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LXX Genesis

Septuagint

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Chapter 2

1 And the heavens and the earth were finished, and the whole world of them. 2 And God finished⁠ on the⁠ sixth day his works⁠ which he made, and he ceased on the seventh day from all his works which he made.⁠ 3 And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he ceased from all his works which God began to do. 4 This is the book of the generation of heaven and earth, when they were made, in the day in which God made the heaven and the earth, 5 and every herb of the field before it was on the earth, and all the grass of the field before it sprang up, for God had not rained on the earth, and there was not a man to cultivate it. 6 But there rose a fountain out of the earth, and watered the whole face of the earth. 7 And God formed the man of dust of the earth,⁠ and breathed upon his face the breath of life,⁠ and the man became a living soul. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and placed there the man whom he had formed. 9 And God made to spring up also out of the earth every tree beautiful to the eye and good for food, and the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of learning the knowledge of good and evil. 10 And a river proceeds out of Eden to water the garden, from there it divides itself into four heads. 11 The name of the one, Pishon, this it is which encircles the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good, there also is carbuncle and emerald. 13 And the name of the second river is Gihon, this it is which encircles the whole land of Ethiopia. 14 And the third river is Tigris, this is that which flows forth over against the Assyrians. And the fourth river is Euphrates. 15 And the Lord God took the man whom he had formed, and placed him in the garden, to cultivate and keep it. 16 And the Lord God gave a charge to Adam, saying, Of every tree which is in the garden you may freely eat, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of it you shall not eat, but in whatever day you eat of it, you shall surely die. 18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone, let us make for him a help suitable to him.⁠ 19 And God formed yet farther out of the earth all the wild beasts of the field, and all the birds of the sky, and he brought them to Adam, to see what he would call them, and whatever Adam called any living creature, that was the name of it. 20 And Adam gave names to all the cattle and to all the birds of the sky, and to all the wild beasts of the field, but for Adam there was not found a help like to himself. 21 And God brought a trance upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs, and filled up the flesh instead of it. 22 And the Lord God formed the rib which he took from Adam into a woman, and brought her to Adam. 23 And Adam said, This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of her husband. 24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cling to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.⁠ 25 And the two were naked, both Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Texts in conversation

Compare LXX Genesis 2:7 and Philo, On the Creation

Septuagint · Classical

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Summary

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 draws on the Greek Septuagint translation he quotes.

Passages

LXX Genesis 2:7

Septuagint
6 But there rose a fountain out of the earth, and watered the whole face of the earth. 7 And God formed the man of dust of the earth, and breathed upon his face the breath of life, and the man became a living soul. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and placed there the man whom he had formed.
300–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Genesis

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." By this expression he shows very clearly that there is a vast difference between man as he is generated now and the first man, who was made according to the image of God. For man as he is formed now is perceptible to the external senses; he partakes of qualities, consists of body and soul, is man or woman, and is mortal by nature. 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, who is perceptible by the external senses, is a composition of earthy substance and divine spirit. For the body was created when the Creator took a lump of clay and fashioned the human form out of it, but the soul proceeds from no created thing at all; it comes from the Father and Ruler of all things. For when he uses the expression, "he breathed into," etc., he means nothing other than the divine spirit proceeding from that happy and blessed nature, sent to make its home here on earth for the benefit of our race, so that, even if man is mortal in the part of him that is visible, he may at least be immortal in the part that is invisible. For this reason one may properly say that man stands on the boundary of a better and an immortal nature, partaking of each as far as he needs, and that he was born both mortal and immortal at the same time. He is mortal in his body, but immortal in his intellect.
20–50 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Philo, On the Creation

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 ...”
Peter Schäfer, The Jewish Jesus: How Judaism and Christianity Shaped Each Other (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 208.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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LXX Genesis 2:7 and Philo, On the Creation

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