Transcendence, transcendent, god in the philosophy of Philo of Alexandria: synthesis of Greek and Jewish traditions

The study focuses on the analysis of the problem of the transcendence in the philosophical and theological teaching of Philo of Alexandria. It is noted that in the cosmological teachings of antiquity, the transcendent was understood as a higher sphere, which possessed specific spatio-temporal characteristics, inaccessible for sensory knowledge, but available for speculative cognition. It is emphasized that, unlike Greek thinkers, Philo introduces a supramundane personal God and His Revelation into the philosophy. These two concepts have fundamentally changed the understanding of the transcendent and transcendence. Instead of the majestic, living, intelligent and immanent to people Cosmos, concealing in its depths the transcendent layers of being, in the philosophy of the great Alexandrian, the omnipotent, superintelligible and incomprehensible God-Creator comes to the fore, completely «beyond» the world and man and pouring out His grace on them. The Hebrew thinker distinguishes between the essence of God himself and His powers manifested in Creation. This is an integral hierarchy, at the bottom of which is the sensuously comprehensible world, and above - the intelligible world - the Logos, the Word of God, the Mind of God. Thus, the philosopher distinguished between the absolutely transcendent and the relatively transcendent.