Works of Philo of Alexandria

Philo — Works Vol. I, Yonge — Section 81

I. " And the heaven and the earth and all their world was completed."* Having previously related the creation of the mind and of sense, Moses now proceeds to describe the perfection which was brought about by them both. And he says that neither the indivisible mind nor the particular sen- sations received perfection, but only ideas, one the idea of the mind, the other of sensation. And, speaking symbolically, he calls the mind heaven, since the natures which can only be comprehended by the intellect are in heaven. And sensation he calls earth, because it is sensation which has obtained a corporeal and somewhat earthy constitution. The ornaments of the mind are all the incorporeal things, which are percep- tible only by the intellect. Those of sensation are the cor- poreal things, and everything in short which is perceptible by the external senses. II. " And on the sixth day God finished his work which he had made." It would be a sign of great simplicity to think that the world was created in six days, or indeed at all in time ; because all time is only the space of days and nights, and these things the motion of the sun as he passes over the earth and under the earth does necessarily make. But the 6un is a portion of heaven, so that one must confess that time * Genesis ii. 1. ON THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. 53 is a thing posterior to the world. Therefore it would be cor- rectly said that the world was not created in time, but that time had its existence in consequence of the world. For it is the motion of the heaven that has displayed the nature of time.