Complete Works of Philo Judaeus, Vol. 1

§. 4. One must speak of as much as is possible of those things contained within it, since it is impossible to speak of all; for it contains the noēton kosmon intelligible world as something exceptional, as the account concerning it will indicate. For God, as God, having grasped beforehand that a beautiful copy could never exist without a beautiful model, and that none of the sensible things is blameless unless it has been fashioned after an archetypal and intelligible idea, wishing to create this visible world, pre-fashioned the intelligible one. He did this in order that, by using an incorporeal and most godlike model, he might perfect this corporeal world, a younger copy of an older one, which would contain as many sensible kinds as there were intelligible ones in that [model]. It is not permitted to say or to suppose that the world consisting of ideas exists in a certain place. We shall know how it exists by following a certain image of our own. Whenever a city is founded with great ambition by a king or some leader who claims absolute power and at the same time is of brilliant spirit, adorning his good fortune, there comes at some point a man trained in architecture, who, having observed the fitness and suitability of the place, first outlines within himself almost all the parts of the city about to be completed: temples, gymnasia, public halls, markets, harbors, shipyards, narrow streets, the construction of walls, and the foundations of houses and public and other buildings. Then, as if in wax, having received the patterns of each in his own soul, he carries about an intelligible city. Having awakened its images through inherent memory, and having sealed the characters even more firmly, like a good creator, he looks to the model and begins to construct the one from stone and wood, making the corporeal substances resemble each of the incorporeal ideas. One must think similar things about God, who, having conceived the plan to build the great city, first thought of its patterns, from which he constructed an intelligible world and then perfected the sensible one, using that as his model.