merates
ten festivals, as follows:[163] (1) Each day in the year, if we use it
aright--a truly Philonic conception; (2) The Sabbath; (3) The new
moon--then in Alexandria, as in Palestine, a solemn day; (4) The
Passover; (5) The bringing of the first barley ('Omer); (6) The Feast
of Unleavened Bread. These last three are separate aspects of one
celebration, which is divided up so as to produce the holy decad. (7)
Pentecost; (8) New Year; (9) Atonement (to the mystic the Feast of
feasts); (10) Tabernacles. Following his design of revealing in
Judaism a religion of universal validity, Philo points out in all
these festivals a double meaning. On the one hand, they mark God's
providence to His chosen people, shown in some great event of their
history--this is the special meaning for the Israelite--and, on the
other, they indicate God's goodness as revealed in the march of
nature, and thus help to bind man to the universal process. So
Passover is the festival of the spring and a memorial of the creation
([Hebrew: zbr lm'sha br'shit]) as well as the memorial of the great Exodus,
and of our gratitude for the deliverance from the inhospitable land of
Egypt. And those who look for a deeper moral meaning may find in it a
symbol of the passing over from the life of the senses to the life with
God. Similarly, Philo deals with the other festivals,[164] and in their
particular ceremonies he finds symbols which stamp eternal lessons of
history and of morality upon our hearts. The unleavened bread is the
mark of the simple life, the New Year Shofar of the Divine rule of
peace, the Sukkot booth of the equality of all men, and, as he puts it
elsewhere, of man's duty in prosperity to remember the troubles of his
past, so that he may worthily recognize God's goodness. Much of this
may appear trite to us; and the association of the festivals with the
seasons of nature may to some appear a false development of historical
Judaism; nevertheless Philo's treatment of this part of the Torah is
notable. It shows remarkable feeling for the ethical import of the
law, and it establishes the harmony between the Greek and Hebrew
conceptions of the Deity by combining the God of history with the God
of nature in the same festival. The ideas were not unknown to
Palestinian rabbis; Philo, by giving them a Greek dress, opened them
to the world.

Equally remarkable and equally suggestive is Philo's treatment of the
dietary laws. We have seen that he placed t