Complete Works of Philo Judaeus, Vol. 1

...[he] was, having fashioned myths or having assented to those composed by others. But the beginning, as I have said, is most admirable, containing the creation of the world original: "κοσμοποιΐαν", as the world harmonizes with the Law, and the Law with the world, and the man who follows the Law is immediately a citizen of the world kosmopolitēs world-citizen, directing his actions according to the will of nature, by which the whole world is also governed. Now, no poet or prose writer could worthily hymn the beauty of the concepts of the creation. For it exceeds both speech and hearing, being greater and more august than to be fitted to the instruments of any generated being. Yet, one must not be silent for this reason; rather, for the sake of piety and because the task is beyond one's strength, one must dare to speak. I speak not from my own resources, nor many things, but a few things instead of many, to which it is likely the human mind may reach, having been seized by love and desire for wisdom. For just as the shortest seal receives the impressions of colossal magnitudes that have been stamped upon it, so perhaps the surpassing beauties of the creation recorded in the laws—which shade the souls of those who encounter them with their radiance—will be handed down in shorter characters, once that which is not worthy to be passed over in silence is first revealed.

§. 2. For some, having admired the world more than the creator of the world, have declared it to be ungenerated and eternal. They have untruly and impiously lied about the great inactivity of God, whereas they ought, on the contrary, to have been struck with awe at his powers as creator and father, and not to have glorified the world beyond what is reasonable. But Moses, having reached the very summit of philosophy and having been instructed by oracles in the most numerous and cohesive principles of nature, knew that it is most necessary that there exist in things an active cause and a passive one. And that the active cause is the mind of the whole universe, most pure and most unalloyed, superior...