A Benchmark: Josephus on Sarah

In light of Philo's attitude toward Eve and contemporary Jewish women, it is all the more remarkable that he did not reduce Sarah's importance. Since it has been argued that he actually wrote her out of Israel's history, it is worth stressing that he sharply differs in this respect from Josephus, who indeed limited her role as much as he could when retelling her story in his Jewish Antiquities. Josephus curtails Sarah's involvement in the drama over Hagar, writing that it was “by God's command” that Sarah brought Hagar to Abraham's bed, “so that he would beget children from her.”¹³

Sarah is thus denied any initiative in the proceedings as well as any desire of her own to have children. Although in the biblical story she actively pursues an agenda that also conforms to the interests of her husband and God, she has become an altogether passive tool in Josephus's story.¹⁴ Here Abraham's request for offspring is directly answered by God, while Sarah's own voice is hardly heard any longer.

Josephus follows a similar line of interpretation regarding Sarah's relationship with God. In his account of the couple's journey to Egypt, when God is said to punish the Egyptians “on account of Sarah” (Gen 12:17), Josephus does not mention God's concern for the matriarch even when describing the divine intervention (A.J. 1.164). Yet the plot of the biblical story turns on God's concern for Sarah, which surfaces in the Antiquities only when Josephus must explain how Pharaoh knew that the calamity that had befallen him was due to the new woman in his house. Josephus has the Egyptian priests explain that “God's wrath” had come upon them because Pharaoh “wished to maltreat the stranger's wife” (A.J. 1.164). This rearrangement of the biblical material may seem harmless, yet it actually effects a subtle manipulation of the reader's sentiments.¹⁵

We hear of Sarah not as Abraham's wife (Gen 12:17), but as the anonymous spouse of the “stranger.” More importantly, Josephus gives the impression that God is not so much concerned for Sarah's welfare as he is angry about Pharaoh's transgression of basic ethical norms. Divine intervention seems to have been prompted by Pharaoh's sin rather than Sarah's plight. While the biblical narrative stresses God's concern for Sarah's welfare, in Josephus's retelling she is relegated to the status of an accessory in God's dealings with Pharaoh: she merely informs him, when he asks, that Abraham is actually her husband (A.J. 1.165).

Furthermore, Josephus minimizes Sarah's role at Mamre, where the couple encounters God's messengers. She is not even mentioned when Abraham prepares food for the visitors. In the biblical narrative, Abraham “rushed to the tent to Sarah and said, ‘Make ready three measures of fine flour, knead it, and make cakes ’ ” (Gen 18:6), but Josephus condenses this vivid notice to a statement that Abraham “ordered cakes of meal to be made” (A.J. 1.197). While the biblical Sarah, even though in the tent, still emerges as a distinct person and is directly addressed by her husband, she has become an anonymous servant in Josephus's account.¹⁶

Josephus has thus denied her any explicit part in the hospitality shown to God's messengers. On the other hand, he does mention how she responds with incredulous laughter when the messengers announce that she will bear a child (A.J. 1.198), yet he drops the complex exchange about her laughter and her denial of it.¹⁷ In the biblical account, it is not clear whether God or Abraham addresses Sarah to insist that she did laugh (Gen 18:15). By omitting the exchange, however, Josephus strips Sarah of her personality even as he erases the suggestion that God spoke directly to Sarah.

All of these examples indicate Josephus's tendency to write Sarah out of the biblical account. He lacks sympathy for the matriarch and makes no attempt to represent her point of view or her voice. Whenever he can, he omits her altogether, and on the remaining occasions he limits her role and distances her from God. Surprisingly, however, Josephus does introduce her in his retelling of a biblical story in which she is not mentioned: the Aqedah (Genesis 22). Yet his explanation of her absence confirms his previous tendency. According to Josephus's reconstruction, Abraham concealed his plans from Sarah as well as from his servants, fearing lest they prevent him from performing God's service.¹⁸

Not only does Josephus minimize Sarah's importance, he even presents her as a potential obstacle to the moral and religious hero, Abraham.

With Josephus's treatment of Sarah as a foil, we are in a better position to grasp the nature and complexity of Philo's midrash, which displays a very different spirit and is indeed considerably more appreciative of the matriarch. His writings obviously did not serve as a model for Josephus. The sheer amount of references to Sarah in Philo's writings is impressive. Unlike Josephus, who avoided mentioning her even when seemingly obliged by Scripture, Philo voluntarily deals with this figure not only in the context of Abraham's biography, but in another treatise largely devoted to her and Hagar, as well as on numerous other occasions. Philo was clearly very interested in Sarah. And unlike Josephus, Philo, in his characteristic fashion, interpreted her both literally and allegorically, yielding a wealth and diversity of exegesis.

Philo's Literal Reading of Sarah in the Life of Abraham

On the level of literal exegesis, Philo made one central and highly original contribution: in his Life of Abraham he rewrote Sarah's story with a sympathetic view to her person. Now, it should be noted that his reconstruction of Sarah's voice is by no means subversive of or a challenge to patriarchal values, but rather emerged within a distinctly patriarchal context. Indeed, in the Questions and Answers on Genesis, Philo opposed critics of Abraham who accused him of abandoning his wife and betraying the laws of marriage (QG 4.61). He thought that such Jewish Bible critics were in fact “deserving of condemnation” (QG 4.60).¹⁹

In the Life of Abraham, Philo instead set out to celebrate Abraham as a “friend of God” who has recognized the true God and founded the Jewish people (Abr. 88–89). In this context, Philo apparently felt uneasy about the patriarch's repeated abandonment of his wife. The two stories about the couple's sojourns at the courts of Pharaoh and Abimelech could not easily be accommodated in his idealizing portrait of Abraham. Philo consequently omitted the episode at Abimelech's house. The first incident at Pharaoh's court, however, could hardly be dropped. Philo attempts to provide extenuating circumstances and vehemently rejects the criticism that had been voiced in Jewish circles. Philo thus insists on Abraham's perfection (QG 4.60) and argues that his “actions do not call for contempt, as some think, but show greatness to those who have tasted virtue” (Abr. 89). Yet Philo continues to feel uneasy about the whole affair and omits any reference to Abraham's proposal that Sarah present herself in Egypt as his sister. In the Life of Abraham, Philo is no longer preoccupied with the improvement of his protagonist's reputation. While remaining on the defensive in the Questions, Philo seems to address a more congenial audience in the biography, which allows him to apply his creative imagination to the matriarch as well. In this context, he is free to suggest new perspectives on her role in the marriage.

In the following paragraphs, I examine Philo's treatment in the Life of Abraham of three episodes in the life of Sarah: her sojourn in Pharaoh's house (Genesis 12), her decision to offer her servant Hagar to Abraham as a surrogate mother (Genesis 16), and the visit of the messengers at Mamre (Genesis 18). Philo does not treat these episodes in the order in which they are narrated in Genesis. He reserves his account of Sarah, Hagar, and Abraham for the moment when he narrates her death. At that point he inserts a lengthy obituary of Sarah, using the story of her offer of Hagar to illustrate her virtues as a wife (Abr. 245–54). I begin with the obituary, because it contains Philo's broad appraisal of Sarah's character.

Sarah, Abraham, and Hagar

Philo's obituary of Sarah is unique in ancient exegesis. While other interpreters simply noted the fact of her death,²⁰

Philo used the opportunity to magnify her significance and extol her character. Abraham, he suggests, nearly collapsed over the loss of his “companion throughout the whole of life.”²¹ The patriarch was so sad because Sarah had been his partner in all his endeavors:

Commenting on this passage, Sly insists that the term “partner” (

) must not mislead us into thinking that Philo implies true equality between Abraham and his wife. Sarah is instead merely cast in the minor role of “model helpmeet.”

²²

Sly thus criticizes Philo for reducing the biblical image of the matriarch, ignoring her original role as a full “partner in the great migration” and limiting her function to that of a supportive wife.²³

The opposite, however, seems to be the case: while Scripture merely mentions Sarah as one of the possessions that Abraham brought with him from Haran to Palestine,²⁴

and overlooks her when recounting Abraham's journey to Egypt (Gen 12:10), Philo asserts that she was always near him as a help and partner. To be sure, Abraham remains the protagonist, but that role had already been assigned by the biblical narrator. Philo accepts Sarah's biblical role as wife, assuming her status to be secondary to that of Abraham. Within this patriarchal structure, however, Philo stresses her significance and idealizes her as an exemplary wife. He especially emphasizes that Sarah did not “shun misadventures … but accepted her lot … with total readiness, as something belonging to and befitting a wedded woman.”

Philo's exegetical contribution emerges with particular clarity in his use of the term

, which he applies to Sarah but never uses in the context of other marriages. The term normally refers in Philo's work to the partnership between priests who perform sacrifices or rulers who share power.

²⁵

The only other hero of the Hebrew Bible who is identified as a “partner” is Moses, who shares God's own possessions (Mos. 1.155). While Israelite men can be direct partners of God, Sarah is merely the partner of a man who had encountered God. Nevertheless, Philo's Sarah enjoys much more equality than her biblical original. Philo suggests that Sarah perfectly fulfilled her role as wife because she was indeeed a true partner of her husband. She accepted with alacrity the different strokes of luck which befell the couple, thus responding actively and rationally to all hardship rather than complaining about her fate.

Indeed, according to Philo, Sarah is just as stoic as Abraham. The ability to leave behind a family and a familiar environment requires, as Philo explains (Abr. 62–65), considerable mental effort as well as the ability to overcome the tendency to remain attached to one's natural context. Sarah's willingness to migrate indicates her control over her passions. While she had less choice than her husband, she made his decision truly hers, willingly participating in Abraham's plan just as he was participating in God's. She could very well have acted differently, Philo points out, by complaining about the difficulties or even accusing her husband of forcing hard circumstances upon her. In Abr. 85–87, Philo dwells at considerable length on the difficulties involved in migration: one must accept detachment from home, insecurity, alienation from city life, and solitude, relying instead on vague hopes for a better future. Abraham mastered these difficulties and never complained on the journey (Abr. 85). Philo maintains that the same is true of Sarah, who bravely endured the strains of prolonged traveling on foreign soil. Among the extant sources, Philo is the first exegete to recognize what Sarah had to endure as a result of Abraham's migration. He calls his readers to appreciate her achievement, thus transforming her from a passive figure into an independent person.

In his obituary, Philo claims that the clearest proof of Sarah's character is to be found in her offer of Hagar to Abraham. Unlike Josephus, who suppressed her voice in this context and suggested that it was God who prompted Sarah to propose Abraham's union with Hagar, Philo permits Sarah to speak eloquently. Sarah does not merely say to her husband, as the Septuagint reports, “Behold now, God has prevented me from bearing children, go now into my maid so that you may have a child from her.”²⁶

In Philo's account, she thoroughly explains her motives and expounds to her husband the principles of marriage life:

Sarah's words so impressed Abraham, according to Philo, that he stood speechless in admiration for her unfailing love and her forethought. Convinced by her proposal, he immediately acted on it. Unlike Josephus, Philo is content with the biblical statement that Abraham obeyed Sarah (Gen 16:2).²⁷

At the same time, however, Philo ignores Sarah's jealous mistreatment of Hagar and her child, and so he passes over a later biblical episode (Genesis 21) in which God tells Abraham that he should feel no pity for the servant and her son, but rather do as Sarah tells him.²⁸ Thus, Philo defends Sarah by eliminating any suggestion that she could be governed by untoward emotions. In his retelling, she does not revenge herself on Hagar, and thus she demonstrates a level of self-control comparable to that of Abraham: the patriarch is, after all, the man whom Philo celebrates as being so much “mastered by his love for God” that he would not spare even Isaac (Abr. 170). By omitting any mention of Hagar's banishment, Philo can present both Sarah and Abraham as paragons of virtue and rationality.

The principles of married life that Sarah explains to her husband are also those that Philo considered to be the central pillars of Mosaic law. Biblical legislation, he explains, generally aims at inculcating enkrateia and is particularly concerned to ensure that the choice of sexual partners guarantees legal offspring rather than pleasure.²⁹

Philo was convinced that the Torah thus conforms to the law of Nature, which endowed men and women with procreative organs. When Joseph confronts Potiphar's wife, addressing her in a manner suiting “his race” and explaining to her “the special laws and customs” of the Jews, he makes the same point: Jews are distinguished by their modesty in sexual matters (Jos. 42). Philo has Joseph state that “we the descendants of the Hebrews” are instructed to engage in sexual relations only for the purpose of procreation. Unlike the promiscuous Egyptians, who enjoy sexual license from early adolescence, Jews come to the wedding canopy as virgin men and virgin women. “The end we seek in wedlock,” Philo's Joseph declares, “is not pleasure but the begetting of lawful children” (Jos. 43).

It is remarkable that Philo also has Sarah recite these principles, because he generally considered enkrateia to be a masculine virtue: one has to wrestle with oneself in order to discipline one's passions. Philo nevertheless allows Sarah to expound these principles of rational modesty in sexual matters. Her offer of Hagar becomes a paramount expression of Mosaic ethics. Indeed, Sarah imposes on herself a measure that goes beyond the normal requirements of the situation: on another occasion, Philo determined that it is halakhically acceptable for a married couple to stay together even though a problem of infertility has arisen (Spec. 3.35); he did not recommend the use of substitute spouses in such cases. Sarah's action is thus highly exceptional. While loving her husband dearly and being a true partner to him in all his endeavors, she advises him to employ a surrogate mother, banishing all jealousy from her heart. Her commitment to the Mosaic ideal of procreation thus proves far stronger than her personal attachment to Abraham. Her mind controls her emotions, setting a perfect example for her husband as well.³⁰

Sarah's speech radiates a sense of partnership not present in the biblical story. Sarah remarks that she herself finds her marriage fulfilling; she says that the marriage is a happy one, resting on mutual satisfaction. Moreover, according to Philo, both spouses seem to have been praying for offspring. In the biblical story, Abraham alone speaks to God about his lack of children (Gen 15:2). He alone is initially and repeatedly promised an heir (Gen 15:4, 17:16), while Sarah is only later—and indirectly—assured of her fertility (Gen 18:9–10). Esther Fuchs has rightly identified in these passages a strong expression of patriarchal ideology, which conceives of Sarah “as primarily a means of reproduction”; her fertility is a “logical and necessary procedure required by Yahweh's commitment to Abraham.”³¹

In Philo's account, Sarah plays a more prominent part in the story of the couple's fertility. He speaks about “the prayers” for offspring that Sarah hopes will be answered by Abraham's union with Hagar. Sarah must have participated in these prayers, which are not mentioned in Scripture, because she was the one who proposed the union. In his account, Philo has Sarah share Abraham's desire for a child, thus giving her a voice that is not heard in the biblical narrative.

Philo's Sarah insists that the offspring from Abraham's union with Hagar will be his by legal parenthood, yet also hers by adoption. Her motherhood, even if only legal and not biological, is crucial. She will be the mother of Abraham's child even if she has not given birth to it. This interpretation of Sarah's role undoubtedly relies on Philo's halakhic understanding of matrilineality, according to which the child's status is determined by the mother as well as by the father.³²

Thus, it was important for him to indicate that Abraham's child by the Egyptian servant would nevertheless have a Jewish mother.

Sarah in Egypt

Philo introduces his retelling of the story of Abraham and Sarah at Pharaoh's court blatantly patriarchal terms. He explains that this story deals with a threat to Abraham's marriage, which is ultimately “kept untouched and intact” by the help of God (Abr. 90). Philo similarly concludes his account by stressing that God granted to Abraham that his marriage, which was to become the fountain of a whole nation, should go unharmed (Abr. 98). Abraham and the purity of his lineage are thus the focus of the narrative: God intervenes in history in order to protect the patriarch's marriage. One can hardly imagine a more androcentric starting point. At the same time, however, and somewhat surprisingly, Philo also turns his attention to the matriarch. Although he clears Abraham of any responsibility for Sarah's plight, he shows more sympathy for her than previous interpreters had.

Philo introduces Sarah as a character in the Life of Abraham only when he begins to recount the couple's journey to Egypt. He then mentions that Abraham “had a wife most noble with regard to the soul and more beautiful in body than other women of her time” (Abr. 93). When they arrive in Egypt, her beauty is reported to Pharaoh and he sends for her. Philo stresses, contrary to the biblical account, that Pharaoh had no decent intentions, but merely wished to satisfy his passions and bring her to shame. Philo then approaches the crux of the biblical story, namely the opaque statement that “they [the chiefs of Egypt] brought her into Pharaoh's house.”³³

From early times, readers of this story have been intrigued by the question of what actually happened to Sarah in Pharaoh's house. The very fact that “they treated Abraham well because of her” and gave him numerous gifts makes it virtually certain that she had indeed become Pharaoh's wife or concubine (Gen 12:16). Abraham seems to have profited from Sarah's sexual services to Pharaoh. A medieval critic even suggested that he had from the beginning hoped for such an outcome.³⁴ Whatever the case may be, we do not hear that he was concerned for his wife or that he called to God for help.

Sarah herself remains completely opaque in this biblical scene. She is not even called by name. Her feelings and experiences at Pharaoh's court are of no interest to the biblical narrator. This situation seems to have left even the earliest readers of the story uncomfortable. Some of the more striking gaps in the text have accordingly been filled in by the biblical narrator of the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Abimelech, when the same plot is repeated. In this tale, it is made clear that even though Sarah was taken by the foreign king, she was not actually touched (Gen 20:2–4). Indeed, we hear that Sarah complied with her husband's scheme, saying to Abimelech, “He is my brother” (Gen 20:5). The reader is reassured that Sarah was not violated because this time God promptly intervened on her behalf. Sarah moreover emerges as a distinct speaking character, insofar as her words are quoted by Abimelech. Her brief statement conveys her heroic attitude: even when confronted with the immediate prospect of being violated, she protects her husband.

Only two of the extant exegetes of the Second Temple period were curious about Sarah's situation in Pharaoh's house. Both the author of the Genesis Apocryphon and Josephus imagined what she said to Pharaoh. Gen 20:5 served as their model. In the Apocryphon, Sarah's statement that “he is my brother” is simply quoted in the context of Pharaoh's rather than Abimelech's court (XX, 10). Abraham explicitly acknowledges the beneficial effect of her words: “I was saved because of her and was not slain.”³⁵

This praise of Sarah nevertheless reflects a distinctly androcentric perspective. The exegete is not aware of a gap between the interests of Abraham and Sarah. Rather, she is praised for her selfless action on behalf of her husband.

Josephus, as we saw above, tells a different story and lets Sarah speak the truth. It is from her that Pharaoh learns about Abraham's real status. Yet Sarah's own words are not explicitly mentioned in Josephus's account. Instead, Pharaoh explains how he was terrified by the turmoil caused by God and therefore “asked Sarah who she was and who was this man whom she had brought along” (A. J. 1.165). Sarah's reply is implicit in Josephus's concise remark that Pharaoh indeed “learned the truth” (ibid). Josephus characteristically silences Sarah. In this case he has also reduced her heroism: while the authors of Genesis 20 and the Genesis Apocryphon appreciate Sarah's courage, even if it is forced on her by her situation, Josephus seems to imply that she, as a woman, was not even capable of complying with her husband's scheme. When pressed, she revealed the secret of her identity.

Philo is the first to address the issue of Sarah's plight in Pharaoh's house. He reconstructs Sarah's situation with remarkable empathy, attributing to her not only words but thoughts and feelings as well, describing the whole episode from her perspective:

The reader is invited to identify with Sarah in her search for someone to rescue her from her dreadful situation. Her isolation is distressing. Abraham, on the other hand, is excused. Philo explains that he was powerless to interfere. In contrast to the biblical story, Abraham is a concerned husband who has turned to God for help. This detail appears already in the Genesis Apocryphon, where Abraham's full prayer is recorded (XX, 12–16). It is theoretically possible that Philo was familiar with this exegetical tradition. Yet his implication that Abraham prayed with Sarah (“she took refuge together with him”) can be understood as a creative interpretation introduced by Philo, who was ever concerned to defend Abraham. Since we know that he was sensitive to criticism of the patriarch's abandonment of his wife, it would be natural for him to supply details suggesting that Abraham had done everything he could to prevent Sarah's violation. The same apologetic concern surely inspired the author of the Genesis Apocryphon. Only Philo, however, has Abraham join in Sarah's prayer. In his midrash, Sarah has direct access to God and pleads for rescue from above. She speaks with an effective voice: God responds by punishing Pharaoh. This midrash on Sarah probably reflects the biblical statement that “God punished Pharaoh and his house … on account of Sarah, Abram's wife” (Gen 12:17). While the Septuagintal

does not convey the rich connotations of the Hebrew

(literally, “on account of the matter/word of Sarah”), it nevertheless provoked an exegesis which refers not only to the “matter” of Sarah, but also to her words.

Philo has only praise for Sarah in her role as Abraham's wife. In his midrash, the couple acts in perfect harmony and mutual understanding. Yet he does not reproach Abraham—who was, after all, responsible for the very plight with which Philo empathizes! This restraint is characteristic of Philo. His sympathetic reading of Sarah's story is by no means subversive, but remains firmly anchored in a patriarchal framework. He is definitely not a feminist in the modern mode who challenges the legitimacy of existing social hierarchies.³⁶

On the contrary, Philo's embellishments of Sarah's story in Egypt make the couple's relationship look much better than it appears in the Bible. Philo thus displays two conflicting tendencies, inserting some gynocentric snapshots into a generally androcentric album. It is noteworthy that Philo's pathbreaking attempts at giving Sarah a voice are put to critical use in Genesis Rabbah when R. Berechia suggests that Sarah complained to God: “Sovereign of the Universe, Abraham went forth [from his land] with your assurance and I went forth with faith. Abraham is outside prison, while I am within!”³⁷

Sarah and the Messengers

Finally, let us look at Philo's reading of the annunciation scene at Mamre (Gen 18:1–15). As mentioned above, the biblical scene is thoroughly focused on Abraham. It is he who meets the divine messengers, organizes their meal, and receives their promise of an heir. Sarah is confined to the tent. Noticing her absence, the messengers ask where she is, yet do nothing to effect her appearance (Gen 18:9–10). On the contrary, immediately after asking about Sarah, they resume their conversation with Abraham, while Sarah remains inside “listening through the door of the tent” (Gen 18:10). Even when her incredulous laughter provokes God's disapproval, she is only indirectly addressed through her husband.³⁸

Thus, although Sarah is a vivid presence in the tale, laughing and then denying her laughter, she remains marginal. Her suspicious reaction to the divine promise is cast by the biblical narrator in a negative light, as a foolish outburst from the women's quarters that deserves divine reprimand. The critical tone of this presentation is conspicuous in light of the fact that Abraham's incredulous laughter had not been chastised by God, but instead was answered by repeated reassurances.³⁹

Philo's rewriting of this biblical scene is remarkable. He observes that “the divine being of their nature had escaped his [Abraham's] attention” (Abr. 107). Abraham receives the three men as regular strangers and shows them the hospitality due human visitors. When the story opens, Abraham is not even aware of God's presence. Sarah, on the other hand, is no longer confined to the tent.⁴⁰

The couple receives the promise together and responds with shared disbelief: Philo implicates Abraham in Sarah's incredulous laughter by stating that he shares his wife's doubt about their ability to produce a child. Philo moreover attenuates the biblical criticism of Sarah's response:

In this passage, Philo transforms the ending of the biblical annunciation scene, which depicts the chastening of Sarah.⁴¹

Either God or Abraham responds to her denial of her laughter by telling her, “Oh yes, you did laugh!” (Gen 18:15). The reader is left with the sense that the narrator disapproves of Sarah's reaction. But Philo reports that Sarah felt “ashamed” when hearing that nothing is impossible for God, because she was thus reminded of a truth she had learned long ago. As a child, Sarah had been instructed in the notion of God's omnipotence, and thus her laughter could not be attributed to ignorance. This statement about Sarah's education ignores, of course, the biblical text, which implies that she grew up in Chaldea in the same pagan environment as Abraham. More importantly, Sarah's early schooling in religious matters is exceptional among Philo's women. Elsewhere he never speaks of the education of either biblical or contemporary women.⁴² It is thus clear that he made a special effort to explain Sarah's provocative laughter in a positive fashion. Philo did not accept the biblical image of the matriarch as a foolish thing ignorant of the nature of God. He chose to portray her as a competent Jewish woman.

At the end of his account of the annunciation, Philo records his own view. “It seems to me,” he writes, that Sarah then recognized the divine nature of the messengers, perceiving their essence through their appearance. Philo's portrait of Sarah seems to have been inspired by the biblical note that she denied her laughter, because “she was afraid” (

, Gen 18:15 LXX). The verb

refers not only to the act of fearing, but often describes in Philo's writings a form of worshipping God which is to be distinguished from loving God. While the “love of God” is possible only for those who have a completely ethereal notion of the deity (Deus 69), more wordly figures such as Joseph demonstrate their fear of God by rejecting material things and recognizing the true God (Migr. 19–21). Similarly, the shepherds at the well were seized by awe or fear when they realized that Moses was not just another colleague, but a divine messenger (Mos. 1.57). This kind of recognition is now attributed to Sarah. Philo carefully explains the mental process involved, suggesting a Platonic advance through the perception of external appearances to the comprehension of spiritual essence. Philo's exegesis is all the more remarkable because he had earlier suggested that Abraham himself lacked this insight, as he failed to observe anything special about his guests. It was only Sarah who had a keen inclination towards the divine and, like Manoach's wife, recognized God's presence when confronted with it.

In Philo's literal exegesis of Sarah's story, she is treated with a degree of attention and empathy that was unusual in antiquity. Philo supplements the biblical text with a sympathetic understanding of her person. In his midrash she becomes a more complex as well as a more important character. She has been educated and is committed to the stringent ethics of Mosaic law. She recognizes the presence of God and prays to him for assistance regarding both her infertility and her plight in Pharaoh's house. The dreadful nature of her situation in Pharaoh's house is conveyed. Her initiatives are seconded by Abraham. Sarah is not only an ideal wife who accompanies and aids her husband, but an impressive matriarch in her own right. Philo's portrait of Sarah is richer than her biblical characterization, and he has positioned her closer to God.

This result is striking in view of Philo's general remarks about women and his interpretation of Eve in particular. How can we account for the difference in his attitude? Perhaps Sarah aroused Philo's sympathy because, unlike Eve, she personified nothing subversive but rather followed her husband and accepted her lot. Because she did not pose a threat to either Philo's patriarchal values or his theological convictions, Sarah could be exalted. More likely, Philo celebrated Sarah because she was the mother of the Jewish nation. While Eve was the mother of all, Sarah mothered a specific ethnicity. She is “our” ancestor, with whom Philo naturally identified, and as the Jewish matriarch, Sarah deserved the same exegetical care and concern as Abraham.

Having appreciated Philo's sympathetic reading of Sarah on the literal level, we may now ask how he proceeded on the allegorical level. Did he express a more critical attitude in this realm, as he did in the case of Joseph? The latter indeed fares well in the Life of Joseph, where he is portrayed as an exemplary politician, but draws harsh criticism when read as a figure of allegory. I have argued elsewhere that the discrepancy between these two approaches has to do with historical context. While in the biography Philo wished to idealize the biblical ancestor, he introduced a distinctly topical perspective in the allegories, criticizing Joseph as a symbol of assimilated contemporary Jews in Egypt.⁴³

Was Sarah, read as an allegorical figure, also associated with more topical concerns and used to illustrate negative stereotypes about women in general, or Jewish-Egyptian women in particular?

Philo's Allegorical Reading of Sarah

While Philo's literal exegesis of Sarah is concentrated in the Life of Abraham, his allegorical interpretations are dispersed among several of his writings. It is striking that the texts about Sarah that Philo reads allegorically are almost exclusively verses that he ignored in his literal exegesis. It is only on the allegorical level, for example, that we hear anything about Abimelech approaching Sarah (Genesis 20).⁴⁴

Similarly, Sarah's jealousy and maltreatment of Hagar are treated only in Philo's allegories, and tactfully omitted from the Life of Abraham.⁴⁵ This distinction between passages that are to be read literally and those that are to be interpreted allegorically suggests that, for Philo, these two types of reading are complementary. As I have noted, Philo draws similar distinctions in the story of Joseph, ignoring the “coat of many colors” in his literal account, while explaining its allegorical significance at length.⁴⁶ Philo's intent, however, seems to have been different in each case. With regard to Joseph, Philo selected certain material for allegorical exegesis in order to highlight his shortcomings, whereas he allegorized unfavorable verses pertaining to Sarah precisely in order to defend her character. Philo's allegorical interpretation of Sarah thus appears distinctly apologetic, in line with his practice in the Questions and Answers on Genesis of countering criticism of Abraham's character by turning to the allegorical realm. Yet most of Philo's allegorical readings of Sarah transcend, as we shall see, the narrow interests of apology.

One more introductory statement on Philo's allegorical exegesis of Sarah is in order. We have seen that Philo vehemently condemned earlier Alexandrian critics who accused Abraham of abandoning his wife, and that he countered their charges with an innovative literal interpretation of Sarah. When he turns to Sarah as a figure of allegory, however, Philo expresses strong approval of several extant Alexandrian interpretations. But Philo's allegorical interpretation of Sarah is not wholly dependent on the work of predecessors: as he did in the literal realm, so too does he introduce innovative allegorical readings. In the following four sections, I treat Philo's discussion of earlier Alexandrian exegesis, his original approach to the report of Sarah's menopause (Gen 18:11); and his curious insistence on Sarah's parthogenesis, based on his reading of Gen 20:12.

Earlier Alexandrian Exegesis

In On the Change of Names 141–43, Philo cites four current interpretations of Gen 17:16 that all presuppose the Septuagint translation and dwell on the expression, “I will give you a son out of her (

).” Only the Greek preposition

, and not the Hebrew

, suggests the notion of “outside and beyond” on which these exegetical traditions are based. Philo thus refers to interpretations that must have developed in a Greek-speaking environment, probably Alexandria. The first three interpretations on Philo's list take

as a reference to the divine origins of spirituality. Some take it, he writes,

“Out of her” is taken to mean “outside of her”: the soul produces offspring not from within itself, but from beyond, namely through the agency of God. A second group of interpreters takes

to mean “immediately,” indicating the swiftness with which God's gifts are given. A third group suggests that “virtue is the mother of all created good, receiving the seeds from nothing mortal” (Mut. 142). In these three interpretations, Sarah is no longer the historical matriarch, but a symbol of spiritual processes in the soul. These early Jewish exegetes in Alexandria seem to have applied the Platonic metaphor of the soul's pregnancy to the biblical report of Sarah's anticipated conception. While Plato had human creativity in mind, especially in the realm of philosophy and poetry, the Jewish exegetes adapted the image of spiritual pregnancy to a distinctly religious context and suggested that the soul is impregnated by God.

⁴⁷

They may well have been encouraged in their interpretation both by the biblical motif of God opening the womb of barren women and the well-known Stoic simile of philosophy as a mistress who is pursued by different types of students.⁴⁸

Sarah's status in this allegory is somewhat ambiguous. While she represents the most valuable human functions, she herself has been allegorized out of existence. She is assimilated to Abraham, whose soul is now said to be impregnated by God. Thus, while Sarah represents one particular aspect of a man, Abraham represents that man in his progress towards God. A male reader of Philo's allegory would presumably have identified with Abraham, while contemporary women must have found it difficult to take the allegorized Saras as a meaningful role model.

Philo's report of a fourth interpretation of

in Gen 17:16 indicates the variety of exegetes whom he knew, as well as his own tendency to embrace the allegorical approach. He reports that some “ask whether the barren indeed gives birth, since the oracles earlier describe Sarah as barren and now admit that she will become a mother” (Mut. 143). Philo replies in a leisurely and somewhat patronizing tone, as if to someone of limited learning, that the literal meaning must not be taken at face value: “It is not in the nature of a barren woman to bear children, just as the blind cannot see nor the deaf hear” (ibid.). The real meaning, Philo adds, emerges when we consider the underlying significance of the text and realize that Sarah is a symbol of the soul, which is sterile when entertaining wicked thoughts, but fruitful when retreating from passions and vices. The allegorical reading of Sarah that Philo adopts is remarkably similar to that of the previously cited interpreters, who were also to some extent gender-biased.

In the Life of Abraham, Philo cites a fifth allegorical interpretation advanced by certain “natural philosophers” (

, Abr. 99). He indicates right away that he sympathizes with the interpretation that they proposed, he stresses, “not without good purpose.” These exegetes, who are committed to an interpretation of Scripture in accordance with nature, have been correctly identified as Jewish allegorists of diverse philosophical backgrounds and various hermeneutical tendencies.

⁴⁹

They proposed an allegorical reading of the Hebrew roots of Abraham's and Sarah's names, suggesting that the husband symbolizes “the good mind” or the “refined disposition in the soul.”⁵⁰

They furthermore said that “his wife is virtue, since her name in Chaldean is ‘Sarra ’ but in Greek ‘the ruling one, ’ because there is nothing more royal and authoritative than virtue” (Abr. 99).⁵¹

Furthermore, the

explained the extraordinary nature of the relationship between Abraham and Sarah by contrasting it with normal gender roles:

Presumed by this interpretation, of course, are the Aristotelian constructions of masculinity and femininity, which translate biological facts into broad cultural and philosophical categories.

⁵³

The exegetes' distinction between physical and spiritual marriage allows them to postulate an inversion of regular gender roles: in life, the wife is passive and receiving, whereas Sarah, allegorically interpreted as virtue, is sowing good counsels. But Philo takes issue with his predecessors' willingness to associate virtue with the feminine. He suggests that “perhaps what has been said is false due to the treachery of the names.”⁵⁴

In his view, the feminine gender of the noun

has misled exegetes to think that virtue assumes the role of wife, while the masculine gender of

was mistakenly understood to signify that mind performs the husband's function. He argues that virtue must be male because it is active, whereas the mind is feminine because it is the passive recipient of action: “Virtue is male, since it causes movement and affects conditions and suggests noble conceptions of noble deeds and words, while mind is female, being moved and trained and helped, and in general belonging to the passive category.”

⁵⁵

Thus, he maintains that gender roles are not to be reversed, even on the allegorical level!⁵⁶

What holds true for material existence also applies to the spiritual realm.

Philo's conviction on this matter is so strong that it colors his paraphrase of the earlier tradition. The statement that virtue “seemingly” holds the position of wife (Abr. 99) must surely be Philo's own, because the

certainly regarded physical and spiritual marriage as really, not just seemingly opposite. In their eyes, Sarah, interpreted as virtue, indeed functioned as a wife in spiritual marriage, but to Philo this was a false conclusion based on the misleading gender of the respective Greek nouns. His paraphrase of the earlier tradition prepares the reader to accept Philo's own criticism. These objections notwithstanding, it is important to remember that Philo accepted the allegorization of Sarah as virtue. He liked this allegorical tradition so much that he continued to paraphrase it in the Life of Abraham, after he had expressed his own reservations (Abr. 103). As I noted above, he also mentioned a version of it in connection with Gen 17:16. Philo appropriated this allegory for himself to the extent that on numerous other occasions he simply reproduces it without identifying its source.

⁵⁷

In the realm of allegory, Philo is conversant with an existing exegetical tradition on which he freely draws. Yet he also makes his own contributions to that tradition, as demonstrated by his insistence that Sarah as virtue is a masculine figure. It remains for us to see how Philo went beyond earlier allegorical traditions to leave his own distinct mark on the Alexandrian exegetical discourse.

Sarah Abandons Womanly Things (Gen 18:11)

The Septuagint wording of Gen 18:11 led Philo to propose an innovative reading in the spirit of the earlier allegorists. In the Masoretic text, this verse simply reports the cessation of Sarah's monthly period; literally, it states, “There ceased to be for Sarah a way like [that of] women” (

). The Septuagint version, by comparison, is rather more suggestive: “There ceased to be for Sarah the menstrual cycle” (

).

⁵⁸

The expression

, here used to indicate the menstrual cycle, has a wide range of meanings in Greek literature. Literally, it means “things pertaining to women,” and is used to denote the female sexual organs and female medical disorders as well as feminine garments and makeup;

is the women's quarter within a house, and the adjective

describes feminine or even effeminate character traits. It is in this broader sense that the word appears on other occasions in the Septuagint;

⁵⁹

only here does

refer to the menstrual cycle. The phrase is an appropriate rendering of the unusual Hebrew expression

(“a way like [that of] women”). Hippocrates and Aristotle had already used the term as an equivalent of

.

⁶⁰

The imperfect form of

indicates that Sarah was in a continuous menopausal state.

Given the broad range of meanings that could be attached to

, however, the Greek sentence could easily be read as implying an intriguing double extendre. This is precisely the path that Philo took. He understood Sarah to be the subject, rather than the object of the action.

⁶¹

Philo moreover construed the verb in its primary transitive sense, meaning “to leave out, omit, stop,” rather than the intransitive “to cease.” In the Greek text of Gen 18:11, Philo thus read that Sarah “stopped turning to womanly things.” The matriarch, in other words, ceased to engage in activities and pursuits characteristic of women and femininity. Philo reinforced his reading of Gen 18:11 by altering slightly the Greek text. On one occasion, he omits the infinitive

, which is grammatically superfluous in his interpretation of the verse (Fug. 128). On other occasions, Philo qualifies the expression

by adding “all,” underlining the broader cultural meaning of this term and eliminating the possibility that it could refer to the menstrual cycle.

⁶²

In the Questions on Genesis, Philo moreover indicates that his innovative reading of Gen 18:11 LXX is firmly anchored in the tradition of allegorizing Sarah as the soul. Here Philo reads

as a reference to women's quarters and applies it to the soul (QG 4.15). Sarah's departure from womanly ways, he asserts, teaches us that we have to leave the women's quarters of the soul and embrace manly virtues.

On the Cherubim contains a key passage in which Philo elaborates his views on Sarah's departure from womanly ways (Cher. 41–50). He begins by stating that the biblical accounts of the marriages of heroes to their respective wives must have been meant allegorically, because these men are described as virtuous and thus could not have associated with real women. This is so, Philo concludes, “because we say (

) that women are symbolically sense perception, whereas learning comes into being through estrangement from sense perception and body” (Cher. 41). The wives must thus be interpreted as virtues, especially as the name Sarah means “sovereign and leader” (

). Philo alludes here to the etymological explanation of Sarah's name that he reported in greater detail in Abr. 99, and names the virtues that correspond to various biblical wives. He then embarks on an excursus on their pregnancies and birth pangs. Philo's explanations require that he use erotic imagery, which he fears may be misunderstood, and so he he warns that he will talk about holy mysteries which should be received only by the initiated.

⁶³

He continues:

Philo explains in this passage the mystery of how virtue is begotten by God. Virtue (

) assumes a female role since “she” is impregnated and gives birth. This impregnation cannot be achieved by a mere human male, but instead requires God's presence. Sarah thus symbolizes the human mind's converse with the deity. Philo's explanations closely follow the allegory of his Alexandrian predecessors, who suggested that Sarah is “virtue … receiving the seeds from nobody mortal” (Mut. 142). Yet Philo elaborates further, probing the triangular relationship between Sarah, God, and Abraham. He proposes a rich exegesis of Gen 21:1, “And the Lord visited Sarah, as he said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he spoke.” Philo is keenly aware that this verse mentions only God and Sarah, while the following verse states that she became pregnant and “delivered a son to Abraham” (Gen 21:2). Filling in the gap in the biblical narrative, Philo suggests that Sarah had actually been “left alone” by her human husband and was thus ready to receive the divine seed. Her offspring, however, is donated to Abraham, who “is longing to attain wisdom.” It is striking how easily Philo moves here from virtue to wisdom, simply exchanging these two feminized abstractions. It furthermore emerges that Abraham, when obtaining wisdom, receives his wife back, after she has been impregnated by God. This arrangement conjures a ménage à trois through which the human and divine realms are conflated. Yet Philo's insistence that his teaching is only meant for the initiate suggests that he wished to keep from sounding any mythological overtones when speaking of the deity's intercourse with real human women.

⁶⁵

This is probably also the reason why Philo suggests that God approached Sarah only when she had been “left alone,” withdrawing immediately and donating the fruits of his impregnation to the seeker of wisdom.⁶⁶

It is thus clear that Abraham, who remains a human being in this allegory, has no direct converse with God. Sarah, allegorically interpreted as virtue and wisdom, is the only aspect that comes into contact with the divine realm, thus mediating between man and God.

Philo's exegesis does not seem to have been particularly eccentric for its time. It strongly resembles the image of the student seeking personified Wisdom in the Wisdom of Solomon. The male protagonist describes his search for Wisdom in erotic terms: “I loved her,” he says, “and I desired to take her as a bride for myself” (Wis 8:2). At the same time, wisdom also “enjoys intimacy with God and the Master of all loved her.”⁶⁷

The author of the Wisdom of Solomon conveys similar concepts as Philo, yet does not share his anxiety about the use of erotic language. Indeed, in the apocryphal text, no effort is made to define more precisely the triangular relationship between the student, God, and Wisdom. The reader may easily get the impression that Wisdom is simultaneously engaged in a love relation with both the student and God.

After Philo has carefully outlined the conditions of God's converse with virtue/wisdom, giving particular emphasis to the separation between the divine and the human realms, he describes the nature and effect of such intercourse. The basis of his explanation is Gen 18:11, which he now reads in the context of Jer 3:4 LXX, “the husband of your [God's] virginity.”⁶⁸

Relying on ideas that he has just expounded, Philo interprets the prophetic text to mean that God is the “husband of wisdom, dropping the seed of happiness for the mortal race into good and virgin soil” (Cher. 49). He next explains the nature of God's converse with the soul:

Here Philo inserts a radical paraphrase of Gen 18:11. Stating that Sarah left “all” womanly things, he then asserts that she has returned to a state of virginity. This interpretation assumes that femininity equals sexuality, and that leaving womanly ways implies celibacy. It is not clear from Philo's words precisely when Sarah became a virgin once more. Did her converse with God result in such a complete eradication of the passions that she became as pure and innocent as she was before knowing man? Or did she become a virgin first, as the end of the above passage indicates, and thus qualify to be visited by God? This distinction seems important, because it implies different agencies. In the first case, virginity is assumed to be a spiritual gift from God; in the second case, it is the result of Sarah's chosen abstinence from womanish ways. Important as this distinction appears to be, it does not trouble Philo, for whom these two aspects seem to have complemented each other. As the parallel case of Abraham shows, human effort at enkrateia is a prerequisite for God's gracious visitation, which in turn strengthens one's ability to sublimate the passions. The symbol of virginity is thus used here in a somewhat loose sense, representing either a substantial taming of the passions or their complete eradication.

Virginity is an important topic in Philo's writings. We saw above that he generally distinguished the Jews on account of their enkrateia in sexual matters. His Joseph was proud to tell Potiphar's wife that “we come as virgin men to virgin maidens” (Jos. 43). Philo clearly envisions virginity here as a temporary state, which is later replaced by a period of marriage and procreative sex. Virginity is thus important, but not as an end in itself. It therefore comes as a surprise that Philo praises the women among the Therapeutae for being “mostly aged virgins” who have chosen celibacy “not under compulsion … but of their own free will in their ardent yearning for wisdom” (Contempl. 68). Seeking wisdom clearly demands abstinence, especially in women, but also in men.⁶⁹

The Therapeutae refrained from sexual relations so that they could give birth to spiritual children. Joan Taylor has recently argued that Philo, always aware of the biblical injunction to procreate, expressed some ambivalence about the extreme abstinence of the Therapeutae.⁷⁰ Nevertheless, it is remarkable that he distinguishes the self-chosen abstinence of the women among the Therapeutae from the enforced celibacy of Greek priestesses (Congr. 68). While Philo considered these Jewish women to be exceptional figures whose example could not be recommended for the whole community, he was nevertheless proud of them.

Motherless Maiden (Gen 20:12)

Even when his respect for the Therapeutae is taken into account, Philo's interpretation of Sarah's virginity is astonishing. Sarah, he asserts, withdrew from the realm of women and became a virgin again as God took away “the low-born and unmanly passions, by which it [the soul] has become feminine” (Cher. 50). Her renewed virginity is the result of the process of becoming masculine. Neither real life nor the paradox of spirituality can account for this surprising turn in Philo's exegesis. What is the source of this motif? I shall argue that the myth of Athena is the key to understanding his interpretation and appreciating his originality. Going beyond the work of earlier exegetes, Philo attributed to Sarah some of the well-known characteristics of the Greek goddess of wisdom, weaving mythological imagery into his reading of Gen 18:11. This move becomes particularly clear in a passage in On Drunkenness, where Philo interprets the verse in light of Abraham's statement that Sarah is his half-sister, the daughter of his father but not of his mother (Gen 20:12). Sensitive to the Greek expression

, which can easily be understood in a more general sense than the Hebrew

(“[she is] not the daughter of my mother”), Philo reads this verse in a radically new way:

Philo suggests that Sarah left “womanly things” in an even more radical sense than has hitherto emerged. Not only has the matriarch returned to virginity, as we learned in the previous passage; now she is said to lack female descent altogether! She is born from the father's side alone. Philo quotes Gen 20:12 as a proof for this claim, yet the gap between the meaning of this verse and Philo's midrash is glaring. He obviously took the ambiguous expression

out of context and interpreted it very creatively. Most striking is his inference that Sarah's motherless birth means that she was born from God, the Father of all things. What made Philo translate a verse that could be interpreted to mean that Sarah lacks a mother as a reference to her divine genealogy? He alludes to some possible sources of inspiration for his proposal, some men “in whom first the sprout of wisdom grew.” Philo may have had in mind various passages in Plato's Timaeus that speak of hylē as mother and nurse.

⁷¹

Those passages shed light on Philo's identification of mother with matter, yet fail to account for the additional motif of Sarah's parthenogenesis from the Father of all things. The latter feature, however, is Philo's main concern here, as we may gather from another treatment of Gen 20:12 in Who Is the Heir? There he quotes the verse as proof of the fact that Sarah or Virtue, “the motherless ruler (

), having been born only of her father, God of all things, lays claim only to male descent” (Her. 62). The crucial question is, What led Philo to move from Gen 18:11 and 20:12 to the notion of Sarah's divine genealogy?

As I indicated above, the key to understanding Philo's interpretation of Sarah is the figure of Athena. This goddess was described in antiquity as a motherless virgin and Zeus's daughter, who sprang directly from his head and not from a motherly womb.

⁷²

This cluster of motifs became so popular that many vases dating from the seventh century onwards depict Athena leaping forth from Zeus's head.⁷³

Aeschylus summarizes current opinion in a speech he assigns her inThe Eumenides. Athena sides with Zeus at the trial of the accused matricide Orestes and votes for his acquital. She explains her decision thus: “For mother have I none that gave me birth, and in all things, save wedlock, I am for the male with all my soul, and am entirely on the father's side.”⁷⁴

Here the “biological” fact of Athena's male descent is interpreted by the dramatist in psychological terms: the goddess is commited to her father's cause. She is a manly goddess who will not take particular pity on women. Athena had already in the fifth century B.C.E. been assimilated to Nike and worshiped as the motherless and untouchable Maiden, in whose honor the Parthenon (from

, “virgin”) had been erected in Athens.

⁷⁵

Her virginity is cited by Pausanias as a well-known fact (5.11.10, 10.34.8). Traditions about Athena's birth and masculinity became popular also in Alexandria. Callimachus, who resided in the city in the early third century B.C.E. and became the most quoted poet of the Hellenistic period, referred to the legend of her birth in his poem “On the Bath of Pallas”: “There was no mother that bore the goddess, but the head of Zeus.”⁷⁶

Like Aeschylus, Callimachus associates Athena's male descent with other traits, praising her as the only one of Zeus's daughters to whom he “gave all the patrimony.”⁷⁷

Athena's descent from Zeus thus implies her succession to his role and qualities.

Philo knew Hellenistic sources that transformed these familiar images of Athena into philosophical allegories. He usually cites such traditions in connection with the seventh day of creation, as celebrates the unique qualities of the hebdomad. He is particularly intrigued by the fact that the number seven is neither a factor nor a multiple of any of the numbers of the first decade: it is both “barren” and without a “parent.” “For this reason,” Philo says, “the Pythagoreans, applying themselves to an explanation [of the hebdomad], liken her to the ever-virgin and motherless, because she was neither delivered from the womb nor will she give birth” (Leg. 1.15).

⁷⁸

Philo says elsewhere of the hebdomad that “some philosophers liken this number to the motherless Nike and the Virgin (

), who, tradition has it, appeared out of Zeus's head (

).”

⁷⁹

The Pythagorean personification of the number seven as a motherless maiden is no doubt traceable to the feminine gender of the noun

. Philo is thus clearly familiar with a Pythagorean interpretation of Athena that associates this goddess with the barren and motherless number seven.

⁸⁰

Philo draws on Pythagorean traditions about Athena elsewhere in his work,⁸¹

and two of these discussions are particularly relevant to his interpretation of Sarah. In Who Is the Heir? Philo discusses the seven-branched menorah (Exod 25:31–37), which has three branches on each side and one in the middle. The number seven again leads Philo to mention Athena, “for the One, being alone and pure, has given birth to the motherless seven out of himself alone, without requiring any hylē besides.”⁸² Philo's exegesis is inspired by the middle branch of the menorah, which holds a special position among the seven. In On the Creation of the World, Philo embarks on a description, teeming with mythological motifs, of the birth of the seven from the One. He is aware of fluctuations in the exegetical traditions of the Pythagoreans, who interpreted the hebdomad sometimes as Athena and sometimes as Zeus.⁸³ In this context, Philo assumes with the Pythagoreans that the hebdomad is connected to “the revered ruler and sovereign,” who is altogether devoid of the movement and generation inherent in the process of creation and who alone “neither causes motion nor experiences it” (Opif. 100b). Philo reports that the Pythagorean Philolaus said, in the context of the hebdomad, that “there is a supreme ruler and sovereign of all of things, God, ever a single one, steadfast, without motion, himself like unto himself, different from all others” (ibid.).⁸⁴ Inspired by this Pyhagoraean exegesis, Philo suggest that the motherless nature of the hebdomad implies her descent from the One alone, and not from anything hylic. His interpretation echoes both the myth of Athena's birth from Zeus's head and the Pythagorean emphasi on her descent from nothing hylic.⁸⁵ In short: the hebdomad, read in a Pythagorean mode as Athena, lacks material descent and thus any connection to the transitory created world, being born of nothing but the One.

This is precisely what Philo says about Sarah. Interpreting Gen 20:12, he suggested, as we saw above, that “she is not born of the sense-perceptible material (

), ever in a state of formation and dissolution, that some … called mother and rearer and nurse of created things, but [she is born] of the Cause of all things and the Father” (Ebr. 61). It is clear that the Pythagorean interpretation of Athena led Philo to infer Sarah's divine ancestry from her biblical identification as Abraham's paternal half-sister. In Greek tradition in general, Athena's motherlessness was explained by her birth from Zeus's head. These two aspects were intrinsically connected, a fact that prompted Philo to explain Sarah's lack of a mother by reference to her birth from God. Furthermore, Philo draws on distinctly Pythagorean Athena traditions. In fact, he never refers to Athena in other than Pythagorean terms, always referring to the goddess as a symbol of the hebdomadic principle in creation. It is thus not surprising that he attributed to Sarah a birth untainted by hylic matter.

Another Pythagorean Athena tradition preserved in Philo's writings is highly relevant to his interpretation of Sarah. In the Life of Moses, Philo once more addresses the subject of the hebdomad, in the context of the seventh day:

Philo uses here the classical epithet of Athena—“having no female descent”—in exactly the same way as he did when describing Sarah's genealogy, remarking that the matriarch has “no share in female descent” (

, Ebr. 61). Moreover, Philo stresses that the special nature of the hebdomad is connected to its unusual birth from the Father. Reflecting Pythagorean asceticism, he speaks of a generation without seed and a delivery without conception. This paradox is augmented by the assertion that the hebdomad was not only motherless, but also, like Athena, a pure virgin. It is precisely this network of motifs that recurs in Philo's interpretation of Sarah. As we saw above, he distinguished her impregnation by God from regular human intercourse. He also remarked that “whenever God begins to consort with the soul, he renders her who was previously a woman a virgin once more” (Cher. 50). God's intercourse with Sarah is clearly not of the common sort but rather follows Pythagorean paradigms. Furthermore, Philo's exegetical leap from Gen 18:11 to Sarah's virginity is fully comprehensible in light of the Pythagorean traditions about Athena.

To summarize: Philo's allegorical reading of Sarah as virtue constructs a distinctly masculine figure that is altogether devoid of “womanly things,” to the extent that Sarah does not even have a mother. It is striking that Philo chose both to identify Sarah with a goddess who appears masculine already in the ancient myths and, in addition, to adopt Pythagorean motifs that augment those traits.⁸⁶

Philo's choice is all the more remarkable as Athena was in Egypt identified with Isis, a goddess of wisdom described, like Sarah, as both wife and sister to her husband.⁸⁷ Unlike Athena, however, Isis was celebrated as the archetypal wife and mother and as a symbol of femininity. The Stoics interpreted her as the feminine earth that is fertilized by Osiris, who symbolizes the waters of the Nile.⁸⁸ By adopting Pythagorean interpretations of Athena, Philo has chosen a very different image. Instead of assimilating some of Isis's distinctly feminine traits to Athena, he takes the conservative route, depicting her in strongly masculine terms. This preference for the Pythagorean, masculine Athena is doubtless also reflected in Philo's insistence, discussed above, that even on the allegorical level regular gender roles must be maintained and that virtue, being active and fruitful, thus cannot be described in female terms.