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

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is less than the whole, and in the second it loses its life and individuality, since a certain living being, which has in itself the center of life, cannot be thought of as infinite. This last consideration perfectly characterizes the Greek concept of deity; and it was so convincing that, under its obvious influence, Panaetius and Posidonius recognized the limitation of the Godhead, and, in order not to turn Him into a part of a larger whole, they denied the infinity of the external world of space. Philo rises above this limited conception, approaching Plato's transcendental ideal. Divinity is known by means of complete abstraction, by the negation of all created things, and only he finds God who has left his senses and his reason, who has left the whole world and himself. This is the path of negation and abstraction – negative theology (ἀποφατικὴ θεολογία), as it was later called.

But the Divinity is not a vacuous abstraction. In fact, Philo thinks of Him as the eternal fullness of being, and ascribes to Him, together with the Scriptures, the attributes of goodness, power, righteousness, and knowledge to an infinite degree. Only these attributes are not qualities of the Godhead, but His peculiarities. Since He is an all-real being, finite, limited beings can partake of His individual powers and be determined by them as qualities. The Godhead itself, having in itself a perfect fullness, cannot participate in anything or possess separate qualities and final determinations. Not partaking in anything, He gives everything from His fullness. Thus, it could be said that, according to Philo, the Godhead is not qualitative, but superqualitative, having in itself the potency or power of all qualities, i.e., absolute omnipotence.

For the first time in philosophy, this new concept of the Godhead was formulated, which formed the basis of all subsequent theology. The idea of absolute monotheism here finds its first philosophical expression, to which the speculation of the Greeks, which did not find in its religious experience an object corresponding to this idea, could not rise. The abstraction of Greek theology, which oscillated between pantheism and dualism, was partly reflected in Philo, as we shall see

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