It should be premised that the “law of nature” was at the time of Philo an idea as widely accepted as “evolution” is to-day.  Men believed that by a study of the processes of the universe the individual might discover the law of conduct that should bring his action into harmony with the whole.  What the Greek philosophers declared to be the privilege of the few, Philo declared to have been imparted by God to His people as their law of life.  Hence the Mosaic legislation is the code of nature and reason, and the righteous man directs his conduct in accordance with those rules of nature by which the cosmos is ordered.[131] Obedience to the law should not be obedience to an outward prescription, but rather the following out of our own highest nature.  The ideal which the Stoic sage continually aspired for and never attained to—­the life according to nature and right reason—­this Philo claimed had been accomplished in the Mosaic revelation, handed down by God to Israel and through them to the world.

Before we deal with Philo’s treatment of the law in its narrower sense, it will be as well to consider briefly his interpretation of the historical parts of the Torah.  Here likewise he finds ideas of natural reason and eternal truths embodied.  To Philo, as we have seen, the Torah is a unity, and every part of it has equal validity and value.  He had to contend against certain higher critics of his day, who declared that Genesis was a collection of myths ([Greek:  mython plasmata]).[132] Moreover, the long catalogues of genealogies in Genesis and the longer recitals of sacrifices in Leviticus and Numbers seemed to refute those who declared that every part of the Pentateuch was a Divine revelation.  In the third book of the “Questions to Genesis” Philo directly grapples with this objection.  Commenting on the verse (Gen. xv. 9), “Take for me a heifer of three years old and a goat of three years old,” etc., he says that in interpreting any part or any verse of Scripture we must look to the purpose of the whole and explain it from this outlook, “without dissecting or disturbing its harmony or disintegrating its unity."[133] Why should God, asked the scoffer, reveal these trivial or prolix details?  Philo’s answer is in fact to spiritualize everything that is material, and universalize everything that is particular.  While he believes in the literal inspiration of the Bible, he does not insist upon the literal truth of every word of it, and in the opening chapters of Genesis in particular, he treats the tales as symbolical or allegorical myths.  His philosophical commentary on the creation, corresponding to the [Hebrew:  m’sha br’shit] of the rabbis, is found in the book De Mundi Opificio, which stands in modern editions at the head of his writings.  Its main theme is to trace in the text the Platonic idealism, i.e., the theory that God first created transcendental, incorporeal archetypes of all physical and material things.  Philo uses the double account of the creation of man in the first and second chapters of Genesis as clear evidence that the Bible describes—­for those who have the mind to see—­the creation of an ideal before the terrestrial man.