Surviving Works of Philo of Alexandria (Vol. 7 - Indices)

VI

PROLEGOMENA

Those who read and engage in critical work know the difficulties this brings. Furthermore, it is my firm hope that my third index, which will contain the notions of Philo’s philosophy and theology, will be of great use in the future even to those who investigate the sources of Philo.

II. REGARDING THE INDEX OF LOCATIONS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

I have distinguished the passages of Holy Scripture, which Philo either quotes or interprets in his writings, in such a way that I placed an asterisk (*) before all those whose actual written words Philo used. I did this with the intention of making the labor of comparison easier for philologists who might wish to discuss the relationship between Philo and the Greek version of the Old Testament.

III. REGARDING THE INDEX OF WORDS

I have expended the greatest amount of labor on the index of words. Since it was not permitted for me to write out an index of the entire Greek language of Philo—for it was impossible for such large volumes to be typeset during these times in Germany, where a war was being waged against almost the entire world, leading to extreme scarcity—I considered it sufficient to collect all those words that appeared to me to be specific to Philo’s philosophy and theology All my observations regarding the language of Philo, which pertain to grammar and usage, are intended for publication in a separate dissertation. Many have already been produced by C. Siegfried: Philo of Alexandria as an Interpreter of the Old Testament, Jena 1875; L. Cohn: Observations on the Language of Philo in the Prolegomena to Philo’s book On the Creation of the World, p. XLI sqq.; F. Cumont: Philo’s Book on the Eternity of the World, p. XVI sqq.; P. Wendland: Philo’s Writing on Providence, Berlin 1892, p. 100 sqq.; P. Wendland: "The Therapeutae" in Yearbooks for Classical Philology, Supplement 22, 1896, p. 693—772; F. C. Conybeare: "Philo Concerning the Contemplative Life" in The Jewish Quarterly Review 7, 1895, p. 755—769; E. Krell: Philo on 'That Every Good Person is Free', The Question of Authenticity, Gymnasium-Program, Augsburg 1896; A. Schröder: On Philo of Alexandria’s Old Testament, Dissertation, Greifswald 1907.. The same rule and standard should not be applied to the Philonic index as to an Aristotelian or Platonic one, because Philo drew words from many books of ancient philosophers and from Holy Scripture, which he either used in their own proper sense or to which he assigned a new concept. In this, he very often mixes his own words with those of others in one and the same sentence. Therefore, in transcribing these passages, I mainly aimed for a full doctrine of Philo on any given subject to be derivable from the index; however, I did not include words from those passages which Philo transcribed word-for-word from the Old Testament and from the books of his sources.