Herein we continue, from part 1, providing quotations and citations on Serpent and Dragon (within a Satanic context) from Philo of Alexandria (20 BC-50 AD). The fuller complete result consists of quotations of those sections within the text that refer to Angels, Cherubim, Seraphim, Devil, Satan, demons, serpent and dragon. The point is not to elucidate these references but to provide relevant partial quotations and citations. See my section on Angels here, Cherubim and Seraphim here, Satan here and Demons here.
Allegorical Interpretation, II
XV “And they were both naked, both Adam and his wife, and they were not ashamed; but the serpent was the most subtle of all the beasts that were upon the Earth, which the Lord God had Made.”
XVIII “Now the serpent was the most subtle of all the beasts which are upon the Earth, which the Lord God Made.”
XIX For Moses says, “And the Lord God sent among the people deadly serpents, and they bit the people, and a great multitude of the children of Israel Died”…Moses, say, “We have sinned in that we have spoken against the Lord and against you; pray, therefore, for us to the Lord, and let him take away the serpents from us.”
XX How, then, can there be any remedy for this evil? When another serpent is created, the enemy of the serpent which came to Eve, namely, the word of temperance: for temperance is opposite to pleasure, which is a varied evil, being a varied virtue, and one ready to repel its enemy pleasure…Moses speaks truly, for if the mind that has been bitten by pleasure, that is by the serpent which was sent to Eve, shall have strength to behold the beauty of temperance, that is to say, the [brazen] serpent made by Moses in a manner affecting the soul, and to behold God himself through the medium of the serpent, it shall live.
XXI Do you not see that not only did the soul, while longing for the passions which prevailed in Egypt, fall under the power of the serpents, but that, also, while it was in the wilderness, it was bitten by pleasure, that affection of varied and serpent-like appearance?
XXVI Accordingly, the word of God in Leviticus recommends men “to feed on those creeping things which go on four feet, and which have legs above their feet, so that they are able to leap with Them;” among which are the locust, and the attacus, and the acris, (these are different kinds of locusts.) and in the fourth place the serpent-fighter; and every properly; for if pleasure, like a serpent, is an unprofitable and pernicious thing, then the nature which contends against pleasure must be a most profitable and saving thing, and this is temperance. Fight thou then, O my mind, against every passion, and especially against pleasure, for “the serpent is the most subtle of all the beasts that are upon the Earth, which the Lord God has made.”
In the next segment, we will consider Allegorical Interpretation III.
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