In the “Allegories of the Laws,” which is the profounder philosophical doctrine, the account of Adam and Eve is deliberately chosen by Philo as the text of a psychological treatise, in which he analyzes[134] the relations of the mind, the senses, and the pleasures, represented respectively by Adam, Eve, and the Serpent.  The necessity of explaining the story symbolically is professedly based on the fact that otherwise we are driven to the idea that the Bible spoke inaccurately about God.  “It is silly,” he says, “to suppose that Adam and Eve can have hidden themselves in the Garden of Eden, for God filled the whole.”  We are driven then to suggest another meaning; and Philo passes into a homily about the false opinion of the man who follows the bidding of the senses (Eve) at the instigation of pleasure (the Serpent).[135]

The story of Cain and Abel is another piece of moral philosophy embodied in a concrete form.  Abel symbolizes pious humility, Cain the deadly sin of atheism and intellectual pride, which denies the absolute and ever-present power of the Deity.  Philo asks himself the question that other commentators have frequently raised, some in reverence, some in ridicule, “Who was Cain’s wife?"[136] And he answers that the Bible expression about the children of Cain cannot be taken literally, but suggests the union of the ill-ruled mind with impious opinions, which have as their issue false pride and sin.

Philo here treats the stories in the opening of Genesis as pure allegories, in which the men and women represent symbolically characters and qualities.  It should be remembered, however, that these interpretations occur in the commentary where our author is not so much expounding the Torah as deducing secret doctrines from it.  His proper exposition of the law proceeds from the book on the Creation to the lives of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then to the lives of Joseph and Moses.  And in this commentary the Bible narrative is taken as historical truth:  only in addition to the historical fact there is a moral and universal value in every figure and every episode.  The patriarchs’ lives represent the unwritten law which the Greek world held in high honor, for it was considered to contain the broad principles of individual and social conduct, and to be prior logically and chronologically to the written codes.  Moses, therefore, the perfect legislator, according to Philo, has presented in the three founders of the Hebrew race embodiments of the unwritten law of good conduct for all mankind.  Each of them is a moral type of eternal validity and represents one of the ways in which blessedness may be attained.[137] Abraham represents the goodness which comes from instruction; Isaac, the spontaneous goodness that is innate, and the joy (or laughter) of the soul that is God’s gift to his favored sons; Jacob, the goodness that comes after long effort, through the life of practice and severe discipline.  Before this triad, the