about the law of theft, “If the sun be risen upon him, blood shall be shed for blood,” he, like R. Eliezer, interprets [Hebrew:  dbrim kktbm][291] i.e., literally.  “If,” he says, “the owner catches the thief before sunrise, he may kill him, but after the sun has risen he must bring him before the court."[292] This also was the Roman law, but the Halakah interprets more artificially:  “If it were as clear as sunlight that the thief would not have killed the owner, then the owner may not kill him.”  Philo would justify the old law; the rabbis explain it away.  On the other hand, in his treatment of the law relating to slaves, Philo extends the liberality both of the Bible and the Halakah.  He declares that the slave is to be set free when by his master’s violence he loses an eye or even a tooth.[293] The Bible and the Talmud direct emancipation only where the slave loses a limb; but Philo writes eloquently of the humanity of which man is deprived by the loss of sight; and he would apparently condemn the master who injured his slave more seriously to the full penalties of the ordinary law.[294] Maimonides, in his exposition of the law, approves the milder practice,[295] and this suggests that it had an old tradition behind it.  Beautiful is Philo’s stray maxim, “Behave to your servants as you pray that God may behave to you.  For as we hear them, so shall we be heard, and as we regard them, so shall we be regarded."[296] In his whole treatment of slavery, Philo shows remarkable enlightenment for his age.  He objects, indeed, to the institution altogether, and he tempers it continually with ideas of equality.  Thus, following the Halakah, he directs the redemption of a slave seven years after his purchase, and he treats the laws of the seventh-year rest to the land and of the jubilee as of universal validity.

Coming to the more specifically religious laws we find that Philo, missionary as he is, prohibits altogether marriage with Gentiles,[297] and that though, in the opinion of certain rabbinic teachers, the Biblical prohibition extended only to marriage with the Canaanite tribes, and unions with other Gentiles were permitted.[298] Philo recognizes how dangerous such unions are for the cause which he had so dearly at heart, the spreading of Judaism.  “Even,” says he, “if you yourself remain true to your religion through the influence of the excellent instruction of your parents, yet there is no small danger that your children by such a marriage may be beguiled away by bad customs to unlearn the true religion of the one only God."[299] Throughout, Philo is true to the mission of Israel in its highest sense.  That mission is not assimilation, and it is to be brought about by no easy method of mixing with the surrounding people.  It can be effected only by holding up the Torah in its purity as a light to the nations, and by offering them examples of life according to the law.