This weeks Torah Parsha is Vezot HaBrakha (Deut. 33:1-34:12) and is normally read at Simchat Torah. In this weeks Parsha we read:
[3] Yea, he loved the people; all his saints are in thy hand: and they sat down at thy feet; every one shall receive of thy words.
[4] Moses commanded us a law, even the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob.
[5] And he was king in Jeshurun, when the heads of the people and the tribes of Israel were gathered together.
[6] Let Reuben live, and not die; and let not his men be few.
[7] And this is the blessing of Judah: and he said, Hear, LORD, the voice of Judah, and bring him unto his people: let his hands be sufficient for him; and be thou an help to him from his enemies.
[8] And of Levi he said, Let thy Thummim and thy Urim be with thy holy one, whom thou didst prove at Massah, and with whom thou didst strive at the waters of Meribah;
[9] Who said unto his father and to his mother, I have not seen him; neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew his own children: for they have observed thy word, and kept thy covenant.
(Deut. 34:3-9 KJV)
Philo of Alexandria writes of these verses:
(130) At all events, God is represented in another passage as saying, “Abraham has kept all my Law.” (Gen. 26:5.) And law is nothing else but the word [Logos] of God, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is not right, as he bears witness, where he says, “He received the law from his Words.”(Deut. 33:4.) If, then, the divine word is the law, and if the righteous man does the law, then by all means he also performs the word of God. So that, as I said before, the words of God are the actions of the wise man.
(On the Mifrastion of Abraham 130)
Philo speaks of Moses account of the Creation saying:
(3) And his exordium, as I have already said, is most admirable; embracing the creation of the world, under the idea that the law corresponds to the world and the world to the law, and that a man who is obedient to the law, being, by so doing, a citizen of the world, arranges his actions with reference to the intention of nature, in harmony with which the whole universal world is regulated. (4) Accordingly no one, whether poet or historian, could ever give expression in an adequate manner to the beauty of his ideas respecting the creation of the world; for they surpass all the power of language, and amaze our hearing, being too great and venerable to be adapted to the sense of any created being.
(On Creation 1-4)
Elsewhere Philo writes:
…for he [Moses] was not like any ordinary compiler of history, studying to leave behind him records of ancient transactions as memorials to future ages for the mere sake of affording pleasure without any advantage; but he traced back the most ancient events from the beginning of the world, commencing with the creation of the universe, in order to make known two most necessary principles. First, that the same being was the father and creator of the world, and likewise the lawgiver of truth; secondly, that the man who adhered to these laws, and clung closely to a connection with and obedience to nature, would live in a manner corresponding to the arrangement of the universe with a perfect harmony and union, between his words and his actions and between his actions and his words.
(On the Life of Moses 2, 48)
As we read in 4th Maccabees:
[22] You scoff at our philosophy as though living by it were irrational,
[23] but it teaches us self-control, so that we master all pleasures and desires, and it also trains us in courage, so that we endure any suffering willingly;
[24] it instructs us in justice, so that in all our dealings we act impartially, and it teaches us piety, so that with proper reverence we worship the only real God.
[25] “Therefore we do not eat defiling food; for since we believe that the law was established by God, we know that in the nature of things the Creator of the world in giving us the law has shown sympathy toward us.
[26] He has permitted us to eat what will be most suitable for our lives, but he has forbidden us to eat meats that would be contrary to this.
(4Macc. 5:22-26 RSV)
The Torah is one and the same with natural law, and thus with the Logos (Word).
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