which should at once harmonize with rational ideas and satisfy
their longing for God. All the philosophical schools were converting
the scientific systems of the classical age into [Greek: Tropoi Biou],
"plans of life," and Philo challenges them all with a new faith which
has as its basis a God who not only was the sole Creator and Ruler of
the world, but who had revealed to man the way of happiness, and the
good life, social as well as individual. To-day, when the world about
us has accepted--or has professed to accept--the ethical law of the
Bible, we are apt to regard the essentials of Judaism as the belief in
One God and the observance of ceremonies. But to Philo Judaism was
something more comprehensive. It was the spiritual life, and the
Mosaic law is the complete code of the Divine Republic, of which all
are or can be citizens. In the introduction to the "Life of Abraham,"
Philo explains the scheme of his work:[91]

"'The Sacred Laws' [as he regularly calls the Bible] were
written in five books, of which the first is entitled
Genesis. It derives its title from the account of the
creation which it contains, though it deals also with
endless other subjects, peace and war, hunger and plenty,
great cataclysms, and the histories of good and evil men. We
have examined with great care the accounts of the creation
in our former treatise ['On the Making of the Universe'],
and we now go on naturally to inquire into the laws; and
postponing the particular laws, which are as it were copies,
we will first of all examine the more universal, which are
their models. Now men who have lived irreproachable lives
are these laws, and their virtues are recorded in the Holy
Scriptures not only by way of eulogy, but in order to lead
on those who read about them to emulate their life. They are
become living standards of right reason, whom the lawgiver
has glorified for two reasons: (1) To show that the laws
laid down are consistent with nature [the conception of a
natural law binding upon all peoples was one of the fixed
ideas of the age]. (2) To show that it is not a matter of
terrible labor to live according to our positive laws if a
man has the will to do so; seeing that the patriarchs
spontaneously followed the unwritten principles before any
of the particular laws were written. So that a man may
properly say