Philo at SBL Annual Meeting (I)

Some people are already trying to get information about the SBL Annual Meeting that this year is to be held in Washington; such information is now available at the SBL homepages, but here is some info about one of the sessions that includes papers on Philo, namely the session on

S19-13Hellenistic Moral Philosophy and Early Christianity
Nov 19. 2006 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM Room: 150B - CC

Theme: Philosophy at the Roots of Christianity

L. Michael White, University of Texas - Austin, Presiding
Part 1: Allegory in Philo and the New Testament
Henrik Tronier, Copenhagen University
Philonic Allegory in Mark (20 min)
On a superficial view the earliest and supposedly most primitive of the four Gospels seems to constitute a strong argument against finding philosophy at the roots of Christianity. However, when Mark is read in the context of contemporary Jewish allegorical hermeneutics another impression surfaces. In this paper it is argued that Mark’s biography of Jesus was written the way Philo interpreted the biblical narratives about the lives and journeys of Abraham and Moses, the founders of the Jewish people. They are stamped images of God’s logos and sophia in history; their journeys are the outward appearance of the interpretive activity of logos-transformed, perfected knowledge, which the allegorical reader will recognise as the defining mark and nature of God’s elected people; the various locations, people and persons along the journey constitute deficient or lower levels of knowledge and ethics in the unified epistemological, cosmological and anthropological framework that is plotted in the geo-, ethno- and topographical space of the narrative. The various literary strategies by which Mark construes the allegorical level of meaning and guides the readers to an allegorical interpretation of the surface story are analysed in the light of Philo’s interpretive strategies. Finally, the paper discusses the different ethnic strategies involved in the allegorical hermeneutics of Philo and Mark. Here it is argued that Mark’s aim is in line with Paul’s allegorical interpretation of Jewish identity markers. At crucial points Mark’s biography of Jesus is an allegorical inscription of Pauline concepts, including his cosmologically framed idea of Christ as God’s wisdom, into the scattered historical traditions about Jesus.


Stefan Nordgaard Svendsen, University of Copenhagen
Philonic Allegory in Hebrews (20 min)
For decades, biblical scholarship has been divided over the question whether or not the author of Hebrews was intellectually influenced by Philo of Alexandria. According to some interpreters, the author was entirely unfamiliar with Philo's work whereas others claim that he must have belonged to the circle around the Alexandrian at some point of his life. In spite of this disagreement, however, practically all scholars agree that he was not influenced by Philo's hermeneutics. Philo, it is argued, read The Old Testament allegorically whereas Hebrews applied typology. The paper challenges this consensus by arguing that the hermeneutics of Hebrews are in fact allegorical and deeply influenced by the Alexandrian philosopher. In the first part of the paper it is argued that the author adopted a number of Philo's allegorical readings (those of the Promised Land, the tabernacle and the Jewish high priest) and developed his argument around them. However, since he operated within an apocalyptically inspired outlook on the world, which differs significantly from Philo's Platonic metaphysics, the allegorical method is transformed in important ways by the author. These changes are identified and explained. In the latter part, it is discussed how the insights into the author's hermeneutics may help us understand the letter's rhetorical aim. It is argued that the author used the allegorical method principally as a means to expose the worthlessness of the Jewish religious institutions in order to dissuade the the recipients from supplementing their Christian faith with observance of the Torah.

Margaret M. Mitchell, University of Chicago, will be the respondent to these papers(15 min).Then there will be an 18 min discussion.

These two Danish scholars, both from the University of Copenhagen, are involved in a Philo related research project called "Philosophy at the Roots of Christianity."
On this project, see my posting below.

Philosophy at the Roots of Christianity

The two Danish scholars, mentioned above as presenting papers on Philo at the SBL Annual Meeting this year, both from the University of Copenhagen, are involved in a Philo related research project called "Philosophy at the Roots of Christianity."
TThe main purpose of this project is to test in what degree it is possible to say that there in fact was a philosophical consciousness mirrored in the oldest writings of Early Christianity, that is the New Testament.

The project is divided into several subsections:
# Philosophy behind the Gospel of Mark
# Philosophy behind allegorical interpretations in the NT
# Philosophy behind the cosmological conceptions of Paul
# Philosophy behind the theo-logical and Christ-ological conceptions of the New Testament
# Philosophy and the Gospel of John

A couple of working papers from scholars involved in this project are available on the internet on one of the pages associated with this page (click on 'Bidrag'):
Troels Engberg-Pedersen: Philosophy of the Self in the Apostle Paul
Henrik Tronier: Rum og krop som tankeform i antik hermeneutik og urkristendommens Kristusfigur.

Their webpages also reveals that Henrik Tronier has a major study forthcoming; its title is given as
Henrik Tronier, Paul in Space. Towards a Spatial Demythologising of Philo, Apocalypses, and Paul (ca. 500 pp., forthcoming).

Ratio Religionis: a new research prosject

An interesting new research project has beeen launched in Germany. Its director is Dr. Rainer Hirsch-Luipold, presently at the Theologische Fakultät, Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen.

The title and focus of this project is
Ratio religionis:
Religiöse Philosophie und philosophische Religion in der frühen Kaiserzeit

Noting that "In der frühen römischen Kaiserzeit kommt es zu einer Neuorientierung innerhalb der (platonischen) Philosophie: nach einer Phase der akademischen Skepsis findet die Philosophie die Quelle ihrer Wahrheit neben den Schriften Platons, die neu gelesen werden, wesentlich in Traditionen der überlieferten, gelebten Religion. Diese werden durch eine bildhaft-allegorische Interpretation philosophisch gedeutet und für die Fragen der Zeit fruchtbar gemacht."
Proceeding from these observations, the research project has as its important comparative and thematic foci "Literaturgeschichtlicher Hintergrund, Entstehungsbedingungen: Alexandria, Kosmologie, Kosmogonie, Schöpfung, and Gottesbild: Einheit und Personalität", and its main focus will be on works of Philo of Alexandria, The Gospel of John and Clemen of Alexandria, and Plutarch.

For further information about this work, see Project Ratio Religionis.

Der eine Gott

Reading the webpage of the director of the abovementioned research prosject Ratio Religionis, I noticed an article about Philo and Plutarch I had not noted before. It might be relevant for some of you:
Der eine Gott bei Philon von Alexandrien und Plutarch,
in: Rainer Hirsch-Luipold (Hrsg.), Gott und die Götter bei Plutarch. Götterbilder – Gottesbilder – Weltbilder (Tagungsband des internationalen Symposiums des Göttinger Graduiertenkollegs "Polytheismus und Monotheismus in der Welt der Antike" und der Internationalen Plutarchgesellschaft vom 2.-4. Februar 2005), RGVV 54, Berlin/ New York 2005.

Roman Collegia again

I never give up on my interest for the Greaeco-Roman clubs and associations. Here is a new volume, to be published by Brill these days, which intends to present an analysis of the research of the Roman collegia:

Jonathan Scott Perry
The Roman Collegia. The Modern Evolution of an Ancient Concept
Mnemosyne, Supplements ; History and Archaeology of Classical Antiquity, 277
Brill, 2006 (available); xii, 248 pp.

The publisher presents the volume thus:
" This volume maintains that contemporary events, ideologies, and institutions have shaped scholarly work on the ancient Roman collegia, a group of institutions known principally from epigraphic and legal sources. It traces the origins of thinking on the subject from the creation of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum through the political and social movements of the 19th and 20th centuries in Western Europe. The bulk of the book focuses particularly on the intersection of scholarship and economic theory in Fascist Italy, as the collegia were analysed by the Istituto di Studi Romani, incorporated into the Mostra Augustea della Romanità, and ultimately championed by the Minister of National Education, Giuseppe Bottai, in 1939."

Collegia in Roman Egypt

Reading up on some blogs I have overlooked or forgotten I stumbled over this again by Philip Harland: “Alive and kicking”: Associations and Roman law again. Here he, inter alia, refers to an article about the collegia in Roman Egypt I was not at all aware of, namely

Ilias N. Arnaoutoglou, “Collegia in the Province of Egypt in the First Century CE,” Ancient Society 35 (2005): 197-216.

Arnaoutoglou here obviously also deals with some of Philo's statements abaout these clubs and associations.
Harland offers some further comments, and also refers to my online article on 'Philo and the Graeco-Roman Clubs and asociations'.

The article by Arnaoutoglou is not available online, but if you click on the link above to Ancient Society, you can order it.
The author's own summary of the article runs like this:

"ln this article I explore the apparent discrepancy between the restrictive statutory Roman legislation on collegia and the documentation on associations in 1st-century Egypt. After exploration of the legal background, I examine the testimony of Philo, ln Flaccum 4, which reveals that the dissolution of hetaireiai and synodoi is not part of an empire-wide ban, but is firmly embedded in the history of Alexandria and in the urge of its prefect A. Flaccus to re-establish law and order. The second testimony providing the imposition of a fine on people taking part in associations, Gnomon of the ldios Logos §108, is so fragmentary as to allow only speculation about its context. It could preserve a clause either from A. Flaccus’ restrictions or from a tax regulation. The investigation suggests that the discrepancy between the literary tradition of a general ban and the documentary evidence on collegia is probably superficial, and it can be reconciled, if we reconsider the nature and the extent of the prohibition imposed by A. Flaccus, as a local and temporary police measure aiming to dissolve the nuclei of opposition and anti-Roman feeling in early 1st-century Alexandria."

Books bought at SNTS

Conferences like the SNTS Meeting and the SBL Annual Meetings are events were booksellers and book buyers are having good times. The book exhibition at SBL is outstanding; the Book marked of SNTS is much smaller as the conference is smaller too. Neverthless, there where several publishers present with their booths and offerings, and like most others, I succumbed to the temptation, and spent some money on books.

One in particular I think should be considered relevant to Philo scholars too, namely

F. Watson,
Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith
London: T & T Clark International, 2004).
There is a lot on Philo here too, and I hope to be able to return to this book on this blog.

Among the other books I bought, these might be mentioned:

M. Hengel,
Der Unterschätzte Petrus. Zwei Studien (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006).
A. Perriman,
The Coming of the Son of Man. New Testament Eschatology for an Emerging Church (Milton Keynes, UK: Peternoster Press, 2005).
J. Starr and Troels Engberg-Pedersen eds.,
Early Christian Paraenesis in Context. (Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 125; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005).
T. H. Tobin,
Paul’s Rhetoric in Its Contexts. The Argument of Romans (Peabody, Ma: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004).

Philo articles online

Visiting Hindy Najman's website, I discovered that she is planning to have several articles available on-line; among these are three directly relevant for Philo studies already available. The articles are available both in web-format and in pdf format; Here are the links to the .pdf versions of the Philo articles. THanks to Hindy for making them available on-line:

1.
“The Law of Nature and the Authority of Mosaic Law.”
In Studia Philonica Annual 11 (1999): 55-73

Download as a pdf (LawOfNature.pdf)

2.
“A Written Copy of the Law of Nature: An Unthinkable Paradox?”
In Studia Philonica Annual 15 (2003) 51-6

Download as a pdf (CopyLawOfNature.pdf)

3.
“Cain and Abel as Character Traits: A Study in the Allegorical Typology of Philo of Alexandria.”
In Themes in Biblical Narrative; Jewish and Christian Traditions, edited by Gerard Luttikhuizen, Brill, 2003:107-118

Download as a pdf (CainAndAbel.pdf)