In the third book of
the "Questions to Genesis" Philo directly grapples with this
objection. Commenting on the verse (Gen. xv. 9), "Take for me a heifer
of three years old and a goat of three years old," etc., he says that
in interpreting any part or any verse of Scripture we must look to the
purpose of the whole and explain it from this outlook, "without
dissecting or disturbing its harmony or disintegrating its
unity."[133] Why should God, asked the scoffer, reveal these trivial
or prolix details? Philo's answer is in fact to spiritualize
everything that is material, and universalize everything that is
particular. While he believes in the literal inspiration of the Bible,
he does not insist upon the literal truth of every word of it, and in
the opening chapters of Genesis in particular, he treats the tales as
symbolical or allegorical myths. His philosophical commentary on the
creation, corresponding to the [Hebrew: m'sha br'shit] of the
rabbis, is found in the book _De Mundi Opificio_, which stands in
modern editions at the head of his writings. Its main theme is to
trace in the text the Platonic idealism, _i.e._, the theory that God
first created transcendental, incorporeal archetypes of all
physical and material things. Philo uses the double account of the
creation of man in the first and second chapters of Genesis as clear
evidence that the Bible describes--for those who have the mind to
see--the creation of an ideal before the terrestrial man.
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