Allegorical Interpretation

Adam as the mind, Eve as the senses, the serpent as pleasure: Philo turns the story of Eden into a map of the soul.

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: Legum allegoriae I–III
Original language: Ancient Greek

Overview

Anyone who takes the six days of creation as a real span of time, Philo warns early in the first book, has read Genesis with great simplicity, because time itself came into being with the world. The warning sets the method for everything that follows. Taking the second and third chapters of Genesis a verse or a phrase at a time, he reads the story of Eden as an account of what happens inside every person. Adam is the mind; Eve, formed from him, is sense-perception, the helper without which the mind can grasp nothing outside itself; the serpent is pleasure, which reaches the mind only through the senses. The garden God plants is wisdom, the rivers flowing from it are the virtues, and the couple hiding among the trees is a soul trying to escape the God it has offended. The Greek title means allegories of the sacred laws, and under that name Eusebius, the fourth-century bishop of Caesarea who catalogued Philo's writings, listed it at the head of the running commentary on Genesis. Three books survive, and they leave a gap: the commentary passes from the serpent's first appearance to the couple in hiding, and nothing survives on the verses in which the fruit is eaten. The series this work opens, known today as the Allegorical Commentary, is Philo's largest body of writing: thirty-nine treatises in the classic modern count, most of them built on the same close, phrase-by-phrase reading.

Key concepts

Why does Philo call it simple-minded to read the six days as a week?

Because time itself came into being with the world. Days and nights are measured by the sun's motion, and the sun is part of what was made, so creation cannot have taken place within a span of days. The six days, for Philo, express order and rank, not duration. The warning opens the commentary and sets its method: the literal surface of Genesis points past itself to a meaning the mind must work out.

Who are Adam, Eve and the serpent in Allegorical Interpretation?

They are three powers inside every person. Adam is the mind; Eve, formed from him, is sense-perception, which the mind needs in order to grasp anything outside itself; the serpent is pleasure, which cannot reach the mind directly and so works through the senses. Read this way, the story of Eden describes how any mind comes to be led astray, not only what befell the first couple.

What do the garden of Eden and its four rivers stand for?

The garden God plants is wisdom, and the river that waters it is generic virtue, dividing into four heads that are the four particular virtues: prudence, courage, self-control and justice. Philo derives them partly from the names of the rivers, so that Pheison, for instance, becomes prudence. The picture is of a soul watered from one source of goodness, with the separate virtues as its branches.

What does allegory mean in Philo's reading of Genesis?

It means reading the words of Scripture as signs of a second, deeper sense, usually an account of what happens in the soul. Philo does not throw out the text; he stops on a phrase, even a single word, and asks what it must mean if the passage is worthy of God. The Greek title calls the work allegories of the sacred laws, and the same close reading drives the whole series it opens.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Eden as a Map of Every Mind

What if the story of Eden happened, and keeps happening, inside every person? Then the fall is not a past event but a pattern a reader can catch in themselves.

Philo takes Genesis 2 and 3 a phrase at a time and reads each figure as a power of the soul. Adam is the mind; Eve, formed from him, is sense-perception, the helper without which the mind grasps nothing outside itself; the serpent is pleasure, which can reach the mind only through the senses. The garden is wisdom, its four rivers the four virtues, and the couple hiding among the trees a soul trying to escape the God it has offended. To read the six days as a real week, he warns, is great simplicity.

soul
mind
sense perception
pleasure
allegory
scriptural allegory
reason
intellect
body
embodiment

Enter a dialogue

Pleasure, Passion and the Cure of Self-Control

Should the passions be tamed or torn out? The three books lean hard towards the second answer, and hold Moses up as the man who needed no moderation.

Once pleasure is the serpent, the rest of the commentary becomes a study of what it does to a soul and how the soul recovers. The bronze serpent Moses set up in the desert is self-control: whoever has been bitten by pleasure and looks at it will live. Moses himself stands for the perfect soul, which does not settle for passions held in moderation but cuts them out root and branch, while weaker souls fight them with lesser strength. Virtue here is not a mood but a victory in a war fought inside.

passions
self-control
temperance
virtue
vice
moral psychology
appetite
desire
virtue and vice

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 214
distinct concepts: 267
by passages held, corpus-wide: #336

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “reason” and “virtue”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 28 pairings. 74 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
reason	virtue	17
soul	virtue	14
allegory	virtue	13
passions	virtue	13
pleasure	virtue	10
passions	pleasure	9
reason	soul	9
sense perception	virtue	9
moral psychology	passions	8
moral psychology	virtue	8
passions	reason	8
pleasure	sense perception	8
passions	sense perception	7
reason	sense perception	7
allegory	pleasure	6
allegory	soul	6
moral psychology	pleasure	6
moral psychology	soul	5
passions	soul	5
pleasure	reason	5
sense perception	soul	5
allegory	passions	4
moral psychology	reason	3
pleasure	soul	3
allegory	reason	2
allegory	sense perception	2
moral psychology	sense perception	2
allegory	moral psychology	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

Against Flaccus (In Flaccum)
Written as a demonstration of divine justice, this account of the Alexandrian riots of 38 CE and of the prefect Philo blamed for them stands with his historical and apologetic works.
EN
Allegorical Interpretation (Legum allegoriae I–III) you are here EN
Every Good Man Is Free (Quod omnis probus liber sit)
Written in the manner of the Greek schools rather than as commentary on Moses, it is, with On the Eternity of the World, one of Philo's philosophical treatises.
EN
On Abraham (De Abrahamo)
The first of Philo's lives of the patriarchs in the Exposition of the Law, following On the Creation of the World; its companions on Isaac and Jacob are lost, and On Joseph continues the set.
EN
On Cultivation (De agricultura)
Noah the farmer is a subject Philo splits across two treatises; this first one is built on the difference between near-synonyms, and On Planting continues it.
EN
On Dreams (De somniis I–II)
A treatise of the Allegorical Commentary, in two surviving books on the dreams of Jacob, Joseph and Pharaoh's court.
EN
On Drunkenness (De ebrietate)
Of the two books on drunkenness known in antiquity, this is the one that survives; it sits between On Planting and On Sobriety in the Allegorical Commentary's run on Noah and the vine.
EN
On Flight and Finding (De fuga et inventione)
Hagar's flight and the angel who finds her, Genesis 16:6–14, read within the Allegorical Commentary.
EN
On Joseph (De Josepho)
The life of the statesman in Philo's series of patriarch lives within the Exposition of the Law. It follows On Abraham; lives of Isaac and Jacob, now lost, once stood between them.
EN
On Mating with the Preliminary Studies (De congressu eruditionis gratia)
Philo's reading of Genesis 16 as a theory of education, set within the Allegorical Commentary; On Flight and Finding continues Hagar's story.
EN
On Planting (De plantatione)
The second of Philo's two treatises on Noah as farmer, turning from farming in general to the planting of the vineyard.
EN
On Rewards and Punishments (De praemiis et poenis et de exsecrationibus)
The closing treatise of the Exposition of the Law, on the rewards, punishments, blessings and curses the Law sets before its hearers.
EN
On Sobriety (De sobrietate)
A short sequel to On Drunkenness in the Allegorical Commentary, on Noah waking and pronouncing his blessings and curse. Its Greek title names exactly that: what Noah prayed for and cursed once sober.
EN
On the Change of Names (De mutatione nominum)
Genesis 17 and its renamings, from Abram and Sarai to Jacob and Joshua, read in the Allegorical Commentary; it also carries Philo's clearest statement that God has no proper name.
EN
On the Cherubim (De Cherubim)
Two short commentaries joined under one title: the cherubim at Eden's gate, then the birth of Cain. Within the Allegorical Commentary it picks up where the three books of Allegorical Interpretation stop.
EN
On the Confusion of Tongues (De confusione linguarum)
The Tower of Babel in the Allegorical Commentary, opening with a defence of Genesis against critics who likened it to Greek myth.
EN
On the Contemplative Life (De vita contemplativa)
A portrait of the Therapeutae, classed with Philo's historical and apologetic writings; it opens by referring back to his account of the Essenes, the active life to this contemplative one.
EN
On the Creation of the World (De opificio mundi)
The overture to Philo's Exposition of the Law, the series that goes on to lives of the patriarchs and a code of laws. It stands apart as his reading of the creation story in its literal order.
EN
On the Decalogue (De decalogo)
The hinge of the Exposition of the Law, turning from the lives of the patriarchs to the written law.
EN
On the Embassy to Gaius (Legatio ad Gaium)
The companion of Against Flaccus: an eyewitness history of the embassy Philo led to Gaius, and the fullest account he left of his own public life.
EN
On the Eternity of the World (De aeternitate mundi)
Among Philo's philosophical treatises, the one that names the Greek schools and their arguments most openly.
EN
On the Giants and On the Unchangeableness of God (De gigantibus; Quod Deus sit immutabilis)
Two treatises that editions usually separate but that read as one commentary, in the Allegorical Commentary, on the verses of Genesis leading up to the flood.
EN
On the Life of Moses (De vita Mosis I–II)
Philo's biography of Moses in two books, usually counted with the Exposition of the Law though it stands on its own.
EN
On the Migration of Abraham (De migratione Abrahami)
Abraham's call in Genesis 12, read as the soul's migration toward God; in the Allegorical Commentary it follows On the Confusion of Tongues in the order of Genesis.
EN
On the Posterity of Cain (De posteritate Caini)
The last of the Cain treatises in the Allegorical Commentary, following Cain from his exile through his descendants.
EN
On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain (De sacrificiis Abelis et Caini)
One of the run of treatises on Cain and Abel in the Allegorical Commentary, taking up the brothers' offerings in Genesis 4.
EN
On the Special Laws (De specialibus legibus I–IV)
The largest work in the Exposition of the Law, in four books; it follows On the Decalogue and is followed by On the Virtues.
EN
On the Virtues (De virtutibus)
A pendant to On the Special Laws in the Exposition of the Law, gathering laws under the virtues they train rather than under the Ten Commandments.
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The Worse Attacks the Better (Quod deterius potiori insidiari soleat)
It follows On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain in the Allegorical Commentary and carries the brothers' story on to the murder itself.
EN
Who Is the Heir of Divine Things? (Quis rerum divinarum heres sit)
Best known for its long passage on the Logos dividing the world into opposites, this reading of God's covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15 belongs to the Allegorical Commentary.
EN

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