Texts in Conversation
Philo interprets the two creation accounts of Genesis by contrasting a heavenly man, made in the divine image, and an earthly man, formed from clay. In 1 Corinthians, Paul uses similar language to contrast the man of earth with the man from heaven.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Philo Allegorical Interpretation 1:12
Classical
“ And God formed the man by taking clay from the earth, and breathed into his face a breath of life, and the man became a living soul ”’ (Gen. ii. 7). There are two types of men ; the one a heavenly man, the other an earthly. The heavenly man, being made after the image of God, is altogether without part or lot in corruptible and terrestrial substance ; but the earthly one was compacted out of the matter scattered here and there, which Moses calls ‘‘clay.” For this reason he says that the heavenly man was not moulded, but was stamped with the image of God; while the earthly is a moulded work of the Artificer, but not His offspring. We must account the man made out of the earth to be mind mingling with, but not yet blended with, body. But this earthlike mind is in reality also corruptible, were not God to breathe into it a power of real life ; when He does so, it does not any more undergo moulding, but becomes a soul, not an inefficient and imperfectly formed soul, but one endowed with mind and actually alive ; for he says, “man became a living soul.”
Date: 20-50 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
1 Corinthians 15:44
New Testament
42 It is the same with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44 it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living person”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 However, the spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man is from the earth, made of dust; the second man is from heaven.
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Notes and References
"... Here, in regard to 1 Corinthians 15:44-49, a fascinating question arises as to whether Paul was also influenced by Philo. The question arises from Paul's distinction between the earthly man and the man from heaven, between the man of ψυχή and the man of πνευμα. For Philo also works with a similar contrast ... As is generally recognized, Philo was able to work from the two creation narratives, the one (Genesis 1) narrating the creation of man in the divine image, the second (Genesis 2) narrating the creation of man from the clay. Read against a Platonic cosmology, the heavenly man is first, 'made after the image of God'; the earthly man an inferior copy, molded by God, to be sure, but from earthly matter, 'clay' ..."
Dunn, James D. G.
"Adam in Paul" in Oegema, Gerbern S., et al., editors. The Pseudepigrapha and Christian Origins: Essays from the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas
(pp. 124-125) T&T Clark International, 2008
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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