With Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire Palestine also was
drawn within the circle of Hellenistic culture. It was at first a
vassal state of the Egyptian Ptolemies, and consequently at the
commencement of the second century before Christ came under the
overlordship of the Syrian Seleucids. The customs and intellectual life
of Greece forced their way into the quiet isolation of the priest-ruled
Jewish state and could not be expelled again, despite the national
reaction under the Maccabees against foreign influences. Above all,
however, the dispersal of the Jews contributed to bring about a
settlement of opposing views. Since the Exile the Jews had spread
over all the countries of the East Mediterranean. Some had remained
in Babylon, others were permanently settled especially in the ports
as tradesmen, bankers, and merchants. They controlled the entire
money market and trade of the East through their assiduous industry,
mercantile sharpness, their lack of scruples, and the tenacity with
which they held together, supported therein by their worship in common
in the Synagogue. In the atmosphere of Greek philosophy and morality a
still further transformation and purification of Jahwe took place. All
common human and material lineaments were dropped, and he developed
into a spiritual being of perfect goodness, such as Plato had described
the Godhead. Here the Jews found themselves face to face with the same
problem that had long occupied the Greek philosophers. This was the
reconciliation of the supernatural loftiness and aloofness from the
world of their God with the demands of the religious consciousness
that required the immediate presence of Godhead.
Among the ideas which were borrowed by Judaism from the Persian
religion belonged those connected with the mediatory "Word." As
the creative power of the Godhead, the bearer of revelation and
representative of God upon earth, the expression "the word" had already
appeared in aphoristic literature. Under Græco-Egyptian influence
the term "wisdom" (sophia) had become the naturalised expression for
it. "Wisdom" served to describe the activities in regard to man of the
God who held aloof from the world. In this connection it may be noted
that according to Persian ideas "Wisdom" under the name of Spenta
Armaiti was considered as one of the six or seven Amesha Spentas
(Amshaspands), those spirits that stood as a bodyguard closest to
the throne of God and corresponded to the Jewish archangels. She
was considered by the Persians as the daughter or spouse of
Ahuramazda. Already, in the so-called "Wisdom of Solomon," written by
an Alexandrian Jew in the last century before Christ, she was declared
to be a separately existing spirit in close relation to God. Under the
guise of a half-personal, half-material being--a power controlling the
whole of nature--she was described as the principle of the revelation
of God in the creation, maintenance, and ruling of the world, as the
common principle of life from on high and as the intermediary organ
of religious salvation. Just as Plato had sought to overcome the
dualism of the ideal and the material world by the conception of a
"world-soul," so "Wisdom" was intended to serve as an intermediary
between the opposites, the God of the Jews and his creation. These
efforts were continued by the Alexandrian Jew Philo (30 B.C. to 50
A.D.), who tried to bring the Perso-Jewish conception of the "Word"
or "Wisdom" into closer accord with the ideas of Greek philosophy
than the author of the "Book of Wisdom" had already done. Philo, too,
commenced with the opposition between an unknowable, unnameable God,
absolutely raised above the world, and material created existence. He
imagined this opposition bridged over by means of "powers" which,
as relatively self-existing individuals, messengers, servants, and
representatives of God, at one time more closely resembled Persian
angels or Greek Dæmons, at another time the Platonic "Ideas," the
originals and patterns of God in creating. Essentially, however,
they bore the character of the so-called "Fructifying powers,"
those creative forces which infused a soul and design into formless
matter and by means of which the Stoic philosophers sought to explain
existence. As the first of these intermediate forces, or, indeed, as
the essence of them all, Philo considered the "Logos," efficacious
reason or the creative word of God. He called him the "first-born
son of God" or the "second God," the representative, interpreter,
ambassador, Archangel of God, or Prince of Angels. He considered him
as the High Priest, who made intercession with God for the world,
the affairs of which he represented before him as the paraclete, the
advocate and consoler of the world, who was the channel to it of the
divine promises; as the tool with which God had fashioned the world,
the original and ideal of it to which God had given effect in its
creation--that which operated in all things; in a word, as the soul
or spirit of the world, which the Stoics had identified with their
God, but which Philo distinguished from the other-world Divinity and
looked upon as his revelation and manifestation.
In essence only an expression for the sum total of all divine forces
and activities, the Logos of Philo also was sometimes an impersonal
metaphysical principle, simply the efficacy of the Godhead, and
sometimes an independent personality distinct from God. Just as the
Stoics had personified their world-reason in Hermes, the messenger of
the Gods, so the Egyptians had raised Amun Ra's magic word of creation
to a self-existing personal mediatory being in Thoth the guide of
souls; the Babylonians, the word of fate of the great God Marduk in
the shape of Nabu; the Persians, the word of Ahuramazda in Vohu mano
as well as in the Spenta Armaiti, the good thought of the creative
God. And just as according to Persian ideas it was at one time the
divine "son" and mediator "Mithras," the collectivity of all divine
forces, at another the ideal man Saoshyant who appeared as Saviour
and Deliverer of the world, and just as both mingled in one form,
so Philo also at one time described the Word as the collectivity of
all creative ideas, at another only as the unembodied idea of man,
the ideal man, the direct divine image and immaterial pattern of
the material exemplars of humanity, that is effective therein as the
subject of all religious redemption. Indeed, he occasionally identified
him with the tree of life in Paradise, since both were everlasting and
"stood in the middle."
According to Philo, man is unable of his own strength to free himself
from the bonds of earthly existence. All deliverance depends upon the
emancipation of the soul from the body and its sensuous desires. In
conformity with his true spiritual and godlike nature, to become
as perfect as God, is the highest virtue and at the same time true
happiness. This is attained by an insight into the divine reality of
things, by whole-hearted trust in God, by grateful recognition of the
goodness and love bestowed by him, showing itself in piety towards God
as well as in charity and justice towards other men. But in addition
the Logos itself must be in us and cause for us the insight into our
divine nature. The Logos must guide us, come to the aid of our human
weakness with his supernatural strength in the struggles against the
world and sin and raise us up to God. Thus the apotheosis of man is
the goal aimed at in all religious activity. The Logos, however, is
the only means to this end, in so far as we are raised through union
with him in faith and love to our true origin and life's source,
"the vision of God," and thereby have participation in his life.