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+{
+ "title": "On the Unchangeableness of God",
+ "language": "en",
+ "versionTitle": "merged",
+ "versionSource": "https://www.sefaria.org/On_the_Unchangeableness_of_God",
+ "text": {
+ "Introduction": [
+ "ON THE UNCHANGEABLENESS OF GOD (QUOD DEUS IMMUTABILIS SIT)
ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTION",
+ "This treatise, which is really a continuation of the De Gigantibus, discusses the following verses, Gen. 6:4–12.",
+ "I. (1–19) And after this when the angels of God went in unto the daughters of men, and begat for themselves … (v. 4).",
+ "II. (20–73) But the Lord God seeing that the wickednesses of men were multiplied upon the earth and that every man is purposing in his heart carefully evil things every day, God had it in His mind that He had made man upon the earth and He bethought Him. And God said, I will blot out man whom I have made from the face of the earth … because I was wroth that I had made him (vv. 5–7).",
+ "III. (74–121) But Noah found grace before God. Now these are the generations of Noah. Noah was a just man, being perfect in his generation, and Noah was well pleasing to God (vv. 8–9).",
+ "IV. (122–139) And the earth was “corrupted” (or destroyed) before God, and the earth was filled with iniquity (v. 11).",
+ "V. (140–end) And the Lord God saw the earth, and it was corrupted, because all flesh destroyed His way upon the earth (v. 12).",
+ "I. Having suggested (1–3) that “after this” means “after the Spirit of God had departed,” Philo goes on to discuss what is meant by saying that these “angels,” which in the previous treatise he had taken to mean “evil angels” or “evil souls,” beget “for themselves.” This is shewn, first by contrast with Abraham (4) and (5–6) with Hannah, who gave her child as a thank-offering to God. This leads to a short meditation on the purifying power of thankfulness, and our need of such purification (7–9), and this is followed by a digression on the words of Hannah’s psalm: “The barren hath borne seven, but she that had many children has languished,” which are treated as contrasting the sacred number “seven” with selfish plurality (10–15). This brings back the thought of “begetting for themselves,” as mere selfishness which, as in the case of Onan, brings destruction (16–19).",
+ "II. The idea that the words “God had it in His mind,” etc. suggest that God had repented of making man is rejected as impious (20–22). God is unchangeable. Even among men the sage may live a life of constancy and harmony (23–25), and while most of us are the victims of fickleness and inconstancy, partly because we are unable to gauge the future, it is not so with God, for time is His creation and His life is eternity (27–32).",
+ "What then is the meaning of “God had in His mind that He had made man”? To explain this, Philo reproduces the Stoic theory of the four classes of things which we find in nature. First there is ἕξις (coherence), i.e. inorganic objects such as stones and dead wood. This ἕξις is conceived of as a “breath” (πνεῦμα) continually passing up and down, and thus binding them together (33–36). Secondly there is φύσις (growth), as seen in plants, and here Philo takes the opportunity to dilate on the wonders of the annual resurrection (37–40). Third comes animal life (ψυχή) with its threefold phenomena (again Stoic) of “sense,” “presentation” and “impulse” (41–44). All these have been mentioned to lead up to the fourth stage, that of the rational mind of man, which alone has free-will and is therefore alone liable to praise or blame, and it was this misused freedom of man which God “had in mind” (45–50).",
+ "We have still to do with the concluding words, “I was wroth that I made man.” Here Philo, who evidently had the variant ἐθυμώθην for ἐνεθυμήθην, is in great difficulty. He cannot allow anger to God and he repeats the explanation of such anthropomorphic phrases (which he gave in De Sac. 94 f.), namely that they are accommodated to our weaker natures, which require the discipline of fear (51–69). But this alone does not satisfy him. His further explanation is hardly intelligible, but seems to mean that as it is anger and similar passions which produce human wickedness, God’s judgement on the wicked may be spoken of as caused by God’s anger (70–73).",
+ "III. But we must observe that this phrase, “I was wroth,” etc., is followed at once by the words, “Noah found grace,” and this contrast brings us to the thought that God in His dealings mingles mercy with judgement, as our weak nature requires (74–76). This “mingling” in fact is a necessary condition before we can understand the divine at all (77–81), and the contrast of the mixed and the unmixed, which is the same as that of the One and the Many, is illustrated by the words “God spake once and these two things have I heard” (for God’s speech is single, while our hearing is produced by different factors) (82–84), and also by the way in which Moses shews us the one just man side by side with the many unjust (85).",
+ "We can now consider more fully the phrase “Noah found grace with the Lord God.” The word “found” leads to reflections first on the differences between finding (εὕρεσις) and “refinding” or “recovering” (ἀνεύρεσις) (86), and this difference is illustrated by an allegorical interpretation of the rules laid down for the “Great Vow” in Num. 6 (86–90), and then by the way in which the gifted by nature absorb knowledge without difficulty, while the efforts of the inapt come to disaster (91–93). This distinction extends to questions of conduct also, for those who with no good motive force themselves to right actions, against which their nature rebels, merely cause misery to themselves (94–103). Again the phrase “found grace” (χάρις) may be best interpreted as meaning that the just man “finds” that what we have is God’s free gift (also χάρις) (104–108). Yet Philo seems at once to ignore this forced interpretation and to identify the meaning of the words “found grace” with the subsequent “was well pleasing” (εὐαρεστῆσαι) and after pointing out, as usual, that the double phrase “Lord God” represents God’s two aspects of “sovereignty” and “goodness” (109–110), proceeds to contrast Noah with Joseph, “who found grace with the ruler of the prison” into which he was thrown. This story of Joseph teaches us the lesson that if we are the prisoners of passion, we should at least avoid the friendship of our gaoler and not become his satellites (111–116). This contrast between Noah and Joseph brings us to the consideration of the words “these are the generations (γενέσεις) of Noah.” Philo takes γένεσις to mean “becoming” or “development,” and explains it in this case by the words that follow, “just,” “perfect” “well pleasing to God” (117–118), and illustrates it from the text, “Joseph was keeping sheep with his brothers, being young, with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah,” where the γένεσις is from the higher nature of Jacob to that of the “young” Joseph and the bastard sons (119–121).",
+ "IV. Philo now turns to the words “the whole earth was corrupted or destroyed” (122). The first view put forward is that Goodness (i.e. Noah) necessarily works the destruction of the Bad (123). But this passes at once into a really different thought that Goodness shews up the Bad in its true light. This is illustrated from three points or rules in the law of leprosy; first, that the appearance of “healthy colour” makes the leper unclean (123–126); secondly, that complete leprosy is clean, while the partial is unclean, shewing that the completely and therefore involuntarily immoral condition is innocence compared with the partial enlightenment, by which the soul knows that it is sinful but does not amend (127–130); thirdly, that the infected house is pronounced unclean by the priest who visits it, shewing again that the entrance of divine reason will reveal the impurity of the soul (131–135). The same moral is found in the words of the widow of Zarephath to Elijah, “O man of God, thou hast entered to remind me of my sin” (136–139).",
+ "V. The important point here is that “destroyed his way” means “destroyed God’s way” (140–143), and this reminds us of the passage in which Israel asked for leave to pass through Edom’s territory, and said “we will go by the king’s way” (144) But Philo cannot endure to be confined to these two words, but deals with the whole content of Num. 20:17–20 in a way which, perverse as it is, shews much richness of thought as well as ingenuity. (α) When Israel says “I will pass through thy land” we have the resolve of the Wise both to test the life of the pleasure-lover, so as to reject it through experience and not mere ignorance, and also not to stay in it (145–153). (β) On the other hand, “we will not go through the fields and vineyards” means “we will abide in the fields of heavenly fruits and the vineyards of virtue and true joy” (154). (γ) “We will not drink of thy well” means that “we on whom God rains his mercies have no need of the scanty water of the wells of earthly pleasures” (155–158). (δ) “We will go by the king’s way” is “we will tread the road of wisdom” (159–161). (ε) “We will turn neither to the right nor to the left” shews that this way of wisdom is in the mean, as e.g. courage is the mean between rashness on the right and cowardice on the left (162–165). (ζ) When in reply to Edom’s refusal and threat of war Israel replies, “we will pass along the mountain,” Philo by a strange play on ὅρος (the mountain) and ὅρος (definition) extracts the idea that the wise man’s course is on lofty thoughts based on scientific analysis (166–167). (η) “If I drink of thy water, I will give thee its value” (τιμή) is turned into “If I truckle to you, I shall be giving to the worthless an honour which will lead the weak to honour it also” (167–171). (θ) The words “the matter is nothing” (see note on 145) are taken to mean the vanity of earthly things. And this leads to a meditation on the witness of history to the instability of national prosperity and indeed of all human aims (172–180). Thus we arrive at the conclusion that while Edom would bar the king’s way, the divine reason will bar that of Edom and its associates (180).",
+ "This last word leads to some concluding thoughts about Balaam as one of these “associates.” The sections (181–end), which otherwise have little connexion with the preceding matter, go back to the thought of 122–139, and describe Balaam as the type of those who reject the warning of divine reason as the inward judge and thus are past all cure."
+ ],
+ "": [
+ [
+ "[1] “And after that,” says Moses, “when the angels of God went in unto the daughters of men and begat for themselves” (Gen. 6:4). It is worth our while to consider what is meant by the word “after that.” The answer is that it is a reference back, bringing out more clearly something of what has been already stated.",
+ "[2] That something is his words about the divine spirit, that nothing is harder than that it should abide for ever in the soul with its manifold forms and divisions—the soul which has fastened on it the grievous burden of this fleshly coil. It is after that spirit that the angels or messengers go in to the daughters of men.",
+ "[3] For while the soul is illumined by the bright and pure rays of wisdom, through which the sage sees God and His potencies, none of the messengers of falsehood has access to the reason, but all are barred from passing the bounds which the lustral water has consecrated. But when the light of the understanding is dimmed and clouded, they who are of the fellowship of darkness win the day, and mating with the nerveless and emasculated passions, which he has called the daughters of men, beget offspring for themselves and not for God.",
+ "[4] For the offspring of God’s parentage are the perfect virtues, but the family of evil are the vices, whose note is discord.",
+ "If thou wilt know, my mind, what it is to beget not for thyself, learn the lesson from the perfect Abraham. He brings to God the dearly loved, the only trueborn offspring of the soul, that clearest image of self-learned wisdom, named Isaac, and without a murmur renders, as in duty bound, this fitting thank-offering. But first he bound, as the law tells us, the feet of the new strange victim (Gen. 22:9), either because having once received God’s inspiration he judged it right to tread no more on aught that was mortal, or it may be that he was taught to see how changeable and inconstant was creation, through his knowledge of the unwavering steadfastness that belongs to the Existent; for in this we are told he had put his trust (Gen. 15:6)."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[5] He finds a disciple and successor in Hannah, the gift of the wisdom of God, for the name Hannah interpreted is “her grace.” She received the divine seed and became pregnant. And when she had reached the consummation of her travail, and had brought forth the type of character which has its appointed place in God’s order, which she named Samuel, a name which being interpreted means “appointed to God,” she took him and rendered him in due payment to the Giver, judging that no good thing was her own peculiar property, nothing, which was not a grace and bounty from God.",
+ "[6] For she speaks in the first book of Kings in this wise, “I give to Thee him, a gift” (1 Sam. 1:28), that is “who is a gift,” and so “I give him who has been given.”",
+ "This agrees with the most sacred ordinance of Moses, “My gifts, My offerings, My fruits ye shall observe to bring to Me” (Num. 28:2).",
+ "[7] For to whom should we make thank-offering save to God? and wherewithal save by what He has given us? for there is nothing else whereof we can have sufficiency. God needs nothing, yet in the exceeding greatness of His beneficence to our race He bids us bring what is His own. For if we cultivate the spirit of rendering thanks and honour to Him, we shall be pure from wrongdoing and wash away the filthiness which defiles our lives in thought and word and deed.",
+ "[8] For it is absurd that a man should be forbidden to enter the temples save after bathing and cleansing his body, and yet should attempt to pray and sacrifice with a heart still soiled and spotted. The temples are made of stones and timber, that is of soulless matter, and soulless too is the body in itself. And can it be that while it is forbidden to this soulless body to touch the soulless stones, except it have first been subjected to lustral and purificatory consecration, a man will not shrink from approaching with his soul impure the absolute purity of God and that too when there is no thought of repentance in his heart?",
+ "[9] He who is resolved not only to commit no further sin, but also to wash away the past, may approach with gladness: let him who lacks this resolve keep far away, since hardly shall he be purified. For he shall never escape the eye of Him who sees into the recesses of the mind and treads its inmost shrine."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[10] Indeed of the nature of the soul beloved of God no clearer evidence can we have than that psalm of Hannah which contains the words “the barren hath borne seven, but she that had many children hath languished” (1 Sam. 2:5).",
+ "[11] And yet it is the mother of one child—Samuel—who is speaking. How then can she say that she has borne seven? It can only be that in full accordance with the truth of things, she holds the One to be the same as the Seven, not only in the lore of numbers, but also in the harmony of the universe and in the thoughts of the virtuous soul. For Samuel who is appointed to God alone and holds no company with any other has his being ordered in accordance with the One and the Monad, the truly existent.",
+ "[12] But this condition of his implies the Seven, that is a soul which rests in God and toils no more at any mortal task, and has thus left behind the Six, which God has assigned to those who could not win the first place, but must needs limit their claims to the second.",
+ "[13] We might well expect, then, that the barren woman, not meaning the childless, but the “firm” or solid who still abounds in power, who with endurance and courage perseveres to the finish in the contest, where the prize is the acquisition of the Best, should bring forth the Monad which is of equal value with the Seven; for her nature is that of a happy and goodly motherhood.",
+ "[14] And when she says that she who had many children languishes, her words are as clear as they are true. For when the soul that is one departs from the one and is in travail with many, she naturally is multiplied a thousand-fold, and then weighed down and sore pressed by the multitude of children that cling to her—most of them abortions born out of due time—she languishes utterly.",
+ "[15] She brings forth the desires of which the eyes and the ears are the channels, these for shapes and colours, those for sounds; she is pregnant with the lusts of the belly and those which have their seat below it, and thus, under the crushing load of the many children that hang upon her, she grows faint and dropping her hands in weakness sinks in prostration. This manner of defeat is the lot of all who engender things corruptible for their corruptible selves."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[16] Some there are who through self-love have brought upon themselves not only defeat but death. Thus Onan “perceiving that the seed will not be his” (Gen. 38:9), ceased not to destroy the reasoning principle, which in kind is the best of all existing things, till he himself underwent utter destruction. And right just and fitting was his fate.",
+ "[17] For if there shall be any whose every deed is self-seeking, who have no regard for the honouring of their parents, for the ordering of their children aright, for the safety of their country, for the maintenance of the laws, for the security of good customs, for the better conduct of things private and public, for the sanctity of temples, for piety towards God, miserable shall be their fate.",
+ "[18] To sacrifice life itself for any single one of these that I have named is honour and glory. But these self-lovers—they say that if these blessings, desirable as they are, were all put together, they would utterly despise them, if they should not procure them some future pleasure. And therefore God in His impartial justice will cast out to destruction that evil suggestion of an unnatural creed, called Onan.",
+ "[19] We must indeed reject all those who “beget for themselves,” that is all those who pursue only their own profit and think not of others. For they think themselves born for themselves only and not for the innumerable others, for father, for mother, for wife, for children, for country, for the human race, and if we must extend the list, for heaven, for earth, for the universe, for knowledge, for virtues, for the Father and Captain of all; to each of whom we are bound according to our powers to render what is due, not holding all things to be an adjunct of ourselves, but rather ourselves an adjunct of all."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[20] Enough on this point. Let us extend our discussion to embrace the words that follow. “The Lord God,” says Moses, “seeing that the wickedness of men were multiplied upon the earth and that every man intended evil in his heart diligently all his days, God had it in His mind that He had made man upon the earth, and He bethought Him. And God said, I will blot out man, whom I made, from the face of the earth” (Gen. 6:5–7).",
+ "[21] Perhaps some of those who are careless inquirers will suppose that the Lawgiver is hinting that the Creator repented of the creation of men when He beheld their impiety, and that this was the reason why He wished to destroy the whole race. Those who think thus may be sure that they make the sins of these men of old time seem light and trivial through the vastness of their own godlessness.",
+ "[22] For what greater impiety could there be than to suppose that the Unchangeable changes? Indeed some maintain that even among men vacillation of mind and judgement is not universal; for those who study philosophy in guilelessness and purity, it is held, gain from their knowledge this as their chief reward, that they do not change with changing circumstances, but with unbending steadfastness and firm constancy take in hand all that it behoves them to do."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[23] It is a tenet of the lawgiver also that the perfect man seeks for quietude. For the words addressed to the Sage with God as the speaker, “stand thou here with Me” (Deut. 5:31), shew most plainly how unbending, unwavering and broad-based is his will.",
+ "[24] Wonderful indeed is the soul of the Sage, how he sets it, like a lyre, to harmony not with a scale of notes low and high, but with the knowledge of moral opposites, and the practice of such of them as are better; how he does not strain it to excessive heights, nor yet relax it and weaken the concord of virtues and things naturally beautiful, but keeps it ever at an equal tension and plays it with hand or bow in melody.",
+ "[25] Such a soul is the most perfect instrument fashioned by nature, the pattern of those which are the work of our hands. And if it be well adjusted, it will produce a symphony the most beautiful in the world, one which has its consummation not in the cadences and tones of melodious sound, but in the consistencies of our life’s actions.",
+ "[26] Oh! if the soul of man, when it feels the soft breeze of wisdom and knowledge, can dismiss the stormy surge which the fierce burst of the gale of wickedness has suddenly stirred, and levelling the billowy swell can rest in unruffled calm under a bright clear sky, can you doubt that He, the Imperishable Blessed One, who has taken as His own the sovereignty of the virtues, of perfection itself and beatitude, knows no change of will, but ever holds fast to what He purposed from the first without any alteration?",
+ "[27] With men then it must needs be that they are ready to change, through instability whether it be in themselves or outside them. So for example often when we have chosen our friends and been familiar with them for a short time, we turn from them, though we have no charge to bring against them, and count them amongst our enemies, or at best as strangers.",
+ "[28] Such action proves the facile levity of ourselves, how little capacity we have for stoutly holding to our original judgements. But God has no such fickleness. Or again, sometimes we are minded to hold to the standards we have taken but we find ourselves with others who have not remained constant, and thus our judgements perforce change with theirs.",
+ "[29] For a mere man cannot foresee the course of future events, or the judgements of others, but to God as in pure sunlight all things are manifest. For already He has pierced into the recesses of our soul, and what is invisible to others is clear as daylight to His eyes. He employs the forethought and foreknowledge which are virtues peculiarly His own, and suffers nothing to escape His control or pass outside His comprehension. For not even about the future can uncertainty be found with Him, since nothing is uncertain or future to God.",
+ "[30] No one doubts that the parent must have knowledge of his offspring, the craftsman of his handiwork, the steward of things entrusted to his stewardship. But God is in very truth the father and craftsman and steward of the heaven and the universe and all that is therein. Future events lie shrouded in the darkness of the time that is yet to be at different distances, some near, some far.",
+ "[31] But God is the maker of time also, for He is the father of time’s father, that is of the universe, and has caused the movements of the one to be the source of the generation of the other. Thus time stands to God in the relation of a grandson. For this universe, since we perceive it by our senses, is the younger son of God. To the elder son, I mean the intelligible universe, He assigned the place of firstborn, and purposed that it should remain in His own keeping.",
+ "[32] So this younger son, the world of our senses, when set in motion, brought that entity we call time to the brightness of its rising. And thus with God there is no future, since He has made the boundaries of the ages subject to Himself. For God’s life is not a time, but eternity, which is the archetype and pattern of time; and in eternity there is no past nor future, but only present existence."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[33] Having now discoursed sufficiently on the theme that the Existent does not experience repentance, we will explain in due sequence the words “God had it in His mind that He had made men upon the earth and He bethought Him” (Gen. 6:6).",
+ "[34] “Having in one’s mind” and “bethinking,” the former being the thought quiescent in the mind, the latter the thought brought to an issue, are two most constant powers, which the Maker of all things has taken as His own and ever employs them when He contemplates His own works. Those of His creatures who do not leave their appointed places, He praises for their obedience. Those who depart from it He visits with the punishment which is the doom of deserters.",
+ "[35] This is explained by consideration of the different conditions, which He has made inseparable from the various bodies. These are in some cases cohesion, in others growth, in others life, in others a reasoning soul. Thus, in stones and bits of wood which have been severed from their organism, He wrought cohesion, which acts as the most rigid of bonds. Cohesion is a breath or current ever returning to itself. It begins to extend itself from the centre of the body in question to its extremes, and when it has reached the outermost surface it reverses its course, till it arrives at the place from which it first set out.",
+ "[36] This regular double course of cohesion is indestructible; and it is this which the runners imitate at the triennial festivals in the places of spectacle universal among men, and exhibit as a great and splendid feat, well worthy of their efforts."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[37] Growth God assigned to plants. It is a compound of many capacities, that of taking nourishment, that of undergoing change and that of increasing. Nourishment plants receive as they need it, as the following proof shews. When they are not watered they decay and wither, just as their increase when watered is plain to see, for sprouts heretofore too tiny to rise above the ground suddenly shoot up and become quite tall. It is hardly necessary to speak of their function of change.",
+ "[38] When the winter solstice arrives, the leaves wither and shed themselves to the ground, and the “eyes,” as the husbandmen call them, on the twigs close like eyes in animals, and all the outlets which serve to put forth life are bound tight, for Nature within them compresses herself and hibernates, to get a breathing-space, like an athlete after his first contest, and thus having regained her fund of strength, comes forth to resume the familiar conflict. And this comes to pass in the spring and summer seasons.",
+ "[39] For she arises as though from a deep sleep and unseals the eyes, opens wide the closed outlets, and brings forth all that is in her womb, shoots, twigs, tendrils, leaves and, to crown all, fruit. Then when the fruit is fully formed, she provides nourishment, like the mother to the infant, through some hidden channels, which correspond to the breasts in women, and she ceases not to minister this nourishment till the fruit is brought to its consummation.",
+ "[40] That consummation comes to the fully ripened fruit, when, if none pluck it, it automatically seeks to disengage itself from its organism, since it needs no longer the nurture which its parent supplies, and is capable, if it chance to drop on good soil, of sowing and producing other plants similar to those which gave it its existence."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[41] Life was made by its creator different from growth in three ways. It has sensation, “presentation,” impulse. For plants have no impulse, no “presentation,” no gift of sense-perception, while each living creature participates in all three combined.",
+ "[42] Sensation or sense, as the name itself shews, is “a putting in,” and introduces what has appeared to it to the mind. For mind is a vast and receptive storehouse in which all that comes through sight or hearing and the other organs of sense is placed and treasured.",
+ "[43] “Presentation” is an imprint made on the soul. For, like a ring or seal, it stamps on the soul the image corresponding to everything which each of the senses has introduced. And the mind like wax receives the impress and retains it vividly, until forgetfulness the opponent of memory levels out the imprint, and makes it indistinct, or entirely effaces it.",
+ "[44] But the object which has presented itself and made the impression has an effect upon the soul sometimes of an appropriate kind, sometimes the reverse. And this condition or state of the soul is called impulse or appetite, which has been defined as the first movement of the soul.",
+ "[45] In all these ways living creatures excel plants. Let us now see where man has been made superior to other animals."
+ ],
+ [
+ "We find that the special prerogative he has received is mind, habituated to apprehend the natures both of all material objects and of things in general. For as sight holds the leading place in the body, and the quality of light holds the leading place in the universe, so too in us the dominant element is the mind.",
+ "[46] For mind is the sight of the soul, illuminated by rays peculiar to itself, whereby the vast and profound darkness, poured upon it by ignorance of things, is dispersed. This branch of the soul was not formed of the same elements, out of which the other branches were brought to completion, but it was allotted something better and purer, the substance in fact out of which divine natures were wrought. And therefore it is reasonably held that the mind alone in all that makes us what we are is indestructible.",
+ "[47] For it is mind alone which the Father who begat it judged worthy of freedom, and loosening the fetters of necessity, suffered it to range as it listed, and of that free-will which is His most peculiar possession and most worthy of His majesty gave it such portion as it was capable of receiving. For the other living creatures in whose souls the mind, the element set apart for liberty, has no place, have been committed under yoke and bridle to the service of men, as slaves to a master. But man, possessed of a spontaneous and self-determined will, whose activities for the most part rest on deliberate choice, is with reason blamed for what he does wrong with intent, praised when he acts rightly of his own will.",
+ "[48] In the others, the plants and animals, no praise is due if they bear well, nor blame if they fare ill: for their movements and changes in either direction come to them from no deliberate choice or volition of their own. But the soul of man alone has received from God the faculty of voluntary movement, and in this way especially is made like to Him, and thus being liberated, as far as might be, from that hard and ruthless mistress, necessity, may justly be charged with guilt, in that it does not honour its Liberator. And therefore it will rightly pay the inexorable penalty which is meted to ungrateful freedmen.",
+ "[49] Thus God “had it in His mind and bethought Him” not now for the first time, but ever from of old—a thought that was fixed and steadfast—“that He had made man,” that is He thought of what nature He had made him. He had made him free and unfettered, to employ his powers of action with voluntary and deliberate choice for this purpose, that, knowing good and ill and receiving the conception of the noble and the base, and setting himself in sincerity to apprehend just and unjust and in general what belongs to virtue and what to vice, he might practise to choose the better and eschew the opposite.",
+ "[50] And therefore we have an oracle of this kind recorded in Deuteronomy. “Behold, I have set before thy face life and death, good and evil; choose life” (Deut. 30:15, 19). So then in this way He puts before us both truths; first that men have been made with a knowledge both of good and evil, its opposite; secondly, that it is their duty to choose the better rather than the worse, because they have, as it were, within them an incorruptible judge in the reasoning faculty, which will accept all that right reason suggests and reject the promptings of its opposite."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[51] Having made this point sufficiently clear let us consider the next words, which are as follows, “I will blot out man whom I made from the face of the earth, from man to beast, from creeping things to fowls of heaven, because I was wroth in that I made him” (Gen. 6:7).",
+ "[52] Again, some on hearing these words suppose that the Existent feels wrath and anger, whereas He is not susceptible to any passion at all. For disquiet is peculiar to human weakness, but neither the unreasoning passions of the soul, nor the parts and members of the body in general, have any relation to God.",
+ "All the same the Law giver uses such expressions, just so far as they serve for a kind of elementary lesson, to admonish those who could not otherwise be brought to their senses.",
+ "[53] Thus, in the laws which deal with commands and prohibitions (laws, that is, in the proper sense of the word), there stand forth above others two leading statements about the Cause, one that “God is not as a man” (Num. 23:19); the other that He is as a man.",
+ "[54] But while the former is warranted by grounds of surest truth, the latter is introduced for the instruction of the many. And therefore also it is said of Him “like a man He shall train His son” (Deut. 8:5). And thus it is for training and admonition, not because God’s nature is such, that these words are used.",
+ "[55] Among men some are soul lovers, some body lovers. The comrades of the soul, who can hold converse with intelligible incorporeal natures, do not compare the Existent to any form of created things. They have dissociated Him from every category or quality, for it is one of the facts which go to make His blessedness and supreme felicity that His being is apprehended as simple being, without other definite characteristic; and thus they do not picture it with form, but admit to their minds the conception of existence only.",
+ "[56] But those who have made a compact and a truce with the body are unable to cast off from them the garment of flesh, and to descry existence needing nothing in its unique solitariness, and free from all admixture and composition in its absolute simplicity. And therefore they think of the Cause of all in the same terms as of themselves, and do not reflect that while a being which is formed through the union of several faculties needs several parts to minister to the need of each,"
+ ],
+ [
+ "God being uncreated and the Author of the creation of the others needs none of the properties which belong to the creatures which He has brought into being.",
+ "[57] For consider, if He uses our bodily parts or organs He has feet to move from one place to another. But whither will He go or walk since His presence fills everything? To whom will He go, when none is His equal? And for what purpose will He walk? For it cannot be out of care for health as it is with us. Hands He must have to receive and give. Yet He receives nothing from anyone, for, besides that He has no needs, all things are His possessions, and when He gives, He employs as minister of His gifts the Reason wherewith also He made the world.",
+ "[58] Nor did He need eyes, which have no power of perception without the light which meets our sense. But that light is created, whereas God saw before creation, being Himself His own light.",
+ "[59] Why need we speak of the organs of nourishment? If He has them, He eats and is filled, rests awhile and after the rest has need again, and the accompaniments of this I will not dwell upon. These are the mythical fictions of the impious, who, professing to represent the deity as of human form, in reality represent Him as having human passions."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[60] Why then does Moses speak of feet and hands, goings in and goings out in connexion with the Uncreated, or of His arming to defend Himself against His enemies? For he describes Him as bearing a sword, and using as His weapons winds and death-dealing fire (thunderbolt and storm blast the poets call them, using different words, and say they are the weapons of the Cause). Why again does he speak of His jealousy, His wrath, His moods of anger, and the other emotions similar to them, which he describes in terms of human nature? But to those who ask these questions Moses answers thus:",
+ "[61] “Sirs, the lawgiver who aims at the best must have one end only before him—to benefit all whom his work reaches. Those to whose lot has fallen a generously gifted nature and a training blameless throughout, and who thus find that their later course through life lies in a straight and even highway, have truth for their fellow-traveller, and being admitted by her into the infallible mysteries of the Existent do not overlay the conception of God with any of the attributes of created being.",
+ "[62] These find a moral most pertinent in the oracles of revelation, that “God is not as a man” nor yet is He as the heaven or the universe. These last are forms of a particular kind which present themselves to our senses. But He is not apprehensible even by the mind, save in the fact that He is. For it is His existence which we apprehend, and of what lies outside that existence nothing."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[63] But they whose natural wit is more dense and dull, or whose early training has been mishandled, since they have no power of clear vision, need physicians in the shape of admonishers, who will devise the treatment proper to their present condition.",
+ "[64] Thus ill-disciplined and foolish slaves receive profit from a master who frightens them, for they fear his threats and menaces and thus involuntarily are schooled by fear. All such may well learn the untruth, which will benefit them, if they cannot be brought to wisdom by truth.",
+ "[65] Thus too in dealing with dangerous sicknesses of the body, the most approved physicians do not allow themselves to tell the truth to their patients, since they know that this will but increase their disheartenment, and bring no recovery from the malady, whereas under the encouragement, which the opposite course of treatment gives, they will bear more contentedly their present trouble, and at the same time the disease will be relieved.",
+ "[66] For what sensible physician would say to his patient, “Sir, you will be subjected to the knife, the cautery or amputation” even if it will be necessary that he should submit to such operations. No one. For the patient will lose heart beforehand, and add to the existing malady of the body a still more painful malady of the soul and break down when faced with the treatment. Whereas if through the physician’s deceit he expects the opposite, he will gladly endure everything with patience, however painful the methods of saving him may be.",
+ "[67] So then the lawgiver, thereby being now approved as the best of physicians for the distempers and maladies of the soul, set before himself one task and purpose, to make a radical excision of the diseases of the mind and leave no root to sprout again into sickness which defies cure.",
+ "[68] In this way he hoped to be able to eradicate the evil, namely by representing the supreme Cause as dealing in threats and oftentimes shewing indignation and implacable anger, or again as using weapons of war for His onslaughts on the unrighteous. For this is the only way in which the fool can be admonished.",
+ "[69] And therefore it seems to me that with the two aforesaid maxims, “God is as a man,” and “God is not as a man,” he has linked two other principles closely connected and consequent on them, namely fear and love. For I observe that all the exhortations to piety in the law refer either to our loving or our fearing the Existent. And thus to love Him is the most suitable for those into whose conception of the Existent no thought of human parts or passions enters, who pay Him the honour meet for God for His own sake only. To fear is most suitable to the others."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[70] Such are the points which needed to be established as preliminaries to our inquiry. We must return to the original question which caused us difficulty, namely, what thought is suggested by the words “I was wroth in that I made them.” Perhaps then he wishes to shew us that the bad have become what they are through the wrath of God and the good through His grace. For the next words are “but Noah found grace with Him” (Gen. 6:8).",
+ "[71] Now the passion of wrath, which is properly speaking an attribute of men, is here used in a more metaphorical sense, yet still correctly, of the Existent, to bring out a vital truth, that all our actions by general consent are worthy of blame and censure, if done through fear or anger, or grief or pleasure, or any other passion, but worthy of praise if done with rectitude of reason and knowledge.",
+ "[72] Mark what caution he shows in his form of statement. He says “I was wroth in that I made them,” not in the reverse order, “because I made them, I was wroth.” The latter would show change of mind or repentance, a thing impossible to the all-foreseeing nature of God. In the former he brings before us a doctrine of great importance that wrath is the source of misdeeds, but the reasoning faculty of right actions.",
+ "[73] But God, remembering His perfect and universal goodness, even though the whole vast body of mankind should through its exceeding sinfulness accomplish its own ruin, stretches forth the right hand of salvation, takes them under His protection and raises them up, and suffers not the race to be brought to utter destruction and annihilation."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[74] And therefore it now says that when the others who had proved ungrateful were doomed to pay the penalty, Noah found grace with Him, that so He might mingle His saving mercy with the judgement pronounced on sinners. And so the Psalmist said somewhere (Ps. 100 [101] 1), “I will sing to thee of mercy and judgement.”",
+ "[75] For if God should will to judge the race of mortals without mercy, His sentence will be one of condemnation, since there is no man who self-sustained has run the course of life from birth to death without stumbling, but in every case his footsteps have slipped through errors, some voluntary, some involuntary.",
+ "[76] So then that the race may subsist, though many of those which go to form it are swallowed up by the deep, He tempers His judgement with the mercy which He shews in doing kindness even to the unworthy. And not only does this mercy follow His judgement but it also precedes it. For mercy with Him is older than justice, since He knows who is worthy of punishment, not only after judgement is given, but before it."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[77] And therefore it is said in another place, “there is a cup in the hand of the Lord of unmixed wine, full of mixture” (Ps. 74 [75] 8). But surely the mixed is not unmixed, and yet there is a meaning in these words most true to nature, and in agreement with what I have said before. For the powers which God employs are unmixed in respect of Himself, but mixed to created beings. For it cannot be that mortal nature should have room for the unmixed.",
+ "[78] We cannot look even upon the sun’s flame untempered, or unmixed, for our sight will be quenched and blasted by the bright flashing of its rays, ere it reach and apprehend them, though the sun is but one of God’s works in the past, a portion of heaven, a condensed mass of ether. And can you think it possible that your understanding should be able to grasp in their unmixed purity those uncreated potencies, which stand around Him and flash forth light of surpassing splendour?",
+ "[79] When God extended the sun’s rays from heaven to the boundaries of earth, He mitigated and abated with cool air the fierceness of their heat. He tempered them in this way, that the radiance drawn off from the blazing flame, surrendering its power of burning but retaining that of giving light, might meet and hail its friend and kinsman, the light which is stored in the treasury of our eyes; for it is when these converge to meet and greet each other that the apprehension through vision is produced. Just in the same way if God’s knowledge and wisdom and prudence and justice and each of His other excellences were not tempered, no mortal could receive them, nay not even the whole heaven and universe.",
+ "[80] The Creator then, knowing His own surpassing excellence in all that is best and the natural weakness of His creatures, however loud they boast, wills not to dispense benefit or punishment according to His power, but according to the measure of capacity which He sees in those who are to participate in either of those dispensations.",
+ "[81] If indeed we could drink and enjoy this diluted draught, wherein is a moderate measure of His powers, we should reap sufficient gladness, and let not the human race seek a more perfect joy. For we have shewn that these powers at their full height unmixed and untempered subsist only in the Existent."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[82] We have something similar to the above-mentioned words in another passage, “The Lord spake once, I have heard these two things” (Ps. 61 [62] 11). For “once” is like the unmixed, for the unmixed is a monad and the monad is unmixed, whereas twice is like the mixed, for the mixed is not single, since it admits both combination and separation.",
+ "[83] God then speaks in unmixed monads or unities. For His word is not a sonant impact of voice upon air, or mixed with anything else at all, but it is unbodied and unclothed and in no way different from unity. But our hearing is the product of two factors, of a dyad.",
+ "[84] For the breath from the seat of the master-principle driven up through the windpipe is shaped in the mouth by the workmanship, as it were, of the tongue, and rushing out it mixes with its congener the air, and impinging on it produces in a harmonious union the mixture which constitutes the dyad. For the consonance caused by different sounds is harmonized in a dyad originally divided which contains a high and a low pitch.",
+ "[85] Right well then did the lawgiver act when he opposed to the multitude of unjust thoughts the just man as one—numerically less, but greater in value. His purpose is that the worse should not prove the weightier when tested as in the scales, but by the victorious force of the opposite tendency to the better cause should kick the beam and prove powerless."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[86] Now let us consider what is meant by “Noah found grace before the Lord God” (Gen. 6:8). Finders sometimes find again what they possessed and have lost, sometimes what they did not own in the past and now gain for the first time. People who seek exactitude in the use of words are wont to call the process in the second case “finding” or “discovery” and in the first “refinding” or “recovery.”",
+ "[87] We have a very clear example of the former in the commandment of the Great Vow (Num. 6:2). Now a vow is a request for good things from God, while a “great vow” is to hold that God Himself and by Himself is the cause of good things, that though the earth may seem to be the mother of fruits, rain to give increase to seeds and plants, air to have the power of fostering them, husbandry to be the cause of the harvest, medicine the cause of health, marriage of childbirth, yet nothing else is His fellow-worker that we may think of them as bringing us benefit.",
+ "[88] For all these things, through the power of God, admit of change and transition, so as often to produce effects quite the reverse of the ordinary. He who makes this vow then, says Moses, must be “holy, suffering the hair of his head to grow” (Num. 6:5). This means that he must foster the young growths of virtue’s truths in the mind which rules his being; these growths must be to him as it were heads, and he must take pride in them as in the glory of the hair.",
+ "[89] But sometimes he loses these early growths, when as it were a whirlwind swoops suddenly down upon the soul and tears from it all that was beautiful in it. This whirlwind is a kind of involuntary defection straightway defiling the soul, and this he calls death (Num. 6:9).",
+ "[90] He has lost, yet in time, when purified, he makes good the loss, remembers what he had forgotten for a while, and finds what he has lost, so that the “former days,” the days of defection, are regarded as not to be counted (Num. 6:12), either because defection is a thing beyond all calculation, discordant with right reason and having no partnership with prudence, or because they are not worthy to be counted. For of such as these there is, as has been said, no count or number."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[91] On the other hand, it is a common experience that things befall us of which we have not even dreamt, like the story of the husbandman who, digging his orchard to plant some fruit-trees, lighted on a treasure, and thus met with prosperity beyond his hopes.",
+ "[92] Thus the Practiser, when his father asked him in this manner of the source of his knowledge, “What is this that thou hast found so quickly, my son?” answered and said, “It is what the Lord God delivered before me” (Gen. 27:20). For when God delivers to us the lore of His eternal wisdom without our toil or labour we find in it suddenly and unexpectedly a treasure of perfect happiness.",
+ "[93] It often happens that those who seek with toil fail to find the object of their search, while others without thought and with the utmost ease find what had never crossed their minds. The slow-souled dullards, like men who have lost their eyesight, labour fruitlessly in the study of any branch of knowledge, while to others richly blessed by nature it comes unsought in myriad forms; theirs is a ready and unfailing grasp; it seems as though they trouble not to come in contact with the objects of their study, rather that these are impelled to take the lead and hurry to present themselves before the student’s vision, and create in him the unerring apprehension which they have to give."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[94] It is to these men that are given, in the lawgiver’s words, “cities great and beautiful which they built not, houses full of good things which they did not fill, pits hewn out which they did not hew, vineyards and olive-gardens which they did not plant” (Deut. 6:10, 11).",
+ "[95] Under the symbol of cities and houses he speaks of the generic and specific virtues. For the genus resembles the city, because its limits are marked out by wider circuits and it embraces a larger number. The species on the other hand resembles the house, because it is more concentrated and avoids the idea of community.",
+ "[96] The pits which they find provided are the prizes ready to be won without toil, cisterns of waters heavenly and sweet to drink, treasure-cells fitly prepared to guard the afore-mentioned virtues, from which is secured to the soul perfect gladness shedding with its beams the light of truth. And for that gladness and light he gives us a symbol in the vineyards for the former, in the olive-gardens for the latter.",
+ "[97] Happy then are these, and their case is as the state of those who waken from deep sleep, and suddenly without toil or active effort open their eyes upon the world. Miserable are those whose lot it is to compete earnestly for ends for which they were not born, urged on by the grievous poison of contentiousness.",
+ "[98] Not only do they fail to gain their end, but they incur great shame and no small damage to boot. They are like ships ploughing the seas in the face of contrary winds; for not only do they fail to reach the roadsteads to which they press, but often they capsize, vessel, crew and cargo, and are a source of grief to their friends and joy to their foes."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[99] So the law says that “some went up with violence into the mountain, and the Amorite who dwelt in that mountain came out and wounded them, as bees might do, and chased them from Seir to Hormah” (Deut. 1:43, 44).",
+ "[100] For it must needs be that if those, who have no aptness for the acquisition of the arts, use force or compel themselves to labour at them, they not only fail in their purpose, but also incur disgrace. Those, too, who perform any other right action without the assent of their judgement or will, but by doing violence to their inclination, do not achieve righteousness, but are wounded and chased by their inward feelings.",
+ "[101] Would you say there was any difference in the matter of honesty between those who repay an insignificant deposit in the hope of securing an opportunity to defraud on a larger scale, and those who actually make a large repayment but in doing so have to do violence to their natural inclination to dishonesty, which never ceases to prick them with the stings of regret?",
+ "[102] What of those who render an insincere worship to the only wise God, those who as on a stage assume a highly sanctified creed and profession of life, which does no more than make an exhibition to the assembled spectators? Are not these men, whose souls are filled with ribaldry rather than piety, racking and torturing themselves as on the wheel, compelling themselves to counterfeit what they have never felt?",
+ "[103] And therefore, though for a short time they are disguised by the insignia of superstition, which is a hindrance to holiness, and a source of much harm both to those who are under its sway and those who find themselves in such company, yet in course of time the wrappings are cast aside and their hypocrisy is seen in its nakedness. And then, like convicted aliens, they are marked as bastard citizens, having falsely inscribed their names in the burgess-roll of that greatest of commonwealths, virtue, to which they had no claim. For violence is short-lived, as the very name (βίαιον) seems to shew, since it is derived from βαιός; for that was the word used in old times for short-lived."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[104] But we must deal fully with the difficulty in the words “Noah found grace with the Lord God.” Is the meaning that he obtained grace or that he was thought worthy of grace? The former is not a reasonable supposition. For in that case what more was given to him than to practically all creatures, not only those who are compounded of body and soul, but also simple elementary natures, all accepted as recipients of divine grace?",
+ "[105] The second explanation is founded on a not unreasonable idea, that the Cause judges those worthy of His gifts, who do not deface with base practices the coin within them which bears the stamp of God, even the sacred mind. And yet perhaps that explanation is not the true one.",
+ "[106] For how great must we suppose him to be, who shall be judged worthy of grace with God? Hardly, I think, could the whole world attain to this, and yet the world is the first and the greatest and the most perfect of God’s works.",
+ "[107] Perhaps then it would be better to accept this explanation, that the man of worth, being zealous in inquiring and eager to learn, in all his inquiries found this to be the highest truth, that all things are the grace or gift of God—earth, water, air, fire, sun, stars, heaven, all plants and animals. But God has bestowed no gift of grace on Himself, for He does not need it, but He has given the world to the world, and its parts to themselves and to each other, aye and to the All.",
+ "[108] But He has given His good things in abundance to the All and its parts, not because He judged anything worthy of grace, but looking to His eternal goodness, and thinking that to be beneficent was incumbent on His blessed and happy nature. So that if anyone should ask me what was the motive for the creation of the world, I will answer what Moses has taught, that it was the goodness of the Existent, that goodness which is the oldest of His bounties and itself the source of others."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[109] But we must observe that he says that Noah was well pleasing to the Potencies of the Existent, to the Lord and to God (Gen. 6:8), but Moses to Him who is attended by the Potencies, and without them is only conceived of as pure being. For it is said with God as speaker, “thou hast found grace with Me” (Exod. 33:17), in which words He shews Himself as Him who has none other with Him.",
+ "[110] Thus, then, through His own agency alone does He who IS judge the supreme wisdom shewn in Moses to be worthy of grace, but the wisdom which was but a copy of that, the wisdom which is secondary and of the nature of species, He judges as worthy through His subject Potencies, which present Him to us as Lord and God, Ruler and Benefactor.",
+ "[111] But there is a different mind which loves the body and the passions and has been sold in slavery to that chief cateress (Gen. 39:1) of our compound nature, Pleasure. Eunuch-like it has been deprived of all the male and productive organs of the soul, and lives in indigence of noble practices, unable to receive the divine message, debarred from the holy congregation (Deut. 23:1) in which the talk and study is always of virtue. When this mind is cast into the prison of the passions, it finds in the eyes of the chief jailer a favour and grace, which is more inglorious than dishonour.",
+ "[112] For, in the true sense of the word, prisoners are not those who after condemnation by magistrates chosen by lot, or it may be elected jurymen, are haled to the appointed place of malefactors, but those whose character of soul is condemned by nature, as full to the brim of folly and incontinence and cowardice, and injustice and impiety and other innumerable plagues.",
+ "[113] Now the over-seer and warder and manager of them, the governor of the prison, is the concentration and congeries of all vices multitudinous and manifold, woven together into a single form, and to be pleasing to him is to suffer the greatest of penalties. But some do not see the nature of this penalty, but, being deluded into counting the harmful as beneficial, become right joyfully his courtiers and satellites, in the hope that having judged them to be faithful he may make them his subalterns and lieutenants to keep guard over the sins which are committed with the will or without it.",
+ "[114] My soul, hold such a mastery and captaincy to be a lot more cruel than that slavery, heavy though it be. Follow indeed, if thou canst, a life-purpose which is unchained and liberated and free.",
+ "[115] But, if it be that thou art snared by the hook of passion, endure rather to become a prisoner than a prison-keeper. For through suffering and groaning thou shalt find mercy; but if thou put thyself in subjection to the craving for office or the greed of glory, thou shalt receive the charge of the prison, a pleasant task indeed, but an ill one and the greatest of ills, and its thraldom shall be over thee for ever."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[116] Put away then with all thy might what may make thee well pleasing to the rulers of the prison, but desire exceedingly and with all zeal what may make thee pleasing to the Cause. But if so be that this is beyond thy powers—so vast is the greatness of His dignity—set thy face and betake thee to His Potencies and make thyself their suppliant, till they accept the constancy and fidelity of thy service, and appoint thee to take thy place amongst those in whom they are well pleased, even as they appointed Noah; of whose descendants Moses has given a genealogy of a truly strange and novel sort.",
+ "[117] For he says, “these are the generations of Noah. Noah was a just man, perfect in his generation, Noah was well pleasing to God” (Gen. 6:9). The offspring indeed of creatures compounded of soul and body, must also themselves be compound; horses necessarily beget horses, lions beget lions, bulls beget bulls, and so too with men.",
+ "[118] Not such are the offspring proper to a good mind; but they are the virtues mentioned in the text, the fact that he was a man, that he was just, that he was perfect, that he was well pleasing to God. And this last as being the consummation of these virtues, and the definition of supreme happiness, is put at the end of them all.",
+ "[119] Now one form of generation is the process by which things are drawn and journey so to speak from non-existence to existence, and this process is that which is always necessarily followed by plants and animals. But there is also another which consists in the change from the higher genus to the lower species, and this it is which Moses had in mind when he says, “But these are the generations of Jacob. Joseph was seventeen years old, keeping sheep with his brethren, being still young, with the sons of Bilhah and with the sons of Zelpah, his father’s wives” (Gen. 37:2).",
+ "[120] For when this reason, once so diligent of practice and filled with love of learning, is brought down from diviner concepts to human and mortal opinions, then at once Joseph is born, Joseph who follows in the train of the body and bodily things. He is still young, even though length of years may have made him grey-headed; for never have there come to his knowledge the thoughts or lessons of riper age, which those who are ranked as members of the company of Moses have learnt, and found in them a treasure and a joy most profitable to themselves and to those who hold converse with them.",
+ "[121] It is for this reason, I think, because he wished to portray Joseph’s image and the exact form of his character in a clearer way, that Moses represents him as keeping sheep, not with any true-born brother, but with the base-born, the sons of the concubines, who are designated by the lower parentage, which is traced to the women, and not by the higher, which is traced to the men. For they are in this instance called the sons of the women Bilhah and Zilpah but not the sons of their father Israel."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[122] We may properly ask, why directly after the recital of Noah’s perfection in virtues, we are told that “the earth was corrupt before the Lord and filled with iniquity” (Gen. 6:11). And yet perhaps save for one who is especially uninstructed it is not difficult to obtain a solution.",
+ "[123] We should say then that when the incorruptible element takes its rise in the soul, the mortal is forthwith corrupted. For the birth of noble practices is the death of the base, for when the light shines, the darkness disappears.",
+ "And therefore in the law of leprosy it is most carefully laid down, that if a living colour arise in the leper, he shall be defiled (Lev. 13:14, 15).",
+ "[124] And by way of clinching this and so to speak setting a seal upon it, he adds “and the healthy colour will defile him.” This is quite opposed to the natural and ordinary view. For all men hold that things healthy are corrupted by things diseased, and living things by dead things, but they do not hold the converse, that the healthy and living corrupt their opposites, but rather that they save and preserve them.",
+ "[125] But the lawgiver, original as ever in his wisdom, has here laid down something distinctly his own. He teaches us that it is the healthy and living which produce the condition which is tainted with pollution. For the healthy and living colour in the soul, when it makes a genuine appearance upon it, is Conviction.",
+ "[126] When this Conviction comes to the surface it makes a record of all the soul’s transgressions, and rebukes and reproaches and calls shame upon it almost without ceasing. And the soul thus convicted sees in their true light its practices each and all, which were contrary to right reason, and then perceives that it is foolish and intemperate and unjust and infected with pollution."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[127] For the same reason Moses enacts a law, which is indeed a paradox, whereby he declares that the leper who is partially a leper is unclean, but that when the leprosy has taken hold of him throughout, from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, he is clean (Lev. 13:11–13). One would probably have conjectured the opposite, as indeed it would be reasonable to suppose that leprosy, if limited and confined to a small part of the body, is less unclean, but if diffused, so as to embrace all the body, is more unclean.",
+ "[128] But he is shewing, I think, through these symbols (and a very true lesson it is), that such wrongdoings as are involuntary, however wide their extent, are pure and devoid of guilt, for they have no stern accuser in conscience, but voluntary sins, even though the space they cover be not large, are convicted by the judge within the soul and thus are proved to be unholy and foul and impure.",
+ "[129] Thus then the leprosy, which is twy-natured and flowers into two colours, shews voluntary wickedness. For the soul has within it the healthy, lively upright reason, and yet it does not use it as its pilot to guide it to the safety which things noble give, but abandons itself to those who have no skill of seamanship, and thus swamps utterly the bark of life which might have reached its bourn safely in calm and fair weather.",
+ "[130] But the leprosy which changes into a single white appearance, represents involuntary error, when the mind is throughout reft of reasoning power, and not a germ is left of what might grow into understanding, and thus, as men in a mist and profound darkness, it sees nothing of what it should do, but, like a blind man tripping over every obstacle since he cannot see before him, it is subject to constant slips and repeated falls in which the will has no part."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[131] Similar again is the enactment about the house in which leprosy is a frequent occurrence. For the law says that “if there is an infection of leprosy in a house, the owner shall come and report it to the priest with the words ‘what seems an infection of leprosy has appeared in my house,’ ” and then it adds “and the priest shall command that they empty the house, before the priest enters the house and sees it, and whatsoever is in the house shall not become unclean, and after that the priest shall go in to observe it” (Lev. 14:34–36).",
+ "[132] So then before the priest goes in, the things in the house are clean, but after he has gone in they are all unclean. And yet we should have expected just the opposite, that when a man who has been purified and fully consecrated, who is wont to offer prayers and litanies and sacrifices for all men, has come within the house, its contents should thereby be bettered and pass from impurity into purity. But here we find that they do not even remain in the same position as before, but actually shift into the inferior region at the entrance of the priest.",
+ "[133] Now whether in the plain and literal sense of the ordinance these things are consistent with each other is a matter for those who are used to such questions and find pleasure in them. But we must say positively that no two things can be more consistent with each other than that, when the priest has entered, the belongings of the house are defiled.",
+ "[134] For so long as the divine reason has not come into our soul, as to some dwelling-place, all its works are free from guilt, since the priest who is its guardian or father or teacher—or whatever name is fitting for him—the priest, who alone can admonish and bring it to wisdom, is far away. There is pardon for those whose sin is due to ignorance, because they have no experience to tell them what they should do. For they do not even conceive of their deeds as sins, nay often they think that their most grievous stumblings are righteous actions.",
+ "[135] But when the true priest, Conviction, enters us, like a pure ray of light, we see in their real value the unholy thoughts that were stored within our soul, and the guilty and blameworthy actions to which we laid our hands in ignorance of our true interests. So Conviction, discharging his priest-like task, defiles all these and bids them all be cleared out and carried away, that he may see the soul’s house in its natural bare condition, and heal whatever sicknesses have arisen in it."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[136] We have a parallel to this in the widow in the Book of Kings who discourses with the prophet (1 Kings 17:10). She is a widow, not in our sense of the word, when the wife has lost her husband, but because she is widowed of the passions which corrupt and maltreat the mind, like Tamar in the books of Moses.",
+ "[137] Tamar was bidden to remain a widow in the house of her father, her one and only saviour (Gen. 38:11), for whose sake she has left for ever the intercourse and society of mortals, and remained desolate and widowed of human pleasures. Thus she receives the divine impregnation, and, being filled with the seeds of virtue, bears them in her womb and is in travail with noble actions. And when she has brought them to the birth, she wins the meed of conquest over her adversaries, and is enrolled as victor with the palm as the symbol of her victory. For Tamar is by interpretation a palm.",
+ "[138] To return to the Book of Kings. Every mind that is on the way to be widowed and empty of evil says to the prophet, “O man of God, thou hast come in to remind me of my iniquity and my sin” (1 Kings 17:18). For when he, the God-inspired, has entered the soul—he who is mastered by celestial yearning, stirred to his very depth by the irresistible goads of god-sent frenzy, he creates a memory of past iniquities and sins, and this not to the end that the soul should return to them, but that, with deep groaning and many tears for its old error, it should turn therefrom with loathing for all that it has engendered, and follow instead the guidance of that reason which is the interpreter and prophet of God.",
+ "[139] For the men of old days called the prophets sometimes “men of God” and sometimes “seers” (1 Sam. 9:9). And the names they gave were names of literal truth and well suited, the former to their inspiration, the latter to the wide vision of reality which they possessed."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[140] Thus apt indeed are these words of Moses, the holiest of men, when he tells us that the earth was being corrupted at the time when the virtues of just Noah shone forth. But he goes on, “it was destroyed because all flesh destroyed his way upon the earth” (Gen. 6:12).",
+ "[141] Some will think that we have here a mistake in diction and that the correct phrase in grammatical sequence is as follows, “all flesh destroyed its way.” For a masculine form like “his” (αὐτοῦ) cannot be properly used with reference to the feminine noun “flesh” (σάρξ).",
+ "[142] But perhaps the writer is not speaking merely of the flesh which corrupts its own way, thus giving reasonable grounds for the idea of a grammatical error, but of two things, the flesh which is being corrupted, and Another, whose way that flesh seeks to mar and corrupt. And so the passage must be explained thus, “all flesh destroyed the perfect way of the Eternal and Indestructible, the way which leads to God.”",
+ "[143] This way, you must know, is wisdom. For wisdom is a straight high road, and it is when the mind’s course is guided along that road that it reaches the goal which is the recognition and knowledge of God. Every comrade of the flesh hates and rejects this path and seeks to corrupt it. For there are no two things so utterly opposed as knowledge and pleasure of the flesh.",
+ "[144] Thus those who are members of that race endowed with vision, which is called Israel, when they wish to journey along that royal road, find their way contested by Edom the earthly one—for such is the interpretation of his name—who, all alert and prepared at every point, threatens to bar them from the road and to render it such that none at all shall tread or travel on it."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[145] The envoys then who are dispatched to him speak thus, “We will pass by through thy land. We will not go through the cornfields nor through the vineyards. We will not drink water of any well of thine. We will journey by the king’s way. We will not turn aside to the right or the left, till we have passed thy boundaries.” But Edom answers, saying, “Thou shalt not pass through me, else I will come out in war to meet thee.” And the sons of Israel say to him, “We will pass along the mountain country. But if I and my cattle drink of thy water, I will give thee value. But the matter is nothing, we will pass along the mountain country” (Num. 20:17–20). But he said, “Thou shalt not go through me.”",
+ "[146] There is a story that one of the ancients beholding a gaily decked and costly pageant turned to some of his disciples and said to them, “My friends, observe how many things there are I do not need.” And the vaunt conveyed in this short utterance is a great and truly heaven-sent profession. “What is it you say?” we ask him.",
+ "[147] “Have you won the Olympic crown of victory over all wealth, and so risen superior to all that wealth involves, that you accept nothing of what it brings for your use and enjoyment?” A wonderful saying! And yet far more wonderful is the resolution which has grown so strong, that now it need exert no effort to win its complete victory."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[148] But in the school of Moses it is not one man only who may boast that he has learnt the first elements of wisdom, but a whole nation, a mighty people. And we have a proof thereof in these words of the envoys. The soul of every one of his disciples has taken heart and courage to say to the king of all that is good in outward appearance, the earthly Edom (for indeed all things whose goodness lies in mere seeming are of earth), “I will now pass by through thy land” (or “earth”).",
+ "[149] What a stupendous, what a magnificent promise! Will you indeed be able, tell me, to step, to travel, to speed past and over those things of earth which appear and are reckoned good? And will nothing, then, that opposes your onward march stay or arrest its course?",
+ "[150] Will you see all the treasuries of wealth, one after the other, full to the brim, yet turn aside from them and avert your eyes? Will you take no heed of the honours of high ancestry on either side, or the pride of noble birth, which the multitude so extol? Will you leave glory behind you, glory, for which men barter their all, and treat it as though it were a worthless trifle? Will you pass unregarded the health of the body, the keenness of the senses, the coveted gift of beauty, the strength which defies opponents, and whatever else serves to adorn our soul’s house, or tomb, or what other name it may be given, and rank none of them as belonging to the province of the good?",
+ "[151] Great ventures such as these betoken a celestial and heavenly soul, which has left the region of the earth, has been drawn upwards, and dwells with divine natures. For when it takes its fill of the vision of good incorruptible and genuine, it bids farewell to the good which is transient and spurious."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[152] Now what can it profit us to pass by all the good things which are mortal as their possessors are mortal, if we pass them by not under the guidance of right reason, but as some do through faint-heartedness or indolence or inexperience of them? For they are not all held in honour everywhere, but some value these, others those.",
+ "[153] And therefore to bring home to us that it is under the guidance of right reason that we should grow to despise these things which I have named, he adds to the words “I will pass by” these others “through thy land.” For this he knew was the most vital thing of all, that we should see ourselves surrounded by a rich abundance of all that goes to provide these seeming forms of good, and yet be caught by none of the snares which each flings before us, but be nerved to break like fire with a single rush through their successive and ceaseless onslaughts.",
+ "[154] Through these then, they say, they will pass by. But they do not use the phrase “pass by” of the fields and vineyards. For it would be monstrous folly to pass by the plants within the soul, whose fruit is kindly as themselves, even worthy sayings and laudable actions. Rather it were well to stay and pluck them and feast upon them with the hunger that is never filled. For truly beautiful is that insatiable joy which the perfect virtues give, and of this the vineyards here mentioned are symbolic.",
+ "[155] Again, shall we on whom God pours as in snow or rain-shower the fountains of His blessings from above, drink of a well and seek for the scanty springs that lie beneath the earth, when heaven rains upon us ceaselessly the nourishment which is better than the nectar and ambrosia of the myths?"
+ ],
+ [
+ "[156] Or shall we draw up with ropes the drink which has been stored by the devices of men and accept as our haven and refuge a task which argues our lack of true hope; we to whom the Saviour of all has opened His celestial treasure for our use and enjoyment? For Moses the revealer prays that the Lord may open to us His good treasure, the heaven, to give us rain (Deut. 28:12), and the prayers of him whom God loves are always heard.",
+ "[157] Or again, what of that Israel who thought that neither heaven nor rainfall or well, or any created thing at all, was able to nourish him, but passed over all these and told his experience in the words “God who doth nourish me from my youth up”? (Gen. 48:15). Think you that all the waters which are gathered beneath the earth would seem to him worthy even of a glance?",
+ "[158] Nay, he will not drink of a well on whom God bestows the undiluted rapture-giving draughts, sometimes through the ministry of some angel whom He has held worthy to act as cupbearer, sometimes by His own agency, setting none to intervene between Him who gives and him who takes.",
+ "[159] So then brooking no delay should we essay to march by the king’s high road, we who hold it our duty to pass by earthly things. And that is the king’s road of which the lordship rests with no common citizen, but with Him alone who alone is king in real truth.",
+ "[160] This road is, as I said but now, wisdom, by which alone suppliant souls can make their escape to the Uncreated. For we may well believe that he who walks unimpeded along the king’s way will never flag or faint, till he comes into the presence of the king.",
+ "[161] And then they that have come to Him recognize His blessedness and their own meanness; for Abraham when he drew nigh to God straightway knew himself to be earth and ashes (Gen. 18:27).",
+ "[162] And let them not turn aside to the right or to the left of the king’s way, but advance along the midmost line. For deviations in either direction whether of excess or of deficiency, whether they tend to strain or to laxity, are in fault, for in this matter the right is no less blameworthy than the left.",
+ "[163] In the case of those who lead a reckless life, rashness is the right and cowardice the left. To those who are churlish in money matters, parsimony is the right and extravagance the left. And all who are oversharp and calculating in business count the knave’s qualities worthy of their choice, but the simpleton’s of their avoidance. And others pursue superstition as their right-hand path, but flee from impiety as a thing to be shunned."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[164] Therefore, that we may not be forced to turn aside and have dealings with the vices that war against us, let us wish and pray that we may walk straightly along the middle path or mean. Courage is the mean between rashness and cowardice, economy between careless extravagance and illiberal parsimony, prudence between knavery and folly, and finally piety between superstition and impiety.",
+ "[165] These lie in the middle between the deviations to either side, all of them high roads meet for the traveller’s use, wherein we are bound in duty to walk continually, not with the mechanism of the body, but with the motions of the soul which seeks the best.",
+ "[166] Angered greatly at this, Edom, the earthly one, since he fears lest the principles of his creed be confounded and overthrown, will threaten to wage war to the bitter end, if we should force our way through his land, tearing and ravaging ever, as we go, the fruits of his soul which he has sown for the destruction of wisdom, though he has not reaped them. For he says, “Thou shalt not go through me, else I will come out in war to meet thee.”",
+ "[167] But let us take no heed of his menaces, but make answer, “We will go along the mountain country.” That is, “It is our wont to hold converse with powers that are lofty and sublime, and to examine each point by analysis and definition, and to search out in everything whatsoever its rationale, by which its essential nature is known. Thus we feel contempt for all that is external or of the body; for these are low-lying and grovelling exceedingly. You love them, but we hate them, and therefore we will handle none of them.",
+ "[168] For if we do but touch them with our finger-tips, as the saying is, we shall provide honour and ‘value’ to you. You will plume yourself and boast that we too, the virtue-lovers, have yielded to the snares of pleasure.”"
+ ],
+ [
+ "[169] “For if I or my cattle drink of your water,” it runs, “I shall give you value.” The writer does not mean the pelf, to use the poet’s word, silver or gold or aught else which the purchaser is wont to give in exchange to the vendor, but by “value” he here means honour.",
+ "[170] For in very truth everyone that is profligate or cowardly or unjust, when he sees any of the stricter folk shrinking from toil or mastered by gain or swerving aside to any of the love-lures of pleasure, rejoices and is glad and thinks that he has received honour. And then with swaggering airs and gestures of pride he begins to hold forth sagely to the multitude about his own vices, how necessary and profitable they are, “for,” says he, “were they not so, would So-and-so, that much respected gentleman, be willing to indulge in them?”",
+ "[171] Let us say, then, to everyone of this sorry sort, “If we drink of thy water, if we touch aught that thy confused and turbid current carries, we shall provide thee with honour and acceptance, instead of the ill-repute and dishonour that are thy true deserts.”",
+ "[172] For in very truth “the matter” which has so engaged thy zeal is absolutely “nothing.” Or dost thou think that aught of mortal matters has real being or subsistence, and that they do not rather swing suspended as it were on fallacious and unstable opinion, treading the void and differing not a whit from false dreams?",
+ "[173] If thou carest not to test the fortunes of individual men, scan the vicissitudes, for better and worse, of whole regions and nations. Greece was once at its zenith, but the Macedonians took away its power. Macedonia flourished in its turn, but when it was divided into portions it weakened till it was utterly extinguished.",
+ "[174] Before the Macedonians fortune smiled on the Persians, but a single day destroyed their vast and mighty empire, and now Parthians rule over Persians, the former subjects over their masters of yesterday. The breath that blew from Egypt of old was clear and strong for many a long year, yet like a cloud its great prosperity passed away. What of the Ethiopians, what of Carthage, and the parts towards Libya? What of the kings of Pontus?",
+ "[175] What of Europe and Asia, and in a word the whole civilized world? Is it not tossed up and down and kept in turmoil like ships at sea, subject now to prosperous, now to adverse winds?",
+ "[176] For circlewise moves the revolution of that divine plan which most call fortune. Presently in its ceaseless flux it makes distribution city by city, nation by nation, country by country. What these had once, those have now. What all had, all have. Only from time to time is the ownership changed by its agency, to the end that the whole of our world should be as a single state, enjoying that best of constitutions, democracy."
+ ],
+ [
+ "[177] So then in all wherewith men concern themselves there is no solid work, no “matter,” only a shadow or a breath which flits past, before it has real existence. It comes and goes as in the ebb and flow of the sea. For the tides sometimes race violently, roaring as they sweep along, and in their wide-spread rush make a lake of what till now was dry land, and then again they retreat and turn into land what was a great tract of sea.",
+ "[178] Even so the good fortune which has flooded a great and populous nation sometimes turns the stream of its current elsewhere and leaves not even a tiny trickle behind it, that no trace of the old richness may remain.",
+ "[179] But it is not all who can estimate these truths justly and fully. Only they can do so who are wont to follow the rule of definition and reason which is straight and constant. The two sayings, “the matter of creation is all of it nothing” and “we will journey along the mountain country,” come from the mouths of the same speakers.",
+ "[180] For it cannot be that he who does not walk in the upland paths of definition should renounce mortal things and turn aside therefrom and make his new home with things indestructible.",
+ "So then the earthly Edom purposes to bar the heavenly and royal road of virtue, but the divine reason on the other hand would bar the road of Edom and his associates.",
+ "[181] In the list of these associates we must write the name of Balaam. For he too is no heavenly growth, but a creature of earth. And here we have the proof. He followed omens and false soothsayings, and not even when the closed eye of his soul received its sight and “beheld the angel of God standing in his way” (Num. 22:31) did he turn aside and refrain from evil-doing, but let the stream of his folly run full course and was overwhelmed by it and swallowed up.",
+ "[182] For it is then that the ailments of the soul become not only hard to tend, but even utterly beyond healing, when though Conviction fronts us, Conviction, the divine reason, the angel who guides our feet and removes the obstacles before them, that we may walk without stumbling along the high road (Psalm 90 [91] 11, 12), we yet set our ill-judged purposes before those counsels of his which he is wont to give without ceasing for our admonishing and chastening and the reformation of our whole life.",
+ "[183] Therefore he who listens not, who is not turned from his course by the Conviction which stands in his path, will in time receive destruction “with the wounded” (Num. 31:8) whom their passions stabbed and wounded with a fatal stroke. His fate will be to those who are not hopelessly impure a lesson which heeds no confirmation, that they should seek to have the favour of the inward judge. And have it they shall, if they do not remove or repeal aught of the righteous judgements which he has given."
+ ]
+ ],
+ "Appendix": [
+ "APPENDIX TO QUOD DEUS SIT IMMUTABILIS",
+ "§ 3. Bounds which the lustral water has consecrated. For this use of περιρραντήρια see De Cher. 96 (and footnote). Below (8) it is used for the purification itself, as in Quod Det. 20.",
+ "§ 6. I give him to thee a gift. The stress which Philo lays on δίδωμι and δοτόν suggests that he had in mind a different version of the text from that of the LXX, where, though in v. 27 we have “the Lord gave me my request,” v. 28 runs “I lend him (κιχρῶ) to the Lord, a loan (χρῆσιν) to the Lord.”",
+ "§ 14. Multiplied a thousand-fold. For this way of taking μυρία (as sing. fem.) it may be argued that it follows up the thought of ἡ δὲ πολλή. On the other hand the words may be a reminiscence of Theaetetus 156 A, where Plato, speaking of the product of the union of τὸ ποιεῖν with τὸ πάσχειν, says γίνεται ἔκγονα πλήθει ἄπειρα, in which case it would be better to take μυρία as plur. neut.",
+ "§ 18. Some future pleasure. A hit at the Epicureans; see note on Quod Det. 157; cf. also S.V.F. iii. 21.",
+ "§ 22. Indeed some maintain, etc. Evidently this refers to the Stoic doctrine of the constancy of the Sage; see quotation from Stobaeus in S.V.F. iii. 548, particularly the words οὐδὲ μεταβάλλεσθαι δὲ κατʼ οὐδένα τρόπον οὐδὲ μετατίθεσθαι οὐδὲ σφάλλεσθαι.",
+ "§ 24. Like a lyre. For the figure cf. De Sacr. 37. There is a hint of this thought (which should be distinguished from that of the soul as a harmony) in Rep. 554 F and Laws 653 B.",
+ "Ibid. The insertion suggested by Wendland is also advocated by him in De Ebr. 6. But though easy enough it is not required, and would be impossible in Quis Rer. Div. Her. 207 ff. where τὴν τῶν ἐναντίων ἐπιστήμην is followed by a long excursus showing the universality of opposites and noting that the doctrine was taught by Heraclitus.",
+ "§ 27. So for example. οὕτως, which otherwise seems rather otiose, is perhaps used in the same idiomatic way as in Plato and elsewhere = “without more ado” i.e. “we often just turn from them.”",
+ "§ 31. Time. These two sections are reminiscent of Timaeus 37–38 B, though there time is represented as coming into existence with the universe.",
+ "§ 32. The archetype and pattern of time. So in Timaeus 37 D “so he bethought him to make a moving image of eternity (εἰκὼ κινητὸν αἰῶνος) … moving according to number, even that which we have called time”; 38 B time was made after the pattern of the eternal nature (κατὰ τὸ παράδειγμα τῆς διαιωνίας φύσεως).",
+ "§ 34. Thought quiescent in the mind. This definition of ἐννοία as ἀποκειμένη νόησις is Stoic (S.V.F. ii. 847). The definition of διανόησις as “thought brought to an issue” or “working out of the thought” is perhaps invented by Philo to fit the διενοήθη of his text. He means presumably that an ἔννοια becomes a διανόησις when it becomes the subject of active deliberation.",
+ "§ 43. Like a ring … it stamps. There seems some confusion here between the imprint and the power which makes it. This might perhaps be avoided by taking ἑκάστη τῶν αἰσθήσεων as subject to ἐναπεμάξατο.",
+ "§ 44. Sometimes of an appropriate kind. Cf. Plut. Adv. Coloten 1122 C τὸ δὲ ὁρμητικὸν ἐγειρόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ φανταστικοῦ πρὸς τὰ οἰκεῖα πρακτικῶς κινεῖ τὸν ἄνθρωπον. In adding to “sometimes the reverse,” “this condition of the soul is called ὁρμή,” Philo seems to be writing rather loosely, for when the impression is contrary to the nature of the animal, the resulting impulse was called ἀφορμή (aversion); see S.V.F. iii. 169.",
+ "Ibid. First movement. Another name for ὁρμή is φορὰ διανοίας ἐπί τι, while an ἀφορμή is φορὰ διανοίας ἀπό τινος. In using the phrase πρώτη κίνησις, which does not seem to appear elsewhere in our sources, Philo is perhaps thinking of the πρώτη ὁρμή of animals defined as the instinct of self-preservation; see Diog. Laert. vii. 88.",
+ "§ 46. Mind is the sight of the soul. So Aristot. Top. 17, p. 108 a, 11 ὡς ὄψις ἐν ὀφθάλμῳ νοῦς ἐν ψυχῇ, cf. Eth. Nic. i. 6, p. 1096 b 28. The saying is, however, older than Aristotle, who quotes as example of a metaphor from some unknown writer or speaker ὁ θεὸς φῶς ἀνῆψεν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ (Rhet. iii. 10. 7, p. 1411 b, 73).",
+ "Ibid. Something better and purer. i.e. the πέμπτη οὐσία, an idea which, originally Pythagorean, was adopted by Aristotle. Cf. Reid on Cic. Acad. i. 26. It is definitely referred to under that name by Philo, Quis Rer. Div. Her. 283.",
+ "§ 53. Laws in the proper sense of the word. Because νόμος is used in a wider sense for custom and the like. So in De Praemiis 55 νόμος δὲ οὐδέν ἐστιν ἢ λόγος προστάττων ἃ χρὴ καὶ ἀπαγορεύων ἃ μὴ χρή.",
+ "Ibid. Leading statements. Or perhaps “principles.” Cf. 62. Philo can hardly have regarded Balaam’s words in Num. 23:19 as being part of the actual legislation. He thinks of them rather as summing up the ideas upon which the law is based. Thus, in a parallel use of the two texts in De Som. i. 237, they are called “the sole two ways of all the legislation.” Every command or prohibition appeals either to love or fear.",
+ "§ 57. Out of care for health. Cf. Aristot. Phys. ii. 3, p. 194 b 32 τοῦτο δʼ ἐστὶ τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα, οἶον τοῦ περιπατεῖν ἡ ὑγιεία. διὰ τί γάρ περιπατεῖ; φαμὲν ἵνα ὑγιείῃ.",
+ "§ 59. The reading ἀποπατεῖ might seem to be supported by De Plant. 35. But not only are the terms used for the excretory process less offensive there, but any such meaning is practically given here clearly enough by καὶ τἄλλα … εἴποιμι. Wendland ultimately (Rhein. Mus. 82, p. 480) proposed παύεται, ἀποπαυσάμενος δὲ, but the MS. ἀποπαύεται is quite tenable.",
+ "§ 62. As the heavens or the universe. This is partly at least aimed at the Stoics, see Diog. Laert. vii. 148 (S.V.F. i. 164) where Zeno, Chrysippus, and Posidonius are all credited with holding τὸν ὅλον κόσμον καὶ τὸν οὔρανον as being οὐσίαν θεοῦ. Cf. ib. vii. 137.",
+ "§§ 65 ff. The thought of these sections has already been brought out in De Cher. 15, but with a different purpose. There it was used to illustrate the truth that the motive of the doer determines whether his action is right or wrong, here to show that falsehood may often be salutary to the person to whom it is said. In the note on De Cher. 15 it was pointed out that the thought might be drawn from Rep. 389 B. It should be added that it was adopted by the Stoics, see S.V.F. iii. 554, 555, where the cases of deceiving the sick and the enemy are specially mentioned.",
+ "§ 66. He will gladly endure. If the MS. reading is retained and ἅσμενος is taken with ἀπερεῖ, we must understand the latter as = “declines” and might translate the former by “only too gladly.” But the thought is strange. Wendland suggests removing ἄσμενος to a later place in the sentence, but the slight alteration suggested seems to the translator simpler.",
+ "§§ 70–73. The argument in these sections is very strange. The discussion in 51–69 would naturally lead up to the first explanation given in Quaest. Gen. i. 95 that the words “I was wroth because I made them” is a hyperbolical way of saying that the sins of men grew so great that they might be expected to anger even Him who knew no anger. But the explanation here given, which appears in an even less intelligible form in the Quaest., is something different. Philo seems to take the words as meaning “it was in anger that I made them,” and��to explain them in the sense that since when men do evil, it is due to anger (and similar passions), and since the creation of men has actually resulted in evil, the creation may be said to be due to God’s anger. But not only is the explanation exceedingly strained, but it can only be got by using ὅτι in a way not known to those “who settle Hoti’s business.” The suggestion that by putting ἐθυμώθην before ὅτι ἐποίησα instead of after it the writer meant to indicate that the wrath was coincident with the creation, instead of after it, is still wilder. There is a strong likeness, which may only be superficial, to Leg. All. ii. 78.",
+ "§ 78. A condensed mass of ether. Cf. De Cher. 26, where the sun is φλογὸς πίλημα πολλῆς. That αἰθέριον means “of ether” not “in ether” is shown by Plut. Mor. 928 C (S.V.F. ii. 668). “The Stoics say that τοῦ αἰθέρος τὸ μὲν αὐγοειδὲς … οὐρανὸν γεγονέναι, τὸ δὲ πυκνωθὲν καὶ συνειληθὲν ἄστρα.” So ps.-Justin, Quaest. et Resp. ad Graecos 172 C ὁ ἥλιος πίλημα αἰθεροειδὲς τῇ οὐσίᾳ.",
+ "§ 79. Friend and kinsman. Cf. Timaeus, 45 B, C, where the fire in the eyes is called ἀδελφόν to that of the daylight and forms with it ἓν σῶμα οἰκειωθέν, whence vision is produced.",
+ "§ 84. For the breath, etc. This is the Stoic theory of hearing, cf. Diog. Laert. vii. 158 (S.V.F. ii. 872): “We hear when the air between the sonant body and the organ of hearing suffers concussion” (πληττόμενον) (Hicks’s translation). Also the definition in S.V.F. ii. 836 ἀκοὴ δὲ πνεῦμα διατεῖνον ἀπὸ τοῦ ἡγεμονικοῦ μεχρὶς ὤτων. For πλήξας cf. the derivation commonly given by ancient philologists, “verbum ab aere verberato.”",
+ "Ibid. For the consonance. One may suspect that for γάρ we should read δέ or καί, as we seem to have a second reason for the view that “we hear through a dyad,” founded apparently on Timaeus 80 B, where the two different notes μίαν ἐξ ὀξείας καὶ βαρείας ξυνεκεράσαντο πάθην.",
+ "§ 89. Philo’s interpretation of the Nazarite vow has already been partially given in Leg. All. i. 17. When the Nazarite lets his hair grow, it signifies the growth of virtuous thoughts. The contact with the corpse which defiles the Nazarite and interrupts his vow is that temporary contact with spiritual death which may befall even the good. The hair is cut off, that is, the good thoughts are forgotten, but they will grow again. We find again what we have lost and the days of defection are blotted out.",
+ "§ 92. Asked him … of the source of his knowledge. The genitive (of the subject of the question) after πυνθάνομαι is certainly strange. If we accept “the father of his knowledge” we must suppose that Philo thinks of a father as being the father of the son’s qualities. Cohn compares “the grandfather of his education,” De Sacr. 43, where see note, and also De Som. i. 47 ὁ πάππος αὐτοῦ τῆς ἐπιστήμης.",
+ "§ 97. Miserable are those. This thought of the fruitlessness of effort, where ability is wanting, has been worked out more fully in De Sacr. 113–117. There, however, one important exception is made. In 115 Philo laid down that moral effort is never wasted. He does not deny this here but confines himself to the practical and intellectual life.",
+ "§ 100. Achieve righteousness. A καθῆκον or common duty does not become a κατόρθωμα unless done with a right motive and perhaps not even then, unless it is part of a generally virtuous course of conduct; see Zeller, Stoics, p. 265.",
+ "§ 101. <τῶν>. This insertion turns this difficult sentence into good sense, i.e. to pay a large sum duly, unless it is done willingly, shows no more real honesty than the admittedly dishonest course of paying some small deposit in the hope of inducing the depositor to entrust some large sum, which the person thus trusted will be able to embezzle. This “confidence trick” has been already mentioned in De Cher. 14, and appears again in De Plant. 101. In the absence of any complete banking-system, the depositing of property with individuals and their honesty and dishonesty in discharging the debt played a great part in commercial life.",
+ "§ 108. ἥτις … ἑαυτῇ. The correction suggested in the footnote has this advantage over Wendland’s that the scribe is more likely to have been misled by the repeated χαρίτων than by the repeated τῶν, and that αὐτὴ is a less violent change from ἑαυτῇ than πηγή. For the thought that the ἀγαθότης is itself a χάρις cf. Leg. All. iii. 78, where the ἀγαθότης καὶ χάρις is said to be the ἀρχὴ γενέσεως. For the coupling of πρεσβυτάτη with χάρις cf. De Cong. 38.",
+ "§§ 111–116. This allegory is evidently founded on Gen. 39, where in verse 1 of the LXX Potiphar is described as a chief cook and eunuch, while in verse 21 Joseph is said to find favour with the chief gaoler. Philo, of course, takes great liberties with the story, making Joseph an eunuch himself and ignoring the statement that it was the Lord who gave him this favour with the gaoler. Presumably he is so anxious to get an antithesis to Noah’s finding favour with God, that he seizes on these words in verse 21, couples them with the convenient parts of the story, viz. that the person who found favour with the gaoler was the slave of the eunuch and instrument of pleasure, and ignores all the rest. It may be said in excuse that by so ignoring them he manages to find a text for a very impressive sermon.",
+ "§ 111. [σύλλογοι καί]. σύλλογοι is coupled with ἐκκλησία in De Som. ii. 184 (a closely parallel passage), cf. also Leg. All. iii. 81. But “meetings” or “gatherings” does not fit in well with μελετῶνται, and Wendland (who also suggests διάλογοι) may be right in omitting the words. It should be noted, however, the phrase σύλλογοι καὶ λόγοι ἐγίγνοντο κατὰ τὴν ἀγοράν, i.e. gatherings and conversations after the assembly had broken up, actually occurs in Dem. De Falsa Leg. 133. Philo, who often shows a close acquaintance with Demosthenes, may have adopted the phrase, though somewhat straining it. If the words are retained we might translate “it is ever the practice to meet and talk of virtue.”",
+ "§ 129. Does not use it as its pilot. Philo has evidently in his mind the similar but much more elaborate parable in Rep. 488 B-489 C, where the pilot is the true philosopher, and the inexperienced sailor the politicians, who obtain the mastery of the ship.",
+ "§ 135. Defiles all these. Philo again treats his text in a very arbitrary way. Instead of the things being cleared out, before the priest enters, to prevent their defilement, they are cleared out because they are defiled.",
+ "§§ 155 and 156. The contrast between the earthly and the heavenly goods is expressed in the allegory of the well-water and the rain. The former is earthly, scanty, obtained by labour; the latter heavenly, abundant, and showered on us without effort of our own. To labour for the former is an ἔργον δυσελπιστίας because it shows that we lack the higher hope. For δυσελπιστία cf. Ley. All. iii. 164. Elsewhere, as in De Post. 136 ff. and De Ëbr. 112 ff., the figure of the well calls up more favourable ideas to Philo.",
+ "§§ 162–165. Here we have, of course, Aristotle’s doctrine of the Mean, cf. particularly Eth. Nic. ii. 6 and 7, where both Philo’s first two examples are given. Cf. De Mig. 147, where the doctrine is ascribed to the “gentle and sociable philosophy,” meaning apparently the Peripatetic.",
+ "§ 167. Its essential nature. Observe how closely this peculiarly Aristotelian expression (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) follows on the Aristotelian doctrine of the Mean.",
+ "§ 176. The best of constitutions, democracy. Philo several times speaks in this way of democracy (De Agr. 45, De Conf. 108, De Abr. 242, De Spec. Leg. iv. 237, De Virt. 180). In three of these places he contrasts it with ochlocracy, or mobrule, while in De Conf. he gives as its ruling characteristic that it honours equality. He does not seem to have got this view, at any rate of the name democracy, from the schools. Neither Plato nor Aristotle speak of it with such favour, and the Stoics held that the best form of government was a mixture of democracy, aristocracy and monarchy (Diog. Laert. vii. 131). Here apparently the democracy which the world enjoys consists in each getting its turn."
+ ]
+ },
+ "versions": [
+ [
+ "Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1930",
+ "https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH001216057/NLI"
+ ]
+ ],
+ "heTitle": "על שהאל הוא ללא שינוי",
+ "categories": [
+ "Second Temple",
+ "Philo"
+ ],
+ "schema": {
+ "heTitle": "על שהאל הוא ללא שינוי",
+ "enTitle": "On the Unchangeableness of God",
+ "key": "On the Unchangeableness of God",
+ "nodes": [
+ {
+ "heTitle": "הקדמה",
+ "enTitle": "Introduction"
+ },
+ {
+ "heTitle": "",
+ "enTitle": ""
+ },
+ {
+ "heTitle": "הערות",
+ "enTitle": "Appendix"
+ }
+ ]
+ }
+}
\ No newline at end of file