Tilden: Philo Judaeus 



7 



in order to help both themselves and others, and so have made others 

 (M. 474) happy by thek generous liberality and themselves by their 

 philosophy. For anxiety about wealth and possessions uses up those 

 who feel it, and it is a fine thing to husband one's time, since according 

 to the physician Hippocrates ''Life is short but art is long."^ Homer 

 also, it seems to me, darkly intimates the same in the Iliad at the 

 opening of the thirteenth rhapsody,^^ in these verses: ''And the 

 Mysians, fierce fighters hand to hand, and the proud Hippemolgoi 

 that drink mare's milk, and the Abioi, the most righteous of men" 

 (Lang, Leaf, and Myer's version),— just as if anxiety and money- 

 getting produce injustice because of inequality, while the opposite 

 motive produces justice thru equality. In accordance with this 

 equality the wealth that nature gives is well defined and surpasses 

 that which exists in vain and empty fancies. 



So when these people have given up their property,^^ not waiting 

 to be caught by the bait of any other attraction, they flee without 

 ever turning to look back, abandoning brothers, children, wives, 

 parents, all the numerous hosts of kindred, fond associations, native 

 lands in which they were born and reared, since association has a 

 great drawing-power (like a windlass), and is most able to entice 

 men. ^2 And they change their residence not merely to another city, 

 like those who beg their owners to sell them, unfortunate or worthless 

 slaves that they are, who thus obtain for themselves a change of 

 masters but not freedom from slavery; for every city, even the best 

 governed, is filled full of indescribable uproar and ruin and confusion, 



^ These are the exact words of Hippocrates, but they were used by the 

 great physician with reference to his own field of medicine. Later they became 

 proverbial in a general sense. 



Rarely does Philo mention the exact place where a quotation is found. 

 Some critics argue against the genuineness of this work of Philo from this 

 passage, forgetting that the division of Homer into books was made h\ Zenodo- 

 tus or Aristarchus, 250 years before Philo. 



11 In the first and second centuries A.D. it was a common thing to give 

 away one's property when entering upon the religious life. Early Christians 

 gave their propertj^ to bishops of the church or to the heads of orders. Some- 

 times the property was put into a common fimd, as we know from Mark 10, 29 

 and Acts 4, 32-35. 



12 In his essay on the Decalogue (2, 181), Philo says it behooves the new 

 convert to go away from his old surromidings entirely since friends and relatives 

 would try to drag him back into paganism. Renunciation of home and friends 

 was the kejTiote of earh' Christianity, and was strengthened bj^ the firm belief 

 that the second advent of Christ and the end of the world were near. Compare 

 Jesus' o^Ti words in Matthew 19, 29: ''And everyone that hath forsaken houses, 

 or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands 

 for my name's sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall inherit evei'- 

 lasting life." 



