Complete Works of Philo Judaeus, Vol. 2

or of itself to be taught about God according to being.

§. 6. Therefore, Abraham also, having come to the place of which God told him, "on the third day, looking up, he sees the place from afar" original: "Gen. 22, 4.". What place? Is it the one to which he came? And how is it still "afar," if he had already arrived? But perhaps what is hinted at is such: the wise man, always longing to understand the Ruler of the universe, when he walks the path through knowledge and wisdom, encounters divine words beforehand, by which he rests; but knowing that he must turn to the other [path], he pauses. For when the eyes of his understanding were opened, he saw more sharply that he had embarked upon the pursuit of a thing difficult to catch, which is always retreating and standing far off, and which reaches ahead of those who pursue it by an infinite distance in between. Therefore, you do well to think that everything under heaven that is most swift would appear to stand still if compared to the motion of the sun and moon and the other stars; although the whole heaven was made by God, and the Creator has always preceded the created; so that of necessity, not only the other things among us, but even that which is most swift of all, the mind, is left behind at unmeasurable distances from the comprehension of the Cause. But the stars pass by the things that are moved, while they themselves are moving; but God, most paradoxically, standing still, has outstripped all things. And it is said that the same Being is both very near and far away: touching [all things] with the creative and punishing powers, which are near to each individual, while having driven the generated [world] very far from His own nature according to being; so that it cannot even touch Him according to the pure and bodiless approaches of the mind. To those, therefore, who seek the Existent, even if they never find Him, we rejoice with them; for the search for the Good is sufficient to gladden [the soul] by itself, even if the end is not achieved. But we grieve for the self-loving Cain, as he has left his soul without a vision of the Existent, having voluntarily blinded that with which alone it could see.