PHILO JUDAEUS

ON THE

INCORRUPTIBILITY OF THE WORLD.

DE

INCORRUPTIBILITATE MUNDI.

Various opinions of different thinkers regarding this matter are set forth, which may be reduced to three categories; for some affirm that the world is neither created nor will it perish, others that it is both created and corruptible, and others finally that it is created but will not perish (1—3). Plato also adhered to this view (4), and they think Hesiod was his father; but Moses, who was far older than Hesiod, taught this same thing to the Jews (5). Critolaus the Peripatetic demonstrated the eternity of the world more excellently than the rest, so much so that even some of the Stoics were compelled by the force of his arguments to adopt the same opinion (6—11). He argues, among other things, that the world does not perish, nor does the earth, since it holds the central and most suitable position, in which it cannot move (12); God would also seem to act without design or rashly if he were to rashly destroy what he had made (13); since if the world were to perish, the entire race of terrestrial beings would also perish; therefore, it cannot be that it should perish (14). And since time is unbegotten, it follows finally that the world also is unbegotten (15). So much for Critolaus. Boëthus the philosopher demonstrated the same thing, relying on the argument that the world can neither be consumed by fire (16—18), nor could it restore itself after such a conflagration, as they taught (19—21). Nor is the world corrupted, as others have dreamed, by addition, by subtraction, by transposition, or by alteration (22). Nor does it harm the eternity of the world that the surface of the earth is uneven, that the sea recedes here and there, so that it appears to be diminished, that individual parts of the universe are corrupted, and specifically that terrestrial animals die, as Theophrastus taught with the clearest arguments (23—27).