Philo and the Logos

Philo of Alexandria was a Hellenistic Jewish theologian and a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth. Building on the works of Heraclitus and Plato, Philo interpreted the Bible allegorically and proposed that God’s Word (“Logos” in Greek) existed as an independent being—the demiurge. His writings share much in common with the Gospel of John’s portrayal of the Messiah or Christ as the Logos, an idea that prefigured the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

Philo’s Alexandria—home to the great Museum and Library—was the center of Hellenistic philosophy in the Greco-Roman world. The city housed a large Jewish diaspora community, where the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, and Hellenism and Judaism were synthesized.

In this lecture, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place examines the works of Philo of Alexandria in the broader context of Alexandria’s history, the Jewish diaspora, and the Greek philosophical developments of his time, as well as his possible influence on early Christianity.

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