RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Eltzholtz Emanation
unimportant work in the sphere of historical theology. Important in exegesis are his Annotationes in locum Gal. ii. 1-10 (Schonthaler Programm, 1852) and Qucestiones et observationes ad philologiam sacram Novi Testamenti pertinentes (Tubingen, 1860). (Robert KuBELf.)
ELY: A small town of England in Cambridgeshire (16 m. n.n.e. of Cambridge). It is the seat of an important bishopric, erected in 1107, which for a long time, owing to its remote situation amid the marsh-lands of East England, enjoyed a quasipalatine authority second only to that of the see of Durham (q.v.). A convent was founded on the Island of Ely in 673 by Etheldreda, queen of Northumbria (see Etheldreda, Saint), who continued abbess till her death. In 1070 Ethelwold, bishop of Winchester, restored the buildings after the ravages of the Danes and filled them with monks instead of nuns. In 1083 Abbot Simeon commenced the conventual church, which Henry VIII. made the cathedral. The present buildings date from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries, affording examples of every period of English Gothic, and especially as restored in the nineteenth century, with the beautiful painting executed as a labor of love by Mr. Gambier Parry, are among the principal attractions of English ecclesiastical architecture.
Bibliography: W E. Dickson, Ely Cathedral, London, 1897; C. W. Stubbs, Historical Memorials of Ely Cathedral, ib. 1897; Handbook to the Cathedral, Ely, 1898; Ely Diocesan Remembrancer, Cambridge, 1895 sqq.; W. D. Sweeting, Cathedral Church of Ely, London, 1901.
EMANATION.
Definition and Distinctions (§ 1). Hindu, Persian, and Greek Phases (§2). Philonic and Early Christian Doctrine (§ 3). Dionysian, Scholastic, and Mystic Doctrine (§ 4).
The doctrine of emanation holds that all derived or secondary things proceed or flow from the more primary. It is distinguished from the doctrine of creation by its elimination of a definite will in the first cause, from which all things are made to emanate according to natural laws and without conscious volition. It differs from the theory of formation at the hands of a supreme i. Defini- artizan who finds his matter ready tion and to his hand, in teaching that all Distinc- things, whether actually or only aptions. parently material, flow from the primal principle. Unlike evolution, again, which includes the entire principle of the world, material and spiritual, in the process of development, emanation holds to the immutability of the first principle as to both quality and quantity, and also in the tendency of the development — evolution implying one which goes from less to more perfect, while emanation involves a series of descending stages. Evolution may be classed under the general head of pantheism; emanation can not, since its primary essence does not enter into the world. The vagueness prevalent in the definition of emanation is due partly to the constant use of metaphors in describing it; indeed the term emanation itself is a metaphor taken from the
flowing of liquid. Of these analogies perhaps the best is that taken from light, the beams of which go out continually without any diminution of the original source, and become more feeble the further they get away from it.
In the Upanishads of the Veda there are not a few passages which point, if obscurely, to this doctrine. One frequently quoted passage asserts that "From this Atman originated space, and from space the wind, and from the wind the fire, and from fire water, and from water the earth, and from the earth plants, and from plants food, and from food the seed of man, and from the seed of man himself." This, however, does not
2. Hindu, clearly assert an emanation, but Persian, merely marks the stages of descent
and Greek that separate man from the Atman. Phases. Attempts have often been made to derive the Gnostic doctrine of emanation from the Avesta, but with doubtful success. Even if we may assume another higher power antecedent to the two hostile powers set forth in this dualistic system and comprising them both, still the independence of these two, as well as of the angels or half-divine beings who surround them, is not clearly asserted as owing to their emanation from the primal principle. In the ancient Egyptian religion, in which polytheism early appeared, there is no question of either emanation or evolution. In Greek philosophy emanations (aporrhoiai) occur at an early period, as in Empedocles, who accounts for sensual perceptions as emanations or effluxes proceeding from the objects perceived. Similarly Democritus spoke of effluxes of atoms from the thing perceived, by which images (eidola) are produced, which strike our senses. But these views do not come under the general head of emanation, since they do not touch the origin of the atoms. Nor does the teaching of the Hylozoists, like Heraclitus, with his doctrine of the transformation of all things into fire, and then of fire into all other things. The same is true of the Stoics; some of the later ones, like Marcus Aurelius, speak of the soul as an aporrhoia of God, but this means a part of God, not an emanation from an undiminished source. The first real mention of the doctrine in Greek or Hellenistic philosophy is in the Wisdom of Solomon, where wisdom is described as " the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence (aporrhoia) flowing from the glory of the Almighty." These and the following expressions may, indeed, be poetical, not involving a personification of wisdom apart from the Godhead; but the way in which wisdom is spoken of throughout the book makes for the conception of an independent cosmic power which is an efflux from the Godhead.
The doctrine of emanation is a little more explicit in Philo, though he does not teach it clearly and consciously, still less purely and logically. It assumes its most definite form for Greek philosophy in the works of the Neoplatonists — though their speculations are largely derived from the Gnostic mythological systems of Basilides and Valentinus, in which emanation played a prominent part. According to Basilides, a whole series of eons emanated in successive stages from the unbegotten
Emanation Emigrants