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PHILO's TREATMENT of the NUMBER SEVEN in on CREATION1 the “Problem”

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PHILO's TREATMENT of the NUMBER SEVEN in on CREATION1 the “Problem” CHAPTER THIRTEEN PHILO’S TREATMENT OF THE NUMBER SEVEN IN ON CREATION1 Th e “Problem” It is tempting to say that the author of On Creation2 was inebriated with thoughts of numbers in various connections and relationships. Whether and to what extent he might have been unusual for his time and training is one aspect of the problem. Th at he is usually perceived as unusual in this regard from our modern perspectives is obvious in the literature. My own interest in these matters is closely related to the fact that when I was fi rst learning about the ancient Pythagoreans and their interpretations of reality in terms of number, I never could force myself, in scholarly empathy, into their world. Plato was diffi cult enough in his otherness. Now that I have been studying these issues for several decades, I fi nd myself still largely an outsider. And this is itself seductive. Previous Work3 Karl Staehle was searching for the presumed common source of arithmological traditions that surface in the fi rst few centuries of the 1 Th is paper was originally delivered for the SBL Philo Group, November 1996 (New Orleans) and has not appeared previously in hard copy. 2 Please note the following abbreviations and symbols to be used throughout this article: Op = On Creation (De Opifi cio Mundi) LA = Allegorical Interpretation (Legum Allegoria) decad = the unit (one) and numbers up to and including ten Translations are based on the Loeb edition, but sometimes have been modified. 3 Much of the homework for this study has been done in two valuable publications: Karl Staehle, Die Zahlenmystik bei Philon von Alexandreia, a 1929 Tübingen disserta- tion published by Teubner (Wiesbaden) in 1931; and Horst Moehring, “Arithmology as an Exegetical Tool in the Writings of Philo of Alexandria,” a paper presented at the 1978 SBL sessions and published in volume 1 of the “SBL Seminar Papers” from that 218 chapter thirteen common era, especially in the works of Th eon of Smyrna (2nd century, writing on Plato’s mathematical ideas) and Anatolios of Alexandria and Caesarea (3rd century, on the fi rst ten numbers—the “decad”), in addition to Philo. Previous research had focused on the possibility that commentarial traditions on Plato’s Timaeus provided the answer, per- haps fi ltered through a lost work of that much-lost yet apparently highly infl uential author, Posidonius of Apamea in Syria (circa 100 bce), whose “neo-Pythagorean” interests are also frequently highlighted. Staehle, following other studies, thought it was unlikely that the main carrier of the common materials was commentary on the Timaeus, but that there was an early and infl uential arithmological treatise (author and title unknown) from around the end of the 2nd century bce (perhaps of “Alexandrian” provenance), that dealt with the decad and was used, directly or indirectly, by Posidonius, Philo and various other authors. His detailed examination of arithmological passages in all of Philo is aimed at reconstructing more of the suspected common source. Staehle relies heavily on the work of Frank Egleston Robbins in attempting to unravel the question of Philo’s source(s) for his arithmol- ogy.4 Robbins thinks that Posidonius wrote a work περὶ κριτηρίου (peri kritēriou) that was itself dependent on an earlier arithmetic source that shows up also in Anatolios and in a slightly diff erent form in Th eon and some allies.5 Philo is also a witness to this lost arithmological source.6 Indeed, Robbins attempts to place Philo more precisely into the fl ow by close analysis of Op, concluding that Philo and Anatolios tend to year (pp. 191–227). Th is has now been republished, aft er his untimely death in 1986, in a Moehring memorial volume (Th e School of Moses: Studies in Philo and Hellenistic Religion in Memory of Horst R. Moehring [ed. John Peter Kenney; BJS 304; Studia Philonica Monographs 1; Atlanta: Scholars, 1995]) and is described as representing “a stage in the development of a study of arithmology in Philo that has been undertaken as part of the eff ort of the Philo project research team under the leadership of Burton Mack at the IAC [Institute for Antiquity and Christianity] at Claremont” (p. 191). I am unsure whether any of Moehring’s related research has survived beyond the article on “Moses and Pythagoras: Arithmology as an Exegetical Tool in Philo” (ed. Elizabeth Livingstone; Studia Biblica 1978, 1: papers on Old Testament and related themes; JSOTSup 11; Sheffi eld: JSOT, 1979). For more bibliography, see the online site “Number Symbolism in the Mediterranean before A.D. 1000: a Select Bibliography,” ed. Joel Kalvemaki [for his 2006 dissertation on number symbolism, see http://www .kalvesmaki.com/Arithmetic/dissabstract.html]. 4 See Frank Egleston Robbins, “Posidonius and the sources of Pythagorean Arith- mology,” CP 15 (1920) 309ff . and “Th e Tradition of Greek Arithmology,” CP 16 (1921) 97–123. 5 Staehle, Die Zahlenmystik, 15. 6 Philo’s Decal 29 is a key text..
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