05_Biblica_1_H_Collins_Layout 1 05/11/12 12:19 Pagina 410 410 C. JOHN COLLINS ries likewise use the noun and its cognate verbs (commonly to designate the destruction of the flood. Under such cir- cumstances it was perhaps inevitable that educated Jewish authors would find a connection between the various stories 16 Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 B.C.E. – 50 C.E.) wrote much on the Pen- tateuch, and aimed as much as possible to commend its faith to his Alexandrian audience. Philo is well known for his allegorical ap- proach, and most scholars recognize that, at least in Philo’s mind, this approach does not imply his rejection of historical referentiality (al- though to be sure, the historical element generally plays little role!). Philo’s treatise De Gigantibus, on Genesis 6,1-4 (basically using the for Hebrew hannepîlîm) LXX) 17, denies that the “giants” ( have any connection to “the myths of the poets about the giants, but indeed myth-making is a thing most alien to” the Lawgiver (58). In De Abrahamo, 41-46, Philo summarizes the Genesis account of the great flood, sticking with the simple historical sense. Although his main source is surely the LXX, that does not supply all of his Greek terms 18. Finally, in his De Praemiis et Poenis, 23, Philo identifies Noah as the Hebrew name for the person the Greeks call Deucalion. F.H. Colson, the editor of the Loeb edition, considers this unique in all of Philo: “Though he often mentions Greek mythical personages, and not always with signs of disbelief … , he nowhere equates them with Old Testament characters”. Of course it is always conceivable that the LXX translators chose their 16 words with such connections in mind; at the same time, with the underlying Hebrew terms based on the root these are the right Greek words to choose. There are slight variations from the received text of the LXX, the most 17 important being Philo’s — the variant reading attested in Alexandrinus and a few scattered witnesses — for (cf. MT) in v. 2. J.W. WEVERS, Notes on the Greek Text of Genesis (SBLSCS; Atlanta, GA 1993) 75-76, observes that the expression “son[s] of God” is rendered “angel[s] of God” elsewhere, but does not suggest that this is the original rendering here in LXX-Genesis. For example, his word for “destroy”, does not appear in the 18 LXX, though it does appear in Pseudo-Apollodorus (1.7.2), and in Plato (Laws, 678e); cf. Josephus, Antiquities, 1,99. He also amplifies the biblical account by saying that the flood would destroy, “not only those who dwelt in the plains and lower lands, but also the inhabitants of the highest mountains”, which may be his own imaginative expansion, but does also seem to echo Plato’s reference to “the cities in the plains and near the sea” (Laws, 677c).