Ancient thinkers–philosophers and scientists–of the Mediterranean world knew that wisdom is a universal that transcends individual knowing, an awareness of truth that transcends the individual existence of each person. The Old Testament and New Testament imply that the Creation has this awareness of God’s glory, the truth that is present in all Creation. In his Gospel, John referred to it as logos. Logos was an ancient Greek philosophical construct that united the thinking of Plato and Aristotle, the Platonists and the Stoics. Ancient Hebrew thinkers as well believed in the logos, as the works of Philo Judaeus attest.

It is through this awareness of the logos, God’s word present at the Creation, that Greek, Roman, and Hebrew philosopher-scientists in the centuries before Christ had a deep sense of piety when observing and seeking to understand the Creation. Philo was a contemporary of Jesus, a Pharisee, an intellectual who lived in Alexandria. His Works provide us with the philosophical and scientific underpinnings of his belief that all thoughtful endeavors to understand the universe are pious responses to the glory of God’s Creation. His thinking is profound, as in this statement, from On a Contemplative Life: God “is superior to the good, and more simple than the one, and more ancient than the unit.” In this Philo revealed that he was a student of the works of Plato, that he anticipated the philosophy of the Neoplatonists and their founder Plotinus. and that he knew the mathematics of Euclid. Philo wrote further that “The elements are inanimate matter, and immovable by any power of their own, being subjected to the operator on them to receive from him every kind of shape or distinctive quality which he chooses to give them.” This was precisely the teaching of the Greeks in their understanding of the universe and how the inanimate is formed by the mind of God. He was also influenced by the Greeks in his belief that Moses had been educated in Egyptian philosophy, and through him the Greeks learned of Egyptian philosophical concepts, which resulted in the earliest philosophical and scientific work of, for example, Thales of Miletus. Such was Philo’s faith in God’s Creation that he said simply, God creates not over time but “at once, not merely by uttering a command, but by even thinking of it.” Those who deny this truth, he wrote, deny the source of piety, that God is the Creator and Caregiver.

Anyone who has studied that New Testament knows that the Pharisees and Sadducees were superb if inflexible intellectuals. There was a large contingent of Jewish thinkers in Alexandria after its founding by Alexander at the end of the fourth century BC. These thinkers had studied in depth ancient philosophy and science, particularly that of the Greeks, as the production of the Septuagint suggests. A contemporary of Philo Judaeus was the author of the Old Testament book Wisdom. This unknown Jew probably lived in Alexandria at the end of the first century, BC; hence he provided an additional source to Philo to understand the Jewish approach to science and philosophy. Speaking as Solomon, the unknown writer of Wisdom proclaims: “For both we and our words are in his hand, as are all understanding and skill in crafts. For it is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements; the beginning and end and middle of times, the alternations of the solstices and the changes of the seasons, the cycles of the year and the constellations of the stars, the natures of animals and the tempers of wild beasts, the powers of spirits and the reasonings of men, the varieties of plants and the virtues of roots; I learned both what is secret and what is manifest, for wisdom, the fashioner of all things, taught me.” This is a succinct summary of Greek science, as represented by the works of Aristotle; for the author of Wisdom proclaims knowledge of epistemology, chemistry and physics, the nature of time, astronomy, zoology, botany, biology, and the knowledge of the transcendent. This knowledge, he claims, is due to God, who provides humans with wisdom, hence eliciting from humans praise and piety.

The other books of the Old Testament, and the New Testament as well, confirm that the many authors of these writings were cognizant of the latest in philosophy and science in the ancient world. Genesis chapter one can easily convince most observers that the myth that Moses brought knowledge to the Greek philosophers has a kernel of truth, especially since the description of the origins of the universe in Genesis is just as sophisticated as those of the great intellectuals among the Greeks, Pythagoras, Thales, Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, Socrates, and Plato. Philo recognized this when he used Biblical and Greek philosophical ideas to describe the Creator: “the active cause is the intellect of the universe, thoroughly unadulterated and thoroughly unmixed, superior to virtue and superior to science, superior even to abstract good or abstract beauty.” Likewise, the Hellenistic author of the Book of Sirach wrote of physicians in the same manner as Greco-Roman writers on medicine: “Honor the physician with the honor due him, according to your need of him, for the Lord created him; for healing comes from the Most High, and he will receive a gift from the king. The skill of the physician lifts up his head, and in the presence of great men he is admired. The Lord created medicines from the earth, and a sensible man will not despise them. Was not water made sweet with a tree in order that his power might be known? And he gave skill to men that he might be glorified in his marvelous works. By them he heals and takes away pain; the pharmacist makes of them a compound. His works will never be finished; and from him health is upon the face of the earth.” Pious physicians “pray to the Lord that he should grant them success in diagnosis and in healing, for the sake of preserving life.”

One of the great achievements of the Greeks was in their understanding of human behavior, the human mind, even what we would call the subconscious mind. The portrait of human behavior is what makes Homer’s works so wonderful. The first century essayist and historian Plutarch recognized this and eulogized Homer’s ability to portray the human psyche as well as the psyche of the world soul. Philo, also, made use of Greek philosophy in his attempts at psychology, writing that human psyches, or souls “are under the mastery of terrible and almost incurable diseases, which pleasures and appetites, fears and griefs, and covetousness, and follies, and injustice, and all the rest of the innumerable multitude of other passions and vices, have inflicted upon them.” Human mental woe is not the product of demons, nor spirits, nor gods, just human sin. Humans bring it on themselves, he argued, just as the greatest psychological portrait of human beings, the Psalms, portrayed time and again. The Psalmist provided such accurate psychological portrayals of humans, their angst and wandering ways, their dependence upon God, their extreme piety even as they fell short in their actions: “O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me! Thou knowest when I sit down and when I rise up; thou discernest my thoughts from afar. Thou searchest out my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it.”

Psychologists today would do well to combine such piety as portrayed in the Psalms with their analyses and diagnoses, hence providing the most accurate assessment of what plagues human minds. Likewise the ancient Greeks would tell us, and Philo Judaeus as well, that any kind of science—social, behavioral, physical, biological, mathematical—done without reference to the Creative Mind, the Logos, is folly indeed.

This article first appeared in Catholic Exchange.

For more on piety and science, see my book Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity through the Middle Ages, now in paperback: Amazon.com: Science in the Ancient World: From Antiquity through the Middle Ages: 9798216445173: Lawson, Russell M.: Books