PHILO of ALEXANDRIA

THE CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE, THE GIANTS, AND SELECTIONS

TRANSLATION AND INTRODUCTION

BY

DAVID WINSTON

PREFACE

BY

JOHN DILLON

PAULIST PRESS

Cover Art:

The artist LIAM ROBERTS was born in Ireland and now lives in New York City. After attending the National College of Art in Dublin, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, and at the Academy of Fine Art in Rome. In this cover Mr. Roberts has produced an updated version of the ancient image of Philo.

Design: Barbini, Pesce & Noble, Inc.

Copyright © 1981 by

David Winston

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress

Catalog Card Number: 80-84499

ISBN: 0-8091-2333-9

Published by Paulist Press

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THE CLASSICS OF WESTERN SPIRITUALITY

A Library of the Great Spiritual Masters

President and Publisher

Kevin A. Lynch, C.S.P.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

Richard J. Payne

Associate Editor

John Farina

Editorial Consultant

Ewert H. Cousins—Professor and Director of Spirituality Graduate Program, Fordham University, Bronx, N.Y.

John E. Booty—Professor of Church History, Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass.

Joseph Dan—Professor of Kaballah in the Department of Jewish Thought, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.

Albert Deblaere—Professor of the History of Spirituality, Gregorian University, Rome, Italy.

Louis Dupré—T.L. Riggs Professor in Philosophy of Religion, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

Rozanne Elder—Executive Vice President, Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, Mich.

Mircea Eliade—Professor in the Department of the History of Religions, University of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.

Anne Fremantle—Teacher, Editor and Writer, New York, N.Y.

Karlfried Froelich—Professor of the History of the Early and Medieval Church, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, N.J.

Arthur Green—Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Thought, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.

Stanley S. Harakas—Dean of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary, Brookline, Mass.

Jean Leclercq—Professor, Institute of Spirituality and Institute of Religious Psychology, Gregorian University, Rome, Italy.

Miguel León-Portilla—Professor Mesoamerican Cultures and Languages, National University of Mexico, University City, Mexico.

George A. Maloney, S.J.—Director, John XXIII Ecumenical Center, Fordham University, Bronx, N.Y.

Bernard McGinn—Associate Professor of Historical Theology and History of Christianity, University of Chicago Divinity School, Chicago, Ill.

John Meyendorff—professor of Church History, Fordham University, Bronx, N.Y., and Professor of Patristics and Church History, St. Vladimir’s Seminary, Tuckahoe, N.Y.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr—Professor of Islamics, ...