על חיי משה, ספר ב ל״וOn the Life of Moses, Book II 36
א׳
1[192] In fulfilment of my promise, I must begin with the following examples. There are four cases upon which the divine voice laid down the law in the form of question and answer and which therefore have a mixed character; for, on the one hand, the prophet asks a question under divine possession, and on the other hand the Father, in giving the word of revelation, answers him and talks with him as with a partner. The first case is one which would have enraged not only Moses, the holiest of men ever yet born, but even one who knew but a little of the flavour of godliness.
ב׳
2[193] A certain base-born man, the child of an unequal marriage, his father an Egyptian, his mother a Jewess, had set at naught the ancestral customs of his mother and turned aside, as we are told, to the impiety of Egypt and embraced the atheism of that people.
ג׳
3[194] For the Egyptians almost alone among the nations have set up earth as a power to challenge heaven. Earth they held to be worthy of the honours due to a god, and refused to render to heaven any special tribute of reverence, acting as though it were right to shew respect to the outermost regions rather than to the royal palace. For in the universe heaven is a palace of the highest sanctity, and earth is the outer region, estimable indeed in itself, but when it comes into comparison with ether, as far inferior to it as darkness is to light and night to day and corruption to incorruption and mortal man to God.
ד׳
4[195] The Egyptians thought otherwise; for, since the land is not watered like other countries by the downpour of rain but regularly every year becomes a standing water through the flooding of the river, they speak of the Nile as though it were the counterpart of heaven and therefore to be deified, and talk about the land in terms of high reverence.