Works of Philo On Mating with the Preliminary Studies Night 5, Post 1 But these men were husbands of many wives and concubines, not only of such as were citizens, as the sacred scriptures tell us, But Isaac had neither many wives nor any concubine at all, but only his first and wedded wife, who lived with him all his life. Why was this? Because the virtue acquired by teaching, which Abraham pursues, requires many things, both such as are legitimate according to prudence, and such also as are illegitimate according to the exegetical contemplations of preliminary instruction. And there is also a virtue which is made perfect by practice, to which Jacob appears to have been devoted, for exercises consist of many and various dogmas and doctrines, some leading and others following, some leading the way, and others arriving later, and bringing at one time more serious, and at other times lighter labors. But the self instructed race, of which Isaac was a partaker, the excellent country of the mastery over the passions, has received as its share a nature simple, and unmixed, and unalloyed, standing in no need of either practice or instruction in which there is need of the concubine sciences, and not only of the citizen wives, for when God has showered down from above that most requisite benefit of knowledge, self-taught, and having no need of a preceptor, it would be impossible any longer for a man to live with the slavish and concubine arts, having a desire for bastard doctrines as his children
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 17:48:17 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015