Philo of Alexandria · 1654 of 1726

Appendix 2 · From the same author.

What is the meaning of the expression, "You shall not eat the flesh in the blood of the Soul?" God appears by this expression to intend to show that the blood is the essence of the soul, that is to say, of the soul endowed with the outward senses, not the soul spoken of in the most excellent sense of the word, that is to say, as far as it is endued with reason and intellect; for there are three divisions of the soul, one part being nutritious, a second being endued with the outward senses, and the third being endued with reason. Accordingly the divine Spirit is the essence of the rational portion, according to the sacred historian of the creation of the world, for he says that "God breathed into his face the breath of Life." But of that part which is endued with the outward senses, and which has the revivifying power, blood is the essence, for he says in another place that "the soul of all flesh is the Blood;" but what is connected with the flesh is the outward sense and the passions, and not the mind and the intellect; not but what that expression, "in the blood of the soul," also indicates that the soul is one thing and the body another. So that in real truth the breath is the essence of the soul, but it has not any place of itself independently of the blood, but it resembles and is combined with blood.