Philo of Alexandria lived in the 1st century BCE and wrote sophisticated books about Jewish thought and the Hebrew Bible that were deeply informed by the ideas of Plato and other ancient philosophers. While his work was much studied by early Christian thinkers, Philo plays a somewhat anomalous role in Judaism. The Talmud was shaped by Jews living in Judea and Babylonia, who betray no knowledge of Philo’s ideas, much as he displays no knowledge of rabbinic traditions. Yet once Jews rediscovered his work, written in Greek, and translated it into Hebrew, some would find inspiration in it, as Dovid Campbell writes:
For the rabbis of Renaissance Italy, he modeled a Judaism that valued the products of Greek civilization but thoroughly subordinated them to religious practice. For those religiously conservative promoters of the Haskalah [Jewish Enlightenment] movement, he was a halakhic Jew who nevertheless found value in culture and worldly wisdom. And for a unique brand of kabbalists, he offered a philosophically informed mysticism.
At the heart of all these encounters was a desire for balance. Philo represented a sage who was deeply immersed in Jewish texts and practices and yet found value in the products of human creativity. He could write equally passionately about the spiritual insights gained from Torah study, a haircut, and a boxing match. He was a pious Jew who often sought solitude in the wilderness, only to find that his thoughts were more collected in a bustling crowd. And he was deeply sensitive to the natural world. In the early rays of dawn and the fresh blooms of spring, he found tangible symbols of the soul’s yearning for the Divine.
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