the limits of variety 179
There seems no doubt that Philo tried to reach out to a readership
much wider than the insiders who might be able to appreciate the dense
argument of the allegorical commentary, for the series of works in his
Exposition of the Law, which included his treatise on the creation of
the world, his lives of the patriarchs, his commentaries on the Deca-
logue and the Special Laws, and his discussions On Virtues and On
Rewards and Punishments, are far more accessible, explaining for the
wider Jewish community the principles of the law and paraphrasing the
biblical material alongside allegorical interpretations. Whether Philo
had partly in mind a non- Jewish audience for the Exposition is un -
certain, but he explicitly reached out to non- Jews in the two books
which constitute the Life of Moses, a sort of companion piece to the
Exposition :
I purpose to write the life of Moses, whom some describe as the legislator
of the Jews, others as the interpreter of the Holy Laws. I hope to bring the
story of this greatest and most perfect of men to the knowledge of such as
deserve not to remain in ignorance of it; for, while the fame of the laws
which he left behind him has travelled throughout the civilized world and
reached the ends of the earth, the man himself as he really was is known
to few. Greek men of letters have refused to treat him as worthy of mem-
ory, possibly through envy, and also because in many cases the ordinances
of the legislators of the different states are opposed to his.We have no idea who in fact read Philo’s voluminous works before they
were raided by Christians from the late second century ce for reasons
of which he would have strongly disapproved: Clement was attracted to
allegory as a way to avoid a literal interpretation of the legal sections of
the biblical text, so his sympathies will have been precisely with the
extreme allegorists singled out by Philo for disapproval. Back in the first
century ce, Josephus may have drawn on Philo’s philosophical treatise
That Every Good Man is Free for his brief account in the Antiquities of
the Essenes, but if so, the result was somewhat garbled. In other parts of
Josephus’ history where Philo’s works would have illuminated his
narrative, such as his account of events in Rome in the time of Caligula,
he shows no sign of having read Philo’s version.^30
Even if Philo’s allegorizing writings were largely ignored by his fel-
low Jews, this does not imply that he was marginal within the Judaism
of his day, since he was evidently deeply immersed in the religious life of
his own community in Alexandria. He never suggested that a literal
understanding of the Torah was wrong, just that it was insufficient. He