This multi-author volume grew out of a workshop held in Münster in 2019. Although no new dominant framework emerges, the volume is of high quality and contains several excellent studies that will be of interest to scholars of early Judaism and ancient philosophy alike. Given its length, I will discuss a selection of chapters that highlight the volume's aims and some of its most provocative arguments.

Sharon Weisser offers a tightly argued study of piety in Philo. She defends the claim that Philo is an ethical intellectualist about piety - knowledge of piety is not merely necessary but sufficient for being pious. She further recommends that interpreters refrain from using ethnic allegiances ("the argument from Judaism") as an interpretive tool for complex arguments. A major payoff of the chapter is the suggestion that Philo's intellectualist construal of piety is not simply derivative but a genuine and original philosophical insight within the Greek tradition. At the same time, important questions remain: given that Philo gives piety a primary place among the virtues and orients it toward a particular physics (and metaphysics), to what extent should his account be understood not simply as Socratic but as informed by Stoicism (within a Socratic lineage)? Conversely, how does this intellectualism sit with Philonic models of the soul-whether monistic, dyadic, or tripartite?

Carlos Lévy investigates skeptical traditions in Philo by juxtaposing (Timon's) Pyrrho with Philo's Moses. He proposes that Philo casts Moses as a "hero" comparable to Pyrrho, with the effect of emphasizing human "nothingness" (oudeneia) before the deity and thereby deconstructing the (Stoic) stable subject who autonomously assents and acts. The case is built on "terminological echoes", which are intriguing but subtle. It is not clear, for example, that images of scales, oscillation, and wavering in judgment should necessarily be read as an allusion to Pyrrhonian ἰσσσθένεια ("equal force of opposites"), or that Philo's use of ἀστάθμητσσ in connection with Heraclitus's ἄνω καὶ κάτω amounts to a transformation of "Heracliteanism into a kind of dynamic Pyrrhonism" (100). Lévy's contrast between Philo's emphasis on the instability of fortune (Mos. 1.30-31) and Stoic rational nature also seems to overlook Stoic acknowledgment of the vicissitudes of human life and the impermanence of preferred indifferents. Even so, the chapter remains illuminating in its focus on Philo's own skepticism and stress on human "nothingness."

Geert Roskam reconsiders the commonplace that Epicurus is Philo's arch-enemy. He notes that Philo explicitly mentions Epicurean doctrines (as Epicurean) only three times, in general terms and in connection with natural philosophy; explicit reference to Epicurean hedonism is absent. On his reading, Philo's discussions of pleasure are governed by the demands of biblical exegesis rather than polemic against Epicurus. Yet Roskam seems overly cautious in his hesitation to join scholars who detect implicit reference to Epicurean doctrines where they appear to be in view - for example, Opif. 161-163 (the Epicurean "cradle argument") and Leg. 3.160 (pleasure as katastematic). Even so, his broader point is well taken. He also makes the intriguing suggestion that by critiquing views about pleasure but not naming them as Epicurean, Philo may be being philosophically careful: he avoids mischaracterizing the oft-mischaracterized Epicurean hedonism and focuses on the views themselves.

Troels Engberg-Pedersen provides a reading of Quod omnis probus liber sit, seeking to infer its intended readership and Sitz im Leben from internal structural analysis. He aptly observes that Philo's discussion of Stoic paradoxes incorporates Platonist elements, especially the ascription of immortality to the mind. His discussion of the differences between the Essenes in Probus and Hypothetica is excellent, though his claim that the Essenes in Probus are idealizations of Philo's own philosophy seems overstated, given their distinctive communal lifestyle, which is not known to have been Philo's own practice. The suggestion of a rhetorical strategy leading the reader "from Stoicism via Platonism to Judaism" also seems too clean: after the Essenes comes a long list of mainly non-Jewish exemplars. Engberg-Pedersen ends by cautiously suggesting a Roman context.

The next chapter, focusing on Probus 1-15, represents a stark methodological contrast: Maren R. Niehoff begins with Rome as a settled context, connecting it to her broader reconstruction of Philo's development from Alexandrian exegete to Roman expositor of Judaism. She further reads the dedication to an otherwise unknown Theodotus as evidence of Roman salon culture and integration into Roman circles - an engaging, though speculative reconstruction. On this basis, she argues for the primacy of Cynic themes and for a move away from Plato within a broader narrative of transition "from transcendental Platonism to Cynic-Stoic ethics in a Roman key."

Rainer Hirsch-Luipold provides an overview of Philo and Plutarch as "religious Platonists." He compellingly argues against anachronistic conceptions of "philosophy," and makes a strong case for further study of these two authors in dialogue, especially on the basis of their respective commitments to interpreting (their) ancestral traditions in a philosophical and pious way.

Mauro Bonazzi offers a compelling contribution on Philo and the practical and contemplative lives. He argues that Philo elevates the contemplative life, while also redirecting it through the interpretation of Moses and emphasizing its limits due to Philo's "metaphysical skepticism." He further argues that even as Philo is at home in the debates between schools in the Greek philosophical tradition, he is nevertheless distinctive insofar as he does not pretend to be able to systematize all the results of his contemplative inquiry into a closed system of thought.

Michael B. Cover examines Philo's discussion of the name change from Abram to Abraham across the Quaestiones and the Allegorical Commentary, drawing on Pythagorean arithmology, before turning to the Stoic division of philosophical discourse (reflecting the fact that Abram represents a soul focused on physics, Abraham a soul focused on ethics). A correction is nevertheless needed. Cover finds an "inversion" of the Stoic ordering of the philosophical curriculum. He bases this on the view that Stoics adopted the sequence logic-physics-ethics or logic-ethics-physics. Philo, by contrast, begins with physics. This proposed "inversion" of Stoic orderings depends on an incomplete picture: Panaetius and Posidonius are reported as beginning with physics (Diog. Laert. 7.41).

Among the remaining chapters, Gregory E. Sterling offers a reconstruction of Philo's library, further developing his hypothesis that he operated a private school. Jason M. Zurawski reads Philo's image of the "rod" as paideia. Gretchen Reydams-Schils addresses natural philosophy and Philo's attitude towards Stoicism. Lutz Doering presents an enlightening survey of Philo's references to Pythagoreans and then focuses on the cosmological significance of the hebdomad. Ilaria L.E. Ramelli closes the volume with a study on Philonic anthropology and early Christian texts.

Christopher Atkins