On the Special Laws

The whole Mosaic code, sorted under the Ten Commandments and explained to Greek readers, written by a man pulled into politics against his will.

by Philo of Alexandria383 passages held

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: De specialibus legibus I–IV
Original language: Ancient Greek

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Overview

Halfway through this long work, at the start of its third book, Philo stops to complain. There was a time, he writes, when he had leisure for philosophy and seemed to ride with the sun and moon; then envy dragged him into the sea of public affairs, where he still struggles to keep his head above water. Whenever a brief calm comes he returns to study, and that is how he dares to take up the laws of Moses one by one. Having treated the Ten Commandments as headings in an earlier book, Philo uses these four to file every other law in the Pentateuch beneath one of them and explains each to readers who meet them from outside. The first book defends circumcision, mocked by outsiders though the Egyptians practise it too, on grounds of health and cleanliness before reading it as a symbol; then come the laws against images, under the second commandment, and the Temple, the priesthood and the sacrifices. Oaths, the Sabbath, the ten festivals of the year and the honour owed to parents fill the second book; adultery, murder and the exposure of unwanted infants, a practice common among the nations of his day, which he condemns, fill the third; theft, false witness and covetousness the fourth, which closes with long sections on justice and on appointing rulers. The lost leisure he mourns is probably the time before the disasters of 38 CE, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy suggests, though Philo himself names no event.

Key concepts

How does The Special Laws relate to the Ten Commandments?

It files every other law of the Pentateuch under one of them. Philo treats each commandment as a heading for a whole class of particular laws: the prohibition of images heads the laws on worship, the Sabbath heads the festivals, the ban on theft heads the laws of property. The four books work through the headings in order, so the entire Mosaic code becomes an unfolding of the Ten.

What does circumcision symbolise for Philo?

Two things. It symbolises the cutting away of the pleasures that delude the mind, beginning with the strongest of them, and it symbolises self-knowledge, the removal of the vain opinion by which some people think themselves the makers of human beings and forget God, the true cause. Philo gives these readings only after defending the practice on grounds of health and cleanliness.

Why is equality the mother of justice?

Because justice consists in giving each their due, and equality is the principle that measures it. Philo takes the phrase from earlier investigators of nature and calls equality a light never shaded, the sun of the intellect, while inequality, where superior and inferior are set against each other, is the source of darkness. The long closing section of the fourth book builds its account of justice on that claim.

What does it mean to read a law in two ways?

To give it a literal reason and a symbolic one, and to keep both. Philo defends a practice first in terms any outsider could accept, such as health or humanity, and then reads it as a sign of a virtue or a truth about God. The practical reason answers the outsider's mockery; the symbolic one says what the practice teaches the person who keeps it.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Ritual Law Explained Twice: As Practice and as Symbol

Can a rite outsiders mock be defended on their terms and still mean more than they see? Philo's answer is to give each law two reasons.

Having treated the Ten Commandments as headings, Philo files every other law of the Pentateuch beneath one of them and explains each to readers who meet it from outside. Circumcision, mocked by outsiders though the Egyptians practise it too, is defended first on grounds of health and cleanliness, then read as a symbol: of cutting away the pleasures that delude the mind, and of a person knowing himself instead of claiming to be the maker of man. The laws against images come under the second commandment; the Temple, priesthood and sacrifices follow; oaths, the Sabbath, the ten festivals and the honour due to parents fill the second book.

religious law
symbolism
worship
priesthood
sacrifice
sabbath
ritual

Enter a dialogue

Adultery, Murder and the Exposed Child

Where does a society's protection of life have to begin? Philo pushes it back to the newborn his neighbours left to die.

The third book takes the commandments against adultery and murder and gathers under them the laws of marriage, of violence and of killing. One stands out. The exposure of unwanted infants was a common practice among the nations of Philo's day, and he condemns it without qualification: if the law protects a child not yet born from harm, how much more must it protect one already born and sent into the world to share nature's gifts? What his contemporaries treated as a household decision he treats as homicide, and the argument rests on the claim that a human being's standing does not wait on anyone's acceptance of it.

homicide
sexual ethics
marriage
family
punishment
moral responsibility
human nature

Enter a dialogue

Justice, Equality and the Rulers Who Keep Them

What makes a community just, and who should be trusted to keep it so? The fourth book closes the Law with theft, false witness and covetousness, and then with justice itself.

The fourth book files theft, false witness and covetousness under the last commandments and closes with long sections on justice and on appointing rulers. Justice, for Philo, grows from equality, which he calls the mother of justice and a light never shaded, while inequality is the source of darkness. All of this was written, he says at the start of the third book, by a man who once had leisure for philosophy and seemed to ride with the sun and moon, until envy dragged him into the sea of public affairs. He returns to study whenever a brief calm comes.

justice
equality
property
truth
desire
temperance
education

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 383
distinct concepts: 540
by passages held, corpus-wide: #195

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “justice” and “law”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 90 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
justice	law	13
justice	punishment	10
sacrifice	virtue	8
gratitude	sacrifice	6
law	virtue	6
justice	virtue	5
priesthood	religious law	4
priesthood	sacrifice	4
justice	sacrifice	3
law	punishment	3
justice	priesthood	2
justice	religious law	2
law	sacrifice	2
priesthood	virtue	2
punishment	religious law	2
gratitude	justice	1
gratitude	law	1
gratitude	priesthood	1
gratitude	religious law	1
law	priesthood	1
punishment	virtue	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

Against Flaccus (In Flaccum)
Written as a demonstration of divine justice, this account of the Alexandrian riots of 38 CE and of the prefect Philo blamed for them stands with his historical and apologetic works.
EN
Allegorical Interpretation (Legum allegoriae I–III)
The first surviving treatise of the Allegorical Commentary, Philo's long verse-by-verse reading of Genesis, covering its second and third chapters in three books.
EN
Every Good Man Is Free (Quod omnis probus liber sit)
Written in the manner of the Greek schools rather than as commentary on Moses, it is, with On the Eternity of the World, one of Philo's philosophical treatises.
EN
On Abraham (De Abrahamo)
The first of Philo's lives of the patriarchs in the Exposition of the Law, following On the Creation of the World; its companions on Isaac and Jacob are lost, and On Joseph continues the set.
EN
On Cultivation (De agricultura)
Noah the farmer is a subject Philo splits across two treatises; this first one is built on the difference between near-synonyms, and On Planting continues it.
EN
On Dreams (De somniis I–II)
A treatise of the Allegorical Commentary, in two surviving books on the dreams of Jacob, Joseph and Pharaoh's court.
EN
On Drunkenness (De ebrietate)
Of the two books on drunkenness known in antiquity, this is the one that survives; it sits between On Planting and On Sobriety in the Allegorical Commentary's run on Noah and the vine.
EN
On Flight and Finding (De fuga et inventione)
Hagar's flight and the angel who finds her, Genesis 16:6–14, read within the Allegorical Commentary.
EN
On Joseph (De Josepho)
The life of the statesman in Philo's series of patriarch lives within the Exposition of the Law. It follows On Abraham; lives of Isaac and Jacob, now lost, once stood between them.
EN
On Mating with the Preliminary Studies (De congressu eruditionis gratia)
Philo's reading of Genesis 16 as a theory of education, set within the Allegorical Commentary; On Flight and Finding continues Hagar's story.
EN
On Planting (De plantatione)
The second of Philo's two treatises on Noah as farmer, turning from farming in general to the planting of the vineyard.
EN
On Rewards and Punishments (De praemiis et poenis et de exsecrationibus)
The closing treatise of the Exposition of the Law, on the rewards, punishments, blessings and curses the Law sets before its hearers.
EN
On Sobriety (De sobrietate)
A short sequel to On Drunkenness in the Allegorical Commentary, on Noah waking and pronouncing his blessings and curse. Its Greek title names exactly that: what Noah prayed for and cursed once sober.
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On the Change of Names (De mutatione nominum)
Genesis 17 and its renamings, from Abram and Sarai to Jacob and Joshua, read in the Allegorical Commentary; it also carries Philo's clearest statement that God has no proper name.
EN
On the Cherubim (De Cherubim)
Two short commentaries joined under one title: the cherubim at Eden's gate, then the birth of Cain. Within the Allegorical Commentary it picks up where the three books of Allegorical Interpretation stop.
EN
On the Confusion of Tongues (De confusione linguarum)
The Tower of Babel in the Allegorical Commentary, opening with a defence of Genesis against critics who likened it to Greek myth.
EN
On the Contemplative Life (De vita contemplativa)
A portrait of the Therapeutae, classed with Philo's historical and apologetic writings; it opens by referring back to his account of the Essenes, the active life to this contemplative one.
EN
On the Creation of the World (De opificio mundi)
The overture to Philo's Exposition of the Law, the series that goes on to lives of the patriarchs and a code of laws. It stands apart as his reading of the creation story in its literal order.
EN
On the Decalogue (De decalogo)
The hinge of the Exposition of the Law, turning from the lives of the patriarchs to the written law.
EN
On the Embassy to Gaius (Legatio ad Gaium)
The companion of Against Flaccus: an eyewitness history of the embassy Philo led to Gaius, and the fullest account he left of his own public life.
EN
On the Eternity of the World (De aeternitate mundi)
Among Philo's philosophical treatises, the one that names the Greek schools and their arguments most openly.
EN
On the Giants and On the Unchangeableness of God (De gigantibus; Quod Deus sit immutabilis)
Two treatises that editions usually separate but that read as one commentary, in the Allegorical Commentary, on the verses of Genesis leading up to the flood.
EN
On the Life of Moses (De vita Mosis I–II)
Philo's biography of Moses in two books, usually counted with the Exposition of the Law though it stands on its own.
EN
On the Migration of Abraham (De migratione Abrahami)
Abraham's call in Genesis 12, read as the soul's migration toward God; in the Allegorical Commentary it follows On the Confusion of Tongues in the order of Genesis.
EN
On the Posterity of Cain (De posteritate Caini)
The last of the Cain treatises in the Allegorical Commentary, following Cain from his exile through his descendants.
EN
On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain (De sacrificiis Abelis et Caini)
One of the run of treatises on Cain and Abel in the Allegorical Commentary, taking up the brothers' offerings in Genesis 4.
EN
On the Special Laws (De specialibus legibus I–IV) you are here EN
On the Virtues (De virtutibus)
A pendant to On the Special Laws in the Exposition of the Law, gathering laws under the virtues they train rather than under the Ten Commandments.
EN
The Worse Attacks the Better (Quod deterius potiori insidiari soleat)
It follows On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain in the Allegorical Commentary and carries the brothers' story on to the murder itself.
EN
Who Is the Heir of Divine Things? (Quis rerum divinarum heres sit)
Best known for its long passage on the Logos dividing the world into opposites, this reading of God's covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15 belongs to the Allegorical Commentary.
EN

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On the Special Laws

Overview

Key concepts

How does The Special Laws relate to the Ten Commandments?

What does circumcision symbolise for Philo?

Why is equality the mother of justice?

What does it mean to read a law in two ways?

Themes of the book

1Ritual Law Explained Twice: As Practice and as Symbol

2Adultery, Murder and the Exposed Child

3Justice, Equality and the Rulers Who Keep Them

Within this work

What this book thinks together

Works held

Ritual Law Explained Twice: As Practice and as Symbol

Adultery, Murder and the Exposed Child

Justice, Equality and the Rulers Who Keep Them