Questions and Answers on Genesis
Philo of Alexandria
Book 2 · Section 32
About this work
Questions and answers interpreting passages in Genesis, combining literal explanation with allegory. The surviving text is fragmentary and does not represent the complete original work.
- Author
- Philo of Alexandria
- Date
- First century AD; dates vary by treatise
- Genre
- Commentary
- Textual language
- Greek
- Translator
- C. D. Yonge
- Translation / Edition
- C. D. Yonge translation, first published 1854.
(32) Why does he say, "In the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the heads of the mountains appeared?" (#Ge 8:4). As in numerals the number ten is the extreme bound of the units, being a definitive and perfect number, so too it is the cycle and end of the units, and also the beginning and cycle of the decades, and of infinity of numbers; thus the Creator, on the cessation of the deluge, condescended that the tops of the mountains should appear in the number of the decade, being a definitive and perfect number.