On the Creation of the World (De opificio mundi)

I hope that you will not be offended, Wilhelm Studemund, that I have embraced the happy opportunity offered by this festive day to inscribe your name upon this book, since it has been of greater concern to no one than to you. For when, in the summer of the year 1887, the Royal Berlin Academy original: "Regia Academia Berolinensis" called for a competition for the Charlotte Prize original: "praemium Carlottiano" and proposed that Philo of Alexandria's Philo (c. 20 BCE – 50 CE) was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who sought to harmonize the Torah with Greek philosophy. treatise On the Creation of the World original: "de opificio mundi" be treated with critical method, I would hardly have entered the contest if you had not believed that my strength, though stretched by other occupations, would be sufficient for this work as well.

In Italy, where I happened to be staying at the time, I immediately began to examine and compare compare: the scholarly process of "collating" or checking different versions of a text against each other to find variations the handwritten books of Philo. For with no writer can the critical art: "ars critica," the scholarly method of determining the original wording of a text by studying its history lack a firm foundation consisting of the evidence of the manuscripts original: "codicum"; and I was convinced from the start that what had been gathered by previous editors of Philo regarding the reliability and authority of the manuscripts was not at all satisfactory.

Therefore, I delivered to the Academy Philo's treatise, revised according to the evidence of the manuscripts and provided with a critical apparatus: a set of notes documenting variations in the text and a prolegomena: a formal introduction or preliminary discussion. It so happened that my modest effort original: "opella" was judged worthy of praise and the prize by the most learned and distinguished men. At last, I publish original: "in lucem emitto" — literally "send into the light" this book, increased and corrected with new care; in finishing and polishing it, your learning and your help were never lacking to me. Below the author's words, I have added two types of notes: one in which I have noted the differences in the manuscript readings, and another in which I have described very similar passages collected from the rest of Philo's books. Then, in the appendix