“‘The Sacred Laws’ [as he regularly calls the Bible] were written in five books, of which the first is entitled Genesis.  It derives its title from the account of the creation which it contains, though it deals also with endless other subjects, peace and war, hunger and plenty, great cataclysms, and the histories of good and evil men.  We have examined with great care the accounts of the creation in our former treatise [’On the Making of the Universe’], and we now go on naturally to inquire into the laws; and postponing the particular laws, which are as it were copies, we will first of all examine the more universal, which are their models.  Now men who have lived irreproachable lives are these laws, and their virtues are recorded in the Holy Scriptures not only by way of eulogy, but in order to lead on those who read about them to emulate their life.  They are become living standards of right reason, whom the lawgiver has glorified for two reasons:  (1) To show that the laws laid down are consistent with nature [the conception of a natural law binding upon all peoples was one of the fixed ideas of the age]. (2) To show that it is not a matter of terrible labor to live according to our positive laws if a man has the will to do so; seeing that the patriarchs spontaneously followed the unwritten principles before any of the particular laws were written.  So that a man may properly say that the code of law is only a memorial of the lives of the patriarchs.  For the patriarchs, of their own accord and impulse, chose to follow nature, and, regarding her course with truth as the most ancient ordinance, they lived a life according to the law.”

Philo dwells affectionately on the patriarchs, because, as he held, they proved the Jewish life to be truest to man’s nature and to the highest ideal of humanity, and served therefore as examples to the Gentile world of the universal truth of the religion.  The rabbis also took the patriarchs as the perfect type of our life, saying, “Everything that happens to them is a sign to future generations,"[92] and again:  “The patriarchs are the true [Hebrew:  mrbba], manifestation of God.”  But while he emphasized the broad moral teachings of Judaism exemplified by the patriarchs, Philo nevertheless upheld in its integrity the Mosaic law, and found in every one of the six hundred and thirteen precepts a spiritual meaning.  Even the details of the tabernacle offerings have their universal lesson when he expounds them as symbols.  Voltaire speaks cynically of Judaism as a religion of sacrifices:  Philo shows that the ritual of sacrifice suggests moral lessons.  The command of the red heifer, a part of the law which was particularly subject to attack, emphasizes the law of moral as well as of physical cleanliness.  The prohibition to add honey or leaven to the sacrifice[93] (Lev. ii. 13) points the lesson that all superfluous pleasure is unrighteous; and so on with each prescription.