Questions and Answers on Genesis
Philo of Alexandria
Book 2 · Section 51
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.
(51) Why is he said to have built an altar to God, and not to the Lord? (#Ge 8:20). In passages of beneficence and regeneration, as at the creation of the world, the sacred writer only refers to the beneficent virtue of the Creator, by which he makes everything in its integrity, and he implies this by concealing the royal name of Lord, as one which bears with it supreme authority; therefore now also, since what he is describing is the beginning of the renewed generation of mankind, he borrows for his description the beneficent virtue, which bears the name of God; for he used the kingly attribute, which declares his imperial power, by which he is called Lord, when he was describing the punishment inflicted by the flood.