Aristobulos in Alexandria

Under Ptolemy VI Philometor (180-145 BC), the Jewish author Aristobulus wrote a comprehensive treatise in Alexandria, which he addressed to the ruler himself and dedicated to the correct interpretation of the Pentateuch. The few surviving fragments still allow a multifaceted insight into the early phase of Jewish biblical exegesis - 200 years before Philon, in the area of conflict between Alexandrian Greeks and Egyptians. Aristobulus, the oldest surviving non-biblical exegete in the Greek language, understands the books of Moses as a divine and therefore sacred and sublime revelation, but at the same time a revelation conveyed linguistically by the prophet, and establishes an exegetical method that he himself characterises as metaphorical in key passages such as the biblical anthropomorphisms, making intensive, yet critical use of Greek-Hellenistic scholarship. The political significance of his writing lies in the fact that he theologically and ethically prioritises the biblical nomos of God over competing claims of both Greek and Egyptian religion and philosophy.