In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Philo's Flaccus, The First Pogrom: Introduction, Translation and Commentary
  • Stuart D. Robertson
Philo's Flaccus, The First Pogrom: Introduction, Translation and Commentary, by Pieter W. van der Horst. Leiden: Brill, 2003. 277 pages. $109.00.

Professor van der Horst's introduction, translation, and commentary of Philo's In Flaccum is the second volume of a projected twenty-volume commentary series on the works of Philo, the early second century CE Jewish philosopher from Alexandria, Egypt. Volume One was by David T. Runia, Philo's On the Creation of the Cosmos According to Moses.

Van der Horst begins with fifty-three pages of introduction. Unlike F. H. Colson's brief introduction to Flaccus in the Loeb Classical Library, Van der Horst offers extensive useful comments on eight themes: the place of Flaccus in Philo's corpus, the contents and structure, the genre, main themes, historical background, previous scholarship, the text he employs, and finally comments on the commentary he will offer following his translation.

Flaccus is clearly an apologetic work. It argues that "[t]he Jewish people had not been deprived of the help of God." It is written for the benefit of fellow Jews who doubted God's providence. The structure of Flaccus shows his pastoral intent. It is written as a diptych with the first part telling about the pogrom that broke out in 38 CE, an unjust and brutal rampage of the Jews' enemies at [End Page 203] the instigation of Flaccus, and the second part explaining how God rewarded Flaccus proportionate to his ill-treatment of the Jews.

Van der Horst recalls Eusebius's comment of five similar works that Philo wrote during the reign of Gaius: 1. The work of Pilate; 2. A work on Sejanus, Tiberius' anti-Jewish henchman; 3. In Flaccum; 4. Legatio ad Gaium, and 5. the palinode—which tells of the fall of Gaius. Only the Legatio and Flaccum remain. It may be the palinode is reflected in Josephus' account of Gaius in War 2, and Antiquities 18–19. This odd name, meaning a retraction, is the last word in Philo's Legatio. Colson writes of the palinode: "The only sense in which the story of these events would be a recantation would be that it would force the doubters of providence to recant" (note a on p. 187 of his translation of the Legatio in the Loeb edition). That is, I suppose, that Gaius' miserable end, which was like Flaccus' miserable end, is further proof of divine providence.

It may be the reason for Flaccus' coming so early in the present edition of Philo's works is the greater readability of Philo's more historical treatises. Though Philo wrote about the great biblical personalities (Noah, Abraham, Joseph, and Moses), they are the figures through which he unfolds allegorically his unique Jewish-Hellenistic philosophical theology.

Even in Philo's Flaccus, the purpose is theological, a motive he may have awakened in his younger contemporary from Jerusalem, now living in Rome, Josephus. Josephus too wrote of the lesson of history that "men who conform to the will of God , and do not venture to transgress laws that have been excellently laid down, prosper in all things beyond belief, and for their reward are offered by God felicity" (Antiquities 1. 14, Thackeray's translation in the Loeb edition). Josephus gave ample illustration as well of the very different reward of those who do not conform to the will of God in telling of Gaius' and King Herod's miserable deaths.

Philo made this opposite point graphically at the end of Flaccus in describing the very end of this Roman governor who "lay there, his hands, feet, head, breast, and sides gashed and smashed, ready as it were to be cut up like a sacrificial animal. For Justice wanted that single body to receive wounds as numerous as the number of the Jews who had been unlawfully murdered by him."

Van der Horst's introduction provides a valuable summary of the matters someone would desire to know who is interested not only in Philo but in his nachleben, a term he uses. This leads me to a comment on the greater usefulness...

pdf

Share