Introduction: Philo's life and work

Summary

Life. Philo is usually referred to as Philo the Jew (Philo Judaeus) or Philo of Alexandria, a city of the Jewish Dispersion in Egypt. We do not know the exact dates of his birth and death, but in one of his writings he refers to himself as among the ‘aged’ who have grown ‘grey’ (Leg. Gaj. i), by Jewish reckoning sixty or seventy. Later in this same work he speaks of his (advanced) ‘age’ (ibid. 182). He describes a visit in AD 40 by a delegation of Jews from Alexandria to the Roman Emperor Caligula in Rome to complain about anti-Jewish hostilities on the part of the Egyptian citizens of Alexandria which occurred in AD 38. From this we may deduce that Philo was between sixty and seventy in AD 40 and was therefore born c. 30 BC. His lifetime thus extended over a period from the time of Herod the Great, including that of some of the great Jewish rabbis (Hillel, Shammai and Gamaliel) and Paul; in particular, he was a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth, of whom, however, he makes absolutely no mention. In Leg. Gaj. 299 he refers to Pontius Pilate and the incident involving the placing of ‘shields coated with gold’ in Herod's palace in ‘the holy city’ (cf. Josephus, War 11.9.2 (169ff.)). He describes Pilate as ‘naturally inflexible, a blend of self-will and relentlessness’, and as stubbornly refusing to meet the Jews' request for the removal of the shields.