Philo's verse-by-verse allegory of Genesis 3-4, reading Adam's flight, Eve, the serpent, and Cain's exile as a map of the soul's struggle with sense-perception and passion.
Allegorical Interpretation III is the third installment of Philo of Alexandria's running commentary on the early chapters of Genesis, continuing straight from the expulsion narrative. Philo opens with Adam and his wife hiding "in the midst of the tree of the garden" and reads the hiding not as a literal event but as the condition of the "worthless person," the soul that tries and fails to escape God's notice. From there he works through a long sequence of Genesis verses -- the midwives who "feared God," Esau the hunter of the field, Jacob's flight from Laban, the serpent's deception of Eve, Melchizedek's bread and wine, Moses' request to see God's glory, the washing of the whole burnt offering, the curse that sentences Adam to eat bread by the sweat of his face -- and unlocks each one as an allegory of psychology and ethics.
Throughout, Philo's method is consistent: characters and objects stand for faculties and states of the soul rather than historical individuals. The serpent is pleasure, which "deceives" perception; the woman is sense-perception itself, receiving impressions from the world; the man is the mind, which either governs perception rightly or is led captive by it. Esau's rough, wandering life models vice as homelessness, while Jacob's careful conduct with Laban's flocks models the disciplined soul's negotiation with the material world. Melchizedek's peaceable kingship, offering bread and wine rather than the spoils of war, is contrasted with the tyrant who brings only conflict. Moses' plea to see God "clearly," not through any created intermediary, becomes Philo's argument that the mind's highest aspiration is unmediated knowledge of the divine rather than inference from the visible cosmos.
The treatise matters as one of the fullest surviving examples of Hellenistic Jewish allegorical exegesis, fusing Stoic and Platonic ethical vocabulary (passions, impressions, the tripartite soul) onto the Hebrew text of Genesis read in Greek. It shows a first-century Alexandrian Jew treating scripture as simultaneously a historical record and a coded psychological and metaphysical treatise, a method that would later shape Christian allegorical interpretation through writers such as Origen.
“This introduces a doctrine that teaches that the worthless person is a fugitive. For if virtue is the native city of the wise, then whoever cannot share in it has been banished from the city the worthless person is unable to share in”
— Allegorical Interpretation III · read this chapter →
“for God has filled all things and has passed through all things, and has left nothing empty or void of himself. What place, then, will someone occupy in which God is not?”
— Allegorical Interpretation III · read this chapter →
“But pleasure does not present the underlying thing to the understanding as it actually is; rather it falsifies it by artifice, bringing what is harmful into the rank of the beneficial.”
— Allegorical Interpretation III · read this chapter →
“For what good is it to make an interpretation vivid and clear, but false? In that case the hearer is bound to be deceived and to reap the greatest misfortune”
— Allegorical Interpretation III · read this chapter →
“for as flame is in motion, so passion, moving in the soul after the manner of a blaze, does not allow it to be at rest”
— Allegorical Interpretation III · read this chapter →
It is the third part of Philo of Alexandria's commentary on Genesis 3-4, moving verse by verse from Adam and Eve's hiding among the trees through Cain's exile. Philo treats each figure and action as an allegory for a faculty or state of the soul rather than as literal history.
The serpent represents pleasure, which Philo says 'deceives' sense-perception, distinguishing this from perception itself, which merely 'gives' impressions to the mind. This distinction runs through his reading of the temptation scene.
Philo uses Esau, described in Genesis as 'skilled in hunting, a man of the field,' as proof that the worthless person is 'without a city and without a home,' making Esau's rough, wandering life a figure for vice.
Philo reads Moses' plea 'Show yourself to me, that I may know you clearly' (Exod. 33:13) as a request for knowledge of God unmediated by heaven, earth, air, or any created thing -- the mind's highest possible aspiration.
Philo contrasts Melchizedek, who brings 'bread and wine' as the peaceable king, with the tyrant who is 'the leader of war,' using the episode to allegorize the soul's choice between conflict-driven passions and virtuous peace.
No. Philo explicitly says 'unless one allegorizes, it is impossible to accept the passage before us,' announcing his method up front: he reads the Genesis narrative as coded ethical and psychological teaching rather than as straightforward history.
Allegorical Interpretation I · Allegorical Interpretation II · 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