"Paul" is Philo, part 1

Now we get to the fun part:  indications that Philo was the source for some of “Paul’s” more memorable lines, and that Philo was the source for much of what we think of as “Christianity.”

In “Who is the Heir of Divine Things,” 3:10b-12, we find:

For ignorance is exceedingly bold and glib of tongue; and the first remedy for it is to hold its peace, the second is to give ear to those who advance something worth hearing…for many who come to hear a discourse have not come with their minds, but wander abroad rehearsing inwardly numberless thoughts on numberless subjects thoughts on their families, on outsiders, on things private and things public, which properly should be forgotten for the moment…If then the mind determines to have no dealing with any of the matters which visit it from abroad or are stored within it, but maintaining peace and tranquility addresses itself to hear the speaker, it sill be ‘silent’…and thus be able to listen with complete attention.  Otherwise, it will have no such power.

In 3:14:

The meaning is that those whould keep silent who have nothing worth hearing to say, and those should speak who have put their faith in the God-sent love of wisdom, and not only speak with ordinary gentleness, but shout with a louder cry.  The cry is not made with mouth and tongue, through which, as we are told, the air assumes a spherical shape and thus is rendered perceptible by the sense of hearing, but by the organ of the soul, uniting all music in its mighty tones heard by no mortal whatsoever, but only by Him who is uncreated and imperishable.

The depiction of God as “uncreated and imperishable” is one we find “Paul” informing the Corinthians of in  1 Cor 9:25, 1 Cor 15:42, 53, 54, and 50, and Romans 1:23

The rhetorical style of Philo’s discussion of ignorance is consistent with the detailed examination of the nature of love, 1 Cor 13.

The notion that it is permissible to speak to God with familiarity (as Jesus is noted doing) is one that Philo addresses in “Who is the Heir” III 21b:

For to whom should a man speak with frankness but to his friend?  And so most excellent is it, that in the oracles (χρησμοις), Moses is proclaimed the friend of God to show that all the audacities of his bold discourse were uttered in friendship, rather than in presumption.

Philo provided the precedent for “friendly” interaction with God, tracing it back to Moses.  With such an authority backing the formula, how simple would it be for the proto-Christian communities to retroject that “friendliness” back further to Abraham (again, courtesy of Philo’s argumentation), to provide a basis for “Jesus’” intimacy with God?

Philo provided the proto-Christian communities with their basis for claiming paternity from God in “Who is the Heir” 6:27:

But Thou, Master, are my country, my kinsfolk, my paternal hearth, my franchise, my free speech, my great and glorious and inalienable wealth.

We find “Paul’s” claim to have “begotten” adult children in “Who is the Heir” 7:36, 38:

For I know that Thou, who gives being to what is not and generates all things, has hated the childless and barren soul, since Thou has given as a special grace to the race of them that see that they should never be without children or sterile…Also in the votaries of practice Thou has implanted a jealousy to sow and beget the children of the soul, and when they are thus endowed, they have cried out in their pleasure.

(We also note from this that Philo presumes the sin God hates is lack of progeny, not homosexuality.)

“Paul’s” argument concerning inheritance from the “free” woman (found in Galatians), finds it origins in “Who is the Heir” 10:49, 51-3.  While Galatians uses Sara/Hagar, Philo begins by using Leah/Rachel as the dichotomy and concudes by referencing Sarah/Hagar:

For if a man…has two wives, one beloved and one hated, and both bear him children, when he purposes to divide his possessions, he shall not be able to adjudge the elder’s rights to the son of the beloved (that is, Pleasure) for he is but “young,” even if years have made him grey-headed, but to the son of Prudence, the hated wife, the son who from earliest childhood is an “elder,” he must give these rights and thus assign to him a double portion…Is it not just, then, when the soul is pregnant and begins to bear what befits a soul, that all objects of sense become barren an incapable of child-bearing, those objects which find acceptance with us “from the kiss” and not through genuine friendship.  The life of the senses, then…has for her son each one among us who honors and admires the nurse and foster-mother of our mortal race, that is  Sense, on whose just-fashioned form the earthly mind, called Adam, looked and gave the name of what was his own death to her life.  “For Adam,” it says, “ called his wife’s name Life” because she is the mother of all living things.”  That is doubtless of those who are in truth dead to the life of the soul.  But those who are really living have Wisdom for their mother, but Sense they take for a bond-woman, the handiwork of nature made to minister to knowledge.

Greco-Romans, with their cultural attachment to philosophy and their assumption of ownership of Wisdom, undoubtedly understood that last phrase to mean that they were uniquely meant to be the “true heirs” of Judean text and promise.

Philo outlines the specifics that the lover of learning needs in 13:63-4:

We must now explain more exactly about what it is that the lover of learning seeks to know.  Surely it is something of this kind:  “can he who desires the life of th blood and still claims for his own the things of the senses become the heir of divine and incorporeal things? “  No;  one alone is held worthy of these, the recipient of inspiration from above, of a portion heavenly and divine, the wholly purified mind which disregards not only the body but that other section of the soul which is devoid of reason and steeped in blood, aflame with seething passions and burning lusts.

And in 13:69-70:

Therefore, my soul, if you feel any yearning to inherit the good things of God, leave not only your land, that is your body, your kinsfolk, that is your senses, your father’s house, that is speech, but be a fugitive from yourself also and issue forth from yourself.  Like persons possessed and corybants, be filled with inspired frenzy, even as the prophets are inspired.  For it is the mind which is under the divine afflatus, and no longer in its own keeping, but is stirred to its depths and maddened by heavenward yearning drawn by the truly existent and pulled upward with truth to lead the say and remove all obstacles before its feet, that its path may be smooth to tread—such is the mind, which has this inheritance.

We see in this intimations of the origins of the “apostles” (those who “issued forth”).  We also see Philo’s demand that the “heir” be separate.  We note the analogy between personal relations and the body, an analogy we find “Paul” uses in 1 Cor.

We find more connections between Philo and 1 Cor in 14:73:

Thus, through experience, as a foolish child learns, I learned that the better course was to quit all these three, yet dedicate and attribute the faculties of each to God.

“Paul’s” version of this is “when I was a child, I spoke as a child…”