Journeying With Philo #4
That The Worse Is Wont To Attack The Better
Journeying once again with my friend Philo, searching systematically through his corpus with special attention to his explanations of when and where to apply deeper readings—particularly moments where he explicitly denies that there is a literal sense. As previously indicated, numbers in brackets are from the paragraph number in Greek and the numbers in parentheses are the pages in the English translation. Everything here is from the second Loeb volume of Philo’s works. I provide the exact Greek at times, approximately whenever I feel like and find it personally interesting or helpful.
Cain is presented as leading Abel into a dispute. This maps on nicely to the translations/glosses of the Targumim which also present the confrontation of Cain and Abel as a theological debate which devolves into violence. Philo’s additional step here is correlating a dispute between two characters with an internal dialogue of knowledge and irrationality in the soul. But he continues to make detailed use of the text of the Torah itself in order to buttress his reading:
“What Cain is aiming at is by means of a challenge to draw Abel into a dispute, and to gain the mastery over him by plausible sophistries that have the appearance of truth…we say that the plain, the rendezvous to which he summons him, is a figure of contest and desperate battle. For we see that most contests both in war and peace take place on plains…The earnest seeker of knowledge [ὁ ἀσκητὴς ἐπιστήμης], at war with ignorance, the contrary condition, when shepherding (so to speak) with admonition and correction the irrational powers in the soul, is presented to us on a plain: for ‘Jacob sent and called Leah and Rachel to the plain where the flocks were’ (Gen. 31:4), making it clear that the plain is a figure for contentiousness [φιλονεικίaς].” [1-3] (203-205)
A little surprisingly, Philo finds it utterly implausible that Jacob would send Joseph to check on his brothers instead of a servant. Whatever one may make of the judgement in terms of narrative logic, verisimilitude, and historical context, the principle Philo is espousing remains valuable–the biblical text sometimes contains immoralities or even implausibilities which must be expunged for the sake of piety–lest we like Joseph are left senselessly wandering in the valley of Hebron:
“If, O my understanding [διάνοια], thou searchest on this wise into the oracles [τοὺς ἱεροφαντηθέντας] which are both words of God and laws given by men whom God loves, thou shalt not be compelled to admit anything base [ταπεινὸν]or unworthy [ἀνάξιον] of their dignity. Why, how could any sensible person [τις τῶν εὖ φρονούντων] admit the very narrative of which we are now speaking? Is it likely that Jacob, who had the health of a king, was so badly off for household servants or attendants as to send a son out abroad to bring word about his other children, whether they are in good health, and about the cattle to boot?...Now you notice that Scripture goes out of its way to record even the place from which he dispatches him, all but giving the reader a plain hint to avoid the literal interpretation [ἀφίστασθαι τοῦ ‘ρητοῦ]. For it says ‘out of the vale of Hebron’ (Gen. 37:14). Now ‘Hebron,’ a ‘coupling’ and ‘comradeship,’ is a figurative title for our body, because it is ‘coupled’ with a soul, and has established a friendship and ‘comradeship’ with it….Seeing therefore that Joseph has utterly sunk into the hollows of the body and the senses…But he, though he fancied that he had made a move forward, is found wandering: for he says, ‘a man found him wandering in the plain’ (Gen. 37:15).” [13-17] (211-215)
Here a striking restatement of certain themes in the Hebrew prophets about the nature of sacrifice:
“Genuine worship is that of a soul bringing simple reality [ἀλήθειαν–usually rendered ‘truth’] as its only sacrifice; all that is mere display, fed by lavish expenditure on externals, is counterfeit.” [21] (217)
Another stunning passage here Philo suggests that Cain’s “murder” as an internal process and that we should read “Cain slew him” as “Cain himself himself”, a modulation that requires only the addition of one letter in the LXX:
“God, however, in his loving-kindness will neither cause a being of an inviolable kind to be the victim of a passion, nor will He hand over the pursuit of virtue to a mad murderer for ruin. So the words that follow ‘Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him [ἀυτὸν]’ (Gen. 4:8), suggest so far as superficial appearance goes, that Abel has been done away with, but when examined more carefully, that Cain has been done away with by himself. It must be read in this way, ‘Cain rose up and slew himself [ἑαυτόν],’ not someone else. And this is just what we should expect to befall him. For the soul that has extirpated from itself the principle of the love of virtue and the love of God, has died to the life of virtue. Abel, therefore, strange as it seems, has both been put to death and lives: he is destroyed or abolished out of the mind of the fool, but he is alive with the happy life in God. To this the declaration of Scripture shall be our witness, where Abel is found quite manifestly using his ‘voice’ and ‘crying out’ the wrongs he has suffered at the hands of a wicked brother. For how could one no longer living speak?” [46-48] (233-235)
Next, a gorgeous passage–and an important image of Divine Sophia as our mother and a mysterious reference to manna as an ancient preexistence substance. Both of these tropes have roughly homologous receptions in later rabbinic material and in the NT (Paul in 1 Corinthians 10 identifying Christ with both the rock and manna and his explicitly feminine reference in Galatians 4 to the Jerusalem above who is our mother. Peter Schafer has a good Philo section in his book Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to Early Kabbalah which is both great reading and great schoalrship.):
“[Moses] uses the word ‘rock’ to express the solid and indestructible wisdom of God [σοφίαν θεοῦ], which feeds and nurses and rears to sturdiness all who yearn after imperishable sustenance. For this divine wisdom has appeared as mother of all that are in the world, affording to her offspring, as soon as they are born, the nourishment which they require from her own breasts…The fountain of divine wisdom runs sometimes with a gentler and more quiet stream, at other times more swiftly and with a fuller and stronger current. When it runs down gently, it sweetens much as honey does; when it runs swiftly down, it comes in full volume as material for lighting up the soul, even as oil does a lamp. In another place he uses a synonym for this rock and calls it ‘manna.’ Manna is the divine word, eldest of all existences, which bears the most comprehensive name of ‘Somewhat.’” [115-118] (279-281)
Continuing on, Philo teaches us a lesson many explicitly deny today:
“For Moses does not, as some impious people do, say that God is the author of ills. Nay, he says that ‘our own hands’ cause them, figuratively describing in this way our own undertakings, and the spontaneous movement of our minds to what is wrong.” [122] (283-285)
Glossing Gen. 4:14, Philo takes this passage as incomprehensible in its literal sense, for no one can escape the face of God:
“Let no one therefore accept without examining it the way of understanding the language that first suggests itself, and by so doing make the Law guilty of his own foolishness. Let him carefully note the sense which it conveys in a figure through deeper meanings underlying the expressions employed, and so attain to certain knowledge.” [155] (305)
Philo further determines that the curse upon anyone who would slay Cain also cannot be taken literally.
“‘He’ it continues, ‘that slayeth Cain shall loosen seven punishable objects [ἑπτὰ ἐκδικούμενα]’ (Gen. 4:15). Hat meaning this conveys to those who interpret literally, I do not know. For there is nothing to show what the seven objects are, nor how they are punishable, nor in what way they become loose and unstrung. We must make up our minds that all such language is figurative and involves deeper meanings.” [167] (313)