Christian Texts and History • Re: Philo's Hell

If punishment is not something Philo expected for the impious after death, what did he expect instead? In the discussion above on the immortality of the soul, the question was raised, what is the meaning of “ends and grows old in evil” (QG 3.11) (i.e., what is the fate of “the evil and sinful man”)? Does this fate apply only to the body, or also to the soul? If “only the soul of the wise man ought to live” in another life, does this imply that the evil man’s soul is mortal? Does this imply that Philo believed in annihilation of evil souls?

Again, Philo did not answer these questions explicitly. He mentioned “annihilation” at least once, indirectly, when he observed, “cold and thirst … may be most earnestly desired, if we feel that they will only entail undelayed annihilation (φθορὰ)” (Praem. 136), but he did not there promote this view.

Philo Judaeus, De Praemiis Et Poenis Et De Exsecrationibus, = On Rewards and Punishments, 135-6: μετὰ γὰρ τῶν ἄλλων, ὥσπερ τοῖς ἐν εὐτυχίαις ποθεινὸς ὁ βίος εἰς ἀπόλαυσιν ἀγαθῶν, οὕτως καὶ τοῖς βαρυδαίμοσιν ἐκείνοις ἔρως πολὺς ἐνιδρυθήσεται τοῦ ζῆν πρὸς ἀμέτρων καὶ ἀπαύστων κακῶν μετουσίαν, ἁπάντων ἀνιάτων. ἧττον γὰρ χαλεπὸν ἀπαλγήσαντας ἐπιτεμεῖν θανάτῳ τὰς ἀνίας, ὃ τοῖς μὴ λίαν φρενοβλαβέσιν ἔθος δρᾶν· οἱ δ’ ἐκ παραπληξίας ἐθέλοιεν ἂν καὶ μακροβιώτατοι γενέσθαι, τῆς ἀνωτάτω βαρυδαιμονίας ἀπλήστως καὶ ἀκορέστως ἔχοντες. τοιαῦτα τὸ κουφότατον εἶναι δοκοῦν τῶν κακῶν, ἀπορία, προσεργάζεσθαι πέφυκεν, ὅταν θεήλατος ἐπάγηται δίκη· καὶ γὰρ εἰ χαλεπὰ ῥῖγος, δίψος, ἔνδεια τροφῆς, ἀλλ’ εὐκταιότατα γένοιτ’ ἂν ἐπὶ καιρῶν, εἰ μόνον ἀνυπέρθετον φθορὰν ἐργάσοιτο· χρονίζοντα δὲ καὶ τήκοντα ψυχήν τε καὶ σῶμα τῶν τετραγῳδημένων, ἃ δι’ ὑπερβολὰς μεμυθεῦσθαι δοκεῖ, βαρύτερα πέφυκε καινουργεῖν.

"135. For just as in prosperous circumstances life appears desirable for the enjoyment of blessings, so in adversity there will be great desire for those accursed beings to live amidst immeasurable and unceasing evils, the source of all woes. For it is less difficult for those who have become insensible to pain to end their sorrows by death, which is the custom of those whose minds are not greatly disturbed; whereas those who are deluded would prefer to become very long-lived, possessing insatiably and endlessly the extremity of wretchedness. 136. Such is the lightest aspect of evils, seeming naturally to bring perplexity, whenever divine judgment is revealed. "For even if cold, thirst, and lack of food are grievous, at times they may become most welcome, if only they would bring about immediate destruction."; but as time passes, they corrode and consume both soul and body of those tragically afflicted, which seems to have been narrated in exaggeration, causing heavier troubles to arise."

Colson, Philo Vol. 8 [1939], pp.395-7: "{135} For apart from all else, just as the prosperous desire life to enjoy their blessings, so too these wretches will have firmly implanted in them a great longing for survival to experience miseries measureless and ceaseless all beyond hope of cure. For it would be a comparatively small matter in their desperation to cut short their afflictions by death, a course often taken by those who have a little sanity left. But these sufferers in their infatuation will wish to prolong their life to the utmost, and their appetite for supreme misery is never satisfied. {136} Such are the natural consequences of what appears to be the lightest of the calamities promised, destitution, when it comes as a visitation of divine justice. For cold and thirst and want of food are hard to bear but may on occasions be most earnestly desired, if we feel that they will only entail undelayed annihilation, but when they linger and waste both soul and body they are bound to produce marvels of suffering worse even than those which, doubtless because they are so intensely painful, are represented on the tragic stage."

C.D. Yonge, The Works of Philo Judaeus, Vol. 3 [1855], p.487: "{135} for, as in the case of other persons, while they are in prosperity they desire length of life to be able to enjoy all good things, so also even those men overwhelmed with misery will have a vehement desire for life established in them, though it can only lead them to a participation in immoderate and interminable evils, all of which are likewise irremediable. For it would have been better for such men to have escaped misery by cutting off their griefs through death, which persons who are not utterly out of their senses are accustomed to do. But these men are arrived at such a degree of folly that they would be willing to live even to the longest possible time of life, being eager for and insatiably desirous of the greatest extremities of misery. {136} Such evils, that which appears at first to be the lightest of all misfortunes, namely, poverty, is naturally calculated to produce, when it is the result of the vengeance of God; for even though cold, and thirst, and want of food may be terrible, still they might at times be objects worth being prayed for, if they only produced instantaneous death without any delay. But when they last a long time and waste away both body and soul, then they are calculated to reproduce the very greatest of the calamities recorded by the tragic poets, which appear to me to be described in a spirit of fabulous exaggeration."