The final book of Philo's exposition of Mosaic law, covering theft, kidnapping, animal-based courtroom testimony, dietary rules, warfare, and a closing hymn to justice and equality.
The Special Laws IV is the last installment in Philo of Alexandria's systematic treatise reorganizing the commandments of the Torah under the headings of the Ten Commandments. Having covered adultery and murder earlier, Philo here works through theft and kidnapping, the treatment of witnesses and judges, the dietary laws (which animals, birds, and sea creatures may be eaten and why), the rules of warfare and treatment of conquered peoples and their land, and closes with an extended meditation on justice and equality as cosmic principles.
Philo's method throughout is to state the biblical law, then supply a rationale that blends practical ethics with allegory. Thieves caught breaking in at night may be killed on the spot because there is no other recourse to justice in darkness, but a daytime killing is punishable, since courts are open. Kidnappers who sell fellow countrymen into slavery face death, since selling a kinsman compounds the crime of enslavement itself. The dietary laws receive Philo's characteristic double reading: cloven hooves and cud-chewing are practical criteria, but also symbols -- cud-chewing represents the mind returning to and testing what it has learned, while the cloven hoof represents the necessary discernment between the path of virtue and the path of vice. Fish need both fins and scales because these represent a soul that resists being swept along by pleasure, choosing instead the harder, upward road of self-control.
The book's rules of war show Philo softening the biblical text toward Greco-Roman ideals of restraint: offer terms of peace before attacking, spare fruit-bearing trees since they are not the enemy's soldiers, and preserve captured women from war's violence. Philo closes not with a law but with a hymn: equality is the mother of justice, visible in the balance of day and night, the phases of the moon, and the turning of the seasons, and its absence produces disorder, disease, and vice in bodies, souls, and cities alike.
“let him be punished as a private matter, being liable only to the one he attempted to harm, and let him pay back double the stolen goods, healing an unjust gain with the most just injury”
— The Special Laws IV · read this chapter →
“man, it seems, has obtained the finest portion among living creatures, being close of kin to God and a relative through his participation in reason, which, though he seems to be mortal, makes him immortal”
— The Special Laws IV · read this chapter →
“the road of life is twofold, one leading toward vice, the other toward virtue, and one must turn away from the one and never abandon the other”
— The Special Laws IV · read this chapter →
“peace, even if it is very costly, is more profitable than war”
— The Special Laws IV · read this chapter →
“equality, as those who have precisely studied nature have handed down to us, is the mother of justice”
— The Special Laws IV · read this chapter →
It is the fourth and final book of Philo's treatise organizing Mosaic law by the Ten Commandments' headings, here covering theft, kidnapping, courtroom justice, dietary law, and the rules of warfare, closing with a hymn to justice and equality. Philo pairs each legal provision with a practical or allegorical rationale drawn from Greek philosophy.
At night courts and magistrates are unavailable, so the wronged homeowner must act as his own judge and ruler in the moment. By day, courts are open and citizens ready to help, so killing the thief outside a trial is itself a form of injustice, since it substitutes personal anger for the law.
He explains the Mosaic rule via two paired physical signs -- cloven hoof and cud-chewing for land animals, fins and scales for water creatures -- and treats animals lacking either sign, including pigs and scaleless fish, as unclean. He then allegorizes these signs as symbols of a disciplined, self-controlled soul versus one enslaved to pleasure.
He describes rules requiring that captured women be spared the violence of war on account of their nature, and that fruit-bearing trees not be destroyed by a besieging army, since a tree that yields useful produce is no enemy. Only barren, wild trees may be cut for siege equipment.
Ordinary stolen property is repaid double, or fourfold and fivefold for livestock, but a kidnapper has stolen a human being's freedom, which Philo calls the finest possession humans hold, given their kinship to God through reason. Selling a fellow countryman into slavery abroad is treated as a compounded crime warranting death.
He closes with a hymn to justice and its 'mother,' equality, tracing equality through the balance of day and night, the phases of the moon, and the four equal seasons, and calling political equality (democracy) the best of constitutions.
Allegorical Interpretation I · Allegorical Interpretation II · Allegorical Interpretation III · Every Good Man is Free · Flaccus · On Abraham · On Dreams · On Drunkenness · On Flight and Finding · On Husbandry · On Joseph · On Mating / Preliminary Studies