Philo of Alexandria · 1566 of 1726

Appendix 2 · From the Questions arising in Genesis.

Page 748. B. "And God brought all the animals to Adam, to see what he would call Them;" for God does not doubt, but since he has given mind to man, the first born and most excellent of his creatures, according to which he, being endowed with knowledge, is by nature enabled to reason; he excites him, as an instructor excites his pupil, to a display of his powers, and he contemplates the most excellent offspring of his soul. And, again, he visibly by the example of this man gives an outline of all that is voluntary in us, looking with disfavour on those who affirm that everything happens through necessity, by which some men must be influenced, he on that account commanded man to take upon himself the regulation of these things. And this is an employment peculiarly fitting for man, as being endowed with a very high degree of knowledge and most surpassing prudence, the giving of names to the animals being suited to him not only as being wise, but also as being the first nobly born creature.

For it was fitting that he should be the founder of the human race, and also the king of everything that is born of the earth, and that he should have this as an especial honour of his own, that, as he was the first who had any acquaintance with the animals, he might also be the first inventor and pronouncer of their names; for it would have been absurd for them to be left without names, and subsequently to have names given to them by some younger man, to the honour and glory of the elder.

And when Adam saw the figure of his wife, as the prophet says, and that it had been produced not by any connexion, nor out of a woman, as human beings in after times were produced, but that she was as it were a nature on the borders between these two kinds, like a graft from a shoot of another vine taken off and grafted into a second one, on which account he says, "For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall become one Flesh;" in saying which he used a most gentle expression, which was at the same time most perfectly true, meaning that they would be united by sympathy in their griefs and joys.