Cosmology
Philo's conception of the matter out of which the world was created is similar to that of the Stoics. According to him, God does not create the world-stuff, but finds it ready at hand. God cannot create it, as in its nature it resists all contact with the divine. Sometimes, following the Stoics, he designates God as "the efficient cause,"and matter as "the affected cause." He seems to have found this conception in the Bible (Gen. i.2) in the image of the spirit of God hovering over the waters ("De Opificio Mundi," § 2 ).
Philo, again like Plato and the Stoics, conceives of matter as having no attributes or form. Philo conceives of matter as evil, on the ground that no praise is meted out to it in Genesis ("Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit," § 160 ). God appears as demiurge (Greek: craftsman) and cosmoplast (Greek: universe molder).
Philo frequently compares God to an architect or gardener, who formed the present world (the κόσμος ἀισϑητός) according to a pattern, the ideal world (κόσμος νοητός). Philo takes the details of his story of the Creation entirely from Genesis 1, the Elohist account. He assigns an especially important position to the Logos, which executes the several acts of the Creation, as God cannot come into contact with matter, actually creating only the soul of the good. The philosophical term Logos (word, reason) parallels the Hebrew phrase "word of God" ("dabar Yahweh"), which the Hebrew Bible portrays as bearing God's message, especially to his prophets.
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