It is thus possible to find the germ of the doctrine of the Logos already in the opening verses of Scripture, which represent God as having called things into being by speech. But, doubtless, it was only in connexion with the later development of the Wisdom that the origin of the Logos doctrine was referred back to this source. The whole subject is beset with much difficulty. This is partly due to the variable meaning attached to the Wisdom by biblical writers. Sometimes it is conceived as a pure abstraction, sometimes as a simple personification of the Divine Intelligence, and sometimes as virtually a distinct person objec- tive to God Himself. From Pr 8 it is clear, on the one hand, that to the writer Wisdom exists along- side of God in a special sense applicable to none of His attributes ; and, on the other, that his picture of the perfectly harmonious coexistence of God and Wisdom excludes the hypothesis of a duality in the Godhead. The Logos is more than a simple personification of Wisdom, and yet is not altogether conceived as a distinct person. The conception is more than poetical, without, however, clearly passing beyond the poetical category. A very near approach is made to the idea of the hypostasis of the Logos, but there is no definite expression given to it. No other passage of the OT affords a deeper glance into the inner Divine life, and yet it is not easy to say what precisely we gain from it in this, to us, necessarily mysterious department of know- ledge. Possibly Langen is right—although it may be difficult to reconcile such an opinion with a strict view of inspiration—when he says with re- gard to the statements of the sacred writer: ‘It would really seem that in those expressions he has presented his own dark surmisings about the essence of his ‘* Wisdom of God” rather than clear- cut thoughts’ (/.c. p. 252).
2. Hellenizing of the Heb. Hokhma in the Alez- andrian Wisdom of Solomon.—In Sirach the con- ception of Wisdom is often of the vaguest kind. Wisdom may be reason, or foresight, or knowledge, or virtue. He does use it, however, in a more definite sense. Objectively, it is that everlasting
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power by which God created and governs the world. Immanent from all eternity (1 249), it became active at the creation. It must therefore be conceived at once as an emanation from God and as standing alongside of God. Subjectively, it is the possession of the man who discovers the Divine Wisdom through the investigation of God’s works in nature, and the knowledge of His will as revealed in the Law. The personification in Sir 24, although sharper and bolder than that of Pr 8, does not go beyond the latter in the direction of asserting a distinct personality. Wisdom is repre- sented as a premundane creation of God (v.°), which ‘came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth as a mist’ (v.°). All- embracing (v.°), and with a footing in every nation (v.°), it makes its home in Israel (vv.8 1), takes root, grows, blossoms, and brings forth fruit (vv.121”), and is enshrined in the Mosaic law (v.”’). To Wisdom is thus given the special aspect of the revelation of God in the Law and in ‘the assem- blies of Jacob.’ But, although in this way it cor- responds somewhat to the NT Adyos, there is no clear ascription to it of personality: ‘the concep- tion of it still floats, so to speak, ‘“‘as a mist.”’* Thus we find nothing in Sirach, or in Baruch who agrees with him (cf. 3%), beyond a highly coloured personification after the manner of the OT writings. They stand, in spite of Greek influ- ences, where the author of Pr 8 stood. But these influences told very strongly in ‘that highly original synthesis of Jewish, Platonic, and Stoic elements,’ the later Alexandrian Book of Wisdom.
Heraclitus, who was a pantheist, appears to have heen the originator of the Greek doctrine of the vods or Néyos. Matter, he said, is God, but the animat- ing vos gave it shape. Anaxagoras improved on this by his threefold system of Godhead, déyos, and matter, holding that God as the highest Being made use of the \éyos or vois= Divine Intelligence, as the regulative principle of the universe. To Anaxagoras belongs the merit of having asserted the ascendency of Mind, although his theory was much obscured by the attempt to adduce explana- tions from material causes. In opposition to the physical philosophers, and in continuation of the work of Socrates, Plato put forth his theory of Ideas, in accordance with which he maintained that the phenomena of the universe could be accounted for only by ‘The good,’ ze. the Final Cause. This philosopher gave a further develop- ment to the views of Anaxagoras by holding that the Néyos or vods which gave form and order to the world designed it after the pattern of its own per- fections. A supreme Mind, he contended, must as Intelligence work with some end in view; but, as the perfect Intelligence can fittingly have for its object only that which is best, it must have reflected its own attributes in the shaping of the world. Thus ‘God is the measure of all things’ (de Leg. iv.). The vods holds together the xécuos vonrds, but, as regards its relation to God Himself, Plato is clear only in saying that it is not identical with Him. For, according to this greatest of Gr. philosophers, the Divine essence is to be sought, not in Intelligence but in the idea of the Chief Good; and, when he speaks of God as vods, it is only as Creator of the world that He is so desig- nated. Still, Plato does not go the length of re- presenting the yvods as a distinct personality.