Philo: Allegorical Interpretation, III

XXXIII. (100) There is also a more perfect and more highly purified kind which has been initiated into the great mysteries, and which does not distinguish the cause from the things created as it would distinguish an abiding body from a shadow; but which, having emerged from all created objects, receives a clear and manifest notion of the great uncreated, so that it comprehends him through himself, and comprehends his shadow, too, so as to understand what it is, and his reason, too, and this universal world. (101) This kind is that Moses, who speaks thus, "Show thyself to me; let me see thee so as to know Thee."

for do not thou be manifested to me through the medium of the heaven, or of the earth, or of water, or of air, or, in short, of anything whatever of created things, and let me not see thy appearance in any other thing, as in a looking-glass, except in thee thyself, the true God. For the images which are presented to the sight in executed things are subject to dissolution; but those which are presented in the One uncreate may last for ever, being durable, eternal, and unchangeable. On this account "God called Moses to him and conversed with Him,"

(102) and he also called Bezaleel to him, though not in the same way as he had called Moses, but he called the one so that he might receive an idea of the appearance of God from the Creator himself, but the other so that he might by calculation form an idea of the Creator as if from the shadow of the things created. On this account you will find the tabernacle and all its furniture to have been made in the first instance by Moses, and again subsequently by Bezaleel. For Moses fashioned the archetypal forms, and Bezaleel made the imitations of them. For Moses had God himself for an instructor, as he tells us, when he represents God as saying to him, "Thou shall make every thing according to the example which was shown thee in the Mount"

(103) And Bezaleel had Moses for his instructor; and this was very natural. For Aaron the word, and Miriam the outward sense, when they rose up against Moses were expressly told that "If there shall arise a prophet to the Lord, God shall be made known to him in a vision, and in a shadow, but not Clearly.

But with Moses, who is faithful in all his house, God will speak mouth to mouth in his own form, and not by riddles."