Philo here treats the stories in the opening of Genesis as pure allegories, in which the men and women represent symbolically characters and qualities. It should be remembered, however, that these interpretations occur in the commentary where our author is not so much expounding the Torah as deducing secret doctrines from it. His proper exposition of the law proceeds from the book on the Creation to the lives of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and then to the lives of Joseph and Moses. And in this commentary the Bible narrative is taken as historical truth: only in addition to the historical fact there is a moral and universal value in every figure and every episode. The patriarchs' lives represent the unwritten law which the Greek world held in high honor, for it was considered to contain the broad principles of individual and social conduct, and to be prior logically and chronologically to the written codes. Moses, therefore, the perfect legislator, according to Philo, has presented in the three founders of the Hebrew race embodiments of the unwritten law of good conduct for all mankind. Each of them is a moral type of eternal validity and represents one of the ways in which blessedness may be attained.[137] Abraham represents the goodness which comes from instruction; Isaac, the spontaneous goodness that is innate, and the joy (or laughter) of the soul that is God's gift to his favored sons; Jacob, the goodness that comes after long effort, through the life of practice and severe discipline. Before this triad, the Bible presents another group of three, who represent the virtues preparatory to the acquisition of perfect goodness: Enosh, Enoch, and Noah.[138] They typify respectively, as their names indicate, hope, repentance, and justice. It is a pretty thought, helped by an error in the Septuagint translation,[139] which sees in the name of the first (_i.e._, man, [Hebrew: 'nosh]) the symbol of hope. Hope, the commentator suggests, is the distinguishing characteristic of man[140] as compared with other animals, and hope therefore is our first step towards the Divine nature, the seed of which faith is the fruit. Next in order come repentance and natural justice, and from these stepping-stones we can rise to the higher self. Philo's interpretation of these Bible figures would appear to have behind it an old Midrashic tradition. As far back as the book of Ben Sira, in the passage on "the Praises of Famous Men" (xliv), they are taken as typical of the different virtues, and Enoch notably is the type of repentance. In the first century the world was becoming incapable of understanding abstract ideas, and required ethics to be concretely embodied in examples of life. Philo found within the Jewish Scriptures what the Christian apostles later transferred to other events.