Finn, “The God-fearers Reconsidered,” pp. 82–83.

Other references in Philo are less clear. In his Life of Moses (2.4.20–24), where he declares that Jewish institutions have won the attention of the whole inhabited world, he singles out the respect which all peoples have for the Sabbath and for the Day of Atonement. We may suggest that the fact that he selects these two observances, whereas a proselyte is required to observe all the commandments, would seem to indicate that we are dealing with “sympathizers.”

Similarly, when Philo (Special Laws 2.12.42) speaks of the “blameless life of pious men who follow nature and her ordinances” and (Special Laws 2.12.44) of “all who practice wisdom either in Grecian or barbarian lands and live a blameless and irreproachable life,” Wolfson (Harry A. Wolfson, Philo, II [Cambridge, Mass., 1947], pp. 373–374) concludes that the reference is to what he terms “spiritual proselytes,” that is “sympathizers,” inasmuch as the ordinances which these pious men are said to follow include five laws which are characteristically similar to those described by the rabbis as Noachian and which are binding on non-Jews.