ABSTRACT
Socrates is an infrequent guest in Jewish literature. He was born too late to appear in the Bible, and he did not come to the attention of the authors of the Mishnah or the Talmud. Nor does he appear in the vast Kabbalistic and Hassidic literature.2 He does however feature in some Jewish writings from the Hellenistic period in Greek, and in some medieval Jewish writings, both in Judeo-Arabic and in Hebrew. Though not numerous, these references are enough to make him a valuable illustration of the strategies used by Jewish writers in confronting foreign wisdom and its exponents. Hellenis tic literature
Josephus mentions Socrates only in his Against Apion, an apologetic work which responds to the charges of Apion against the Jewish people.3 Here his goal is to counter Apion’s efforts to denigrate the Jewish people, and so Josephus himself has occasion to denigrate those whom Apion holds in esteem, such as the Greeks. His discussion of the trial of Socrates (Against Apion 2.263-264), which is clearly based on Xenophon’s Memorabilia (compare 1.2.63-64) aims to denigrate the Athenians who condemned
Socrates. Josephus claims that Socrates was condemned because he used to swear strange oaths (presumably a reference to his supposedly frequent exclamation ‘by the dog’ and ‘by the plane tree’ – see Maximus of Tyre 18.6), and said that something daimonic communicated with him. He adds that Socrates’ claim to hearing a daimonion was surely intended jokingly (see Antisthenes’ comment in Xenophon’s Symposium [8.5] that Socrates uses the daimonion as an excuse for avoiding him). The discussion takes it for granted that Socrates was a worthy man, unjustly condemned. But Josephus adopts that attitude primarily because it enables him to condemn his Athenian judges. That Socrates should be mentioned only in this context shows how restricted Josephus’s interest in him was.4 Philo Judaeus mentions Socrates most prominently5 in his polemic work On the Contemplative Life in which he offers criticism of various Greek philosophers and contrasts them with superior exemplars found among the Jewish people. In section VII (= paragraphs 57-63), he compares the Symposia of Xenophon and Plato, finding Xenophon’s more human (anthrôpikôteron) and Plato’s much too obsessed with unnatural homosexual love. His purpose here is to denigrate the practices of even the best philosophers of Greece in comparison with the practices of the therapeutai, a small Jewish sect in Palestine, so he concentrates on the indulgence of homosexuality found in Plato’s Symposium. He claims that the discussion of heavenly love and heavenly Aphrodite was brought in merely as a joke (asteïsma) and asserts that most of Plato’s Symposium is concerned with earthly love, which he seems to identify, erroneously, with homosexuality. He does not seem to have noticed that in Pausanias’ speech heavenly love is homosexual and that heterosexuality is a component of earthly love. Philo’s discussion here is based in part on Plato’s Phaedrus, and in part on Laws. Sections 61-2 describes the pernicious effects of homosexual love on both lover and beloved, in terms reminiscent of Socrates’ first speech on love in Phaedrus (238d-241d). Section 63 compares the act of homosexual love to the futile acts of unskilled farmers who plant seeds in barren rocky places where they will not grow, echoing Plato’s vivid denunciation of homosexual activity in Laws 838e-839a.
