From: pharvey@quack.sac.ca.us (Paul Harvey)
Subject: Septuagint, Philo, and the beginings of Christian philosophy
Summary: and now you know, the rest, of the story, ... Good Day!
Organization: The Duck Pond public unix: +1 408 249 9630, log in as 'guest'.
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1992 04:16:04 GMT

Ref: My People, Abba Eban, 1968, Behrman House, Random House, Lib of
Cong# 68-27328

Jewish creativity during the Hellenistic period has left imposing
monuments. Most of that literature, however, remained unknown to the
Jews of Palestine. The books written by Hellenistic Jewry were preserved
by the Christian Church. They were not included in the Jewish Bible and
their clandestine status is expressed in the word by which they are
known, Apocrypha, the hidden books.
The most important spiritual event in Hellenistic Jewry was the
translation of the Old Testament into Greek, This translation, known as
the Septuagint, was the product of a group in Alexandria, helped by
scholars from Palestine, who began their task during the third century.
Legend has it that seventy translators were enclosed in seventy
different chambers, and that they all emerged with an exactly identical
version. It is not agreeable to question such an attractive belief, but
scientific truth leads us to believe that the work of translation was
long, arduous, and highly contentious. It lasted for a hundred years,
starting with the Pentateuch and the Prophets. As a literary model the
translation is of little merit. It is mechanically literal, lacks
fluency, and shows excessive regard for the Greek reader out of respect
to pagan sensitivity. In an effort to make the text fully comprehensible
to the Greek reader, general terms and ideas were often replaced by
purely local and national concepts. Yet no work of translation has ever
had such a potent effect. Without a Greek version of the Old Testament
the early Christian missionaries would not have been able to convert
Greek-speaking gentiles, and Christianity would never have become a
world religion.
The systhesis between Jewish tradition and Greek philosophical thought
is most brilliantly represented in Philo of Alexandria. He lived in the
twilight between the old and the new era. His life coincided with the
reign of Herod and Agrippa in Israel and he is a younger contemporary of
Hillel. He belonged to one of the most distinguished families of
Alexandria. It is certain that during his lifetime he visitied Jerusalem
as the guest of Agrippa. He is a combination of a statesman and a
philosopher. His intensely searching mind was brought to bear on the
task of establishing a bridge between Hebrew monotheism and Greek
paganism. He maintained that all philosophical thought went back to
Mosaic Law through which God had revealed His will. Torah was in his
view but another name for "wisdom" and this "wisdom" (hochma) and
sophia, or Greek science, were the same. For many centuries before and
since Philo, efforts were made to vindicate Hebrew thought by proving
that it was similar to something else. Philo held that the true Jewish
philosopher must first apply himself to outside culture, and, with that
training, attempt to probe the more sublime philosophy of the Devine
Law.
Philo thus embodies the extreme Hellenic development of Judaism. He held
that between faith and philosophy there is no conflict. But he did not
convince the Jews of his age, and few gentiles seem to have yielded to
his advocacy to the point of accepting the Mosaic Law as the true
Natural Law, and Judaism as the universal religion. A modern historian
has described him as "a man of vast knowledge and noble intentions, a
great and useless figure ... The bridge he had built was not used by
those for whom it was intended, but by Christians when they came to
develop their dogma." The thought of Philo became the starting point of
medieval Christian philosophy; for later generations of Jews, he was
unknown. For Christian scholarship, however, he was to become and remain
a significant figure.
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