On the Posterity of Cain and His Exile
Philo of Alexandria
Section 170
About this work
An allegorical reading of Cain’s exile and descendants. Philo explores the development of vice and the opposing pursuit of virtue.
- Author
- Philo of Alexandria
- Date
- First century AD; dates vary by treatise
- Genre
- Theological Treatise
- Textual language
- Greek
- Translator
- C. D. Yonge
- Translation / Edition
- C. D. Yonge translation, first published 1854.
XLIX. (170) Therefore the mind having generated the foundation of good [...] and the primary principle of virtue, namely Seth, or irrigation, boasts with an honourable and holy boast; for she says, "God has raised up to me another seed, instead of Abel whom Cain Slew," for it has been said with great exactness and neatness, that no single divine seed ever falls to the ground, but that they all rise up from the things of earth, and leave them, and are borne upwards to heaven; (171) but the seeds which are sown by mortals, whether for the generation of animals or of plants, do not all come to perfection; but we must be content if more are not wasted than those which remain above; and God sows nothing in our souls which is incomplete; but his seed is all so seasonable and so perfect that every one of them is at once borne forward to produce abundance of its appropriate fruit.