Philo About the Contemplative Life, or the Fourth Book of the Treatise Concerning Virtues

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Any such hypothesis ignores the philological affinities of the piece; as well as all the circumstances of its trans mission to us in the manuscripts and in ancient versions. It conflicts with chronology, rests upon wholesale mis understanding of the text, and presupposes conditions of pseud-epigraphic authorship which never did and never could exist. That it should be rapidly stereotyping itself among scholars is indicative of a prevalent and regrettable ignorance of Philo's writings; and it was in the hope of being able to correct an error which is the inversion of three centuries of religious history, that I undertook six years ago, at the instance of Professor L. Massebieau of Paris, the present edition. If he had kept his health and strength, he would have himself followed up his excellent monograph 1 with a critical edition of the Greek text.