Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC–after AD 40)

A Very High-Ranking Jewish Family in Alexandria

Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, had in the first century one of the largest Jewish communities in the ancient world, concentrated in two of the city’s five quarters^[9]. Philo was born there around 20 BC into a Jewish family of exceptional social rank—so much so that the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, writing a few decades later, presents him as “the chief of the Jewish embassy, a man eminent in every respect, brother of Alexander the Alabarch”^[10]. The Alabarch (or Arabarch) was a high Roman official responsible for collecting customs duties on the Nile’s Arabian side; it was one of the most lucrative and prestigious offices open to a Jewish notable in Egypt. Philo’s brother, Alexander Lysimachus, was according to Josephus “the foremost of his contemporaries, both by birth and wealth”^[11], to the extent that he personally financed the gold and silver plating of the nine gates of the Temple in Jerusalem^[12].

This social origin explains Philo’s education: contrary to what one might expect from a future Torah commentator, nothing in his work attests to knowledge of Hebrew^[13]. Philo reads and cites the Torah exclusively in its Greek translation, the Septuagint, and his culture is that of a first-rate Hellenized intellectual: he quotes extensively from Homer, the tragedians, Plato, the Stoics, and skillfully handles the categories of Greek philosophy of his time—a middle Platonism tinged with Stoicism and Pythagoreanism, common in the scholarly Alexandria of the first century^[14].

The Only Event Dated with Certainty: The Embassy of AD 39-40

Apart from his own testimony and mentions by Josephus, almost nothing certain is known about Philo’s private life^[15]. The only event in his life that can be dated with absolute precision is his participation, as head of delegation, in the Jewish embassy to Emperor Caligula in AD 40^[16]. Philo himself opens the account of this embassy by placing himself among the “aged men,” “gray-headed” through the length of time they have lived^[17]—an indication that places his birth around 20 BC, though without absolute certainty.

The Alexandria Pogrom of AD 38

In AD 38, under the reign of Caligula, an unprecedented wave of anti-Jewish violence erupted in Alexandria, encouraged by the Roman prefect of Egypt, Aulus Avillius Flaccus. Philo was a direct witness and left us the most detailed account from antiquity in his treatise In Flaccum (Against Flaccus). The Alexandrian mob demanded the installation of imperial statues even inside synagogues^[18], then the Jews were expelled from four of the five city quarters and crowded into the remaining one^[19], wandering afterward “along the shore, in deserted places and among tombs, stripped of all their possessions”^[20]. Flaccus had thirty-eight members of the council of Elders of the Jewish community arrested and publicly whipped—elderly men of honorable rank^[21]—while the populace committed acts of violence sparing “neither age nor youth, nor the innocent helplessness of children”^[22].

“None of them escaped the blows, neither the old men weakened by age, nor the children still incapable of understanding what was happening to them.” — Philo of Alexandria, In Flaccum, IX, 68-71^[23]

Flaccus himself was eventually arrested on Caligula’s orders, deported, and executed on the island of Andros in 39—Philo saw in this violent end, “torn apart like a victim,” a just recompense for the wounds he had inflicted on the Jews of Alexandria^[24].

“Our Temple Is Destroyed”: The Humiliated Embassy Before Caligula

In response to this crisis, the Jewish community of Alexandria sent a delegation to Rome to plead their case before the emperor; Philo, due to his rank and philosophical culture, was appointed its leader^[25]. Opposing them, the Greeks of Alexandria sent their own embassy, led by the grammarian Apion—author of an anti-Jewish pamphlet that Flavius Josephus would later refute point by point in his treatise Against Apion—who “uttered many blasphemies against the Jews,” accusing them notably of neglecting the honors due to Caesar by refusing to erect statues in his honor^[26].

Caligula, increasingly possessed by the megalomaniac madness that marked the end of his reign—he alternately believed himself to be Mercury, Apollo, and Mars^[27]—received the ambassadors with open contempt. When Philo attempted to present the defense of the ancestral Jewish laws, “Gaius pushed him away and ordered him to leave”^[28]; the Greek text noted by Josephus specifies that the emperor “was in such a rage that it was clear he was about to do them some very great harm”^[29]. Philo then reported to his companions that Caligula’s anger against them “had in fact set God against himself”^[30].

The humiliation reached its peak when a messenger suddenly appeared before the embassy, “eyes bloodshot, very disturbed, out of breath and trembling”^[31], to announce to them through tears the news at the heart of their faith:

“Our temple is destroyed! Gaius has ordered that a colossal statue of himself be erected in the Holy of Holies, bearing his own name inscribed on it with the title of Jupiter!” — Account reported by Philo of Alexandria, Legatio ad Gaium, XXIX, 188^[32]

At this announcement, the ambassadors remained “struck with astonishment and terror, as if deprived of all movement,” then “silent and despairing, ready to fall to the ground from fear and grief”^[33]; they withdrew together to weep “their individual and collective miseries”^[34]. The statue project, which would have constituted the gravest desecration ever inflicted on the Temple of Jerusalem, was ultimately never carried out—first delayed by the governor of Syria, Publius Petronius, who temporized in the face of the Jews’ supplications and wrote to the emperor to gain time^[35], then definitively abandoned upon Caligula’s death, assassinated in a conspiracy by his own guards on January 24, 41^[36].

Allegorical Exegesis: Reading Moses in the Light of Greek Philosophy

Philo’s intellectual project is to demonstrate, treatise after treatise, that the Law of Moses is not only compatible with the best Greek philosophy but that it contains and surpasses it. His fundamental method is allegorical exegesis: when the literal meaning of a biblical narrative presents a difficulty—divine anthropomorphism, improbability, seemingly insignificant detail—Philo seeks a second, spiritual and philosophical meaning, without denying the historical reality of the text^[44]. This dual reading, literal and spiritual, relies on a Neo-Pythagorean-inspired numerical symbolism and a cosmology of Stoic origin^[45]. A striking example: Philo interprets the high priest’s garment described in Exodus as a symbolic imitation of the entire universe, each piece of the garment corresponding to an element of the cosmos^[46].

For Philo, as later for the Therapeutae he describes, “the entire Law seems to these men like a living being, whose body would be the explicit commandments and whose soul the invisible meaning hidden beneath the words”^[47]. This formula—the Law as a living organism, body and soul—would become a guiding principle of all subsequent Christian allegorical exegesis, from Origen to Saint Augustine.

Overview of Major Treatises

Philo’s considerable work is divided into several major categories, which can be grouped as follows, according to the usual modern classification—Eusebius of Caesarea already gave, in the 4th century, a detailed list of his own^[48]:

This extensive output for a single ancient author is no accident: it systematically aims to show that a Jew faithful to the Torah can also be a fully accomplished philosopher in the most demanding Greek sense—a project both apologetic and theological, intended to defend Judaism against the intellectual contempt of Alexandria’s Greco-Roman elite^[49].

“The Firstborn”: An Intermediary Between God and the World

The most influential concept Philo bequeathed to the history of ideas is his doctrine of the Logos—a Greek word meaning both “word,” “reason,” and “discourse.” For Philo, God, in His own nature, is absolutely transcendent, unknowable in His essence: one can only know of Him that He is, never what He is^[50]. Between this inaccessible God and the sensible world, Philo places the Logos as an intermediary: “the invisible divine reason, perceptible only by the intellect, [Moses] calls the image of God”^[51]. The Logos is thus the archetypal model of creation, “the idea of ideas, the Reason of God”^[52], the instrument by which God shapes the sensible universe from the intelligible world.

In a particularly striking passage from his commentary On the Confusion of Tongues, Philo even personifies the Logos as a son begotten by God:

“Here is a man whose name is the East! [...] The Father of the universe brought him forth as the firstborn son, whom in another passage he calls the firstborn.” — Philo of Alexandria, De Confusione Linguarum, XIV, 62-63^[53]

An even bolder passage, preserved only in the Armenian version of Questions and Answers on Genesis (II, 62), goes so far as to call the Logos the “second God” (deuteros theos) in relation to the supreme God—a formulation so striking that it still fuels scholarly debates today about the origins of Christian theological vocabulary^[54].

A Doctrine Not to Be Confused with the Word Made Flesh

This vocabulary similarity between Philo’s Logos and the prologue of the Gospel of Saint John—“In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1)—has fueled, for more than a century, scholarly debate about a possible direct dependence of Saint John on Philo. Caution is warranted here: nothing establishes that the evangelist read Philo, and the hypothesis of direct influence remains debated and unproven; it is more likely that both authors draw, each in their own way, from a Greek vocabulary of the time—the Stoic logos as immanent cosmic reason, the Wisdom and Word of God from the biblical tradition itself (Ps 33:6; Pr 8; Wis 9:1-2)—without requiring a literary borrowing from one to the other.

The decisive point is not there anyway. Philo’s Logos remains a philosophical intermediate category, an abstract hypostasis between God and the world, never a fully distinct person begotten within the unity of the divine substance, and above all never incarnate. The Word of Saint John, by contrast, “became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn 1:14): He is the second Person of the Trinity, consubstantial with the Father, truly made man in Jesus Christ. Where Philo seeks an intermediary to protect divine transcendence from contact with matter, Christianity affirms instead that God Himself, without losing any of His divinity, entered into matter and history. It is precisely on this point that the Church Fathers, while borrowing from Philo his vocabulary and method, marked the irreducible difference between his theology and the Christian faith in the incarnate Word.

Contemplative Life on the Shores of Lake Mareotis

In his treatise De Vita Contemplativa, Philo describes in great detail a contemplative Jewish community established “beyond the walls, in solitary fields and gardens” near Lake Mareotis, southwest of Alexandria^[55]: the Therapeutae (and the Therapeutrides for women), whose name, according to Philo, means that they possess “a healing art more excellent than that practiced in the cities, for the latter heals only bodies, whereas the former heals souls”^[56]. Renouncing their possessions in favor of their children or relatives^[57], they live a rigorous ascetic life—no food or drink before sunset, simple bread seasoned with salt, pure water as their only drink^[58]—punctuated by prayer, allegorical study of the Scriptures, and an annual nocturnal vigil where men and women form two separate choirs, “as if drunk all night until the morning of this beautiful spiritual intoxication”^[59]. Philo notes that most Therapeutrides, though elderly, remain virgins out of purity and “admiration and love of wisdom,” not out of necessity^[60].

In another treatise, Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit, Philo describes a second ascetic Jewish community, distinct from the Therapeutae: the Essenes of Palestine, numbering about four thousand according to him, living in communities, sharing their goods, and mostly observing celibacy^[61]. This dual description, both in Philo and Flavius Josephus, forms one of the ancient documentary bases for the hypothesis identifying the inhabitants of the Qumran site, where the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, as a branch of the Essene movement—see The Qumran Manuscripts (Dead Sea Scrolls) for the debated state of this question^[62].

An Ancient Christian Legend: Eusebius and the “Monks” of Philo

This detailed description of the Therapeutae gave rise to a lasting misunderstanding among early Christian historians. In the 4th century, Eusebius of Caesarea, in his Ecclesiastical History, claims that these Jewish ascetics described by Philo were in fact Christians, disciples of the evangelist Mark in Alexandria:

“It is said that this Mark was the first sent to Egypt, that he proclaimed there the Gospel he had written, and that he established the first Church in Alexandria. [...] The multitude of believers, men and women, who gathered there from the beginning, and who led the most philosophical and ascetic life, was so great that Philo deemed it fitting to describe their practices.” — Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, II, 16-17^[63]

Eusebius even asserts that Philo “met Peter in Rome during the reign of Claudius, who was then preaching there,” and that he “knew and approved” Peter’s apostolic companions^[64], while Saint Jerome, repeating the same tradition in his De Viris Illustribus, goes so far as to rank Philo among the “ecclesiastical writers” for this sole reason^[65]. This is an ancient Christian legend, born of piety and admiration for Philo: Philo describes the Therapeutae as Jews devoted to the study of the Law of Moses^[66], and Eusebius himself reported this identification only as an “it is said”^[67]—the mark of a pious tradition, not an established fact. This ancient confusion deserves to be known precisely because it illustrates, by contrast, the real but sometimes excessive admiration early Christians had for Philo—to the point of wanting to claim him entirely.

Why Philo’s Silence Proves Nothing Against the Existence of Jesus

Philo of Alexandria lived exactly at the time of Jesus of Nazareth, of whom he was, within a few years, an exact contemporary—he died after 40^[68], only a few years after the Crucifixion. He left, in all his preserved works, no mention of Jesus or the early Christians. This silence, sometimes invoked by skeptical authors as an argument against the historicity of Jesus, does not withstand scrutiny: Philo lived in Alexandria, Egypt, while Jesus’ ministry took place in Galilee and Judea, a region Philo never addresses in his preserved works, which are entirely focused on Torah exegesis, philosophy, and the affairs of the Jewish community in Alexandria. A 1st-century Alexandrian philosopher had no reason to mention a Galilean preacher whose renown, during his lifetime, remained confined to Palestine—the argument from silence, here as elsewhere, proves nothing by itself^[69]. The historical existence of Jesus rests on other solid foundations, independent of any Christian confessional authority: four distinct extra-Christian sources (Tacitus, Flavius Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius) attest to his life and death—see Did Jesus Really Exist? for the detailed historical demonstration.

The Legend of the Meeting with Saint Peter in Rome

It is precisely the absence of any direct mention of Jesus or Christians in Philo that makes the tradition reported by Eusebius of a personal meeting between Philo and Saint Peter in Rome, during the reign of Claudius, all the more fragile^[70]. No writing of Philo confirms this meeting; it rests solely on later Christian tradition, eager to link the nascent Church to the prestigious figure of the greatest Jewish philosopher of his time. Encyclopedic caution requires presenting this account as a pious but unconfirmed tradition, not as a historically established fact.

Clement of Alexandria and Origen, Heirs to His Method

While rabbinic Judaism after the destruction of the Temple (70 AD) largely turned away from Philo—too Hellenized, too distant from Hebrew and the emerging Talmudic exegesis—it was the Christian Alexandrian school that almost single-handedly preserved and copied his work through the centuries. Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 215) directly adopts Philo’s vocabulary and categories of the Logos to construct his own theology of the preexistent Word^[71]. Origen (c. 185–c. 253), the greatest exegete of the Alexandrian school, in turn systematized Philo’s allegorical method—literal sense, moral sense, spiritual sense—and applied it to the entire Christian Scripture, both Old and New Testaments^[72].

“Either Plato Philonizes, or Philo Platonizes”

Christian admiration for Philo finds its most striking expression in an ancient Greek saying, reported by Saint Jerome in his catalogue On Illustrious Men, written around 392–393:

“It is said that under Claudius he ventured to Rome, where he had been sent as a legate of his nation, and that, having returned there a second time, he conversed in that same city with the apostle Peter and enjoyed his friendship. [...] Among the Greeks there is a saying about him: ‘Either Plato Philonizes, or Philo Platonizes,’ so great is the resemblance of ideas and language.” — Saint Jerome, De Viris Illustribus, chapter XI^[73]

Jerome himself clarifies that this saying “circulated among the Greeks” before him—he reports it without claiming it as his own. Moreover, in the same chapter, he provides a long list of Philo’s works known in his time, largely overlapping with the list compiled earlier by Eusebius of Caesarea in his Ecclesiastical History^[74]—proof that Philo’s works were then fully circulating in Christian libraries, at a time when they had already largely vanished from Jewish memory.

Ambrose of Milan and the Latin Legacy up to Augustine

In the West, it was Saint Ambrose of Milan (c. 339–397) who provided the most direct link: his own commentary on the creation of the world, the Hexameron, draws heavily—often without explicit citation—on Philo’s exegesis of Genesis, to the point that entire passages are genuine Latin translations or paraphrases of Philo^[75]. It was precisely Ambrose’s preaching in Milan—of which Augustine himself recounts, in Books V and VI of the Confessions, that it taught him to seek beneath the letter of Scripture its spiritual meaning^[76]—that turned Saint Augustine away from an overly literal reading of Genesis and contributed to his conversion: through this indirect channel, part of Philo’s exegesis thus came to nourish, three centuries and two languages later, one of the greatest doctors of the Latin Church.

Alexander Lysimachus, the Alabarch Who Gilded the Temple Gates

Philo’s brother, Alexander Lysimachus, holds a special place in the Jewish history of the 1st century. Alabarch of Alexandria, he was, according to Josephus, “the foremost among his contemporaries, both by birth and by wealth”^[77]. His fortune was such that he personally financed the gilding with gold and silver of the nine gates of the Second Temple in Jerusalem—“these nine gates received this gold and silver poured by Alexander, father of Tiberius”^[78]—a gesture of piety and patronage unparalleled for a Jewish notable of the diaspora. Imprisoned for a time by Caligula, likely due to his ties with the imperial household, he was released upon the accession of Claudius in 41 AD^[79], regaining his leading position in the Jewish community of Alexandria.

Tiberius Julius Alexander, the Nephew Who Abandoned His Fathers’ Faith

The contrast is striking with Tiberius Julius Alexander, son of Alexander Lysimachus and thus Philo’s nephew, who made a brilliant Roman career—but at the cost, according to Josephus, of abandoning the religion of his ancestors:

“He was the son of Alexander, the alabarch of Alexandria, who was a leading figure among all his contemporaries, both by family and wealth. However, he [Tiberius Alexander] was less pious than his father, for he did not persevere in the religion of his country.” — Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, XX, 5, 2^[80]

Becoming Roman procurator of Judea under Claudius around 46–48 AD, Tiberius Julius Alexander had James and Simon, sons of Judas the Galilean—the same agitator whose revolt against Quirinius’ census had inflamed Judea a generation earlier—crucified^[81]. Josephus notes that despite this harshness, he “made no changes to the ancient laws” and “kept the nation in peace”^[82]. His career culminated as Roman prefect of Egypt (66–69 AD), where he played a decisive role in Vespasian’s rise to the Empire during the crisis of 69 AD. The Jewish philosopher most admired by Christians and the apostate who became a high Roman official: the story of this single Alexandrian family, in one generation, encapsulates the entire tension of 1st-century Hellenistic Judaism, torn between fidelity to the Law and integration into the Empire.

• Did Jesus Really Exist? — the extra-Christian historical evidence for the existence and death of Jesus, distinguished from Philo’s silence on this point.
• The Qumran Manuscripts (Dead Sea Scrolls) — the archaeological and documentary record on the Essenes, also described by Philo in Quod Omnis Probus Liber Sit.
• The Book of Wisdom — a biblical book once mistakenly attributed to Philo himself, due to similarities in style and vocabulary.
• Hillel the Elder (c. 110 BC–c. AD 10) — a contemporary Pharisaic teacher, representing a rabbinic Judaism tradition very different from Philo’s Alexandrian Hellenism.