The topic tackled in this book is Philo's account of the complex, double-sided nature of God's acting - the two-sided coin of God as transcendent yet immanent, unknowable yet revealed, immobile yet creating - and also the two sides of acting in humans - who, in an attempt to imitate God, both contemplate and produce. In both contexts, divine and human, Philo considers that it would not be proper to give precedence to either side - the result would be barren. God's acting and man's acting are at the same time both speculative and practical, and it is precisely out of this co-presence that the...

Philo (20BCE?-45CE?) is the most illustrious son of Alexandrian Jewry and the first major scholar to combine a deep Jewish learning with Greek philosophy. His unique allegorical exegesis of the Greek Bible was to have a profound influence on the early fathers of the Church. Philo was, above all, a philosopher, but he was also intensely practical in his defence of the Jewish faith and law in general, and that of Alexandria's embattled Jewish community in particular. A famous example was his leadership of a perilous mission to plead the community's cause to Emperor Caligula. This monograph...

Die in der Arbeit vorgenomme Auslegung der Schriften De Josepho und De Somniis II von Philo von Alexandria liest die beiden gegensatzlichen Darstellungen der Josephfigur als Beitrag zum Herrschaftsdiskurs. Die ambivalenten Tendenzen der biblischen Josephfigur bilden fur ihn den Ausgangspunkt am Beispiel Josephs, Strukturen sowohl tyrannischer als auch idealer Herrschaft zu untersuchen. Philos Kenntnis griechisch-hellenistischer Philosophie sowie sein Verstandnis der Tora als gottlich inspiriertem Text ermoglicht ihm, den politischen Charakter auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen zu reflektieren. Die...