Philo's allegorical treatise on why God renames Abram, Sarah, and Jacob in Genesis, reading each name-change as a stage of the soul's progress toward virtue and knowledge of God.
On the Change of Names is one of Philo of Alexandria's allegorical commentaries on Genesis, taking as its starting point God's appearance to the ninety-nine-year-old Abraham in Genesis 17:1 and the renamings that follow in the patriarchal narratives. Philo treats the biblical text as a code: every numeral, letter, and change of name signals something about the soul's ascent from sense-perception and cosmology toward virtue and the contemplation of the truly Existent God.
The treatise opens with a long meditation on why God is unknowable and unnameable - Moses himself, 'the beholder of the invisible nature,' cannot see God's essence but only his 'back parts,' and even the name 'Lord' is only an accommodation to human weakness. Philo then works through the renamings one by one: Abram ('uplifted father,' the astronomer who studies the heavens) becomes Abraham ('elect father of sound,' the wise man who has moved from natural philosophy to ethics); Sarah becomes Sarrah, moving from particular to generic virtue; and Jacob ('supplanter') becomes Israel ('one who sees God'). He also explains why Abraham and Israel permanently replace their old names while Jacob is still called Jacob afterward, and why Isaac alone is never renamed at all - each case illustrating a different relationship between taught virtue, trained virtue, and natural virtue. Joseph's Egyptian name, Psonthomphanech, gets similar treatment as a symbol of worldly stewardship.
The work matters as a prime specimen of Philo's method: Hellenistic Jewish allegorical exegesis that reads Genesis through a Middle Platonist and Stoic philosophical lens, converting patriarchal biography into a psychology of moral and intellectual progress. It shows how a first-century Alexandrian Jew could hold Mosaic law as literally authoritative while treating its narrative surface as a doorway to universal ethical philosophy - a hermeneutic that decisively shaped later Christian allegorical reading, especially in Origen and the Alexandrian tradition.
“Abraham was ninety-nine years old, and the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to him: I am your God”
— On the Change of Names · read this chapter →
“Show yourself to me, that I may see you with knowledge”
— On the Change of Names · read this chapter →
“You shall see my back parts, but my face shall not be seen by you”
— On the Change of Names · read this chapter →
“Abram, when interpreted, means "uplifted father"; Abraham means "elect father of sound."”
— On the Change of Names · read this chapter →
“But Jacob too came to be renamed Israel, and not without purpose.”
— On the Change of Names · read this chapter →
It is Philo of Alexandria's allegorical commentary on why God renames Abram, Sarah, and Jacob in Genesis. Philo reads each name change as marking a stage in the soul's progress from cosmology and sense-perception toward virtue and knowledge of God.
Philo explains that Abraham and Jacob, the 'outer two' patriarchs, were renamed because taught and trained virtue admit of improvement and change, while Isaac, representing self-taught virtue given by nature, retained the same name forever because his condition needed no alteration.
Philo says Jacob means 'supplanter,' the name of one still struggling against passion, while Israel means 'one who sees God,' representing the soul that has achieved the vision of the Existent - which is why, in his reading, the text keeps calling the patriarch by both names afterward.
Philo argues the Existent is beyond sense-perception and mind alike, so 'Lord' and even the name revealed to Moses ('I am the One who is') are only accommodations allowing humans some verbal approach to a being who is, in his own nature, ineffable.
It is thoroughly allegorical: Philo treats the literal narrative details of Genesis, including single added letters in names, as symbols encoding philosophical and psychological truths about the soul's ascent to virtue.
Allegorical Interpretation I · Allegorical Interpretation II · 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