Philo reads Genesis 2's making of Eve and Genesis 3's serpent as an allegory of mind, sense-perception, and the passions.
Allegorical Interpretation II is the second installment of Philo of Alexandria's verse-by-verse philosophical commentary on Genesis 2-3. Rather than treating Adam and Eve as historical individuals, Philo reads them as symbols in a psychological drama: Adam represents the human mind (nous), Eve represents sense-perception (aisthesis), and their union, separation, and the serpent's intervention map the soul's struggle between reason and the passions.
The book opens with God's declaration that "it is not good for the man to be alone" (Gen. 2:18), which Philo uses to distinguish two kinds of "man": the one made in God's image (pure mind) and the earth-molded one who needs a helper. That helper -- sensation -- is created from the sleeping mind's rib, and Philo works through why sensation is described as bone, flesh, and passion of the mind, why it is called "woman," and why Scripture says a man leaves father and mother to cling to his wife. He treats the five senses as instruments the mind employs to grasp the world, and the passions (pleasure, desire, grief, fear, anger) as forces that, rightly used, preserve the race but, unchecked, enslave the mind to sensation.
The second half turns to the serpent of Genesis 3 and the Song of Moses in Exodus 15, weaving in Jacob's blessing on Dan ("a horseman falls backward," Gen. 49:17) and the dietary law about leaping creatures in Leviticus 11. Philo allegorizes the serpent as pleasure -- "the most cunning of all the wild beasts" -- and the horse-and-rider imagery of the Song as the passions carrying an enslaved mind to destruction. He closes by urging the reader's own mind to fight pleasure as a wrestler fights for an uncrowned, non-human prize. Throughout, the work exemplifies Philo's method of decoding Torah narrative into a Stoic-and-Platonic psychology of virtue over passion, making it a key witness to how a first-century Alexandrian Jew fused biblical text with Greek philosophical categories.
“God alone, being one by himself, is unique; nothing is like God.”
— Allegorical Interpretation II · read this chapter →
“For pleasure helps toward the continuance of our race, as does desire; and grief and fear too, by biting the soul, turn it to disregard nothing”
— Allegorical Interpretation II · read this chapter →
“Observe, however, that it is not the woman who clings to the man, but rather, conversely, the man who clings to the woman”
— Allegorical Interpretation II · read this chapter →
“Fight, then, you too, O mind, against every passion, and above all against pleasure.”
— Allegorical Interpretation II · read this chapter →
It is Philo of Alexandria's philosophical commentary on Genesis 2:18 through Genesis 3, reading the creation of Eve and the serpent's temptation as an allegory of the mind, the senses, and the passions rather than as literal history. Philo also draws in the Song of Moses (Exodus 15) and Jacob's blessing (Genesis 49) to reinforce his interpretation.
Eve symbolizes sense-perception (aisthesis), created as a helper to the mind (Adam) but subordinate and "younger" than it. Philo explains her formation from Adam's rib as sensation being generated from, and dependent on, the mind.
Philo allegorizes the serpent as pleasure, calling it "the most cunning of all the wild beasts," because pleasure is the most cunning force enslaving the unwary human mind. He urges the reader's mind to fight against pleasure as its central ethical battle.
Philo distinguishes two kinds of humans: the one made in God's image, for whom aloneness would leave the mind without the sensation it needs to engage the world, and the earth-molded human. Being alone is good only for God, who is uniquely self-sufficient and needs nothing.
Philo practices allegorical exegesis, treating Genesis narrative details as coded philosophical statements about mind, sensation, and passion, and cross-referencing other Torah passages (Exodus, Leviticus, Genesis 49) as confirming evidence for each reading.
Allegorical Interpretation I · Allegorical Interpretation III · Every Good Man is Free · Flaccus · On Abraham · On Dreams · On Drunkenness · On Flight and Finding · On Husbandry · On Joseph · On Mating / Preliminary Studies · On Noah's Work as a Planter