Chapter XVIII. Philo on the Soul

[PHILO IUDAEUS] [1] ‘BUT whereas the others, who said that our mind is a part of the ethereal nature, connected man by kinship with the ether; the great Moses did not liken the form of the reasonable soul to any of the things created, but said that it was a genuine coinage of that divine and invisible Spirit, marked and stamped by the seal of God, the impress of which is the eternal Word. “For God,” says he, “breathed breath of life into his face, and man became a living soul.” [2] So that he who receives that breath must be made like to Him that sends it forth.

‘Wherefore also it is said that man was made iu the image of God, but not in the image of anything created. It naturally followed then that, as man’s soul was fashioned after the likeness of the archetypal Word of the First Cause, so his body, being raised up toward heaven the purest portion of the universe, should lift its eyes on high.’

So far Philo. With good reason then does the sacred Scripture affirm that man was not made in the same way as the other animals; because some of them came forth from the earth at one command of God the King of all, and others again at His bidding flew up out of the watery element: but of the living creatures upon earth only the most beloved of God, ourselves, have been made in our soul after the image and likeness of God. And in reference to this man is also regarded as having the nature of a ruler and a king, and is the only one of the creatures upon earth that has powers of reasoning, creating, judging, and legislating, and is capable of learning arts and sciences. For only the soul in man is an intelligent and rational essence, in which the other animals on earth do not participate.

They therefore are serfs, and fill the place of servants to man: while he as lord and ruler enslaves and subjugates those that are far superior in bodily strength, but inferior by their privation in regard to the intelligent essence.

He therefore, they say, was created with a certain singular excellence after the image and likeness of God by God Himself. And for this reason he is able to attain to a presentation of the concept of God, and to form perceptions of wisdom and righteousness and every virtue, to calculate also the courses of sun and moon and stars, and the cycles of days and seasons, thanks to the kinship with heaven, which man alone of mortal things exhibits.

But the outward frame enveloping this part of man is essentially different in kind and born of the earth, yet this also itself is a work of God taken from earth and returning to earth. And therefore we ought to care for this part as much as a master cares for a brute beast when distressed, and to treat it gently, and feed it just as a slave well attached to the service of human life; but the master within, as being of noble birth and in nature akin to God, we must honour in liberal ways, as having also received honour from the First Cause of all.

The oracles at least say that the Universal King, having adorned man’s original nature with divine powers and with the likeness of God, allotted his first mode of life in accordance with the gifts which He had bestowed, and associated him with divine companies in a Paradise of good things.

Also that God on His part had in the beginning as an all-kind Father bestowed these blessings upon him, but that he by wilful choice fell away from these happier conditions, and for neglect of a divine command passed by exchange into the condition of mortality.

Wherefore also it is our highest concern to make piety our very first aim, and to amend the first transgression by a sequel of happier omen; and so to hasten on to the recurrence and restoration of our proper state. For the true end of man’s nature is not here on earth sinking down into ruin and destruction, but in yonder place from which the first man fell away.

And therefore it is necessary to win back again the purity and likeness to God of the intelligent being within us; and to this all men must zealously strive with all their might to return, by devotion to piety and virtue.

Such were the philosophic doctrines concerning man’s nature taught by the Hebrews originally, before any Greeks had even come into the world: for these being of yesterday and quite newly sprung up from the earth, designed to steal away the doctrines of barbarians, and did not abstain from those of the Hebrews, as our discourse in its progress will presently show.

But since it was peculiar to the Hebrew doctrines to regard the Supreme God as the one sole Creator of all things, including the substance underlying bodies, which the Greeks call hylé (matter), whereas countless multitudes of barbarians and Greeks alike stood opposed to this opinion, some of them declaring that matter was the source of evil and subsisted without beginning, and others that in its own nature it had neither quality nor shape, but by the power of God had acquired its orderly arrangement together with its qualities; we must therefore show that the opinion of the Hebrews upholds a far better doctrine, approaching the question with logical demonstration, and overthrowing the opposite argument with correct reasoning.

I shall quote then the words of those who before our time have thoroughly examined the doctrine, and first of Dionysius, who in the first book of his exercitations Against Sabelliuswrites on the subject before us as follows: