PHILO JUDAEUS

OF QUESTIONS AND SOLUTIONS REGARDING THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE IN GENESIS,

THIRD DISCOURSE.

What is: I am the Lord your God, who led you out of the land of the Chaldeans, to give you this land as an inheritance? original: "Genes. 15, 7."

§. 1. Since the literal text is clear as regards the force of the statement, it must be explained in this way. The land of the Chaldeans is symbolically the study of mathematics, of which astronomy is recognized as a part; the Chaldeans study this not in vain or lazily. Therefore, he honors the wise man with a double gift: first, by delivering him from the sect of astrologers, namely from the hallucination of Chaldeanism, which, being difficult to grasp, is found to be the cause of great evils and impiety, attributing the virtues to the deeds of the creator and persuading people to worship and venerate the works of the world as God. P. A. 168 Secondly, by granting him fruitful wisdom, which he symbolically called land. However, the Father (of the universe) shows that wisdom and virtue are invariable and unchangeable; since it is not fitting that God should show to anyone that original: "Vel: monstretur aut figuretur velut aliquid, quod etc." which is able to undergo variation or change: for what is shown must exist from the immutable and constant;