Philo of Alexandria

English

But that the world composed of the ideas should be said, or supposed, to be in some place is not lawful; how it is composed we shall know by following out an image drawn from things among us. When a city is founded out of the great ambition of a king, or of some ruler who lays claim to absolute power and, being splendid in mind, adorns his good fortune the more, there comes forward at times a man trained in architecture who, having observed the good temper and good situation of the place, first draws out within himself well-nigh all the parts of the city that is to be completed: temples, gymnasia, town halls, market places, harbours, docks, alleys, the building of walls, the setting of houses and of other public buildings. Then, having received the impressions of each of these in his own soul as in wax, he carries about an intelligible city, whose images he stirs up by the memory native to him; and stamping the characters yet more firmly, like a good craftsman, looking to the model, he begins to build the city of stone and timber, making the corporeal substances like each of the incorporeal ideas. The like must be held concerning God: that when he purposed to found the great city, he first conceived its types, out of which he composed an intelligible world, and then completed the perceptible one, using that as a model. Therefore, just as the city that was fashioned beforehand within the architect had no place outside, but was stamped upon the artificer's soul, in the same way neither would the world composed of the ideas have any other place than the divine Reason, which set these in order. For what other place could there be for his powers, one that would be sufficient to receive and contain, I do not say all of them, but a single unmixed one, whichever it might be?

Draft English (Claude), awaiting Wilson · cc-by

Greek

Philo, De opificio mundi 17-20 (Cohn-Wendland i. 5-6) · first1k-greek

Notes

The parable this crux's finding turns on, in Greek, four hundred years before the midrash that states it. A king founds a city; a trained architect, seeing the site, draws the whole plan within himself and carries an intelligible city about in his soul; only then does he build in stone and timber, looking to the model. So with God: he conceived the types, composed an intelligible world out of them, and made the perceptible one to that pattern. And the conclusion is the one that matters here: as the planned city had no place outside the architect's soul, the world of the ideas has no place but the divine Reason. Bereshit Rabbah 1:1 tells the same story with the same three parts and a different plan: a king does not build of his own head but with an amon, a craftsman's plan, and the plan the Holy One looked into is the Torah. Nobody has to have borrowed anything for that to be the most interesting fact on this daf. What separates them is what each puts in the architect's hand: for Philo the Reason of God, which is not a person; for the midrash the Torah, which is a book; and for the Latin bench the Son, which is neither. Philo's own barest statement of the identification stands at section 24, where the intelligible world is said to be nothing other than the Reason of God already engaged in creating: it is not sliced here because that section is corrupt in the TEI, which breaks off into a bracketed doublet of the word noeten in place of the clause. Nothing is lost, because section 20 says it in words that are sound.

Threads

• → parallel · Bereshit Rabbah
  One story, told twice, four hundred years and one language apart, and neither telling knows the other. Philo: a king founds a city, a trained architect draws the whole of it within himself first and carries an intelligible city in his soul, and only then builds in stone; so God conceived the types, made the intelligible world of them, and used it as the model for this one. Bereshit Rabbah 1:1: a king does not build a palace of his own head but from an amon, a craftsman's plan, and the Holy One looked into the Torah and created the world. Same king, same plan, same order of operations, and the whole difference is what is in the architect's hand. Philo puts the divine Reason there, which is not a person and has no text; the midrash puts the Torah there, which is a book. This crux's finding rests on the midrash's parable; this is where the parable comes from, or at least where it is older.
• → parallel · Jerome
  The near miss that makes this crux what it is. Jerome: in the Son God made heaven and earth, and the Hebrew has bresith. Philo: the world of the ideas has no place but the divine Reason. Both read the beginning of Gen 1:1 as something rather than some time, and the something is in both cases the Logos. But Philo's Logos is not a person, is not begotten, and is not distinguished from God as a Son from a Father: it is the place where the ideas are, which is to say the mind of the maker planning. The Latin bench inherits the reading and not the metaphysics, and inherits it from a channel it cannot name.
• → parallel · Targum Neofiti
  Neofiti alone among the targums renders bereshit as be-chokhmah, in wisdom, making the beginning an instrument rather than a date. Philo makes it the intelligible world in the divine Reason, which is the same move in a philosophical vocabulary: not when God made, but with what. The two are the only Jewish witnesses on this crux to answer the question that way, they are four centuries and one language apart, and neither can be shown to have known the other.