honest Claudius dispelled immediate danger from the Jews and brought them a temporary increase of favor in Alexandria as well as in Palestine, Philo did not return entirely to the contemplative life which he loved; and throughout the latter portion of his life he was the public defender as well as the teacher of his people.  He probably died before the reign of Nero, between 50 and 60 C.E.  In Jewish history his life covered the reigns of King Herod, his sons, and King Agrippa, when the Jewish kingdom reached its height of outward magnificence; and it extended probably up to the ill-omened conversion of Judaea into a Roman province under the rule of a procurator.  It is noteworthy also that Philo was partly contemporary with Hillel, who came from Babylon to Jerusalem in 30 B.C.E., and according to the accepted tradition was president of the Sanhedrin till his death in 10 C.E.  In this epoch Judaism, by contact with external forces, was thoroughly self-conscious, and the world was most receptive of its teaching; hence it spread itself far and wide, and at the same time reached its greatest spiritual intensity.  Hillel and Philo show the splendid expansion of the Hebrew mind.  In the history of most races national greatness and national genius appear together.  The two grandest expressions of Jewish genius immediately preceded the national downfall.  For the genius of Judaism is religious, and temporal power is not one of the conditions of its development.

Philo belonged to the most distinguished Jewish family of Alexandria,[41] and according to Jerome and Photius, the ancient authorities for his life, was of the priestly rank; his brother Alexander Lysimachus was not only the governor of the Jewish community, but also the alabarch, i.e., ruler of the whole Delta region, and enjoyed the confidence of Mark Antony, who appointed him guardian of his second daughter Antonia, the mother of Germanicus and the Roman emperor Claudius.  Born in an atmosphere of power and affluence, Philo, who might have consorted with princes, devoted himself from the first with all his soul to a life of contemplation; like a Palestinian rabbi he regarded as man’s highest duty the study of the law and the knowledge of God.[42] This is the way in which he understood the philosopher’s life[43]:  man’s true function is to know God, and to make God known:  he can know God only through His revelation, and he can comprehend that revelation only by continued study. [Hebrew:  v-nbi’ lbb hkma], God’s interpreter must have a wise heart,[44] as the rabbis explained.  Philo then considered that the true understanding of the law required a complete knowledge of general culture, and that secular philosophy was a necessary preparation for the deeper mysteries of the Holy Word.  “He who is practicing to abide in the city of perfect virtue, before he can be inscribed as a citizen thereof, must sojourn with the ‘encyclic’ sciences, so that through them he may advance securely