If you’ve spent any time wandering through Jung, Gnosticism, early Christianity, mysticism, or philosophy, sooner or later you run into a man named Philo.
Actually, you might not. That’s part of the mystery. He appears everywhere and nowhere at once.
The Church Fathers knew him. Scholars study him. Jung references him. Historians acknowledge him. Yet outside of philosophy circles, most people have never heard his name. Which is strange, because Philo may have helped build the intellectual bridge that much of Western spirituality still walks across today.
His name is pronounced “Fee-lo.” And I wish I could have bought him a coffee.
Why Was He Named Philo?
A quick side note because I wondered the same thing. Even though his name is Philo, as in philosophy, he was probably not named after a philosopher. The Greek name Philo (Fee-lo) comes from the root philein, meaning “to love” or “to be fond of.”
The same root appears in words like:
- Philosophy — love of wisdom
- Philanthropy — love of humanity
- Bibliophile — lover of books
So Philo essentially means: “The lover.” Or perhaps: “The friend.”
It was a fairly common Greek name in Alexandria at the time. Still, the coincidence is hard to ignore. A man named Philo—the lover—would spend his life pursuing wisdom, searching for truth, and building bridges between worlds.
Alexandria: Where Worlds Collided
Philo lived in Alexandria, Egypt around the time of Jesus. This was not a sleepy town. Alexandria was one of the great crossroads of the ancient world. Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Jews, merchants, philosophers, priests, and mystics all shared the same city. Imagine a place where Plato and Moses were both considered required reading. That was Alexandria.
Reading Scripture Differently
Most people read a story and ask: “Did this happen?”
Philo often asked a different question: “What does this mean?”
When he read about Adam and Eve, he wasn’t only interested in the historical story. He wanted to understand what Adam represented. What Eve represented. What paradise represented, exile, the apple, or the serpent…
In other words, he treated scripture almost the way Jung would later treat dreams. Not as literal events alone, but as symbolic descriptions of psychological and spiritual realities. Thousands of years before modern depth psychology, Philo was already looking beneath the surface of stories.
The Problem of God
Philo believed God was so vast that human language could barely touch the subject. He faced a problem. Every time we describe God, we accidentally make God smaller. If God is utterly beyond comprehension, how does God interact with the world?
The Logos
The Logos is one of those ideas or concepts with a ton of nuance. It is often translated as “Word,” which is technically correct but also wildly inadequate. For Philo, the Logos was divine reason, divine intelligence, divine pattern.
The invisible architecture behind reality.
The bridge between the unnamable source and the visible world.
The blueprint before the building.
The music before the symphony.
The thought before the action.
The Logos was not merely a thing.
It was the principle through which all things became possible.
If that sounds familiar, it should.
The opening of the Gospel of John begins:
“In the beginning was the Word…”
The Greek word used there is Logos. Whether directly or indirectly, Philo helped shape the intellectual atmosphere from which that idea emerged.
Why Jung Notices Him
Jung had a habit of finding the people who lived between categories. The thinkers who refused to stay inside neat boxes. Philo was one of them. He was Jewish but spoke the language of Greek philosophy. He was rational but deeply spiritual. He respected scripture but read it symbolically. He stood at the boundary between religion and psychology centuries before psychology existed.
Jung spent much of his life exploring the relationship between the conscious mind and the unconscious. Philo spent much of his life exploring the relationship between humanity and the divine. Different vocabulary but remarkably similar territory.
The Soul Remembers
One theme appears repeatedly throughout Philo’s writings.
This theme later appears in Gnosticism. It appears in mysticism. It appears in Plato. It appears in Jung. Countless spiritual traditions.
The journey is not always about becoming. Sometimes it is about remembering.
There Is More to Philo Than the Logos
Logos was only one room in a much larger mansion. Because Philo wasn’t merely a philosopher. He was trying to learn how to see.
The Two Adams
Abraham Leaves Home
Jacob’s Ladder
Moses the Mystic
The Divine Darkness
Virtues as Living Realities
Why Have I Never Heard of Philo?
The more I learn about Philo, the more I am remarkably surprised that I’ve only recently heard of him. He was not some obscure philosopher scribbling in a cave. He was actually a pretty big deal. He came from a wealthy and influential Jewish family in Alexandria, Egypt—one of the most important cities in the world at the time.
Alexandria wasn’t just a city. It was a collision.
Egyptian religion.
Greek philosophy.
Jewish scripture.
Roman politics.
Trade routes.
Mystery traditions.
All of it swirling together in one place. And right in the middle of it stood Philo.
Not only as a philosopher, but as a public intellectual, community leader, and even a diplomat. At one point, he led a delegation to the Roman emperor after violence broke out against Jews in Alexandria. In other words, he wasn’t hiding in a library. People knew who he was. So why don’t we?
Standing at the Crossroads
Part of the answer is timing. Philo lived at one of the most fascinating moments in history. Jesus was likely alive during Philo’s lifetime. The Second Temple still stood. Christianity had not yet become Christianity. Rabbinic Judaism had not yet fully emerged. The Gnostic movements were still taking shape. The roads had not yet split apart.
Philo was standing at the intersection before the intersection existed.
From a historical perspective, that’s premium.
The Philosopher Christians Couldn’t Ignore
One reason historians care about Philo is that early Christians absolutely loved him.
When Church Fathers encountered ideas like the Logos, mystical ascent, divine transcendence, symbolic readings of scripture, and the unknowable nature of God, they discovered that a Jewish philosopher from Alexandria had already been wrestling with many of the same questions. Not necessarily arriving at the same conclusions. But asking remarkably similar questions.
The result?
Christians copied his books. Studied his work. Preserved his writings. Ironically, if Christians had not found him useful, much of Philo’s work might have disappeared entirely.
The Philosopher Judaism Mostly Left Behind
Here’s the twist. Philo was Jewish. But after the destruction of the Second Temple, Judaism moved in a different direction. The future belonged to the rabbis. The emphasis shifted toward law, interpretation, community, and oral tradition.
As Judaism evolved, Philo became less central. As Christianity evolved, Philo became more central. The strange result is that a Jewish philosopher survived largely because Christians kept reading him.
History is weird sometimes.
Why Jung Notices Him
Jung had a habit of finding people like this. He loved the forgotten bridge-builders and the figures who stood between worlds. He adored the people who refused to choose a single camp. When Jung reads Philo, he finds a kindred spirit. Philo sees the knowledge and looks for the wisdom it reveals.
Adam becomes more than Adam.
Abraham becomes more than Abraham.
Jacob becomes more than Jacob.
The stories begin functioning almost like dreams. Like symbols. Like maps of inner experience. That’s Jung’s favorite playground.
Why Philosophy Classes Usually Skip Him
Philo also suffers from a classification problem.
He’s not Socrates.
He’s not Plato.
He’s not Aristotle.
So introductory philosophy courses often move right past him. But he’s also not one of the major Christian theologians. And he’s not usually taught alongside the great medieval Jewish thinkers either.
He falls into a crack between categories.
Too Jewish for some philosophy courses.
Too philosophical for some religious studies courses.
Too early for Christian theology.
Too Greek for later Judaism.
Too Jewish for Gnosticism.
He belongs everywhere. Which means he often ends up belonging nowhere.
I think the simplest explanation is this: Philo didn’t found anything. No organized religion. No Movement. Zero schools with generations of followers carrying his name. His ideas simply seeped into the culture.
His fingerprints are everywhere.
His name is almost nowhere.
And perhaps that’s the fate of bridge-builders. People remember the cities. They forget the bridge.
But once you discover Philo, you start noticing him all over the place.
A Man Standing at a Fork in the Road
One reason Philo fascinates me is that he belongs to no single tradition.
Jews claim him.
Christians study him.
Mystics admire him.
Philosophers analyze him.
Yet he remains strangely independent.
He feels less like the founder of a movement and more like a traveler standing at a crossroads, quietly pointing in several directions at once. Perhaps that is why he still matters. He reminds us that wisdom often lives at the edges. At the boundary between reason and revelation. Between symbol and fact. Myth and psychology. Heaven and earth.
And perhaps most importantly, between what we think we know and what we are still learning to see.
Philo spent his life building bridges.
Two thousand years later, many of us are still crossing them.
Amy Dinaburg, Philosopher, Retired ER RN, MS (Molecular Biology)
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