Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [227]
Philo, in characteristic fashion, understood Isaiah 54 allegorically. Probably, Philo was not actually thinking of bodily resurrection per se, but the perfection of God’s kingdom on earth, which suited his philosophical principles more exactly.
Because Philo thought of the soul as a perfected body, he sometimes described it as made out of the same stuff as stars. He was able to identify the righteous dead with the stars themselves, hence as angels, as we have seen in the apocalyptic literature:
When Abraham left this mortal life, “he is added to the people of God” (Gen 25:8), in that he inherited incorruption and became equal to the angels, for angels-those unbodied and blessed souls-are the host and people of God. (Sacr. 5)
Some would suggest that “equal to angels” means only “like angels.” But Philo explained exactly what he meant-they are the unbodied and blessed souls, who are “the people of God.” “Equal to” in Greek means “equated with,” not “something like angels.”19 Philo was giving us his own interpretation of by-now familiar apocalyptic traditions. But he styled them not in terms of resurrection (they are unincarnate souls) but in terms of incorporeal intelligences. We learn that the stars and the angels are both incorporeal and intelligences:
The men of God are priests and prophets who have refused to accept membership in the commonwealth of the world and to become citizens therein, but have risen wholly above the sphere of sense-perception and have been translated into the world of the intelligible and dwell there registered as freemen of the commonwealth of ideas, which are imperishable and incorporeal. (Gig. 61)
Notice that Philo did not use the standard vocabulary for resurrection in these passages, rather made up his own vocabulary to distinguish his thinking from other Jewish writers. In most passages, however, Philo explicitly regarded death as the soul’s liberation from the prison of the body. Here he seems to have tried to accommodate post-Biblical interpretations to his brand of Platonism.
Philo also coded his philosophy according to gender. Matter is feminine and passive to the masculine logos and nous. Unbridled sexuality is both a distraction and a detraction for both men and women. Unfortunately, it is the influence of women on men with which Philo seemed obsessed. Since women distract men, the influence of women must be limited by human rules and regulation for the good of both sexes. Women, though theoretically the equal of men and equally responsible for their actions, are simply not described as being as responsible as men, because they are prejudicially viewed as weaker in reason. Certainly their will is viewed as weaker; their sexuality must therefore be disciplined by reason. This was a typical judgment of Platonism but Philo seemed more zealous than most in his judgment. Philo highlighted the sexual abstinence and even celibacy of the Therapeutai, who he admired and who were so similar to the Qumran group.20
Philo noted that philosophical meditation is transformative in itself. It does not need to end in a right vision of the Existent One:
Therefore we sympathize in joy with those who love God and seek to understand the nature of the living, even if they fail to discover it; for the vague investigation of what is good is sufficient by itself to cheer the heart, even if it fail to attain the end that it desires. But we participate in indignation against that lover of himself, Cain; because he has left his soul without any conception whatever of the living God, having of deliberate purpose mutilated himself of that faculty by which alone he might have been able to see him. (Post. 21)
Philo thus was able to harmonize Judaism with Greek philosophy. For him, both said the same, when each is seen in its finest light.
Josephus as Sociologist of the Sects and Parties of Judea
PHILO’S ATTEMPT to correct Platonism by means of Biblical truth is paralleled in a