tics of Eve between the Philonic and rabbinic formations has to do with the role assigned to the snake. In Philo, the snake stands for pleasure embodied, especially the carnal pleasure that the male has in intercourse with the female.
7
Philo actually refers to the snake as "Eve's snake" (Philo 1929, 275); she is not his victim, but rather he is her agent, indeed her inevitable retinue.
7
For once Eve was created, it was inevitable that the snake (= pleasure) would threaten Adam's bliss ("it could not but be that the first man too should experience some ill fortune") and entrap him (''that pleasure which is the beginning of wrongs"). Woman, whom Philo equates with sexuality, is an ill fortune.
9
When notions such as these were combined in Philo with platonic dualism, and woman as the sign of corporeality was thereby committed to the realm of the senses, indeed construed
as
the realm of the senses, the scene was set for the production of the systematic misogyny which has plagued Western cultures ever since. Philo had an overwhelming effect on the formation of early Christian
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 | | 7. As Philo says explicitly (1929a, 271). Dorothy Sly has pointed out that the standard translation there elides the clear sense of the Greek that it is the pleasure of the male with the female which is being spoken of (Sly 1990, 109).
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| | 8. Note that even the midrashic text cited below does not indicate that the snake is an essential attribute or companion of Eve but only that she functioned in the moment as Adam's temptress just as the snake had tempted her. The second text quoted, to the effect that Satan was created together with the woman,
is
much closer to Philo.
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| | 9. It should be noted, however, that since in the biblical text itself, Eve is positively evaluated as the "Mother of All Living," Philo does not assign her or sexuality only a negative value. Moreover, the term "Helper," for all of its connotations of subservience, is one that he can only read as having a positive valence, because help itself is clearly positively marked. On this, Dillon writes, "It seems true to say that in Philo's thought there is present the recognition of a female life-principle assisting the supreme God in his work of creation and administration, but also somehow fulfilling the role of mother to all creation. If this concept reveals contradictions, that is perhaps because Philo himself was not quite sure what to do with it" (1977, 164). Similarly, for Philo in his allegorical interpretation, "woman" is the senses, and the import is that senses are something that cannot be done without, something that has a positive role to play, however disturbing, in human life. This understanding on the allegorical level has its parallel on the literal level and even in practice, for in Philo, I think, literal women have about the same status as their signified, the senses, do in the allegorical meaning. That is, in Peter Brown's words, they are ''an irritating but necessary aspect of existence" (1987, 26667). For Philo on women in general, see Sly 1990. In this, as in other areas, Philo represents a relatively moderate position that would later be radicalized. Thus, while he ascribes spiritual meaning to the commandments, he also requires their observance and berates those who substitute the allegorical entirely for the literal observance, and while he approbates highly the celibate life of the Therapeutae, nowhere does he argue against procreation as a necessity.
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