On the Posterity of Cain

If God has a face, Philo asks, how can Jews fault the Epicureans' impiety or the Egyptians' godlessness? His answer turns an exile into a theology.

by Philo of Alexandria78 passages held

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: De posteritate Caini
Original language: Ancient Greek

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Overview

Genesis says that Cain went out from the face of God, and Philo stops on the phrase at once. If the living God has a face that a man can turn his back on and walk away from, he asks, on what grounds do Jews condemn the impiety of the Epicureans, the godlessness of the Egyptians, or the mythical fancies of the Greeks? A face implies a neck, a chest, hands and every other part of a body, and a place one could leave implies that God is somewhere and not everywhere. So the verse cannot mean what it says on its surface. Leaving God's face becomes a state of soul, and the land of Nod where Cain settles becomes the tossing of a mind that has cut itself loose. From there Philo follows Cain's family line in Genesis name by name, his son Enoch and the city Cain builds in his name, down to Lamech and his wives, and reads each figure as a stage in the life of self-love, set against the line of Seth. The Greek heading also calls Cain the man who thought himself wise; the Loeb Classical Library follows it in titling the treatise On the Posterity and Exile of Cain. The book returns more than once to the limits of knowledge: a soul searching for what God is in himself enters darkness, and its reward is to learn that God cannot be grasped; near the end Philo allows that a soul can know that God is, though never what he is.

Key concepts

What does it mean to go out from the face of God?

It means a state of soul, not a journey. Since God has no body, he has no face to turn from, and since he fills everything, there is no place where he is absent. Leaving his face therefore describes a mind that has turned away from him inwardly and cut itself loose. Philo insists on this because a literal reading would make Scripture as crude as the myths it condemns.

What is divine incomprehensibility in On the Posterity of Cain?

It is the teaching that God, as to his essence, cannot be grasped by any created mind. A soul that seeks to know what God is enters a dark inquiry, and its greatest gain is to learn exactly that. What can be known is that God exists, because his powers and works declare it; they reveal his existence, not his nature.

What is the land of Nod in Philo's reading?

Nod is interpreted as tumult or tossing, and it lies opposite Eden. For Philo it is where a soul ends up once it has left God: not a region on a map but a condition of restless agitation, the opposite of the calm the soul had in the presence of wisdom. Cain's settling there means the self-loving mind makes that turmoil its permanent home.

What are the two lines of descendants in On the Posterity of Cain?

They are the line of Cain and the line of Seth, read as two ways a soul can live. Cain's descendants, from Enoch and the city built in his name down to Lamech and his wives, represent stages of self-love, the mind trusting itself. Seth's line stands for the soul that looks to God. The genealogy becomes a map of moral types rather than a family history.

Themes of the book

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

A God Who Has No Face and Cannot Be Grasped

How much can a human mind know of God? Enough to know that he is, Philo concludes, and never enough to know what he is.

The treatise opens on a verse that cannot be literal: Cain went out from the face of God. A face implies a body, and a place one could leave implies that God is somewhere and not everywhere; read that way, Philo asks, how could Jews fault the Epicureans, the Egyptians or the fables of the Greeks? So leaving God's face becomes a state of soul. The same caution governs the book's account of knowledge. A soul that seeks what God is in himself enters darkness, and its reward is to learn that he cannot be grasped; his works declare that he exists, never what he is.

divine incomprehensibility
theology
knowledge
wisdom
scriptural interpretation
scripture
allegory
humility
divine reason

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Cain's Family Tree as the Life of Self-Love

What becomes of a mind that cuts itself loose from God and trusts only itself? Philo follows Cain's descendants name by name to show it.

Cain settles in the land of Nod, which Philo reads as the tossing of a mind that has cut itself loose, and there he builds a city named for his son Enoch. Every impious person, Philo says, builds such a city in his own soul. Down to Lamech and his wives, each figure in the line becomes a stage in the life of self-love, set against the line of Seth. The creed of that line is that the human mind is the measure of all things, and Philo calls Protagoras, who taught it, a descendant of Cain's folly.

virtue
pleasure
passions
wealth
bodily goods
moral responsibility
virtue and vice
desire
peace

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Within this work

passages held: 78
distinct concepts: 174
by passages held, corpus-wide: #559

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: “education” and “virtue”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 69 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
education	virtue	6
virtue	wisdom	6
allegory	virtue	5
education	knowledge	3
knowledge	virtue	3
pleasure	virtue	3
reason	virtue	3
allegory	knowledge	2
allegory	reason	2
education	wisdom	2
knowledge	reason	2
passions	virtue	2
allegory	education	1
allegory	passions	1
allegory	pleasure	1
allegory	wisdom	1
education	passions	1
education	pleasure	1
knowledge	wisdom	1
passions	pleasure	1
pleasure	wisdom	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)
The first surviving treatise of the Allegorical Commentary, Philo's long verse-by-verse reading of Genesis, covering its second and third chapters in three books.
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) you are here 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.
EN
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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