drink, delicate foods, and the enjoyment of another’s beauty (eumorphias),
the last of which may refer to marriage to a Gentile. By following their
natural appetites, eating forbidden food, and marrying forbidden people,
they have thus sold their freedom (eleutheria), and do “the gravest injury to
both body and soul.” In De praemiis et poenis152, Philo alludes to Jews who
are like the well-born man who “debases the coinage of his noble birth”
(parakompsas to nomisma tês eugeneias), which may also allude to intermar-
riage as well as a more general abandonment of Jewish laws. In the first
passage, the Jewish apostates are contrasted pointedly with faithful pros-
elytes; and in the second, their fate, to “be carried into Tartarus itself and
profound darkness,” is contrasted with that of virtuous proselytes who
will be especially prized in heaven. In each case, the allusion to intermar-
riage is oblique, but Harry Austryn Wolfson (1947, 1:73–77) has made a case
for this interpretation, as he has for distinguishing the Jews alluded to
here from the “Yom Kippur” Jews (Spec.1.186–187), who sat lightly on
religious observance but once a year, and from those who were lured by the
attractions of the Gentile world but made no deliberate break with their
community (an interpretation originally followed by Feldman [1960, 227]
but not recently [1993a, 79–82]). The language Philo uses to describe these
apostate Jews, the dire fate he envisages for them, and the contrast between
them and faithful proselytes suggest that they were of a different order
from the casually unobservant.
Feldman (1993a, 80) denies a reference to intermarriage and thinks
that Philo is speaking not of apostates but of those who do not keep the com-
mandments—part of Feldman’s overall tendency to minimize the incidence
of apostasy. Feldman refers, unconvincingly, to the concern for repentance
inDe virtutibus,and the rabbinic view that apostates remain, in some sense,
Jews. It is the context, rather than the terms themselves, which might sup-
port Wolfson. Eumorphialiterally means “beauty of form” (cf. Josephus,
A.J.10.186; 15.23), and is used by Philo of men (Opif.136; Ios.40, 268), ani-
mals (Leg.2.75), slaves (Spec.2.34;Flacc.149), and idols (Spec.1.29), as well
as of women (Post.117; Sobr.12; Abr.93). It probably refers to beautiful
women in De specialibus legibus4.82: one of those things (like money and
power) which uncontrolled appetites desire. Apart from Philo, Testament of
Judah14:3 conveys the sense of promiscuous sex. Thus, desire for beautiful
women, rather than marriage to foreign women, is all that the terminology
suggests. Elsewhere, however, Philo specifically mentions the dangers of
intermarriage, especially as it affects offspring (Spec.3.29; cf. Jub.30:11).
When recalling biblical instances of intermarriage, Philo takes a benign
view and minimizes the foreign element in the relationships. Is this because
nora
(Nora)
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