the limits of variety 175
image’. And thus the mind in each of us, which in the true and full sense is
the ‘man’, is an expression at third hand from the Maker, while between
them is the Reason which serves as model for our reason, but itself is the
effigies or presentment of God.Sometimes Philo identified the Logos with the mind of God. At other
times, the Logos was reckoned ‘midway between man and God’. And
indeed Philo often dropped into language which assumed the working
of divine powers within the human soul as envisaged in Stoic thought.
But consistency was less important than Philo’s implication that
through the Logos, and with the help of a true understanding of the
biblical texts, man can ascend to the divine realm.^25
This view of the nature of reality had an impact on Philo’s under-
standing of ethics. Since man is composed of body and soul, his body
connecting him to matter and his soul to the divine, he is in a constant
struggle to control his passions through reason. Hence Philo’s version of
the real meaning of the migration of Abraham from Mesopotamia as
recounted in Genesis:
‘And the Lord said unto Abraham, Depart out of your land, and out of
your kindred, and out of your father’s house, into the land which I shall
show you; and I will make you a great nation and will bless you and will
make your name great, and you shalt be blessed. And I will bless them that
bless you, and them that curse you I will curse, and in you shall all the tribes
of the earth be blessed’ (Gen 12: 1– 3). God begins the carrying out of His
will to cleanse man’s soul by giving it a starting- point for full salvation in
its removal out of three localities, namely, body, sensation, and speech.
‘Land’ or ‘country’ is a symbol of body, ‘kindred’ of sensation, ‘father’s
house’ of speech. How so? Because the body took its substance out of earth
(or land) and is again resolved into earth ... Sensation, again, is of one kin
and family with understanding, the irrational with the rational, for both
these are parts of one soul. And speech is our ‘father’s house’, ‘father’s’
because Mind is our father.^26
The allegorical technique used by Philo in this passage is typical of
his procedure in the thirty- one treatises of his Allegorical Commentary,
which was evidently addressed to highly educated Jewish readers with
an interest in very detailed analysis of the inner meaning of the book of
Genesis. Philo’s Questions and Answers on Genesis, which for the most
part survives only in Armenian translation, provides similar interpre-
tations of the text for a less sophisticated readership, distinguishing