Not less striking than his correspondence with later Jewish religious philosophy, though not less indefinite, is the relation of Philo to the later Jewish mystical and theosophical literature, purporting also to be a development of hoary tradition, and indeed calling itself simply the tradition, [Hebrew:  kbla].  Between Philo and the Cabbalah it is as difficult to establish any direct connection as between Philo and rabbinic Midrash, but the likeness in spirit and the signs of a common source are equally remarkable.  To trace God in all things through various attributes and emanations, to bring God and man into direct union, to prove that there is an immanent God within the soul of the individual, and to show how this may be inspired with the transcendental Deity—­this is common to both.  In the earliest times the mystic doctrine appears to have been a form of Jewish Gnosticism, speculation about the nature of God and His connection with the world.  It probably embraced the [Hebrew:  m’sha br’shit] and the [Hebrew:  m’sha mrkba], though we know not what these exactly contained.[336] But it was not till the Middle Ages that Jewish mysticism received definite and separate literary expression, and by that time it was mixed up with a number of neo-Platonic and magical fancies and foreign theosophies.  The later compilations of this character form what is more regularly known as the Cabbalah; but, apart from the professions of the later writers, a continuous train of tradition affirms the existence of secret teachings in Judaism from the time of the Babylonian captivity.  Jewish mysticism is as much a continuous expression of the spirit of the race as the Jewish law.  We may then without rashness conclude that the later Cabbalah is a coarser development, for a less enlightened and less philosophical age, of the Gnostic material which Philo refashioned in the light of Platonism for the Hellenized community at Alexandria.  Modern scholars have favored the idea that the Essenes were the first systematizers of and the first practitioners in the Cabbalah, and have interpreted their name[337] to mean those engaged in secret things, but the mystic tradition itself is earlier than the foundation of a special mystic sect.  It is part of the heritage from the Jewish prophets and psalmists and the Babylonian interaction with Hebraism.

Philo had large sympathies with the Essenic development of Judaism, and he speaks at times as though he had joined one of their communities, and therein had been initiated into the great mysteries and secret philosophies of the sages.  We have noted that he offers his most precious wisdom to the worthy few alone, “who in all humility practice genuine piety, free from all false pretence.”  They, in turn, are to discourse on these doctrines only to other members of the brotherhood.  “I bid ye, initiated brethren, who listen with chastened ears, receive these truly sacred mysteries in your inmost souls, and reveal them not to one of the uninitiated, but