Philo of Alexandria Blog

S20-75

---

Philo of Alexandria
11/20/2006
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: 305 - CC

Theme: Philo's Legum Allegoriae

Gregory Sterling, University of Notre Dame, Presiding
Thomas H. Tobin, S.J., Loyola University of Chicago
Philo's Legum Allegoriae I–III: The Thread of the Argument (40 min)
Annewies van den Hoek, Harvard University, Respondent (20 min)
Steven Di Mattei, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes
Moses Allegorizes phusikôs: Reevaluating the Notion of Physical Allegory in Philo of Alexandria's Legum allegoriae (30 min)
General discussion
Business meeting
Editorial Board meeting for Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series

This session has been organized in collaboration with the Philo of Alexandria Commentary Series published by Brill and SBL Publications. Papers will not be pre-circulated.

A couple of fine new reviews are offered at the SBL Book review site at www. bookreviews.org: the adresses are given below:

Steven Fine
Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5001
Reviewed by Hayim Lapin

Ruth Langer and Steven Fine, eds.
Liturgy in the Life of the Synagogue: Studies in the History of Jewish Prayer
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=5070
Reviewed by Gregory Glazov
Reviewed by Viktor Petrovich Roudkovski

This week I received the Festschrift published this summer in honor of David E. Aune; hence I am now able to provide the excact reference to my own contribution in this volume:'Philo, Magic and Balaam. Neglected Aspects of Philo's Exposition of the Balaam Story,' in John Fotopoulos (ed.), The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Greco-Roman Context. Studies in Honor of David E. Aune (Supplements to Novum Testamentum 122; Leiden, Brill, 2006), pp. 333-346.
My summarizing conclusions of this article are:

"Given Philo’s high view of prophecy, it comes to no surprise to discover his great focus on the issue of magical divination. One the one hand, genuine prophecy is to Philo due to "the divine spirit which plays upon the vocal organism and dictates words, which clearly express its prophetic message"; no pronouncement of a prophet is ever his own, "he is an interpreter prompted by another in all his utterances" (Spec. 4,49; cf. 1,65). On the other hand, magical divination is mere fantasies of human beings, it is 'guessing', 'surmises and conjectures' (Spec. 1,61; 4,50).

The social life of Alexandria probably surfaces when Philo cautions and says: "Moses demands that one who is registered in the commonwealth of the laws ­should be perfect not in the lore, in which many are schooled, of divination and voices and plausible conjectures, but in his duties towards God . . ." (Spec. 1,63; cf. 1,319). He seems to have been well acquainted with various forms of magical divination, as both divination by dreams (oneiromanteia), watching the flight and behavior of birds (ornitomancy), watching sacrifical animals, and various other omens are mentioned by him. I have argued elsewhere that his exposition of Deutr 13 in Spec. 1,315-318 should be read as an actualization of this very law, possibly triggered by local experiences in Alexandria. Apostasy was an option, and ‘seduction’ one of the means. Hence magical divination was no ‘adiaphoron’ to Philo; on the contrary, it could lead to impiety.

I suggest that his struggles with the figure of Balaam, resulting in his emphasizing of his magic only vaguely presented in the Pentateuch, should also be understood as part of Philo’s struggle against magical divination of his own times.
When reading the works of Philo, there should be no doubt that he considered magic as incompatible with ‘true religion’, i.e. his Judaism: it paved the way for impiety (Spec. 1,61).

Whether he considered it an inherent part of the other ‘religions’ of his Alexandrian social world is probable, but hard to say as he provides no direct statements in this regard. To him, magical divination is a transgression of both the first and the ninth commandment of the Decalogue (Spec. 1,59-63; 4,48), and as such a "corruption of art, a counterfeit of the divine and prophetic possession" (Spec. 4,48). Hence when it comes to his own form of religion, magic is forbidden in the Torah; i.e., in the constitution of his Judaism. To those wanting to be Torah-observing Jews, magic should be no option. Accordingly, his expositions can be read as demonstrating that magic was not only a feature of the opponents of Moses in Egypt and of the non-Jewish Balaam, but also of the non-Jewish surroundings of the Jews in Alexandria. Whether it in reality also was a part of the daily life in the Jewish sectors of the Alexandria of his time, is quite another question. But in light of our other sources of magical activities in Jewish circles, and Philo’s stern warnings against magic in so many of his writings, we might suggest that it was a feature more known to his readers than he ever liked."

Thanks to Holger Szesnat, I am able to present a link to a recent dissertation that also contains a chapter on Philo's work De Josepho: Jessica Lyn Tinklenberg De Vega,
"A Man who Fears God," Constructions of Masculinity in Hellenistic Jewish Interpretations of the Story of Joseph.
(A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Religion in partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy; Florida University, 2006).
The dissertation is available in .pdf format here.

The author's own summary of her work runs like this:Hellenistic Jewish interpreters of the Bible often restructured and modified biblical texts in an effort to further their own ideological perspectives. Among the many adaptations they made, these exegetes often sought to transform the familiar stories to better fit or express their own constructs of gender identity. This study attempts to uncover the ideologies of masculinity in three first-century Hellenistic Jewish texts: The Jewish Antiquities of Josephus, Philo’s De Somniis, and the anonymous Joseph and Aseneth. The texts were studied by means of a close reading for the rhetorical structures of each author, particularly noting the ways terminology and literary structures describing maleness are held in opposition to femaleness, and assuming that gender was a culturally constructed (rather than innate or essential) category. In the course of the study, a variety of constructions are confirmed: masculinity as dominance over the self (Josephus), as sexual propriety and non-violence (Joseph and Aseneth), and as avoidance of eunuchism, feminine company, and violating establish hierarchies (Philo). As these three exegetes represent only a small number of those writing at the time, this variety suggests that there may be many more constructions of maleness present in Hellenistic Jewish literature of the era.

We continue our third presentation of the sessions at this years SBL Annual Meeting in which lectures or papers focus on Philo of Alexandria.

This time we point to
S19-72Philo of Alexandria
Joint Session With: Philo of Alexandria, History and Literature of Early Rabbinic Judaism
11/19/2006 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM Room: 140A - CC

Theme: Reception of Philo of Alexandria in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity: The Question Revisited

Hindy Najman, University of Toronto, Presiding

James L. Kugel, Bar Ilan University
Philo and the Problem of the Book of Genesis (30 min)
Abstract: "The very existence of the book of genesis posed a problem for Jews of the late second temp period: unlike the other 4 books of the Pentateuch, it had no laws or halakhic instruction per se. What was it there for? Along with the authors of Jubilees and other biblical pseudepigrapha, Philo of Alexandria wrestled with this question."

Maren Niehoff, Hebrew University
Philo and Genesis Rabbah: Similar Questions and Answers (30 min)
Abstract: "A comparison between Philo's "Questions and Answers on Genesis" and Genesis Rabbah against the background of the genre of "Questions and Answers" in Homeric Scholarship. I shall discuss whether the exegetes in Genesis Rabbah raised the same or other questions and whether they may have been familiar with the genre as it appears in Philo's work."


Daniel Boyarin, University of California-Berkeley
From Greek thought to Jewish and Christian Scriptural Allegory (30 min)
Abstract:"In this paper, I propose to work out in a general way some new thinking about continuity, rather than rupture, in the history of allegoresis, in particular I wish to locate allegorical thinking in some persistent themes of Greek thought of various types and argue then that it is not as foreign to rabbinic interpretation as once I would have claimed."


Judith H. Newman, University of Toronto
The Composition of Prayers and Songs in Philo's De Vita Contemplativa (30 min)
Discussion (30 min)
Abstract: "In contrast to Greek pagan prayer and in spite of its infinite variety, early Jewish prayers are marked by their interpretive engagement with Torah. How can we account for this production of scripturalized prayers? This paper compares the "philosophy" practiced by the Therapeutae at Mareotis with the nature and function of prayers at Qumran to argue that all such utterances were offered as manifestations of internalized torah, conceived through the prophetic gift of divine spirit."

We continue our presentation of sessions that focus on Philo of Alexandria at this year's SBL Annual Meeting in Washington:

S20-18Hebrews
11/20/2006 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: 140A - CC

Theme: Emerging Studies in the Book of Hebrews
Kevin B. McCruden, Gonzaga University
High Priestly Patronage and Philanthropia in the Epistle to the Hebrews
(30 min) Discussion (15 min)
Abstract: "Integral to Hebrews' highly sacrificial portrait of the Christ event is a profound emphasis on the beneficent aspect of Christ's high priestly status. Hebrews depicts Christ as a "merciful and faithful high priest," (Heb 2:17) who actively "sympathizes" with the "weaknesses" of the faithful (Heb 4:15). This paper explores the exegetical connections to be made between such beneficent christology and the ideas surrounding the virtue of philanthropia as a both a royal and divine attribute in the roman imperial period. Particular attention will be paid to the following areas: the prominent place given to the virtue of philanthropia in relation to the Roman Caesars; the ancient testimonies concerning the beneficent activity of the god Asclepius; and lastly, Philo of Alexandria’s encomium on philanthropia in the De virtutibus. This paper will argue that ancient reflection on the virtue of philanthropia in both Greco-Roman and Jewish sources offers a new and fruitful vantage point from which to appreciate the highly beneficent dimension of Hebrews’ priestly christology. In essence, Hebrews depicts the exalted Christ as the divine patron Son, who in consequence of death is now presently and beneficently available to a beleaguered community likely residing in Rome."