APPENDIX TO DE VITA MOSIS II
§ 4. The king is a living law. This application of the term νόμος ἔμψυχος to the ruler (rather than as in De Abr. 4 to an exemplary person) is often met with. Cf. especially Musonius, δεῖ αὐτὸν ὥσπερ ἐδόκει τοῖς παλαιοῖς νόμον ἔμψυχον εἶναι (Stobaeus, Flor. xlvii. 67, Meineke’s edition, vol. ii. p. 274). Other examples are Archytas, νόμων δὲ ὁ μὲν ἔμψυχος, βασιλεύς, ὁ δὲ ἄψυχος, γράμμα (ibid. xliii. 132, Mein. ibid. p. 136), and Diotogenes, ὁ δὲ βασιλεὺς ἤτοι νόμος ἔμψυχος ἢ νόμιμος ἄρχων (ibid, xlvii. 61, Mein. ibid. p. 260). I owe these examples to an article by Professor Goodenough in Yale Classical Studies, vol. i. pp. 56–101, on “The Political Philosophy of Hellenistic Kingship.” For the other part of the dictum, that the law is a just king, cf. Quod Det. 141 and note, where Plato, Symposium 196 c οἱ πόλεως βασιλῆς νόμοι, is quoted.
§ 26–44. Philo’s story of the origin of the Septuagint is probably founded on and in the main agrees with the long and elaborate account in the so-called letter of Aristeas. This document is admittedly pseudonymous and not written as it claims to be by a contemporary Greek at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Its probable date is a matter of dispute, opinions ranging from 200 to 80 B.C. The chief difference is that Aristeas represents the seventy-two translators as comparing their work as they write it and producing an agreed though not an inspired version. The feasting also is more elaborate than Philo suggests, and occupies seven days, during which some question bearing on morals, particularly on the duties of kingship, is propounded to each of the translators in turn, and each of the answers is recorded. The account of the annual festival at Pharos could not of course appear in Aristeas.
Aristeas like Philo, as also Josephus, who gives a free paraphrase of a large part of the letter (Ant. xii. 2. 1), confines the translation to the Pentateuch. Modern criticism tends to accept the view that the version was made in the time of Philadelphus and may well have had his approval, but doubts the official co-operation of the king with the high priest and the employment of Palestinian Jews.
(See Swete, Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek, or Thackeray’s translation of the letter with appendices.)
§ 38. κύρια κυρίοις ὀνόμασι. Thackeray in his version of these sections in an appendix to his translation of the letter of Aristeas, p. 92, renders “the appropriate technical words in the translation corresponded with the technical words in the original.” I do not think that κύριον ὄνομα, here at any rate, means a technical term. A κύριον ὄνομα is a word used in its literal and exact sense (without μετάφρασις or παράφρασις), and all that the phrase suggests is that each word is an exact rendering of the corresponding word in the original. The duplication serves to bring out more strongly the mutuality of the correspondence like μόνη … μόνους in § 36. See note on De Mut. 12.
§ 47. τὸ γενεαλογικόν. In the grammatical schools the ἐξήγησις ἱστοριῶν, i.e. the elucidation of allusions in literature, was classified according as they dealt with places (τοπικαί), dates (χρονικαί), events (πραγματικαί), and persons (γενεαλογικαί); see Usener, Kleine Schriften ii. p. 286. So in Polybius ix. 1 the γενεαλογικὸς τρόπος of historiography is opposed to ὁ περὶ τὰς ἀποικίας καὶ κτίσεις καὶ συγγενείας, i.e. the ethnological, and ὁ περὶ τὰς πράξεις τῶν ἐθνῶν καὶ πόλεων καὶ δυναστῶν, called afterwards ὁ πραγματικός, which Polybius himself adopts. No doubt the Pentateuch contains much of the “pragmatical,” but Philo’s preoccupation with character would lead him to regard it as “genealogical.” (This use of the word is ignored in L. & S.)
§ 65. While I have followed Cohn’s text in indicating a lacuna at this point, which is also the termination of the second book in those editions which divide the De Vita Mosis into three, the correctness of this should not, I think, be regarded as certain. The decision really depends on the interpretation put on § 46 ὑπὲρ οὖ (i.e. the legislative part of the Pentateuch) δεύτερον λέξομεν τὸ πρότερον τῇ τάξει (i.e. the historical part) πρότερον ἀκριβώσαντες. If these words, as has generally been thought and at first sight seems natural, refer to the plan of this treatise we should conclude that the following sections give the “full treatment” of the historical part and that some similar discussion on the legislative part has been lost. [It does not, however, seem to me that this need have been of any great length, or much more than a general praise of the laws to the same effect as what we find in § 52.] But I am inclined to agree with the suggestion of Professor Goodenough that the reference is to the scheme of the whole Exposition. On this view the full treatment of the historical part is being carried out in the four treatises, and the discussion of the legislation relegated to books De Specialibus Legibus, and the sections 47–65 are merely a justification of Moses’ plan of setting the historical before the legislative.
This will not, of course, seem convincing to those who regard the De Vita Mosis as a separate work entirely independent of the scheme of the Exposition (see General Introduction pp. xv f.). Also it may be argued that if there is no lacuna, or only a very small one, the length of the treatment of Moses as lawgiver is disproportionately short compared with what is given to him as high priest and prophet. Also it must be remembered that in the copies made by the scribes whose MSS. we possess, the book did end at § 65, and that a loss at the end of a book is more likely to occur than a lacuna in the middle.
§ 79. The sum of successive numbers, etc. Fifty-five is what in ancient arithmetic is called a “triangular” number being the sum of 1 + 2 + 3 … 10, and therefore = . This name is given to these numbers because the units can be arranged in the form of an equilateral triangle. Thus e.g. 10 units can be arranged so as to form an equilateral triangle with each side consisting of 4 units. This side, sometimes called the gnomon, is regarded as the base of the whole triangle, and thought to possess any allegorical virtues which belong to it. Cf. § 84, where four is said to be the essence of ten. Twenty-eight is also a triangular number, being the sum of 1 + 2 … 7, but any virtues which it possesses as such appear to be superseded by its being also the sum of its factors. The number of the Beast (666 = 1 + 2 … 36) and the Fishes in John 21 (153 = 1 + 2 … 17) are also triangular, and attempts have been made to interpret them from this point of view.
§ 114. (The inscription on the πέταλον.) The footnote requires supplementing and perhaps correcting. Thackeray in his note to Joseph. Bell. Iud. v. 235 states positively that the inscription has been shewn to be the “tetragrammaton” rather than “Holiness to the Lord.” He refers to a note in the Journal of Theological Studies, vol. xxvi. p. 72 by Mr. J. E. Hogg. I do not think this note does more than argue (with what success I cannot tell) that the Hebrew in Ex. 28:36 (LXX 32) and in Ex. 39:30 (LXX, 36:38)—though the prima facie meaning is “Holy to Jahve”—may mean “the sacred name Jahve,” and also that the LXX in Ex. 28 does not assert more than that the thing engraved was a “holy thing belonging to the Lord.” This last is true, but in the other passage, Ex. 39 (LXX, 36), the translators make it perfectly clear that the inscription was ἁγίασμα κυρίῳ.
As for Philo, in De Mig. 103, where he quotes Ex. 28 in the form πέταλον χρυσοῦν καθαρόν, ἔχον ἐκτύπωμα σφραγῖδος, ἁγίσμα κυρίῳ, it is quite possible that he takes ἁγίασμα in apposition to πέταλον or ἐκτύπωμα, and does not mention any inscription at all. The words then mean “a plate of pure gold, having the engraving (embossment?) of a signet, a sacred thing to the Lord”; not “as of a signet,” for he goes on to explain that the signet represents the ἰδέα ἰδεῶν, a phrase which, I think, refers to the Logos rather than to the Self-existent. If so, in Mos. ii. 114 and 132 he is following quite another tradition. What authorities are there for this besides himself and Josephus? Prof. Burkitt in a supplementary note in J.T.S. xxvi. p. 180 remarks that the same is stated by Bar Hebraeus, “who must ultimately have derived it from Origen,” and by Origen, who may “possibly” have derived it from Philo. Considering Origen’s well-known acquaintance with Philo, “possibly” seems a weak word. Mangey also quotes Jerome to the same effect, but Jerome also makes frequent use of Philo. Is it a Rabbinic tradition? The German translators, generally well versed in such parallels, quote nothing from this source.
The question then suggests itself, “Did Josephus also merely follow Philo?” If so, though it is not given among Cohn’s examples of coincidence between the two, it is the strongest evidence I have yet seen of Josephus’s use of his predecessor.
A further question, to which I can give no answer, is what does Philo mean by saying that the “theologian,” presumably Moses, declares that the name of the Self-existent has four letters. I do not think he anywhere shews any knowledge of the YHVH, or that it is represented by κύριος in the LXX.
§ 117–135. (Symbolism of the High Priest’s vesture.) A much shorter account in De Spec. Leg. i. 85–95 agrees very closely with this in substance. The chief differences are that the bells there signify the harmony, not between merely earth and water, but between all the parts of the universe, and that “Clear-shewing” and “Truth” are given a somewhat different interpretation. There “Clear-shewing” is entirely confined to the “natures in heaven” (corresponding more or less to the “rational principle in nature” of this treatise), and “Truth” only concerns men as a qualification for the “heaven” which the breastplate in both passages represents, while in this treatise both are common to both forms of λόγος. In De Mig. 102 f. the only parts noticed are the gold-plate on the head, and the flowers and the bells at the feet (the pomegranates being left unnoticed). The treatment of these two (the flowers and bells) is altogether different. The two together represent the αἰσθητά, as opposed to the νοητά (the head-gear), the flowers being the things seen, and the bells the things heard, and, while in De Vita Mosis the harmony produced by the latter is that between earth and water, in De Mig. we have the profounder idea that it is the essential harmony between the world of sense and the world of thought.
In Josephus’s short notice (Ant. ii. 184), besides other differences, the pomegranates signify the lightning, and the bells the thunder.
§ 210. Ever virgin, etc. In De Op. 100 Philo has ascribed these epithets to philosophers other than Pythagorean; in Leg. All. i. 15 to the Pythagoreans themselves. The second view is supported by the statement of Stobaeus, Ecl. 1.1. 10, that Pythagoras, likening the numbers to the Gods, called Seven Athena.