its exact detail. It is
true, he makes it an offence[287]--unknown to the rabbis--for
a Jew to be initiated into the Greek mysteries, but usually he is
concerned to recommend the Halakah to the world rather than expand it
for his own community. This is shown in his treatment of the civil as
much as the moral law. The great system of jurisprudence in his day,
with which every code claiming to have universal value had necessarily
to challenge comparison, was Roman Law. That part of it which was
applied throughout the Empire, the _jus gentium_, was regarded as
"written reason." It is probable that contact with Roman jurisprudence
had affected the practical interpretations which the Alexandrian
Sanhedrin put upon the Biblical legislation, and was the cause of some
of their differences from the Palestinian Halakah. In treating the
ethical law, Philo's object was to show its agreement with the
loftiest conceptions of Greek philosophers, and, indeed, its
profounder truth; in treating the civil law of the Bible, his object
likewise was to show its agreement with the highest principles of
jurisprudence and its superiority to pagan codes. If at times he
supports a greater severity than the Palestinian rabbis eventually
allowed, that is where greater severity implies a closer relation to
Roman Law. Thus he has not the horror of capital punishment which the
Jerusalem Sanhedrin exhibited; he would condemn to death the man who
commits wilful homicide, whether by his own hand or by poison;[288]
whereas the other Halakah allows it only in the former case. He who
commits perjury also is to suffer capital punishment.[289] He adds a
law which finds no place in the Palestinian tradition, making the
exposure of children a capital crime.[290] Again, following the text
of the Biblical law literally (see Deut. xxi. 18), he gives power of
life and death to parents over their rebellious children, whereas the
Jewish law demands a trial before a court to make the death sentence
legal. He approves of the _lex talionis_, "an eye for an eye, a tooth
for a tooth," agreeing here, indeed, with the opinion of earlier
rabbis like R. Eliezer (see Baba Kama 84, [Hebrew: 'yn tht 'yn mmsh],
"the law of eye for eye is to be taken literally"), and disagreeing with
the later Halakic interpretation, which says that the law of Moses means
the award of the value of an eye for an eye, etc.

This is one instance among many of Philo's adoption of the older
tradition,