Questions and Answers on Genesis
Philo of Alexandria
Book 1 · Section 90
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.
(90) What is the meaning of the expression, "My spirit shall not always strive with man, because he is but flesh?" (#Ge 6:3). An oracle is here promulgated as if it were a law; for the divine spirit is not a motion of the air, but intellect and wisdom; just as it also flows over the man who with great skill constructed the tabernacle of the Lord, namely upon Bezaleel, when the scripture says, "And he filled him with the divine spirit of wisdom and understanding." Therefore that spirit comes upon men, but does not abide or persevere in them; and the Lord himself adds the reason, when he says, "Because they are flesh." For the disposition of the flesh is inconsistent with wisdom, inasmuch as it makes a bond of alliance with desire; on which account it is evident that nothing important can be in the way of incorporeal and light souls, or can be any hindrance to their discerning and comprehending the condition of nature, because a pure disposition is acquired together with constancy.