Bernard Muller wrote:I said it before, the same appellation can be applied to different entities. Just like "Lord" is applied to both God and Jesus in the NT. Philo accepted that appellation as applied to a human, but he thought it would applied as well, even better, to his incorporeal being.
Are you deliberately trying to avoid answering the question? Or is this your way of taking option B, that Philo thought that the reference to a man named East/Branch/Sprout/Rising was to an incorporeal being? The man named East/Branch/Rising cannot both have a body and not have a body.
Consider: "If the universe is only 10 thousand years old, then one is hard pressed to explain how light can reach us already from stars further than 10 thousand light years away. But, if the universe is much older, the explanation is easy."
Only one of those two "if" clauses is true. The universe cannot be only 10 thousand years old and also billions of years old at the same time.
'On Mating': But Philo quoted a proverb, whose author is anonymous (so, understandably, no further identification of the author). Anyway here we are not dealing with a prophetic saying, showing that disciple of Moses is not necessarily a prophet.
Is
this the passage you are referring to? The passage in which Philo does not identify the author (hint: Solomon),
even though Jews of the time regularly deemed a particular figure from Jewish history (hint: Solomon) to have been the author of all the unattributed sayings in the book of Proverbs?
On Mating: "And it is from this consideration, as it appears to me that one of the disciples of Moses, by name the peaceful, who in his native language is called Solomon, says, 'My son, neglect not the instruction of God, and be not grieved when thou art reproved by him; for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth; and scourgeth every son whom he Received' (= Proverbs 3.11-12)."
Are you sure you are reading Philo carefully enough?
In these days, most people were illiterate and therefore any religious education had to be verbal/oral. So the 'heard" and 'hear".
But Philo was not illiterate. He did not have to learn about the saying by hearing it as showing in the book of 'Zechariah'. Actually, the way he presented the saying shows he was ignorant (or faked ignorance) of its ultimate origin.
Are Philo's own readers illiterate?
On the Change of Names: (171) When, therefore, you hear [ἀκούσῃς] that "Pharaoh and all his servants rejoiced on account of the arrival of Joseph's Brethren," (= Genesis 45.16) do not think that they rejoiced in reality, unless perhaps in this sense, that they expected that he would become changed from the good things of the soul in which he had been brought up, and would come over to the profitless appetites of the body, having adulterated the ancient and hereditary coinage of that virtue which was akin to him.
This comes right in the middle of a long exposition of the story of Joseph, which Philo is clearly deriving from the written text of Genesis. Why, then, does he suggest his readers will
hear the story rather than read it?
Similarly:
Allegorical Interpretation III: (51) And the expression "Where art thou?" admits of being interpreted in many ways. In the first place it may be taken not as an interrogation, but as an affirmation, equivalent to the words "You are somewhere," if you alter the accent on the particle pou "where." For, since you have thought that God was walking in the garden, and was surrounded by it, learn now that in this you were mistaken, and hear [ἄκουσον] from God who knows all things that most true statement that God is not in any one place. For he is not surrounded by anything, but he does himself surround everything. For that which is created is in place; for it is inevitable that it must be surrounded, and not be the thing which surrounds.
Who Is the Heir of All Things: (292) Listen [ἄκουε], therefore, in such a spirit as to think his words a good lesson, to this statement of the lawgiver, that the good man alone has a happy old age, and that he is the most long-lived of men; but that the wicked man is the most short-lived of men, living only to die, or rather having already died as to the life of virtue.
How are the readers to listen to the words of the lawgiver if Moses is dead?
You said that Philo himself was not illiterate, so why does
he listen to scripture at times?
Who Is the Heir of All Things: (203) And I marvel still more, when listening [κατακούων] to the sacred oracles I learn from them in what manner "a cloud came in the Midst" (= Exodus 14.19) between the army of the Egyptians and the company of the children of Israel; for the cloud no longer permitted the race, which is temperate and beloved by God, to be persecuted by that which was devoted to the passions and a foe to God; being a covering and a protection to its friends, but a weapon of vengeance and chastisement against its enemies.
Or did he forget (or pretend) that the story of the exodus from Egypt came from the scriptures, too, like he forgot (or pretended) about the man named East?
You know, I bet that Philo just sometimes wrote of hearing the scriptures, even when he had not forgotten that the passage in question came from the scriptures and/or was not faking ignorance of the source:
On the Confusion of Tongues: (134) And the statement, "The Lord went down to see that city and that tower" (= Genesis 11.5) must be listened [ἀκουστέον] to altogether as if spoken in a figurative sense. For to think that the divinity can go towards, or go from, or go down, or go to meet, or, in short, that it has the same positions and motions as particular animals, and that it is susceptible of real motion at all, is, to use a common proverb, an impiety deserving of being banished beyond the sea and beyond the world. (135) But these things are spoken, as if of man, by the lawgiver, of God who is not invested with human form, for the sake of advantage to us who are to be instructed, as I have often said before with reference to other passages. Since who is there who does not know that it is indispensable for a person who goes down, to leave one place and to occupy another?
On the Unchangeableness of God: (51) Having now therefore explained these matters sufficiently, let us pass on to what comes next. And this is what follows: "I will destroy," says God, "the man whom I have made from off the face of the earth, from man to beast, from creeping things to the fowls of the air, because I have considered and repent that I have made them." (52) Now, some persons, when they hear [ἀκούσαντες] the expressions which I have just cited, imagine that the living God is here giving away to anger and passion; but God is utterly inaccessible to any passion whatever. For it is the peculiar property of human weakness to be disquieted by any such feelings, but God has neither the irrational passions of the soul, nor are the parts and limits of the body in the least belonging to him. But, nevertheless, such things are spoken of with reference to God by the great lawgiver in an introductory sort of way, for the sake of admonishing those persons who could not be corrected otherwise.
On Drunkenness: (215b) For what advantage is there, from the hearing of the sacred scriptures, to a man who is destitute of wisdom, whose faith has been eradicated, and who is unable to preserve that deposit of doctrines most advantageous to all human life?
I bet that is just one way of referring to the scriptures, and has nothing to do with your forced interpretation of his words.
Ben.