Historical Relations 109 



At this late date there were, however, Jewish writers who still 

 held to the older view with great tenacity. Thus the " Book of 

 Jubilees," which dates from the latter half of the second century B.C. , 

 was composed as a defence of Judaism against the Hellenistic spirit. 

 It thus exalts the Divine Law, the Torah, at the expense of the 

 natural law, and all physical phenomena are represented as due to 

 the direct action of God : 



" Worship the God of heaven 

 Who causeth the rain and the dew to descend on the earth 

 And doeth everything upon the earth. 



If He d^sireth, He withholdeth it, 

 And all things are in His hand." 



(Jubilees xii. 4 and 18.} 



The attitude of this work is a crude presentation of the Hebrew 

 revolt against Greek philosophy. In the extremer form this 

 revolt had no rational future, and we need not follow further the 

 movement for which it stands. There are, however, other 

 channels of later Hebrew thought which are more in the direct line 

 of our story. The best representative of this later Jewish move- 

 ment is the Alexandrian philosopher Philo. 



Philo was a thinker who drew on many sources, but his general 

 trend was along Platonic lines and far removed from the study of 

 phenomena. He therefore represents a further separation of 

 religion from science. Religion and science had touched each other 

 in the days of the " Wisdom Literature." It is evident that in 

 Jewish feeling, so far as it is exhibited by Philo, they are again 

 diverging. Philo was conscious of being a " philosopher " in the 

 Greek sense, and he betrays this consciousness in his works in a way 

 that is not exhibited in any earlier Jewish writings. 



Just as the Stoics treated Homer allegorically in their search for 

 a justification of their views, so did Philo with the Old Testament. 

 This often leads him to what we should now regard as an extreme 

 straining of the text. The process, though very characteristic of 

 a large amount of subsequent theological writing, is devoid of 

 interest for our purpose. It takes religion ever further from the 

 scientific standpoint. 



It is the mechanism of Philo's attempt to deal with the problem 

 of Creation that alone brings him into contact with our subj ect. On 



