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Philo’s On the Creation distinguishes two human creations from Genesis, an earthly Adam formed from dust and a heavenly intellectual Adam made in God’s image. Philo’s reading depends on the Greek Septuagint translation he quotes.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
LXX Genesis 2:7
Septuagint
6 yet a spring would rise from the earth and water the whole face of the earth. 7 And God formed man, dust from the earth, and breathed into his face a breath of life, and the man became a living being. 8 And the Lord God planted an orchard in Edem toward the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
Philo On the Creation
Classical
After this, Moses says that "God made man, having taken clay from the earth, and he breathed into his face the breath of life." And by this expression he shows most clearly that there is a vast difference between man as generated now, and the first man who was made according to the image of God. For man as formed now is perceptible to the external senses, partaking of qualities, consisting of body and soul, man or woman, by nature mortal. But man, made according to the image of God, was an idea, or a genus, or a seal, perceptible only by the intellect, incorporeal, neither male nor female, imperishable by nature. But he asserts that the formation of the individual man, perceptible by the external senses is a composition of earthy substance, and divine spirit. For that the body was created by the Creator taking a lump of clay, and fashioning the human form out of it; but that the soul proceeds from no created thing at all, but from the Father and Ruler of all things. For when he uses the expression, "he breathed into," etc., he means nothing else than the divine spirit proceeding form that happy and blessed nature, sent to take up its habitation here on earth, for the advantage of our race, in order that, even if man is mortal according to that portion of him which is visible, he may at all events be immortal according to that portion which is invisible; and for this reason, one may properly say that man is on the boundaries of a better and an immortal nature, partaking of each as far as it is necessary for him; and that he was born at the same time, both mortal and the immortal. Mortal as to his body, but immortal as to his intellect.
Date: 20-50 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... Philo makes very clever use here of the major differences between the two creation accounts in Genesis. The man created from the dust of the earth—in using the word ‘clay’ Philo follows the Septuagint translation—is the earthly Adam (in the literary sense of the word), consisting of body and soul, who has a partner (as Genesis 2:21ff. describes in graphic detail, unlike the first creation account where the woman is at most hinted at) and who is mortal (sleep). Quite in contrast, the man of Genesis 1 is incorporeal, not yet male or female, and incorruptible, that is, immortal. The earthly Adam of Genesis 2 is part of the kosmos aisthētos, whereas the heavenly Adam of Genesis 1 pertains to the kosmos noētos, perceived only by the intellect ...”
Schäfer, Peter
The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other
(p. 208) Princeton University Press, 2012
* 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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