"Exegesis of the Mosaic Law," which was an attempt to reveal the
teachings of the Peripatetic system, _i.e._, the philosophy of
Aristotle, within the text of the Pentateuch. All anthropomorphic
expressions are explained away allegorically, and God's activity in
the material universe is ascribed to his [Greek: Dunamis] or power,
which pervades all creation. Whether the power is independent and
treated as a separate person is not clear from the fragments that
Eusebius[32] has preserved for us. Aristobulus was only one link in a
continuous chain, though his is the only name among Philo's
predecessors that has come down to us. Philo speaks, fifteen times in
all, of explanations of allegorists who read into the Bible this or
that system of thought[33] regarding the words of the law as "manifest
symbols of things invisible and hints of things inexpressible." And if
their work were before us, it is likely that Philo would appear as the
central figure of an Alexandrian Midrash gathered from many sources,
instead of the sole authority for a vast development of the Torah. We
must not regard him as a single philosophical genius who suddenly
springs up, but as the culmination of a long development, the supreme
master of an old tradition.

If the allegorical method appears now as artificial and frigid, it
must be remembered that it was one which recommended itself strongly
to the age. The great creative era of the Greek mind had passed away
with the absorption of the city-state in Alexander's empire. Then
followed the age of criticism, during which the works of the great
masters were interpreted, annotated, and compared. Next, as creative
thought became rarer, and confidence in human reason began to be
shaken, men fell back more and more for their ideas and opinions upon
some authority of the distant past, whom they regarded as an inspired
teacher. The sayings of Homer and Pythagoras were considered as