Philonis Judaei Opera Omnia (Vol. 8)

the number of these, this Philo is also believed to have been *): for during those times he was prefect of the city of Alexandria P. A. and was sent as an ambassador to Rome to Gaius Caesar, returning thence in disgrace; which Eusebius Pamphili testifies happened at the time of the preaching of Peter in Rome **).

(Among his commentaries, they hold the first place). Questions and Solutions on Genesis. He calls Genesis the creation of all things made by the uncreated God, which that theologian Moses narrates in order with those words, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth: by which he briefly hints at the origin of intelligible and sensible creatures. But so that creatures might not be considered confused, the historian follows a certain order, and recounts the first day, the second, and the others up to the seventh; although the will and power of God were entirely equal to creating all things at once. Perceiving this, that great sage bears witness to the historian’s words, that God does not need time, but all things existed before time and were contained incorporeally within His knowledge: and when He willed, He formed the genus of intellectual things and endowed all sensible things with a visible quality, which were signs of the invisible.

To this pertains what he relates concerning God making the herbs and plants before He rained upon the earth, and before the sprout had sprouted, He made the sprouts; P. A. and whatever else he says literally about paradise and the rivers and other things: then what he says about the deception of the serpent, the assent of the woman, and the agreement of the man. Then he expounds in order the just punishment, namely the expulsion from paradise: likewise the offering of sacrifices by Abel, approved by God, and the rejection of Cain from the face of God: finally all the events

*) Where the Armenian interpreter derived this, I do not know: in the same way as what he added shortly after regarding the Alexandrian prefecture of Philo himself. Auch.
**) Euseb. Hist. Eccl. II. 5. and Chron. P. II. in the 3rd year of Gaius Caesar. Auch.