Philonis Judaei Opera Omnia (Vol. 7)

was its origin. Furthermore, regarding the phrase offer to me original: "ferto mihi", it is excellently said: take for me original: "accipe mihi"; since the creature has nothing strictly its own, but all things are gifts and graces of God: to whom it is entirely pleasing that, when one has received something, he should return thanks with his whole heart. He orders one to take each of the animals as three years old; since three is a full and perfect number, consisting of a beginning, a middle, and an end. Yet one may ask, why does he introduce two females from the three animals, a heifer and a goat, but only one male, a ram? Perhaps it is because the heifer and the goat are offered for sin, but the sheep is not; just as sin arises from frailty, and the female is frail.

P. A. 170

It seemed appropriate to say this much. I am not unaware, however, that all such things provide an opportunity for men who vainly criticize to disparage the sacred books. Therefore, now they say nothing else but that an immolation sacrifice is being delineated and indicated through the division of the animals and the inspection of the entrails: and as for the fact that they sat down, they claim this is an indication of convenience and a similarity arising from visible things. But these men, as I think I know, are among those who judge the whole from a single part, and not conversely the part from the whole; which is a better judgment, by which both the name and the thing are thoroughly tested.

The giving of the law (that is, the sacred scripture) is, so to speak, a certain living unity: which one must look at clearly with full eyes and perceive the entire intention of the entire scripture truly, certainly, and manifestly, without dissecting the harmony nor breaking up the unity; otherwise, all things would appear entirely alien and absurd, with the community or equity destroyed. What then is the purported intention of the law-giving? Scientific *) It could also be translated as 'knowledge-based' or 'prescient' or rather 'prognostic.',