Moses is not only the divinely inspired legislator, but he typifies also the perfection of the human soul, the highest example of the man at one with God, supreme as king, lawgiver, priest, and prophet.  He is the link between God and man, the perfect interpreter of the Divine Word; and though Philo avoids the suggestion of any Divine power incarnate in man, he speaks imaginatively of the Logos of Moses,[145] i.e., his reason, as identical with the Logos of God, the Divine law of the universe.  It is significant of his attitude to religion that he lays no stress upon the miracles of the Bible narrative.  Not that he rationalizes them away; he rejects all rationalizing whatsoever; but he interprets them as great spiritual signs, rather than as diversions from the laws of nature.  His allegory of the burning bush, which Moses saw at Horeb is typical, and presents a truth to which the whole history of Israel bears witness.  The weak thorn-bush, which was not consumed by the fire, is the image of the idea of Israel, which almost cries to the people in their misfortune:  “Do not despair!  Your weakness is your strength, and by it you shall wound race after race.  You will be preserved by those who wish to destroy you, and you shall not perish.  In evil days you shall not suffer, and when a tyrant thinks to uproot you, you shall shine forth the more in brighter glory."[146] The passage is typical also of the rhetorical artifice with which Philo, following the taste of the time, recommended the Bible to the Greeks.

We turn now to Philo’s treatment of the Mosaic legislation, the Torah in its narrower sense, which is to modern Jewry perhaps the most striking part of his commentary.  His problem was the same as ours—­to bring the ancient law into harmony with the ideas of a non-Jewish environment, and to show its essential value when tried by an external cultural standard.  Briefly his solution is that he sees everything in the Torah sub specie aeternitatis, in the light of eternity; and by his faithfulness to the law, combined with his spiritual interpretation of it, he stands forth as the greatest Jewish missionary of his age.  Unfortunately for Judaism, depth of thought and philosophical judgment are not the qualities which mark the successful religious missionary.  Philo’s philosophical treatment of the Torah was understood only of the few; the fanatical Pauline rejection of the law appealed to the masses.  The spirit of the age demanded, indeed, the ethical interpretation of the Bible, and it was carried out in many ways, some true, some untrue to Judaism.  Philo and Josephus tell us how Judaism was spreading over the world.[147] “There is not any city of the Greeks,” says the historian, “nor of the barbarians, nor of any nation whatsoever, to which our custom of resting on the seventh day has not been introduced, and where our fasts and our dietary laws are not observed....  As God Himself pervadeth all the universe, so hath our law passed through the