Biblexika

On the Decalogue (Philo)

jewishgreek~20-50 CE

Philo's philosophical exposition of the Ten Commandments as the summary of all law — natural, divine, and human. Shows how Hellenistic Jews understood the Torah's ethical core.

Translation: Loeb Classical Library (via Sefaria) (public-domain)

Overview

On the Decalogue (Greek: De Decalogo) is one of Philo of Alexandria's expository treatises belonging to his Exposition of the Law series. It treats the Ten Commandments as the supreme summary of divine legislation — the organizing headings under which all of Moses's specific laws can be systematically arranged and philosophically justified. Philo presents the Decalogue not merely as religious commandments addressed to Israel but as expressions of universal natural law accessible in principle to all rational beings.

Philo divides the Ten Commandments into two groups of five, structured around two stone tablets. The first five commandments concern humanity's duties to God; the second five concern duties to other human beings. This organizational scheme reflects Philo's view that all of ethics can be organized under two great principles — piety toward God and justice toward humanity — a framework strikingly close to Jesus's summary of the law in the Synoptic Gospels.

The treatise also contains one of Philo's most philosophically sophisticated treatments of revelation: his account of the Sinai theophany as God communicating through intelligible, rational sound rather than through literal acoustic vibrations preserves divine transcendence while affirming the genuine cognitive content of the divine command. On the Decalogue serves as the introduction to Philo's four-book treatment On the Special Laws, making together with that work the most comprehensive ancient philosophical presentation of Mosaic legislation.

Bible connections
  • Exodus 20:1-17 (the Ten Commandments, the primary text)
  • Deuteronomy 5:6-21 (the Deuteronomic version of the Decalogue)
  • Matthew 22:37-40 (love of God and neighbor as summary of the law)
  • Romans 13:8-10 (individual commandments summed up in love of neighbor)
  • Romans 1:18-25 (idolatry as irrational confusion of creator and creation)
  • Hebrews 12:18-24 (the Sinai theophany contrasted with the heavenly Jerusalem)
Key terms
Natural law– the philosophical concept that certain moral obligations are inscribed in the rational structure of reality and accessible to any reasoning person; Philo presents the Decalogue as the perfect codification of natural law
Two-tablet framework– Philo's division of the Ten Commandments into duties to God (first tablet, commandments 1-5) and duties to humanity (second tablet, commandments 6-10), anticipating Jesus's and Paul's summaries of the law under two principles
Theophany– a divine self-manifestation; Philo's interpretation of the Sinai theophany as a rational communicative event rather than a physical acoustic miracle reflects his commitment to divine transcendence
Decalogue– from the Greek for 'ten words'; the Ten Commandments given at Sinai (Exodus 20; Deuteronomy 5), which Philo treats as the supreme summary and organizing principle of all Mosaic legislation
Did you know?

Philo's two-tablet organizational scheme — first five commandments governing duties to God, second five governing duties to other humans — is the same basic framework that Jesus and the early church used to summarize the whole law under love of God and love of neighbor. The structural parallel between Philo's De Decalogo and the Synoptic summaries of the law (Matthew 22:37-40; Mark 12:29-31) suggests that both reflect a widespread Jewish tradition of organizing the Decalogue's ethical content under two fundamental relational principles.