Philo

Let us follow him from the beginning in his book “On the Allegories of the sacred Laws.” “It would,” he tells us, “be a sign of great simplicity to think that the world was created in six days or indeed at all in time.” Six, therefore, is only mentioned because it is a perfect number, being the first which is produced by the multiplication of two unequal factors. On the seventh day God did not “rest,” but, having desisted from the creation of mortal creatures, began the formation of more divine beings; and the word should be rendered “He cause to rest.” Nature delights in the number seven. There are seven stars in the Bear, seven parts of the soul, seven viscera, seven limbs, seven secretions, seven vowels, seven tones of the voice, seven strings to the lyre; and by God’s “causing to rest” on the seventh day is meant that when reason “which is holy according to the number has entered into the soul, the number six is then arrested, and all the mortal things which this number appears to make.” By “the green herb of the field” Moses means “that portion of the mind which is perceptible only by intellect.” The verse “God did not rain upon the earth,” means that God did not shed the perceptions of things upon the senses. To take literally the words “God planted a Paradise in Eden” is impiety; “let not such fabulous nonsense even enter our minds.” The meaning is that God implants terrestrial virtue in the human race. The tree of life is that most general virtue which some people call goodness. Its four heads are the cardinal virtues. Pheison is derived from pheidomai “I spare,” and means prudence, and being an illustrious virtue it is said to compass the whole land of Evilat where there is gold. The name Gihon means “chest” or an animal which attacks with its horns, and therefore stands for courage, and it compasses Ethiopia or humiliation; in other words, it makes hostile demonstrations against cowardice. Tigris is temperance; the name is connected with a tiger because it resolutely opposes desire. Euphrates means fertility and stands for justice. Again, Pheison means “change of the mouth,” and Evilat “bringing forth,” which is an appropriate name for folly which always aims at the unattainable, and is destroyed by prudence manifested by speaking, i.e. by the changing of the mouth! The carbuncle and emerald of the land of Evilat stand for Judah and Issachar. The Euphrates does not mean the river, but the correction of manners. The literal statement that God cast Adam into a deep sleep and made Eve of one of his ribs is fabulous; the meaning is that God took the power which dwells in the outwards senses, and led it to the mind. The serpent means pleasure, which leads Philo into a long disquisition about the rod of Moses, and the tribe of Dan. Dan means “temperance” though he is the son of Bilhah, which means imbibing; he is a serpent in the path that is in the soul; he bites the heels of the horse, because “passion has four legs as a horse has,” and is an impetuous beast and full of insolence, and the soul which is the rider of this horse falls backwards, i.e. falls from the passions when they have been wounded.

Frederic W. Farrar, History of Interpretation, Bampton Lectures 1885 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1961), 143-144.

Medieval Hermeneutics

The schoolmen fell into the fundamental error of supposing that an elaboration of phraseology is a science of theology, and that we can add to our knowledge of God by dialectic formulae about Him. Can any other name but nonsense be given to discussions as to whether the Father begets the Divine Essence, or whether the Divine Essence begets the Son? Whether the Essence begets the Essence, or whether the Essence itself neither begets nor is begotten? Such questions, as Erasmus says, it is more learned to ignore than to know. For all these years, he says, we have been frivolously caviling in the schools whether we should say that Christ is composed or that He consists of two nature; and whether the right word to use respecting their union is “conflate,” or “commixed,” or “conglutinate,” or “coagmentate,” or “copulated,” or “ferruminate.” What again, are we to say of the immense and long-continued discussions as to whether the host still continued to be the body of Christ if it was eaten by a mouse, or the wine to be his blood when tasted by an insect which had fallen into the chalice?

Frederic W. Farrar, History of Interpretation, Bampton Lectures 1885 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1961), 292-293.