and
endows it with one spirit. Whether he is writing philosophical,
ethical, or mystical commentary, whether history, apology, or essay,
his purpose is to assert the true notion of the one God, and the
Divine excellence of God's revelation to His chosen people. Thus he
regards history as a theodicy, vindicating the ways of God to man, and
His special providence for Israel; philosophy as the inner meaning of
the Scriptures, revealed by God in mystic communion with His holy
prophets,[85] and, if comprehended aright, able to lead us on to a
true conception of His Divine being. The greater part of the
Hellenistic-Jewish literature has disappeared, but Philo sums up for
us the whole of the Alexandrian development of Judaism. He represents
it worthily in both its main aspects: the infusion of Greek culture
into the Jewish pursuit of righteousness, and the recommendation of
Jewish monotheism and the Torah to the Greek world. Aristaeus,
Aristobulus, and Artapanus are hardly more than names, but their
spirit is inherited and glorified in Philo-Judaeus. His work,
therefore, is more than the expression of one great mind; it is the
record and expression of a great culture.

The chronology of Philo's writings is as uncertain as the chronology
of his life. Yet it is possible to trace a deepening of outlook and an
increasing originality, if we work our way up from the sixth to the
first division of the classification. It does not follow that the
works were written in this order--and it may well be that Philo was
producing at one and the same time books of several classes--but we
may use this order as an ideal scale by which to mark off the stages
of his philosophical progress. In the first place come the [Greek:
Hypotheticha], or apologetic works, which have a practical purpose.
With these we may associate the moralizing history that dealt in five
books respectively with the persecutions of Sejanus, Flaccus, and
Caligula, the ill-starred embassy, and the final triumph of the Jews
over their enemies. The [Greek: Hypotheticha] proper, as we gather
from Eusebius, contained a general apology for Judaism, and an account
of the Essenes--which have disappeared--and the suspected book on the
Therapeutic sect known by the title "On the Contemplative Life."
Whether they received this generic name because they are suggestions
for the Jewish cause, or because they are written to answer the
insinuations ([Greek: kath' hypothesin]) of adversaries