Texts in Conversation
Philo’s description of a soul drinking wisdom from a divine rock and Paul's reference in 1 Corinthians 10 of the rock that followed the Israelites reflect a Jewish midrash about a miraculous rock that accompanied Israel in the wilderness.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Philo, Allegorical Interpretation
Classical
and quenches with unfailing health the thirst of the soul that had turned from Him. For the flinty rock is the wisdom of God, which He marked off from His powers as highest and chief, and from which He satisfies the thirsty souls that love God. And when they have been given water to drink, they are filled also with the manna, the most generic of substances, for the manna is called “somewhat,” and that suggests the summum genus. But the primal existence is God, and next to Him is the Word of God; all other things subsist in word only, and in their active effects some of them are as good as non-subsisting.
Date: 20–50 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
1 Corinthians 10:4
New Testament
1 For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they were all drinking from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. 5 But God was not pleased with most of them, for they were cut down in the wilderness.
Date: 55–57 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... It is noteworthy that in Deuteronomy 1:5 it says: "... Moses undertook to explain (בֵּאֵר, be'er, 'to explain' or 'make clear') the Torah." בֵּאֵר (be'er) is, of course, related to בְּאֵר (be'er, 'well'; cf. Deuteronomy 27:8), and this suggests that there was a cognate verbal connection between the "well" and Torah interpretation by the time Deuteronomy was written. Also, Philo equates the "rock" with the wisdom of God (Legum Allegoriarum II.86 and Quod Deterius Potiori Insidiari Soleat 115–119). In light of the association between Torah and Wisdom, this is an important connection ..."
Aageson, James W.
Paul's Use of Scripture: A Comparative Study of Biblical Interpretation in Early Palestinian Judaism and the New Testament With Special Reference to Romans 9-11
(p. 266) Mansfield College, the University of Oxford, 1983
* 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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