Of all the Jews who have written in Greek, Philo of Alexandria is undoubtedly the greatest on account of the breadth and richness of his ideas, the number of his works and his brilliant literary qualities. No other author in antiquity has attempted with so much boldness the confrontation and symbiosis of Judaism with another philosophy and another culture. This, one would think, would have assured his work and his personality a posthumous life among the generations of Jews which have followed him throughout the Mediterranean. However, in general Judaism knew absolutely nothing about him for fifteen hundred years, until in the sixteenth century Azariah ben Moses dei Rossi, a man of great learning who knew little Greek but who read in the Latin translation all the ancient Greek writers, including the Fathers of the Church, revived his name and his writings.

These writings, however, had not disappeared in the course of so many centuries; Christians from the beginning knew of them, made use of them and copied the manuscripts until the printed editions of the Renaissance; in 1552, Adrien Turnèbe published the whole of Philo's treatises in Paris for the first time. But it is above all in the nineteenth century that Philo gradually came to have an increasingly important place in the history of religious and philosophical ideas, as also in literary history. For a century, one study has followed another: sometimes detailed monographs as Zeller already attempted when he devoted nearly a hundred pages to Philo in his monumental Philosophie der Griechen (vol. iii.2, Tübingen, 1852; edn 5, Leipzig 1923); sometimes one-sided essays which overlook the complexity of a man who is both a Greek philosopher nurtured by Judaism and also a Jewish thinker moulded by Greek culture, and which claim to sum up the character of this astonishing personality in a word by choosing one of the alternatives Greek or Jew.

Canonic

The two main issues of Epicurean epistemology may be put as follows: what is the foundation of knowledge; and how is knowledge built on this foundation? There is general agreement that Epicurus proposed to rely on sensory observations as a means of knowing what is unobserved. But there is much debate on the extent to which he proposed to rely on empirical observations, on what he took to be the basic objects of observation, and on how he proposed to proceed from sensory information to the discovery of what is not perceived by the senses.

It has been argued that Epicurus proposed to use empirical observation as the only means of determining the truth or falsity of beliefs. He set out two rules of investigation at the beginning of his physics requiring that the truth and falsity of beliefs rest entirely on sensory observations. The two rules consist of a demand for empirical concepts and a demand for empirical data. The latter consist of uninterpreted, or what may be called ‘raw’ or ‘incorrigible’, acts of perception. Epicurus proposed to infer all truths about the physical world and human happiness from this incorrigible foundation.

Against this interpretation, it has been held that Epicurus was not nearly as methodical in his use of empirical observations. Rather, he accepted many nonempirical claims, while proposing to support theories (much like Aristotle) by agreement with perception. Although he supposed that all perceptions are in a sense incorrigible, Epicurus singled out what are ordinarily called true perceptions as the basis for checking scientific theories.

In rabbinic tradition, the Pharisaic sages are described as the successors of the men of the ‘Great Synagogue’ and, ultimately, of Moses: ‘Moses received the Law from Sinai and committed it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the Prophets; and the Prophets committed it to the men of the Great Synagogue. They said three things: be deliberate in judgement, raise up many disciples, and make a fence around the Law.’ Following this introduction, the Mishnah commemorates famous sages, from Simeon the Just and Antigonus of Sokho down to Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel. Committed to writing well after ce 70, this short ‘history’ of the Sages enabled the rabbis to make sense of and systematize the development of Jewish religious teaching in the aftermath of the catastrophe. Thus, m. Av. 1 may serve as the starting point of an inquiry into the history of Pharisaism, but not as its blueprint.

Before we can embark on our task, a few words concerning our sources are called for. The ‘classic’ texts which have been used by critical scholarship to reconstruct the history of Pharisaism are the works of Josephus, the New Testament and rabbinic works such as the Mishnah, the Tosefta, Tannaitic passages in both the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmuds and Tannaitic midrashim. To these we can now add, thanks to the discovery of the Qumran library, 4qpNah, 1qpHab, 4qpPs37, 4qTest, 11qt and, most importantly, 4qmmt. To a certain degree, 1 and 2 Maccabees and the Psalms of Solomon can also assist our reconstruction.

The schools which dominated the philosophy of the Hellenistic age did not disintegrate or disappear with the end of the Hellenistic era, but for the most part continued to exist well into Imperial times. This certainly is true of the two schools which came into existence only at the beginning of the Hellenistic period, and which in their very origin have a distinctive Hellenistic character, the Stoa and Epicurus’ Garden. We can produce a long list of distinguished Stoic philosophers stretching well into the third century AD: a list that includes Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The Epicureans are less conspicuous in Imperial times, but, again, the list is fairly long, including e.g. Diogenes of Oenoanda in the second century AD. The generalization is also true of the two older schools. Indeed the Peripatos, which had lost some of its prominence and influence in Hellenistic times, saw a revival in the Empire, largely by returning to Aristotle, but without entirely shedding the Hellenistic heritage.

More complicated is the case of Plato's Academy. The debate in philosophy in Hellenistic times was crucially shaped by the fact that the Academy under Arcesilaus turned sceptical, and by the dominance of scepticism in the school until the time of Philo of Larissa and Antiochus early in the first century BC, when Platonism re-emerged. So here there was a break of continuity at the end of the Hellenistic era. But it was not a complete break. There continued to be philosophers, like Favorinus of Arelate, who saw themselves as in the tradition of Arcesilaus and Carneades.

Introduction

Hellenistic political philosophy has had a bad press. In lectures published in 1983 the distinguished and influential ancient historian Moses Finley gave it as his view that Plato and Aristotle ‘were the first genuine political theorists of antiquity, and the last’. For only they attempted ‘a complete and coherent account’ of the ideal society ‘grounded in systematic metaphysics, epistemology, psychology and ethics’. Some thirty years earlier, in what remains an eminently serviceable general account of Greek political thought, T. A. Sinclair wrote as follows:

Finley and Sinclair are only echoing a long entrenched judgement which finds a classic formulation in the third volume of Zeller's great history of Greek philosophy, first published in 1852. For Zeller the Hellenistic period found the Greeks coping with a deterioration in their external circumstances, and particularly with loss of political self-determination as the monarchies of Alexander's successors eclipsed the city-state, by withdrawing into the inner world of self-consciousness.

Introduction: the fourth-century legacy

By the time of the death of Aristotle, there was some measure of agreement among educated Greeks about the nature of the cosmos. The word cosmos itself soon acquired a canonical meaning. Aristotle used it in its wider sense to mean ‘good order’ or ‘elegance’, but in the context of the study of the natural world he used it as a synonym for ouranos, thinking particularly of the heavens and their orderly movements. But the word was defined by the Stoic Chrysippus as a ‘system of heaven and earth and the natures contained in these’ (Ar. Did. fr. 31 ap. Stob. I.184.8–10), and this is a definition that reappears, sometimes with small variations, fairly frequently. It is repeated by the Peripatetic author of the treatise On the Cosmos attributed to Aristotle (391b9). The Epicurean definition was not significantly different (Ep. Epistula ad Pythoclem 88).

From the start this definition marks a difference between the classical use of the word and our own in the twentieth century. The ancient use of the word leaves open the possibility that the cosmos in which we live is only a part of the universe. A cosmos is a limited system, bounded on its periphery by the heavens: what lay beyond the heavens of our cosmos, if anything, was open to debate. This chapter will therefore be careful to preserve the distinction between the cosmos and the universe.

Aristotle had already provided arguments to show that the earth does not move and occupies a position at the centre of the cosmos (In Aristotelis De caelo commentaria II. 14).

Philosophy and mathematics

The relationship between philosophy and mathematics appears to be less close in the Hellenistic age than in previous centuries. The mathematicians proceeded with their work without any explicit adhesion to philosophical doctrines or any reply to the theoretical and epistemological problems raised by the Epicureans and the sceptics when dealing with mathematics. In the fifth century AD the Neo-platonist Proclus saw Euclid as a Platonist, because his Elements concluded with the construction of regular polyhedrons, the basis of the cosmic structure outlined by Plato in the Timaeus (Eucl. 68.20–3; 70.22–71.5). But there is no proof that Euclid meant to direct the whole of his writing towards the creation of a cosmology.

Another level on which Proclus tried to show Euclidean geometry's dependence on philosophy was the formal structure of the Elements. This was based on the distinction between a small number of principles, assumed at the outset without demonstration and listed in the first book as definitions, common notions and postulates, and a body of propositions reached deductively starting from the principles. Proclus highlighted a correspondence between this structure and the theory of science formulated by Aristotle, particularly in the Posterior Analytics, and also between Euclid's principles and those mentioned by Aristotle (Eucl. 76.6–77.2). It is in fact possible to make out some parallelism: for example, Aristotle includes among the principles used by mathematicians Euclid's third common notion, which is that if equals are subtracted from equals, the remainders will be equal (APo. 76a41).

Foundations and first principles

Stoic ethics starts from foundations and first principles which are more explicit than those of most ancient ethical systems. Chrysippus announced in his Propositions in Physics that ‘there is no other or more fitting way to tackle the theory of good and bad things, the virtues, and happiness than on the basis of nature as a whole and the administration of the cosmos’ (Plu. De Stoicis In Platonis Rempublicam commentarii 1035c). This explicit statement about starting points puts the emphasis on nature in the cosmic sense, i.e. the nature of the entire providentially governed cosmos; but elsewhere Chrysippus turns to a more inclusive sense of nature: when he says ‘Where should I begin from and what should I take as the starting point for the appropriate and as the raw material for virtue, if I skip over nature and what accords with nature?’ (Plu. De communibus notitiis adversus Stoicos. 1069e), it is clear that the nature in question is not just cosmic. Crucial ethical concepts also find their roots in the nature of humans and in theories about what accords with human nature.

The central importance of human nature clearly goes back to the founder of the school. In the list of titles given by Diogenes Laertius (VII.4) we find a treatise On the life according to nature and one On impulse, also titled On human nature. But we have no record of an On goals or On virtue; indeed, the main evidence given for Zeno's views on the telos is the work On human nature (D.L. VII.87). Whatever the rôle of human as opposed to cosmic nature in Zeno's thinking, it is striking that the major ethical treatises (aside from the Republic) suggest a strong interest in the former.

The epistemological turn

It is generally agreed that the Hellenistic period is the great age of ancient epistemology. For a variety of reasons, many of which have nothing to do with the history of philosophy, the period is standardly deemed to start in 323 bc on the death of Alexander the Great. By a curious coincidence, two philosophers of signal and symbolic importance had connections with Alexander. The first is Aristotle, who had been tutor to the young Alexander and who died a year after his royal pupil, leaving a vast body of scientific and philosophical work which, after a period of mixed fortune, would for centuries be considered - in particular by the sceptics - as a model of dogmatic thought. The second is Pyrrho, some twenty years younger than Aristotle, who accompanied Alexander on his eastern campaign: he returned from Asia in his prime, and the words and deeds which filled the rest of his long life caused him, rightly or wrongly, to be regarded for centuries as the eponymous hero of scepticism.

It is tempting - and conventional - to assert that, on Aristotle's death, philosophy saw itself driven from a happy paradise of epistemological innocence, and that the poison of doubt, spat out by the serpent of Pyrrhonism, would oblige any future philosopher who failed to succumb to it to earn his neo-dogmatic bread by the sweat of his brow. And this picture makes a pleasing diptych with the picture which is painted, with equal facility, of the state of ethics: before the geopolitical earthquake provoked by Alexander, the moral existence of the Greeks had been firmly framed by the ethical and political structures of the city-state; after the earthquake, the new Hellenistic schools could offer the shaken citizenry nothing more than recipes for individual salvation.

‘JEWS’ AND ‘GENTILES’: TERMINOLOGY

By Hasmonaean times the people of Palestine had survived and been increased by two thousand years of invasions. The Israelite invasion had been only one in a long series. The series had produced a stock of untraceable complexity, diversified by many small groups with recognizable local characteristics. Such groups were more conspicuous than the population's general uniformity, hence classical Hebrew had no word equivalent to our ‘Palestinian’; Pelishtim means ‘Philistines’, another peculiar group of invaders. ‘Canaanite’ was sometimes pressed into service for the whole non-Israelite population, but properly speaking the Canaanites were only one of the many little peoples whom the Israelites had found living in the land. According to the stories of the Israelite invasion they had shared possession with Perizzites, Hivites, Amorites, Jebusites, etc.

Such peoples the Israelites called ‘the goyyim’. Goy (the singular) refers to ‘an ethnic group considered as a political rather than a biological entity’; it was therefore rendered by the King James translators as ‘nation’. In this sense it was occasionally used for ‘Israel’ (the Israelites considered as a single group). More frequently, however, goy and goyyim were used of non-Israelite groups, often by antithesis to Israel, and pejoratively. Both singular and plural referred to ‘nations’ only; the classical Hebrew terms for a single alien, qua alien, were nokhri and zar. There was no term whatever for an individual who worshipped gods other than Yahweh, much less for all such persons. It was taken for granted that other nations worshipped their own gods (though individuals among them might also worship Yahweh), but until the end of the monarchy the Israelites thought of aliens primarily as strangers and as members of other nations, not as worshippers of other gods; there was no term for, nor concept of, ‘the heathen’ as such.