To the editors:
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But De Mille was not quite right to cast that ancient Jewish writer as a historian. Philo of Alexandria was a Platonic philosopher. It was not additional historical facts that he brought to the Bible, as De Mille implied, but imaginative allegories that wed Judaism to Platonism. Yet I expect De Mille was right to credit Philo’s thought with a role in the film. De Mille’s Moses speaks several philosophically searching lines, universal in their import, that would never have occurred to the biblical Moses, but would certainly have warmed Philo’s heart. An example: The film’s Moses, fresh from his encounter with the burning bush, tells Joshua that he has just communicated with eternal Mind. Such a way of describing God was very alien to the biblical Moses, and indeed to all of the Pentateuch. But it was very close to Philo (interested readers should see Philo of Alexandria, tr and ed by David Winston, N.Y.: Paulist Pr, 1981, especially the index entries under Mind, Universal).
Ernest Rubinstein
