conceivable nor describable, nor nameable.[178] Siegfried and Zeller press this negative attitude to the Deity, and find that there is an inherent contradiction in Philo’s system, which ruins it, in that his God, upon whom all depends and who is the object of all knowledge, is absolutely unknowable and unapproachable.  But this is to take Philo according to the strict letter to the neglect of the spirit, and to do that with one so eloquent and so careless of verbal accuracy is utterly to misunderstand him.

The Greek philosophers in their attempt to formulate an exact notion of the First Being by abstract metaphysics had, indeed, conceived it in this fashion; and Philo, harmonizing Greek metaphysics and Hebrew intuition, is drawn at times into a presentation of God which appears to deny His personality and make of Him an abstraction.  What has been said of Spinoza is true no less of Philo.[179] “The tendency to unity, to the infinite, to religion, overbalanced itself till, by its mere excess, it seemed to be changed into its opposite.  But this is not his spirit, only the dead ultimate result of an imperfect logic that confuses an abstract with a concrete unity.”  In truth, the moment man tries to define his conception of God’s essence in words, he either impairs and perverts his idea, or he must use words that do not really make the idea any clearer than it was unexpressed.  Thus in the Hymn of [Hebrew:  ygdl] the writer, versifying the creeds of Maimonides, seeks to define God:  “He is a Unity, but there is no Unity like His; He is hidden and there is no end to His oneness.”  But nobody can claim that this gives any adequate conception of what he means; so, too, Philo, when he tries to analyze God’s being metaphysically, only obscures the God of his soul, who was the historical God of Israel.

The Hebraic God, like the Greek First Being, has no qualities, but unlike the other He has ethical attributes, and it is by these that we know Him and by these that He is related to the universe and to man.  “Failing to comprehend Him in His essence we must aim at the next best thing, to comprehend Him as He is manifested to the world."[180] So in the “Hymn of Unity” it is written, “In images they told of Thee, but not according to Thy essence!  They but likened Thee in accordance with Thy works."[181] And this is the manner in which Philo conceives Him:  “God’s grace and goodness it is which are the causes of creation."[182] “The just man, seeking the nature of all things, makes this most excellent discovery, that all things are due to the grace of God.”  “To those who ask the origin of creation, one could most easily reply that it is the goodness and grace of God which He bestowed on the race that is after His image."[183] “For all that is in the universe and the universe itself are the gift and bounty and grace of God."[184] Again, “God is omnipotent; He could make all evil, but He wills only what is best."[185] “All is due to God’s grace, though nothing is worthy of it;[186] but God looked to His own eternal goodness, and considered that to do good befitted His own blessed and happy nature.”