Time and reading in Philo of Alexandria

Part of the Faculty of Divinity Jewish Studies seminar series 2025

Speaker: Dr Arjen Bakker

This paper will explore Jewish concepts of time that emerge from an encounter between Jewish and Greek thinking in the work of Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE–50 CE). This Jewish philosopher integrates Hellenistic philosophy and science with an extensive tradition of commentary on the Laws of Moses, a tradition which is itself embedded in ritual and calendrical practices.

I will look at the ways in which Philo’s exegetical and philosophical explanations interact with performance, festivals, and early synagogal practice. In Philo’s reading of the book of Genesis, he regards the creation story simultaneously as a precise account of cosmic order and as the rational foundation for the Law of Moses which decrees rituals and timed celebrations. The movement of the heavenly bodies generates measurable time but also corresponds to a numerical order that lies at the basis of this sequence of celebrations. Thus, astronomy and the festival calendar are co-constitutive for Philo, and both are reinforced by a metaphysical argument which posits an immaterial cause behind the physical world.

Philo understands this principle in terms of pure intellectual activity, or divine being, a state to which the philosopher also aspires through askesis and contemplative practices.

About the speaker

Dr Arjen Bakker is Assistant Professor in Second Temple Judaism at the Faculty of Divinity, and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. 

His first book, The secret of time: reconfiguring wisdom in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Brill 2023), examined how Jewish wisdom texts from the Hellenistic period integrate contemplation on history and cosmological secrets into liturgical practices through a study of the mystery of time. He is currently working on a second book that focuses on the development of early Jewish prayer in relation to the sacrificial cult in the Jerusalem Temple and the emergence of the synagogue in the Hellenistic world.

He also recently started a project at the Einstein Center Chronoi in Berlin on concepts of time in Jewish philosophical texts from antiquity. This focuses on the author Philo of Alexandria whose writings on the origins and organization of the cosmos mark a highly innovative integration of Greek philosophy and Jewish cosmological thinking.

About the seminar series

The Jewish Studies seminar series is convened by Professor Daniel Weiss. All are welcome to attend.

Online auditing may be available on request.