14 Philo of Alexandria

The largest corpus of Jewish writings from the Second Temple period was preserved not by Jews, but by Christians. This chapter explores the transmission of the writings of Philo of Alexandria by using “historical contingency” to address why Christians preserved the works of Philo. It identifies four major contingencies: the destruction of the Alexandrian Jewish community in 115–117 CE, Origen’s move from Alexandria to Caesarea c. 232 CE and the impact on the Episcopal library, Philo’s role in the embassy of 38 CE and the later Latin translation of some of his works, and the adoption of a selection of Philo’s texts in the curriculum at Constantinople and the translation of selections from his work into Armenian. The preservation of Philo’s corpus was not a foregone conclusion in the first century CE. If any of these events had turned out differently, we would have lost the bulk or a significant portion of his writings.