NP-5980Folder 09 — People & Texts to Investigate
Philo of Alexandria
On the Giants
A Jewish philosopher who reads the passage allegorically rather than as biography.
ANCIENT TEXTINTERPRETATION
His approach
In On the Giants, Philo treats the angels of Genesis 6 within a Platonic framework of souls, and reads the narrative primarily as an account of souls drawn toward the flesh — a moral and philosophical reading rather than a historical one.
Why he belongs on the board
Philo shows that a non-literal reading existed in Jewish thought in the first century, alongside Josephus's literal one. The disagreement is not a modern invention.