to the one who irrigated the face of the earth (B. II, 6), he gives water to the senses placed in our face; 2) sources of education – first of all, secondary education with its various useful disciplines; 3) the sources of foolishness are sensations that are likened to the monthly purifications of a woman (Lev. XX, 18), then "the fountains of the abyss" (B. VII, II), which open and drown our soul; 4) the sources of reason, virtue – good character, constancy, wisdom, and 5) the highest source and Father of all, God, the source of life (32-36). The angel found Hagar at the fountain (37): she did not draw from it, because the soul, which is in the process of development, is not yet able to draw from the pure source of wisdom. He refers Hagar to her mistress, a teacher of perfect wisdom, free from sensuality, in whom "the ordinary feminine has ceased", and he predicts to Hagar, who personifies secondary education, that she will give birth to Ishmael, a sophist who is different from the true sage who sees God. We omit many interesting details of more episodic importance, although, strictly speaking, everything in the treatise we are examining consists of episodes. The reader sees what a strange mixture of mysticism and eclecticism, theosophy and rhetoric, Philo gives us in his commentary. The interpreted text connects in a purely external way variegated, diverse thoughts that do not logically follow from each other, but are connected by accidental psychological associations. The work of thought is replaced by capricious play, and propositions are substantiated not by logic, but by external authority, which gives them the seal of infallibility. This is a symptom of a serious illness that has fettered human thought for a long time. But behind the apparent variegation of Philo's images, notions, and concepts, however, there is one idea, one world outlook, integral and complete; he did not give it a logical, systematically scientific form, but it is undoubtedly the form in which he clothed it that corresponds most to it. Man's life is a dream; his reason and feelings are powerless in the knowledge of the truth; The only source of unconditionally reliable knowledge is revelation, the only reliable word is the Divine Word, which is clothed in images, adapting itself to the weakness of man. This is the divine Word, in which

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contains the meaning of Scripture, and contains the meaning of all that exists. In him and through him everything is created, in him and through him everything is known. The world itself is an allegory of the Godhead, His allegorical revelation. But blessed is he who rises above allegories, parables, and images of the word, who is directly illumined by the eternal light of the Eternal!

IV. Philo's Doctrine of God and His Powers

Philo's teaching in his own eyes is the teaching of Moses himself, the very Word of God, and the role of the philosopher consists only in the true exegesis and transmission of this Word. Rhetoric, logic, physics, Greek philosophy, and science are only the interpreter's manuals, which are fruitless without the enlightenment of grace and even harmful, where we take them for something self-sufficient, valuable in itself, and are drawn into sophistic philosophizing. Inspiration, the direct illumination of the soul, cleansed of sensuality and nourished by the manna of the Word, is the true key to all the parables, riddles, and mysteries of Scripture.

Scripture is the true Word of God, the true wisdom of God and the law of God revealed to men. All the words of Scripture express this one content; all of them are only different expressions, spiritualized images, allegories of a single, all-embracing truth. God in His essence is inaccessible and unknowable to man; man knows Him only in His powers and attributes, in His goodness, which is manifested in His creative and providential activity, and in His truth, which is revealed in His law. Man knows God only in His true Word, for this Word is not the creation of Moses, and Moses himself is only the organ of the Word, which speaks in him.

Philo's view of the Scriptures expresses the main idea of his theology. On the one hand, the Eternal – the Godhead in itself – is not expressed by any word, being ineffable and transcending every thought, word or image, concept or definition. We only know that the Eternal exists, but we cannot know what He is. More precisely, by denying all definitions, we are elevated

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to the realization of His absolute transcendence: everything that is said about Him is only allegory. He is the incomprehensible monad of Plato and the Pythagoreans, an absolutely simple Being above all existence and all knowledge. But, on the other hand, the Godhead is the absolute principle or cause of existence, the source of being, the source of all forces and properties, the subject and object of revelation, of the Word.

The Scriptures say that God is not a man, and at the same time He appears in it as a man. As an absolute being, He is infinitely far from everything relative, finite, limited; and at the same time the Scriptures ascribe to Him human feelings, properties, and organs. We already know that, from Philo's point of view, such organs allegorically denote the properties of the Godhead, His omniscience, power, etc. But in what sense can any qualities, properties, or definitions be ascribed to God at all? Every quality determines a certain class of objects which partake of it: but God is not a finite being along with other relative and finite beings. Not only is it not anthropomorphic, but it is of no quality[164]. Not belonging to any class of beings, He cannot be defined by any qualities, even the most excellent. He does not partake of them, and is above them, above goodness, reasonableness, righteousness, etc. Therefore, wherever the Scriptures attribute such qualities to God, they also speak only allegorically and adapt themselves to the weakness of our reason. Deity is beyond all understanding, and therefore beyond all doubt. This is where skepticism finds its limit. His criticism was justified, showing the internal contradiction of all the particular, limited determinations of the Godhead, which turned the unconditional into the conditional and the relationless into the relative. For if everything relative and conditional makes us assume the absolute, then we must first of all deny all particular and limited determinations of this absolute. Carneades argued against the Stoics that the Deity could not be thought of as either limited or unlimited: in the first case it was transformed into a part which