Chapter XXIV. Philo on the Ideas in Moses

[PHILO] [1] ‘Now if any one should wish to use names in a plainer way, he would not call the intelligible world anything else than the Word (or, Reason) of God already engaged in the creation of a world. For neither is the intelligible city anything else than the reasoning of the architect, when already designing to build the visible city [by help of the intelligible].

‘But this is Moses’ doctrine, not mine. For instance, in recording the creation of man he expressly avows, in what follows, that he was fashioned after the image of God.[2]

‘Now if the part (man) is an image of an image, evidently also the whole species, I mean the whole of this visible world, which is greater than the human image, is a copy of a divine image; and the archetypal seal, as we call the intelligible world, must itself evidently be the archetypal pattern, the Idea of the Ideas, the Word (Reason) of God.

‘He says too that “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”;[3] taking the beginning to be not, as some suppose, the beginning in time; for time was not before the world, but either has begun with it, or after it.

‘For since time is the interval of the motion of the universe, and motion could not begin before that which was to be moved, but must necessarily be established either after it or with it, so time also must necessarily either have been of the same age as the universe or younger than it, and to venture to represent it as older is unphilosophical.

‘But if in the present passage the beginningis not taken to be the beginning in time, then the beginning according to number would naturally be signified, so that in the beginning God createdwould be equivalent to “first He created the heaven.” ‘

Then afterwards he says: [4]

‘First, therefore, the Maker proceeded to make an immaterial heaven, and an invisible earth, and an ideal form of air and of empty space, the former of which He called darkness,because the air is by nature black, and the latter He called the deep,for the empty space is very deep and vast.

‘Then He made the incorporeal essence of water and of wind, and over all the essence of light, the seventh in order, which again was incorporeal, and then an intelligible model of the sun. and of all stars that were destined to be established as luminaries in the heaven.

‘And the wind and the light were honoured with special privilege: for the one he called the Spirit of God,because spirit is the most life-giving thing, and God is the author of life; and light, because it excels in beauty. For the intelligible is, I suppose, as much more brilliant and radiant than the sensible, as the sun is than darkness, and day than night, and the mind, which is the guide of the whole soul, than the criteria of sense, and the eyes than the body.

‘But that invisible and intelligible light is made an image of the Divine Word, which explained its origin; and it is a super-celestial star the source of the visible stars, which one would not be wrong in calling “universal light,” from which sun and moon and the other planets and fixed stars draw their appropriate splendours in proportion to the power of each, while that unmingled and pure light becomes obscured, whenever it begins to turn in direction of the change from intelligible to sensible; for of the things subject to sense none is pure.’

Also after a few words he adds: [5]

‘But when light came, and darkness yielded and retired, and bounds were set in the intervals between them, namely evening and morning, there was at once completed, according to the necessary measure of time, that which the Creator rightly called “day,” and not the first daybut one day,which it is called because of the singleness of the intelligible world, which has the nature of unity.

‘So then the incorporeal world was now complete, being founded in the divine Reason (Word); and after the model thereof the sensible world was now to be produced in its perfection: so the Creator proceeded to make first that which was also the best of all its parts, namely the heaven, which He rightly named the firmament,as being corporeal. For body is by nature solid, because it is of three dimensions: and what other idea is there of a solid and a body, except extension in every direction? Naturally therefore He called this the firmament, as contrasting the sensible and corporeal world with the intelligible and incorporeal.’

So writes Philo. And Clement also agrees with him, speaking as follows in the Fifth Miscellany.