it was this very rationale of the Law which the Alexandrians sought to find under its letter. It
was in this sense that Aristobulus, a Hellenist Jew of Alexandria,30 sought to explain Scripture.
Only a fragment of his work, which seems to have been a Commentary on the Pentateuch,
dedicated to King Ptolemy (Philometor), has been preserved to us (by Clement of Alexandria,
and by Eusebius31). According to Clement of Alexandria, his aim was, `to bring the Peripatetic
philosophy out of the law of Moses, and out of the other prophets.' Thus, when we read that
God stood, it meant the stable order of the world; that He created the world in six days, the
orderly succession of time; the rest of the Sabbath, the preservation of what was created. And
in such manner could the whole system of Aristotle be found in the Bible. But how was this to
be accounted for? Of course, the Bible had not learned from Aristotle, but he and all the other
philosophers had learned from the Bible. Thus, according to Aristobulus, Pythagoras, Plato, and
all the other sages had really learned from Moses, and the broken rays found in their writings
were united in all their glory in the Torah.
26. Or Dorshey Chamuroth, searchers of difficult passages. Zunz. Gottesd. Vortr. p. 323. note b.
27. Ps. lxii. 11; Sanh. 34 a.
28. The seventy languages in which the Law was supposed to have been written below Mount Ebal
(Sotah vii. 5). I cannot help feeling this may in part also refer to the various modes of interpreting Holy
Scripture, and that there is an allusion to this Shabb. 88 b, where Ps. lxviii. 12. and Jer. xxiii. 29, are
quoted, the latter to show that the word of God is like a hammer that breaks the rock in a thousand
pieces. Comp. Rashi on Gen. xxxiii. 20.
29. Perhaps we ought here to point out one of the most important principles of Rabbinism, which has
been almost entirely overlooked in modern criticism of the Talmud. It is this: that any ordinance, not
only of the Divine law, but of the Rabbis, even though only given for a particular time or occasion, or
for a special reason, remains in full force for all time unless it be expressly recalled (Betsah 5 b). Thus
Maimonides (Sepher ha Mitsv.) declares the law to extirpate the Canaanites as continuing in its
obligations. The inferences as to the perpetual obligation, not only of the ceremonial law, but of
sacrifices, will be obvious, and their bearing on the Jewish controversy need not be explained. Comp.
Chief Rabbi Holdheim. d. Ceremonial Gesetz in Messasreich, 1845.
30. About 160 b.c.
31. Prępar. Evang. vii. 14. 1 ; vii. 10. 1-17; xiii. 12.
It was a tempting path on which to enter, and one on which there was no standing still. It only
remained to give fixedness to the allegorical method by reducing it to certain principles, or
canons of criticism, and to form the heterogeneous mass of Grecian philosophemes and Jewish
theologumena into a compact, if not homogeneous system. This was the work of Philo of
Alexandria, born about 20 b.c. It concerns us not here to inquire what were the intermediate
links between Aristobulus and Philo. Another and more important point claims our attention. If
ancient Greek philosophy knew the teaching of Moses, where was the historic evidence for it?
If such did not exist, it must somehow be invented. Orpheus was a name which had always lent
itself to literary fraud,32 and so Aristobulus boldly produces (whether of his own or of others'
making) a number of spurious citations from Hesiod, Homer, Linus, but especially from
Orpheus, all Biblical and Jewish in their cast. Aristobulus was neither the first nor the last to