Legum Allegoriarum Libri I-III

Philo Judaeus

The works of Philo Judaeus, the contemporary of Josephus, volume 1. Yonge, C. D., translator. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854.

Now of assistants there are two kinds, the one consisting in the passions and the other in the sensations ....[*](A word or two are lost here. Pfeiffer thinks that several sentences are wanting; and there is a great want of connection between what follows and what has gone before. )

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But the prior kind is that of generation, for Moses says, And God proceeded and made all the beasts of the field out of the earth, and all the birds of heaven; and he brought them to Adam to see what he would call them, and whatever Adam called any living soul that became its name. You see here who are our assistants, the beasts of the soul, the passions. For after God had said, I will make him a help-meet for him, Moses adds subsequently, He made the beasts, as if the beasts also were assistants to us.

But these are not, properly speaking, assistants, but are called so only in a catachrestic manner, by a kind of abuse of language, for they are found in reality to be enemies to man. As also in the case of cities, the allies turn out at times to be traitors and deserters; and in the case of friendship, flatterers are found to be enemies instead of companions; and Moses here speaks of the heaven and the field synonymously, describing the mind in this allegorical manner; for the mind, like the field, has innumerable periods of rising and budding forth; and, like the heaven, has brilliant, and divine, and happy characteristics of nature.

But the passions he compares to beasts and birds, because they injure the mind, being untamed and wild, and because, after the manner of birds, they descend upon the intellect; for their onset is swift and difficult to withstand; and the word besides, as attached to he made, is not superfluous. Why so? because he has previously said, that the beasts were formed before the creation of man, and he shows it in the following words, which are an account of what was done on the sixth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, four-footed animals, and creeping things, and wild beasts.

Why, then, is it that he makes other animals now, not being content with those already existing? now this must be stated according to the principles of moral philosophy. The species of evil are abundant in created man, so that the most evil things are continually produced in him; and this other thing must be affirmed on principles of natural philosophy. First of all, in the six days he created the different kinds of passions, and the ideas, but now, in addition to them, he is creating the species.

On which account Moses says, And besides he made ... and that what had been

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previously created were genera is plain from what he says, Let the earth bring forth living souls, not according to species but according to genus. And this is found to be the course taken by God in all cases; for before making the species he completes the genera, as he did in the case of man: for having first modelled the generic man, in whom they say that the male and female sexes are contained, he afterwards created the specific man Adam.

This therefore he denominated the species of assistants, but the other part of the creation, the description, that is, of the formation of the external sensations, was postponed till he began to form the woman; and having put off this he then gives an account of the distribution of names; and this is an explanation, partly figurative and partly literal, which is worthy of our admiration. It is literal, inasmuch as the Lawgiver has attributed the imposition of names to the first-born man;

for those also among the Greeks, who study philosophy, say that they were wise men who first gave names to things: but Moses speaks more correctly in the first place, because he attributes this giving of names, not to some of those men who lived in early times, but to the first man who was created upon the earth; so that, just as he himself was created to be the beginning of creation to all other animals, he might also be considered the beginning of conversation and language: for if there were no such things as names there could be no such thing as language: and, secondly, because, if many different persons gave names, they must have been different and devoid of all connexion, since different persons would have given different names: but if only one person did so, the name given by one was sure to be adapted to the thing: and the same name was likely to be a token to every one of the existing things signified by it.

But the moral meaning of this passage is as follows:—We often use the expression τί instead of διὰ τί; (why?) as when we say, why (τί) have you washed yourself? why (τί) are you walking? why (τί) are you conversing? for in all these cases τί is used instead of διὰ τί; when therefore Moses says, to see what he would call them, you must understand him as if he had said διὰ τί (why), instead of τί (what): and the mind will invite and embrace each of these meanings. Is it then only for the sake of what is necessary that the

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mortal race is of necessity implicated in passions and vices? or is it also on account of that which is immoderate and superfluous? And again, is it because of the requirements of the earth-born man, or because the mind judges them to be most excellent and admirable things;