Philo and the Liber Mundi

(Not Philo, but maybe he looked like this!)

LAST week I felt inspired to look at Philo’s On Dreams again.  The Introduction in Colson & Whitaker’s translation didn’t turn up much of new interest, until I got to their summary of Philo’s interpretation of Jacob’s ladder dream.

Philo pays particular attention to Jacob’s statement, “this is a gate of heaven” (Gen. 28:17).  Here Philo sees a reference to how the sensory world is a ‘gate’ to the Ideal world — every material thing being an image or shadow of a corresponding eternal Idea.  To me it seems Philo isn’t making so much a technical metaphysical point as a practical, psychological and experiential one: in the proper frame of mine, we can ascend from material things to catch sight of Eternal Beauty, or of objects belonging to that realm.

There are obviously Platonic overtones here — implicit references to the ascent to God from contemplation of beautiful things in Symposium 201–212, parts of the Timaeus, and the ‘pure world’ myth of Phaedo 107c–115a.  But in another sense it comes across (at least to me) as reminiscent of Neoplatonism — not just Plotinus, but of the characteristically Renaissance Neoplatonism idea that the world is a Book of God, a mirror or gateway into a corresponding universe of eternal, perfect Forms. One proceeds, say, from seeing an actual beautiful flower to somehow intuiting or contemplating a truth that the object not only instantiates, but one which the object is intended to convey to us for some didactic purpose.

IF that corresponds to Philo’s intentions it seems worth mentioning, because then it means that Philo is expressing this typically Neoplatonist idea two centuries before Plotinus.

Or perhaps I’m reading too much into the passage.  This general subject has been on my mind lately as I’ve recently collected and placed online quotations from American Transcendentalists and others about the transcendent beauty and meaning of flowers, illustrated with my photos  (Visit the new website Florigelium here).

Genesis 28

[10] And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran.

[11] And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep.

[12] And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

[13] And, behold, the LORD stood above it, and said, I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed;?

[14] And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

[15] And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.

[16] And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.

[17] And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.

Philo, On Dreams 1 (De Somniis 1)

XXXII. [184]
Rightly, therefore, was he afraid and said in an awestruck tone, “How dreadful is this place” (Gen. 28:17). For indeed most difficult of the “places” in the study of nature’s verities is that in which men inquire as to where, and whether at all in any thing the Existent Being is. Some say that everything that subsists occupies some space, and of these one allots to the Existent One this space, another that, whether inside the world or a space outside it in the interval between worlds. Others maintain that the Unoriginate resembles nothing among created things, but so completely transcends them, that even the swiftest understanding falls far short of apprehending Him and acknowledges its failure.

[185]
Wherefore he straightway cried aloud “This is not” (ibid. 17); this that I supposed, “that the Lord is in some place” (ibid. 16), is not so; for according to the true reckoning He contains, but is not contained. But this that we can point out and see, this world discerned by sense, is, as I now know, nothing but a house of “God,” that is, of one of the Potencies of the Existent, that is, the Potency which expresses His goodness.

[Note:  Yonge translates this paragraph in a somewhat less difficult way as: “wherefore (Jacob) speedily cries out, This is not what I expected, because the Lord is in the place”; for he surrounds everything, but in truth and reason he is not surrounded by anything. And this thing which is demonstrated and visible, this world perceptible by the outward senses, is nothing else but the house of God, the abode of one of the powers of the true God, in accordance with which he is good;”]

[186]
The world which he named a “house,” he also described as “gate of” the real “heaven” (ibid. 17). Now what is this? The world which only intellect can perceive, framed from the eternal forms in Him [Note: Perhaps meaning the Logos] Who was appointed in accordance with Divine bounties, cannot be apprehended otherwise than by passing on to it from this world which we see and perceive by our senses.

[187]
For neither indeed is it possible to get an idea of any other incorporeal thing among existences except by making material objects our starting-point. The conception of place was gained when they were at rest: that of time from their motion, and points and lines and superficies, in a word extremities from the robe-like exterior which covers them.

[188]
Correspondingly, then, the conception of the intelligible world was gained from the one which our senses perceive: it is therefore a kind of gate into the former. For as those who desire to see our cities go in through gates, so all who wish to apprehend the unseen world are introduced to it by receiving the impression of the visible world. The world whose substance is discernible only by intellect apart from any sight whatever of shapes or figures, but only by means of the archetypal eternal form present in the world which was fashioned in accordance with the image beheld by him with no intervening shadow, — that world shall change its title, when all its walls and every gate has been removed and men may not catch sight of it from some outside point, but behold the unchanging beauty, as it actually is, and that sight no words can tell or express.

p.s. This passage connects with an earlier one in On Dreams about which I wrote previously.

Reference

Colson, F.H.; Whitaker, G. H.  On Dreams.  In: Philo in Ten Volumes, Vol. 5. Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA, 1938.

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