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.