The Land of the Body: Studies in Philo’s Representation of Egypt (review)

Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE–c. 50 CE) has left us an extensive oeuvre that has been passed down in good condition. As a Jew who lived in the capital of Roman Egypt, and as an exegete of the Mosaic books in the Jewish Bible, he could not but speak about Egypt. He personally experienced the hostility between the native inhabitants and large populations of immigrants from earlier and recent times. In 39 CE he went to Rome for this reason, as the leader of a legation to plead the cause of the Jewish inhabitants before the judge’s chair of Emperor Gaius Caligula. And from the Pentateuch he knew the description of Egypt as the house of bondage, with the Hebrews subjected to forced labor and discrimination by the Pharaoh and his henchmen. So it is a splendid theme that Sarah Pearce has chosen. Many facets of Philo’s oeuvre are treated in her book, with the focus on Philo’s view of Egypt and the Egyptians. The author displays comprehensive knowledge of the scholarly literature on Philo and many related subjects. Chapter Two, on the tensions and explosions of violence between native inhabitants and the Jewish population, is complete and meticulous, with emphasis on the refusal by the Alexandrian Jews to admit statues of strange gods and deified rulers in their houses of prayer and on the hypocritical motivation of the Alexandrians for worshipping the Roman emperor. The book has been finely edited and the publisher has produced it beautifully. The worst slip-ups are misspellings of the names of my fellow Dutchmen Koen Goudriaan (8 times) and Jaap Mansfeld (3 times). But the book is very suitable as a thorough introduction to Philo’s work.

The central theme is well formulated on p. xxi:

At the most profound level of truth, Philo’s Pentateuch reveals the journey of the soul, its gradual migration from the material world to its original home in the heavenly realm. The places and people of the Pentateuch symbolise different stages of that journey, different stages of the soul in progress. In this framework, Egypt always represents the material sphere, “the land of the body” which the soul must leave to arrive at its God-given destiny.

(cf. p. 30)

As a result of this framework, biblical passages on Egypt as a land of hospitality and deliverance are left in shadow (p. 94) or explained as necessary intermediate stages on the way to a higher and more glorious goal. Thus Hagar “the Egyptian” wife of Abraham can be presented by Philo (and many later Church Fathers) as a symbol of the empirical sciences (enkyklios paideia), which people need to study before they can become receptive to “Wisdom,” knowledge of the purely spiritual world and of the transcendent God (pp. 167–77).

After reading the book, I was struck by the omission of the motif of the “plunder of the Egyptians’ (the spoliatio Aegyptiorum), so important in the Church Fathers, and it seemed to me that a few themes could have been tackled differently. Philo’s attitude to philosophy rightly plays an important role. The term “Platonic” is constantly used here (pp. 82ff.; 98ff.). The author emphasizes Philo’s choice to dehistoricize and spiritualize the Mosaic stories. When discussing Philo’s anthropology, Pearce mostly uses the “body and soul” scheme (pp. 85ff.). The great Greek philosopher Aristotle is barely mentioned, though it could be argued that Philo’s theology of God as the utterly unchanging Being, who produces the Logos and creates the cosmos by means of the Logos, has integrated Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s Timaeus (cf. Elenchos, Vol. 24 [2003]: 311–332). And Philo’s anthropological dualism can be usefully contrasted as “Aristotelian dualism” (of intellect v. ensouled body) with the older “Platonic dualism” (cf. Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 56 [2002]: 273–291). Aristotle’s lost...