some of which excluded the literal interpretation, while others admitted it by the side of the
higher meaning.5
3. Siegfried has, with immense labor, collected a vast number of parallel expressions, chiefly from Plato
and Plutarch (pp. 39-47).
4. Comp. Grossmann, Quĉ st. Phil. i. p. 5 &c.
5. In this sketch of the system of Philo I have largely availed myself of the careful analysis of Siegfried.
To begin with the former: the literal sense must be wholly set aside, when it implied anything
unworthy of the Deity, anything unmeaning, impossible, or contrary to reason. Manifestly, this
canon, if strictly applied, would do away not only with all anthropomorphisms, but cut the knot
wherever difficulties seemed insuperable. Again, Philo would find an allegorical, along with the
literal, interpretation indicated in the reduplication of a word, and in seemingly superfluous
words, particles, or expressions.6 These could, of course, only bear such a meaning on Philo's
assumption of the actual inspiration of the LXX. version. Similarly, in exact accordance with a
Talmudical canon,7 any repetition of what had been already stated would point to something
new. These were comparatively sober rules of exegesis. Not so the licence which he claimed of
freely altering the punctuation8 of sentences, and his notion that, if one from among several
synonymous words was chosen in a passage, this pointed to some special meaning attaching to
it. Even more extravagant was the idea, that a word which occurred in the LXX. might be
interpreted according to every shade of meaning which it bore in the Greek, and that even
another meaning might be given it by slightly altering the letters. However, like other of Philo's
allegorical canons, these were also adopted by the Rabbis, and Haggadic interpretations were
frequently prefaced by: `Read not thus - but thus.' If such violence might be done to the text, we
need not wonder at interpretations based on a play upon words, or even upon parts of a word.
Of course, all seemingly strange or peculiar modes of expression, or of designation, occurring in
Scripture, must have their special meaning, and so also every particle, adverb, or preposition.
Again, the position of a verse, its succession by another, the apparently unaccountable presence
or absence of a word, might furnish hints for some deeper meaning, and so would an
unexpected singular for a plural, or vice versâ, the use of a tense, even the gender of a word.
Most serious of all, an allegorical interpretation might be again employed as the basis of
another.9
6. It should be noted that these are also Talmudical canons, not indeed for allegorical interpretation, but
as pointing to some special meaning, since there was not a word or particle in Scripture without a
definite meaning and object.
7. Baba K 64 a.
8. To illustrate what use might be made of such alterations, the Midrash (Ber. R. 65) would have us
punctuate Gen. xxvii. 19, as follows: `And Jacob s aid unto his father, I (viz. am he who will receive the
ten commandments) - (but) Esau (is) thy firstborn.' In Yalkut there is the still more curious explanation
that in heaven the soul of Jacob was the firstborn!
9. Each of these positions is capable of ample proof from Philo's writings, as shown by Siegfried. But
only a bare statement of these canons was here possible.