René Bloch, "Bringing Philo Home: Responses to Harry A. Wolfson’s Philo (1947) in the Aftermath of World War II" (Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2023)
Several years ago, trying to pinpoint the date when Wolfson's Philo research began in earnest, I concluded it was a year or two earlier. I suspected that -- from their Harvard informant(s) -- my Anonymous Authors knew by Early 1938 that Wolfson was pursuing a Philonica project AND that A.D. Nock was collaborating w/ Msgr. Festugiere on an Hermetica project. Their synthesis may therefore be at least partly explained as a competitive sally into 'Hot Topics of Top Scholars' in the USA, their newly adopted country. The Basic Text is therefore in line w/ the zeitgeist of American Classical scholarship: Hopkins vs. Harvard, as it were.
(I'm traveling in Florida now, but I will update this Reply w/ my older research on that date, later.)
...It is not clear when exactly Wolfson started working on Philo, maybe as early as in 1937. 44
44. Schwarz, Wolfson of Harvard, 144, refers to a statement about Philo in an interview given in 1937. Philo as an important source for ancient Judaism was, of course, on Wolfson’s horizon earlier in his career. According to Schwarz, Wolfson argued already in the 1920s, in a course on post-biblical Jewish history, against a deep breach between Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism. Later on, Wolfson apparently deleted an early draft of 100 pages on the history of the Jews of Alexandria and condensed it to a few sentences in the first chapter (Philo, 1:4–5; Schwarz, Wolfson of Harvard, 147).
44. Schwarz, Wolfson of Harvard, 144, refers to a statement about Philo in an interview given in 1937. Philo as an important source for ancient Judaism was, of course, on Wolfson’s horizon earlier in his career. According to Schwarz, Wolfson argued already in the 1920s, in a course on post-biblical Jewish history, against a deep breach between Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism. Later on, Wolfson apparently deleted an early draft of 100 pages on the history of the Jews of Alexandria and condensed it to a few sentences in the first chapter (Philo, 1:4–5; Schwarz, Wolfson of Harvard, 147).
Several years ago, trying to pinpoint the date when Wolfson's Philo research began in earnest, I concluded it was a year or two earlier. I suspected that -- from their Harvard informant(s) -- my Anonymous Authors knew by Early 1938 that Wolfson was pursuing a Philonica project AND that A.D. Nock was collaborating w/ Msgr. Festugiere on an Hermetica project. Their synthesis may therefore be at least partly explained as a competitive sally into 'Hot Topics of Top Scholars' in the USA, their newly adopted country. The Basic Text is therefore in line w/ the zeitgeist of American Classical scholarship: Hopkins vs. Harvard, as it were.
(I'm traveling in Florida now, but I will update this Reply w/ my older research on that date, later.)
Statistics: Posted by billd89 — Thu Feb 15, 2024 8:37 am