obviously signaling to his readers that he is writing in Rome in the 90s of the common era. Babylon seems to have been a code-name for Rome among both Christians and Jews at this period (see Sib. Or. 5:143, 159; Rev. 14:8, 16:19, 17:3–5; 1 Pet 5:13). 2 Baruch was probably not written in Rome, but in the Galilee. However, given its strong links to 4 Ezra, its references to Babylon take on added significance. It ends with an encyclical letter addressed to the Diaspora (“the nine and a half tribes”) summarizing the contents of the apocalypse (2 Bar. 78–87). In this letter Baruch rather pointedly says that he has sent a similar letter “to our brothers in Babylon, that I may testify these things also to them” (85:6; cf. 77:12). This may signal that he has, inter alios, a Roman audience in mind and intended to send a copy of his work there. “Baruch’s” and “Ezra’s” advice to the exiles in Rome could not be more different than that of Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in ancient Babylon: far from settling down and making the best of things in exile, “Baruch” and “Ezra” exhort them to look for the imminent destruction of Rome and the restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple. They directly challenge the Roman imperial ideology of the day. They pit the New Jerusalem against Roma Aeterna.29 29 On all this see Alexander 2024a. There is a possible objection to locating 4 Ezra in Rome at the end of the first century. It is generally agreed that the work was composed originally in Hebrew. But is it likely that someone could have been found in Rome with the Hebrew learning to perform such a feat, or that there would have been there a Hebrew-reading audience to receive his work? I don’t think we can rule this out. We could suppose that the author of 4 Ezra was, like his contemporary Josephus, an exile from Judaea who had received an excellent Hebrew education in his homeland, and that there may have been others in the Jewish community in Rome of similar background with whom he could have communicated in Hebrew. Writing in Hebrew would have served the purpose not only of giving added solemnity to his work but of keeping its subversive content from prying eyes.

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Another Jewish text of the period which may have a Roman context is 4 Maccabees, possibly composed around 100. Whether or not it was composed in Rome – Antioch still seems the most likely provenance – it’s message of resistance to tyranny resonates strongly with contemporary Roman philosophical criticism of empire. 3.2. Christian Texts with a Roman Context Nor is Hebrews by any means the only Christian text to be linked with Rome in our period. Rome was one the significant centers of early Christian life and thought.30 We have important Christian texts which were addressed to Rome or written there, and which, as a working hypothesis, can be examined to see if they reflect a distinctive Roman environment. There is Paul’s Letter to the Romans, sent to Rome around 56 – his most impressive and carefully considered composition, which shows the importance he placed on the city and its Christian communities, and the intellectual level he expected at least some of them to have attained. There is the Gospel of Mark, written in Rome around 66–70. There is Hebrews addressed to Rome, by a member of the community there but temporarily absent, around 80 (Heb 13:24). There is Luke-Acts (ca. 85), the Roman setting of which Loveday Alexander argues for cogently.31 There is, possibly, the Petrine correspondence: 1 Peter was, apparently, sent from “Babylon” (1 Pet. 5:13). There is 1 Clement (ca. 96) and the Shepherd of Hermas (ca. 100), both written in Rome. 1 Clement is, of course, an important early witness to the presence of Hebrews in Rome. There is Ignatius of Antioch who writes to Rome around 107,32 and shows knowledge of sentiment within the city, and there is Justin Martyr who spent the later part of his life there teaching Christianity as a philosophy and defending it to the Roman authorities, who put him to death in 165. Here, then, is a rich body of Christian writing associated with Rome, the very same Rome whose intellectual circles Philo addressed in his later work. 3.3. Romanitas We have, then, a body of first-century Christian literature associated with the city of Rome, and a body of first century Jewish literature associated with the city of Rome. It is a rather obvious hermeneutical strategy to read these two corpora against each other. Early Christian literature is certainly reacting to Judaism: a 30 On the city of Roman as an important centre of Christian thought in the first century see Lampe 2003. 31 See her chapter in the present volume. 32 The date of the Ignatian letters has become controversial in recent years, and some argue they could be as late as the late second or early third century. See Glaser 2021: 384–404 and 405–435.

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major item – perhaps the major item – on the Christian agenda was to define its relationship to the dominant forms of Judaism in its day. The Jewish agenda at this period was less interested in defining its relationship to Christianity – save, on the whole, to reject it as false. More nuanced responses were to come later, when Christianity began to triumph.33 But Jewish literature of the first century is deeply concerned with defining its relationship to Rome. Judaism and Christianity are linked together by the fact that both are subaltern cultures which, like it or not, had to respond to the politically dominant culture of imperial Rome. It is this Roman culture that forms the third side of the triangle of comparison. We need to read Judaism and Christianity not only against each other, but against Romanitas. It is the overarching Romanitas that gives this reading-strategy added bite. The term Romanitas has been bandied about increasingly in recent scholarship. Defining it is not easy. To some extent it is in the eye of the subaltern beholder, but for present purposes I would tentatively identify at least two strands. The first is the moralizing tradition which attempts to isolate virtues – personal and civic – that are deemed characteristically Roman. The godfather of this tradition is surely Cicero (106–43 bce), but other significant proponents are Seneca (ca. 4 bce – 65 ce), Musonius (ca. 20–ca.100 ce), Plutarch (45–127) (on whom we can bestow an honorary toga), and Epictetus (50–135). It is this strand of Romanitas to which the late Philo is most obviously responding, though with an apologetic, political purpose in view – to show Roman intellectuals that Judaism is in tune with the best and most enlightened of Roman values. The second strand of Romanitas is the imperialist. This involves the development in the first century of a Roman imperial ideology which claims that Rome’s divine and manifest destiny is to rule the world – to spread the universal pax romana. It is not easy to find this ideology comprehensively and coherently stated anywhere. It is scattered across many texts, monuments, images and coins. Some of its most eloquent exponents are colonials – Aelius Aristides (117–181), and Dio Chrysostom (40–ca.115). These two strands of Romanitas – the moralist and the imperialist – could be at odds with each other. Some of the most blistering critiques of Roman imperialism were penned by Roman intellectuals, and put in the mouths of defeated colonials – Caratacus, Boudicca, Gaius Julius Civilis, and above all the Caledonian chief Calgacus, whom Tacitus has utter, before the battle of Mons Graupius, the immortal condemnation of Roman power, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant (Agr. 30). As Mary Beard has rightly stressed, these criticisms are couched in terms of quintessential Roman values such as libertas.34 Thus the two sides of Romanitas can be in acute tension. Even the most celebrated expres33 34

On this subject see Alexander 2024b. Beard 2016: 516.

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sion of Rome’s imperial destiny, Vergil’s parcere subiectis et debellare superbos in Aeneid 6 (851–853) is surely shot through with latent criticism. It is this imperialist strand of Romanitas to which, on the whole, the Christian and Jewish writers are responding. And, when Philo and to a degree Josephus seek to show that Judaism is aligned with all that is best in Roman values, they are in a sense taking sides in an internal Roman debate. They are backing the Roman anti-imperialist tradition. The Jewish and Christian apocalypses are also anti-imperialist, but on rather different grounds. They are not anti-imperialist per se. Rather they believe that the wrong imperium is in charge. Rome and the Roman Emperor have usurped the Kingdom of God and his Messiah, and God will soon put that right. Urbs Roma will be replaced by the New Jerusalem as the capital of the world. What I am suggesting here is a program of research which looks not just at the relationship between Jewish and Christian texts, but also at that relationship within the context of Roman ideas of the time; the Romanitas of the culture which defined the political framework within which Judaism and Christianity lived and moved and had their being. The Roman framework of Jewish and Christian thought in the first century was ubiquitous and inescapable. I am proposing here to concentrate initially on first-century Jewish and Christian texts which have connections with the city of Rome, either because they were composed there, or were sent there, and so are likely to have been consciously or unconsciously responding, at least to some degree, to Romanitas. If the late Philo belongs to this corpus, to an extent that had not been grasped before, so also does the Letter to the Hebrews. And if this is the case, then, I would suggest, it opens up a new way of looking at the old problem of Hebrews’ possible indebtedness to Philo. It sits easy to the question of direct contact and borrowing, but nevertheless compares and contrasts Hebrews and Philo for heuristic purposes within the context that both are responding to the Romanitas of their day. They are unquestionably linked by the fact that they are both focused on Rome and belong to subaltern cultures within the Roman empire. 3.4. A Case Study: Exemplarity in Hebrews and in Philo in a Roman Setting How such a heuristic approach might work can be illustrated by a case study of the use of exemplarity in Hebrews and Philo. By exemplarity I mean the use of examples to illustrate and commend moral values which the author wants to promote. There has been much discussion of late of the use of exemplarity in ethical teaching in antiquity. It was widespread, arguably going all the way back to Ancient Near Eastern Wisdom, but it seems to have been particularly popular among Roman moral philosophers and historians in the two centuries around the turn of the eras.35 One can debate what exactly counts as an exemplum, but 35

For surveys see: Morgan 2007: 122–159; Langlands 2018; Roller 2018. Further, Chaplin

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for present purposes I will define it as a story about the actions of a hero from the past history of the community, which are held up for imitation and emulation because they are seen as expressing the community’s fundamental moral values. Note several points here. The actors are seen as historical: they are not fictional, and the incidents described are deemed to have actually happened. One could, of course, make up a story that illustrated the same virtues, but that would not be an exemplum. And although figures from the present or the recent past can play exemplary roles (martyrs for example), typically they come from the distant past, and they belong to the time of the founding fathers (and occasionally mothers) of the community. They are “national heroes,” and this immediately invests them with an aura of authority as the bearers of national values. Exempla tend to be short stories, anecdotes of specific incidents, which strikingly and memorably illustrate a particular virtue, but there are also examples of what might be called exemplary lives (βίοι), where the life-story of a single person in its entirety is held up for admiration and emulation. The purpose of the exemplum or exemplary bios will fail if the virtue or virtues being inculcated are not explicitly named, or transparently implied. There is nothing to be gained by being too subtle and oblique in exemplary instruction. As will become apparent in a moment, the exemplarist relies on a body of knowledge shared between him or herself and their audience. They are not usually talking about incidents or events that are entirely new to their readers. They are drawing on a social memory which the community shares about its past.36 How such social memories are formed is a matter of debate. Anecdotal exempla served as chreiai within the Greek and Roman school system, and this would have been one way that the memory was laid down. Visual representation in the cityscape – statuary, mosaics, and wallpaintings – would also have played a part. Within Jewish and Christian communities the constant public reading of Scripture, and regular preaching on the biblical lections would undoubtedly have served similar ends. But in both the 2000; Bell and Hansen 2008. Just how complex the use of exemplarity – particularly crosscultural exemplarity – could become is illustrated by the fourth century Christian Latin author Pseudo-Hegesippus’ rewriting of Josephus’s Bellum Judaicum, the De Excidio Hierosolymitano. At De Excidio 5.40 Pseudo-Hegesippus imagines Titus being told the story of the Jewish woman Maria who, driven mad by hunger in the besieged city of Jerusalem, had killed, cooked and eaten her own infant son (see Joseph. BJ 6.201–213). Titus expresses his horror and denies any responsibility for this appalling behaviour, but then goes on to ask what sort of people would do such a thing, and issues a blanket condemnation of the Jews as savage and barbarous. Maria was simply behaving in the manner of her ancestor Abraham who was willing to sacrifice his son (Gen 22). He cites also the example of Jephthah’s daughter (Judg 11) and “many other exempla of this kind” (multaque alia huiusmodi exempla) (De Excidio 5.41.2). In other words, Maria and her fellow Jews had been corrupted by bad exempla! Given that Abraham and Jephthah are given as exempla of πίστις in Heb 11, such an argument was surely high risk for a Christian writer. See Bay 2022:98–126 for an analysis. 36 The idea of social memory has played an important role in recent Biblical Studies. For a useful overview see Keith 2015.

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latter cases the social memory clearly embraced much more than canonic history, and this points perhaps to more folkloric lines of transmission. Historical festivals probably served to stimulate and fill the collective memory in both the Jewish and Christian communities, and, indeed, in the Roman as well. Armed with this somewhat functional definition of exemplarity, let us turn now to our texts, and read them heuristically within a first-century Roman context. First Hebrews. Hebrews is full of exemplarity. The virtue which above all it seeks to exemplify is crystal clear. It is πίστις. The noun πίστις, its related adjective πιστός, and the verb πιστεύω occur no less than 39 times in the work. The concept of πίστις (and its corresponding Latin noun fides) is complex. The verb πιστεύω occurs in two main constructions: (1) πιστεύω + dative/ἐν; and (2) πιστεύω ὅτι. In the first case the verb expresses the confidence or belief of its subject that a person or persons is reliable and trustworthy, that they are able and willing to perform some task which affects the interests of the subject. In the second case the verb expresses the confidence or belief of its subject that such and such is objectively the case. It fundamentally describes a subjective state of mind – confidence, trust, belief, but exercised towards the external world. It is, therefore, as Teresa Morgan stresses, a relational term which has its primary setting in social life.37 One should not, however, overstress its mutuality, as she, perhaps, is inclined to do. The attitude belongs objectively to only one side of the relationship: the confidence or faith may prove to be misplaced. This point should be remembered particularly with regard to the adjective πιστός. If one describes another person as πιστός, “reliable, trustworthy,” one is not, in the last analysis, asserting an objective fact, but one’s perception of what is the case. One is not claiming certain knowledge of the other’s attitude towards the relationship. One might hope that one’s πίστις will be reciprocated: that the person in whom the πίστις has been placed will respond with πίστις, and one might see such reciprocity as the foundation of a healthy society, but this mutuality is not intrinsic to the word. In Hebrews the object of πίστις is God, specifically trust or confidence that he is willing and able to fulfil what he has promised – even against the odds. This stress on πίστις relates very directly to the pastoral situation which the writer to the Hebrews addresses. His readers have been subject to some sort of persecution, and it has led them to a crisis of faith. They are no longer confident that God can and will perform for them what was promised in the good news which they received. Implicit in this lack of trust is a questioning of the very existence of God: χωρὶς δὲ πίστεως ἀδύνατον εὐαρεστῆσαι, πιστεῦσαι γὰρ δεῖ τὸν προσερχόμενον τῷ θεῷ ὅτι ἔστιν καὶ τοῖς ἐκζητοῦσιν αὐτὸν μισθαποδότης γίνεται, “Without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would ap37 See Teresa Morgan’s magisterial survey Morgan 2015, with the review by Alexander 2018. For Morgan’s analysis of πίστις specifically in Hebrews see Morgan 2015: 330–341.

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proach him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Heb 11:6).38 This has sometimes been discussed in terms of whether or not it envisages the possibility of atheism, whether or not there was atheism in the modern sense of the term in the ancient world. This is somewhat to miss the point. The end of the statement must be understood in very closely proximity to the beginning. For the author of Hebrews, brought up in the traditions of the great Hebrew prophets, a god who does not “reward those who seek him,” i. e. who does not morally govern the world he has made, but exists, like the gods of Epicurus, in profound indifference to the world and human behavior, is no god but an idol. Hebrews speaks of πίστις in the abstract at 11:1: Ἔστιν δὲ πίστις ἐλπιζομένων ὑπόστασις, πραγμάτων ἔλεγχος οὐ βλεπομένων. This definition is far from clear, as the disputes over the translation show.39 The exact meaning need not concern us here. Suffice to note that Hebrews prefers to define πίστις by examples. Christ is the supreme example: he is the ἀρχηγὸν καὶ τελειωτήν of faith (Heb 12:2). The wilderness generation are an egregious example of lack of faith in God (Heb 3:7– 12; note ἀπιστία at 3:12). But it is in chapter 11 that the exemplarity comes out most dramatically.40 This offers a dazzling gallery of examples of what the author of Hebrews means by πίστις. Several points about this should be highlighted. (1) Though the heroes of faith are drawn largely from biblical history, they are not exclusively so. Some commentators have detected allusions to the Maccabean martyrs. Their story, told in 2 Macc 6:18–7:42, was retold in 4 Macc 5–18, a text, as we have already noted, roughly contemporary with Hebrews.41 And even when biblical figures are in view, aspects of their lives are mentioned which are not found in the Hebrew Scriptures. So the reference to those who were ἐπρίσθησαν, “sawn in two” (11:37) is widely seen as a reference primarily to the prophet Isaiah, who was said to have suffered this ghastly fate, but this is not mentioned in the Bible. It is part of postbiblical tradition. It is found in the Ascension of Isaiah 38 NRSV translation. Morgan comments: “Given, as has often been noted, that atheism is exceedingly rare in the ancient Mediterranean world and Near East, that almost everyone assumes that god or god(s) exist, and that the only question for most worshippers is which god(s) to worship, it is exceedingly unlikely that estin here means ‘exists.’ It must mean something like, ‘acknowledges that [the God we are talking about] is the one true, and living God and that he rewards those who seek him” (Morgan 2015: 334). But see Loveday Alexander’s corrective to this in Alexander 2018: 286–287. 39 The NRSV has: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Morgan 2015: 338–341, calls this verse “one of the most hermeneutically challenging statements about πίστις in the New Testament or anywhere else.” After a long discussion, she comes up with the translation: “The divine-human relationship of pistis is the foundation (in two senses) of everything human beings hope for, the proof of everything (which God has promised) that they have not yet seen.” 40 Besides the standard commentaries see Eisenbaum 1997 and the essays by Moberly 2009, Bockmuehl 2009, Macdonald 2009, Mosser 2009 and above all Loveday Alexander 2009. 41 For the Maccabean Martyrs as Christian exempla see Van Henten 2017.

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5:11–14, in the part of that work known as the Martyrdom of Isaiah which dates roughly from the time of Hebrews, and in the Vitae Prophetarum, also from the same period.42 (2) It is astonishing how much the author of Hebrews seems to expect his readers to know of the tradition. He deals with Abraham (11:8–20) and Moses (11:23–28) at some length, and covers multiple episodes in their life. But he becomes more and more allusive as time goes on: Καὶ τί ἔτι λέγω; ἐπιλείψει με γὰρ διηγούμενον ὁ χρόνος περὶ Γεδεών, Βαράκ, Σαμψών, Ἰεφθάε, Δαυίδ τε καὶ Σαμουὴλ καὶ τῶν προφητῶν, οἳ διὰ πίστεως κατηγωνίσαντο βασιλείας, εἰργάσαντο δικαιοσύνην, ἐπέτυχον ἐπαγγελιῶν, ἔφραξαν στόματα λεόντων, ἔσβεσαν δύναμιν πυρός, ἔφυγον στόματα μαχαίρης, ἐδυναμώθησαν ἀπὸ ἀσθενείας, ἐγενήθησαν ἰσχυροὶ ἐν πολέμῳ, παρεμβολὰς ἔκλιναν ἀλλοτρίων. What more can I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets – who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight etc. (Heb 11:32–34, NRSV ).

At least we have here names and deeds, though the reader is left to match up one to the other, which is not always easy. And modern commentators, with all their resources, have been left scratching their heads as to what some of these figures did to exemplify πίστις in God (Heb 11:35–38). The writer ends up simply listing deeds, and leaving the reader to supply the names. The degree to which he expects the reader to supply the missing stories is staggering. Perhaps his intention was fundamentally rhetorical: simply to create a glittering array of figures – a great “cloud of witnesses” (νέφος μαρτύρων) as he himself calls them (Heb 12:1) – to drive home his point about trust in God. But he gives us incidentally a glimpse of the parameters of Jewish “national history” in the first century (what a Jew then might be expected to know about the past of his people), from which his exempla could be drawn. There is evidence to suggest that that this history was being worked on in the first century. There is not only the obvious case of Josephus’ Antiquities (reading the heroes of faith in Heb 11 against the corresponding narratives in Josephus is instructive), but also the Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum, though in its present form this ends with the time of Saul (it may be incomplete). Other parts of the national grand narrative were being embellished. We have already mentioned the Vitae Prophetarum. Though there is no clear consensus as to its date, it is widely regarded as also belonging to this period, and this makes good sense. It draws together stories regarding the great biblical prophets, linking them to sites where they were commemorated. This tying of literary history to the landscape is rather typical of national epics. Parts of the Maccabean history continued to be elaborated, and integrated into the “national epic.” 4 Maccabees was probably created in the late 42 See also Justin, Dial. 120; Tert. De pat. 14; Jer. Comm. Is. 57.2 (PL 24.546), and B.Yevam. 49b.

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first/early second century ce, possibly because of a renewed post-70 commemoration of the festival of Hanukkah. It has been recast as a story of heroic Jewish resistance to tyranny, which would be typical of the ethos of the Jewish world post-70.43 Indeed, it may have been intended as a Megillah for the festival. What all this suggests to me is a growing awareness among Jews in the first century of their national story, the emergence of the elements of a Jewish national epic – one that set Jews off from Romans, whose national epic was being created by Livy, Vergil and others. And it was this Jewish “national epic” which served as the natural reservoir for Jewish exempla. How would this catalogue of the heroes of the faith in Hebrews 11 have been read in Rome? Suppose an educated Roman, brought up within Roman culture on Livy and Vergil, had picked it up and read it, what would he have made of it? There would have been much in Hebrews that would have seemed strange to him, but surely he could have approved in principle of its attempt to promote πίστις/fides. As Teresa Morgan has shown, fides was an important virtue for Romans. He might have been puzzled when he spotted that fides in Hebrews was fundamentally faith in God. While that idea would not have been entirely incomprehensible to him, for him fides was primarily a civic rather than a religious virtue: it was the glue that held society together. He would have recognized the rhetorical device that attempted to illustrate and commend the virtue to the readership by appealing to stories of the deeds of past heroes. But then he would have hit something of a blank wall. Who were all these people whose heroism was being commended? They were not part of his past, but of the past of another people. He could not identify with them so readily as he could with the great Romans of his past. They carried no cultural authority for him. Now it is not impossible to appeal to shared values across cultural divides. For example, Josephus in his account of the last stand of the Sicarii at Masada is surely inviting Roman readers to admire at least their bravery and their love of liberty. They may have been utterly misguided, but, by God! they were brave and died nobly in defense of their liberty – a virtue which Romans held dear. The same may also apply to his account of the suppression of the Sicarii revolt in Cyrenaica.44 43

See Alexander 2024a. Eleazar’s speeches (BJ 7.320–401) are all about asserting “liberty” (ἐλευθερία, 327) and avoiding “slavery” (δουλεία, 324) about dying a noble death (νομίζω δὲ καὶ παρὰ θεοῦ ταύτην δεδόσθαι χάριν τοῦ δύνασθαι καλῶς καὶ ἐλευθέρως ἀποθανεῖν, ὅπερ ἄλλοις οὐκ ἐγένετο παρ᾿ ἐλπίδα κρατηθεῖσιν, 325. “Moreover, I believe that it is God who has granted us this favour, that we have it in our power to die nobly and in freedom – a privilege denied to others who have met with unexpected defeat”, trans. Thackeray LCL), about allowing reason to triumph over passion (τοῦ μὲν οἰκείου καὶ φιλοστόργου πάθους ἅπασι παραμένοντος, τοῦ λογισμοῦ δὲ ὡς τὰ κράτιστα βεβουλευκότος τοῖς φιλτάτοις ἐπικρατοῦντος, 390. “though personal emotion and affection were alive in all, reason which they knew had consulted best for their loved ones, was paramount”, trans. Thackeray LCL. This last point recalls 4 Maccabees, and perhaps hints that the Sicarii are being seen as in some sense martyrs. By effectively ending the Bellum with 44

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But such appeals are ambivalent and can backfire: Romans could just as easily have seen the “heroic” actions of the Sicarii as evidence of their fanaticism and barbarism. One might compare modern reactions to “terrorist” attacks. It may depend on the virtue in view. The fact remains that our putative Roman reader’s moral exempla would have been drawn from a different collective memory than that which supplied the author of Hebrews with his, and that makes a difference, because when presented with these exempla the reader is being invited not simply to approve and adopt a virtue in isolation but to identify with a particular past, to acknowledge it, to own it, to accept the virtues on display as part of their values. And this is why, as Langland rightly notes, exempla play an important role in forging group and national identity.45 In presenting to his readers in Rome exempla from the Jewish past the author of Hebrews is implicitly inviting them to identify with an alien people. This call inevitably takes on a political dimension. The author of Hebrews probably had a mixed audience in Rome. Some would have been Jews: for them owning that past would have been natural and easy. But some would surely have been non-Jews. For them the step would have been more momentous. It would have involved giving up their old identity. For any nativeborn Romans that would have involved repudiating their Roman past. But this is precisely what the author of Hebrews invites them to do. They have become part of a new “people” (λαός), a new “household” (οἶκος) of God, the past history of which is recorded not in Livy but in the Jewish Scriptures (cf. Heb 3–4, esp. 3:4–5 and 4:9). The reason these exempla matter is because they are the past of the Heilsgeschicte of which his readers are the present. Now let us bring Philo back into the picture. On the face of it, Philo does something similar to the author of Hebrews: he appeals to great heroes from the Jewish past as worthy of emulation, as exemplifying virtues that should be imitated. So we have from his pen biographies of Moses, Abraham and Joseph, and he alludes to Lives of Isaac and Jacob which are now lost. Several of these figures feature in Hebrews’ heroes of faith. Philo’s biographies are exemplary. As Niehoff rightly stresses, he believes that the biography of Moses will be helpful to his readers, because “they can benefit from his story as a model of their own lives.”46 There is an obvious formal difference between exemplary biographies and exemplary anecdotes. The latter are typically short stories of a single episode that exemplify a single virtue, whereas the former are rounded accounts of a rounded these two big set pieces, on which he expended enormous care, Josephus sets the whole in a particular light. In his account of the courage of the Sicarii at Alexandria (note the same group as at Masada!) in resisting the attempts of the Romans to make them acknowledge Caesar as lord (BJ 7.416–419), Josephus briefly but clearly echoes the language he used about Masada: the last stand of the Sicarii in Alexandria is a “second Masada.” 45 Langlands 2018: passim, but especially ch. 3 (67–85). 46 Niehoff 2018: 112. The whole of her ch. 6 provides valuable background to the present argument.

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character whose whole life is held up as a model, but that character is portrayed through individual stories which display his virtues in action, and which could serve on their own as anecdotal exempla. Take for example the story of Moses defending the shepherdesses at the well: this surely illustrates of the virtues of justice and fair play (Mos. 1.51–59). Interestingly, Philo in retelling these tales, like the author of Hebrews, does not simply rely on the written Scriptures: much of the detail is not actually found in Scripture. Some of it may be generated by reasonable Midrashic expansion of what is said in Scripture. But Philo himself acknowledges reliance on traditions from “the elders” (Mos. 1.4) – on a penumbra of folklore that already surrounded these tales. In other words, what he is relying on is the collective memory of the Jewish people. And, as with Hebrews, it is implicitly important that he is dealing with historical figures, and, therefore, with events that actually happened. He could have made up a story about an ideal philosopher king, who exemplified all the virtues displayed by Moses, but this would have lacked the rhetorical persuasiveness of tracing how through trials and tribulations, through rising to moral challenges, a real man matured into the role model that he became. Despite the formal differences, there is sufficient overlap between Hebrews’ heroes of faith and Philo’s βίοι of the founding fathers of the faith, to make comparison a useful exercise. But we should not miss a profound difference. I alluded earlier to the problem of trying to project exempla across a cultural divide. What appeal would Jewish heroes of the Jewish past have to Romans? This question can be posed to Philo as much as to Hebrews, but here we notice an important difference. Philo is clearly aware of the cultural gap and seeks to bridge it, and how he does this is by portraying Moses as exemplifying virtues that would be approved by his putative readership. That readership is fundamentally philosophical, and indeed Stoic. Philo makes a pitch to have Moses admitted into the “Republic of Wisdom,” alongside Socrates and other such universal figures. The Roman philosophical circles whom he has in mind, though they were not averse to using exempla from the Roman past, were less concerned with national virtues than with universal virtues, and therefore more inclined to recognize them wherever they might be found. Philo appeals to the same Jewish past as Hebrews, but he is much more selective, and chooses figures who are capable of universalization. His star example is Moses, who was already widely known to non-Jews as the founder of the Jewish polity, though sometimes by way of vilification.47 His putative addressees are first and foremost philosophers, albeit wearing the toga.48 None of this concerns the author of Hebrews. His approach to the past is much more scatter-gun. As we noted, his vast array of exempla (his “cloud of witnesses”) covers the whole of Jewish history, and implicitly invites 47 48

See Gager 1972 for an overview. For philosophy in first century Rome see Griffin and Barnes 1997 and 1999.

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his readers to make that history their own. The virtue he illustrates is not some sort of universal notion of πίστις/fides, but specifically Christian faith, and on the level of presentation he remains very much within the world of popular morality, not the world of the philosophers. Here, then, I would argue, we have an example of how heuristic comparison might work. It is always possible to compare Philo’s and Hebrew’s exploitation of the Jewish past for exemplary purposes in isolation, but that comparison only really sparks when we exploit the fact that both were addressing a first-century Roman audience, and read their use of exemplarity in a Roman context. This crucial hermeneutical move sharpens our understanding of what each element of the comparison – the Christian, the Jewish, and the pagan Roman – is saying, and the light that it casts, I suggest, makes less pressing the search for literary dependency.

Conclusion For reasons of space this essay must remain largely programmatic, but what I hope it has achieved is to chart a way forward, beyond the common practice of casting the question of Hebrews and Philo in purely positivist terms. Centuries of scholarship collecting parallels to Hebrews in the writings of Philo have still not produced a consensus as to whether the author of Hebrews knew Philo, and borrowed from, or adapted, or maybe even occasionally rejected his teachings. Indeed, the consensus is now strongly against such direct dependence. What I propose is that, while acknowledging the parallelism – at times it is striking and clearly locates Hebrews and Philo in the same world of Hellenistic Jewish thought – we should engage in heuristic comparison of our two thinkers, by putting them into dialogue with one another, without becoming entangled in questions of literary dependence. The broad convergences of time, place, and idea would make that comparison worthwhile in its own right, but I would further suggest that we sharpen up the comparison by exploiting the fact that both writers seem to be addressing a Roman audience and triangulate what they say with first century Roman thought: we should read them in first century Rome. Maren Niehoff has begun to do this with Philo. It has yet to be done systematically with Hebrews, still less has a Roman matrix been exploited as a tool for comparing and contrasting the two writers.

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Roller, Matthew. Models from the Past in Roman Culture: A World of Exempla. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Runia, David T. Philo in Early Christian Literature: A Survey. Minneapolis, MS: Fortress Press, 1993. Sandmel, Samuel. “The Clew to Survival.” Central Conference of American Rabbis Yearbook 63 (1953): 199–208. –. “Parallelomania” Journal of Biblical Literature 81 (1962): 1–13. Schenck, Kenneth. “Philo and the Epistle to the Hebrews: Ronald Williamson’s Study after Thirty Years.” The Studia Philonica Annual 14 (2002): 112–135. Siegert, Folker. “Philo and the New Testament.” In The Cambridge Companion to Philo. Edited by Adam Kamesar, 175–209. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Smallwood, E. Mary. Philonis Alexandrini Legatio ad Gaium. Leiden: Brill, 1961. Smith, Jonathan Z. Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity. Chicago, IL : University of Chicago Press, 1990. Spicq, Ceslas. “Le philonisme de l’Épitre aux Hébreux.” Revue Biblique 56 (1949): 542– 572; 57 (1950): 212–242. –. “Alexandrismes dans l’Épitre aux Hébreux.” Revue Biblique 58 (1951): 481–502. –. L’Épitre aux Hébreux. Études Bibliques. Two volumes. 3rd Edition. Paris: J. Gabalda et Cie, 1952–1953. –. “L’Épitre aux Hébreux: Apollos, Jean-Baptiste, les Hellénistes et Qumran.” Revue de Qumran 1/3 (1959): 365–390 Sterling, Gregory E. “From Editio Princeps to Editio Maior: The History of Editions of Philo.” The Studia Philonica Annual 33 (2021): 125–131. Van Henten, Jan Willem. “The Maccabean Martyrs as Models in early Christian Writings.” In The Jew as Legitimation: Jewish-Gentile Relations Beyond Antisemitism and Philosemitism. Edited by David J. Wertheim, 17–32. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Weinberg, Joanna. “The Quest for Philo in Sixteenth-Century Jewish Historiography.” In Jewish History: Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky. Edited by Ada Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein, 163–187. London: Peter Halban, 1988. –. “The Jewish Rediscovery of Philo in the Italian Renaissance.” In The Reception of Philo of Alexandria. Edited by Courtney Friesen, David Lincicum, and David T. Runia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. Wettstein, J. J. Novum Testamentum Graecum. Amsterdam, 1752. Williamson, Ronald. Philo and the Epistle to the Hebrews. Leiden: Brill, 1970. –. “The Background of the Epistle to the Hebrews.” Expository Times 87 (1976): 232–237.

Greek Literature and Philosophy as Context

Human and Environment in Philo’s Life of Moses and Flaccus* Jason König 1. Introduction My starting point in this chapter is the observation that images of both human dominance over the environment and subjection to environmental forces, are much more prominent in Book 1 of Philo’s Life of Moses than in the Septuagint version of the Exodus story that he was responding to1 (and much more so2 than in the work of other late Hellenistic and imperial Jewish authors who retell the same story, including Artapanus,3 Ezekiel4 and Josephus5). Philo’s embellishment of the text of Exodus is in many ways typical both of Midrash and of other Hellenistic Jewish authors. His version of that technique is distinctive, however, for its conspicuously Hellenizing character: It is saturated with language and motifs that mark out the text’s affiliation to the conventions of Greek biographical and philosophical writing.6 Philo’s fascination with environmental themes is one element of that “Greekness.” As we shall see, his portrayal of the plagues inflicted on the Egyptians supplements the depictions of environmental damage already present in the Exodus tradition, with extravagant

* I am grateful to Maren Niehoff and to the anonymous readers for their comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 1 See McGing 2006 and Damgaard 2014 for broader discussion of Philo’s rewriting of the biblical original in his Life of Moses, focusing on different issues from the ones I cover here; I have also learned a lot from Gottfried Schimanowski’s not-yet-published work on this subject. 2 However, see Lacoste 2019 for an account that compares the Exodus narratives of Philo, Artapanus and Ezekiel, and also the Wisdom of Solomon, arguing that one of the things they have in common is that all of them describe the Egyptian environment in detail, esp. 83–87 on the Life of Moses. 3 Quoted in Euseb. Praep. evang. 9.27.1–37. 4 See esp. the sections of the Exagoge quoted in Euseb. Praep. evang. 9.29. 5 See esp. Josephus, AJ books 2 and 3. 6 See Goldhill 2020: 218–223 on Philo, and 223–225 on Josephus, in the context of discussion of the huge differences between Rabbinic and Greco-Roman biographical writing. As he shows, the works of Philo and Josephus are very unusual among Jewish biographical texts in their use of the standard forms of Greek biography; also Goldhill 2022 on the need to give new attention to Jewish texts in moving towards an expanded understanding of late Hellenistic and imperial Greek literature, esp. 361–362 on Philo’s “idealised cultural hybridity” (362).

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and paradoxical images that have their best parallels in Greek (and also Latin) rhetoric and poetry.7 Some of the effects Philo achieves through his attention to this theme are relatively familiar within Philo scholarship. For example, it reinforces his portrayal of the naturalness of the Jewish religion, in contrast with what he views as the unnatural character of the Egyptians’ relationship with the world around them. What has been less often observed is the way in which it also contributes to Philo’s negative representations of imperial dominance. In the opening sections of Life of Moses Book 1 he emphasizes the Jewish population’s vulnerability to the environment, side by side with attempts by the Egyptians to exercise control over the natural world; those images are then overturned later in the narrative, as the Egyptians are themselves exposed to environmental harm through the plagues, while Moses increasingly exercises a divinely sanctioned mastery over nature. We see a very similar pattern in Philo’s Flaccus, which I turn to in the final section of this chapter. In that work, Flaccus’ final demise is described through images of exposure to environmental harm that reverse Philo’s portrayal of Flaccus’ oppression of the Jews from earlier in the work. They also closely parallel Philo’s portrayal of human-environment relations in the Life of Moses. That connection between the two works has not to my knowledge been discussed in detail before. It suggests that Philo’s interest in these themes has implications not just for his understanding of biblical history but also for his experience of empire in the Roman present. Those features of Philo’s writing have some intriguing resonances with approaches developed within postcolonial ecocriticism, to make sense of the experience of environmental vulnerability within modern imperial and postimperial cultures.8 Of course there is a risk of anachronism in drawing that link. Researchers working on postcolonial themes within the environmental humanities tend to be interested above all in the problems associated with our presentday environmental crisis, and in the way in which those problems have developed as a consequence of modern capitalist and imperialist systems. Postcolonial ecocritics also tend to be interested in problems of environmental justice, focusing attention on the needs of marginalized communities as well as the protection of natural environments, in response to specifically modern problems of anthropogenic climate change and industrial pollution. Those are all distinctively modern concerns. Nevertheless, my hypothesis here is that approaching ancient texts with those approaches in mind can sometimes help us to see aspects of them that we might not have noticed before. Perhaps most importantly for this 7 See Whitmarsh 2020: 34, on Achilles Tatius as a typical representative of the love of paradox and pairing in Greek rhetoric, in relation to the land/water dichotomy that is also so important for Philo (as discussed further below in relation to Life of Moses 1.103–104, on the plague of frogs). 8 For introduction, see Huggan and Tiffin 2010; Clark 2019: 137–159.

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chapter, one of the phenomena that postcolonial ecocriticism raises most consistently is the idea of differential exposure to damage, whereby marginal or subject communities tend to have a disproportionate vulnerability to environmental harm.9 That is a central concern of Philo’s writing too, at least in the two works I focus on in this chapter, in his portrait of the oppression of Jewish populations in Egypt, both in the biblical past and in the Roman present. He offers us a set of fantasy images of the overturning of those inequalities, whereby the oppressors are exposed to environmental harm in turn, and formerly marginal, oppressed Jewish communities are entirely insulated from it. The lack of attention to these aspects of the text is typical of a wider tendency to underestimate the sophistication of ancient representations of human-environment relations. There is still a widespread tendency to assume that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – which saw an explosion of interest in nature writing and landscape in northern Europe and America, side by side with the processes of industrialization that on many accounts ushered in the beginnings of the anthropocene era – represent a watershed period in human thinking about the natural world, and that premodern literature has very little to offer us on that subject.10 That is beginning to change, thanks to a series of recent attempts to explore the relevance of ecocritical approaches for ancient Greek and Roman literature.11 That work has tended, however, to focus on archaic and classical Greek literature, without giving much attention to the Greek writing of the Roman empire.12 I have argued elsewhere that the importance of the theme of human-environment relations in late Hellenistic, imperial and late antique Greek literature has been underestimated. The interest in political history and elite education that dominates some of the most often-read philosophical, historiographical and rhetorical works of this period – for example in a work like Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists, which is still for many people the first starting point for understanding Greek literary culture in the Roman empire – can lead us to miss the importance of an alternative strand of interest in human vulnerability to and immersion in the environment.13 Looking more closely at Philo’s Life of Moses can help us to see this more clearly. The text has been viewed repeatedly against the background of Philo’s thinking about Jewish identity and theology, but with no attempt to explore its wider significance for an ecocritical account of the literatures of the ancient Mediterranean.

9

See Clark 2019: 138 for summary. For the way in which those assumptions have shaped scholarship on the history of human engagement with mountains in classical antiquity and beyond, see König 2022a. 11 E. g., see Schliephake 2017 and 2020; Bosak-Schroeder 2020. 12 For one important exception, see Kneebone 2020, who shows how Oppian, like Philo, uses representations of the natural world to reflect on the dynamics of imperial control. 13 For a longer version of that argument, see König forthcoming (c). 10

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2. The Jews in Egypt The first third of Book 1 (Mos. 1.1–85, which corresponds to Exod 1–4) deals with Moses’ upbringing and his early life, and the process by which he came to assume leadership of the Hebrews before their exodus. Even in this early section Philo introduces a series of reflections on the use or misuse of natural resources, none of which are present in the original Septuagint version that Philo would have been working with. The theme is fairly muted to begin with, and might not be conspicuous for a first-time reader, but it prepares the ground for much more extravagant manifestations in the plague narratives later on. This section of the work draws repeatedly on the concept of physis (“nature”), which is one of Philo’s favorite words, used with extraordinary frequency throughout his works.14 It is important to stress that in many of its manifestations Philo’s use of that Greek word is unconnected with any notion of “natural environment.” Rather it is often used to signify the “nature” or “character” of an individual, as often in ancient biographical writing.15 Even in these cases, however, Philo is often interested in the way in which individuals or groups have used or misused their own “natures,” in a way which I suggest is thematically connected with his interest in harmonious or disharmonious human treatment of the environment in later sections of the text. Those themes run right through the opening pages. In the preface, for example, Moses’ detractors are associated with misuse of natural resources – in this case the resources of their own education and intelligence – in ways which anticipate Philo’s later descriptions of the Egyptians: “most of these authors have abused the powers (τὰς δυνάμεις) which education gave them […] they should have used their natural gifts (ταῖς φύσεσι) to the full on the lessons taught by good men and their lives” (Mos. 1.3).16 By contrast the opening of the narrative account that follows, starting with the migration of Moses’ ancestors to Egypt as refugees from famine, initially seems to give us a positive image of the Egyptian people in harmony with nature, in describing their relationship with the Nile: “Egypt is a land rich in plains, with deep soil, and very productive of all that human nature needs (ὧν ἡ ἀνθρωπίνη φύσις δεῖται), and particularly of grain” (1.5). Here too, however, there is a more pessimistic strand, in one brief but ominous caveat, where Philo tells us that the river overflows “if not prevented by some visitation of the wrath of God to punish the prevailing

14 Φύσις is used a total of 1,388 times in Philo’s œuvre; it is the second most overrepresented lemma in his work (TLG). 15 On the prominence of that theme in Philo’s account of Moses’ upbringing, see Feldman 2002 and Goldhill 2020: 221, in both cases emphasizing similarities with non-Jewish Greek biography. 16 Translations are from the Loeb Classical Library series, with occasional adjustments.

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impiety of the inhabitants” (1.6).17 Later, in telling the story of Moses’ adoption by the Egyptian princess, and his subsequent upbringing, Philo draws attention to the way in which the intervention of Moses’ sister ultimately leads to a situation where he is restored to a natural relationship with his birth mother, who then nurses him: “Thus, by God’s disposing, it was provided that the child’s first nursing should come from the legitimate source” (1.17). The plot details here are all in place already in the Septuagint version – Moses’ exposure, the princess’ pity for him, his mother as nursemaid. Philo’s distinctive additions come in his expanded phrasing, in the italicized passages. The princess, by contrast, unlike Moses and his family, is represented as being removed from what is natural, in feigning pregnancy – “having at an earlier time artificially enlarged the figure of her womb to make him pass as her real and not a suppositious child” (1.19). The Egyptians are portrayed in similar terms through their unwitting acceptance of the Hebrew child as heir to the kingdom of Egypt, which is a consequence of the princess’ deception: Philo draws attention to that gap between appearance and reality by including lengthy reflections on the princess’ need for an heir and on her knowledge of Moses’ Hebrew identity, which are only hinted at in the briefest possible terms in the biblical version, which says simply that “this was one of the Hebrews’ children” (Exod 2.6). The adoption scene is also the first of many passages in Philo’s account where Moses is represented as having a benign relationship with water: we even hear at Mos. 1.17 that “since he had been taken up from the water, the princess gave him a name derived from this, and called him Moses, for Möu is the Egyptian word for water.” By contrast, the tyrannical character of the Egyptians is made clear among other things by their unhealthy relationship with natural resources, water included. For example, the Egyptians’ oppression of the Hebrews goes hand in hand with their desire to dominate and shape the land: “some of the workers wrought clay into brick, while others fetched from every quarter straw which served to bind the brick. Others were appointed to build houses and walls and cities or to cut canals” (διωρύχων ἀνατομάς) (Mos. 1.38). This passage is based closely on Exodus 1.14, but Philo’s added mention of cutting canals picks up on the theme of water that is so important for the rest of the work too, while also recalling the archetypally hybristic acts of landscape alteration committed by the Persian king Xerxes, especially his cutting of the canal through Mt. Athos.18 17 Cf. Pearce 2007a: 220–221 and 2007b: esp. 139 on the way in which Philo combines positive and negative traditions about the Nile, in this passage and elsewhere; Lacoste 2019: 152–155. 18 On Philo’s assimilation of the Egyptians to the Persians under Xerxes, see Niehoff 2001: 52–58; also Philo, Somn. 1.117–119 for an exceptionally negative account of Xerxes’ hybris, including discussion of his cutting of the Athos peninsula. For representation of Nero’s attempt to cut through the isthmus at Corinth as a similarly hybristic act in the Ps.-Lucianic Nero, see Whitmarsh 1999. That text represents the land as a body, as does Cass. Dio 63.16.1–2 (discussed by Whitmarsh 1999: 149, note 54), where the earth spouts blood as a portent before the digging

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Philo then adds a powerful and vivid account of the way in which this violent mistreatment leads to unnatural death for the Hebrews, and denial even of the basic right of burial. That detail is presented together with a set of abstract reflections – which are once again additions to the much sparser text of the biblical original – on the workings of nature, and especially the Egyptians’ cruel suppression of natural rights: They [i. e. the Jews] died one after the other, as though they were the victims of a pestilence, to be flung unburied outside the borders by their masters, who did not allow the survivors even to collect dust to throw upon the corpses or even to shed tears for their kinsfolk or friends thus pitifully done to death. And, though nature (ἡ φύσις) has given to the untrammeled feelings of the soul a liberty which she has denied to almost everything else, they impiously threatened to exert their despotism over these also and suppressed them with the intolerable weight of a constraint more powerful than nature. (Mos. 1.39)

The scenes that follow Moses’ voluntary exile are saturated with similar imagery associating Moses with a productive relationship with the natural world, in contrast to the behavior of others. For example, Philo offers us a long account – again much expanded from the more laconic biblical original – of the tyrannical mistreatment of some shepherd women at a well and Moses’ successful attempts to defend them: “some other shepherds appeared on the spot who, disdaining the weakness of the girls, tried to drive them and their flock away, and proceeded to bring their own animals to the place where the water lay ready, and thus appropriate the labors of others” (Mos. 1.53). Here Moses is associated with resistance to oppressive exercise of power in relation to natural resources. Moses later marries one of the girls, and takes charge of her father’s flocks. His skillful and productive management of natural resources, in his role as a herdsman, is represented as intertwined with his later skills as leader of the Hebrews: For the shepherd’s business is a training-ground and a preliminary exercise in kingship for one who is destined to command the herd of mankind, the most civilized of herds […] and the care and supervision of tame animals is a schooling for the king in dealing with his subjects, and therefore kings are called ‘shepherds of their people,’ not as a term of reproach but as the highest honor. (Mos. 1.60–61)

The phrase “shepherds of the people” is traditional in Homeric epics and reminds us, like the scenes of Moses’ early education after his adoption, that he stands in a long line of heroic leaders from Greek and Roman literature. Every so often Moses is associated with natural resources unshaped by human intervention. For example at Mos. 1.84, we hear that God reassures Moses about his capacity to speak under divine impulse “so that none can hinder the stream of words from flowing easily and smoothly from a pure spring.” This passage begins, in much the same way as the canals at Philo, Mos. 1.99. That passage, and the plague of frogs at 1.103 (both discussed further below) between them overturn the image of Egyptian control over their canals at 1.38.

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picks up on the theme of healthy and unhealthy relationships with water already discussed. The association between Moses’ voice and a pure, natural source appropriates long-standing Callimachean imagery for literary originality, and in doing so suggests that Moses is associated with unmediated and uncontaminated nature.19 Elsewhere, however, the images attached to Moses tend to be more anthropocentric. For example, when Philo praises Moses for keeping control over his adolescent passions, he uses metaphors associated with horse-riding and horse-taming: “he kept a tight hold on them with the reins, as it were, of temperance and self-control, and forcibly pulled them back from their forward course […] in general he watched the first directions and impulses of the soul as one would a restive horse, in fear lest they should run away with the reason which ought to rein them in” (Mos. 1.25–26). Like the shepherding imagery, these metaphors celebrate human manipulation of natural resources. There are parallels in the work of Plutarch, for example in his Life of Alexander, where Alexander’s literal taming of the horse Bucephalus is implicitly linked with the idea of the taming of passion through education.20 Philo is very similar to Plutarch in many respects, for example in his interest in “great natures” (that phrase is used by Philo in Mos. 1.22 and 1.59, and repeatedly by Plutarch),21 and also in his interest in the way in which excellence of character in his subjects can be demonstrated by the ability to exercise control over natural landscapes.22 By contrast, Moses’ opponents are associated not only with suppression of nature in some contexts, but also paradoxically with uncontrolled and uncivilized natural forces. For example, the overseers who mistreat the Hebrews are described as “wild beasts in human form (ἀνθρωποειδῆ θηρία), who assumed in outward form the semblance of civilized beings only to beguile and catch their prey, in reality more unyielding than iron or adamant” (Mos. 1.43). When Moses rescues the women at the well, he says to their tormentors “you are masses of long hair and lumps of flesh, not men” (χαῖται βαθεῖαι καὶ σάρκες ὑμεῖς ἐστε, οὐκ ἄνδρες, Mos. 1.54). Moses apparently strikes an ideal balance between human control over and respect for nature. By contrast the Egyptians and others like them are represented either as having too little distance from wild nature, in the images just quoted, or else too much, in the scenes of anthropocentric landscape alteration from earlier in the work, of the kind that had so often been associated with hybris in the Greco-Roman literary tradition.

19

On spring imagery for the divine word, see Niehoff 2001: 192–197, esp. 196 on this passage. See Whitmarsh 2002: 180–181. 21 For that phrase in Plutarch, and its origins in Plato, esp. Rep. 491d–492a, see Duff 1999: esp. 47–49 and 207–209. 22 See König 2022a: 205–212 for extensive discussion of that feature of Plutarch’s Lives. 20

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3. Plagues As we move into the next phase of the text (Mos. 1.86–180, which corresponds to Exod 4–15),23 and especially Philo’s account of the ten plagues directed against the Egyptians, the environmental imagery becomes both more conspicuous and more violent.24 Immediately before the beginning of the Egyptians’ afflictions, for example, Philo tells us, in a passage that has no traces in the biblical narrative, that “The chastisement was different from the usual kind, for the elements of the universe – earth, fire, air, water – carried out the assault. God’s judgement was that the materials which had served to produce the world should serve also to destroy the land of the impious” (Mos. 1.96). That passage paints the suffering of the Egyptians as a struggle against environmental forces, much more blatantly than in the Septuagint version. The point here is partly that the elements that are central to Egyptian visions of the natural order themselves become the agents of destruction. That impression is enhanced in the first plague, the plague of blood, which subverts the Egyptian’s special and orderly relationship with the Nile,25 outlined already above in Mos. 1.5–6: He began by bringing into play first the plagues of water; for, since the Egyptians had paid a specially high homage to water, which they believed to be the original source of the creation of the All, He thought well to summon water first to reprove and admonish its votaries. What, then, was the event which so soon came to pass? The brother of Moses, at the command of God, smote the river with his staff, and at once, from Ethiopia to the sea, it turned into blood, and so did also the lakes, canals, springs, wells and fountains and all the existing water-supply of Egypt. Consequently, having nothing to drink, they dug up the ground along the banks; but the veins thus opened spouted up squirts of blood, which shot up as in hemorrhages, and not a drop of clear liquid was anywhere to be seen. Every kind of fish died therein, since its life-giving properties had become a means of destruction, so that a general stench pervaded everything from all these bodies rotting together. Also a great multitude of men, killed by thirst, lay in heaps at the cross-roads, since their relatives had not the strength to carry the dead to the tombs. (Mos. 1.98–100)26

The Septuagint version, by contrast, gives much more space to portraying divine agency, and correspondingly less to the power of nature: This is what the Lord says: “This is how you will know that I am the Lord: see, I strike with the staff that is in my hand the water of the river, and it will change into blood. And the fish that are in the river will die, and the river will stink, and the Egyptians will not 23 Cf. Feldman 2007: 89–108 for excellent, detailed discussion of Philo’s adjustment of the biblical original. 24 See McGing 2006: 128–129 for a brief discussion along similar lines, emphasizing among other things that Philo’s additions make these incidents more “dramatic” (129), and also drawing attention to Philo’s re-ordering of the plagues from the biblical original. 25 See Pearce 2007a: 220–23. 26 See Lacoste 2019: 93 and 121–122.

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be able to drink water from the river.” And the Lord said to Moses, “Say to your brother Aaron, ‘Take your rod in your hand, and stretch your hand over the waters of Egypt, and over their rivers, and over their canals, and over their marshes, and over all their standing water, and it shall become blood’” … And Moses and Aaron did so, as the Lord commanded them; and Aaron having lifted up his hand with his staff, struck the water in the river, in front of Pharaoh, and in front of his servants, and changed all the water in the river into blood. And the fish in the river died, and the river stank; and the Egyptians could not drink water from the river, and the blood was in all the land of Egypt. (Exod 7:17–21)

When we see these two passages together it is immediately striking that Philo’s changes are not only additions. He has in fact removed a large part of the Septuagint account. The agency of God is certainly not ignored, but it is given much less prominence: Philo, both here and repeatedly elsewhere in the plague narrative, cuts out the distinctive doubling of the Septuagint’s account, where God outlines what will happen and then the narrative repeats those details almost word for word in order to confirm that they have happened, in a way that leaves an impression of the powerful correspondence between divine will and action.27 In Philo’s version, by contrast, the agency and the power of the river itself dominates the narrative. That change also has the effect of giving more attention to the role of Moses and Aaron, who preside over the humiliation of their oppressors. Philo’s account is also given a much more sensory, bodily character, which conveys more viscerally the exposure of the Egyptians to environmental harm, and the distance between that experience and their previous invulnerability and mastery. Even the land itself is equated with a human body: “but the veins thus opened spouted up squirts of blood, which shot up as in hemorrhages” (Mos. 1.99).28 And the bodies of the Egyptians are much more powerfully present in the image Philo presents to us, with his reference to “all these bodies rotting together” and lying “in heaps at the cross-roads.” Here the self-contained nature of human bodies and human identities is eroded, in ways which anticipate some of the concerns of new materialist approaches to ecocriticism, with their interest in imagery that erodes or challenges the sense of a clear dividing line between human bodies and the physical environment.29 This also fits with Philo’s tendency to associate Egypt with embodiment in his allegorical writing, where Egypt is repeatedly imagined as the “land of the body,” associated with entrapment in the material, corporeal world.30 One of the effects of that passage is to articulate the way in which the punishment of the Egyptians replays their own mistreatment of the Hebrews earlier in the work, in the sense that it recalls the detail already quoted at Mos. 1.39, where the Hebrews are “flung unburied outside the borders by their masters.” 27

Cf. McGing 2006: 125. Discussed briefly by Lacoste 2019: 86. 29 See Clark 2019: 111–136 for overview. 30 See among many others Pearce 2007a: esp. 81–127 and 2007b: esp. 141. 28

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Similar patterns are repeated over and over again in what follows, with the Egyptians vulnerable to the kind of bodily and sensory exposure to environmental forces that is often associated with low status in Greek and Roman literature.31 God eventually restores the water to its pure state – a detail that recalls his promise to guarantee the pure stream of Moses’ voice – but from then the other plagues come thick and fast. The issue of control over water is central also to the plague of frogs that follows. Moses “stretched forth and brought his rod upon the canals and lakes and fens” (Mos. 1.103). That phrase closely parallels the Septuagint original, but Philo departs from it in what follows, in emphasizing the way in which the plague overturns the proper relationship between water and land: “as though it were nature’s purpose to send one kind of the aquatic animals to colonize the opposite region, since land is the opposite of water” (1.103–104). Once again this leads to bodies piled in heaps, and represented as objects of sensory disgust – in this case the bodies of frogs, which “lay in heaps at the crossroads, to which the Egyptians added the piles of those which they brought out of their houses, because of the intolerable stench arising from the dead bodies, and bodies of a kind which, even when alive, is highly displeasing to the senses” (1.105). The plague of gnats too is represented as an example of environmental disorder, again with very sensory language, in contrast with the much sparser Septuagint version: “the gnat is a very small creature, but exceedingly troublesome, for it not only causes mischief to the surface of the body, and produces an unpleasant and very noxious itching, but it forces its way inside through the nostrils and ears, and also flies into and damages the pupils of the eyes, if one does not take precautions” (1.108). Philo’s emphasis here on the paradoxical power of an environmental force that one might expect to be small and insignificant, and on its sensory impact, have no parallel in the biblical original. We hear that God “provides the slightest and the smallest with irresistible and invincible powers, and through them wreaks vengeance on the evil-doers” (1.111–112). At Mos. 1.113– 119 Philo’s account of the plague of hail is preceded by a set of scientific speculations, unprecedented within the biblical version, about the flooding of the river Nile and the workings of Egypt’s climate, which is said to be one of the few countries of the world that does not experience winter. The arrival of the hailstorms is thereby represented as a subversion of that usual order. Next Philo gives an account of the plague of locusts, which are brought by a strong south wind; he supplements the biblical version by explaining that the wind “is dry and produces headaches and makes hearing difficult, and thus is fitted to cause distress and suffering” (1.120) – another good example of his fascination with the bodily impact of the plagues. By contrast, the Jews are increasingly associated with freedom from environmental harm. As we have seen, the idea of the differential impact of environ31

See further discussion below, note 45.

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mental disaster on different communities is central to postcolonial approaches within the environmental humanities. Philo offers us an extraordinary reversal of that kind of image: initially it is the Jews who are vulnerable, but that vulnerability is then reversed so as to apply to the Egyptians, especially in a remarkable passage where Philo explains at length how the Jews were unaffected: With all these plagues and punishments was Egypt admonished, none of which touched the Hebrews, though they dwelt in the same cities and villages and houses, and though earth, water, air, fire, the constituent parts of that nature which it is impossible to escape, joined in the attack. And the strangest thing of all was that the same elements in the same place and at the same time brought destruction to one people and safety to the other. (Mos. 1.143)

That passage inverts the standard picture we find in both ancient and modern thinking where elites are unaffected by environmental disaster while non-elites suffer.32 In that sense it has a certain amount in common with ancient apocalypse narratives, which often use imagery of environmental disaster in order to project a fantasy of reversal, in which marginal, oppressed communities are insulated from harm, while dominant imperial populations become vulnerable, in a way which overturns idealizing images of imperial dominance over nature.33 Those effects are of course anticipated by the biblical original of the Exodus story, but they are greatly intensified in Philo’s account. Moses himself is also personally associated with control over environmental forces as the narrative progresses. There are parallels from other imperial Greek texts for images of environmental mastery being used to characterize the subjects of hagiography34 and other biography, for example in Plutarch’s Lives.35 The most decisive statement of Moses’ dominance comes in the long reflections on his character that come between the end of the plagues and the final acts of the Hebrews’ exodus into the desert: And so, as he abjured the accumulation of profit, and the wealth whose influence is mighty among men, God rewarded him by giving him instead the greatest and most perfect wealth (πλοῦτον). That is the wealth of the whole earth and sea and rivers (ὁ τῆς συμπάσης γῆς καὶ θαλάττης καὶ ποταμῶν), and of all the other elements and the combinations which they form … Therefore, each element obeyed him as its master, changed its natural properties and submitted to his command. (Mos. 1.155–156) 32 E. g., see König forthcoming (a) on the way in which Aelius Aristides celebrates his own immunity from suffering in the Smyrna earthquake, at Sacred Tales 3.38–43. 33 E. g., see Friesen 2014 on Revelation. 34 Cf. König forthcoming (b) on Moses as a figure associated with anthropocentric images of saints exercising control over their environments in early Christian hagiography, especially in Theodoret’s Religious History. 35 See König 2022a: 205–212; also Niehoff 2012 and 2018: 128–129 for other aspects of the relationship between Philo and Plutarch; McGing 2006: 117–119 for a critical account of the bizarre failure in classical scholarship to acknowledge Philo’s Life of Moses as a work of biography; and Adams 2020: 277–283 for Philo’s adaptation of biographical motifs and structures in the text.

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Here Moses is associated with the kind of territorial control which is often linked with great rulers, and especially, in the century or so before Philo was writing, with Roman imperial dominance over the earth, which was often imagined in celebratory terms in late Hellenistic and early imperial Greek literature.36 For example, there is a close parallel in the opening sections of Philo’s Embassy to Gaius, where Philo offers a positive picture of Gaius’ control over the inhabited world immediately after his accession, with very similar use of the language of prosperity, and repetition of the idea of the subject status of the land and the sea: For who that saw Gaius when after the death of Tiberius he succeeded to the sovereignty of the whole earth and sea (πάσης γῆς καὶ θαλάσσης), gained not by faction but established by law, with all parts, east, west, south, north, harmoniously adjusted, the Greek in full agreement with the barbarian, the civil with the military, to enjoy and participate in peace – who I say was not filled with admiration and astonishment at his prodigious and indescribable prosperity (εὐπραγίας)? (Legat. 8)

The difference is that Moses’ divinely sanctioned mastery goes far beyond those terrestrial versions, and certainly far beyond the Egyptians’ much more ephemeral attempts to reshape the land they inhabit, in the images of building works already discussed. Moses’ control over nature is then acted out in Philo’s description of the parting of the waters. The main act whereby Moses commands the waters is very much like its relatively brief biblical equivalent: “Moses now, at God’s command, smote the sea with his staff, and as he did so the sea broke and parted into two” (Mos. 1.177). One difference, however, is that Philo goes into much more detail about the actions of the tide and the wind, in a way which represents Moses working with natural forces rather than simply forcing them to conform to divine will, as well as recalling Philo’s earlier discussion of the actions of wind on the Nile at 1.115.37 The description of the exodus comes to a conclusion with the Hebrews rejoicing over the defeat of their enemy and their own freedom from harm, once again drawing attention to the differential impact of environmental harm, redirected here against imperial oppressors rather than oppressed subjects (1.180).

36 See König 2022b, on the predominantly positive representations of landscape alteration in Diodorus Siculus and Strabo. 37 Philo, Mos. 1.176–177: “At sunset a south wind of tremendous violence arose, and, as it rushed down, the sea under it was driven back, and, though regularly tidal, was on this occasion more so than usually, and swept as into a chasm or whirlpool, when driven against the shore. No star appeared, but a thick black cloud covered the whole heaven, and the murkiness of the night struck terror into the pursuers. Moses now, at God’s command, smote the sea with his staff, and as he did so it broke and parted into two. Of the waters thus divided, one part rose up to a vast height, where the break was made, and stood quite firmly, motionless and still like a wall”; cf. Mos. 1.115: “during that time the Etesian winds sweep down opposite to the mouths of the Nile and put a stop to its outflow through them. For, as the sea rises to a great height through the violence of the winds, extending its huge billows like a long wall, it coops the river up within.”

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4. Desert The increasing sense of mastery associated with Moses is then tested by the Hebrews’ encounter with the desert in the last third of Book 1 (Mos. 1.181–334, corresponding to Exod 15 onwards). Of course, the contrast between Moses’ divinely sanctioned leadership and the Hebrews’ deprivation and despair is already central to the structure of the biblical story, but once again Philo’s additions to the biblical version bring it out even more bluntly, especially through a series of scenes that replay the earlier images of Moses exercising control over water of various kinds through God’s will. They set out inland, and after three days the water fails them. They think they have found a source of water, but they experience only disappointment: “Then they saw some springs and ran to draw from them, full of joy, but in their ignorance of the truth were deceived. For the water was bitter, and, when they had tasted it, the disappointment broke them down” (1.182). Moses prays to God, and the Lord: […] bade him lift and throw into the spring a tree which he showed him, possibly formed by nature (ἐκ φύσεως) to exercise a virtue which had hitherto remained unknown, or possibly created on this occasion for the service which it was destined to perform. Moses did as he was ordered, whereupon the springs became sweet, and were converted into drinkable water, so that no one could even guess that they had originally been bitter, since no trace or tang remained to remind one of its former badness. (Mos. 1.185–186)

The biblical version is, as so often, a much sparser and shorter account: “And Moses cried to the Lord, and the Lord shewed him a tree, and he cast it into the water, and the water was sweetened” (Exod 15.25). Some of Philo’s expansions seem designed just to make the narrative more vivid and engaging, but the scientific speculation he includes also has a more pointed significance, in its reminder that Moses is working with nature, rather than imposing a purely miraculous solution. Other water sources too emerge every so often into the barren landscape of this final section of Book 1, providing the raw material by which Philo exercises his reshaping hand over the terrain of the biblical narrative.38 The famous story of Moses bringing forth water from the rock is another good example. Philo’s changes from the Septuagint version are typical of the adjustments we have seen already from earlier in Book 1: Moses, taking that sacred staff with which he accomplished the signs in Egypt, under inspiration struck the steep rock with it. It may be that the rock contained originally a spring and now had its artery clean severed, or perhaps that then for the first time a body of water collected in it through hidden channels was forced out by the impact. Whichever is the case, it opened under the violence of the stream and spouted out its contents, so that not

38

For other examples see Mos. 1.188–189 and 1.255–256.

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only then did it provide a remedy for their thirst but also abundance of drink for a longer time for all these thousands. (Mos. 1.210–211)

Once again Philo cuts out the voice of God, giving more attention to Moses’ own agency. That is not to say that Philo ignores the divine impulse behind Moses actions – in fact he goes on in Mos. 1.212–213 to emphasize how trivial this event was by comparison with the vastness of God’s creation: “The wide-spreading seas, the rushing rivers, spring-fed and winter torrents, the fountains with their perennial streams, some sending forth cold, others warm, water” (1.212). Once again, however, in exploring the possibility that there is a natural explanation, Philo makes it clear that Moses’ relationship with natural resources is a co-operative one: he works with nature, not against it.

5. Life of Moses: Book 2 How do these aspects relate to what we find in Book 2 of the Life of Moses? One of their functions is to contribute to Philo’s portrayal of Jewish culture as being in harmony with nature. For example, Maren Niehoff has shown how Philo represents Mosaic law in those terms, adapting Stoic ideals of living in accordance with nature.39 Philo also in places draws a distinction between ideal Jewish identity closely intertwined with the natural world and dominant models of urban culture. Book 2 of the Life of Moses includes some important landmarks in Philo’s exploration of those ideas, which carry forward the themes of the narrative section in the first book. Here once again, as so often in Philo’s work, the word physis is very prominent. Once again, we need to be careful not to overread the significance of that work for the theme of human-environment relations, since it refers in many of its manifestations to human nature or character. Nevertheless, there are some references to physis in Book 2 that carry forward Philo’s reflections on the contrast between Jewish harmony and Egyptian disharmony with the natural world. In the opening section of the book, for example, Philo describes Moses’ laws as “firm, unshaken, immovable, stamped, as it were, with the seals of nature herself ” (καθάπερ σφραγῖσι φύσεως αὐτῆς σεσημασμένα) (Mos. 2.14). Later we hear that Moses included history in his lawgiving among other things in order to show that “he who would observe the laws will accept gladly the duty of following nature (ἀκολουθίαν φύσεως) and live in accordance with the ordering of the universe, so that his deeds are attuned to harmony with his words and his words with his deeds” (2.48–49), and that the laws are “in agreement with the principles of eternal nature” (τῷ λόγῳ τῆς ἀιδίου φύσεως συνᾳδούσας) (2.52). Philo tells the story of the great flood and the preservation 39

Niehoff 2001: 247–252 and 2018: 154–161.

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of Noah (2.53–65), and also retells the story of the parting of the Red Sea and the destruction of the Egyptians (2.247–257), and both events are represented as instances of environmental upheaval, which in the case of the flood is followed by the restoration of nature to its proper order (2.63–64), and in the case of the parting of the seas, by the redirection of nature’s forces, which had threatened the Hebrews, against their enemies. Philo also offers us a famous image of the translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, sitting on the seashore of the island of Pharos and writing under divine inspiration – “with none present save the elements of nature, earth, water, air, heaven (ὅτι μὴ τῶν τῆς φύσεως μερῶν, γῆς ὕδατος ἀέρος οὐρανοῦ), the genesis of which was to be the first theme of their sacred revelation” (2.37) – and then gives an account of the annual seashore festival in the open air on Pharos held to commemorate that event (2.41–42). Philo’s portrayal in Book 1 of Moses working with nature, in contrast with the impious Egyptians, who try to dominate nature and end up exposed to environmental destruction, is thus part of a lifelong project of exploring the naturalness of the Jewish religion and its implications for Jewish identity. As we have seen already, Philo also often represents the Egyptians as having a problematic relationship with nature, in contrast to the Jews. At first sight the opposite might seem likely because of their harmonious relationship with the Nile, but in fact he makes it clear that this dependence on the river is problematic, in the sense that it attracts from them the kinds of respect that should be reserved for the things of heaven: “The Egyptians,” he says, “speak of the Nile as though it were the counterpart of heaven and therefore to be deified and talked about in terms of high reverence” (Mos. 2.195).40

6. Philo’s Flaccus How do these phenomena relate to what we find in Philo’s other works? In some respects the Life of Moses stands out from the rest of Philo’s œuvre. For example, there are several scenes of divinely inflicted natural disaster in the Life of Abraham, which at first look quite similar to their equivalents in the Life of Moses, not least because they have a comparable extravagance and energy. Obvious examples include his description of the flood (Abr. 39–46), the plagues sent against pharaoh in punishment for his attempt to seduce Abraham’s wife (Abr. 89–98), and then the destruction of the land of the Sodomites (Abr. 133– 141). The difference, however, is that all of these passages are treated by Philo in the Life of Abraham as allegories, whereas this kind of allegorical interpretation is almost entirely lacking from the Life of Moses.

40

See Niehoff 2001: 51–52; Pearce 2007a: 215–239 and 2007b.

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In what follows I suggest that it may be more productive to view the environmental themes of the Life of Moses side by side with his famous work Against Flaccus, on the mistreatment of the Jewish population in Alexandria. Both works were written in the same period of Philo’s career, after his visit to Rome on the embassy to the emperor Gaius.41 In making that comparison we can begin to see how Philo’s reimagining of human-environment relations at the heart of the Exodus story is entangled with his present-day experience of empire. Of course, Philo himself was in many contexts embedded in Roman imperial culture, and positive about Roman rule and individual Roman rulers.42 Nevertheless, he does in places explore the risks of oppression and brutality in Rome’s power over its subject populations. In the Flaccus especially, some of the horrors that are inflicted on the Jews of Alexandria are closely parallel to the equivalent sufferings in the Life of Moses. To my knowledge that parallel has never been explored in detail. For example, Philo points to the fact that the Alexandrian Jews did not have the opportunity to bury their dead (Flacc. 61–62);43 he also contrasts the fertility and abundance of the Nile with the famine that is inflicted on the Jews: They were oppressed by a terrible scarcity and even lack of necessary things and they saw their wives and little children dying before their eyes through a famine organized by men. For in every other place all else was full of prosperity and abundance – the river had richly flooded the fields with its inundations and the wheat-bearing area of the lowlands was producing grain in unstinted abundance thanks to its fertility” (Flacc. 62–63).

That passage gives a stark image of the way in which exposure to environmental crisis is determined by status, as it so often the case in the modern world too. In both Against Flaccus and the Life of Moses we also see the Jews rejoicing intheir deliverance by God from their enemies, in both cases standing on the seashore (Mos. 1.180: “standing on the shore,” ἐπὶ τῆς ἠϊόνος στήσαντες; Flacc. 122: “pouring out through the gates of the city on to the nearby beaches,” διὰ πυλῶν ἐκχυθέντες ἐπὶ τοὺς πλησίον αἰγιαλούς). Most importantly, the two works share a structure of reversal. Philo’s recognition of the sufferings imposed on their imperial subjects by the Egyptians in Life of Moses Book 1, and the fantasy of overturning those sufferings and inflicting them on the dominant population in turn, have parallels in the process of overturning, which leads to Flaccus’ punishment. That becomes clear especially in the final scenes of his assassination: When they caught him some of them at once dug a pit while others violently dragged him along, resisting and screaming and struggling hard, the result of which was that as wild 41

See Niehoff 2018: 110. See Niehoff 2001: 111–136 on Philo’s generally very positive representation of Roman identity, and his representation of the behaviour of Gaius and Flaccus as temporary aberrations. 43 Cf. Philo, Mos. 1.39, discussed above; also Flacc. 83–84 for Flaccus’ denial of the usual custom of allowing burial on the emperor’s birthday for those punished by crucifixion. 42

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beasts do, he ran upon the blows and had his whole body pierced with wounds […] The whole place was flooded with the blood, which poured out like a fountain from the many veins which one after the other were severed, while as his corpse was dragged into the pit which had been dug, most of the parts fell asunder as the ligaments which bind the whole body together in one had been rent. (Flacc. 188–190)

Here Flaccus’ body is immersed in or dispersed over the ground; it is also itself described in landscape-like terms, pouring out its blood like a fountain. That is represented as a reversal of Flaccus’ earlier exposure of the Jews of Alexandria to environmental harm, for example in the following passage from earlier in the text: They inflicted worse outrages on the bodies, dragging them through almost every lane of the city until the corpses, their skin, flesh and muscles shattered by the unevenness and roughness of the ground, and all the parts which united to make the organism dissevered and dispersed in different directions, were wasted to nothing. (Flacc. 71)

That passage finds echoes in the description of Flaccus’ death,44 not least in the images of bodies in contact with the ground. Ground contact in ancient literature tends to be associated with death and loss of status.45 This is an extreme example. That final description of Flaccus’ dissolution, with its erosion of the boundaries between human body and surrounding environment, is the penultimate sentence of the work. Just one sentence follows: “Such was the fate of Flaccus also (τοιαῦτα καὶ Φλάκκος ἔπαθε), who thereby became an indubitable proof that the help which God can give was not withdrawn from the nation of the Jews” (Flacc. 191). The word “also” (καί) is hard to interpret. The standard interpretation is that it refers to another work by Philo on Sejanus’ persecution of the Jews.46 That explanation seems entirely plausible, but it is surely also intended at the same time to remind us of the way in which Flaccus’ sufferings replicate the sufferings he has inflicted on the Jews, especially given that Flaccus draws attention to the equivalence between his suffering and theirs just a few pages before: “all the mad acts that I have committed against the Jews I have now suffered myself ” (Flacc. 170). In that sense the final sentence of the work draws attention to the structure of overturning that lies at the heart of Philo’s Flaccus, as it does also for the Life of Moses. That structure has often been remarked upon in the Flaccus47 – in fact it would be hard to miss – but the connection with the Life of Moses,48 and the 44

See Van Der Horst 2003: 244 for brief acknowledgement of that parallel. See König 2022a: 160–178 on Apuleius’ Metamorphoses for one example of the latter. 46 See Box 1939: xxxiii, n. 1; Van Der Horst 2003: 5–6 for that work. 47 E. g., see Van Der Horst 2003: 1–2 for the central importance of the “diptych” structure of the Flaccus. 48 Cf. Damgaard 2014: 242–243 for other aspects of the connection between Life of Moses and Flaccus, exploring the possibility that the two works should be viewed as “companion pieces;” also 245 for the claim that “Philo’s picture of Moses may be seen as a political response to the situation of the Alexandrian diaspora Jews.” 45

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importance of images of exposure to environmental harm for both works, have gone largely unnoticed.

7. Conclusions My main focus in this chapter has been on Philo’s extravagant interest in rewriting the biblical narrative of Exodus to make it, among other things, into a drama of human encounter with environmental forces. I have suggested that the overturning of the Jews’ experience of exposure to environmental suffering, so that it is inflicted on the Egyptians in turn, has a great deal in common with the similar structure of overturning in Philo’s Flaccus, and that Philo’s portrayal of those developments has some intriguing resonances with ecocritical thinking about the disproportionate exposure of disadvantaged communities to environmental harm. In both the Life of Moses and the Flaccus, Philo’s depiction of oppression, and the overturning of oppression, is articulated through the imagery of vulnerability to environmental damage, in the context of the unequal exercise of imperial power.

Bibliography Adams, Sean A. Greek Genres and Jewish Authors: Negotiating Literary Culture in the Greco-Roman Era. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2020. Bosak-Schroeder, Clara. Other Natures: Environmental Encounters with Ancient Greek Ethnography. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020. Box, Herbert. Philonis Alexandrini In Flaccum. London: Oxford University Press, 1939. Clark, Timothy. The Value of Ecocriticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Damgaard, Finn. “Philo’s Life of Moses as ‘Rewritten Bible.’” In Rewritten Bible after Fifty Years: Texts, Terms, or Techniques? Edited by József Zsengellér, 233–248. Leiden: Brill, 2014. Duff, Tim. Plutarch’s Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Feldman, Louis H. “Philo’s View of Moses’ Birth and Upbringing.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 64 (2002): 258–281. –. Philo’s Portrayal of Moses in the Context of Ancient Judaism. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Friesen, Stepen J. “Apocalypse and Empire.” In The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature. Edited by John J. Collins, 163–179. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Goldhill, Simon. Preposterous Poetics: The Politics and Aesthetics of Form in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. –. “Envoi: To Live in Hellenistic Times.” In Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue. Edited by Jason König and Nicolas Wiater, 351–365. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Huggan, Graham and Tiffin, Helen. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010.

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Kneebone, Emily. Oppian’s Halieutica: Charting a Didactic Epic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. König, Jason. The Folds of Olympus: Mountains in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022a. –. “Ecocritical Readings in Late Hellenistic Literature: Landscape Alteration and Hybris in Strabo and Diodorus.” In Late Hellenistic Greek Literature in Dialogue. Edited by Jason König and Nicolas Wiater, 119–148. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022b. –. “Ecological Grief in Aelius Aristides and Philostratus.” In Conversing with Chaos in Greco-Roman Antiquity. Edited by Esther Eidinow and Christopher Schliephake. London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming (a). –. “Suburban Saints: Space, Place and Environment in Theodoret’s Religious History.” In Lived Spaces in Late Antiquity. Edited by Carlos Machado and Rebecca Sweetman. London: Routledge, forthcoming (b). –. “Human and Environment in Imperial Greek Literature.” In Greek Literary Topographies in the Roman Imperial World. Edited by Janet Downie and Anna Peterson. London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming (c). Lacoste, Nathalie. Waters of the Exodus: Jewish Experiences with Water in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. Leiden: Brill, 2019. McGing, Brian. “Philo’s Adaptation of the Bible in his Life of Moses.” In The Limits of Ancient Biography. Edited by Brian McGing and Judith Mossman, 117–140. Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2006. Niehoff, Maren. Philo on Jewish Identity and Culture. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001. –. “Philo and Plutarch as Biographers: Parallel Responses to Roman Stoicism.” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 52 (2012): 361–392. –. Philo of Alexandria: An Intellectual Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018. Pearce, Sarah J. K. The Land of the Body: Studies in Philo’s Representation of Egypt. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007a. –. “Philo on the Nile.” In Jewish Identity in the Greco-Roman World. Edited by Jörg Frey, Daniel R. Shwartz, and Stephanie Gripentrog, 137–157. Leiden: Brill, 2007b. Schliephake, Christopher. Ecocriticism, Ecology, and the Cultures of Antiquity. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. –. The Environmental Humanities and the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020 Van Der Horst, Pieter. Philo’s Flaccus: The First Pogrom. Leiden: Brill, 2003. Whitmarsh, Tim. “Greek and Roman in Dialogue: The Pseudo-Lucianic Nero.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 119 (1999): 142–160. –. “Alexander’s Hellenism and Plutarch’s Textualism.” Classical Quarterly 52 (2002): 174– 192. –. Achilles Tatius, Leucippe and Clitophon Books I–II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Philo and Severus on the Unity of Soul Volker Henning Drecoll A historian’s eye is presumably like a camera that focuses upon a detail and then zooms out, bringing more and more context into view. This might include things that belong to the object on which the camera had focused previously, as well as other things unrelated to it. The zooming out could continue ad infinitum. For the context of an object is always endless, infinite, theoretically the whole of what is real in all its details and through the entire course of time. The historian must therefore be selective. The act of zooming in or out is dependent upon research interests, previous knowledge and research, education and categories of thinking, other scholars, etc. The question of which choices should lead the historian in the attempt to contextualize a specific object in its historical environment is the most delicate. Normally we would prefer to concentrate on a) the context that precedes the object of interest, b) those aspects of the context that presumably have exerted influence on the object. Sometimes, however, it is also useful to broaden this approach and to consider even a context that is subsequent to the object of interest. This is of special importance when such a later context can elucidate themes, questions, a discourse etc., that could have been present or may have emerged in earlier times. It is exactly such a kind of contextualization that is the aim of this contribution. By discussing an Alexandrian Platonist of the second century ce, I hope to shed light on Philo as an Alexandrian Platonist1 who lived a century before Severus.2 The main hypothesis is that Philo’s psychology is a very early witness to an innerPlatonic discourse about the unity and the parts of the soul that otherwise can only be observed in the discussions of the second century ce. This hypothesis has three implications: (1) Philo’s flexibility in describing the soul as divided into parts or as a homogeneous unit is not due to ignorance or lack of interest but mirrors an inner-Platonic discourse.

1 By focusing upon Philo’s use of Platonism I do not want to dismiss or relativize the exegetical character of most of his works or his debt to Jewish traditions; for the discussion, whether he can be called a Middle-Platonist, see Sterling 1993: 111. Runia 1993: 130 prefers the term “Platonizing devotee of Mosaic scripture.” 2 On Severus in general, see Ferrari 2018; Goulet 2016. Testimonies are collected by Gioè 2002: 377–433; Lakmann 2017: 684–699.

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(2) In the history of middle-Platonism, Severus established a tradition that stressed the unity of the soul rather than its division into parts. This was directed against Atticus and proved to be crucial for Neo-Platonism. (3) Even if it is not clear whether Severus relied on an Alexandrian tradition about the unity of the soul that could be traced back to Eudorus, Philo is an important witness to the fact that such discussions were known in Alexandria in the first century ce. I will proceed in three stages. First, I will address Philo’s psychology in some of his writings; second, I will deal with Severus; third, I will draw some conclusions from a comparison of the two.

1. Philo’s Platonizing Psychology in his Earlier Writings For the works of Philo, I will start with earlier, Platonic writings and only then analyze a passage of the later period.3 For these earlier writings it is beyond question that Philo applied Plato’s psychology. In the chapter “The Divided Soul,” Maren Niehoff highlighted that he was familiar with the inner-Platonic discussions about the parts of the soul and their location and the discussion about the chariot of the Phaedrus.4 This becomes clear from several passages, e. g. from the Legum allegoriae. In Leg. 3.115, Philo introduces the division of the soul into three parts (rational, vital force, desire = λογικόν, θυμικόν, ἐπιθυμητικόν) as something that is clearly the case (συμβέβηκε means something like “it is really the case, on which all agree”).5 The context of the passage is the interpretation of the curse of the snake in Gen 3:14. The snake is condemned to creep on its breast and belly.6 When Philo employs the localization of the three parts of the soul as outlined by some philosophers, he overtly states that his purpose is to show that breast and belly in Gen 3:14 mean the lower parts of the soul, in which lust (ἡδονή) is active and involves parts of the ἄλογον of the soul at war (Philo uses the word πόλεμος) with the upper part, i. e. reason.7 This prompts his admonition to look for a better, more reasonable understanding of what 3 I follow the general hypothesis of Maren Niehoff who distinguishes between earlier (more Platonic) and later writings that are influenced more and more by Roman Stoicism, cf. Niehoff 2018 passim (and the useful table on 245–246). See Royse 2009: 59–61. I do not delve here into the question of where to place the Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesin. Bechtle 1998: 378–381, focuses upon the creation of the world (and the role of the world-soul in it) and is based mainly upon De opificio mundi. 4 Niehoff 2018: 203–207. 5 Philo, Leg. 3.115. Quotations from Philo’s texts follow the critical edition of Leopold Cohn and Paul Wendland. 6 Philo, Leg. 3.114. 7 Philo, Leg. 3.115–117. Cf. Runia 1986: 303.

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is written e. g. in the Bible (by following the important values of clarity and truthfulness/σαφήνεια and ἀληθότης).8 What is interesting here, is that Philo used the opinion of “some philosophers” as the starting point on his way to a hermeneutics of biblical texts (which corresponds to the title of the work: Legum allegoriae). The localization of the parts of the soul inspired his reading of Gen 3:14. I have expected: He could only do so because he shared the concept of distinct rational and irrational parts of the soul and could subdivide the latter into θυμός and ἐπιθυμία, picking up the Phaedrustradition and Timaeus 69–70. At the same time, Philo was convinced that, properly speaking, it is only the higher part of the soul that is worthy of being named soul. Philo says this explicitly in Her. 55. As the word “eye” means the entire eyeball or just the main part through which we see, the word “soul” means either the entire soul or just its ruling part (τὸ ἡγεμονικόν). It is just this part of the soul that should be properly called soul (or even the soul of the soul, ὃ κυρίως εἰπεῖν ψυχὴ ψυχῆς ἐστι).9 The exegetical context of this passage is the interpretation of the name Damascus Eliezer mentioned in Gen 15:2. The name of this domestic servant is contrasted with the promised son Isaak, and this comparison is interpreted by Philo as the opposition of flesh and blood, vivified by the “entire soul” and intellect, enabled by the divine spirit. The fleshly side has a soul that is similar to it and is mentioned in Lev 17:11 as blood.10 The substance of the intellect, however, is not derived from anything created, but was given by God in the creation, as Gen 2:7 shows. Therefore, human reason can be shaped in the likeness of the creator.11 This leads Philo to the distinction between two types of humans: some are living in accordance with their reason, enabled through the divine spirit, while others are living following their blood and the lust of the flesh.12 Blood and flesh refer to the earthly side of humans (expressed in the name Damascus, for which the etymological meaning of “sack of blood” is given),13 while Eliezer means that this side really needs the help of God (which is confirmed by the meaning of the name Eliezer, namely “my help is God”).14 Only the purified intellect, corroborated by God, who participates in the heavenly and divine gift is worthy of inheritance. This purified intellect is opposed to the other part (τμῆμα) of the soul that is irrational and inflames θυμοί and ἐπιθυμίαι.15 This passage shows 8 Philo, Leg. 3.117–120. For the overall moral intention of Philo’s exegesis of Gen 1–2 in Legum Allegoriae, see Wyss 2016: 113. 9 Philo, Her. 55. 10 Philo, Her. 54–56. Cf. Van Kooten 2008: 282–283; Dillon 2010: 163–169. 11 Philo, Her. 56. 12 Philo, Her. 57. 13 Philo, Her. 54. 14 Philo, Her. 58. 15 Philo, Her. 63–64.

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that Philo, on the one hand, considers only the rational, ruling part of the soul to be really soul, the vivifying power in humans granted directly by God. On the other hand, he combines this with the Platonic distinction of parts of the soul. Similar to this is Philo’s exegesis of Gen 15:10 in Her. 230–236, where it is said that Abraham did not divide the birds for the sacrifice. Philo interprets the birds as the two reasons (λόγοι), i. e., the reason according to Gen 1:27, the paradigm of human reason that is in the likeness of God, and the reason of us humans which imitates this paradigm.16 Consequently, this human reason is the third in the hierarchy (after the divine Logos and the paradigm of human reason). This is, Philo says, what mainly and truly comprises the human being.17 This human intellect (no difference is made here between intellect/νοῦς and reason/λόγος) is indivisible by nature, while the irrational part of the soul is divided into seven parts (the five senses, the voice and the capacity of sexual reproduction). The opposition of the two parts of the soul is defined by the opposition between divisible and indivisible.18 The specific character of indivisible reason characterizes both human reason and the divine Logos. Being indivisible, reason acts to divide others: the divine Logos divides or distinguishes all the mixtures and confusions, the separations, and constellations of many parts. In a similar way, also the human mind is capable of dividing things by its thinking, and so it is able to attribute everything to the creator and Father of the Universe.19 This is the specific character of humans that prompts Philo to conclude that this part of the soul is properly “the human being” (ὁ ἄνθρωπος).20 It is worth comparing this with a passage of De fuga et inventione, where Philo refers to the creation of human beings according to Gen 1:26–27, in order to explain why in Gen 48:15–16 God is named alongside an angel. In the latter, God is said to be responsible for that part of human existence that is purely good, while the angel is said to be responsible for salvation. This presupposes an ambivalent existence that includes also bad decisions.21 Similarly, Philo continues, also in the creation of humans (no distinction is made here between the paradigm of humans in Gen 1 and the material creation in Gen 2), God Himself created the rational part – also called intellect – while the lower part of the human soul that is capable of thinking good and evil things was entrusted to His powers, i. e. the angels which are called even “the other creators” (ἕτεροι δημιουργοί).22 The higher part, the pure intellect, is described as a “true” human being (ὁ κατ’

16

Philo, Her. 230–231. Cf. Harl 1966: 37–38. Philo, Her. 231. 18 Philo, Her. 232. 19 Philo, Her. 234–236. 20 Philo, Her. 231. Cf. Harl 1966: 109. 21 Philo, Fug. 67. 22 Philo, Fug. 68–70.

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ἀλήθειαν ἄνθρωπος).23 The lower part is only “called” human being, as it is mixed and related to the multitude (being created by a multitude of angels). This also explains the shift from the plural ποιήσωμεν in Gen 1:26 to the singular “he made” (ἐποίησεν) in Gen 1:27 and the difference between “human” (ἄνθρωπον) in general (without article) in Gen 1:26 and the material human being (with article) in Gen 1:27.24 Again, Philo shares the idea of a divided self or soul, but only the higher part is (properly speaking) the human self. It is not clear how divine this higher, indivisible part is in these passages. Illuminating in this respect is the exegesis of Gen 2:7 in Legum allegoriae. While I cannot deal with all the details of this important text here, I would like to highlight that according to this interpretation humans have a mortal, corruptible intellect that is activated through a special gift by God. This idea is linked to the concept that the activated intellect rules over the irrational part of the soul which is merely passive. The exegesis of Gen 2:7 starts with the distinction of Gen 2:7 from Gen 1:26– 27 (which seems to presuppose an Allegorical Commentary on Gen 1).25 It becomes clear by these introductory remarks that Gen 2:7 does not deal with the paradigm of humans (which was the issue of Gen 1:26–27), but with the earthly humans that are not generated by God as ideas but created immediately with the material body.26 This created human consists of both an intellect and a body. This means that humans have an earthly and corruptible intellect. This intellect is incapable of true life and knowing God. Only when God blows his spirit into his face, does the protoplast receive real life and can encounter God.27 The intellect of the earthly human being is born from earth and loves the body (γηγενής and φιλοσώματος). Philo unfolds this thought by raising four questions: Why is this earthly intellect worthy of receiving the divine inspiration? What does the expression “he inflated” (ἐνεφύσησεν) exactly mean? Why did he blow his spirit into the face of Adam? Finally, why is the spirit called breath (πνοή) rather than spirit (πνεῦμα)?28 I will focus on questions two and three. The meaning of the verb “he inflated” (ἐνεφύσησεν) is interpreted as a special power that God adds to the human intellect. Only with this gift, can the human intellect get an idea of God and only thus can the soul recognize God. The human mind itself is not capable of reaching the high level where it can recognize the nature of God, but this happens only if God draws the human to Himself as far as possible for a human intellect. In other words, the human intellect is shaped 23 On the idea of the “true man” and its Cynic background in Philo, see Chouinard 2016: 26–27. 24 Philo, Fug. 71–72. 25 On this question, see Niehoff 2018: 247–250. 26 Philo, Leg. 1.31. 27 Philo, Leg. 1.32. 28 Philo, Leg. 1.32–33. Cf. Wyss 2016: 111–112.

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by the powers of God.29 This image suits Philo’s answer to the third question concerning the face. After initially considering the face to be the most vivid part of the body, Philo develops a second answer. As the face is the principal part of the body, its leading part (ἡγεμονικόν), so the intellect is the main or ruling part of the soul. God gives his spirit only to this part and ignores the other parts of the soul (namely the five senses, the voice and the sexual capacity of procreation).30 These lower capacities are “inspired” or vivified by the intellect. The intellect transmits the gift it has received from God to the lower parts. The intellect is to the irrational part of the soul as God is to the intellect. It also stems from God as it is also created, but not through him, i. e. it does not get its life from God, but the intellect gifted by the divine spirit is the life-giving power.31 Philo shared the concept that the soul possesses opposing parts, based on the tripartite Platonic psychology of the Phaedrus and Timaeus 69, but stressed that properly speaking only the higher part of the soul is the soul, the self, the human.32 Philo’s Platonism cannot be reduced to a standard Platonic division of the soul. Instead, he favored the idea that the intellect or reason, if it really fulfills its duty, is able to dominate the entire self, especially the lower parts or powers of the souls, i. e., the passions. This happens only if God Himself grants this divine capacity. For Philo as a Platonist, the indivisible and divine character of reason and the intellect are the crucial characteristics of human nature. At the same time, Philo ignored other important issues of Platonic psychology, such as the doctrine of the remembrance (ἀνάμνησις) and the concept of reincarnation, as Maren Niehoff has observed. It is noteworthy that this description of Philo’s psychology primarily fits his earlier writings from his Platonizing phase. In contrast, his later writings, which are influenced by Stoicism and Roman philosophy, present a different scenario. As an example, we may look at the famous interpretation of Gen 2:7 in De opificio mundi.33 Here, Philo distinguishes the creation of the material protoplast Adam from the paradigm that was meant in Gen 1:26–27.34 The nature of the protoplast 29

Philo, Leg. 1.37–38. Philo, Leg. 1.39. 31 Philo, Leg. 1.40–41. 32 Cf. Van Kooten 2008: 50–52. 33 I assume that Legum Allegoriae was written before De opificio mundi (Wyss 2016: 116, note 51), see note 3 above. 34 Philo, Opif. 134. For the discussion about Philo’s interpretation of Gen 1:26–27 and Gen 2:7 see Runia 1990: 64–67. Runia 1986: 335–336, assumes that Philo does not pick up here the interpretation of Gen 1:26–27 as creation of the paradigm. However, this passage presupposes the distinction between the protoplast and his descendants which are the focus of Opif. 135–147 (for this cf. Runia 2001: 330–334). From my reading, the expression “in the image” (κατ’ εἰκόνα) in Opif. 134 refers to the paradigmatic human, while from Opif. 135 onwards Philo speaks about the divine spirit, the reason in its best state, given to the protoplast and received in a deteriorated state by Adam’s descendants (Opif. 136–147 being an “essay on the excellence of the first man,” as Wyss 2016: 104, says). Cf. also the discussion in Runia 2001: 321–324. 30

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is identical with our nature, but he is better and more beautiful than we are because he was created directly by God.35 In this context Philo uses the opposition between the earthly substance or matter and the divine spirit that God blew into Adam’s face. The body was taken from the mud, but the soul was not derived from something corruptible, but stems from the Father and Ruler of the Universe. It is in fact the divine spirit that was given to Adam.36 This renders human nature immortal and mortal at the same time: regarding the divine spirit, it is immortal, regarding the earthly body, it is mortal. Humans reside between the immortal and the mortal.37 No division of the soul is mentioned here. The soul seems to be something homogenous that – in the case of Adam – is identified with the divine spirit. For the descendants of Adam, this means a twofold relation: with our reason and thinking we have an affinity with the Divine Logos, thus being an imprint and image, even a part (ἀπόσπασμα) of the blessed, divine nature. Yet through our body we have an affinity with the cosmos because we consist of the same elements.38 In this text, no distinction between a higher and a lower level of the soul is mentioned. The Platonic division of three parts of the soul is completely absent.39 Philo’s tendency to stress that the intellect or reason is properly speaking the soul, might have enabled him to increasingly favor a concept of the human soul without any further distinction. Does this lead him to the assumption that the human soul and reason are a divine entity within human nature as the passage of the De opificio mundi suggests? For two reasons I would be careful in this respect. Firstly, as mentioned, the description of the protoplast also highlights the difference between Adam and his progeny.40And secondly, at the end of De specialibus legibus I, Philo interprets Deut 23:1–2 and presents us with five types of mistaken religious orientations: (1) Some deny the real existence of incorporeal ideas; (2) some favor a blind fate and deny the existence of God, being real atheists; (3) some worship a multitude of gods;41 (4) and (5) are dominated by self-love (φιλαυτία). While the fourth group divinizes the human intellect or reason by praising its great achievements (technical advancements, but also philosophy), the fifth one divinizes the sensations and everything that is at work in the body.42 These last two groups are important for our question, 35

Philo, Opif. 136. Philo, Opif. 135. Cf. Wyss 2016: 105; Runia 2001: 326. 37 Philo, Opif. 135. 38 Philo, Opif. 145–146, cf. for the term Runia 2001: 345. 39 Philo mentions the tripartite Platonic standard model as opinion of others in the Exposition of the Law (Spec. 4.92–93). It is also the background of a localization of psychic capacities (Spec. 1.146–148). Further research is necessary for clarifying whether Philo distanced himself from this model after his stay in Rome. 40 Philo, Opif. 140. 41 Philo, Spec. 1.327–332. 42 Philo, Spec. 1.333–343. 36

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as Philo concludes: even if the thoughts of the adherents of all these five groups are different, they ignore the one and true God proclaimed by Moses. They are more or less impious (ἄθεοι) and kill their souls, while those who follow the real God and his commandment will attain an immortal life.43 Even if the intellect is identified with the divine spirit in Gen 2:7, Philo argues that this is only properly activated if related to God and His will. This resonates with his message in Legum Allegoriae where he developed the concept of an earthly intellect activated by God in order to recognize God.

2. The Unity of the Soul according to Severus Severus lived approximately 100 or 150 years after Philo.44 His psychology reveals that a technical discussion about the parts of the soul and its unity likely took place among Platonists in the second century ce. Precisely when this discussion began is anything but clear. Lacking other sources, especially earlier Platonic texts from Alexandria that could be placed next to Philo, a look at Severus may provide a better understanding of the discussion. Unfortunately, no works of Severus are preserved in the manuscript tradition. Besides several doxographic reports, we have only two direct quotations from Severus the Platonist: one is preserved by Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica,45 and another can be found in Syriac translation in the newly discovered treatise On Principles and Matter, which the editor, Yury Arzhanov, convincingly ascribed to Porphyry.46 For our analysis of the human soul, the quotation given in book 13 of the Praeparatio Evangelica is important. The quotation is introduced anonymously, but Eusebius concludes the quotation with the words: “This is what should be put forward by me from the work ‘On the soul’ of Severus, the Platonist.”47 This Severus can be identified with the Alexandrian or at least Egyptian Platonist Severus whose exegesis of the Timaeus is mentioned and characterized by Proclus in various passages in his Com43

Philo, Spec. 1.344–345. The date is plausible if we agree that the Platonic philosopher mentioned in an inscription of Antinoupolis with the two first letters “Se …” is our Severus: Testimony 1 Gioè (= Gioè 2002: 379, numbered as T1 with question mark, cf. the comment of Gioè 2002: 395–397, skeptical Lakmann 2017: 230. Severus at least lived before Plotinus who read his works together with his disciples, cf. Porphyry, Vita Plotini 14 (SCBO Plotini Opera I, 17,11 Henry/Schwyzer). 45 Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.17.1–6. The Greek text is that of Karl Mras in vol. 43.1 and 43.2 of the Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte (GCS). 46 Porph. PM 88–93. The critical edition of Porphyry’ On Principles and Matter is that of Arzhanov 2021. For Porphyry as the author see Arzhanov 2021: 66–79. In Porph. PM 95, the author refers to Plotinus and to Longinus and qualifies both as his teachers. 47 Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.17.7. The subtitles inserted by Mras in the text of the Praeparatio Evangelica do not belong to Eusebius’ text. The introduction of the quotation is Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.16.18. 44

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mentarius in Timaeum. The title “On the soul” (Περὶ ψυχῆς) is not very specific and does not necessarily presuppose that this is a stand-alone work – and not just a part of his Commentarius in Timaeum.48 The context of the fragment in book 13 is Eusebius’ attempt to show where and why Christians have not followed Platonism, even if Platonism in many aspects is in full harmony with the teachings of the Hebrews. Hebrews are the receivers of God’s law and teaching as it can be found in the Septuagint and are not identical with the Jews (οἱ Ἱουδαῖοι) of Eusebius’ days who – from Eusebius’ perspective – have only a partial understanding of the Scriptures.49 While the Demonstratio Evangelica shows how the Scriptures of the Hebrews should be understood appropriately, the Praeparatio Evangelica shows how the most important insights of these Scriptures can be found also in other cultures and philosophies, even if the teaching of the Hebrews proves to be superior. Among the philosophies, Platonism, especially in its Neo-Platonic form shaped by Porphyry in the early fourth century, is the most important. Porphyry’s re-interpretation of pagan culture and theology proves to be one of the main targets of Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica, because Porphyry had reacted already to Christian theology and was its influential competitor.50 The context of book 13 of Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica is important to understand the fragment of Severus, because Eusebius is very adept at presenting and trimming the quotation in accordance with his own argumentative purpose. The quotation of Severus is a perfect example of the fact that the list of errors he ascribes to Platonism is neither invented by Eusebius nor simply taken from nonPlatonic schools which criticizes it from without. Instead, it goes back to innerPlatonic discussions based on various interpretations of Plato’s texts.51 The quotation of Severus fills chapter 17 of book 13 which belongs closely together with chapter 16. Both chapters deal with Plato’s doctrine of the soul. As Eusebius makes clear at the beginning of chapter 16, two aspects of Plato’s psychology disagree with the teachings of the Hebrews and can therefore not be accepted by Christians: a) the distinct existence of parts (μέρη) of the soul, i. e., into parts whose substances are clearly opposed to each other (divisible and in-

48 Cf. Goulet 2016. Two independent works (the Commentary on Timaeus and a separate work, On the soul) assume e. g. Gioè 2002: 425–426; Ferrari 2018: 585; Lakmann 2017: 230. 49 Cf. Morlet: 2009: 170–171. For a nuanced view of Eusebius’ distinction between Hebrews and Jews, see Ulrich 1999: 121–125. 50 Porphyry as a main target of Eusebius can be maintained even if Porphyry’s Contra Christianos is not quoted or refuted in detail (which modern scholars may have expected), cf. Magny 2014: 40–53. 51 My reading of book 13 of Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evanglica benefitted a lot from the research of Joshua Shaw (not yet published), who argues that Eusebius could be read as a convert from a Platonic paganism to Christianity. This would mean that in book 13, he did not only discuss Platonism as such, but was engaged also with his own past.

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divisible), and b) the concept of reincarnation.52 Eusebius starts with the idea of the division of the soul and quotes Tim. 34c–35a as proof, concluding that Plato would add a suffering part (παθητικὸν μέρος) to the concept of the soul’s substance.53 Tim. 34c–35a is apparently read as the creation of soul as such and not in a specific way as the creation of the world-soul, which was the context in Plato’s text. Then Eusebius interrupts himself and deals with reincarnation. The concept of reincarnation is presented as a serious mistake (an ἀτόπημα) of Platonism because the soul, which is interpreted by Plato as divine and heavenly, incorporeal and reasonable, similar to God and capable of surpassing even the highest regions of the universe, surely cannot fall down from the higher heavenly realms to donkeys, wolves, ants and bees. Plato is said not to have provided an argument for this. He rather demanded that this be believed.54 Eusebius quotes at length the decisive three passages from Plato’s Phaedo, Phaedrus and Politeia that deal with reincarnation ).55 He characterizes Plato as “being like an Egyptian,” using the verb αἰγυπτιάζων, since he assumes that human souls can be reincarnated as animals, and argues that he is self-contradictory because in other passages he stresses the idea of an eternal punishment of the souls in the Tartarus (two passages of the Phaedo and of the Gorgias are quoted). While in the concept of reincarnation souls choose voluntarily a body corresponding to the moral quality of their prior life, the idea of the Tartarus implies the imprisonment of punished souls against their will.56 Only thereafter does Eusebius return to the question of whether the soul is composed of two opposite natures. Here the argument is not that Plato is selfcontradictory, but that this idea is questioned even by Platonists, foremost by Severus.57 The introduction picks up the characterization of the soul, but the terms are shifting. At the beginning of chapter 16 he had said: according to Plato (Tim. 34), the soul is composed of both an indivisible and unchanging substance and of a divisible one.58 Now Plato says that it is composed of a divine and reasonable substance and an irrational and passive or suffering one59 (with this, he adopts his characterization of the soul as something divine in his introduction of the reincarnation-argument).60 The Severus-fragment begins with the statement that according to Plato, the soul was composed by God from two parts: a part that does not accept affections 52

Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.16.1.3 Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.16.3 54 Euseb. Praep. evang. 55 Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.16.4-11 56 Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.16.12-18 57 Euseb. Praep. evang. 58 Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.16.113.16.18 59 Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.16.3 60 Cf. Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.16.3 53

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and any suffering (πάθη), and another one that does, namely an impassive and a passive part.61 It is noteworthy that Severus mentions God as the one who constitutes the soul. From the rest of the fragment, it is clear that it is the human soul he is talking about. In Plato’s text of the Timaeus the composition of human individuals is not performed by God the Demiurge himself, but by the lower gods. This means either that Severus reads Plato’s Tim. 34c–35a as pertaining to the creation of the soul as such, just as Eusebius did, or he meant that human souls are composed by God because the lower gods of Tim. 41ab and Tim. 69ab follow his instructions and commands.62 Severus rejects the idea of the soul being composed of two opposite elements by applying the analogy of colors. While these are originally composed of black and white, following a simplified understanding of Tim. 67e–68d, their association exists only temporarily and dissolves after a certain length of time. In other words, the separate constituents of the colors persist, but their combination vanishes. Applied to the soul, this analogy suggests that the soul cannot be composite and at the same time immortal, as its constitutions would dissolve and thus no longer characterize the whole.63 If the immortal element was only one part of the soul, it would not convey its immortality, but soon separate from the other parts and retain its qualities just for itself. This argument is corroborated by a more extensive argument that generalizes the idea of the temporary combination of opposites. Everything in the world is composed of opposites by God who caused love and friendship between them. Examples of the opposites are dry and wet, warm and cold, heavy and light, white and black, sweet and bitter, hard and soft.64 If the pair impassive/passive would be just another example and the soul would be the composition of both, it would imply that these opposites naturally fall apart after a certain time, i. e., without any further external influence or force.65 The example of heavy and light objects further confirms that contrary components can be held together only by the application of an external force. Heavy things tend to fall, while light things will rise, and only a third power can maintain them together. The composition of two things requires a third element that puts the opposites together permanently.66 We could say: the universe can only persist as long as a deity imposes its power on it and provides love and friendship between the opposites which – without this influence – would quickly return to their opposite sides. 61

Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.17.1 For the complexity of how Plato described the creation of soul and the structure of the Timaeus, see Karfik 2020: 64–65, 69–70. 63 Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.17.1. 64 The elements warm and cold, hard and soft, and heavy and light are taken for Tim. 61c–62d. 65 Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.17.2. 66 Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.17.3. 62

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This model, however, of a third element holding two opposites together, cannot be applied to the soul because the soul is simple, i. e. homogenous, and by its own nature impassive and bodyless. Therefore, Plato and his successors have declared the soul to be immortal.67 This does not necessarily imply that Plato also said that the soul was simple, but that he made a good point in declaring it immortal. In line with this, humans experience affections (πάθη), some of them voluntarily, others involuntarily, and these cannot be traced back to the human body but belong to the soul. This led many to the assumption that the soul’s substance can suffer, i. e., is passive, and is therefore mortal and body-like, perhaps reflecting a Stoic influence.68 Plato, however, felt obliged to weave in a passive element or substance into his theory of the impassive, immortal soul.69 Severus asserts that none of these two assumptions is true and that he will prove it from what both of them say – Plato and the others.70 This is a tricky phrase because it is not absolutely clear where the relative clause belongs, namely either to the subordinate clause introduced by “that” (“that none of these two opinions is true based on what they said, namely Plato and the others”) or to the verb “we will try” (“we will try – πειρασόμεθα – to prove this from what both of them said, Plato and the others”). Both readings, however, allow the option that what was presented so far as Plato’s opinion can be modified by a more careful reading of Plato’s text. The next problem in this phrase: The meaning of the participle (παραθέντες) is not clear. The root of the verb (παρατίθημι) can mean “to set aside, to ignore” or just the opposite, “to explain, to unfold.” The object is “the powers that are active in us” which refer either to Severus, who uses the plural in the expression “we will try” (πειρασόμεθα) or to humans in general. The expression “active in us” suggests rather the latter meaning, namely that Severus speaks about the various powers and capacities of the soul, and this leads to the translation of the participle (παραθέντες) as “by explaining.” Consequently, Severus wanted to resolve the tricky question of the composition or simplicity of the soul by an analysis of the soul’s powers and capacities.71 Severus’ solution to this problem is not clear from the fragment provided by Eusebius. Of course, it is not in Eusebius’ interest here to show how a Platonist like Severus could provide a convincing solution. The fragment is quoted by him in order to show that even Platonists felt uncomfortable with Plato’s psychology, which assumes that the soul is immortal but composed of an impassive, divine element and a passive element. Eusebius cuts the fragment precisely where the next few sentences would be of interest to us. 67

Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.17.4. Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.17.5. 69 Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.17.6. 70 Euseb. Praep. evang. 13.17.6. 71 Cf. Lakmann 2017: 233, and her translation, at 687. 68

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Having said this, I would like to suggest a possible solution to how Severus might have conceived the concept of the soul.72 For this, I would like to stress four aspects of the text that hint to a specific discussion within Platonism: (1) The two opposite parts of the soul are passive/impassive. (2) The composition of the soul rejected by Severus is named σύστασις.73 It is simply a combination of two things that remain essentially what they were before. (3) The aim of Severus’ argument is to maintain the immortality of the soul. This leads him to the principle that the soul is simple (not composite). (4) Affections (πάθη) belong to human nature as a whole; they are not something that happens to the body. These four points hint to Tim. 69ab, where Plato explains how the soul enters individual humans.74 He attributes it to two sources, namely the leftovers from the creation of the world-soul described in Tim. 35, and another type of soul, created by the lower gods. It emerges that this is the passive, suffering, affectable part that is subdivided into vital force and desire (θυμός and ἐπιθυμία). By this identification, the Timaeus picks up the famous picture of the chariot where reason controls the two horses (or fails to do so). This “part” of the soul is called the “kind/shape of soul” (εἶδος ψυχῆς) in Plato’s text, which proved to be important to Plotinus and later Neo-Platonists. I suggest that our fragment belongs to an explanation of Tim. 69ab and that Severus was interested in providing an explanation of the text that suited his philosophy. I assume that Severus already wanted to name only the higher part of the individual soul, the reasonable part, soul in its proper sense. Therefore, he could reject a Platonic philosophy that stressed the soul as being a composite unit. He could have gone even further in assuming that it is the soul as such that is immortal and divine, but that this is different from the “kind of soul” – Plotinus would say “the traces of the soul” – in the presumably mortal lower parts of the body shared by humans with animals. The profile of Severus’ concept of soul becomes clear if compared with Atticus.75 The harsh rejection of the idea that the soul holds together two opposite elements via a third element, differs directly from the psychology of this Platonist.76 There72

See Martano 1956: 20, who denies that anything can be said about Severus’ solution. Only the combination of the opposite elements like warmth and cold etc., are named as mixtures in the fragment: τὰ δὲ κραθέντα καὶ μιχθέντα. 74 Cf. Gioè 2002: 426; Deuse 1983: 104, note 44. 75 For Atticus in general, see Männlein-Robert 2018: 594–601, 689–690. 76 The transmission of the fragments of Atticus is comparable with Severus: Besides direct quotations in Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica, reports in Proclus are the most important witness. Unfortunately, the direct quotations in Eusebius focus upon the rejection of Aristotle (cf. Moreaux 1984: 564–582), so that Atticus’ own psychology can be described only by taking into consideration the reports of Proclus who often combines Atticus and Plutarch. For the problem 73

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fore, I would like to suggest that Severus at least partially reacted to Atticus’ psychology, which was based on the fact that the rational soul (λογικὴ ψυχή) appears only if two parts come together. In the case of the world soul, these two parts are the divine soul of the demiurge and the uncontrolled, evil soul linked to matter, an “evil-doing soul” (κακεργέτις ψυχή).77 In the case of the individual human soul, the two opposite parts are the leftover of the mixture mentioned in Tim. 35a–41d and an irrational life (ἄλογος ζωή) that is added and identified with the lower powers in Tim. 69ab. The rational soul (λογικὴ ψυχή) is the third element that holds these two opposites together.78 Severus’ concept was probably directed against such a theory. From his point of view, Atticus’ approach risks presupposing that the soul’s immortality can only be maintained if its divine and stable character is continuously affirmed. Severus’ argument against Atticus was not influenced by Stoicism or Aristotelianism, but rather resulted from his attempt to defend what he as a Platonist, considered important in Platonism as such. This argument developed within the spectrum of Platonism. Severus was, after all, a Platonic philosopher, even if he would say that the division of the human soul is not really a distinction of parts, but that soul is just the part that is really soul, immortal and divine, indivisible and incorruptible. The newly discovered treatise of Porphyry, On Principles and Matter, confirms that Atticus is the main target of Severus’ argument. The quotation from Severus’ explanation of the Timaeus focuses upon Tim. 30a,79 and deals with the question of how we can understand the activity of the demiurge who is said to have created a reality in unordered motion and then to have brought it into order. A quotation of Severus’ text is contrasted by Porphyry to a quotation of Atticus dealing with the world’s soul as a fourth principle.80 Atticus’ world soul is the unordered self-motion, i. e. an irrational motion, that is linked to matter though not directly derived from it.81 Severus is introduced by Porphyry as the Platonist who – in contrast to Atticus – put forward a sound explanation of Plato’s text, namely to say that the disorder mentioned by Plato is not an irrational soul or motion, but a kind of neutral state of matter that has not yet received order and therefore is intermediate between order and real disorder.82 This quotation fits with the reports of Proclus about Severus’ philosophy regarding two aspects. Firstly, Severus distinguished reality or matter from the see Deuse 1983: 51–52, 57–60. For Atticus’ psychology, see Atticus, frg. 10–11.15.19.22–23.26 (des Places’ edition), and the reconstruction by Baltes 1983: 44–45. Cf. Bechtle 1999: 41–49. 77 Atticus, frg. 23. 78 Atticus, frg. 11, 15; cf. Baltes 1983: 47–48, 52–55. 79 Porph. PM 85. 80 The new fragment of Atticus is to be found in Porph. PM 73–83. For PM 83, cf. Arzhanov 2021: 118, note 30. 81 Porph. PM 76. 82 Porph. PM 84–87.

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shaped and ordered matter, i. e. the bodies. The former moves itself without order, the latter belong to the visible, material world.83 The disordered motion is something neutral, so it has neither yet received order nor is really an evil. This argument is directed against Atticus’ idea of a self-moving entity that accompanies matter.84 Severus was thus able to distinguish something akin to eternal matter and to agree with the idea that the present, visible cosmos was created by the demiurge and is not eternal or indissoluble as such.85 The soul, however, cannot be assumed to be implied in the disordered motion mentioned in Tim. 30a. Describing the soul as a geometric entity, Severus aimed to show that the soul is not composite of two opposites but running from one point to an extension.86 Secondly, the idea of something neutral, i. e. beyond the opposites, can be compared with Severus’ concept of “something” (τι) described by Proclus as beyond the opposites of to be and to become.87 Even if the fragment provided by Porphyry and the reports of Proclus are related to the world soul, these texts fit with Eusebius’ fragment of Severus concerning the individual soul. Parallel to the argument he had developed concerning the world soul, the human soul is not a disordered or irrational element in the individual. Soul as such is not even the positive side that brings order into something disordered. Rather, it is something simple and divine. Only its effects, such as capacities or powers, cause order and encounter matter. This process may have further effects described as the passive side viz. the horses by Plato. To conclude, Severus maintained the unity of the soul and endeavored to prove that this was in full harmony with a proper understanding of Plato’s text, esp. the Timaeus. Even if Eusebius, for the purposes of his own agenda, cut off the fragment where Severus’ own solution can be expected, the outline of his psychology can be reconstructed by taking into consideration reports of Proclus and the direct quotation in the newly discovered treatise of Porphyry, On Principles and Matter. It becomes clear that Severus specifically attacked Atticus and prepared the Neo-Platonic reading of the Timaeus.

83

Porph. PM 89. Porph. PM 92–93. 85 Severus, frg. 6,1–3 (381 Gioè) = frg. 7 (688 Lakmann) = Procl. In Ti. 1 (289,6–9 Diehl). 86 Severus, frg. 12,6–7 (384 Gioè) = frg. 10 (690 Lakmann) = Procl. In Ti. 2 (153,21–22 Diehl). Cf. Deuse 1983: 103. Proclus seems to misrepresent Severus’ concept because he suggests that for Severus the soul is constituted from both, the point and the extension. For the problems of Iamblichus’ report on this (cf. Severus, frg. 9,2–5 [383 Gioè] = frg. 9 (696 Lakmann) = Iamblichus, De anima 4 [28,2–4 Finamore/Dillon 2002]) cf. the comment of the editors in Finamore/Dillon 2002: 80. Lakmann 2017: 235, shows herself skeptical towards Iamblichus directly using works of Severus. 87 Severus, frg. 4,1–4 (380 Gioè) = frg. 5 (688 Lakmann) = Procl. In Ti. 1 (227,13–18 Diehl). Cf. Gioè 2002: 402–406; Goulet 2016; Lakmann 2017: 234. 84

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3. Philo and The Beginning of Platonic Discussions about the Parts and the Unity of the Soul The inner-Platonic discussion visible in Severus’ psychology reflects tensions within Plato’s thought. Plato sometimes presupposes a division of the soul, by using the image of the chariot in the Phaedrus (246a6–249d3) or the mythical animal in the Politeia (588b10–588e2), which could be easily combined with the distinction of reason, desire, and vital force (λογισμός, ἐπιθυμία, θυμός, Rep. 437b1–441c3). This became a Platonic standard view in handbooks.88 At the end of the Republic however, Plato distinguishes the pure soul from the embodied soul and declares that it is difficult to have any knowledge about the pure soul while being embodied (Rep. 611b5–612a6), but that we should assume that the pure soul, the soul as such, is free from any plurality, inequality or conflict (Rep. 611a10–611b2). This suggests that the soul is a unit and is, properly speaking, reason. This tension within Plato’s thought89 makes the interpretation of the Timaeus even more difficult where the creation of the world-soul and the individual souls are described as mixtures. The discussion between Atticus and Severus deals with exactly these tensions in Plato’s texts. The question of when the technical discussion about parts and unity in Middle-Platonism began, however, is not easy to answer. Little is known about Hellenistic Platonism before Philo. Plutarch mentions Eudorus who, like Philo, presumably lived in Alexandria, when he discusses two traditions of interpretation of the Timaeus: one is linked to Xenocrates and stresses the proportional and mathematical character of the soul, while another is linked to Crantor and considers the souls to be a mixture of intelligible and material nature.90 Plutarch adds the question of whether the report of the Timaeus really means a generation or creation of the soul or describes its eternal condition by a process for purely didactical purposes. In this case, the various steps of mixture explained in the Timaeus would describe just the various capacities or powers (δυνάμεις) of the soul, not a real process of creation. It is in this context that Eudorus is mentioned, who is said to have rejected both opinions.91 Unfortunately Plutarch does not reveal Eudorus’ solution,92 but develops his own

88

Cf. Alkinoos, Didask. 23; Apul. De dog. Plat. 1.13. Baltes 2002: 343–344. 90 Plut. De an. procr. 3, 1013ABD. “The critical edition is that of Hubert.” On Eudorus in general cf. Männlein-Robert 2018: 555–561; 677–678 (for Eudorus’ psychology cf. ib. 556; 559– 560 though Eudorus’ psychology is not presented by Plutarch). 91 Plut. De an. procr. 1, 1012D. 92 Later on, Plutarch mentions Eudorus’ speculation about the arithmetic character of the soul: Plut. De an. procr. 1, 1012D. For the wrong order of pages of the Stephanus numbers and the correct order in Hubert’s edition see Deuse 1983: 14, note 5. 89

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argument, which distinguished the ingenerate soul, active in matter, from the process of creation overseen by the demiurge.93 We can conclude from this that Eudorus had participated in an exegetical discourse about the creation of the soul in which the question of whether the Timaeus illustrates several capacities or powers of the soul was at stake. Since this is linked to the previous controversy in the early Academy between the followers of Xenocrates and Crantor, we may assume that this discourse also included a discussion about the soul consisting of several parts or being one. Since we have no further evidence about this discourse to which Plutarch alludes, the witness of Philo becomes highly significant. As another Alexandrian, who was familiar with Platonism, he shows a solid knowledge about the three parts of the soul, but considers the soul mainly to be the intellect or reason that may have various powers. This ambiguity is not due to an overall skepticism that allows any kind of psychological model,94 but has its roots in discussions within Platonism whose effects can be seen later in the second century ce and onwards, especially in the controversy between Severus and Atticus. Philo’s psychology in his earlier Platonizing writings can be contextualized in the early stage of inner-Platonic discussions that took place in Alexandria at the time of Eudorus and Philo, and escalated in the second century ce when Severus attacked Atticus. Severus’ solution stressed the unity of the soul as something intellectual and exerted a considerable influence on the psychology of Neo-Platonists like Porphyry. Philo’s psychology paved the way for such concepts. Severus’ emphasis on the soul remains the primary reason that he presumably came closer to the core of Plato’s psychology than the handbook view about the three parts of the soul.

93 For Plutarch’s solution see Bechtle 1999: 25–26, 29–33. In the myth at the end of Plut. De facie 28, the human being is described as consisting of three levels: body, soul, and intellect, which are linked to earth, moon, and sun respectively. The second death is the separation of the intellect from the soul, the intellect being the best part of the human being (BSGRT 943AB Hubert/Pohlenz). This makes clear that the intellect is the true self (αὐτός) of the human being that can be distinguished from the psychic factors such as vital force, fear and desire (θυμός, φόβος, ἐπιθυμία) and from the body (Plut. De facie 30). The soul gets a shape by its contact to the body, and it is exactly this postmortal remaining connection to the bodily world that leads to reincarnation (Plut. De facie 30). Plutarch ascribes this myth to an anonymous stranger whose myth is reported as words of Sulla by the narrator, Lamprias. This stresses the authority of the myth and its character as something that says more than a clear-cut philosophical terminology might grasp, cf. Taub 2019: 73–274. The myth shows how vital force and desire are linked to the soul, while the intellect is distinguished from it and considered to be the true self. I do not delve into the details of Plutarch’s psychology here because a) Plutarch is not part of the Alexandrian discourse, and b) Porphyry, On Principles and Matters, shows that Severus reacted rather to Atticus than to Plutarch. 94 This is the opinion of Lévy 2009: 155.

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List of Contributors Loveday C. A. Alexander is Professor Emerita of Biblical Studies at The University of Sheffield. She received her first degree in Classics and her doctorate in Theology from the University of Oxford. She has published extensively on the interface between the New Testament and the Graeco-Roman world, with a special focus on the book of Acts. She is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Centre for Biblical Studies at The University of Manchester, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Chester and the University of St Andrews. Philip Alexander is Emeritus Professor of Postbiblical Jewish Literature at The University of Manchester, an Honorary Professor of the University of St Andrews and the University of Chester, and a Senior Associate Scholar of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He researches and publishes widely in the fields of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism, particularly Dead Sea Scrolls, early Jewish Bible Interpretation, Mysticism, Magic, and the Jewish background to Christian origins. He is currently working, with his wife, on a major commentary on Hebrews. He is a Fellow of the British Academy. Matthias Becker is Professor of New Testament Theology at the Faculty of Theology of Heidelberg University. Before coming to Heidelberg, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen (Classics) and at the University of Göttingen (New Testament Studies). He was awarded the Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which he held at University College Oxford in 2016, and at Yale Divinity School in 2019. Due to his academic background in Classics, Patristics, and New Testament Studies, his academic work is devoted to the interpretation of the New Testament and early Christian texts within the various contexts of Greco-Roman literature, philosophy, and religion. Ludovica De Luca received her PhD in Ancient Philosophy at Roma Tre University in 2017, focusing on the cosmology of Philo of Alexandria, and later published as Il Dio architetto di Filone di Alessandria (Vita e Pensiero, 2021). As part of her Post-doctoral fellowships, first at the University of L’Aquila and then at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she has worked on the relationship between John Philoponus and Philo of Alexandria. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Milan, where she collaborates in the research project PRIN “Kanon” on the roots of Epicurean epistemology.

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Volker Henning Drecoll has been Professor of Church History (Early Christianity) at the University of Tübingen since 2004. He received his doctoral degree in 1996 and his habilitation in 1998. From 2001 to 2004, he was a Heisenberg Fellow. Since 2005, he is the Ephorus of the Evangelisches Stift Tübingen and, since 2009, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Philipp-MelanchthonStiftung, founded by Martin Hengel. His most recent monographs include Augustinus, Späte Schriften zur Gnadenlehre (edited with Christoph Scheerer; De Gruyter, 2019) and Lehrbuch der Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte. Alte Kirche und Mittelalter (edited with Wolf-Dieter Hauschild; Gütersloh, 2016; 7th Edition Gütersloh, 2023). He is currently working on a project about Platonism and Christianity in the 4th c. ce. Jason König is Professor of Greek at the University of St Andrews. His books include Athletics and Literature in the Roman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Saints and Symposiasts: The Literature of Food and the Symposium in Greco-Roman and Early Christian Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and The Folds of Olympus: Mountains in Ancient Greek and Roman Culture (Princeton University Press, 2022). He is currently working on a project on representations of human-environment relations in Roman imperial and late antique culture. Rebecca Langlands is Professor of Classics at the University of Exeter, with particular interests in Latin literature and Roman culture, ethics and exemplarity, the history of sexuality and classical reception. Her books include Sexual Morality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Sex, Knowledge, and Receptions of the Past (edited with Kate Fisher; Oxford University Press, 2015), Exemplary Ethics in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Literature and Culture in the Roman Empire, 96–235. Cross-Cultural Interactions (edited with Alice König and James Uden; Cambridge University Press, 2020). Sergio Marín is a PhD student at the Department of Jewish Thought at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he also received his master’s degree in Jewish Studies. Before joining Hebrew University, he completed a postgraduate diploma in Classical Philology at The Polis Institute of Jerusalem. His areas of work include Hellenistic Judaism, Roman historiography, and the entanglement between philosophy and law. He is currently writing his doctoral dissertation on the Roman background of Philo’s descriptions of conscience. Mischa Meier has been Professor of Ancient History at the University of Tübingen since 2004. His main areas of work include archaic and classical Greece, early principate, and late antiquity. Meier is also interested in ancient historiography, the study of catastrophes, transformation processes in history, the Christianization of the ancient world, phenomena of migration and mobility

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in antiquity. His most recent monographs are Geschichte der Völkerwanderung (C. H. Beck, 2021), and Die Hunnen (forthcoming in 2025). Maren R. Niehoff is the Max Cooper Professor of Jewish Thought at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Trained at the Hebrew University, the Free University in Berlin as well as Oxford University and Harvard University, she specializes in interdisciplinary research in Hellenistic and rabbinic Judaism as well as early Christianity and Greco-Roman culture. She has led multiple explorations at the Israeli Science Foundation and the Einstein Center Chronoi in Berlin, and has recently been awarded the ERC Advanced Grant for her project ROMANA – The Roman Turn among Jews, Greek Pagans and Christians (September 2024). Her latest monographs include Philo of Alexandria: An Intellectual Biography (Yale University Press, 2018), Hellenism and Judaism/Hellenismus und Judentum (Lucas Preisrede; Tübingen, 2024), and Philo of Alexandria. On the Freedom of Every Righteous Person. Introduction, Translation and Commentary (forthcoming in 2025). Gretchen Reydams-Schils is Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame (USA), and holds concurrent appointments in Classics, Philosophy, and Theology. She works on the traditions of Stoicism and Platonism, and her most recent monograph is Calcidius on Plato’s Timaeus: Greek Philosophy, Latin Reception, and Christian Contexts (Cambridge University Press, 2020). She is co-editor, together with Myrto Garani and David Konstan, of The Oxford Handbook of Roman Philosophy, and a Guggenheim Fellow (2024). At Notre Dame she directs the Workshop on Ancient Philosophy and is a member of the steering committee of the History of Philosophy Forum. Gregory E. Sterling is the Reverend Henry L. Slack Dean and Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament at Yale Divinity School. He is the general editor of Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series by E. J. Brill and co-editor of the Studia Philonica Annual. He has published over 100 scholarly papers on, among other subjects, the writings of Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, and Luke– Acts. His academic work focuses on the ways Second Temple Jews and early Christians interacted with one another and with the Greco-Roman world. He is the author of Historiography and Self-Definition: Josephus, Luke-Acts and Apologetic Historiography (Brill, 1992), Armenian Paradigms (Peeters, 2004), Coptic Paradigms: A Summary of Sahidic Coptic Morphology (Peeters, 2008), and Shaping the Past to Define the Present: Luke-Acts and Apologetic Historiography (Eerdmans, 2023). Joan E. Taylor is Professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s College London and Honorary Professor in the Program in Biblical and Early Christian Studies (Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry) at the Aus-

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List of Contributors

tralian Catholic University in Melbourne. She has authored numerous books and articles about the history, archaeology, and literature of ancient Judaism and Christianity. Her work on Philo includes two books: Jewish Women Philosophers of First-Century Alexandria. Philo’s ‘Therapeutae’ Reconsidered (Oxford University Press, 2003; paperback edition 2006) and, with David Hay, Philo of Alexandria: On the Contemplative Life (Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series, Brill, 2021).

Index of Names Abraham 235, 239, 241–247, 250–251 Adam 178, 274 Agrippa I 215–216, 219, 225, 227 Agrippa II 212, 219–227 Alexandria 169, 171, 174, 184–186, 198, 200–203, 264–268, 276, 280 Antiouchus of Aschalon 170 Apion 200 Aristobulus 265 Aristotle 174–177 Arius Didymus 170 Artapanus 265 Athens 169 Attalus 173

Jamnia 200 Jerusalem 201 Jesus of Nazareth 237–246, 249–256 Josephus 172–173, 184, 212–225, 227 Julia Livilla 174

Caesarea 172 Caligula 174, 200 Cassius Dio 198–199 Celsus 171 Cerinthus 263–80 Ceslas Spicq 294 Chrestus 194–199, 202–203 Christ 266, 269–70, 272, 276, 277–280 Cicero 13–15, 25–30, 33–34, 38–39, 41–42, 58, 72–89, 183 Claudius 174, 193–195, 198, 200–203 Corduba 173 Corsica 174

Origen 172

Demetrius 137–143 Ephesus 264–269, 276, 280 Egypt 172, 174, 269 321–338 Epictetus 144–147 Eudorus 170 Eve 178 Felix 217, 221, 223–224, 226 Festus 220–221, 223–224, 226 Herodians 215–216, 219, 221–222

Mithriades VI 169 Moses 235, 238–247, 249–251, 254–256, 276 Musonius Rufus 155–166 Nero 174, 191–194, 196, 198, 202–203 Nile 324–325, 328, 330, 332, 335–336 Numenius 171

Papirius Fabianus 173 Paul (apostle) 148, 191–192, 194, 196, 199, 201, 211–213, 221–227, 231 Peter (apostle) 265 Philo of Alexandria 171, 177, 179–180, 182–186, 192, 194, 200–203 – Allegorical Commentary 173 – codex 171–172 – Exposition of the Law 173 – Latin translation of Philo 173 – the Philo legend 289–293 Philo of Larissa 169 Plato 186 Plotinus 171 Plutarch 171 Poppaea Sabina 200 Poseidonius 170 Quintus Sextius 173 Rome 169, 171, 173–174, 184–187, 191–194, 198–199, 200–203, 264– 265, 267

366

Index of Names

Seneca 59, 76, 143–144, 171, 175, 179, 187, 202–203 Sophocles 129–137 Sotion 173 Suetonius 192–195, 197–199 Sulla 169 Syria 172

Therapeutae 265 Valerius Maximus 102, 108–109, 113–123 Varro 180

Index locorum Old Testament

Heliodorus of Emesa

Genesis 1:1–5 1:6–31

Aethiopica 9.9

183 183

New Testament Gospel of John 263–280 Gospel of Mark 278 Acts of the apostles 211–213, 215, 221–227, 231 Epistle to the Hebrews 287–289, 293–302, 304, 306, 308–314

Philo of Alexandria De cherubim 124–217

In Flaccum

227–228, 230, 335–338

De Iosepho

53–66

Classical writings Placita 1.11.2

De vita Mosis 180

Alcinous Didaskalikos 9.1.2 9.3 10.3

324–335, 338

178

Quaestiones et solutiones in Genesin 1.58 178 Philoponus

Augustine De civitate dei 7.28.18–21

211, 214–217, 227–228, 230–231

Quod omnis probus liber sit 101–122, 127–137 De providentia 1.23

184 180 184

178

De opificio mundi 17–20 13–25, 42–45 19–20 182 69 185

Legatio ad Gaium Aëtius

172

180

Cicero

In Aristotelis Physicorum Libros Commentaria 5.7–12 181 Plato

De oratore 5–10 7–10

176 182

De legibus 1.59

185–186

Phaedo

170

Timaeus

14–18, 21–25, 28, 38–42, 44–45, 170 177

28e

368

Index locorum

Proclus

Sextus Empiricus

In Platonis Timaeum Commentarii 1.357.12–16 181

Adversus Mathematicos 10.10 180–181

Seneca

Tacitus

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium 58.8–22 169 65 170–171, 175–177, 182, 185–186

Annals 15.44

191–193, 195, 197–199

Index of Subjects Angel 273–274 Anti-Epicureanism 14, 38–44 Apologetic, apologia 213–214, 216, 223, 225–230 Arbitration 214–215 Architecture 13–14, 20–21, 25–44 Biography, biographies 235–256 Caesar, emperor 214–217, 219, 226–228 Causation 176–178, 180–181 Cause – efficient cause 179 – material cause 179 – formal cause 179 – instrumental cause 179 – final cause 179 – Christians 191–199, 201–203 – persecution of 191–194, 198–199, 202–203 Conscience – συνειδός 62–66 – conscientia 72–86 Courtroom 82–86, 88–89, 221, 229 Cynicism 161–164 Docetism 277–278

– God the Father 270–275, 277, 279 – ideas as the thoughts of 183–185 – obedience to 245–246 Gymnosophists 108, 111, 115–119 Hagiographical discourse 235–256 Holiness, holy 239–240 Jews – persecution of 193–195, 198, 200–203 Justice 214–215, 217, 221, 223, 227–228 Logos 263–280 Macrocosm/microcosm 185–186 Maker, demiourgos 273 Marriage 156, 163 Midrash 278–279 Miracles 253–254 Monad 272 Monogenēs 270, 272, 275, 279 Mourning 156–158 Nature 30–38, 322–323, 324, 326–327, 328, 330–334

Freedom 127–149

Philosophical dependence 175 Physiognomics 67, 77–81 Pistis 308 Platonic theory 269–270 Prepositional metaphysics 176–178, 180–181 Presbeia 211–220, 227–231 Providence 24, 27–29, 33–34, 39, 41–45, 248–250

God 130–137, 139, 142, 144–147 – becoming like 156–159 – divine powers 270–277, 279–280

Reason 343–344, 356 Romanitas 304–306 Roman empire 322–323, 336, 338

Education 103–107, 164–165 Embassy, ambassadors 211–220, 227–231 Environment 321–323 Exemplarity, exempla 101–102, 105–113, 115–122, 306–314

370

Index of Subjects

Roman law – lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus 59–60 – lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis 60–61 Septuagint 321, 324–334 Sociability 156–162 Social memory 307–308 Solitude 246–248 Soul – parts of 341–344, 350–351, 353, 357 – unity of 344–347, 351–352, 354–356 – creation of 344–347, 356 – chariot of the Phaedrus 342, 355–356

Stoicism 13–18, 22–30,33–34, 40–44, 103–108, 113–115, 155–166, 264 Targums 263–264 Theatricality 86–93 Trial 212, 215, 219, 221–227, 229–231 Tribunal 215, 217, 221–222, 224–226, 228, 231 Virtue 105–107, 110–112, 115–122 Water 325–334 Wisdom, sophia 250–252, 275