Citation with stable link: Philip A. Harland, 'Babylonian wisdom: Philo on Abraham’s migration away from Chaldean astrology (early first century CE),' Ethnic Relations and Migration in the Ancient World, last modified May 13, 2024, https://philipharland.com/Blog/?p=19100.
Ancient author: Philo of Alexandria (early first century CE), On Abraham 66-72, 77-88; Migration of Abraham 175-189; Who is the Heir 96-99, 275-279; Preliminary Studies 44-51; On Dreams 47-48, 50-52, 159-161; On the Virtues 212-217; Questions and Answers on Genesis 3.1 (link).
Comments: Philo of Alexandria was an active participant in ongoing ethnographic debates about which, if any, “barbarian” people was a potential source of some elements of true wisdom (on which see Diogenes’ complaint about those who speak of Magians among Persians, Chaldeans among Babylonians, naked sages among Indians, and Druids among Celts at this link). In these debates, someone might reject all “barbarian” peoples due to their lack of wisdom, but they might also pick and choose their own favourite foreign people, preferring one or several over other options.
Philo is generally affirmative about Babylonian Magians and Indian naked sages, at one point placing the Judean Essenes alongside them (link), and at another point speaking of true Persian Magian skill in a positive manner (link). In the passages gathered here, we begin to see clearly that Philo rejects Chaldeans and astrological knowledge specifically as a source of true wisdom, however.
The Chaldeans are not just a side issue for Philo, though. Instead, the Chaldeans serve an ongoing allegorical role in explaining the departure (with Abraham) from false Chaldean knowledge (Ur in the region of Chaldea) and the arrival at true wisdom of the Judean god’s providence via an allegorical interpretation of the books of Moses (the promised land of Israel). Philo sees a fundamental incompatibility between a view that holds that the stars determine the course of human lives and a view that holds to a notion of God’s providence. This ongoing idea comes through regularly in numerous writings, as you see below.
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On Abraham
[Abraham’s migration from Chaldea]
(On Abraham 66-72) But Abraham, the moment he was bidden, departed with a few or even alone, and his emigration was one of soul rather than body. For the heavenly love overpowered his desire for mortal things, and so he took no thought for anything: he took no thought for those of his tribe, for those of his neighbourhood, for friends, for comrades, for relatives on the father’s or mother’s side, for homeland, for ancient customs, for community of nurture or home life. These are all ties possessing a power to allure and attract which it is hard to throw off. Abraham followed a free and unrestricted impulse and departed quickly first from Chaldea, a land at that time blessed by fortune and at the height of its prosperity, and migrated to Haran. Then not long afterwards he left Haran for another place, about which we will speak after dealing with something else to which I now proceed.
[Chaldeans]
The migrations (apoikiai) as presented in the literal text of the writing [i.e. Genesis] are made by a man of wisdom, but according to the laws of allegory they are made by a virtue-loving soul in its search for the true God. For the Chaldeans were especially active in the elaboration of astronomy (astronomia) and ascribed everything to the movements of the stars. They supposed that the course of the phenomena of the world is guided by influences contained in numbers and numerical proportions. In this way they glorified visible existence, leaving out of consideration the intelligible and invisible. But while exploring numerical order as applied to the revolution of the sun, moon and other planets and fixed stars, and the changes of the yearly seasons and the interdependence of phenomena in heaven and on earth, they concluded that the world itself was God, thus likening the created to the creator.
Abraham had been raised with this notion, and for a long time he remained a Chaldean. Then opening the soul’s eye as though after profound sleep, and beginning to see the pure beam instead of the deep darkness, he followed the ray and discerned what he had not seen before. He saw a charioteer and pilot presiding over the world and directing his own work in safety, assuming the charge and superintendence of that work and of all such parts of it as are worthy of divine care. In order to firmly establish his understanding of what he had seen in this revelation, the sacred word (logos) follows it up by saying to him, “Friend, that which is great is often known by its outlines as shown in that which is smaller, and by looking at them the observer finds the scope of his vision infinitely enlarged. Dismiss, then, the wanderers in the heavens and Chaldean knowledge. Depart for a short time from the greatest of cities, this world, to the lesser, and in this way you will be better able to apprehend the overseer of everything.” This is why he is said to emigrate first from the land of Chaldea to that of Haran. . . [omitted sections].
[Abraham’s / mind’s migration away from astronomy]
(On Abraham 77-88) We have a very clear proof of the mind’s migration from astronomy (astronomia) and the Chaldean notion in the words which follow at once the story of the departure of the sage. It says that “God was seen by Abraham” [Genesis 12:7]. This shows that God was not manifested to him before, when in his Chaldean way he was fixing his thoughts on the circular movement of the stars with no apprehension at all of an harmonious and intelligible order of things outside the cosmos and the sphere of sense. But when Abraham had departed and changed his place of settlement he could not help but know that the cosmos is not sovereign but dependent, not governing but governed by its maker and first cause. His mind saw this for the first time with its recovered sight.
For before a great mist had been shed upon it by the things of sense, and only with difficulty could it dispel this mist under the warmth and fervour of higher truths and so be able as in clear open sky to receive the vision of one who so long lay hidden and invisible. In God’s love for humankind, when the soul came into his presence, did not turn away his face, but came forward to meet him and revealed his nature, so far as the beholder’s power of sight allowed. That is why we are told not that the sage saw God, but that God was seen by him. For it was impossible for anyone by himself to apprehend the truly existent unless he revealed and manifested himself.
[Change of name from Abram to Abraham as change from Chaldean astrology to true wisdom]
What has just been said is attested by the alteration and change in his name, for his original name was “Abram,” but afterwards he was addressed as “Abraham.” To the ear there was merely a duplication of one letter – the letter alpha – but in fact and in the truth conveyed this duplication showed a change of great importance. Abram is by interpretation “uplifted father”; Abraham, is “elect father of sound.” The former signifies one called astrologer and meteorologist, one who takes care of the Chaldean principles as a father would of his children. The latter signifies the sage, for he uses “sound” as a figure for spoken thought and “father” for the ruling mind, since the inward thought is by its nature father of the uttered, being senior to it, the secret begetter of what it has to say. “Elect” signifies the man of worth, for the worthless character is random and confused, while the good is elect, chosen out of all for his merits. Now to the meteorologist nothing at all seems greater than the universe, and he credits it with the causation of what comes into being. But the wise man with more discerning eyes sees something more perfect perceived by mind, something which rules and governs, the master and pilot of everything else. And therefore he blames himself severely for his former life, feeling that all his years have been passed in blindness with no staff to support him but the world of sense, which is by its nature an insecure and unstable thing.
The second migration which the worthy man undertakes, again in obedience to an oracle, is not as before from one city to another but into a desert country in which he continued to wander, never complaining of the wandering or the insecurity which it caused. Yet who else would not have felt it a burden not only to be severed from his own country, but also to be driven out of all city life into pathless tracts where the traveller could hardly find a way? Who would not have turned his course and hurried back homeward, paying little regard to future hopes, but eager to escape his present hardships, and thinking it foolish to choose admitted evil for the sake of uncertain good? Yet Abraham alone appears to have had feelings the opposite of these, and to have thought that no life was so pleasant as one lived without association with the multitude. And that is natural, for those who seek God and yearn to find him love the solitude which is dear to God, and in this way first of all hurry to make themselves like his blessed and happy nature.
[Conclusion to the dual interpretation]
So in both our expositions, the literal as applied to the man and the allegorical as applied to the soul, we have shown both man and soul to be worthy of our affection. We have shown how the man in obedience to divine commands was drawn away from the stubborn hold of his associations and how the mind did not remain for ever deceived nor stand rooted in the realm of sense, nor suppose that the visible cosmos was the almighty and primal God, but using its reason sped upwards and turned its gaze upon the intelligible order which is superior to the visible and upon the one who is maker and ruler of both alike.
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Migration of Abraham
[Interpretating Abraham’s migration]
(The Migration of Abraham 175-189) Moses says: “Abraham was seventy-five years old when he went out from Haran” [Genesis 12:4]. On the number of seventy-five years, whose import agrees with what has just been said, we will dwell in detail at a later time. Let us first examine the significance of Haran and of the removal from this country. No one familiar with the laws is likely to be unaware that at an earlier date Abraham migrated from Chaldea and settled in Haran, and that, after his father’s death there, he leaves that country also, so that he has at this point already left two places.
[Chaldeans’ teaching on the cosmos]
What comment does this call for? The Chaldeans have the reputation of having, in a degree quite beyond that of other men, elaborated astronomy (astronomia) and the calculation of horoscopes with respect to births. They have set up a harmony between things on earth and things in heaven, between heavenly things and earthly. Following as it were the laws of musical proportion, they have exhibited the cosmos as a perfect concord or symphony produced by a sympathetic affinity between its parts, actually separated in space but relatives in the same house. These men imagined that this visible cosmos was the only thing in existence, either being itself god or containing god in itself as the soul of the whole cosmos. They also made Fate and Necessity divine, thereby filling human life with much impiety through teaching that, apart from phenomena, there is no originating cause of anything whatever. Rather, the circuits of sun and moon and of the other heavenly bodies determine for every being in existence both good things and their opposites.
[Moses’ alternative teaching on the cosmos]
On the other hand, while Moses seems to confirm the sympathetic affinity of its parts displayed throughout the cosmos, Moses is at variance with the Chaldeans’ opinion concerning God. Moses endorses the earlier teaching by declaring the cosmos to be one and to have been created, because if it came into being and is one, it stands to reason that all its completed several parts have the same elementary substances for their substratum, on the principle that interdependence of the parts is a characteristic of bodies which constitute a unity. Moses differs from their opinion about God, holding that neither the cosmos, nor its soul, is the primal God, and that the constellations or their revolutions are not the primary causes of the things that happen to human beings. No, Moses teaches that the complete whole around us is held together by invisible powers, which the Creator has made to reach from the ends of the earth to heaven’s furthest bounds, taking forethought that what was well bound should not be loosened, because the powers of the cosmos are chains that cannot be broken.
Therefore, even though it is said somewhere in the legislation: “God in heaven above and on the earth below” [Deuternomy 4:39], let no one suppose that the one who is is being spoken about, since the existent Being can contain, but cannot be contained. What is meant is that potency of his by which he established and ordered and marshalled the whole realm of being. This potency is nothing other than loving-kindness. It has driven away from itself envy with its hatred of virtue and of moral beauty; it is the mother of gracious actions by which, bringing into created existence things that were not, it displayed them to view. For that which is, though in opinion it be imagined everywhere, in reality shows itself nowhere, so that that is a most true oracle in which the words “Here am I” which describe him – the “him” that cannot be pointed out, as though he were being pointed out, him that is invisible, as though he were visible – are followed by the words, “before you were made” [Exodus 17:6]. This is because he is before all creation and his activities are outside creation; nor is he present in any of the things that come after him.
[Moses calls people away from the Chaldean opinion and to the truth]
All this is said to refute the Chaldean opinion, but side by side with this Moses considers it his duty to change the way of thinking of those whose judgement still inclines towards the Chaldean opinion, and to recall them to the truth, and he begins his lesson in this way: “How strange it is, my friends, that you have been suddenly lifted to such a height above the earth and are floating there, and, leaving the lower air beneath you, are treading the aether above, thinking to master every detail respecting the movements of the sun, and of the circuits of the moon, and of the glorious rhythmical dances of the other constellations. These are too high to be reached by your powers of thought, for their lot is happy and divine beyond what is common. (185) So come down from heaven and, when you have come down, do not begin in turn to pass in review earth, sea, rivers, plants and animals in their numerous kinds. Instead, explore yourselves only and your own nature, and stay with yourselves and not elsewhere, because by observing the conditions prevailing in your own individual household, the element that is master in it, and that which is in subjection, the living and the lifeless element, the rational and the irrational, the immortal and the mortal, the better and the worse, you will immediately gain a sure knowledge of God and of his works. Your reason will show you that, as there is mind (nous) in you, so is there in the cosmos, and that as your mind has taken upon itself sovereign control of all that is in you, and brought every part into subjection to itself. In the same way, he that possesses lordship over everything guides and controls the cosmos by the law and right of an absolute sway, taking forethought not only for those which are of greater, but for those which are of less importance in our eyes. So quit, your meddling with heavenly concerns, and stay with yourselves, as I have said. Leave the opinion of the land of the Chaldeans behind you and migrate to Haran, the place of sense-perception, which is understanding’s bodily house. For the translation of Haran is “hole,” and holes are figures of openings used by sense-perception, because eyes are, in a way, openings and lairs used by sight, ears by hearing, nostrils to receive scents, the throat for tasting, and the whole structure of the body for touch. By travelling further, therefore, gain a peaceful and unhurried familiarity with these, and to the utmost of your power get an exact knowledge of the nature of each, and, when you have thoroughly learned what is good and bad in each, shun the one, and choose the other. And when you have surveyed all your individual dwelling with absolute exactitude, and have acquired an insight into the true nature of each of its parts, exert yourselves and seek for your departure from here, for it is a call not to death but to immortality. . .” [omitted remainder of Moses’ ostensible opinions, since Chaldeans fade into the background].
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Who is the Heir
[Migrating away from Chaldean sky-talk and astronomy]
(Who is the Heir 96-99) The text continues “He said to him, I am the God who brought you out of the land of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit” [Genesis 15:7]. These words indicate not only a promise, but also the confirmation of an old promise. The good granted in the past was his departure from Chaldean sky-talk (meteōrologia), which taught that the cosmos was not God’s work, but the cosmos was itself God, and that to all existing things better and worse circumstances are determined by the courses and ordered revolutions of the stars, and that on these depends the birth of good and bad. The even character, the uniformly ordered motion of the heavenly bodies have induced weak-minded people to adopt this fantastic teaching. Actually, the name “Chaldean” when interpreted corresponds to even character or levelness.
The new good gift is inheritance of the wisdom which cannot be received by sense, but is apprehended by a completely pure and clear mind. Through this wisdom the best of all migrations becomes an established fact, the migration of the soul which passes from astronomy (astronomia) to the study of true nature, from insecure conjecture to firm apprehension, and to give it its truest expression, from the created to the uncreated, from the cosmos to its maker and father. Thus the oracles tell us that those whose views are of the Chaldean type have put their trust in heaven, while he who has migrated from this home has given his trust to the one who rides on the heaven and guides the chariot of the whole cosmos, even God. This heritage is truly excellent. It may be too great the powers of the recipient, but worthy of the greatness of the giver. . . [omitted sections].
[Abraham as founder of a new descent group and people]
(Who is the Heir 275-279) Having said this much on these points also Moses continues, “but you will depart to your fathers nourished with peace, in a good old age” [Genesis 15:15]. So then we who are imperfect are victims both of war and slavery, and hard-won is our release from the terrors which menace us. But the perfect are a descent group (genos) subject neither to war nor slavery, but nourished in peace and freedom sure and secure.
When he also represents the good man as not dying but departing, there is sound teaching in the words. He would have the nature of the fully purified soul shown as unquenchable and immortal, destined to journey from here to heaven, not to meet with dissolution and corruption, which death appears to bring.
After “you will depart” come the words “to your fathers.” What fathers? This is worth inquiring about. For Moses could not mean those who had lived in the land of the Chaldeans, who were the only relatives Abraham had, seeing that the oracle had set his dwelling away from all those of his blood. For we read, “the Lord said to Abraham: depart from your land and from your relatives and from the house of your father and go into the land which I will show you, and I will make you into a great people (ethnos)” [Genesis 12:1, 2]. Was it reasonable that he should again have affinity with the very persons from whom he had been alienated by the forethought of God? Or that he who was to be the leader of of a people (ethnarchēs) and leader of a descent group (genarchēs) should be associated with that of a former age? God would not grant him a fresh and in a sense a new people and descent group, if he were not cutting him right adrift from the old. Surely he is in fact the founder of the people and the descent group, since from him as root sprang the young plant called Israel, which observes and contemplates all the things of nature. So we are told to bear out the old from the face of the new [Leviticus 26:10]. Rightly, for how they shall they on whom the rain of new blessings has fallen in all its abundance, sudden and unlooked for, still find profit in old and monotonous customs?
[Alternative interpretations of “fathers”: four elements]
(280-289) No! By “fathers” he does not mean those whom the pilgrim soul has left behind, those who lie buried in the graves of Chaldea, but possibly, as some say, the sun, moon and other stars to which it is held that all things on earth owe their birth and framing, or, as others think, the archetypal ideas which, invisible and intelligible there, are the patterns of things visible and sensible here. These are the ideas in which, as they say, the mind of the sage finds its new home. Others again have surmised that by “fathers” are meant the four first leaders (archai) and powers (dynameis), from which the cosmos has been framed: earth, water, air and fire. For into these, they say, each thing that has come into being is duly resolved. Just as nouns and verbs and all parts of speech which are composed of the “elements” (stocheiai) in the grammatical sense are finally resolved into the same, so too each of us is composed of the four mundane elements, borrowing small fragments from the substance of each. That person repays that debt when the appointed time-cycles are completed, rendering the dry in him to earth, the wet to water, the cold to air, and the warm to fire.
These all belong to the body, but the soul whose nature is intellectual and celestial will depart to find a father in aether, the purest of the substances. For we may suppose that as the men of old declared, there is a fifth substance, moving in a circle, differing by its superior quality from the four. Out of this they thought the stars and the whole of heaven had been made and deduced as a natural consequence that the human soul also was a fragment of it.
[Meaning of “nourished with peace”]
The words “nourished with peace” are not a pointless addition, but mean that the majority of humankind are with little exception “nourished” for war and all its attendant evils. Now war sometimes arises from things outside us, waged against us by ill-repute, poverty, low birth and similar things. Sometimes it arises from intestine enemies: in the body, illnesses, maimings, complete disablements of the senses and numberless other disasters piled on each other; and, in the soul, passions, diseases and infirmities of mind, fierce and bitter insurrections, inexpugnable despotisms of folly and injustice and their fellow usurpers. So, then, if a man is “nourished with peace” he will depart, having gained a calm, unclouded life, a life of true bliss and happiness. When will this be found? When there is welfare outside us, welfare in the body, welfare in the soul, the first bringing ease of circumstance and good repute, the second health and strength, the third delight in virtues. For each part needs its own proper guards. The body is guarded by good repute and unstinted abundance of wealth, the soul by the complete health and soundness of the body, the mind by the acquired lore of the various forms of knowledge. Such is the meaning of the text.
For that he is thinking of a peace other than that which cities enjoy is clear to those who are versed in the holy writings. For Abraham underwent great and severe wars, which he is shown to have fought to the finish. And further, the mere leaving of his homeland to emigrate without any possibility of dwelling there again, to be taken here and there and to wander over desolate and untravelled roads were in itself a grievous war for one who had no divine message or promise in which to trust. Still more he had, to crown this profusion of terrors, a third, famine [Genesis 12:10], an evil worse than migration and war. What kind of “peace,” then, was his? For surely to be a homeless emigrant, to be confronted by kings with overwhelming forces and to feel the stress of famine would seem to indicate not one war only, but many and manifold wars.
But if we turn to the allegorical exposition of the words, each of these three proves to be an evidence of peace pure and simple. For dearth and famine of passions, the defeat of enemies in the shape of wrongdoings, the migration from the Chaldean teaching to God-loving teaching, that is, from the created and sensible to the intelligible and creative cause. The latter build up the fabric of good order and stability.
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Preliminary Studies
[Allegorical interpretation of Abraham’s brother, Nahor, as stagnant and incomplete knowledge, like that of the Chaldeans, among whom he stayed]
(Preliminary Studies 44-51) Nahor too, the brother of Abraham, has two wives, legitimate and concubine, and the name of the legitimate wife was Milcah, and the name of the concubine was Reumah [Genesis 22:23-24] . . . [omitted sentences]. Now knowledge is the great sunlight of the soul. For as our eyes are illuminated by the sun’s rays, so is the mind by wisdom. Anointed with the eye-salve of ever fresh acquisitions of knowledge it grows accustomed to see with clearer vision. Nahor is therefore properly called “rest of light.” In so far as he is wise Abraham’s relative, he has obtained a share in wisdom’s light, but in so far as he has not accompanied him abroad in his journey from the created to the uncreated, and from the cosmos to the cosmos’ framer, the knowledge he has gained is halting and incomplete, resting and staying where it is, or rather standing completely, like a lifeless statue. For he does not depart from the land of Chaldea, that is he does not sever himself from speculation concerning astronomy (astronomia). Nahor honours the created before the creator, and the cosmos before God, or rather he holds that the cosmos is not the work of God but is itself God absolute in his power.
[Milcah as Chaldean astrological knowledge, Reumah as scepticism]
But in Milcah he marries a queen, not a ruler of men or perhaps cities, but one who merely bears the same name with a different meaning. For just as heaven, being the best and greatest of created things, may be rightly called the king of the cosmos of our senses, so the knowledge of heaven, which those who study astronomy and the Chaldeans especially pursue, may be called the queen of bodies of knowledge. Milcah, then, is the legitimate wife, but the concubine is the one who sees one thing of what is, though it is not the least important thing. Now to see the best, that is the truly existing, is the lot of the best of descent groups (genos), Israel, for Israel means seeing God. The descent group that strives for the second place sees the second best, that is the heaven of our senses, and therein the well-ordered host of the stars, the choir that moves to the fullest and truest music.
Third are the sceptics, who do not concern themselves with the best things in nature, whether perceived by the senses or the mind, but spend their time on petty quibbles and insignificant disputes. These are the housemates of Reumah, who “sees something” even the smallest, men incapable of the quest for the better things which might bring profit to their lives. In the case of physicians what is called word-medicine is far removed from assistance to the sick, for diseases are cured by drugs and surgery and prescriptions of diet, but not with words. So too in the pursuit of wisdom (philosophia) there are men who are merely word-mongers and word-hunters, who neither wish nor practise to cure their life, brimful of infirmities as it is, but from their earliest years to extreme old age contend in battles of argument and battles of syllables and blush not to do so. They act as though happiness depended on the endless fruitless hypercriticism of words as such instead of on establishing on a better basis character, the fount of human life, by expelling the vices from its borders and planting there the virtues as settlers in their stead.
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On Dreams
[On leaving Chaldean knowledge]
(On Dreams 47-48) Owing to this, as it seems to me, the grandfather also of his knowledge, called Abraham, did not tolerate long stay in Haran. For we read “Abraham was seventy-five years old when he left Haran” [Genesis 12:4], although his father lived there until his death. His father’s name was “Terah,” which means “scent-exploring.” So it is expressed in plain words in the sacred records that “Terah died in Haran” [Genesis 11:32], because he was there as a spy or explorer of virtue, not as a legal holder of virtue. Terah also had recourse to scents, not to enjoyment of nourishing foods, not being capable as yet of being filled with sound sense, no, not even of tasting it, but simply and solely of smelling it.
(On Dreams 52-54) The information that Terah left the land of Chaldea and migrated to Haran, taking with him his son Abraham and his relatives, is given us not with the object that we may learn as from a writer of history, that certain people became emigrants, leaving the land of their ancestors, and making a foreign land their home and country. Instead, it is given so that a lesson well suited to man and of great service to human life may not be neglected.
What is this lesson? The Chaldeans engage in astronomy, while the citizens of Haran busy themselves with the place of the senses. Accordingly sacred account addresses to the explorer of the facts of nature certain questions: “Why do you carry on investigations about the sun, as to whether it is a foot in diameter, whether it is larger than the whole earth, whether it is many times its size? And about the illuminations of the moon, whether it has a borrowed light, or whether it employs one entirely its own? And why do you search into the nature of the other heavenly bodies, or into their revolutions or the ways in which they affect each other and affect earthly things? And why, treading as you do on earth, do you leap over the clouds? And why do you say that you are able to lay hold of what is in the upper air, when you are rooted to the ground? Why do you venture to determine the indeterminate? And why are you so busy with what you should leave alone, the things above? And why do you extend even to the heavens your learned ingenuity? Why do you take up astronomy and pay such full and minute attention to the higher regions? Pay attention not to what is above and beyond your reach, my friend, but what is close to yourself, or rather make yourself the object of your impartial scrutiny. . . . [omitted sections].
(On Dreasm 159-161) He, then, that stands upon the ladder of heaven says to him who sees the dream-vision, “I am the Lord God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. Do not fear” [Genesis 28:13]. This oracle was the fort and most firm stability of the practising soul. Do not think that it is without special point that in this passage the divine relationship to Abraham is expressed by the words “Lord and God,” that to Isaac by the word “God” only. For Isaac is a figure of knowledge gained by nature, knowledge which listens to and learns from no other teacher but itself, while Abraham is a figure of knowledge gained by instruction. Isaac is a dweller on his native soil, while Abraham is an emigrant and a stranger in the land. For, abandoning the Chaldean language of another descent group and another tribe, the language of sky-focussed astronomy (astronomia), he took on the language that is appropriate to a living creature endowed with reason, even the worship of the first cause of all things. . . [omitted remainder].
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On the Virtues
[Abraham’s virtuous move away from the Chaldean astrological perspective to wisdom]
(On the Virtues 212-217) But I can cite others of the opposite and better class, whose ancestors were men of guilt, but their own lives were worthy of emulation and full of good report. The most ancient member of the people (ethnos) of the Judeans was a Chaldean by birth [i.e. Abram/Abraham], the son of an astronomer (astronomia). He was among those who calculate celestial phenomena (mathēmatikos), and think that the stars and the whole heaven and universe are gods, the authors, they say, of the events which happen to each person for good or for ill, and hold that there is no originating cause outside the things we perceive by our senses. What could be more grievous or more capable of proving the total absence of nobility in the soul than this, that its knowledge of the many, the secondary, the created, only leads it to ignore the one, the primal, the uncreated and maker of everything, whose supreme excellence is established by these and countless other attributes of such magnitude that no human reason can contain them?
Perception of these truths and divine inspiration induced him to leave his homeland, his family, and father’s home, knowing that, if he stayed, the delusions of the notion of many gods would stay within him and render it impossible for him to discover the one, who alone is eternal and the father of everything, conceptual and sensible. Whereas if he left, the delusion would also leave his mind and its false notion would be replaced by the truth.
At the same time, also, the fire of yearning, which possessed Abraham to know the existent, was fanned by the divine warnings vouchsafed to him. With these to guide his steps, he went forth never faltering in his effort to seek for the one, nor did he pause until he received clearer visions, not of God’s essence, for that is impossible, but of God’s existence and providence. So he is the first person spoken of as believing in God, since he first grasped a firm and unswerving conception of the truth that there is one cause above everything, and that it provides for the cosmos and everything in it.
After gaining faith, the most sure and certain of the virtues, he gained with it all the other virtues, so that by those among whom he settled he was regarded as a king, not because of the outward state which surrounded him, mere commoner that he was, but because of his greatness of soul, for his spirit was the spirit of a king. In fact, they continued to treat him with a respect which subjects pay to a ruler, being amazed at the all-embracing greatness of his nature and its more than human perfection. For the society also which he sought was not the same as they sought, but under inspiration another more holy one. Thus whenever he was possessed, everything in him changed to something better, eyes, complexion, stature, carriage, movements, and voice. For the divine spirit which was breathed upon him from on high made its lodging in his soul, and invested his body with singular beauty, his voice with persuasiveness, and his hearers with understanding.
Would you not say that this lone wanderer without relatives or friends was of the highest nobility, he who craved for kinship with God and strove by every means to live in familiarity with God, he who while ranked among the prophets, a post of such high excellence, put his trust in nothing created rather than in the uncreated and the father of everything. Abraham was, as I have said, regarded as a king by those in whose midst he settled, a sovereignty gained not with weapons, nor with mighty armies, as is the way of some, but by the election of God, the friend of virtue, who rewards the lovers of piety with imperial powers to benefit those around them? He is the standard of nobility for all foreigners who come, who, abandoning the ignobility of strange laws and monstrous customs which assigned divine honours to stocks and stones and soulless things in general, have come to settle in a better land, in a community full of true life and vitality, with truth as its director and president.
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Questions and Answers on Genesis
[Land of the Chaldeans symbolizes astronomy]
(Questions and Answers on Genesis 3.1 [preserved only in Armenian]) [Genesis 15:7] What is the meaning of the words, “I am the Lord God who led you out of the land of the Chaldeans to give you this land to inherit”? The literal meaning is clear. That which must be rendered as the deeper meaning is as follows: The “land of the Chaldeans” is symbolically mathematical theory, of which astronomy is part. And in this field the Chaldeans labour not unsuccessfully or slothfully. Thus God honours the wise man with two gifts. For one thing God takes him away “from Chaldaean teaching,” which in addition to being difficult to seize and grasp, is the cause of great evils and impiety in attributing to that which is created the powers of the creator, and persuades men to honour and worship the works of the world instead of the creator of the world. And again, God grants Abraham fruitful wisdom which God symbolically calls “land.” And the father shows that wisdom and virtue are immutable and without change or turning, for it is not proper for God to reveal that which is able to admit turning or change, because that which is revealed should be and remain unchangeable and constant. But that which is subject to change and is used to being always fluid does not allow true and proper revelation.
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Source of translation: F.H. Colson, G. Whitaker, and R. Marcus, Philo, 12 volumes, LCL (Cambridge, MA: HUP, 1929-41), public domain (Colson passed away in 1943; Whitaker passed away in 1929; Marcus passed away in 1956), adapted by Harland.