brought together.  Its development was in its essence a sign of intellectual vigor and religious activity; but in the time of Philo it threatened to have one evil consequence, which did in the end undermine the religion of the Alexandrian community.  Some who allegorized the Torah were not content with discovering a deeper meaning beneath the law, but went on to disregard the literal sense, i.e., they allegorized away the law, and held in contempt the symbolic observance to which they had attached a spiritual meaning.  On the other hand, there was a party which adhered strictly to the literal sense ([Greek:  to hreton]) and rejected allegorism.[34] Philo protested against these extremes and was the leader of those who were liberal in thought and conservative in practice, and who venerated the law both for its literal and for its allegorical sense.  To effect the true harmony between the literal and the allegorical sense of the Torah, between the spiritual and the legal sides of Judaism, between Greek philosophy and revealed religion—­that was the great work of Philo-Judaeus.

Though the religious and intellectual development of the Alexandrian community proceeded on different lines from that of the main body of the nation in Palestine, yet the connection between the two was maintained closely for centuries.  The colony, as we have noticed, recognized whole-heartedly the spiritual headship of Jerusalem, and at the great festivals of the year a deputation went from Alexandria to the holy sanctuary, bearing offerings from the whole community.  In Jerusalem, on the other hand, special synagogues, where Greek was the language,[35] were built for Alexandrian visitors.  Alexandrian artisans and craftsmen took part in the building of Herod’s temple, but were found inferior to native workmen.[36] The notices within the building were written in Greek as well as in Aramaic, and the golden gates to the inner court were, we are told by Josephus,[37] the gift of Philo’s brother, the head of the Alexandrian community.  Some fragments have come down to us of a poem about Jerusalem in Greek verse by a certain Philo, who lived in the first century B.C.E., and was perhaps an ancestor of our worthy.  He glorifies the Holy City, extols its fertility, and speaks of its ever-flowing waters beneath the earth.  His greater namesake says that wherever the Jews live they consider Jerusalem as their metropolis.  The Talmud again tells how Judah Ben Tabbai and Joshua Ben Perahya, during the persecution of the Pharisees by Hyreanus, fled to Alexandria, and how later Joshua Ben Hanania[38] sojourned there and gave answers to twelve questions which the Jews propounded to him, three of them dealing with “the Wisdom.”  The Talmud has frequent reference to Alexandrian Jews, and that it makes little direct mention of the Alexandrian exegesis is explained by the distrust of the whole Hellenistic movement, which the rise of Christianity and the growth of Gnosticism induced in the rabbis