Philonis Judaei Opera Omnia (Vol. 8)

restored the nations to liberty; and he displayed a double virtue, since he granted life and joy to these, while he gave miserable death and inconsolable mourning to those: he enabled the former to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving, while the latter were suddenly overwhelmed by the horror and shock of sudden death.

§. 4. After these events, he arranges the order of the laws and the ascent of Moses and the elders onto the mountain with Hur and Aaron, some gazing upon the light of divine revelation, while others remained below according to the level of their dignity. He adds the stone tablets received and the rest up to the oracle of the law, encompassing the ten words: the virtue of which he artificially explains through the very number of the commandments, and interprets where the perfection of such a thing is situated. He also treats the priest’s garment the priestly vestments mystically; where he also commemorates the Christ anointed one of God, and professes his supreme power with the Father. *) Up to this point, the interpreter excellently describes the order of Philo’s books according to the arrangement of our better codex; where after the questions on Genesis and Exodus, it deals with the Priests, the Altar, and the Decalogue: then after some things concerning Samson, Jonah, and the three Angels, the discourse on Providence is placed with what follows. Auch.

§. 5. Since Philo was instructed and imbued with almost all the wisdom of the Greeks and nourished under the divine law, he attacks the futile opinions of the heathens original: "Ethnicorum", who attributed the prosperous and adverse cases of lower changes to the movements and periods cycles of the stars/planets; and consequently believed that all things were subject to fortune, fate, and immutable necessity: so that the providence of the creator and the perpetual arbiter of our affairs was entirely removed.