Letters and Notes in Response to Wolfson’s Philo

To enter an archive and read through letters that were not meant to be seen by the great public can make one feel somewhat uncomfortable. It may even be seen as an intrusion into the privacy of a past generation of scholars. At the same time, letters are an extremely valuable source for reconstructing a scholar’s biography. In the case of Harry Wolfson, it is probably safe to say that he would not have minded us reading through the letters and notes (or most of them) that he received on the occasion of the publication of his Philo between the summer of 1947 and the summer of 1948. Many of the recipients of the two volumes reacted: some limited themselves to brief thank-you-notes, others wrote actual letters. Most letters are written in English, some in Hebrew, and a few in German. Harry Starr, the president of the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, which supported the publication of Wolfson’s Philo with a grant, wrote on 28 November 1947, in a letter to Jacob Billikopf (a prominent figure in Jewish philanthropy and social work): “If you ever get up to Cambridge, make Harry Wolfson show you some of the letters he received about this work from the greatest names in philosophy and Semitics.”^{Footnote 24} It seems that Wolfson was proud of the responses he received to the well-orchestrated promotion of his book.^{Footnote 25} I will first discuss positive (if not enthusiastic) Jewish responses, then mixed and critical ones from both Jews and non-Jews. As will become clear, often much more was at stake than a purely academic discussion.

Rehabilitating the Jewish Philo

Most of the letters, articles, and notes in the Philo papers at the Wolfson archive at Harvard University are positive appraisals of the book. Of course, many of them are thank-you letters, and their authors were eager to show their gratitude for having received a free copy of the book. However, the excitement about Wolfson’s Philo was often more than a gesture: it is especially tangible in letters from Jewish scholars and rabbis living in the United States. Many praised Wolfson for his fresh, Jewish interpretation of Philo. Leo Schwarz, Wolfson’s biographer, writes to him: “as in your previous volumes you have given Jewish philosophy a habitation and a name.”^{Footnote 26} Especially rabbis from Reform communities enthusiastically endorsed Philo’s return to Judaism: “you have made a real Jew of Philo,” writes Rabbi Felix A. Levy, a Reform rabbi in Chicago.^{Footnote 27} Rabbi Samuel S. Cohon, professor of Jewish theology at the Hebrew Union College and a leader of the Reform movement, expresses in his letter his deep gratitude to Wolfson for placing Philo at the “headwaters of the Christian, Islamic and Jewish philosophic streams,” because, so far, Philo had “not received a square deal.”^{Footnote 28} Ralph Marcus, a friend of Wolfson’s and himself a great specialist of Hellenistic Judaism, speaks of a “rehabilitation of Philo.”^{Footnote 29}

Particularly enthusiastic are the reactions of some of the scholars who write to Wolfson in Hebrew: Shalom Spiegel, Professor of medieval Hebrew literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary and author of Hebrew Reborn (1930), writes to Wolfson that he received the volumes on the evening of Yom Kippur and that he could not stop reading. Wolfson, Spiegel writes, is Philo’s redeemer () “who returned him to his people and to the inheritance of his ancestors and also brought him back to the significance he deserves given his influence in the history of philosophy.”^{Footnote 30} Chaim Tchernowitz, a fervent Zionist who, like Wolfson, was first trained in a Lithuanian yeshiva and then later became a professor of Talmud and Rabbinic literature at the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, uses very similar language: he is grateful to Wolfson because he “restored the former Jewish glory that the Goyim had taken from Philo and his name.”^{Footnote 31} Tchernowitz shows great sympathy for Wolfson’s take on rabbinic parallels in Philo: there must have been an exchange between Alexandria and the rabbinic movement. If Philo had written his oeuvre in Hebrew, Tchernowitz continues, there would now be a “Midrash Alexandria,” a “Rabbi Yedidyah” (the Hebrew name for Philo since Azariah de’ Rossi) or maybe even a third Talmud, in addition to the Bavli and the Yerushalmi, a “Talmud Alexandria.” However, Philo would not have deserved that, Tchernowitz writes to Wolfson, because Philo “sinned” by not writing his tractates in Hebrew (and Wolfson, too, Tchernowitz adds, should have written his book in Hebrew!^{Footnote 32}). Another reaction full of excitement came from Harry Blumberg, who at the time taught Hebrew at the James Monroe High School in New York and published several Hebrew textbooks.^{Footnote 33} In his letter, written in Hebrew, Blumberg shows his deep gratitude to Wolfson for having corrected the “misconceptions and prejudices of scholars such as Ziegert and Goodenough (…) who did not refrain from humiliating the value of Philo and the Jews in Alexandria.”^{Footnote 34}

To these Jewish scholars, more important than Wolfson’s main thesis (Philo as a predecessor for medieval thought) was that Wolfson restored Philo’s Judaism. He brought Philo home. And he brought him much closer to the world of the rabbis and to the Hebrew language. According to Wolfson, Philo knew Hebrew. True, it is obvious that Philo used the Greek text of the Bible in his exegetical work, but that is because he wrote for a Greek readership: “Writing in Greek for Greek readers, he would naturally quote the translation familiar to his readers, even though his knowledge of Hebrew was such that he could himself without too much effort provide his own translation.”^{Footnote 35} With this Wolfson distanced himself from scholars such as Isaak Heinemann (see below) according to whom Philo did not know Hebrew. Especially in light of the numerous Hebrew etymologies in his exegesis, Wolfson believed that “the burden of proof is upon those who would deny that he [Philo] possessed such a knowledge [of Hebrew].”^{Footnote 36} According to Wolfson, Alexandrian and Palestinian Judaism were by no means two worlds apart. Rather, the Alexandrian Jewish community endorsed “the dominant element” which came from Palestine and which “ultimately gave rise to Pharisaism.”^{Footnote 37} To readers such as Chaim Tchernowitz and Shalom Spiegel, both promoters of the Hebrew language, Wolfson’s portrait of Philo as being in an intense exchange with rabbinic thinking in Palestine was very attractive indeed, a treat for the Jewish high holidays in 1947 when the book came out. Two years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust, Wolfson’s grand work could be read as proof of a strong and lively Jewish presence in intellectual history. As noted before, Wolfson was not the first to stress the importance of Philo in both Jewish and non-Jewish intellectual history. Nor was he the first to situate Philo within a larger Judaism that included the rabbinic movement. Prior to Wolfson, Samuel Belkin, who was Wolfson’s student at Harvard, had already argued in his Philo and the Oral Law, that Philo had been considerably influenced by rabbinic, that is Palestinian, Judaism. Belkin, too, aimed at stressing Philo’s Jewish identity: “Philo has been studied with great interest, but Judaeus has been left unnoticed.”^{Footnote 38} But the scope of Belkin’s study, which grew out of a Brown University dissertation, was much more confined and, in comparison with the reception of Wolfson’s Philo, caused no commotion.^{Footnote 39}

In the Shadow of World War II

Wolfson’s goal was to rehabilitate Philo, to secure his place in the library of Jewish philosophy. In the light of his greater history of philosophy, Wolfson’s “real critical thrust,” was, as Leon Wieseltier rightly notes, “toward a reassessment of the place of Judaism within Western culture.”^{Footnote 40} Wolfson wanted to show how influential Philo was for later medieval thought centered around Scripture. The young Morton Smith sent Wolfson a thank-you note, written in Hebrew, in which he called Wolfson’s Philo “the best preface to Christian theology.”^{Footnote 41} However, to Wolfson, Philo was more than that, more than just a preparatory author.^{Footnote 42} The conviction that the contributions of Jewish philosophy had been greatly underestimated and that there was an urgent need for a reevaluation had been driving Wolfson’s research early on.^{Footnote 43} With Philo, that conviction reached a pinnacle. It is not clear when exactly Wolfson started working on Philo, maybe as early as in 1937.^{Footnote 44} In 1942, he published a substantial article on Philo’s take on free will which became one of the backbones of the later monograph. In 1944 and 1946 two brief studies on Jewish citizenship and the Synhedrion in Philo followed.^{Footnote 45}

Wolfson wrote his Philo during the Second World War. It is difficult to imagine that his strong emphasis on the Jewish momentum in the history of philosophy, while already present in his earlier work, was not also the result of the continuing marginalization of the Jews in Europe (and elsewhere). What seems to be clear from the letters at the Wolfson archive is that in the post-war years of mourning and uncertainty, Philo could provide an orientation for comfort and a source of pride for Jewish readers. Henry Hurwitz, the editor of The Menorah Journal (to which Wolfson had contributed several articles in earlier years),^{Footnote 46} writes to Wolfson: “It is thrilling to contemplate that two Jews have divided the substance and history of post-Greek European philosophy between them—Philo and Spinoza. Yet there are those who say that Jews are aliens in Europe!”^{Footnote 47} In an emotional letter, the ancient historian Eugen Täubler writes from Cincinnati to congratulate Harry Wolfson on his “opus grande” on Philo. Struggling with the English language, Täubler switches in the middle of a sentence to his native German (apologetically reminding Wolfson that German is not only the language of today’s Germany, it was also the language of pre-war Germany). He had always hoped, Täubler writes, “that Judaism would one day be recognized not only as a tolerated but as an indispensable part of European intellectuality.” What was left, he continues, were “two question marks: European culture? Judaism?”^{Footnote 48} Täubler’s appreciation for Wolfson’s Philo is to be understood against this background: throughout his work, Täubler stressed that Jewish history needs to be understood within universal history.^{Footnote 49} Täubler, who was forced out of his professorship at the University of Heidelberg in 1933, took note of Wolfson’s repositioning of Philo in the history of philosophy with some satisfaction.

Laudatory language on Wolfson’s Philo can also be found in the Jewish Press. In a long review, published in the Passover edition of The Jewish Advocate in 1948, Rabbi Joseph Shubow, who served as a military chaplain in Europe and was a prominent Zionist leader, praises the book in the most enthusiastic terms: when he read the book, Shubow felt himself to be “in a state of spiritual ecstasy.” “Nobody,” Shubow writes, “has ever so fully depicted the majesty and inner depth of value and enriching influence which Jewish political thought merits.” The review, surrounded by large “Happy Passover” ads, is a long hymn on how Wolfson liberated Philo, and Jewish philosophy in general, from slavery.^{Footnote 50} Later in the year, in December of 1948, the “Jewish Book Council of America” awarded Wolfson the prize for the best non-fiction Jewish work of the year. Wolfson was the first recipient to be awarded this prize.^{Footnote 51}

Irony and Critique: Scholem, Bickerman, Heinemann

Among the letters that were sent to Harry Wolfson on the occasion of the publication of his Philo one also finds responses that were less enthusiastic than others, sometimes not without hints of irony. Thus Gershom Scholem, the great specialist of Jewish mysticism, writes from Jerusalem to Harry Wolfson: “I am filled with wonder about the discussions it [the book] certainly should entail. I am very glad I am not a historian of philosophy as your book would put me in great distress as to what to do about all that goyish gibberish which hitherto has been called history of philosophy. Now it seems that the Jews have stolen the show for another time: three philosophers who count, and two of them Jews. [may it be] that you are right of which, of course, I am not sure having not yet studied the volumes.”^{Footnote 52} Scholem does not hide that he has doubts about Wolfson’s grandiose repositioning of Philo in the history of philosophy. However, in the letter one also notices, beyond the irony, a sympathetic wondering about Wolfson’s new take on Philo.^{Footnote 53} With “three philosophers who count, two of them Jews” he means, as he states in his critical review on Leo Schwarz’ biography of Wolfson from 1979, Aristotle, Philo and Spinoza. In that review, published more than thirty years later, Scholem leaves no doubt that in his opinion Wolfson greatly exaggerated the importance of Philo as a philosopher: “Wolfson, in his big work on Philo of Alexandria, maintained the bold thesis that Philo was the most important philosopher between Aristotle and Spinoza, thereby making out that two of the great pillars of Western philosophy were Jews—a contention scarcely acceptable to many of Wolfson’s readers, or of Philo’s, for that matter, Jews and Gentiles alike.”^{Footnote 54} Naturally, in his thank you note to Wolfson, Scholem phrased his critique in a much less skeptical tone. But at the time, under the immediate impression of the Holocaust, Scholem may even have felt some sympathy for Wolfson’s grandiose thesis.

Wolfson’s book raised eyebrows, especially among those who otherwise did not have great interest in or sympathy for Philo. The ancient historian Elias Bickerman, who at the time had a research fellowship at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, writes to Wolfson: “I don’t know anything about Philo. Except his political tracts, I could never compel myself to read more than a couple of pages of his tiresome homiletics. You, however, succeed in making this synagogue preacher interesting and important. Viewed in the line of Maimonides and St. Thomas, even Philo appears endowed with reason (…).”^{Footnote 55} It can be doubted that Wolfson’s book left a lasting impression on Bickerman or that it changed the latter’s opinion on Philo.

Bickerman was a historian, a specialist of the Hellenistic period and the Maccabees. Much closer to Wolfson’s interests was the classicist Isaak Heinemann, who at the time was already an established Philo scholar. Heinemann, who came out of a modern-orthodox Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main, was the author of Philons jüdische und griechische Bildung, published in 1926, and since 1919 the co-editor of the German Philo edition.^{Footnote 56} To Heinemann it was clear that Philo did not know Hebrew. He tries to show that Philo was much closer to Greek legal and philosophical thinking than to Jewish “oral law” (with a few exceptions).^{Footnote 57} For Heinemann, one could say, Philo in a way represented an integrated German Jew avant la lettre.^{Footnote 58} Heinemann’s approach to Philo differed, then, quite a bit from Wolfson’s. Heinemann wrote a letter in German from Jerusalem (he had emigrated to Palestine in 1939) to thank Harry Wolfson for having sent him a copy of Philo. In the letter, Heinemann, who was Wolfson’s senior by about ten years, lets Wolfson politely know who is ahead in the study of Philo: “you made yourself quite successfully familiar with a field which in your earlier research you have touched upon less.”^{Footnote 59} Heinemann barely mentions any points of disagreement: “we entirely agree on many points” (in vielem sind wir uns vollkommen einig). This, though, was the polite language of a thank-you letter. That Heinemann was not convinced by Wolfson’s main thesis becomes clear from two review essays he published on the book: the first in Hebrew, the second—with a more substantial critique—in German.^{Footnote 60} Heinemann rejects Wolfson’s view that Philo introduced philosophy as a handmaid of Scripture. Philo, Heinemann argues, was much more embedded in Greek philosophy (and much further away from the rabbis) than Wolfson suggests. Moreover, according to Heinemann, Wolfson overlooks the fact that the Greeks, too, could think of law as something inspired and that for Philo the concept of revelation was not that essential after all (much less than for medieval philosophers). Neither was there a clear cut between Greek philosophy and Philo, nor was Philo the predecessor of medieval philosophy tout court. Heinemann’s and Wolfson’s methodological approaches to Philo were worlds apart: here the classicist trained by German philologists (Heinemann wrote his dissertation on Solon in Berlin under the supervision of Hermann Diels), there the philosopher whose “Talmudic hypothetico-deductive method” was based on the assumption that every text passage is significant and part of a reasoning that can be deduced.^{Footnote 61}

Goodenough’s Critique and Marcus’s Defense

In many respects, Heinemann’s critique coincided with that of Erwin R. Goodenough, the historian of religions at Yale University and Wolfson’s great rival.^{Footnote 62} Goodenough and Wolfson each imagined a very different Philo. For Goodenough, the author of By Light, Light: The Mystic Gospel of Hellenistic Judaism (1935), Philo was primarily a mystic, his Judaism, mystical Judaism.^{Footnote 63} Wolfson rejects that view early on in his monograph.^{Footnote 64} There are two letters from Goodenough in the Wolfson papers at Harvard. In the first, Goodenough congratulates Wolfson on this “accomplishment,” not without indicating that they will probably continue to disagree.^{Footnote 65} In the second letter, the tone continues to be friendly, but Goodenough remains firm with regard to one of his main critiques (shared by Heinemann): the parallelization of Philo with rabbinic sources. Just how rabbinic sources could possibly “throw light on a period from two to ten centuries before they were written,” remains methodologically questionable to Goodenough. Such a method “has never been proposed, let alone demonstrated.”^{Footnote 66} Like Heinemann, Goodenough published a review essay on Wolfson’s book.^{Footnote 67} In the review, he rejects Wolfson’s concept of “native” Judaism in which rabbinic and Jewish-Hellenistic thought convene. For Goodenough, Wolfson, although he makes Philo a greater person than he had ever been, does not do justice to the Alexandrian philosopher. Very much like Heinemann, Goodenough criticizes Wolfson’s urge to “reconcile inconsistencies.”^{Footnote 68} With such an approach, according to Goodenough, Wolfson belittled the complexities of Philo’s thinking which allowed for contradictions. In the eyes of Goodenough, Wolfson may have promoted Jewish philosophy, but not Philo of Alexandria.^{Footnote 69} With this, Goodenough declared a failure what was most important to Wolfson: to prove the importance of the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria. Such a critique was not to remain without a response. It was his friend and mentor Ralph Marcus, an established scholar of Josephus and Philo, who came to Wolfson’s assistance. In a review article published in the spring of 1949, Marcus defends Wolfson against some of the critiques, especially the one by Goodenough. By stating that Wolfson’s Philo “surpasses the studies of earlier scholars in breadth and depth,” he places Wolfson above Goodenough.^{Footnote 70} Following up on Wolfson’ last chapter (“What is New in Philo?”) Marcus asks: “What is new in Wolfson’s Philo?” While Marcus is not willing to endorse Wolfson’s grand thesis of Philo as the founder of medieval philosophy, he repeats publicly what he had written to Wolfson in a private letter^{Footnote 71} and what to him as a Professor of Hellenistic culture apparently was most important: before Wolfson, Philo had “not been adequately recognized as a philosopher in his own right.”^{Footnote 72} As becomes clear from a letter that Marcus sent to Wolfson in the summer of 1948, the review was orchestrated by the two: “My own adverse comments on Philo are few and detailed, not too gefährlich. … If youre not pleased by my review, boy, you sure aint never gonna be pleased by any review.”^{Footnote 73}

Emil Fackenheim’s Review of Philo

As becomes clear from a number of letters and notes in the Harvard Archives, another review (or rather a review essay), published in the newly founded journal The Review of Metaphysics, made Wolfson truly furious. The author of the review was the young Emil L. Fackenheim, at the time a recent PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto and rabbi at a reform community in Hamilton, Ontario.^{Footnote 74} The review may show a bit of ardor iuvenilis, but it is by no means spiteful. Rather, Fackenheim discusses in a balanced way the merits and shortcomings (some of which he does not hesitate to call “serious”) of the book. Fackenheim endorses Wolfson’s initial observation that in scholarship Philo had been neglected as a philosopher. He praises Wolfson for having demonstrated to what extent Philo corrects Plato’s theory of knowledge (by recognizing the need for revelation). And he discusses in most laudatory terms Wolfson’s interpretation of Philo when it comes to ethical questions. At the same time, Fackenheim notes three methodological limitations in Wolfson’s Philo. First, he rejects Wolfson’s “hypothetico-deductive method of text-study.” That method, Fackenheim writes, “fetters the creative potential of philosophic ideas to conditions behind them; it makes Philo, a pious Jew with sincere philosophic aspirations, perforce face the problem of reconciling Scripture with Greek philosophy, and relentlessly be driven to certain conclusions.”^{Footnote 75} What Fackenheim, the reform rabbi, rejects is Wolfson’s proneness to make Philo an orthodox Jew. In some ways, Philo becomes here the object of an inner-Jewish dialogue on orthodoxy and liberalism. The second critique concerns Wolfson’s hesitation, in Fackenheim’s view, to ask how and why a doctrine in Philo came about. Third, Fackenheim criticizes Wolfson for not looking more into historical realities when explaining the peculiarities of Philo’s arguments.^{Footnote 76} Moreover, Fackenheim regrets that Wolfson sometimes did not dig deeper. If in Philo reason is subordinate to faith, how can reason then explain the true meaning of Scripture, Fackenheim wonders.^{Footnote 77} Towards the end of his nineteen-page review essay, Fackenheim—he, too, a Jewish immigrant (from Halle, Germany)—goes so far as to criticize Wolfson’s English: “His style, while on the whole adequate, is sometimes absurdly involved, and there are grammatical mistakes.”^{Footnote 78} As becomes clear from letters that ensued, it was in particular Fackenheim’s critical remarks with regard to language that hurt Wolfson tremendously. Remarkably (or maybe naively), Fackenheim sent offprints of the review to Wolfson. In an enclosed letter, written on 15 May 1948 (the day after the Israeli declaration of independence), Fackenheim stresses “how very instructive and stimulating” he found the reading of the “two learned volumes:” “Had I not been entrusted with the task to review them, I should probably not have found the time to study them as carefully. It has been most worthwhile.”^{Footnote 79} When Wolfson received Fackenheim’s letter, he had already seen the review and intended to publish a sharp response. Here, too, it was Ralph Marcus who tried to calm Wolfson down. In two letters to Wolfson, Marcus strongly advised against writing “a rejoinder in a ferocious tone.”^{Footnote 80} In the first two weeks of May 1948, Wolfson exchanged letters with the editor of The Review of Metaphysics, Paul Weiss, as well as members of the editorial board of the journal (Anton Pegis and Charles Hartshorne). Weiss showed little sympathy for Wolfson’s reaction, but was willing to publish a response under the condition that Fackenheim would be allowed to respond in the same issue of the journal.^{Footnote 81} That condition, however, was not acceptable to Wolfson (“I will not debate with a man who went out of the way to be personally insulting”).^{Footnote 82} In another letter to Paul Weiss, Wolfson indicates that he would not want to exclude writing a response at some point—“in a form both satisfactory to myself and suitable for your Review.”^{Footnote 83} Wolfson’s poisonous response to Fackenheim was never printed.^{Footnote 84} On 25 May 1948 Wolfson wrote an angry letter to Fackenheim, accusing him of acting like a “stern schoolmaster, querying, spattering corrections, and handing out advice.” In the letter, he rejects Fackenheim’s points of critique in toto. He ends by writing: “I am sorry for you.”^{Footnote 85} Nowhere in these letters is there mention of what was happening in mid-May of 1948 in the Near East. Harry Wolfson, a fervent Zionist from his youth, got caught up in his own battlefield.^{Footnote 86}

Bringing Philo to Germany

Wolfson promoted his book with an almost missionary effort. Copies of the volumes were sent out to different parts of the world. Among the addressees, German scholars figure particularly prominently. It seems that Wolfson wanted to make sure his Philo reached German scholarship. For this purpose, he had received help from Erich Frank, the philosopher who, until his expulsion in 1936, had been Martin Heidegger’s successor in Marburg, and now taught philosophy at Bryn Mawr College. Frank sent Wolfson several letters in which he referred to (mainly) German scholars who would be interested in his Philo such as Ernst Käsemann (Mainz), Günther Bornkamm (Göttingen), Joseph Pascher (Munich) and Gerhard Kittel (Tübingen).^{Footnote 87} On Wolfson’s own lists of scholars who were to receive copies of Philo German scholars, especially theologians (but also journals and libraries), also figure prominently: Rudolf Bultmann (Marburg), Martin Dibelius (Heidelberg), Heinrich Schlier (Bonn). As for Wolfson’s motivations to promote his book strongly in Germany one can only guess (besides the fact that in Germany Philonic scholarship was more present than elsewhere). It may not be too far-fetched to assume that Wolfson wished that his portrait of a Jewish Philo who was so important for all of medieval philosophy would also take foot in the country which had led such a gruesome war against the Jews. As a young man, after having visited Germany on his travel fellowship, he reported in rather pessimistic language about the possibility of a full acceptance of Jews in German society: “that the Jews are capable of being good patriots is no longer questioned, but can they be genuine ones? Will not the Jews always remain the carriers of an alien culture, unabsorbable and unassimilable, despite their conversion and intermarriage? It is this problem that confronts the Jewish intellectuals in Germany.”^{Footnote 88}

Strikingly, in the Philo-correspondence in the Wolfson archive, there is only one brief response that was sent to Cambridge from Germany: the psychiatrist Karl Jaspers thanked Wolfson for this “offenbar ungemein gründliche, historisch genaue und begrifflich konstruktive Buch” (“this clearly extremely thorough, historically accurate and conceptually constructive book”).^{Footnote 89} For whatever reason, Wolfson’s Philo was not well received in Germany. The points of critique were similar to those we have already encountered in the reviews by Goodenough, Heinemann, and Fackenheim. Wolfson was criticized for his tendency to harmonize inconsistencies in Philo’s work, for over-systematizing Philo, for artificially bringing rabbinic thought into proximity with Greek philosophy, but also—as the church historian Walther Völker (Mainz) put it—for his strong “Jewish point of view.” For Völker, Wolfson’s self-confident presentation of a greatly influential Philo must have been too provocative. In his own monograph on Philo, published in 1938, Völker had argued the opposite: that early Christian piety has very little in common with Philo. In his review, he compares Wolfson with Jewish-Hellenistic authors who claim that Plato had plagiarized Moses.^{Footnote 90} Other reviews published in Germany were less harsh on Wolfson, but far from endorsing his thesis.^{Footnote 91} Wolfson cannot have been pleased with the reception of his Philo in Germany.