The Works of Philo Judaeus

XLV. Then, preserving the natural order of things, and having a regard to the connection between what comes afterwards and what has gone before, he says next, "And a fountain went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth." For other philosophers affirm that all water is one of the four elements of which the world was composed. But Moses, who was accustomed to contemplate and comprehend matters with a more acute and far-sighted vision, considers thus : the vast sea is an element, being a fourth part of the entire universe, which the men after him denominated the ocean, while they look upon the smaller seas which we sail over in the light of harbours. And he drew a distinction between the sweet and drinkable water and that of the sea, attributing the former to the earth, and considering it a portion of the earth, rather than of the ocean, on account of the reason which I have already mentioned, that is to say, that the earth may be held together by the sweet qualities of the water as by a chain ; the water acting in the manner of glue. For if the earth were left entirely dry, so that no moisture arose and penetrated through its holes rising to the surface in various directions, it would split. But now it is held together, and remains lasting, partly by the force of the wind which unites it, and partly because the moisture does not allow it to become dry, and so to be broken up into larger and smaller fragments. This is one reason : and we must also mention another, which is aimed at the truth like an arrow at a mark. It is not the nature of anything upon the earth to exist without a moist essence. And this is indicated by the throwing of seed, which is either moist, as the seed of animals, or else does not shoot up without moisture, such as the seeds of plants ; from which it is evident that it follows that the aforesaid moist essence must be a portion of the earth which produces everything, just as the flux of the catamenia is a part of women. For by men who are learned in natural philosophy, this also is said to be the corporeal essence of children. Nor is what we are about to say inconsistent with what has been said ; for nature has bestowed upon every mother, as a most indispensable part of her conformation, breasts gushing forth like fountains, having in this manner provided abundant food for the child that is to be born. And the earth also, as it seems, is a mother, from which consideration it occurred to the early ages to call her Demetra, combining the names of mother (.cujnjg), and earth (yrj or dr,). For it is not the earth which imitates the woman, as Plato has said, but the woman who has imitated the earth which the race of poets has been accustomed with truth to call the mother of all things, and the fruit-bearer, and the .giver of all things, since she is at the same time the cause of the generation and durability of all things, to the animals and plants. Rightly, therefore, did nature bestow on the earth as the eldest and most fertile of mothers, streams of rivers, and fountains like breasts, in order that the plants might be watered, and that all living things might have abundant supplies of drink. XL VI. After this, Moses says that " God made man, having taken clay from the earth, and he breathed into his face the breath of life." And by this expression he shows most clearly that there is a vast difference between man as generated now, and the first man who was made according to the image of God. For man as formed now is perceptible to the external senses, partaking of qualities, consisting of body and soul, man or woman, by nature mortal. But man, made according to the image of God, was an idea, or a genus, or a seal, perceptible only by the intellect, incorporeal, neither male nor female, imperishable by nature. But he asserts that the formation of the individual man, perceptible by the external senses is a composition of earthy substance, and divine spirit. For that the body was created by the Creator taking a lump of clay, and fashioning the human form out of it ; but that the soul proceeds from no created thing at all, but from the Father and Ruler of all things. For when he uses the expression, " he breathed into," &c, he means nothing else than the divine spirit proceeding from that happy and blessed nature, sent to take up its habitation here on earth, for the advantage of our race, in order that, even if man is mortal according to that portion of him which is visible, he may at all events be immortal according to that portion which is invisible ; and for this reason, one may properly say that man is on the boundaries of a better and an immortal nature, partaking of each as far as it is necessary for him ; and that he was born at the same time, both mortal and the immortal. Mortal as to his body, but immortal as to his intellect. XL VII. But the original man, he who was created out of the clay, the primeval founder of all our race, appears to me to have been most excellent in both particulars, in both soul and body, and to have been very far superior to all the men of subsequent ages from his pre-eminent excellence in both parts. For he in truth was really good and perfect. And one may form a conjecture of the perfection of his bodily beauty from three considerations, the first of which is this : when the earth was now but lately formed by its separation from that abundant quantity of water which was called the sea, it happened that the materials out of which the things just created were formed were unmixed, uncorrupted, and pure ; and the things made from this material were naturally free from all imperfection. The second consideration is that it is not likely that God made this figure in the present form of a man, working with the most sublime care, after he had taken the clay from any chance portion of earth, but that he selected carefully the most excellent clay of all the earth, of the pure material choosing the finest and most carefully sifted portion, such as was especially fit for the formation of the work which he had in hand. For it was an abode or sacred temple for a reasonable soul which was being made, the image of which he was about to carry in his heart, being the most God-like looking of images. The third consideration is one which admits of no comparison with those which have been already mentioned, namely, this : the Creator was good both in other respects, and also in knowledge, so that every one of the parts of the body had separately the numbers which were suited to it, and was also accurately completed in the admirable adaptation to the share in the universe of which it was to partake. And after he had endowed it with fair proportions, he clothed it with beauty of flesh, and embellished it with an exquisite complexion, wishing, as far as was possible, that man should appear the most beautiful of beings. XLVI1I. And. that he is superior to all these animals in regard of his soul, is plain. For God does not seem to have availed himself of any other animal existing in creation as his model in the formation of man ; but to have been guided, as I have said before, by his own reason alone. On which account, Moses affirms that this man was an image and imitation of God, being breathed into in his face in which is the place of the sensations, by which the Creator endowed the body with a soul. Then, having placed the mind in the dominant part as king, he gave him as a body of satellites, the different powers calculated to perceive colours and sounds, and flavours and odours, and other things of similar kinds, which man could never have distinguished by Ins own resources without the sensations. And it follows of necessity that an imitation of a perfectly beautiful model must itself be perfectly beautiful, for the word of God surpasses even that beauty which exists in the nature which is perceptible only by the external senses, not being embellished by any adventitious beauty, but being itself, if one must speak the truth, its most exquisite embellishment.

VII. " And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it." God blesses the manners which are formed in accordance with the seventh and divine light, as being truly light, and immediately declares them holy. For that which is blessed, and that which is holy, are closely connected with one another. On this account he says, concerning him who has vowed a great vow, that " If a sudden change comes over him, and pollutes his mind, he shall no longer be holy." But the previous days were not taken into the calculation, as was natural, For those manners which are not holy are not counted, so that which is blessed is alone holy. Correctly therefore, did Moses say that " God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it," because on it he "caused to rest from all his works which he had begun to make." And this is the reason why he who lives and conducts himself in accordance with the seventh and perfect light is blessed and holy, since it is in accordance with his nature, that the creation of mortal beings was terminated. For the case is thus : when the light of virtue, which is brilliant and really divine, rises up, then the generation of the contrary nature is checked. And we have shown that God never desists from creating something, but that when he appears to do so he is only beginning the creation of something else ; as being not only, the Creator, but also the Father of everything which exists.

XII. " And God created man, taking a lump of clay from the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life : and man became a living soul." The races of men are twofold ; for one is the heavenly man, and the other the earthly man. Now the heavenly man, as being born in the image of God, has no participation in any corruptible or earth-like essence. But the earthly man is made of loose material, which ho calls a lump of clay, On which account he says, not that the heavenly man was made, but that he was fashioned according to the imao-e of God ; but the earthly man he calls a thing made, and not begotten by the maker. And we must consider that the man who was formed of earth, means the mind which is to be infused into the body, but which has not yet been so infused. And this mind would be really earthly and corruptible, if it. were not that God had breathed into it the spirit of genuine life ; for then it " exists," and is no longer made into a soul ; and its soul is not inactive, and incapable of proper formation, but a really intellectual and living one. " For man," says Moses, " became a living soul."

XIV. "And God planted a paradise in Eden, in the east : and there he placed the man whom he had formed :" for he called that divine and heavenly wisdom by many names ; and he made it manifest that it had many appellations ; for he called it the beginning, and the image, and the sight of God. And now he exhibits the wisdom which is conversant about the things of the earth (as being an imitation of this archetypal wisdom), in the plantation of this Paradise. For let not such impiety ever occupy our thoughts as for us to suppose that God cultivates the land and plants paradises, since if we were to do so, we should be presently raising the question of why he does so : for it could not be that he might provide himself with pleasant places of recreation and pastime, or with amusement. Let not such fabulous nonsense ever enter our minds ; for even the whole world would not be a worthy place or habitation for God, since he is a place to himself, and he himself is full of himself, and he himself is sufficient for himself, filling up and surrounding everything else which is deficient in any respect, or deserted, or empty ; but he himself is surrounded by nothing else, as being himself one and the universe. God therefore sow3 and implants terrestrial virtue in the human race, being an imitation and representation of the heavenly virtue. For, pitying our race, and seeing that it is exposed to abundant and innumerable evils, he firmly planted terrestrial virtue as an assistant against and warder-off of the diseases of the soul ; being, as I have said before, an imitation of the heavenly and archetypal wisdom which he calls by various names. Now virtue is called a paradise metaphorically, and the appropriate place for the paradise is Eden : and this means luxury : and the most appropriate field for virtue is peace, and ease, and joy ; in which real luxury especially consists. Moreover, the plantation of this paradise is represented in the east ; for right reason never sets, and is never extinguished, but it is its nature to be always rising. And as I imagine, the rising sun fills the darkness of the air with light, so also does virtue when it has arisen in the soul, irradiate its mist and dissipate the dense darkness. " And there," says Moses, " he placed the man whom he had formed :" for God being good, and having formed our race for virtue, as his work which Genesis ii. 8. C-l PITILO JUDiEUS. was most akin to himself, places the mind in virtue, evidently in order that it, like a good husband, may cultivate and attend to nothing else except virtue.

XX. "'The name of one river is Pheison. This is that Genesis ii. 13. OX THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. G9 river which encircles all the land of Evilat ; there is the country where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good ; there also are the carbuncle and the sapphire stone." One of the four virtues is prudence, which Moses here calls Pheison : because the soul abstains from, and guards against, acts of iniquity. And it meanders in a circle, and flows all round the land of Evilat ; that is to say. it preserves a mild, and gentle, and favourable constitution. And as of all fusible essences, the most excellent and the most illustrious is gold, so also the virtue of the soul which enjoys the highest reputation, is prudence. And when he uses the expression, " that is the country where there is gold," he is not speaking geographically, that is, where gold exists, but that is the country in which that valuable possession exists, brilliant as gold, tried in the fire, aud .valuable, namely, prudence. And this is confessed to be the most valuable possession of God. But with reference to the geographical position of virtue, there are two personages, each invested with distinctive qualities. One, the being who has prudence, the other, the being who exerts it ; and these he likens to the carbuncle and the emerald. XXI, " And the name of the second river is Gihon. This is that which encircles all the land of Ethiopia." Under the symbol of this river courage is intended. For the name of Gihon being interpreted means chest, or an animal which attacks with its horns ; each of which interpretations is emblematical of courage. For courage has its abode about the chest, where also is the seat of the heart, and where man is prepared to defend himself. For courage is the knowledge of what is to be withstood, and of what is not to be withstood, and of what is indifferent. And it encircles and surrounds Ethiopia, making demonstrations of war against it ; and the name of Ethiopia, being interpreted, means humiliation. And cowardice is a humiliating thing; but courage is adverse to humiliation and to cowardice. " And the third river is the Tigris ; this is that which flows in front of Assyria." The third virtue is temperance, which resolutely opposes that kind of pleasure which appears to be the directress of human infirmity. For the translation of the name Assyrians in the Greek tongue is ibQvvovrsc, (directors). Qeicrujv, from QtiSopai, to spare, or abstain from. 70 And he has likened desire to a tiger, which is the most untaineahle of beasts ; it being desire about which temperance is conversant.

XXVIII. "And the Lord God took the man whom he had made and placed him in the Paradise, to cultivate and to guard it." The man whom God made differs from the factitious man, as I have said before. For the factitious mind is somewhat earthly ; but the created mind is purer and more immaterial, haviug no participation in any perishable matter, but having received a purer and more simple constitution. Accordingly God takes this pure mind, not permitting it to proceed out of itself, and after he has taken it, he places it among the virtues winch are firmly rooted and budding well, that it may cultivate and guard them. For many men who were originally pracof virtue, when they come to the end fall off; but he to whom God gives lasting knowledge is also endowed by him with both qualities, namely with the disposition to cultivate the virtues, and the resolution never to desert them, but always to minister to and guard every one of them. So Moses here uses the expression "cultivate" as equivalent to "act," and the word " guard" instead of " remember."

XXXIII. Accordingly God says, " In the day in which ye eat of it ye shall die the death." And yet, though they have eaten of it, they not only do not die, but they even beget children, and are the causes of life to other beings besides themselves. What, then, are we to say? Surely that death is of two kinds ; the one being the death of the man, the other the peculiar death of the soul — now the death of the man is the separation of his soul from his body, but the death of the soul is the destruction of virtue and the admission of vice ; and consequently God calls that not merely " to die," but " to die the death;" showing that he is speaking not of common death, but of that peculiar and especial death which is the death of the soul, buried in its passions and in all kinds of evil. And we may almost say that one kind of death is opposed to the other kind. For the one is the separation of what was previously existing in combination, namely, of body and soul. But this other death, on the contrary, is a combination of them both, the inferior one, the body, having the predominance, and the superior one, the soul, being made subject to it When, therefore, God says, "to die the death," you must remark that he is speaking of that death which is inflicted as punishment, and not of that which exists by the original ordinance of nature. The natural death is that one by which the soul is separated from the body. But the one which is inflicted as a punishment, is when the soul dies according to the life of virtue, and lives only according to the life of vice. Well, therefore, did Heraclitus say this, following the doctrine of Moses; for he says, " We are living according to the death of those men; and we have died according to their life." As if he had said, Now, when we are alive, we are so though our soul is dead and buried in our body, as if in a tomb. But if it were to die, then our soul would live according to its proper life, being released from the evil and dead body to which it is bound. THE SECOND BOOK OF THE TREATISE ON THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACKED LAWS, AFTER THE WORK OF THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION.

I. "And the Lord God said, It is not good for man to be alone : let us make him a help meet for him." Why, 0 prophet, is it not good for man to be alone ? Because, says he, it is good, that he who is alone should be alone. But God is alone, and by himself, being one ; and there is nothing like unto God. So that, since it is good that he who only has a real existence should be alone (for that which is about itself alone is good), it cannot be good for man to be alone. But the fact of God being alone one may receive in this sense ; that neither before the creation was there anything with God, nor, since the world has been created, is anything placed in the same rank with him; for he is in need of absolutely nothing whatever. But the better way of understanding this passage is the following : God is alone : a single being : not a combination : a single nature : but each of us, and every other animal in the world, are compound beings: for instance, I myself am made ON TIIE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. -81 up of many things, of soul and body. Again, the soul is made up of a rational part and an irrational part : also of the body, there is one part hot, another cold ; one heavy, another light ; one dry, another moist. But God is not a compound being, nor one which is made up of many parts, but one which has no mixture with anything else ; for whatever could be combined with God must be either superior to him, or inferior to him, or equal to him. But there is nothing equal to God, and nothing superior to him, and nothing is combined with him which is worse than himself; for if it were, he himself would be deteriorated ; and if he were to suffer deterioration, he would also become perishable, which it is impious even to imagine. Therefore God exists according to oneness and unity ; or we should rather say, that oneness exists according to the one God, for all number is more recent than the world, as is also time. But God is older than the world, and is its Creator.

IV. 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. OX THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. 53 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 helpmeet 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 4i 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 G 2 ' 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.

VII. " And God cast a deep trance upon Adam, and sent him to sleep ; and he took one of his ribs," and so on. The literal statement conveyed in these words is a fabulous one ; for how can any one believe that a woman was made of a rib of a man, or, in short, that any human being was made out of another ? And what hindered God, as he had made man out of the earth, from making woman in the same manner ? For the Creator was the same, and the material was almost interminable, from which every distinctive quality whatever was made. And why, when there were so many parts of a man, did not God make the woman out of some other part rather than out of one of his ribs ? Again, of which rib did he make her ? And this question would hold even if we were to say, that he had only spoken of two ribs ; but in truth he has not specified their number. Was it then the right rib, or the left rib '? Again, if he filled up the place of the other with flesh, was not the one which he left also made of flesh ? and indeed, our ribs are like sisters, and akin in all their parts, and they consist of flesh. What then are we to say ? ordinary custom calls the ribs the strength of a man ; for we say that a man has ribs, which is equivalent to saying that he has vigour; and we say that a wrestler is a man with strong ribs, when we mean to express that he is strong : and we say that a harpplayer has ribs, instead of saying that he has energy and power in his singing. Now that this has been premised we must also say, that the mind, while naked and free from the entanglement of the body (for our present discussion is about the mind, while it is as yet entangled in nothing) has many powers, namely, the possessive power, the progenitive power, the power of the soul, the power of reason, the power of comprehension, and part of others innumerable both in their genus and species. Now the possessive power is common to it with other inanimate things, with stocks and stones, and it is shared by the things in us, which are like stones, namely, by our bones. And natural power extends also over plants : and there are parts in us which have some resemblance to plants, namely, our nails and our hair : and nature is a habit already put in motion, but the soul is a habit which has taken to itself, in addition, imagination and impetuosity ; and this power also is possessed by man in common with the irrational animals ; and our mind has something analogous to the soul of an irrational animal. • Again, the power of comprehension is a peculiar property of the mind ; and the reasoning power is perhaps common to the more divine natures, but is especially the property of the mortal nature of man : and this is a twofold power, one kind being that in accordance with which we are rational creatures, partaking of mind ; and the other kind being that faculty by which we converse. There is also another power in the soul akin to these, the power of sensation, of which we are now speaking ; for Moses is describing nothing else on this occasion except the formation of the external sense, according to energy and according to reason.

IX. After this preface w-e must now proceed to explain the words : " The Lord God," says Moses, " cast a deep trance upon Adam, and sent him to sleep." He speaks here with great correctness, for a trance and perversion of the mind is its sleep. And the mind is rendered beside itself when it ceases to be occupied about the things perceptible only by the intellect which present themselves to it. And when it is not energizing with respect to them it is asleep. And the expression, ,kit is in a trance," is very well employed, as it means that it is perverted and changed, not by itself, but by God, who presents to it, and brings before it, and sends upon it the change which occurs to it. For the case is this : — if it were in my own power to be changed, then whenever I chose I should exercise this power, and whenever I did not choose I should continue as I am, without any change. But now change attacks me from an opposite direction, and very often when I am desirous to turn my intellect to some fitting subject, I am swallowed up by an influx contrary to what is fitting ; and on the other hand, when I conceive an idea respecting something unseemly, I discard it by means of pleasant notions while God by his own grace pours into my soul a sweet stream instead of the salt flood. It is necessary therefore, that even' created thing should at times be changed. For this is a property of every created thing, just as it is an attribute of God to be unchangeable. But of these beings who have been changed, some remain in their altered state till their final and complete destruction, though others are only exposed to the ordinary vicissitudes of human nature ; and they are immediately preserved. On which account Moses says that " God will not suffer the destroyer to enter into your houses to smite them." For he does permit the destroyer (and change is the destruction of the soul) to enter into the soul, in order to exhibit the peculiar characteristic of the created being. But God will not permit the offspring of the seeing Israel to be changed in such a manner as to be stricken down by the change ; but he will compel it to emerge and rise up again like one who rises up from the deep, and so he will cause it to be saved.

XII. " And he brought her to Adam. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh." God leads the external sense, existing according to energy, to the mind ; knowing that its motion and apprehension must turnback to the mind. But the mind, perceiving the power which it previously had (and winch, while it was existing according to habit was in a state of tranquillity), now have to become a complete operation and energy, and to be in a state of motion, marvels at it, and utters an exclamation, saying that it is not unconnected with it, but very closely akin to it. For Adam says, " This now is bone of my bone ;" that is to say, This is power of my power ; for bone is here to be understood as a symbol of strength and power. And it is, he adds, suffering of my sufferings ; that is, it is flesh of my flesh. For every thing which the external sense suffers, it endures not without the support of the mind ; for the mind is its fountain, and the foundation on which it is supported. It is also worth while to consider why Adam added the word "now," for he says, "This now is bone of my hone."' The explanation is, external sensation exists now, having its existence solely with reference to the present moment. For the mind touches three separate points of time ; for it perceives present circumstances, and it remembers past events, and it anticipates the future. But the external sensations have neither any anticipation of future events, nor are they subject to any feeling resembling expectation or hope, nor have they any recollection of past circumstances ; but are by nature capable only of being affected by that which moves them at the moment, and is actually present. As, for example, the eye is made white by a white appearance presented to it at the moment, but it is not affected in any manner by that which is not present to it. But the mind is agitated also by that which is not actually present, but which may be past ; in which case it is affected by its recollection of it ; or it may be future, in which case it is, indeed, the influence of hope and expectation.

XIV. " On this account a man will leave his father and his mother and will cleave to his wife ; and they two shall become one flesh." On account of the external sensation, the mind, when it has become enslaved to it, shall leave both its father, the God of the universe, and the mother of all things, namely, the virtue and wisdom of God, and cleaves to and becomes united to the external sensations, and is dissolved into external sensation, so that the two become one flesh and one passion. And here you must observe that it is not the woman who cleaves to the man, but on the contrary, the man who cleaves to the woman ; that is to say, the mind cleaves to the external sensations. For when that which is the better, namely, the mind. is united to that which is the worse, namely, the external sensation, it is then dissolved into the nature of flesh, whicb • Gen. xxx. 1. + Gen. xxix. 31. % Deut. xxi. 15. is worse, and into outward sensation, which is the cause of the passions. But when that which is the inferior, namely, the outward sensation, follows the hetter part, that is the mind, then there will no longer be flesh, but both will become one, namely, mind. And this is a thing of such a nature that it prefers the affections to piety. There is also another being called by an opposite name, Levi ; he who says to his father and mother : " He saw you not, and he did not recognize his brethren, and repudiated his children."' This man leaves his father and mother ; that is to say, his mind and the material of his body, in order to have as his inheritance the one God ; " For the Lord himself is his inheritance. "f And, indeed, suffering is the inheritance of him who is fond of suffering ; but the inheritance of Levi is God. Do you not see that " he bids him on the tenth day of the month bring two goats as his share, one lot for the Lord and one lot for the scape-goat."^ For the sufferings inflicted on the scape goat are in real truth the lot of him who is fond of suffering.

XVI. This is the most excellent nakedness, but the other nakedness is of a contrary nature, being a change which involves a deprivation of virtue, when the soul becomes foolish and goes astray. Such was the folly of Noah when he was naked, when he drank wine.f But thanks be to God, that this change and this stripping naked of the mind according to the deprivation of virtue, did not extend as far as external things, but remained in the house ; for Closes says, that " he was stripped naked in his house :" for even if a wise man does commit folly, he still does not run to ruin like a bad man ; for the evil of the one is spread abroad, but that of the other is kept within bounds, and therefore he becomes sober again, that is to say, he repents, and as it were recovers from his disease. But let us now more accurately examine the statement, " that the stripping of him naked took place in his house." When the soul, being changed, only conceives some evil thing and does not put it in execution, so as to accomplish it in deed, then the sin is only in the private domain and abode of the soul. But if, in addition to thinking some wickedness it proceeds also to accomplish it and cany it into execution, then the wickedness is diffused over the parts beyond his house : and on this account he curses Canaan also, because he related the change of his soul abroad, that is to say, he extended it into the parts out of doors, and gave it notoriety, adding to his evil intention an evil consummation by means of his actions : but Shem and Japhet are praised, because they did not attack his soul, but rather concealed its deterioration. On this account also the prayers and vows of the soul are invalidated when " they are made in the house of one s father or one's husband,} while the reasoning powers are in a state of quiescence, and do not attack the alteration which has taken place in the soul, but conceal the delinquency ; for then also " the master of all things " will purify it : but he hears the prayer of the widow and of her who is divorced without revoking it ; for " whatever," says he, " she has vowed against her own soul shall abide to her," and very reasonably; for if, Gen. xxv. 25. f Gen. ix. 21. J Nun. xxx. 4. 96 after she has been put away, she has advanced as far as the parts out of the house, so that not only is her place changed, but that she also sins in respect of deeds that she has perfected, she remains incurable, having no communion of conversation with her husband, and being deprived also of the advocacy and consolation of her father. The third description of stripping naked is the middle one, according to which the mind is destitute of reason, having no share in either virtue or vice ; and it is with reference to this kind of nakedness which an infant also is partaker of, that the expression is used which says, " And the two were naked, both Adam and his wife;" and the meaning of it is this, neither did their intellect understand, nor did their outward senses perceive tins nakedness ; but the former was devoid of all power of understanding, and naked; and the latter was destitute of all perception.

LV. But the expression, "And dust shalt thou eat'all the days of thy life," is also used with great propriety. For the pleasures which are derived from the food of the body are all earthly. And may we not reasonably speak thus? There are two several parts of which we consist, the soul and the body; now the body is made of earth, but the soul consists of air, being a fragment of the Divinity, for " God breathed into man's face the breath of life, and man became a living soul."t It is therefore quite consistent with reason to say that the body which was fashioned out of the earth has nourish ment which the earth gives forth akin to the matter of which it is composed ; but the soul, inasmuch as it is a portion of the ethereal nature, is supported by nourishment which is ethereal and divine, for it it is nourished on knowledge, and not on meat or drink, which the body requires.

XXII. And what was said afterwards is uttered veiy beautifully, with reference either to the beauty of the interpretation of which it is susceptible, or to the conception which may be discovered in it. " The voice of the blood of thy brother calls to me from out of the earth." This now, which is a very sublime expression if we regard the language in which it is couched, is intelligible to all those who are not utterly uninitiated in eloquence. But let us consider the ideas which are apparent in it as well as we are able. And first of all, let us consider what is said about the blood : for in many places of the law as given by Moses, he pronounces the blood to be the essence of the soul or of life, saying distinctly, " For the life of all flesh is the blood thereof." And when the Creator of all living things first began to make man, after the creation of the heaven and the earth, and all the things which are between the two, Moses says, "And he breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul," showing again by this expression that it is the breath which Leviticus xvii. 11. is the essence of the life. And, indeed, he is accustomed diligently to record all the suggestions and purposes of God from the beginning, thinking it right to adopt his subsequent statements to aid to make them consistent with his first accounts. Therefore, after he had previously stated the breath to be the essence of the life, he would not subsequently have spoken of the blood as occupying the most important place in the body, unless he had been making a reference to some very necessary and comprehensive principle. What then are we to say ? The truth is, that every one of us according to the nearest estimation of numbers, is two persons, the animal and the man. And each of these two has a cognate power in the faculties, the seat of which is the soul assigned to it. To the one portion is assigned the vivifying faculty according to which we live ; and to the other, the reasoning faculty in accordance with which we are capable of reasoning. Therefore, even the irrational animals partake of the vivifying power ; but of the rational faculty, God — I will not say partakes, but — is the ruler, and that is the fountain of the most ancient Word.

XXXVII. On which account it is said in Genesis, " And a fountain went up from the earth, and watered all the face of the earth." For since nature has allotted the most excellent portion of the whole body, namely the face, to the outward senses, therefore the fountain which goes up from the superior part, being diffused over various parts, and sending up its streams like so many water-courses as high as the face, by their means conducts the faculties to each of the organs of the outward senses. In this way in truth, it is that the word of God irrigates the virtues ; for that is the beginning and the fountain of all good actions. And the lawgiver shows this, when he says, " And a river went out of Eden to water the Paradise ; and from thence it is divided into four heads. "f For there are four generic virtues : prudence, courage, temperance, and justice. And of these, every single one is a princess aud a ruler ; and he who has acquired them is, from the moment of the acquisition, a ruler and a king, even if he has no abundance of any kind of treasure ; for the meaning of the expression, ''it is divided into four heads," is £ nor distance ; but virtue exhibits the pre-eminence and the power. And these spring from the word of God as from one root, which he compares to a river, on account of the unceasing and everlasting flow of salutary words and doctrines, by which it increases and nourishes the souls that love God. XXXVIII. And of what kind they are, he proceeds to Genesis ii. 6. t Genesis ii. 1 0. X Here again is an hiatu3, which Mangey does not attempt to supply. show in a few words, deriving bis explanation from the natural things of art ; for he introduces Agar as filling a leathern bag with water, and giving her child drink. Now Agar is the handmaid of Sarah, the new dispensation of perfect virtue ; and she is correctly represented so. Since, therefore, having come to the depth of knowledge, which Moses here calls a well, she draws up (filling the soul as if it were a vessel) the doctrines and speculations which she is in pursuit of, wishing to feed her child on the things on which she herself is fed. And Moses, by her child, means, a soul which has lately learnt to desire instruction, arid which has, in a manner, just been born to learn. In reference to which, the boy, when he has grown up to man's estate, becomes a sophist, whom Moses calls an archer ;f for whatever argument he applies his mind to, at that, as at a target, he shoots all his reasons, as an archer shoots his arrows.

V. But the others who say that our mind is a portion of the ethereal nature, have by this assertion attributed to man a kindred with the air ; but the great Moses has not named the species of the rational soul by a title resembling that of any created being, but has pronounced it an image of the divine and invisible being, making it a coin as it were of sterling metal, stamped and impressed with the seal of God, the impression of which is the eternal word. For, says Moses, " God breathed into man's face the breath of life," so that it follows of necessity, that he that received the breath must be fashioned after the model of him who sent it forth. On which account it is said too, that "Man was made after the image of God," t and not after the image of any created being. It follows, therefore, since the soul of man has been fashioned in accordance with the archetypal word of the great cause of all things, that his body also, having been raised up to the purest portion of the universe— the heaven, must extend its vision, in order that, by a comparison with what is visible, it may attain to an accurate comprehension of what is invisible. Since, therefore, it was impossible for any one to perceive the attraction of the mind to the living God, except for those persons alone who were drawn towards him (for that which each person suffers, he alone particularly knows), God has given us the eyes of the body (as an evident and visible image of the invisible eye), which are able to look up to the heaven ; for when the eyes, composed of perishable material, have raised themselves to such a height, as to be able from the region of the earth to mount up to heaven which is removed at so great a distance from the earth, and to reach its utmost heights, how great a course in every direction must we suppose to be within the power of the eyes of the soul ? which, being endowed with wings from their excessive desire to see the living God clearly, reach up not only to the highest regions of the air, but even pass over the boundaries of the whole world, and hasten towards the Uncreate. And while all other creatures from their birth With downcast eyes gaze on their kindred earth, He bids man walk erect, and scan the heaven, From whence he sprung, to which his hopes are given. Geuesis ii. 7. f Genesis i. 27. ABOUT THE PLANTING OF NOAH. 4Q1

X. And the statement that "the Paradise was in the east," is a proof of what has been here said. Eor folly is a thing of darkness and setting, and which brings on the night; but wisdom is a most brilliant thing, radiant all around, and in the truest sense of the word, rising. And, as the sun, when it arises, fills the whole circle of the heaven with its light, so in the same manner, when the beams of virtue shine forth, they make the whole place occupied by the mind full of pure light. Therefore the possessions of man have guards and keepers, very fierce beasts, for the repulse of invading and attacking enemies. But the possessions of God have rational natures for their guards. Eor " there," says Moses, " God placed the man whom he had made ; " that is to say, he placed him among ) the rational virtues alone ; therefore the practices and uses of the virtues have received from God this especial honour beyond the souls of other animals. And therefore, also, it is most Psalm xxx vii. 4. ABOUT THE PLANTING OF NOAH. 425 expressly and plainly declared that God placed that man which is really man in us, namely, the mind, among the most sacred shoots and plants of excellence and virtue. But among those animals which have no share in mind, no one has ever cultivated any plant worth speaking of, since there is not one of them capable by nature of receiving comprehension.

XI. "We cannot therefore raise any question as to why it was ordained that all the different species of animals should be collected in the ark which was made at the time of the great deluge, while more were brought into the Paradise. For the ark was an emblem of the body, which of necessity therefore contained all the most tameable and ferocious evils of the passions and vices ; but the Paradise contained only the virtues : and the virtues do not receive anything savage or in short anything destitute of reason. And Moses also speaks very carefully, not representing the man who wa3 made after God's own image, but the man who was formed of clay, as the one who was placed in the paradise. Por the one who was made after the image of God, and stamped with the truth of God, does, as it appears to me, in no respect differ from the tree which bore as its fruit everlasting life. Por they are both imperishable, and have both been thought worthy of the most central position in the dominant part of man. Por it is said that " the tree of life is in the midst of the Paradise." But the other man, he of the composite and more earthly body, who has no justification in uncreated and simple nature, the cultivator of which is the only person who knows how to dwell in the house and in the courts of the Lord. Por Jacob is represented " as a plain man dwelling in a house," having a disposition full of ingenuity, and compounded and made up of all kinds of materials. It was natural therefore to place and firmly root the mind in the middle of the paradise, that is, of the universal world, havingin itself faculties which draw it in contrary directions, so that it should be kept in a state of doubt when called upon to discriminate as to what it should choose and what it should avoid, since if it chose the better part it would reap immor- Genesis xxv. 27, where the expression, however, ia "dwelling in tents." 426 PHILO JUMUS. tality and glory ; and if it chose the worse it would meet with reproach and death.