Krochmal translated into Hebrew examples of Philo’s allegories and gave parallels and contrasts from the Talmud.  The relation between the Palestinian and the Alexandrian exegesis was more elaborately considered by a greater master of Hellenistic literature, Zacharias Frankel (1801-1875), who has been followed by a band of Jewish scholars.  Yearly our understanding of the Alexandrian culture becomes fuller.  Philo, too, has in part been translated into Hebrew.  Indirect in the past, his influence on Jewish thought in the future bids fair to be direct and increasing.

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VIII

THE INFLUENCE OF PHILO

The hope which Philo had cherished and worked for was the spreading of the knowledge of God and the diffusion of the true religion over the whole world.[346] The end of Jewish national life was approaching, but rabbis in Palestine and philosophers at Alexandria, unconscious of the imminent doom, thought that the promise of the prophet was soon to be fulfilled, and all peoples would go up to worship the one God at the temple upon Mount Zion, which should be the religious centre of the world.  In Philo’s day a universal Judaism seemed possible, a Judaism true to the Torah as well as to the Unity of God,[347] spread over the Megalopolis of all peoples; and in the light of this hope Philo welcomed proselytism.  The Jews had a clear mission; they were to be the light of the world, because they alone of all peoples had perceived God.  Israel ([Hebrew:  ’shr’l]), to repeat Philo’s etymology, is the man who beholds God, and through him the other nations were to be led to the light.  The mission of Israel was not a passive service, but an active preaching of God’s word, and an active propagation of God’s law to the Gentile.  He must welcome the stranger that came within the gates.[348] Philo struggled against the separative and exclusive tendency which characterized a section of his race.  He laid stress upon the valuelessness of birth, and the saving power of God’s grace to the pagan who has come to recognize Him, in language which Christian commentators call incredible in a Jew, but which was in fact typical of the common feeling at Alexandria.  Appealing to the Gentiles, Philo declared that “God has special regard for the proselyte, who is in the class of the weak and humble together with the widow and orphan[349]; for he may be alienated from his kindred when he is converted to the honor of the one true God, and abandons idolatrous, polytheistic worship, but God is all the more his advocate and helper.”  And speaking to the Jews he says:[350] “Kinship is not measured by blood alone when truth is the judge, but by likeness of conduct and by the pursuit of the same objects.”  Similarly, in the Midrash, it is said that proselytes are as dear to God as those who were born Jews;[351] and, again, that the Torah was given to Israel for