Philo of Alexandria 25 BC – 50 AD

Philo of Alexandria was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who synthesized the Hebrew scriptures with Greek philosophical thought, especially Platonism and Stoicism. He developed an allegorical method of reading the Pentateuch in which the literal text encodes deeper philosophical and ethical meanings. His doctrine of the divine Logos as mediator between the transcendent God and the created world influenced early Christian theology and the trajectory of Western religious thought. He also led a delegation of Alexandrian Jews to the emperor Caligula on behalf of his community.

Philo of Alexandria was born around 25 BC into one of the wealthiest and best-connected Jewish families of Roman Egypt; his nephew Tiberius Julius Alexander would later serve as Roman procurator of Judaea and prefect of Egypt. Educated in both the Greek paideia and the scriptures, Philo lived the life of a contemplative scholar but did not stay aloof from public affairs: in 39-40 AD he led the Jewish embassy to the emperor Caligula, who had ordered his statue placed in the Jerusalem Temple, and left a vivid account of the mission in his Embassy to Gaius.

His enormous body of writings consists chiefly of allegorical commentaries on the Pentateuch — the Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis, On the Creation of the World, On the Migration of Abraham, On the Life of Moses, the Exposition of the Law — together with philosophical treatises (On the Eternity of the World, On the Contemplative Life), historical works on the persecution of the Alexandrian Jews under Flaccus and on the embassy to Caligula, and a series of question-and-answer commentaries on Genesis and Exodus.

Philo's reading of Moses through the categories of Greek philosophy — Platonic Forms, Stoic logos, Pythagorean number — created the first sustained synthesis of biblical revelation with philosophical reason and supplied the conceptual scaffolding through which Christian thought, by way of the Alexandrian Fathers, would later develop a Trinitarian theology. He died at Alexandria around 50 AD.