EDorts have been matle to relegate some of the most chararteiistic teaching of the Kourth Gospel
and First Ep. of the same writer to the dominant inlluence of Philo J ud;eus of Alexandria. Liicke, Bleok, Baur, Keim, Schiirer, Alb. Thoma, and many others have laid great emphasis on this filiation of ideas. But Siegfried has found the same inlluence abundantly evidcot in St. James, in Ep. to Heb., and in St. Paul. Luthardt, Godet, Pre.ssense, and others disclaim any relation, direct or indirect, on the part of St. John with the philo- sophy of Philo or his school. Even Keim and S. Davidson contend for the originality of the Fourth Gospel, pre-eminently in its teaching regarding the incarnation of the Son of God and its doctrine of the Messiah. The phraseology current in the Alex, school consists of important terms also used in the Johannine writings, i.e. not only Lo/jvs, but Light, Life, Truth, the Paraclete, the Archon, the Pleroma, the /lovoyetnis and irpwrAroitot, ' only-be- gotten' and 'first-bom.' These terms are used to denote the relation and mediation of the Divine Essence to the k6(tiios, and part at least of the process by which all things have come into being. Philo endeavoured to utilize the speculation and phrases of both Plato and the Stoics in order to expound the teaching of the Pentateuch, but the amalgam was uncertain and really valueless. No one finally accepted these high-fiown allegories of 'law,' or of 'narrative,' any more than they did the Stoic interpretation ot the Homeric poems. It is, however, true that the place which, about the same time, St. Paul had in Co, Gal, and Col assigned to ' Christ ' and ' the Son ' and the ' Rock in the wilderness,' Philo had assigned to the ' Logos.' So, too, ' the heavenly bread ' is ex- plained by Philo as the manifestation of the Logos; and other terms in He 1'"', and the ' Wis- dom ' of the Psalms, and in the Sapiential Books, are by Philo similarly correlated with the Logos. There are, however, strong reasons for disputing either a verbal or a philosophical dependence of the author of the Fourth Gospel on the Alex. theosophy.
(n) Ihe twofold meaning ot the term 'Logo.s.' In Greek this represents not only, as in Philo, the Reason and Self consciousness, the rationality of a thing or person, but also ' the word,' the ex- pression, the process by which a revelation can be made or ratiocination carried into ellect. The same ambiguous word is used for the Reason and the Word of both tJoil and man. There are those who say that they are but the reverse and obverse sides ot the same reality. At any rate, the same term is U5.ed by Philo for the archetypal reason and by 'John' for the creative energy, the divine personal nature, the source of life and light in man, which is at length incarnated in Ininianity, the glorj- of God revealed, full of grace and truth, the only-begotten and beloved of the Father, able to declare Him.*
(b) The Philonic Logos is in no sense personal. The Logos is often identified with the ' world,' as ' intelligible,' the ' image' of God in the univer.se ; 'by His Logos, God is both governor and good.' True, Philo spoke of the Logos who, in place of the Angel of the Lord, brought back Hagar to Sarah (de Cher. p. Ui8), but by Hagar he meant not the woman Hagar, typical or historic, but ' human arts and science, brought back to the true virtue.' Numerous illustrations of the same method constantly recur. There is no i>ersonality in the Logos of Philo, such as we find adumbrated in the Books of Job or Wis, and, in another form, in 'the Son' of the Fourth Gospel, the ' Christ' of St. Paul, and the dr ai.'y atriui ol God in Ho2».
(c) The doctrine of Messiah was ignored by Philo,
■ Schnrer {IIJP ii. ill. 340-SCS) hu more (ully giTtn to PhUo'i L.O|;<^ tlw (jiiulity of UYrnf.
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JOHN, GOSPEL OF
JOHN, GOSPEL OP
and that of the incarnation of the Logos was abhor- rent to the whole Neo-Platonic school.
(rf) To the phraseoloKT of Philo some curious analogies are found in the Fourth Gospel, but by Siegfried (I.e.) many similar ones have been found in all the books of NT. Even the Ep. of Ja, the Targuras, and the Sj'nop. Gospels (Pulp. Com. Introd. p. xMx) are supposed to reflect Philo's influence. But this phraseology is kindled into entirely new meaning by the W ord made flesh, — cf. 'love,' 'faith,' 'righteousness,' 'life eternal,' — and the use of it does not in the least degree establish a non-Pal. origin for the author of the Fourth Gospel. Thoma's eloquent enumeration of the titles and glories of Philo's Logos vanishes as an anticipation of the Fourth Gospel when it is found that these are only tropical phrases for the discipline through which souls are passing to the
rest of a true philosophy.
(e) The true origin of the ideas and i)hraseology of the Fourth Gospel is to be sought in the O'T.
St. Paul and St. Jonn found their material in the books which they had studied from their youth, and in the traditional interpretations of the Pal. schools. The spoken word is throughout Gn I the creative agency, the mediator between the Eternal and the ' cosmos.' In Ps 33" and 147' ' the word of J"' is approximately personified for the same purpose. The personihcations, moreover, of the direct activity of J" under the form of Memra or Deltra of the Lord in the Targums, though they cannot attest a literary usage answering to the Prologue of 'John,' indirectly reveal a mental tone in the Aram, schools, out of which the Joliannine representation sprang. The same remark may be made touching ' the Angel of J",' distinct from the created angels, who makes His appearance tlirough- out the OT, and suggests awful and sublime deptlis in the bosom of the Divine Essence. The phrase is used as Logos is used, interchangeably with Deity and invested with all J'"s glory. Kurtz in his Old Covenant has criticised this, his earlier m'W (appx. of Enjj. tr.); but see Westcott (/nirorf.), Liddon {Divinity of our Lord). Cf. also art. Anqel, vol. i. p. 94.