proved that that movement led away from Judaism, and its main tenets
had been adopted or perverted by an antagonistic creed. It was a
tragic necessity which compelled the severance between the Eastern and
Western developments of the religion. In Philo's day the breach was
already threatened, through the anti-legal tendencies of the extreme
allegorists. His own aim was to maintain the catholic tradition of
Judaism, while at the same time expounding the Torah according to the
conceptions of ancient philosophy. Unfortunately, the balance was not
preserved by those who followed him, and the branch of Judaism that
had blossomed forth so fruitfully fell off from the parent tree. But
till the middle of the first century of the common era the Alexandrian
and the Palestinian developments of Jewish culture were complementary:
on the one side there was legal, on the other, philosophical
expansion. Moreover, the Judæo-Alexandrian school, though, through its
abandonment of the Hebrew tongue, it lies outside the main stream of
Judaism, was an immense force in the religious history of the world,
and Philo, its greatest figure, stands out in our annals as the
embodiment of the Jewish religious mission, which is to preach to the
nations the knowledge of the one God, and the law of righteousness.

* * * * *




II

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF PHILO