Philo of Alexandria on Genesis 12:4 (1)

Text
Philo of Alexandria, The Migration of Abraham 32 (176-179):
Let us first examine the significance of Harran and of the removal from this country. No one versed in the Laws is likely to be unaware that an earlier date Abraham migrated from Chaldea and dwelt in Harran, and that after his father’s death there, he removes from that country also, so that he has at this point already quitted two places. What remark does this call for? The Chaldeans have the reputation of having, in a degree quite beyond that of other peoples, elaborated astronomy and the casting of nativities. They have set up a harmony between things on earth and things on high, between heavenly things and earthly. Following as it were the laws of musical proportion, they have exhibited the universe as a perfect concord or symphony produced by a sympathetic affinity between its parts, separated indeed in space, but housemates in kinship. These men imagined that this visible universe was the only thing in existence, either being itself God or containing God in itself as the soul of the whole. And they made Fate and Necessity divine, thus filling human life with much impiety, by teaching that apart from phenomena there is no originating cause of anything whatever, but that the circuits of sun and moon and the other heavenly bodies determine for every being in existence both good things and their opposites.

Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Philo of Alexandria, The Migration of Abraham 32 (176-179)

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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