s at Alexandria, attacked by Philo for their shallowness in the
famous passage, quoted from _De Migratione Abrahami_ (ch. 16[358]),
who, because they recognized the spiritual meaning of the law,
rejected its literal commands; because they saw that circumcision
symbolized the abandonment of the sensual life, no longer observed the
ceremony. The same antinomian spirit is shown in the Epistle to the
Galatians by the allegory of the children whom Abraham had by Hagar
the bondwoman and Sarah the free wife: "For there are the two
covenants, the one from the mount of Sinai which gendereth to bondage,
which is Hagar.... But we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of
promise." To Philo the law and the observance of the letter were the
high-road to freedom and the Divine spirit, and, remaining loyal to
the Jewish conception of religion, for all his philosophical outlook,
he said: "The rejection of the [Greek: Nomos] will produce chaos in
our lives." To Paul the law was an obstacle to the spread of religious
truth and a fetter to the spiritual life of the individual.

It is possible that an extremist section of the Jews pressed the
letter of the law to excess, so as to lose its spirit, but the
opposite excess, into which Paul plunged the new faith, was as narrow.
It involved a glorification of belief, which did not imply any
relation to conduct. Philo had pleaded no less earnestly than the
Apostle for the reliance upon grace and the saving virtue of faith,
but he did not therefore absolve men from the law which made for
righteousness.[359] And lest it be thought that the stress laid upon
faith was peculiar to Hellenizing Judaism, we have only to note such
passages as Dr. Schechter has adduced from the early Midrash on the
rabbinic conception.[360] "Great was the merit of faith which Israel
put in God; for it was by the merit of this faith that the Holy Spirit
came over them, and they said the [Hebrew: shira], (_i.e._, the Song of
Moses) to God, as it is said, 'And they believed in the Lord and His
servant Moses. Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song
unto the Lord.'" Or again[361]--and the passage reminds us still more
strongly of both Philo and Christian Gospel--"Our Father Abraham came
into the possession of this world and the world hereafter only by the
merit of his faith."

What is new in the Christian position is not the magnifying of faith;
it is the severance of faith from the law and the particular fait