In Op. Mund. Philo works out his doctrine of creation
in close dependence on Plato’s Tim. and in conscious opposition to the
Aristotelian view that the world has no beginning. But while he maintains with
Plato the ἀφθαρσία τοῦ κόσμου (cf. Aet.
Mund.), he deviates from the biblical doctrine of the world. For the OT view of
creation as an absolute beginning posited by God presupposes that there is also
an end of the world (→ αἰών, I, 202 ff.). Thus Philo, for all his attempt to be
loyal to biblical truth, is nearer to the Tim. than to Gn. What he really
describes is not the creation of the world by almighty God, who summons what is
not into being by His Word, but the fashioning of a cosmos by a superior spirit
working on already existing material. This given material is τὸ παθητὸν ἄψυχον καὶ ἀκίνμτον ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ (Op.
Mund., 9). Hence creation, as in Wis. 11:17, is a κτίζειν τὸν κόσμον ἐξ ἀμόρφου ὕλης, but not οὐκ ἐξ ὄντων, as in 2
Macc. 7:28. Even the use of τὰ μὴ ὄντα for τὸ παθητόν (e.g.,
Op. Mund., 81) does not alter this. For in Philo τὸ μὴ ὄν does not
mean nothing; it has rather the sense of formless matter. In his cosmology, as in other parts of his teaching,
other traditions are also at work as well as that of the Jewish OT and that of
Gk. philosophy. This may be seen in his development of the idea of God as the
father of the cosmos, which goes beyond the Tim. Ebr., 30 teaches the birth of
the κόσμος from God and ἐπιστήμη: ἡ δὲ παραδεξαμένη τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ σπέρματα … τὸν μόνον καὶ ἀγαπητὸν αἰσθητὸν υἱὸν ἀπεκύησε, τόνδε τὸν κόσμον, cf. Deus
Imm., 31, where the κόσμος is called υἱὸς θεοῦ (cf. also
the μονογενής in Plat. Tim., 92c). Here we may discern traces of
the influence of oriental cosmogonies such as are reflected in the Corp. Herm. (Hermann Sasse, “Κοσμέω,
Κόσμος, Κόσμιος, Κοσμικός,” TDNT 3:878)
