2. Intermediary Beings. - Potencies (dunmeis, lgoi). If, in what has preceded, we have once and again noticed a remarkable similarity between Philo and the Rabbis, there is a still more curious analogy between his teaching and that of Jewish Mysticism, as ultimately fully developed in the Kabbalah.' The very term Kabbalah (from qibbel, to hand down) seems to point out not only its descent by oral tradition, but also its ascent to ancient sources. [189] Its existence is presupposed, and its leading ideas are sketched in the Mishnah. [190] The Targums also bear at least one remarkable trace of it. May it not be, that as Philo frequently refers to ancient tradition, so both Eastern and Western Judaism may here have drawn from one and the same source - we will not venture to suggest, how high up - while each made such use of it as suited their distinctive tendencies? At any rate the Kabbalah also, likening Scripture to a person, compares those who study merely the letter, to them who attend only to the dress; those who consider the moral of a fact, to them who attend to the body; while the initiated alone, who regard the hidden meaning, are those who attend to the soul. Again, as Philo, so the oldest part of the Mishnah [191] designates God as Maqom - the place' - the tpos, the all-comprehending, what the Kabbalists called the EnSoph, the boundless,' that God, without any quality, Who becomes cognisable only by His manifestations. [192]
The manifestations of God! But neither Eastern mystical Judaism, nor the philosophy of Philo, could admit of any direct contact between God and creation. The Kabbalah solved the difficulty by their Sephiroth, [193] or emanations from God, through which this contact was ultimately brought about, and of which the EnSoph, or crown, was the spring: the source from which the infinite light issued.' If Philo found greater difficulties, he had also more ready help from the philosophical systems to hand. His Sephiroth were Potencies' (dunmeis), Words' (lgoi), intermediate powers. Potencies,' as we imagine, when viewed Godwards; Words,' as viewed creationwards. They were not emanations, but, according to Plato, archetypal ideas,' on the model of which all that exists was formed; and also, according to the Stoic idea, the cause of all, pervading all, forming all, and sustaining all. Thus these Potencies' were wholly in God, and yet wholly out of God. If we divest all this of its philosophical colouring, did not Eastern Judaism also teach that there was a distinction between the Unapproachable God, and God manifest? [194]
Another remark will show the parallelism between Philo and Rabbinism. [195] As the latter speaks of the two qualities (Middoth) of Mercy and Judgment in the Divine Being, [196] and distinguishes between Elohim as the God of Justice, and Jehovah as the God of Mercy and Grace, so Philo places next to the Divine Word (theos lgos), Goodness (gathotes), as the Creative Potency (poietik dnamis), and Power (xousia), as the Ruling Potency (basilik dnamis), proving this by a curious etymological derivation of the words for God' and Lord' (Thes and krios) - apparently unconscious that the LXX., in direct contradiction, translated Jehovah by Lord (krios), and Elohim by God (Thes)! These two potencies of goodness and power, Philo sees in the two Cherubim, and in the two Angels' which accompanied God (the Divine Word), when on his way to destroy the cities of the plain. But there were more than these two Potencies. In one place Philo enumerates six, according to the number of the cities of refuge. The Potencies issued from God as the beams from the light, as the waters from the spring, as the breath from a person; they were immanent in God, and yet also without Him - motions on the part of God, and yet independent beings. They were the ideal world, which in its impulse outwards, meeting matter, produced this material world of ours. They were also the angels of God - His messengers to man, the media through whom He reveled Himself. [197]