On reading Philo, Legatio ad Gaium

This week I read Kenneth Schenck's magnificent little primer to Philo, A Brief Guide to Philo (Westminster John Knox, 2005), which has motivated me to face my Philophobia and wade into Philo's writings. I enjoyed reading In Flaccum and am now reading Legatio ad Gaium. I am surprised by some of the things Philo says, and I'm hoping that some of you Philo experts might be able to provide some guidance.

Okay, here's my question (in bold), with some brief introduction: I think Schenck (and others) is right to approach Philo as first an interpreter/exegete of Israel's biblical traditions and also a philosopher, mystic (in a limited sense), apologist, etc. In other words, Philo remains a staunchly observant Jew committed to keeping Torah despite the thoroughly Hellenistic, even middle-Platonic expression of his Judaism. So how should we describe the tension between the following two observations from Legatio ad Gaium? One the one hand, Philo gives surprisingly straightforward and even glowing encomia of the demigods Dionysius, Heracles, and the Dioscuri (Legat. 77–92) and of the gods Hermes, Apollo, and Ares (Legat. 93–113) as part of his condemnation of Gaius Caligula. On the other hand, Philo acknowledges and even participates in the Jewish insistence "to acknowledge one God who is the Father and Maker of the world" [ἕνα νομίζειν τὸν πατέρα καὶ ποιητὴν τοῦ κόσμου θεόν; Legat. 114–18 (115 quoted)]. Notice that these are adjacent sections of Legatio ad Gaium; Philo goes immediately from lauding Greco-Roman demigods and deities (in contrast to Caligula) to expressing the fierce monotheism we often think more typical of second-temple Judaism. How do those more expert in Philo's thought and writings manage and/or resolve this tension, or am I seeing non-existent ghosts?

SECSOR: Day Three

Sunday morning had three sections I wanted to attend, but I had to balance my desire to hear papers with my urge to get home. Sunday morning papers can be sparsely attended, which is too bad. They're typically of the same quality as their earlier counterparts, and often the discussion (perhaps because of the lower attendance) is even better. Having had to present a paper on Tuesday morning at the SBL's Annual Meeting, I really do sympathize.

At any rate, I heard four papers Sunday morning. The first two papers were part of the ASOR/SBL: Archaeology and the Ancient World IV meeting, and the second two were part of the SBL: New Testament V meeting.

• The first paper, which was moved from a later meeting because two presenters were unable to attend, was "A Sculpture Fragment from Iron II Moabite Khirbet Mudaybi': A Case Study of Inter-Disciplinary Inquiry for Interpretive Purposes" (Ted Carruth, David Lipscomb University), presented a sculpture fragment and the contextual information impinging upon its interpretation. This is about as far afield from my area of expertise as you can get and not be, say, a NASA engineer, so I have very little by way of comment. But it was interesting to see the kinds of deliberations archaeologists engage in and the kinds of argumentation deemed appropriate for those deliberations.


• The second paper, "Was There an Economic Crisis under Antipas? Revisiting the Questions of Royal Estates and Taxation in Herodian Galilee" (Sharon Lea Mattila, University of North Carolina at Pembroke), took aim at the application of conflictual models of society as they are applied to reconstructions of first-century CE Galilean society (by, e.g., Richard Horsely, Douglas Oakman, and others). Mattila presented a circumstantial (though convincing) argument that the Great Plain (a.k.a. the Jezreel Valley) between the Galilee and Samaria would have been allotted to Herod Antipas rather than to Archelaus after the death of their father, Herod the Great, in 4 BCE. These lands would have been considered Antipas' private lands and would have provided him with considerable income. Due to time constraints Mattila was unable to adequately consider the question of taxation, but that really is the point. That is, if Antipas did not have control over the Great Plain (and so did not reap its fruits for his own wealth), then the funding for his building projects would have had to have found a different source, probably heavy taxation of the populace. Mattila's implied argument was that, since Antipas held the Great Plain, theories of excessive taxation that have been fashionable in the last three or four decades and have driven much of the sociological interpretation of this time are probably wide of the mark. This, I thought, was an especially interesting way to pursue this question.
  
  [At this point I had hoped to hear the paper, "How to Read a Book: Irenaeus and the Pastoral Epistles Reconsidered" (Ben White, UNC Chapel Hill), but unfortunately Mattila's paper ended about the same time as White's. If you happened to attend the New Testament IV session and you heard that paper, I'd be interested in getting a brief synopsis and any evaluative comments you might have.]


• The first paper of the New Testament V session was "If Christ Has Not Been Raised—The Inefficacy of a Qualified Gospel in 1 Cor 15:17" (Mark Proctor, Lee University), offered a critique of certain interpretations of Paul's claim at 1 Cor 15.17 ["If Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless and you are still in your sins"]. That is, some have read this verse as Paul's claim that, if Christ has not been raised from the dead, that forgiveness of sins is impossible. According to this reading, the resurrection is the essential factor in Pauline ideas of forgiveness; forgiveness, in other words, is a function (or result) of Christ's resurrection. Proctor argues that this is wrong on two counts. First, Paul typically locates the forgiveness of sins in relation to Jesus' crucifixion rather than the resurrection. Second, this interpretation neglects the rhetorical structure of Paul's arguments in this section. Instead, Proctor reads 1 Cor 15.17 as Paul's claim that, if Christ hasn't been raised, then his proclamation of the gospel—which trades heavily on the message of Jesus' resurrection—is worthless because he has offered false testimony about God. In other words, forgiveness might still be a real possibility between God and Paul's readers, but Paul's proclamation of that forgiveness would not be trustworthy if his message of the resurrection were false. Proctor's argument was convincing, though I lack the necessary knowledge to know the extent to which the interpretation Proctor opposes characterizes the scholarly literature.


• The second paper, "From Qumran to Philo: Precedence for Paul's Use of Israel" (Thomas Whitley, Gardner-Webb University), compared the use of Israel among the DSS (1QS, CD, and the Temple Scroll) with the rather different use of the term among Philo's writings. According to Whitley, Israel is used among the Scrolls in a number of different ways: as a label for the nation at large, as a label for the group itself, and others. In Philo, however, Israel usually refers to a spiritual level achieved only by a select élite. Whitley finds elements of both Qumranic and Philonic uses of Israel in Paul (esp. Galatians and Romans). Whitley then made an appeal to sociological theories of identity, which I think was the right move to make. Unfortunately, Whitley makes a mistake common among biblical scholarship's appropriation of sociological inquiry in that he identifies two separate theories: "identity theory," which highlights the identity of the individual, and "social identity theory," which highlights the identity of the group. This, of course, is not correct; social identity theory (and the similar field, social memory theory) takes up the issue both personal and collective identity as fundamentally social processes. If Whitley takes account of this difference between sociological research and its biblical social-scientific criticism, I think he'll have a very interesting analytical perspective to bring to bear upon his data.

There were two other papers in the New Testament V session, both of which looked good in the program. But I hadn't seen my family in over forty-eight hours, and I was itching to get home. So I left. I am sympathetic to how frustrating it can be to be the last two presenters at a conference and to watch your audience melt under the heat of earlier papers and pressures of travel. My apologies to Annie Tinsley (University of Birmingham [UK]) and Presian Burroughs (Duke University). I hope your papers were well received and discussed.

And that was my experience of SECSOR 2010. Next year's meeting will be in Louisville, KY, which sounds like a fabulous venue. Hopefully the weather will be nice that far north, but I'm sure I'll survive. Although . . . I suppose that really is the sort of thing I shouldn't take for granted. See you all in Louisville!

Philo and Paul

In my reading of Joslin's book on Hebrews (see my comments here) I'm currently elbow-deep in his discussion of Philo's view of the law. In a sub-section entitled, "Philo and the Patriarchs" (71–72), Joslin writes,

Philo also paints an idealized picture of the patriarchs. He states that they embodied the law and intuitively obeyed the Torah before it was written by Moses. In short, the patriarchs lived according to true virtue since the written law codified what was known to be both true and virtuous. In his concluding statements on Abraham, Philo writes that the patriarch "obeyed the law . . . himself a law and an unwritten statute." (71; citing Philo, On Abraham 276)

Joslin also cites an article by John W. Martens ("Philo and the 'Higher' Law." Society of Biblical Literature 1991 Seminar Papers 30 [1991]: 309–22). My question: Is anyone aware of anyone bringing this Philonic evidence to bear on Paul's (nearly) contemporary argument in Rom 2.14–15 regarding the gentiles "being a law for themselves" [ἑαυτοῖς εἰσιν νόμος; heautois eisin nomos]? Is anyone out there familiar with Martens's work?