Philo and the Logos, Transcript

Philo and the Logos - Centre Place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkY0KnO7n-c

Transcript:

(00:03) our topic this evening is Pho of Alexandria and the idea of the logos and this is a very interesting topic I think because um this gives a um a background within helenistic Judaism um for you know the theological concept it's underpinning um that heniz Jews who become then heniz Christians in other words the synthesis of uh Judaism and uh Greek philosophy Greek theology that becomes um the largely Greek speaking uh Christian Church you know we notice sometimes that already that there is a very high christology really early on and one of

(00:55) the reasons why that's possible is that a lot of these theological ideas were already running around and contemporary even to the historical Jesus so the four fourth gospel in the Christian New Testament when we now call The Gospel of John it's actually an anonymous work when it was written but now it's attributed to John the Fourth gospel begins with an early Christian hymn which most scholars believe predates even the gospel so it's sometimes called the logos hymn or the hymn to the logos this hymn is a retelling of the

(01:37) first verses of the creation story that is very familiar from uh the beginning of the book of Genesis and this retelling though in the Gospel of John has an emphasis on the presence of God's logos in the creation um and we have here from an mediev Vil French manuscript an image of the creation we can see um God as architect here holding an architect's uh compass and creating the uh Cosmos which is sphere-shaped as everybody in the Middle Ages knew so in Genesis 1 1 through3 we read when God began to create the heavens and the Earth the Earth was complete chaos

(02:30) and darkness covered the face of the deep while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters then God said let there be light and there was light so this is probably more familiar in the King James like in the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth but this is a um the new revised Standard Version updated Edition so in this familiar narrative creation begins with God speaking and thus God God's words are present with God in the creation as God says let there be light but um the idea of that is made much more explicit in

(03:10) its retelling at the beginning of the Gospel of John in that version we read in the beginning was the logos and the logos was with God and the logos was God he the logos that is was in the beginning with God all came all things came into being through him and without him without the logos not one thing came into being what is has come into being in him was life and the life was the light to all light of all people the light shines in the darkness and the Darkness did not overtake it so here God's logos which is

(03:54) usually translated as God's word but obviously the word here has a lot more meaning than that and that's what the topic of tonight's lecture is God's logos is present with God at the creation and you can see here the relationship with the words that God speaks in Genesis let there be light because in him uh that is to say in the logos was life the life was the light of all people light shines in the darkness so there's the equation here also uh of the words with light and True Light so there's already a lot going on here you know we can see that the logos is

(04:36) the agent of the process of creation so the hymn says all things came into being through him and without him not one thing came into being and we also see that the logos has personal pronouns it's being called he and him rather than an impersonal idea of the God's word being it and the logos is is both said to be with God in creation and yet the logos also is God and so we already even if um when this was written the doctrine of the Trinity had not been developed and fleshed out yet nevertheless there's

(05:17) already some kind of complexity here um understanding again with the understanding of the logos as God and also as being with God this is another uh medieval uh image Mosaic from Norman Sicily from the 12th century of uh God and creation the logos hymn continues the True Light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world he was in the world and the world came into being through him yet the world did not know him he came to what was his own and his own people did not accept him but to all all who received him who believed in his

(06:02) name he gave power to become children of God who were born not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man but of God so there's not going to be this the group that are are now going to be called children of God they're not from any particular ethnicity but they are all who are coming to know and believing in the name of uh the logos coming into the world and the Lo ghost became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory the glory as of a son I'm sorry as of a father's only son full of grace and

(06:41) truth from his fullness we have all received Grace upon Grace the law indeed was given through Moses Grace and Truth came through Jesus Christ no one has ever seen God it is the only son himself God who is close to The Father's Heart who has made him the father known so this is a um a very theologically fit uh thick um just a couple verses this uh Hymn of the logos which is explaining um this early Christian movement's understanding of itself as as a different kind of community than the community that had emerged from uh in

(07:29) second Temple Judaism uh and it also by the end of the hymn obviously we've revealed that the logos which was the True Light present with God at creation that has come into the world has become incarnate as Jesus Christ uh come to his own people his people rejected him uh according to this hymn and then also uh that logos is God's only son and yet somehow is also Al himself God so uh where did it say that him yeah it is the only son himself God who was close to the Father's Heart who has made the father known so God the

(08:17) father so no one has seen God the Father only through the son so that statement uh no one has ever seen God seems to contradict passages in the Hebrew Bible for example uh in the book of Exodus chap 33 which is um one of the sources one of the um parts of the pentet part parts of the Torah which is a yahwist or a j Source passage and so one of the characteristics of the yahwist is having a much more fleshy human God who's more interactive with people then the Priestly source which wrote the beginning of the creation story where God is much more Cosmic and

(09:02) removed and so in Exodus here we read when Moses entered the tent the Tabernacle that they Ed to travel around uh as the substitute for a temple where the Ark of the Covenant is kept um uh during the wandering in the in the wilderness when Moses entered that tent the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent and Yahweh would speak with Moses and when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent all the people would rise and bow down all of them at the entrance of their

(09:41) tent thus Yahweh used to speak to Moses face to face as one speaks to a friend so this kind of seems to contradict this idea in the present in the Gospel of John that no one has ever seen God so how do we reconcile that by the time the logos hymn was written a tradition had developed in second temple Judaism where God's name Yahweh written out with the tetragrammaton the four letters YH wh is how we do it in English would no longer be said aloud and instead when you would get to that place where in the text it previously had said Yahweh now um what

(10:25) you would have instead is you would say you wouldn't read it out loud you would say instead the Lord and so uh you know when uh the pillar Cloud would descend the Lord would speak with Moses and thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face so there is a um you know a little bit step of remove here as God's name is no longer spoken and instead we're talking about the Lord speaking to Moses so the Loos hymn has taken the idea of substituting the words the Lord for Yahweh one step further since no one has ever seen the

(11:03) unknowable invisible father Moses must have been interacting with the Lord and this is now theologically understood in early Christianity to mean with God's logos that is to say with God's only son the pre-existent Christ so Christ hasn't been uh Born Into the world yet but nevertheless uh as God has existed you know before time even started to exist and so therefore is interacting with uh is the component of God that is interacting with with people as opposed to the unknowable source the God the father and so this understanding anyway corresponds with the Apostle Paul's

(11:52) formula where Paul's testimony is Christ is Lord Christ is the Lord so when ever we hear you know we get to that part in the text where we say the Lord then that refers to God's word God's glory God's logos which is Christ is the Christian understanding and so this is why ancient and medieval artwork um showing the creation is actually showing Christ rather than um God the Father who is not not visible because Christ the world is created through Christ and Christ is God's glory and God's word made visible and so you

(12:38) can see on the left especially um God here that is shown as the architect is wearing the red and blue Robes of uh that are iconographic for Jesus and you can see the Halo has a cross behind it as well uh it's less clear in the Mosaic but this is the idea all of these early pictures of creation um unlike what happens in the Renaissance with Michelangelo's pictures of creation these are um understanding that uh the God the father isn't to be depicted and isn't seeable and instead we're looking at the logos the Christ Christ is Christ before Christ was born into the

(13:18) world so like Paul then the L ghost hymn and the Gospel of John Express a very high christology that is to say an emphasis on Christ Divinity and this contrasts with the much more human portrait of Jesus that's found in the gospel of Mark our first narrative gospel where Jesus um you know gets angry and shows a lot of emotions and acts a lot more human more understandably humanlike than Jesus acts in the Gospel of John so much of the heavy theological lifting in John is accomplished by this understanding of Christ as God's logos which very clearly means much more

(14:07) than just the words in a literal sense that God speaks in Genesis let there be light so there is a bigger philosophical or theological concept here um in using this term logos than what we see immediately when we just read the hymn so let's look at the term logos so while the ancient greed work the ancient Greek word logos literally does mean word or discourse or perhaps meaning already by the end of the first century of the Common Era the Christian era when uh the Gospel of John is written the term had acquired a number

(14:52) of additional meanings especially as a technical term in philosophy actually different philosophers use the word to mean different things but it's extremely important beginning as early as the works of heraclitus so heraclitus of Ephesus who was active around the year 500 before the Common Era um one of the earliest and most influential philosophers prior to Socrates and so all of the because of how important Socrates is and especially Socrates um students Plato and then Plato student Aristotle um for convention and for all of history all of the philosophers before Socrates

(15:39) are called presocratic so heraclitus wrote a long poem about nature called on nature significant fragments it's it's lost but significant fragments survive because it was very influential and so lots of later philosophers uh quote him and one of the most famous uh quotes is the phrase one cannot step twice into the same river um which is a quotation from heraclitus that's found in Plato and so the idea of this the idea is that you know even though we by convention um you know the river temps has is the same river that would have been called the river temps in the Middle Ages um you know a thousand years

(16:29) ago nevertheless and it's in the same kind of place it it's not the same because it's constantly moving around and the water is always there's always different water Everything Has Changed uh it floods its banks and so on and so um heraclitis is making the case that everything in the material world is in a constant uh state of change and and flux and therefore everything is always in the process of becoming something else so um you know a a a seed is in the process of becoming a plant which is in the process of becoming you know a dead plant and and a decayed plant and gone

(17:11) and and rather than anything actually uh having a state of being and this is Central then to heraclitus uh cosmology his understanding of the world heraclitus uses the word logos to describe what he sees as the organizing principle Central to his cosmology Central to his understanding of how the world is ordered and so his uh poem begins with the statement listening not to me but to the logos is wise uh it I'm sorry listening not to me but to the logos it is wise to agree that all things are one and so um he is going to then go on to describe how even though um everything

(18:07) seems to be there seems to be opposites they are actually ultimately part of the one and the same thing because everything is in a state of uh of change so like I say this introduces his position that everything is in flux uh and but despite that there's an underlying Unity so he says in another fragment cool things become warm warm things cool down moist things dry out parched Things become damp nothing stays the same Under the Sun of the logos uh heraclitis Mourns but of this principle which holds forever so this is something that is

(18:54) beyond the one organizing principle not all the things that are of this Earth that are in flux the logos of this principle people prove ignorant not only before they hear it but also once they have heard it so nobody's ever heard of this idea that he has before but even once he tells people about it they still are ignorant of it for although everything happens in accordance with this principle the logos people resemble those with no familiarity with it even after they have become familiar with the kinds of accounts and events I discuss as I distinguish each thing according to

(19:33) its nature and explain its Constitution you might remember that I told you you never can step twice in the same river but then you don't realize that that's because there's an underlying principle here which is the logos uh which you remain ignorant of but while the general run of people are as unaware of their actions while they're awake as they are I'm sorry but the general run of people are as unaware of their actions while awake as they are of what they do while asleep so this kind of um General ignorance of the public and lack of

(20:10) introspection um I think is a common lament that philosophers continue to have all the way up until the present day um but heraclitis is at least optimistic enough to insist in another fragment that everyone he says has the potential for self- knowledge and sound thinking if they would only exercise it so again of this logos this underlying principle for everything hertis States the one and only wise thing the logos this principle exists and is not willing to be called by the name of Zeus so um this is kind

(20:51) of showing an idea that um this organizing principle this logos this meaning um heraclitus sees as sort of a Divine being and a Divine being that is um far superior in conception than the traditional religion that he finds around him um in other words the the gods and their uh King Zeus so heraclitus we can kind of see is also like a religious reformer we sometimes in our post Enlightenment um very modern attitude and worldview we think of um philosophy as like a secular U Pursuit separate from religion

(21:41) U because that's what ended up happening after that Enlightenment when um when philosophers were barred from control of the churches by clerics who wanted to maintain uh kind of control over their own thought and ideas but in ancient time um you know part of what is happening in this whole tradition of philosophy is trying to um make a kind of religious reform so heraclitus was dissatisfied with the traditional inherited religion of his day that is to say what we now call paganism but this traditional religion the worship of the gods that involved all sorts of um appeasement rituals um making sure that

(22:30) uh that the functioning of the universe continued to happen through the system of sacrifices and so on um things that people did out of habit and inheritance rather than because they had any um any particularly good or logical reason for doing any of those things and so heraclitus work involved observing how the cosmos actually operates and how everything in it operates to the best of his ability and then using reason to provide explanations and so you could imagine why it makes sense that having had that as his um uh his own modus operandi and objective that he

(23:13) comes to the conclusion that the Universe actually is being operated by uh there's a fundamental underlying principle of reason of logos that is uh that is actually the source or the operations so rather than a CA most that's ruled by uh chaotic humanlike Gods like Zeus then heraclitus argues that there is this single organizing principle uh that is a principle of reason that is the Divine logos so this is not in any way the only use of the word logos um and so I mentioned this one because Aristotle is so famous and this connection um uh uh that he

(24:00) makes it by of logos pathos and Athos I think a lot of people will know but this is a different path and using the word very differently Aristotle himself was not a huge fan of heraclitus work he also felt that as heraclitus talked about all of these opposites having a sharing and underlying Unity um he feels that that actually uh is violating the principle of self-contradiction so um so that's not what heraclitus meant but Aristotle decided to take him literally on that and and say well that heraclitus doesn't know what he's talking about so har

(24:38) Aristotle uses um a different definition or creates a different definition for Logos as a technical term in his study of rhetoric and so he says that there are um three ways to make rhetorical arguments you can either have ones that are are logos that is to say a reason argument which contrasts with posos which is making an emotional appeal and then ethos which is appealing to a person's uh sense of morality right and wrong and so um uh the contemporaries or the earlier contemporaries the sophists who were really good at um public speaking and teaching rhetoric also used the word

(25:23) logos to mean argument but this isn't the use that um continues on on and it's not related to what pho is using it for or what uh Christians are using it for but I mention it because again it's complicated there are more than one meanings um Zeno of sidium who is the uh kidum I guess is the way we say it zenov kidum is the founder of the stoic School of philosophy um and he definitely did build on the works and ideas of heraclitus so the stoics ultimately came up with a very um very U elaborated cosmology where they argued in their type of physics that the universe

(26:12) itself consists of a single living entity so the world the Earth and all of the Spheres around it all the planets and stars and everything um uh are themselves um coherent entity that's alive and then within that entity The Entity is permeated by the logos which is to say a Divine rational principle that is having everything work together and and function um we've done we've done yeah we've done a couple lectures on stoicism um but it's always interesting to go back to so as a result this cosmology that they put together stoicism is a pan pantheistic um philosophical religion

(27:02) since the material universe is itself God and is a single cohesive unit nevertheless the universe interior of the universe has parts and the stoics had a kind of a cosmic dualism and they saw a division between this idea of logos the active rational principle of God and then the UIA the substance the passive principle of matter so so yes all of the material world is um part of you know the cosmic God but you know there's different parts so that part that is actually you know the kind of the rational life-giving active part that is putting everything together is

(27:50) the logos and the logos then is therefore Superior as the active principle to the passive material substance that was yeah so um you know operating prior to uh Zeno and the stoics um Plato had a more negative uh Material World few of the material world than the stoics later developed for Plato everything material is in that state of flux described by heraclitis which for Plato means that it exists now but will eventually die or be destroyed and so nothing in the material world um is really important it's a shadow of a true

(28:35) reality because uh it's all going to be you know coming out of being coming into being and coming out of being it's not going to be permanent for this reason for Plato if you want to see something that's permanent that's something that's Everlasting something that's truly real it can't have a material component it has to be entirely M immaterial um and Plato comes to this by studying things like mathematics and one of his uh other influences the pythagoreans who are interested in um all sorts of mathematical um

(29:12) demonstrations and this leads Plato to the idea that in addition to you know math and things like that that where you can have the idea of a perfect sphere and that is um that always will exist there's always the idea of a per perfect sphere even if the even if the world itself which is a sphere is not perfect it's not perfectly spherical so in that same way there are all of these Eternal ideas or forms that are imperishable but also immaterial and that's what's truly real for Plato's uh philosophy so um Plato then has a develops a

(29:57) cosmology of his own which includes uh the idea of Oneness which is to say the source of the forms and therefore obviously as the greatest thing has to be immaterial um it's usually understood as the form of goodness or goodness for goodness's own sake in other words and according to Plato in his dialogue the tus the material universe is the creation of a lesser but fully benevolent Divine being uh called the Demi urge which just means The Artisan or the Craftsman and so this is um not the same as the one but is another Divine being and so although Plato doesn't use

(30:46) the word logos here to name either the one uh or the Demi erge his system is going to have uh an influence on Pho of Alexandria especially as it gets later developed by uh middle platonists who are the contemporaries of Pho and so you can imagine the one here is going to be able to be identified with the unknowable invisible uh God the father and the Demi urge with the Craftsman of the of the of the created world of Creation with the logos for Pho so let's look at Pho of Alexandria with all of that uh background on what logos can already come to mean in G uh

(31:33) ancient Greek philosophy so Pho came from a very wealthy and very influential heniz Jewish Family in Alexandria Egypt philo's brother Alexander was the Roman Customs agent and Alexander was responsible for collecting the duties of on all the Imports that came into Alexandria from the Eastern parts of the Roman Empire which allowed him to become uh fabulously wealthy um Alexander you can tell again here is a this is a heniz family they're not having names out of uh the Bible but are rather being named after you know

(32:12) Alexander the Great and Alexander wasn't a practicing uh Jew unlike Philo um one of philo's nephews married a daughter of Herod agria King Herod Agrippa the first so in other words the herodian uh royal family it's very prominent uh another of pho's nephews became the Roman procurator of Judea uh in the in the 40s of the Common Era so after a couple times after pilot and later prefect of Egypt so right before the um um Roman Revolt I'm sorry the Jewish first Roman Jewish War Philo himself was a very respected leader in the very large Jewish community in

(33:00) Alexandria and in the year 40 of the Common Era Pho was elected to lead that community's delegation as it had to make it plead a case before the emperor Caligula himself and so very important um prominent powerful heniz Jewish family so Roman Alexandria um was one of the great cities of the Empire um it had previously been was founded by Alexander the Great but then or actually Alexander went out there but it's founded by tmy his uh successor and named for him and becomes the capital of toic Egypt a um

(33:43) great center of helenismo the tmes um founded uh a temple to the muses which are the godesses of the Arts and Sciences called the museum so and that is gives us our word for Museum to this day the museum also had its Associated uh great library and so um under the tmes Alexandria displaced um Athens as the center for uh helenistic philosophy and continuing then after the conquest by the Romans um was continued to be a cosmop politan City and perhaps had 400 500,000 inhabitants so making it uh one of the most populous cities in the Empire all after Rome itself and also then with uh Antioch in

(34:44) Syria Egypt was home to a very significant diaspora Judean Community beginning with the destruction of the kingdom of Judah the kingdom of Judea and of Jerusalem by the Babylonians all the way back in the 6th Century before the Common Era the size of that Jewish diaspora Community grew significantly under the tmes when um more Jews lived in Alexandria than lived in Jerusalem so um again there's hundreds of thousands of people in Alexandria uh it's roughly divided into Greek speaking uh Greek and Macedonian uh population along side a local Egyptian population who over time

(35:32) also becomes Greek speaking and then finally uh a large population a large Jewish diaspora population whose primary language also becomes Greek according to the Greek geographer strabo um writing at the end of the first the beginning of the end of the first century before the Common Era beginning of the first century of the Common Era uh strabo says that the Jewish community in Alexandria enjoyed very substantial autonomy under the tmes and those privileges were maintained under the Roman Administration uh he says that the Jews have their own

(36:11) ethnarch or archon leader of an ethnicity their own ethnarch who governs the people and adjudicates suits and supervises contracts and ordinances just as if he were the head of a sovereign state the ethnarch is able to operate just as if he were the head of a sovereign state according to stra nevertheless the Jewish community did not always uh get along with the Greek and Egyptian communities in Alexandria so for example there were a serious disturbances in the year 38 so when the emperor Caligula came to the throne in the year

(36:52) 37 he sent his friend Herod a grippa to Alexandria because he wanted to assess the Loyalty of the prefect there the person who had been loyal to uh the emperor Tiberius and who hadn't seemed to have been um a fan of Caligula Allis avilius flakus so um this friend of Caligula uh Herod agria Caligula later restored uh as king he made him King uh restoring the kingdom of Jerusalem I'm sorry the kingdom of Judea as it had existed under Herod griet's an ancestor Herod the Great um it previously had been administered for a long time as a Roman

(37:38) province and herodians were only able to rule little tiny territories of it as as tetrarchs and so on now under uh Caligula Herod grippa is again made a king but that's a little bit a couple years after this so when Herod grippa came to uh Alexandria unannounced the Greek Community there really resented his presence um because they saw him as um the claimant to be the king of the Jews and they didn't like uh having a direct representative um of the emperor um also representing the Jewish community so the

(38:18) Egyptian the pre the Roman prefect for Egypt flakus attempted to Plate the local Greek community and also the emperor by ordering that all of the city's synagogues have statues of Caligula erected in them and this is a kind of thing that CA liked is having statues of himself put into uh temples and synagogues but the this was an unprecedented invasion of synagog synagogues um which was resisted with Force by the Jewish community in Alexandria so according to Philo himself when he writes about uh what happened in response the um the prefect flakus

(39:01) issued a notice in which he called us all foreigners and Aliens was a community that had existed there for hundreds of years uh allowing anyone who was inclined to proceed to exterminate the Jews as prisoners of War so once that notice was in place Vio says that mobs drove the Jews entirely out of four quarters of the city of Alexandria and then crammed them all in into a very small portion of one quarter while the non-jewish populace then overrunning the desolate houses of the Jews turned to plunder and divided

(39:40) the booty among themselves as if they had obtained it obtained it from war soop Fila states that in some cases whole families were burned to death in the resulting ethnic violence and then just a couple years later a second round of riots broke out between the Greek and Jewish communities in Alexandria in the year 40 the second round of riots resulted in those delegations uh from each of the communities being summoned to Rome to explain the cause of the dispute before the emperor Caligula uh and we have an account of that um delegation Pho talks about it

(40:19) himself but we also have um uh an account by Josephus the Jewish Roman historian writing in his book Jewish antiquity Josephus is always is a partisan and he gives his own highly partisan account of this but he also includes a description of Pho that's interesting so Josephus says there was now a tumult Arisen at Alexandria between the Jewish inhabitant and the Greeks and three ambassadors were chosen out of each party that were at variant who came to guas Caligula now one of these ambassadors from the people of Alexandria was appion

(40:58) and so appan is a heniz Egyptian who is also um a teacher of rhetoric and a sophus who wrote commentaries on Homer and he also wrote a book collection a collection of five books called the egyptica which talked about Egypt and included many um many slurs and attacks on the Jewish Community there so appion was a big enemy of the Jewish community in Alexandria uh the egyptic has lost but um appan uttered many blasphemies against the Jews according to Josephus and among other things he said he charged them with neglecting the Honors that belonged to Caesar for that while

(41:41) all who were subjects to the Roman empire built altars and temples to gas Caligula and in other regards universally received him as they received the gods the Jews alone thought it a dishonorable thing for them to erect statues in honor of him as well as to swear by his name so many of these severe things were said by appion by which he hoped to provoke gas Caligula to anger against the Jews as he was lik to be so even though um you know even though josephus's description here says that these are lies this is a problem Jews um because of their uh monotheism

(42:25) and because of their um uh you know they don't are not to worship any other gods besides uh the god of Israel they actually don't um aren't able to easily um worship The Genius of the Emperor or have statues of the emperor in in their kind of iconoclastic um synagogues or especially in the temple in Jerusalem so uh Josephus continues in with a description of Pho but Pho the principle of the Jew Jewish ambassage a man eminent on all counts brother to Alexander the alabar this is that official I was talking about who had uh control over the um the import duties in

(43:12) Alexandria brother of Alexander and one not unskillful in philosophy was ready to betake himself to make his defense against the accusations but Caligula Pro prohibited him and bid him be gone he was also in such a rage that it openly appeared that he was about to do some very great Mischief so the emperor did not even listen to the ambass uh the Jewish account so Pho being thus affronted went out and said to those Jews who were about him that they should be of good courage since Caligula's words indeed showed anger at them but in reality had

(43:50) already set God against Caligula so so Josephus is writing this with the benefit of hindsight and at the time that this delegation failed Pho of course wouldn't have known that Caligula was about to be assassinated the following year in 41 um but Josephus knows that in in retrospect and so um Caligula despite having been friends with Herod a grippa was you know got a little bit obsessed with the idea of people not worshiping a statue and so has was intending it seems to erect a statue of himself in the Jerusalem Temple which may well have

(44:31) provoked uh a Jewish Revolt some uh 30 years before the Revolt actually broke out so when that Revolt did break out the first Roman Jewish war that took place between 66 and 74 when that happened the Loyalty of the alexandrian Jews was questioned um even though that war was taking place you in neighboring Judea not in Alexandria and so in Alexandria in ' 66 in the year' 66 mobs again massacred members of the city's Jewish community and now in the next decades that Community started to go into decline as people who weren't Mass secured started to feel that they

(45:14) weren't safe in the city or welcomed in the city and they immigrated and moved to other other cities and other communities in the Empire and then finally there was a second Jewish Revolt in the year 115 called the diaspora Revolt because it took place in places like Serena Egypt Cyprus and so on not so much in Judea itself um and that was fought you know in part in Alexandria where the community was either all killed or expelled the great synagogue of Alexandria that had stood for a long time was destroyed and at the end of

(45:51) that Revolt no Jews were left in Alexandria so there was a uh this community kind of faced very serious Decline and then uh extermination by into by the 2 Century CE okay so Pho therefore was uh alive at the beginning of that violent end because he had uh lived through those um the ethnic Strife in 38 and 40 but he was already an old man that time at that point uh and that end would happen several Generations in the future but when Pho was born the Jewish community of Alexandria had thrived and grown for

(46:33) centuries and was uh very seriously contributing significantly to Jewish thought and especially to a synthesis between helenismo Andria with its library with its Museum was the center for helenistic thought for centuries and here there is a significant Jewish community that is um participating in that uh on its terms um it's actually this Jewish Community the um Jews of Alexandria who were responsible for the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek the translation known as the Septuagint which is the word for 70 and

(47:21) of course the there's a myth that talami himself commissioned uh 70 Scholars that created that translation um and that's why it has that name but in fact it's actually a work that took place over centuries um and ultimately uh the whole Corpus of the Hebrew Bible and even a much more expanded more books than made it into the U the rabic Canon of the Hebrew Bible uh or composed into the subagent Greek became the primary language for the alexandrian Jews um which is one of the reasons they needed the scriptures translated into Greek and

(48:01) um Pho certainly um accessed the Hebrew Bible through the septu agent and Scholars debate the degree to which he knows Hebrew so he sometimes is able to make um um eological uh discussions about Hebrew terms and things like that but um again how much he's using Hebrew is is debated so um as you can imagine being in the heart of uh helenismo Andria um had you know was a place where there was a helenistic Judaism so it was one of the seats of the Jewish wisdom tradition um it's possible that the 2 Century uh BCE author uh G Jesus benak

(48:58) or Joshua Ben the author of the book of serak wrote his book in Alexandria um the author of second mccabes which defends helenismo Andrian Jew and its perspective is in stark contrast to the author of the first book of mccabes who was um writing in Judea who is very critical of helenismo we get two very different pictures of um the kind of civil conflict between um more heniz Jews and Jews that were less heniz and wanted to um wanted to have a stronger border between Greek ideas and um and traditional ideas uh within their

(49:48) tradition um there's another book uh that was roughly contemporary a little bit earlier than Pho called wisdom of Solomon one of the many books that is attributed to Solomon not by Solomon but is actually again written by a wisdom author uh in the uh in the Greek I'm sorry the heniz Jewish population of Alexandria so Pho was educated in uh helenistic the helenistic culture of the city having read for example Greek poets poets everyone from Homer to Ides and also studied great orators like deanes and quotes from all of these he was

(50:29) heavily influenced by stoic philosophy But ultimately his greatest influence is Plato and so throughout his many Works he quotes from Plato's dialogues the tus the fedis fedo the Republic the Symposium the laws and many others his work falls into three General categories so he writes commentaries on the pentat the five books attributed to Moses the Torah but as is written in Greek translated into Greek the sagent and his commentaries consist of very highly allegorical interpretations of scripture uh in which Philo sees Moses who he sees as the author of The pentat

(51:12) as a precursor of Greek philosophers pilo also wrote philosophical essays that combine Moses that is to say the the pentat text and Plato and so um the ideas of Plato he he reads into his allegorical interpretation of the petuk um and he also pulls ethics drawing from stoicism and a little bit of Aristotle's ethics as well uh which he again reads into the uh the law within the petuk and then he also writes some apologetic and historical Works uh on behalf of the Jewish Community including for example his account of the allegation he had to Rome and also the

(51:59) account uh that I quoted from about the troubles leading up to that so in his first treaties on allegorical interpretation Philo quotes uh Genesis chapter 2 where it said verse one where it says on the sixth day God finished his work which he had made and then he asserts that quote it would be a sign of great Simplicity to think that the world was created in six days or indeed at all in time because all time is only the space of days and nights and these things the motion of the Sun as he the Sun Passes over the Earth and under the Earth does necessarily make but the sun

(52:49) is a portion of heaven so one must confess that time is a thing posterior to the world that therefore it would be correctly said that the world was not created in time but that time had its existence in consequence of the world for it is the motion of Heaven that has displayed the nature of time so you can see here you know there's a um he's absolutely not a uh uh let's say a a young Earth creationist who wants to read the Bible literally and said the Bible was made in six days would says that's essentially

(53:29) uh utter Simplicity and utter Folly and instead says uh gives the the general understanding of how the world works and Cosmos works and um gives therefore an interpretation that time itself is something that God created when God began to create the heavens and the Earth in other words that God pre-exists uh before time so insisting on this uh you know actually resuing literal readings and insisting on allegorical readings um that's in keeping with contemporary science that is natural philosophy and the Contemporary natural philosophical understanding of the universe that was already a wellestablished practice in

(54:13) helenistic philosophy so um Greek philosophers had already been doing this for Centuries with their own um myths and religion so as early for example as the 6th Century before the common era the Ayes of regium argued that the struggle of the Gods in Homer that that was just an allegory that is T teaching about the opposition between elements how uh uh Earth opposes water which opposes air which and fire and so forth um these are not um these are not these are not uh literal stories about the Gods uh having a war uh and egging on a

(54:54) war between Greeks and Trojans but it's an Al alory likewise in the fifth century before the Common Era prodicus of chaos um Kos uh reinterpreted the gods as personifications of different substances and so Deiter the god of grain becomes equated with the substance of bread dionisius with wine Poseidon with water hus with fire and so forth so C pho's allegorical interpretation of the Bible was therefore very much in keeping with the way the Greeks had long been reinterpreting their own mythologies their own texts and so for example the

(55:41) stoic philosopher cleanthes redefines Zeus not as um this guy that heat had told all these myths about who is uh you know a human looking guy who uh is seducing all these women and doing all these things no instead what he's saying is Zeus is actually the personification of the logos that rational principle within the stoic worldview the the god Cosmos within the god Cosmos the logos the ra rational ordering principle is what is Al could also be called Zeus um so again that's reinterpreting the gods um and no different from how Pho is

(56:27) doing so the stoic view of God as the living universe itself is not easily compatible with the description of God creating the universe in Genesis so although Pho adapted other ideas from stoicism including latching on to that word logos the Contemporary middle platonist view of God in other words um how they interpreted how they saw God that proved much more useful to pho's own monoe monotheism so middle platonism so-called because it's not immediately what Plato was teaching and it's not as Plato was reimagined centuries later as

(57:11) neoplatonism but this middle platonism which begins at the beginning of the um 1 Century BC um views God as the idea of ideas or the form of forms the one that archetypical platonic form and um also views the one as you know the fully unmoved mover the utterly Transcendent mover and so because of um how remote and Transcendent the one is um in order for us as created beings to have any kind of connection to that there needs to be an entire host of intermediaries to bridge the gap um to the created Material World from uh God so Pho similarly um presents the

(58:06) relationship that God has with Creation in a framework that would have been very very familiar to his middle platonist contemporaries so he says God not being urged on by any prompter for who else could have been there to prompt him but Guided by his own so will decided that it was fitting to benefit with unlimited and abundant favors a nature which without the Divine gift was unable to itself partake of any good thing but he benefits it not according to the greatness of his own Graces for they are illimitable and eternal so so

(58:49) he's not limited I me he is you know God is unlimited he's Eternal everything like that he's doing everything this but Accord to the power of that which is benefited to receive his Graces so creation can only accept so much because it's so limited uh for the capacity of that which is created to receive benefits does not correspond to the Natural power of God to confer them since his powers are infinitely greater and the create the thing created uh being not sufficiently powerful to receive all their greatness would have sunk under it if he had not measured his

(59:26) bounty allotting to each in duee proportion that which was poured upon it so so God is fully Transcendent and Superior to Creation uh in uh pho's understanding and Pho also then agrees with the platonist that God is uh that God created intellectual models as patterns for creation that is God creates the forms first in order to have matter be um a shadow of those Eternal forms so um uh Pho writes if anyone were desire were to desire to use more un if if anyone were to desire to use more undisguised terms he would not call the

(1:00:14) world which is perceptible only to the intellect anything else but the reason of God so Plato's intellectual world is the reason of God already occupied in the creation of the world for neither is a city while only perceptible to the intellect anything else but the reason of the AR architect who is already designing to build one perceptible to external senses on the model of that which is only to the intellect so just when an architect has a plan in his head of the city that he's about to build that's the form and the

(1:00:55) city only comes into existence because that form exists so the idea of the forms so in the architect here though is uh now the forms are in the mind of God and so Pho says this is the doctrine of Moses this is not what I'm saying Moses is saying this this is what the Bible says according to pho's interpretation of the Bible accordingly he um when recording the creation of Man in The Words which follow asserts expressly that he was made in the image of God and if the image be a part of the image then manifestly so is the entire form namely

(1:01:36) the whole of the world perceptible by the external senses so the sensible world is is simply a um imitation so the world perceptible by the senses is a greater imitation of the Divine image than the human form is so the sensible world is just like in platonism uh an imitation of the immaterial uh world in the mind of God it is Manifest also he says that the archetypal seal which we call that world which is perceptible only to the intellect must itself be the archetypal model the idea of ideas the reason of God so in this way then Plato's

(1:02:22) reasoning upwards is deciding that I'm sorry Philo is reasoning upwards that um uh Plato's forms these immaterial Eternal ideas on which the sensible Material World of creation is patterned all of those exist within the idea of ideas that is to say God's reason which we're going to find out uh is the same as God's logos in pho's conception so borrowing from heraclitus and the stoics pho identifies the first and highest of the intermediaries that exist between between the Transcendent God of and creation so the lowness of

(1:02:59) creation and the Transcendent God the first of these intermediaries is God's logos who is present with God at the creation so quoting from Genesis 9:6 where it says for in the image of God had God made mankind Philo adds this interpretation he says why is it that he speaks as if of some other God saying that he had made man after the image of God and not that he had made him after his own image so it says in the image of God had God made mankind instead of saying God made Mankind in his own image so why does he say it that way Pho asks well very

(1:03:42) appropriately and without any falsehood was this oracular sentence uttered by God for no mortal thing could have been formed on the similitude of the Supreme father of the universe but only after the pattern of the second deity who is the logos of the Supreme Being what second deity so anyway does that trigger alarms here in I think when we're talking about like Jewish monotheism right so uh since it is fitting that the rational soul of man should bear it the type of the Divine logos since in his first logos God is superior to the most rational possible

(1:04:30) nature but he who is superior to the logos holds rank in a better and more singular preeminence and how could the creature possibly exhibit a likeness of him in himself so the Supreme father of the universe the unseeable God Is So Transcendent that humans can't simply um be made in that God's image but rather What's Happening Here is that uh he's saying that there that that um that father then has something Made In His Image which is his logos his word and that therefore humans are made in the image of that logos rather than you know in other words through an

(1:05:14) intermediary not directly with the Father which would be impossible because it's just too remote so in addition to calling the logos the second deity here uh made directly in God's image pho in other books identifies the logos as God's firstborn um and so he says and even if there be not as yet anyone who is worthy to be called a Son of God so we humans aren't really worthy to be called Son of God nevertheless let him labor earnestly to be adorned according to his firstborn logos the logos the eldest of his angels

(1:05:56) the great Archangel of many names for he the logos is called the authority and the name of God and the logos and the man according to God's image and he who sees Israel so these are all different ways that um uh uh Pho understands this very first entity uh that is the second deity pattern on the unseeable God for which reason I was induced a little while ago to praise the principles of those who said we are all one man's Sons for even if we are not yet suitable to be called sons of God still we may deserve to be called children of his etal image of his

(1:06:46) most sacred logos for the image of God is his most ancient logos so um we are patterned after the image of God which is the logos so there's the intermediary as opposed to being patterned on God God self so humans should aspire to be called be worthy to be called sons of God even if we really can't be but at least Pho is saying we can rightly be called Children of the logos since humans are made in the image of the logos additionally uh Pho here calls the logos Gods firstborn and another things like eldest Angel God's Authority God's name so there's a lot of things that

(1:07:31) um uh are brought together a lot of ideas that are brought together by Philo in his interpretation of scripture and his theology here um uh of understanding the Transcendent God and then the intermediary the first intermediary so like I say although Pho uses many names and analogies to describe the logos the underly l in idea is that there needs to be some kind of an intermediary to connect the fully Transcendent invisible God to the much lower material creation the sensible universe so this first intermediary the

(1:08:10) logos forms a second hypostasis that is to say an underlying reality or platonic substance with God as God's rational creative power God's logos so Pho sees this second deity as inferior to the Transcendent God and sometimes like I say labels the logos an angel or the great Archangel and so this idea that he has diverges from the later trinitarian ideas that are going to develop Century or so later um about the logos but um I'm going to suggest here that while phos synthesis of platonism and Judaism is is certainly not trinitarian I think we can see that the theological tools needed to develop

(1:09:01) Christian theology were already present and so um you know very soon decades after Pho is writing um whether or not the authors of the Gospel of John or the author of the uh the hymn of the logos had ever read Pho um the ideas were in the same yeah we in the same mix that uh that produced that then a couple decades later and I I think we can also see um why then um second temple Judaism the heniz components of second temple Judaism are what Christianity uh Builds on especially as Christianity um becomes a converting religion which is primarily um populated with uh Greek

(1:09:51) speakers who are converted from paganism as opposed to being converted from Judaism because um a lot of this synthesis of Plato is it already kind of at present and makes it much more um immediately palatable and understandable to all of those new converts and then finally um I think we can see why um why Rabin Judaism goes a bit maybe goes a different direction because at the moment when um uh the rabbis are regrouping and trying to um reformulate uh uh Judaism after the destruction of the temple so post Temple Judaism this is the very moment that

(1:10:37) this long-standing influential Community um uh of heniz Jews in Alexandria has been totally destroyed um and so this is the reason why um voo is actually remembered and preserved and quoted by the church fathers and uh the his texts are actually preserved in Christian libraries um rather than the Rabin uh the rabbinic libraries although you know has been re re refound by more recent Judaism of course and is a great understanding for Judaism in general and understanding um the diversity of thought in this time

(1:11:15) period And so um that is my take on Pho and the logos so I want to thank people for their support thanks to CK to J M to darthur Rama to Kevin Thompson to Dave Anderson to Mark long to fire ever living to Magi Mike appreciate it all thank you for um supporting the lectures um Julie bazooki asks I think the best biblical description of the logos aside from John or at least to hint at it may be from uh Psalm 33 which says in verses 6 and 7 the Lord spoke um and the heavens were created he breathed the word um so that's interesting to do that

(1:12:04) uh so this is um landro has uh written to me that this is from the um New revised Standard Version and so the word here means uh Hebrew is Bidar meaning word or Oracle or counsel of the Lord and so um the lord of the heavens made all the hosts the breath of his mouth he gathered the Waters of the sea as a bottle he puts the deep in storehouses so it's interesting I'll have to look at that Julie for um uh we we're we keep on talking about we need to do a um a lecture on the Psalms and I'm actually um wanting to buy a few more commentaries of the psalm so that we would so I have um more more detail to

(1:12:48) give in such a lecture because I want to look into all of this um Lander can you raise up the I'm a TOD R rad maker so Todd rad maker says who wrote the logos hymn we we don't know the author of um any of the names of any of the authors of of the Gospel of John so there are um multiple authors who uh who composed John and so there is um the logos hymn might have been an a Christian hymn that predates it it uh or it might have been something um that uh you know there are different component sources so there's thought to

(1:13:34) be the sign source and maybe also the passion Source or maybe there was one sign passion source and then there's a significant expansion by uh one of the authors we might think of as the main author of John who would have written around that and expanded that and then there's a final editor that will have written little extra bits uh and at edits but none of those are known we've had a um lecture on who wrote the Gospel of John before uh K dempus Bradford is um their music to the himym at the beginning of

(1:14:07) John either from Antiquity or contemporary I'm not um I'm not aware of there being any of that being set to music yeah certainly not from Antiquity but I mean I'm not I'm not aware of a contemporary one so they they wouldn't have had um I mean they wouldn't have had the kind of tunes that we have back in Antiquity that's not how music was was done so a um poetry would have been you know would have been read in kind of more like a rhythmic way as opposed to a melodic s hymn like we have music that we have today um Winston Barz says how did the

(1:14:46) logos of the stoics contribute to the theistic concepts uh of fine-tuning of the universe and intelligent design um so I think that um so I think that the the way it works in in the stoic conception is that um you know we're aware that that a lot of um you know the material world when we're seeing the material world as all one big Cosmic entity nevertheless it has Parts within it that you know are simply rocks and stuff and so um and so those are not particularly um those are not particularly I don't know active and and

(1:15:33) uh showing signs of divinity and so I think the idea of of of the logos within the world's soul is that this represents the um yeah the part that is keeping everything fine-tuned and intelligent and working and the what why why everything is active and Cycles through uh and there is New Creation happening along with all the destruction that happens and so I think that that's probably um it's so it's understanding that active principle that is keeping the universe kind of living um that is is where the stoic idea is is happening there or is aelan say did The

(1:16:14) Exodus of pantomime actors in 23 CE influence gospel playwrights um so I don't I don't know I don't know what you mean by an exodus of pantomime actors and uh and gospel playwrights so I think that you I'm probably telling a joke that I'm missing here Aries but um the gospels aren't from that time and um and the writers aren't playwrights um Alan Troy asks what's the difference between um pho's imitation and the current idea of simulation so I'm also not sure what you mean by pho's imitation or the current idea of

(1:17:04) simulation Alan so I'm not sure um I think you were talking about simulation or maybe that's something that people were talking about in the chat maybe people were talking about simulation in the chat but I don't know um so if you're talking about the idea of um if I don't know what I i' be speculating wildly here if you're talking about like what we're all being in the Matrix in other words the universe is just a simulation or something that's um I would say that that's not um that's not the sense of platonism the platonism is um I guess the sense the similarity

(1:17:41) between let's say that we're all in the Matrix is that the The Matrix is uh you know there's an IM material world that's underlying that and everybody is in a in a fake simulation the plate platonism reverses that because the material world itself is matter and everything like that we're all radical materialists we think that only the material world matters and Plato is arguing no that's not doesn't matter at all the um it's the Eternal Eternal world of the ideas that is the only thing that's really real so it's be the opposite um mology media says could it

(1:18:19) be fair to say that these philosophers were creating the basis for simulation Theory since it's uh the idea about the immaterial logos word concept being the basis of reality um and so yeah I think that you you guys must probably having this in the in the lecture and so what I would say is that um that in some ways it's having it's sort of the opposite of it but maybe it's um but maybe we're having this again because we have had um this entire modern era we have been very uh focused on materialism and matter is the only

(1:18:55) thing that matters and so now um that we have started creating you know this world where our lives are lived on screens and everything is a virtual reality now we're having um that's influencing how we're understanding things um but in some ways again the philosophically this is the opposite idea so the um the argument from the platonists including like pho here is that uh the material world um exists and it consists of matter but that matter doesn't matter because what's Real and True is a thing that won't perish the um Eternal ideas uh and

(1:19:38) being one with with god um fire ever living says are there any Jewish groups that have taken up pho's philosophy again without becoming Messianic Jews I don't I doubt it I don't know that but um it would be interesting um I think that I would think that um I would think that Messianic Jews May well you know read and recover Pho but I don't actually know so I haven't had a lot of contact with Messianic Jews and none of the um I've never had any discussions with anybody in Reform Judaism about pho so I'm not sure if if that's if there has been any kind of Rebirth of that in in a religious sense within any

(1:20:19) component of Judaism uh Zer xlex says uh what was the first the reaction of first century Judaism towards Pho so um he was considered uh uh you know an incredible leader he was know well known as a a learned writer we saw what Josephus had to say about him which is that he was eminent and U respected by everybody in the community uh and so I think these ideas were fully in keeping with uh what heniz Judaism was interested in Greek speaking Judaism in the Jewish community in Alexandria that said you know there is um there would

(1:21:01) have been the other community that was trying to reject a lot of Hellenism and so um this is why we talked about how there's competing books of mccabes where um some traditionalists are wanting to keep more there everybody's been heliz to some extent or another but they're trying to keep more of the of the Greek ideas out of their religion and draw a cordon around it and so and so there is a um there is a a debate within second temple Judaism and some folks are are don't see Hellenism as a threat at all they see it as completely

(1:21:38) compatible like like pho does um but but there's not only one idea so some people very much would have had a lot of it would have appealed to them but others um others would have resented it so the na Works says um do you think Christianity would have heniz without Pho or was that more of a foregone conclusion so so it was already part of the helenistic Jewish tradition I would say that the um we you know we don't even have any of uh any of the early Christian writings in Aramaic or any of the uh the language that Jesus was

(1:22:18) speaking we we have it all recorded first in Greek and um and again our earliest uh Christian who's writing survive Paul is writing in Greek so um so Christianity was already part of the um the heniz Jewish BR branch of second temple Judaism and and so what I think Pho here is is not not um a person who like created Christianity or you have to have had him in order for Christianity to exist but rather he is an incredible example of of the ideas and philosophical tools that were existing Within in heniz Judaism and so um which

(1:22:59) is the part of Judaism that Christianity grows out of um Kate Tempest Bradford says does do I have a recommendation for good translations of Pho unfortunately um I don't because I I I have my own ones are not very good so I have a big um you know a big book that is like his complete works but it is you know one of these ones that has been republished in old transl ation and also the ones that I was using uh an internet source so I could have the text online and again it's a very old translation and so I I

(1:23:34) frankly need to have an a new maybe like like it's he wrote a lot so it's hard to have like a whole library of everything that he has so a lot of Pho has been preserved but if we had like a if I had like some of the best Works let's say annotated um that's what I would really like to have and unfortunately I don't have a recommendation for that oh Michael carpit asks are there um novel ideas in file ELO's thought that have influenced your own thinking about religion so so one of the things that um both Pho and

(1:24:12) um when we look closely at early Christian thought um I think one of the things that these have both done to influence with me is is this awareness that early Christians and also people in second temple Judaism um you know in Pho here has a um has a a much higher christology you know if we just think of this his idea of the logos it's not really christology because he's not Christian but if this there's a much higher idea of you know this conception of logos than modern-day Christians I think modern-day Christians have have

(1:24:51) gotten so fixated on um uh Christ as Jesus and Jesus as a historical figure and focused on the historicity of Jesus that um that everybody has become pretty much everybody's become Heretics that nobody nobody anymore thinks of um you know Christ as God they um they have this kind of very human way of thinking about Jesus they which they're they're dubious of um and so and so for me what the influence that all of this has had on me is kind of trying to recover um that high christology and to you know possible fully separate um historicity and the ideas of the historical Jesus

(1:25:38) from you know my thinking about um Christ so that we can again recover you know a an understanding of Christ as God um uh Matilda Heisman thank you for your support um fire ever living says if you interpret the New Testament very liberally perhaps all of these different conceptions of logos can lead to Salvation and the point is to just look toward Transcendence uh I you know follow the logos to the uh Transcendent uh source and so fire for living that's a great um um comment and way to look at it I think

(1:26:17) so yes um is that it Leandro or we okay well thank you so much for all of this I want to remind everybody that we won't have a lecture next week but the week after that we'll look at female Apostles in the early church and then we're going to uh go after the Trinity thanks again