Philo of Alexandria

English

And the world-making power too has for its spring the truly good. For if anyone should wish to search out the cause for the sake of which this all was fashioned, it seems to me he would not miss the mark in saying, as one of the ancients also said, that the Father and Maker is good; and for that reason he did not grudge his own most excellent nature to a substance which had nothing beautiful of itself, but was able to become all things. For of itself it was without order, without quality, without life, unlike itself, full of unevenness and of discord and of dissonance; but it admitted a turn and a change to the opposites and to the best things, to order, quality, ensoulment, likeness, sameness, the well-fitted, the concordant, all that belongs to the better idea.

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

Greek

Philo, De opificio mundi 21-22 (Cohn-Wendland i. 6-7) · first1k-greek

Notes

The position the whole Latin bench spends eight centuries refusing, stated by a Jew in Greek before any of them, and stated without embarrassment. There is a substance; of itself it is without order, without quality, without life, unlike itself, full of unevenness and discord; and God, being good, did not grudge it his own best nature, so it took the turn to order, quality, ensoulment and likeness. Philo does not say where the substance came from, and he does not deny that God made it; what he does is decline to raise the question, which is what makes the passage so useful to read against Ambrose and Augustine, who cannot decline it. Ambrose knows the position by name as the hyle of the philosophers and refutes it; Augustine at Confessions 12 accepts a formless matter and insists in the same breath that God made it too; Chalcidius reports the Hebrews as confessing that hyle was generated, which is the concession Philo does not make. The vocabulary is one of the reasons the argument travelled: ataktos and apoios are the Greek behind the invisibilis et incomposita of the old Latin Gen 1:2, so what the Latin bench debates as a fact about the earth of the second verse, Philo has already stated as a doctrine about substance in general.

Threads

• → parallel · Basil of Caesarea
  The same two Greek words, once as a doctrine and once as a lemma, and the Latin bench only ever saw the second. Basil's text of Gen 1:2 reads the earth was invisible and unordered, aoratos kai akataskeuastos, and the whole Latin argument about invisibilis et incomposita descends from it. Philo, writing before that Greek Bible reading had a history of interpretation, uses ataktos, without order, of substance in general, and pairs it with apoios, without quality. So the phrase the Latins treat as a fact reported about the earth is in Philo a philosophical description of matter as such. Basil then denies exactly what Philo asserted, that there is an unbegotten substance, and does not name him.
• → contests · Chalcidius
  Chalcidius reports that the Hebrews confess hyle was generated. Philo is a Hebrew who confesses nothing of the kind: he says the substance was of itself without order, quality or life, and he never says who made it. Chalcidius had read Philo and names him twice elsewhere in the commentary, so his generalisation about the Hebrews is made in full knowledge of the one Hebrew author he could actually read, and does not fit him. This is the sharpest place in the edition to watch a Latin report of a Jewish position round off its edges.
• → contests · Ambrose
  Ambrose refutes this position by name and does not know he is refuting Philo, whom he is elsewhere copying. Ambrose: they say the world was made out of the matter they call hyle, and this is to make God a craftsman rather than a creator. Philo: the substance was of itself without order, without quality, without life, and God being good did not grudge it his own best nature. Every term Ambrose objects to is in the Greek, in that order, in the book his own Hexaemeron follows most closely.
• → parallel · Augustine
  Augustine's near-nothing is Philo's substance with the one addition that makes it orthodox. Augustine: you made two things, one near to you and one near to nothing, and the formless matter is yours too, made by you out of nothing. Philo: the substance had nothing beautiful of itself but was able to become all things. The description matches almost word for word; what Augustine adds is the clause about where it came from, and that clause is exactly what Philo does not supply.
• → parallel · Chalcidius
  The one Latin here who had read Philo, describing hyle in Philo's terms: because it is the receiver of all qualities it has none of its own. That is Philo's apoios, without quality, and Philo's able to become all things. Chalcidius names Philo twice elsewhere in the commentary and does not name him here, which is the ordinary shape of this transmission: the doctrine crosses and the attribution does not.
• → contests · Augustine
  The craftsman argument, from both sides. Augustine reports the objection that craftsmen and workmen of any kind cannot make anything unless they have something to make it from, and answers that God is not a craftsman. Philo is the position Augustine is answering, and he holds it as a description of God's goodness rather than of God's limits: the maker is good, and goodness is what makes him give form to what has none. The Latin bench inherits the objection without the argument that made it worth holding.