"This book examines Philo's understanding of the acquisition of virtues and the avoidance of vices using the Greek concept of piety as a central virtue in his ethical discourse. Naveros exceptionally shows how Philo construes his understanding of living ethically within both the Hellenistic Jewish and Greek traditions"--

This volume, prepared in collaboration with the International Philo Bibliography Project, is the fourth in a series of annotated bibliographies on the Jewish exegete and philosopher Philo of Alexandria. It contains an annotated listing of all scholarly writings on Philo for the period 2007 to 2016.

Nélida Naveros Córdova carefully draws from a variety of texts within the Philonic corpus to provide a complete sourcebook for an introduction to Philo. After a general introduction, she consolidates the major topics and themes commonly studied in Philo into seven chapters: Philo's theology, his doctrine of creation, his anthropology, his doctrine of ethics, his metaphorical interpretation of biblical characters, his exposition of the Jewish Law and the Decalogue, and Jewish worship and major observances. For each chapter, Naveros Córdova provides a brief introduction and overview of the topics in their cultural and religious contexts highlighting Philo's philosophical thought and the significance of his biblical interpretation. The sourcebook consists mostly of fresh translations with few authorial comments with an attempt to introduce and present Philonic texts to the introductory reader to give broad exposure to the nature of Philo's literal and allegorical biblical interpretations. From start to finish, the book emphasizes the unity of the ethical character of Philo's thought considered the basic spectrum of his biblical exegesis.

In his comprehensive exposition of the Tenth Commandment (Spec. 4.79–131), Philo considers the prohibition “You shall not desire”: what sort of desire it prohibits (and why) and how the Mosaic dietary laws collectively enforce that prohibition. This volume offers the first complete study of Philo’s exposition, beginning with an overview of its content, context, and place in previous research. In-depth studies of Philo’s concept of desire and his concept of self-control provide background and demonstrate Philo’s fundamental agreement with contemporary Middle-Platonic moral psychology, especially in his theory of emotion (pathos). A new translation of the exposition, with commentary, offers a definitive explanation of Philo’s view of the Tenth Commandment, including precisely the sort of excessive desire it targets and how the dietary laws work as practical exercises for training the soul in self-control.

This first biography of Philo of Alexandria, one of antiquity's most prolific yet enigmatic authors, traces his intellectual development from Bible interpreter to diplomat in Rome

This volume, prepared with the collaboration of the International Philo Bibliography Project, is the third in a series of annotated bibliographies on the Jewish exegete and philosopher Philo of Alexandria. It contains a listing of all scholarly writings on Philo for the period 1997 to 2006.

In The Moral Psychology of Clement of Alexandria, Kathleen Gibbons proposes a new approach to Clement’s moral philosophy and explores how his construction of Christianity’s relationship with Jewishness informed, and was informed by, his philosophical project. As one of the earliest Christian philosophers, Clement’s work has alternatively been treated as important for understanding the history of relations between Christianity and Judaism and between Christianity and pagan philosophy. This study argues that an adequate examination of his significance for the one requires an adequate examination of his significance for the other. While the ancient claim that the writings of Moses were read by the philosophical schools was found in Jewish, Christian, and pagan authors, Gibbons demonstrates that Clement’s use of this claim shapes not only his justification of his authorial project, but also his philosophical argumentation. In explaining what he took to be the cosmological, metaphysical, and ethical implications of the doctrine that the supreme God is a lawgiver, Clement provided the theoretical justifications for his views on a range of issues that included martyrdom, sexual asceticism, the status of the law of Moses, and the relationship between divine providence and human autonomy. By contextualizing Clement’s discussions of volition against wider Greco-Roman debates about self-determination, it becomes possible to reinterpret the invocation of “free will” in early Christian heresiological discourse as part of a larger dispute about what human autonomy requires.