Chapter XV. Philo on the Second Cause

[PHILO] [1] ‘FOR it becomes those who have made companionship with knowledge to desire to behold the true Being, but should they be unable, then at least to behold His image, the most holy Word.’

Also in the same treatise he says this: [2]

‘But even if one be not as yet worthy to be called the son of God, let him strive earnestly to be adorned after the likeness of His first-begotten Word, who is the eldest of the Angels, and as an Archangel has many names.

‘For He is called the Beginning, and the Name of God, and the Word, and the Man after God’s image, and He who seeth Israel. For which cause I was induced a short time ago to praise the virtues of those who assert that we are all sons of one Man.[3]

‘For even if we have not yet become fit to be deemed children of God, yet surely we may be children of His eternal Image, the most holy Word: for His eldest Word is the Image of God.’

And again he adds: [4]

‘I have, however,heard also one of the companions of Moses utter an oracle of this kind: Behold I the man whose name is the East.[5] A very strange appellation, if you suppose the man who is composed of body and soul to be meant: but if you mean that incorporeal Being who wears the divine form, you will fully acknowledge that the ‘East’ was happily given to Him as a most appropriate name: for the Universal Father made Him rise as His eldest Son, whom elsewhere He named “First-begotten.” And indeed He that was begotten, imitating the ways of His Father, looked to His archetypal patterns in giving form to the various species.’

Let it suffice at this point to have made these quotations from, the Hebrew Philo, taken from the treatise inscribed with the title, On the worse plotting against the better.[6] But already in an earlier part of The Preparation for the Gospel,in setting forth the doctrines of the religion of the ancient Hebrews, I have also sufficiently discussed those which relate to the Second Cause, and to those passages I will now refer the earnest student. Since therefore these have been the theological opinions held among the Hebrews in the way that I have described concerning the Second Cause of the Universe, it is now time to listen to Plato speaking as follows in the Epinomis: