Whose Abraham,Which Promise? Genesis 15.6 in Philo’s De Virtutibus and Romans 4

Abstract

This article creates a dialogue between Philo’s and Paul the Apostle’s interpretations of Gen. 15.6—specifically, their understandings of Abraham’s faith. Both Philo and Paul see Abraham as functioning in a formally analogous way: for example, Abraham’s faith identifies him as a representative or paradigmatic figure for those who follow him. Yet Philo and Paul develop their interpretations in remarkably divergent fashions. Accordingly, this article will seek to discern the hermeneutical fault line that allows two near-contemporary readers of the same text to construe it so differently. As will be demonstrated, Philo reads Abraham’s story as the narrative of Abraham’s becoming virtuous, and thus how one attains virtue is the key to Philo’s hermeneutic; Paul, by contrast, interprets Abraham’s faith from the vantage point of the Christ-event, such that the focus is on the incongruity between God’s gift and the human recipient.