IT has been suggested that the first task of a be-
ginner is to read Philo through. Here I shall at-
tempt to give some suggestions for that reading,
since his treatises are not easy to approach. A reader
of Philo must distinguish carefully between the dif-
ferent sorts of writings, for each should be read with
different expectations. So, at the expense of making
a dull analysis, I must outline the various series of
treatises in the corpus, and the place of the individual
documents in each series. This has often been done be-
fore. The analyses by Schürer, ¹ Massebieau, ² Cohn, ³
and Schmid ⁴ follow each other closely, and to them I
must refer a student for many details. The presenta-
tion has become quite standardized, for that of
Schmid in 1920 is almost exactly that of Cohn in
1899, and he differed only in details from his prede-
cessors. This conception of Philo's writings is still
valid for the most part, though I shall frequently
find occasion to differ from it. But I should like to
consider Philo's works in the order in which it is rec-
ommended for a beginner to read them, rather than
in the order in which they are usually discussed.

The first treatises of Philo which one should read
seem to me to be the two, in the first of which he de-
fends the Jews of Alexandria for their relations with
Flaccus, and in the second for their refusing, even to

-34-