From what has been said, it will be apparent that, while the Memra plays a réle somewhat similar to it, it is not to be altogether identified with the Logos of Philo. In one respect, however, the Targumists are at one with the Alexandrian theo- sophy of which he became the leading exponent; the Deity Himself remained in the background, and everything that can be known by us about God’s essential Being is transferred to the Word. This is shown, é.g., by their treatment of 1 S 2620, where, instead of ‘ Let not my blood fall to the earth before the face of the Lord,’ we have ‘Let not . . . before the Word of the Lord.’ Even affections are attributed to God only mediately through the Word (Gn 66, 1S 1510, Is 421), With the Alex- andrians God is without qualities (érois); with the Targumists He is virtually unknowable. While, then, the Memra of the Targumists is not to be identified with the Logos doctrine of the Alexandrian school, the former being at bottom religious and the latter philosophical, the two conceptions are yet in some measure related. Indeed the difference between the position reflected in the Targums and the standpoint of the Book of Wisdom is most satisfactorily explained on the assumption that the Alexandrian doctrine of the Logos, as representing the knowable in Deity, was not unfamiliar to Pal. circles, at any rate so far as its general features and results were concerned. In all probability it was to a large extent welcomed and adopted as a ready-made and serviceable con- ception. This may be inferred from the fact that the ex- pression Memra is used almost to excess, and in the most varied connexions. While really connoting much less than the Jewish cogin=Gr. Adyos, it was given a far more extended application than is warranted by the doctrine of the cog/a as presented in the Book of Wisdom.
It was in keeping with the spirit of the age that the Tar- gumists should hail a doctrine which made for the purification of the conception of God by excluding the ascription to God in His essential Being of all direct activity in the world or contact with man, and of all such affections of the soul as seemed to savour of the finite and human, and so to import a certain limitation and degradation of the Deity. They did not, how- ever, like Philo, speculate about the position of the Word relatively to God. They were content to connect their generali- zations with the OT representation of the creation of the world mediately through Wisdom. And as in the sacred writings the conception of Wisdom is not a fixed one, but appears now as merely a personified Divine attribute, now as virtually a distinct entity or hypostasis, they secured their object by the simple method of giving to it a wider scope. In the hands of the Tar- gumists, however, the Logos doctrine underwent no essential development ; they did nothing to give precision or clearness to the obscure and indeterminate position in which it is found in Proverbs and Wisdom, and also in the earlier writings of the Alexandrian school.
For generations thinking men had been grap- pling with the problems suggested by the OT doctrine of the Logos in conjunction with philo- sophical speculation, and it would appear as if at length by the first century of our era the hope of a satisfactory conclusion ever being reached had
* Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, i. p. 47.
DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE
been to a large extent abandoned. Men were weary of wandering in what seemed an intermin- able maze. For while on the one hand there was a disposition to surmise that the unity of the God- head was not in all respects absolute, on the other hand it was recognized that the phenomena of the inner life of Deity were secrets undecipherable by man’s intellect, and only darkly hinted at even in revelation. Through the dense maze of subtleties and theorizings which had overrun the path of investigation Philo had boldly cut his way to clearer ground by ascribing to the Logos a distinct personality, albeit with the rank of an inferior God. Others went to the opposite extreme, and took no cognizance whatever of the subject. The writer of 2 (4) Esdras, ¢.g., ignores the whole development of the Logos doctrine. Although that doctrine was specially associated with the creation of the world, and had obtained in Pales- tine a new significance as Memra, the term ‘ Word’ is used by the writer simply as denoting the spoken word, even where he speaks of God as having created heaven and earth by His Word. All mystery is eliminated from the doctrine, and no consciousness betrayed of the existence of the many enigmas which had gathered round it.
5. NT conception of the Logos.—But the whole position with reference to this doctrine was about to undergo a development of the utmost conse- quence through the promulgation of the Christian idea of the Logos. ‘This is set forth in the Pro- logue to the Fourth Gospel. Here we are taught that the Logos is a Divine personal Subsistence, and, as such, exists in a twofold manner: first, as coexistent with God from eternity, as resting in Him before all time; second, as outwardly exist- ing, 7.e. as manifested, first of all in order to the act of creation, and finally in His Incarnation in order to the redemption of the world. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him. . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.’ In these bold, concise, and unmistakable utterances, St. John, moved and enlightened by the Holy Ghost, at once completely solves the long-standing riddle of centuries, and communicates a new revelation. Joining on his representation to that of the Mosaic account of the creation as containing the first revelation of the activity of the Logos, he pro- ceeds to erect upon this foundation his great doctrinal superstructure. The opening verses of the OT had already declared that in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and through His Word gave shape and order to formless chaos. St. John supplements this statement by further declaring that ‘in the beginning’ the Word already existed alongside of God and partook of the Divine nature. He thereby also confirms the language of Pr 8, which speaks of Wisdom as ‘set up from everlasting,’ and as occupying the very closest relation to God. True, he does not make use of the term Wisdom, but of the term Logos. The latter, however, is employed, not in its older mean- ing of Nous but in its then current sense of Word. The connexion with Pr 8 is obvious enough, and the Evangelist’s representation makes it impossible to put any other interpretation upon the passage than that which it must bear when read in the light of his words.