Complete Works of Philo Judaeus, Vol. 1

...to virtue, superior to knowledge, and superior to the Good itself and the Beautiful itself. The passive [element], however, was inanimate and motionless of itself, but having been moved, shaped, and ensouled by the Mind, it changed into the most perfect work, this world. Those who assert that it is ungenerated have failed to notice that they are cutting away the most useful and necessary element for piety: providence. For reason chooses to hold that the Father and Creator takes care of what has been generated. For a father cares for his offspring, and a creator for his creations, aiming at their preservation. He wards off all that is harmful and injurious by every means, and longs to provide for all that is beneficial and advantageous in every way. But there is no kinship between the one who has not made something and the thing that has not been made. It is an indefensible and useless doctrine to construct anarchy in this world, as if it were in a city that has no overseer, arbiter, or judge, by whom it is right that all things should be managed and governed.

3 M. But great Moses, having considered the ungenerated to be most foreign to the visible—for everything sensible is in generation and change, never being the same—assigned eternity to the invisible and intelligible as a brother and kinsman, and bestowed the appropriate name of generation upon the sensible. Since, therefore, this world is visible and sensible, it must necessarily be generated. Hence, he did not record its generation without a purpose, having spoken of God in a very august manner.

§. 3. He says that the world was created in six days, not because the creator was in need of a length of time—for it is likely that God does all things simultaneously, not only by commanding but also by conceiving—but because the things being generated needed order. Number is appropriate to order, and the number six is most productive of the laws of nature. For among the numbers from the unit, it is the first perfect number, being equal to its own parts, and completed by them: half is three, a third is two, and a sixth is one; and, so to speak, it is naturally both male and female, and is fitted together from the power of each. For the odd is male in existing things, and the even is female. The triad is the beginning of odd numbers, the duad of even, and the power that is in both is the hexad. For it was necessary that the world, being the most perfect of generated things, should be established according to a perfect number, the six; and, since it was to contain the generations arising from combination, it was to be modeled after the first mixed number, the artio-perittos even-odd number, containing the idea both of the male that sows and of the female that receives the seeds. He assigned each of the days to one of the parts of the whole, excluding the first. He does not even call this [first] one 'first,' lest it be numbered together with the others, but by calling it 'one,' he aptly designates it, having seen and bestowed upon it the nature and name of the unit.