Giuseppe wrote: ↑Wed May 18, 2022 6:28 am
(cf. Philo,
On the Posterity of Cain and His Exile 17.61, where he compares souls being attached to bodies to men being
attached to crosses via crucifixion crucified and nailed to a tree)
Philo,
On the Posterity of Cain and His Exile 17.60 — 18.63
[60] For we are told that the spies came to Hebron, and that Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the children of Anak, were there; then it is added: “and Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt” (Numb. 13:22). It is a thoroughly philosophical proceeding to show how one and the same name has different shades of meaning. “Hebron,” for instance, means “union,” but union may be of two kinds, the soul being either made the body’s yokefellow, or being brought into fellowship with virtue.
[61] The soul, then, that submits to bodily couplings has as its inhabitants those mentioned just now. “Ahiman” means “my brother”; “Sheshai” “outside me”; “Talmai” “one hanging”: for it is a necessity to souls that love the body that the body should be looked upon as a brother, and that external good things should be valued pre-eminently: and all souls in this condition depend on and hang from lifeless things, for, like men crucified and nailed to a tree, they are affixed to perishable materials till they die.
[62] But the soul wedded to goodness obtained inhabitants excelling in the virtues, whom the double cave [Greek: 'Machpelah'] (Gen. 23:9) received in pairs, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Leah and Jacob, these being virtues and their possessors. This Hebron, a treasure-house guarding personal monuments of knowledge and wisdom, is earlier than Zoan and all Egypt. For nature wrought soul elder than body (or Egypt), and virtue elder than vice (or Zoan). for “Zoan” means “Command of evacuation”; and nature determines precedence not by length of time but by worth.
XVIII. [63] Accordingly he calls Israel, though younger in age, his “firstborn” son in dignity (Exod. 4:22), making it evident that he who sees God, the original Cause of being, is the recipient of honour, as earliest offspring of the Uncreated One, conceived by Virtue the object of the hatred of mortals, and as he to whom there is a law that a double portion, the right of the first-born, should be given as being the eldest (Deut. 21:17).
fwiw, the 'Analytical Introduction' (the '17/XVII,' etc. are not referred to)
ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTION
The treatise begins with a denunciation of anthropomorphism and a defence of allegorical interpretation suggested by the statement that “Cain went out from the face of God” (1–7).
What the Lawgiver teaches by these words is that the soul that forfeits with Adam, or forgoes with Cain, the power of seeing God, loses the joy of the quest of Him, experienced by Moses and by Abraham (8–21); and incurs instability, in lieu of the firm standing gained by them through nearness to God (22–32). Moreover, he is ‘wedded’ to the impious view that “man is the measure of all things,” and fails to regard his offspring, as Seth regarded his, as the gift of God (33–48).
The “city builded” by Cain is the creed set up by every impious soul. Its buildings are arguments, its inhabitants the self-conceited, its law lawlessness, its tower of confusion (Babel) the defence of its tenets. Even the lovers of Virtue are forced by the worldly to build such cities for them (49–59).
At this point (§ 60) Philo stops to illustrate, from the instance of Hebron, how
names, like ‘Enoch,’ ‘Methuselah,’ ‘Lamech,’
can have two discrepant shades of meaning,
as they have when borne by descendants of Cain and
when borne by descendants of Seth. He is also led to give examples of that which is later in time being given precedence over what is earlier, as Hebron was placed above Zoan (60–65).
Having now made clear the nature of the creed which the Cain-like soul sets up, Philo turns to its offspring—‘Gaidad’ (or ‘Irad)’ is the “flock” of untended irrational faculties. ‘Maiel’ (or ‘Mehu-jael’) means “away from the Love of God”; ‘Methuselah’ is one “incurring soul death”; and Lamech one “low-cringing”; who “takes to himself” as wives Adah and Zillah (66–74).
Here Philo cannot refrain from pointing out the wrongness of a man taking a wife to himself instead of receiving her as a gift from God. He makes an attempt to account for the fact that the self-same expression is used of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses (75–78).
[continues]