(reference 1>S OJotiten Hniueratty liibrata 3tt;aca, S^em lavk BARNES BIBLICAL LIBRARY THE GIFT OF ALFRED C. BARNES 1889 Date Due ! Cornell University Library BS2615 .H31 Orign of the proloaue JS,,,§,',;,,,^,9'j,n!|f;i|P°® olin 3 1924 029 342 601 Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924029342601 THE ORIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN'S GOSPEL CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, Manacjeh EnnBnn: FETTER LANE, E.G. iESmbutsfj: loo PRINCES STREET 0.cia gorft: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Bombag, STalcutta anS ilHaliras: MACMILI-AN AND CO., JToionto: J. M. DENT AND SONS, Ltd. Cokjjo: THE MARUZEN-ICAI'.USHIKI-KAISHA j^/l rights reserved THE ORIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN'S GOSPEL by RENDEL HARRIS Cambridge : at the University Press 1917 3-^506 PREFACE ~rN the following pages I have gathered together and made some additions to a series of articles which I recently pubhshed in the pages of the Expositor. If I am right in the results here reached, we must recognise that a fresh chapter has been added to the History of Christian Dogma, and one that stands very near to the beginning of the book. A nearer approach to the origin of the Christology of the Church means a closer approxima- tion to the position of those who first tried to answer the question "Who do men say that I am?".; and to be nearer the Apostles is to be nearer, also, to Christ Himself. It is not easy to say how much of the argument is really new ; as far as I know, British theologians have hardly touched the question; they are always more at home in the fourth century than in the first! The best account of the subject that I have come across is Lebreton's Origines du dogme de la Trinite, which combines Catholic doctrine with a good deal of sound reasoning as to the evolution of that doctrine. I should have quoted it several times if I had read it before my brief essay was written. As it is, I can only refer to it here, without suggesting that my commendations should be reckoned along with the imprimatur under which it appears. They are appreciations rather than endorsements. It is certainly a book from which very much can be learned by students of every school of thought. While these pages are passing through the press I have had the pleasure of examining Prof. Hans Windisch's essay on Die gottliche Weisheit der Juden und die paulinische Christologie, in which a number of the conclusions in vi PEEFACE this book are either adumbrated, or definitely stated. It wordd have been easy for Prof. Windisch to carry his argument further, if he had known the bearing of the early Testimony Booh upon the Christological problem. In theology generally we seem to be at a standstill from which we can only be moved by the discovery of fresh facts, or the opening up of fresh hues of enquiry. It will certainly be to many a discovery that Jesus was known in the first century as the Wisdom of God ; with equal certainty the appUca- tion of this new fact to the existing Christian tradition will be productive of not a little motion amongst its dry bones. My thanks are due to the Editor of the Expositor, from whose pages much of the following volume is reproduced, and to my friend Vacher Burch, who has assisted me greatly in the com- position and correction of the volume. EENDEL HAEKIS. October, 1916. CONTENTS PAGE The Origin or the Prologue to St John, I . . . 1 II ... 19 III . . 24 Christ as the Hand of God 43 On the Ascription of Sapiential Titles to Christ 52 Did Jesus call Himself Sophia? .... 57 St John asd the Divine Wisdom . 62 THE OKIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN'S GOSPEL I In a recent number of the Commonwealth, Professor Scott Holland writes with enthusiasm in praise of the Poet Laureate's new book The Spirit of Man. But he says that he has one real regret and one only. He regrets that Dr Bridges was persuaded to give the opening passage of St John's Gospel as "In the beginning was mind." The criticism here made, which I quote from that excellent little paper, entitled Public Opinion (as I have no access to the Commonwealth), raises once more in our minds the question as to the real meaning and the actual genesis of the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel. Are we nearer to the actual sense of the words when we say with the Poet Laureate that "in the beginning was Mind," or, as some would say, "in the beginning was Thought," or are we to say with Professor Scott Holland that Mind is an inadequate term, and that the idea must have included " speech, expression, the rational word" ? It seems evident that there must be other questions to be resolved before we come to the hermeneutical and exegetical problems over which the Professor and the Poet are in danger of a collision. For instance, we want to know more about this Prologue, which is attributed commonly to St John, and which, in any case, contains theological statements of the highest importance, deserving, if any such statements necessarily deserve, an apostolical authority. Is this Prologue an intellectual Athena bursting forth suddenly from the brain of a mystical Zeus ? or is it, like so many other surprising statements of poets, sages and saints which seem to defy evolution and to be as independent of ancestry as Melchizedek, a statement which carries about it, upon close examination, marks of an ancestry in stages and by steps, like most of the reUgious, intellectual and physical products with which we are acquainted ? 2 THE OEIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN To put it another way. The Church is firmly persuaded, and not without strong supporting reasons, that these opening sentences of the Fourth Gospel are among the most inspired words in the whole of the Christian records. It is not merely that they have resonance, and apparent novelty, and depth of meaning, and unexpected views of the world sub specie aeternitatis. They are so unhke any other evangehcal prologues : their Beginning is not the "Genesis of Jesus Christ" in Matthew, nor the Beginning of the Gospel in Mark ; their glory of the Son of God is not the abrupt formula with which Mark opens, and which he uses his pictorial records to attest : the artistic fashion of them does not appear to be made on the lines of some previously successful literary artist, like the elegant Greek of the first verses of St Luke. Is it any wonder that direct and immediate inspiration has been claimed for these majestic sentences? Thus Jerome, in his prologue to Matthew, speaks of St John as saturatus revelatione when he wrote his opening words : and it is possible that the same sense of constraint is involved in the terms in which Jerome describes St John as setting pen to paper; in illud proemium caelo veniens eruotavit In prinoipio erat verbum : but this ought not to be unduly pressed, since Jerome's eructavit is really borrowed from the opening of Psalm xlv. : Eructavit cor meum verbum bonum, where the language is taken to express the emission of the doctrine of the Logos by St John, and goes back to the Septuagint, e^tfpev- ^aro r) KaphLa fiov Xoyov dyaOov. However that may be, it is certain that the Prologue of St John is the high-water mark of inspiration for those who read the Scriptures reverently. It is just at this point that the enquiring mind puts in a protest and asks whether it is not possible that, conceding the inspiration of the words, we might legitimately question the immediateness of the inspiration. Suppose then we go in search of any prior stages of thought that may underlie the famous Prologue. To begin with, there is the description of Christ as the Logos. Was that reached immediately, as soon as Philosophy and Religion looked one another fairly in the face in Ephesus or Palestine, or Alexandria? How soon did the term "Word of God" acquire a metaphysical sense? The question is, perhaps, easier THE ORIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN 3 asked than answered. In the Synoptic Gospels the term "Word of God" is always used of the utterance divine or the record of that utterance. It is that which the sower sows, that which the traditionalist makes void by his tradition, that which the multi- tudes throng round Jesus to hear. And the curious thing is that in the Fourth Gospel there is a similar usage, after one passes away from the Prologue and the doctrine of the Incarnation. Jesus Himself speaks of the readers of a certain Psalm as those to whom the Word of God came, and of His own message (rather than Himself) as the Word of the Father which He has communi- cated to His disciples. "I have given them thy word^." The suggestion is natural that we should regard the philosophical use of Logos as the latest deposit upon the surface of the narration, a verbal usage which has displaced an earher meaning and sense. It is the more curious that the Evangehst never reverts to the Logos with which he opens his narrative, in view of the fact that Christ speaks as "Light" and "Life" in various parts of the Gospel, and so identifies Himself (or is identified) with the metaphysic of the Prologue. Is it possible, we ask next, that the Logos may have displaced an earher metaphysical title as well as that employment of the word which we usually indicate by not writing it in capitals? All through the rest of the New Testament the Word of God means the Evangelic message, except in one passage in the Apocalypse, where it is a title of the Messiah, and a doubtful place in Hebrews where the "quick and powerful" word of God appears to be exphcable by Philonean parallels in a metaphysical sense. We find, however, that the re is occasionally another title give n t o Jesus Christ. He is called " the Wisdom of God and the Powe r of God," and is said to become the Wisdom of his yeo-ple. "H e has beco me to us Wisdom^." So the question arises whether Sophi a may not be an alternative title to Logos and- perhaps prior to it. For instance, in the Gospel of Luke (xi. 49) the Wisdom of God is personified and speaks of sending prophets and wise men to be 1 John xvii. 14, where the sense of X670S is fixed by the alternative p-qnaTa of verse S. 2 1 Cor. i. .30, where the use of the conjunctions makes it clear that the emphasis is on Wisdom, which should have a capital letter, and be explained by ""righteous- ness, sanctification and redemption.'' See Moffatt in loc. 1—2 4 THE ORIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN rejected by the scribes and Pharisees. Apparently this is not meant for a BibUcal quotation, and in that sense is not the Word of God ; the " Wisdom " that speaks is not the title nor the contents of a book. In the corresponding passage of Matthew (I suppose we must refer the origin to the lost document Q) we have simply "Therefore, behold! I send unto you, etc." So when Tatian made his Harmony, he naturally produced the sentence, " Behold ! I, the Wisdom of God, send unto you, etc.," which brings out clearly the involved, personified Wisdom — Christ ; and inasmuch as God is personified and speaks through Sophia, when He sends His processional array of prophets and wise men, we have what in Greek looks like a feminine form of the Johannine Logos. The suggestion arises (at present in the form of a pure hypothesis) that the way to Logos is through Sophia and that the latter is the ancestress of the former. Now let us try if we can re-write the Johannine Prologue, substituting the word Sophia for the word Logos. It now runs as follows — In the beginning was the Divine Wisdom, and Wisdom was with God, and Wisdom was God. The same was in the beginning with God : All things were made by her, and without her was nothing made that was made. As soon as we have written down the sentences we are at once struck by their resemblance to the Old Testament : we could almost say that we were transcribing a famous passage in Proverbs : Prov. viii. 22-30. "The Lord possessed me (Sophia) in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning ...when he prepared the heavens I was there : when he set a compass upon the face of the deep... then / was by him." It seems clear that we have found the stratum of the Old Testament upon which the Prologue reposes. This is practically admitted by almost all persons who find Old Testament references in the New : they simply cannot ignore the eighth chapter of Proverbs. If this be so, and if the Logos is quoted as being and doing just what Sophia is said to be and to do in the Book of Proverbs, then the equation between Logos and Sophia is justified, and we may speak of Christ in the metaphysical sense as the Wisdom of God, and may write out the first draft of the doctrine of the Logos in the form which we have suggested above. In other words, we have THE ORIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN 5 in the Prologue not an immediate oracle, but a mediated one, in which separate stages can be marked out, and an original ground- form postulated. Now let us examine the Greek of the Prologue and compare it with the Greek of the Septuagint in Proverbs. We readily see the principal parallels consist in the collocation of— ( ev ap-xfi ^v 6 \6yos and Kvpias CKTiaiv jxe ap^fju 68a>v airov ■ . npo tov aliivos f6(p.f\taa-4v /i€ ^^ "PXri (viii. 22) (6 \6yos jfy npos tov 6eov and I Tjixrjv Trap' avTa (viii. 30) fovTos rjv iv ap-j(Ti npos tov 6e6v and rjVLKa TjToifjia^ev tov ovpavov, (rvp,7Tnp7)ix7jv avTa (viii. 27) cf. also 6 deos TTJ (Tocfiia i6iy.(kiav ^r)TovvTv. II In the previous section we examined the primitive books of Testimonies against the Jews, in order to see whether they showed any traces of an evolution of the Logos-Christology out of a previous Sophia-Christology. The results were significant, and we were able to take the further step of affirming that the great Christological passage in the Epistle to the Colossians was like the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel in its ultimate dependence upon the eighth chapter of Proverbs. The next step would seem to be an enquiry as to whether these results are confirmed by Patristic study. Do the early Christian Fathers show, by survival or reminiscence, or in any other way, any traces of (a) the equation between Christ and Sophia, or (b) any signs that the famous statement that "the Lord created me the beginning of His way, before His works of old," has been a factor that can be recognised in the development of the doctrine of the Person of Christ. To these points we may now address ourselves. In so doing, we may occasionally be repeating the evidence of the previous section, for the reason that the earhest Patristic literature is coloured by the conventional Testimonies that were employed by Christian propa- gandists; but this overlapping is inevitable, and we need not discount the evidence of Irenaeus or Justin because it contains elements that run parallel to the Book of Testimonies : if they are sapng the same things twice over, in any case, they say them from a different point of view, and by the mouth of fresh witnesses. Justin Martyr, for example, uses the method of prophetic testimony beyond any other Christian writer ; but his evidence runs far be- yond the small pocket edition of Quotations used by a primitive controversiaUst. Let us leave the hypothetical Book of Testi- monies, and if we please, the actual Cyprianic collection, and ask 2—2 20 THE ORIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN the question whether Justin ever calls Christ Sophia, and whether he argues from the Sapiential books when he develops his Christ- ology. Here is a striking passage from the Dialogue with Trypho (c. 139), where Justin has been deducing plurality in the Godhead from the book of Genesis ("Behold, the man has become one of us" and similar well-known passages), and where he goes on to quote Proverbs, under the title of Sophia, as though the real Wisdom of Solomon was the book of Proverbs itself. So he "In Sophia it is said: If I announce to you everyday occur- rences I can also recall matters out of eternity. The Lord created me the beginning of his ways.... Before the hills He begat me." After quoting the famous speech of Sophia from the Book of Sophia, he turns to his listeners and says that the thing which is here said to be begotten is declared by the Word of God to have been begotten before all created things, and every one will admit that there is a numerical distinction between that which begets and that which is begotten. We see that Justin uses the word Logos, not for Christ but for the Scripture ; the Heavenly Birth is not the Logos but the Divine Wisdom, which he identifies with Christ. In a previous chapter (c. 126) he definitely calls Christ the Wisdom of God, after the manner of the Book of Testimonies, to which he may even be referring, and he says : " Who can this be who is sometimes called the Angel of the Great Counsel, and by Ezekiel is called a man, and by Daniel Uke a Son of Man, and by Isaiah a child, and Christ and God worshipful by David, and Christ and a Stone by many writers, and Sophia by Solomon, etc., etc." In the sixty-first chapter of the same dialogue, Justin goes over the same ground, and introduces the matter as follows : " I am now going to give you, my friends, another Testimony from the Scriptures that God before all His other creatures begat as the Beginning a certain spiritual Power, which is also called Glory by the Holy Spirit, and sometimes Son, and sometimes Sophia, and sometimes Angel, and sometimes God, and sometimes Lord and Word, and sometimes calls himself Commander-in-Chief, etc." He then continues that "The Word of Wisdom will attest what I say, being itself God begotten from the Father of the Universe, and being Word and Wisdom and the Glory of its Sire, THE ORIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN 21 as Solomon affirms " : after which we are again treated to Proverbs viii. 21-36. It is clear that this speech of Sophia in the eighth of Proverbs occupied a large space in the accumulated material for Justin's Christology. Now let us turn to the writings of Theophilus of Antioch whose three books addressed to Autolycus are dated in 168 a.d. We shall find in Theophilus the two streams of Christology flowing into one another, and we can actually see the absorption of the doctrine that Christ is the Wisdom of God, by the doctrine that Christ is the Logos of God. For awhile they flow side by side, but it needs no commentator to point out which of the two is to absorb the other. For instance, when Theophilus talks of the Creation of the world, he tells us : Ps. xxxiii. 6 : God by His Word and His Wisdom made all things : for by His Word were the Heavens established; and all their host by His Spirit. Very excellent is His Wisdom. Prov. iii. 19: By Wisdom God founded the earth, and He prepared the Heavens by understanding. Theoph. ad Autol. i. 7. He returns to the theme at a later point where his language will reqiiire careful consideration. Ps. xlv. 1 : God having within HimseK His own inherent Word, begat Him with His own Wisdom, having emitted Him before the Universe. This passage is, for our purpose, important, (1) for the co-existence of the Word of God and the Wisdom of God^, (2) because the word emitted {i^epev^djjLevo^) is due to the finding of the "good word" in Ps. xlv. (My heart is emitting a good word) : this identification of the Logos with the language of the psalm we have shown to be very early, and to have been current in the primitive Booh of Testimonies. Theophilus goes on: This Word He had as His assistant in the things that were made by Him, and it was through Him that He made all things. This "Word" is called beginning {apxn) because he is ruler {apxei) and lord of all things that have 1 Athanasius frequently restates this equation, which is a commonplace with him : e.g. iv Tairr) yap Kal toi xcicra yiyov^v, us i/'dXXci Aa^lS, IldvTa iv So^Lg, eiroiijiras. Kal SoXo/xcii' (prjalv '0 Oeos rrj 2o(plg. i6efie\iu)cre tt]v yfiv, i]Tolfi.a(Te de oipamis iv (ppov-qa-ei. kiirr] de i] So^/a ^(Ttiv 6 A6yos, Kal Sl airoO, us 'liadwris (jrqalv, ''EyiveTo rk iravra Kre. Oral. I. contra Arianos 19. Note the connexion with the Prologue. 22 THE ORIGIN OF THE PEOLOGUE TO ST JOHN been created by Him. It was He, who, being the Spirit of God, and the Beginning and the Wisdom and Power of the Most High, descended on the prophets and through them discoursed of the Creation of the "World and all other matters. Not that the prophets were themselves at the Creation of the World; but what was present was the Wisdom of God that was in it (the World?) and the Holy Word of His that was always with Him. Here we see that the reference to the Logos as Beginning {apxv) leads at once to the introduction of the Sophia who is the Arche of the O.T. The writer says as much : the Logos is Arche and Wisdom. When he states the co-existence of the Word and the Wisdom in Creation, he uses of the Logos the expression "always present with Him" (ael avfLirapcbv aiira)) which we recognise at once as borrowed from the description of Wisdom in the eighth chapter of Proverbs. And lest we should miss the reference, and the consequent equivalence of Word and Wisdom, Theophilus explains: This is why He speaks as follows through Solomon: When He prepared the heavens I was by Him, ( ^iTOS. THE OEIGIN OF THE PROLOGUlj] TO ST JOHN 27 And just as in one aspect He is called the Word of God, and in another Life and Truth and True Light, and whatever other names the Scriptures give Him, so also He is entitled Sophia, the Handmaid of the Father for the Providence and Regulation of the Universe. In these words Eusebius hands on the ecclesiastical traditions which we have been considering, identifying Sophia and Logos, and explaining the Prologue in John and the Christological passage in Colossians by the help of the eighth chapter of Proverbs, from which they are thus admitted to have been derived. It is not for the sake of multiplying references that we cite one Father after another, but with the object of showing the continuity and consistency of the Patristic tradition, which appears to have been inadequately treated by leading commentators of our day, who did not see the meaning of the constant reference to Christ as the Wisdom of God, nor recognise the close connexion between these early Patristic commentaries and the primitive collections of Testimonies. To illustrate the matter once more from a fresh point of view, suppose we go back to the opening capitulations of the second book of Cyprian's Testimonies, the book that contains the prophecies concerning Jesus Christ. We pointed out that these opening summaries of the sections that are to follow bore evidence of having been somewhat modified; for example, that the theme of the first chapter was originally the identification of Christ with the Wisdom of God, and that this Wisdom was the firstborn (primogenita), the adjective being apphed to Sophia in the first instance. Now if we were to turn to Eusebius, Evangelical Demonstration, we should find the very same theme before us, the collection of prophetic arguments for Christological purposes; and it would be quite easy to show that Eusebius, while working with great freedom, is not independent of the approved Testimonies which have come down from the early days of the Church. The first chapter of the fifth book of the Demonstratio Evangelica has for its heading the statement that " among the Hebrews the most wise Solomon was aware of a certain firstborn (ttpcotctoko?) Power of God, which he also entitles His Wisdom and His Off- spring, with the same honour that we ourselves also bestow." Compare that with the Firstborn Wisdom of the Testimonies, and then note how the writer plunges at once into Proverbs viii., and after enumerating the praises of Wisdom, remarks that 28 TPIE ORIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN Wisdom is the Divine and all- virtuous Substance that precedes all created things, the intellectual {voep6<;) and firstborn {TrpcororoKO';) Image (eiKcov) of the Unbegotten Nature, the true-born and only- born {fj,ovoyev7j<;) Son of the God of all. Here Christ is declared to be the Wisdom of God, in the terms in which Wisdom is described in Proverbs and the other Sapiential Books (see especially Sap. Sol. vii. 22 sqq.). And, just as in the early Testimonies, Eusebius goes on to quote Colossians (i. 15, 17) and complete the proof that Christ is the Firstborn of every Creature; for Christ, he says, was speaking in His own person when Wisdom (apparently) spoke in hers. The equation between Christ and the Wisdom of God covers the whole of the argument. Reviewing the cour se of the enquiry, we see that the com - mentators upon the great Christological passages in the New Testament, the P rologu e to St John, and the parallel passa ge in Colossians, have failed to s et these passages in the true Une o f their historical evolution. We have tried to restate the texts upon which the accepted Christology is based, first by correcting a grammatical error in the first verse of St J ohn's Gospel, whic h ought to have been obvio us to an unsophisticated reader ; secon d, by showing that the theology of the Church is best seen in the first davs of its making by a careful consideration of the primitiv e books of Testimonies ;\ it follows from these corrections and identi- fications that the key to the language of the Johannine Prologue and to St Paul's language in the Epistle to the Colossians lies in the Sapiential tradition, and not in the reaction from Plato or \ Philo or HeracKtus. It is not pretended that this point of view is altogether new. Many critics and interpreters have occasionally come near to it; few have altogether ignored it; but it is not sufiicient to put a stray marginal reference to Proverbs or Sirach in the New Testa- ment; we must examine those occasional references and disclose the system to which they belong. It will perhaps surprise some students to know that it was Alford who came nearest to what we believe to be the right solution : at least, the following sentences from his commentary are significant for the identification of the Word of God and the Wisdom of God : " We are now to enquire how it came that St John found this ivord Xoyoi so ready made to his hands, as to require no explanation. The answer to this will be found by tracing the gradual personifica- THE ORIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN 29 tion of the Word or Wisdom of God, in the Old Testament.... As the Word of God was the constant idea for his revelations relatively to man, so was the Wisdom of God for those which related to His own essence and attributes. That this was a later form of ex- pression than the simple recognition of the Divine Word in the Mosaic and early historical books, would naturally be the case.... In Sap. Sir. i. 1 Wisdom is said to be napa Kvpiov Kat fj^er' avrov sis tov almi'a. Then in c. xxiv. 9, 21, the same strain is continued, 7rp6 TOV aloivos an dp)(ris eVricreV fxc. ...In the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon... we find a similar personification and eulogy of Wisdom. In this remarkable passage we have Wisdom called ndpedpus rwv (Toiv Spovtov (c. ix. i), and said to have been napuvcra ore eiroUis rov Kotr/xoi^, and parallelised with 6 Xoyoy (TOV (c. ix. 12, c. xvi. 12)." The foregoing passages indicate the right way to approach the sub] ect, and are only in error in the assumption that the Sophia of the Old Testament is a later development of the Logos. If we are substantially right in the foregoing investigation, the next step will be to see how much further elucidation of St John's Prologue will result from the restoration of Sophia to its right place in the theme. This further enquiry will involve important considerations. Before, however, we turn to this part of the enquiry it will be interesting to show that the suggestion of hymns in honour of Sophia, produced in the time that is adjacent to that in which the Fourth Gospel was written, is not a hypothesis destitute of illus- tration outside of the Scriptures. We actually have a Sophia- hymn of the kind that we have described in the Odes of Solomon. The twenty-third Ode of this collection, after a somewhat obscure opening, in which Divine Grace appears to be speaking in the Person of Christ, goes on to tell of a Perfect Virgin, who stands and cries to men : " There stood a perfect Virgin, who was proclaiming and calhng and saving, ye sons of men, return ye ; ye daughters, come ye : and forsake the ways of that corruption and draw near unto me. 30 THE ORIGIN OF THE PEOLOGUE TO ST JOHN and I will enter into you and will bring you forth from perdition, and make you wise in the ways of truth ; that you be not destroyed nor perish : hear ye me, and be redeemed. For the Grace of God I am telling among you, and by my means you shall be redeemed and become blessed. I am your judge; and they who have put me on shall not be injured; but they shall possess immortaUty in the new world : my chosen ones, walk ye in me, and my ways will I make known to them that seek me, 'and I will make them trust in my name." One has only to recall the language of the Book of Proverbs in the beginning of the eighth chapter. Doth not Wisdom cry? And Understanding put forth her voice? ***** Unto you, O men, I call; And my voice is to the sons of men. It is clear that the Virgin speaker is Sophia and we are to illustrate the Ode in question by Proverbs viii., upon which it is based. It will be easy to adduce fresh parallels to the language, but what is really important for us to note is that the Sophia who speaks exchanged personality with the Christ. "I will make them trust in my name" ; and the "Grace who stands on a lofty summit" (at the beginning of the Ode) and cries from one end of the earth to the other, is, perhaps, only a modification of the figure of Wisdom in Proverbs viii. 2, who "standeth on the top of high places." Thus we have actually found a Sophia-Christ-Ode in the early Christian Church, quite unconnected with the Sophia that we dis- covered in the Testimony Book. Note in passing that she describes herself as a Preacher of Divine Grace. In the preceding series of arguments we have attempted to show that St John in his Prologue was working from existing materials, which comprise the Praises of Sophia in the Sapiential Books, and perhaps from some Sophia-songs that are no longer extant. There are foundations apparent underneath his edifice; and it is only reasonable to ask whether we can go further in the detection of the sources, and whether we can thereby throw any further fight upon tfie language of the Prologue. For example, we have in the seventh chapter of the book of Wisdom, a description of Wisdom as the Radiance of the Eternal THE ORIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN 31 Light, and it is natural to compare this with the Johannine doctrine that Christ is the Light, and the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews that Christ is the Radiance of the Father's Glory. When we read a little further we find (Sap. Sol. vii. 29) that Sophia is " more illustrious than the Sun and brighter than the positions of all stars," and that compared with all "created" Light (or with "day "-light) she is found to be anterior; lq.) ouSh Trovrfpov. 32 THE OEIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN Hebrews, and the Image in Colossians, furnishes us also with the clue to the argument in John i. 5, and with the right way to trans- late the words. Our next instance shall be the great Incarnation verse (John i. 14), which tells us that The Word became flesh and dwelt among us: where there is much discussion as to the meaning of the word i(rKrjV(oaev, which is connected by etymology with the word a-Krjvi] (a tabernacle or tent) and so with the Hebrew word Shehinah. Moffatt, indeed, discards this explanation, perhaps as being too subtle and mystical, and tells us to translate. So the Logos became flesh and tarried among us: and the first impulse of an educated theologian would be to annotate the rendering as inadequate. Yet Alford says " sojourned or tabernacled... the word is one technically used in Scripture to import the dwelling of God among men" : and there is not much difference between "sojourned" of Alford and "tarried" of Moflatt. Since, however, we are arguing from the hypothesis that the Logos has been evolved from Sophia, the first thing to be done is to ask whether a/crjvoM or its equivalent (caraaicTqvoa) is one of the Sapiential words, and in what sense it is used in the Praises of Wisdom. The answer is that it occurs over and over again in the AlVeo-i? Xoipiai; in the twenty-fourth chapter of Sirach: for example: Sir. xxiv. 4: I dwelt {KaTfa-icrjvaa-a) on high: Sir. xxiv. 8: He that created me pitched my tent (a-Kijvrjv), And said. Dwell thou in Jacob {KaTdo-Krjvaia-ov). Let thy inheritance be in Israel: (= Prov. viii. 22): Before the world from the Beginning He created me, (And said) unto the end of the world I will not forsake thge. In the Holy Tabernacle (Tfjp Xeyerai, uf TJeTpos ev KrjpvyfiaTL. Edogae in Script. Proph. ii. 1004 (Potter). The same thing occurs in a fragment of Hippolytus on Lulce as follows : Luke ii. 22. 'iTnroXvrov OTe avTov avf)yayov fls to Upov napacTTrivm ra Kvpia, ras KaBaptriovs iwiTeXovvTes avacfjopas' el yap ra KaBdpma 8S)pa Kara Tov vopov virep aiiTov TrpotrfjiepeTO ravrrj Kal vtto tov vofwv yeyovev' ovre oe o Ad-yos viriKeiTO tm vofia, KaBcnrep oi crvKOCfidvTat lio^d^ov(nv , avTos &v 6 Nd/ior. (P.G. 10. 701 A.) There is another direction in which the idea of Pleroma might have been reached by the student of the Old Testament who was in search of Christ in its pages. It is, in fact, said of the Holy Spirit that it fills the whole world : nvevpa Kvptov TreTrXrjpatKcu rrju oiKovpLevrjv, (Sap. Sol. i. 7.) and this passage is one of Gregory of Nyssa's proof-texts for the Holy Spirit. It is, however, clear as we have shown by a variety of illustrations that the Holy Spirit came into the Christian Theology, through the bifurcation of the doctrine of the Divine Wisdom, which, on the one side, became the Logos, and on the other the Holy Ghost. It is Wisdom which is, in this passage, denoted by the Holy Spirit. It appears to be quite natural that the Law should turn up in the praises of Sophia, when Sophia is interpreted in a pre-Christian sense, and that it should be spoken of depreciatingly, when Sophia is interpreted in a Christian sense. From the foregoing considerations it follows that there is an anti-Judaic element in the Fourth Gospel, from its very first page. The Law is antagonised and the people to whom the Law came. When we make that statement and follow Alford and Westcott in what is certainly the right explanation of "His own who did not receive Him," we are again treading on the heels of the first composers of books of Testimonies against the Jews ; for a scrutiny of Cyprian's First Book of Testimonies shows conclusively the very same rejection of the Jews on the ground that they have rejected the Lord. THE ORIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN 39 Let us turn to the ttird chapter of the book in question. It is headed as follows : That it was foretold that they (i.e. the Jews) would neither recognise the Lord nor understand nor receive Him. Then follow the proofs, and we readily anticipate the opening verses of Isaiah, with its appeal to a sinful nation, Israel that doth not know, my people that doth not understand. But a little lower down we come upon a reference to Proverbs i. 28 ff. : as follows : Item apud Solomonem: Quaerent me mali et non inuenient. Oderunt enim Sapientiwm, sermonem autem Domini non receperunt. Here we have the Logos and Sophia side by side in the same verse, and the statement that the Wisdom has been hated and the Word not received. The parallel with John i. 11 is obvious. That verse is of the nature of an anti-Judaic Testimony. It is an adaptation of the LXX of Proverbs i. 29 ifxl(rr)(Tav yap iTo(piav, tou 8e \6yov rov Kvpiov ov rrpoerfiXavTo. The transition from ao<^ia to Xoya is natural and easy, and a primitive statement that Wisdom came to the Jews and the Jews did not receive her, would readily be re-written in terms of the Logos, who Came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. The two statements are in part equivalent; and Alford's inter- pretation was right as far as it went. In this connexion belongs a curious chapter in the Book of Enoch, which Dr Charles had actually suggested to be parallel with the Prologue of John. The forty-second chapter of Enoch opens as follows : Wisdom found no place where she might dwell; Then a dwelling place was assigned her in the heavens. Wisdom came to make her dweUing among the children of men, And found no dwe lling place. Then Wisdom returned to her place, And took her seat among the angels. The parallels with the Logos who dwelt among us, and who had not been received by His own, are striking. And we are confirmed in our belief that the Prologue to the Gospel can be turned back from a Logos-Hymn to a Sophia-Hymn. One more illustration may be given of the derivation of the language of the Prologue from the Sapiential sources which preceded it. 40 THE ORIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN The Gospel, after reciting the unresponsiveness of the Jewish people generally to the Logos who had come among them, goes on to explain that there were some who did receive the Logos, and that, in consequence of this reception, they became children of God, and experienced a spiritual birth ; " to as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the children of God, owing their birth not to carnal generation nor human impulse, but to the Divine WilF." It may be asked whether this striking passage has any counterpart in the Sophia Uterature upon which we have been drawing. The answer is that to this beautiful description of the appear- ance of the Life of the Spirit as given in the Gospel, there is a parallel, shorter indeed, but almost as beautiful, in the seventh chapter of the Wisdom of Solomon, from which we have already taken so many illustrations. "In all ages Wisdom entering into holy souls, makes them Friends of God and prophets." It is this work of Sophia in the making of "Friends of God" ((jjiXov; ©eoO) that has prompted the "Children of God" {reKva @eov) who result from the reception of the Logos^. In explaining e^-qryrjoraro of John i. 18 as being the equivalent of riq, /le of Proverbs vili. 25. 2 Hence, perhaps, the masculine ot in John i. 13. THE ORIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN 41 Sophia had the first rank, after God, in the order of being. Note carefully that neither in Sirach nor in John is there any object attached to riyeofiai. : it is therefore, to be taken intransitively. The case of iKBiTjyrja-ofx.ai in Sirach xhi. 15, xliv. 31 is, therefore, not an objection to the intransitive interpretation, for here the object is expressed. Was there anything in the underlying document that corre- sponded to the statement that "the Word became flesh'"? Will the critical reagent bring it up ? Suppose we turn to Methodius, the Banquet of the Ten Virgins (iii. 4; P. G. ix. 18. 65), we shall find a very curious passage, whose obscurity has baffled both translators and interpreters. The writer has been explaining the difficulties which arise from the Pauline language when the Apostle compares Christ and the Church mystically with Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis. How could the comparison have been made between the pure and the impure? we might as well compare odd and even. No wonder that persons have taken exception to the comparison between the First Adam and the Second. Methodius explains that it was the Wisdom of God that was joined to the First Adam, and became incarnate: and this Wisdom was Christ. His language is very pecuhar, and needs closer examination. It was appropriate, says Methodius, that Wisdom (the First- born, the First Offshoot, the Only-Born of God) should be united with the First and First-Born Man (Adam) by an incarnation. We notice the array of Sapiential terms with which we have become famihar. The result of this incarnation was Christ, " a man filled with the pure and perfect Godhead, and God received into man." In other words, Christ is the Incarnate Wisdom of God. Thus there lies behind the phrase o \6yos (Tap^ eyevero, the expression ^ a-otj)ia crap^ iyivero. If Christ is Firstborn, and Only-born, He has derived these appella- tions from Sophia. Methodius continues the explanation: "it was most suitable that the oldest of the aeons and the first of the Archangels (viz. Sophia), when about to hold communion with men, should dwell 42 THE OEIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN in the oldest and the first of men, even in Adam." The passage suggests for Sophia a description almost identical with the Johannine language, that "the Word became Flesh"; for "the Word" restore "Wisdom." It is interesting to note further that Methodius has elsewhere identified Christ with the Wisdom of God, by a combination of the language of Proverbs with that of St John's Gospel. In his discourse on the Resurrection, he tells us that " Wisdom, the Firstborn of God, the parent and artificer of all things, brings forth everything into the world... whom the ancients called Nature and Providence, because she, with constant provision and care, gives to all things birth and growth. For, says the Wisdom of God, 'my Father worketh still, and I work' (John v. 17)." We note the identification of Jesus with the Wisdom of God, and compare the way in which the passage from John, is introduced with the similar feature which we observed in the Gospel of Luke (xi. 49). An even more remarkable equation between Christ and the Wisdom of God will be found in the fragments of Methodius on Created Things, which are preserved for us in the Bibliotheca of Photius. Here the equivalence of the opening verses of the Prologue with the eighth chapter of Proverbs is insisted upon: Methodius says, of the words "In the Beginning God created the Heavens and the earth," that one will not err who says that the Beginning is Wisdom. Tor Wisdom is said by one of the Divine Band to speak in this manner con- cerning herself: "The Lord created me the Beginning of His ways for His works; from eternity He laid my foundation." It was fitting and more seemly that aU things which came into existence should be more recent than Wisdom, since they existed through her. Now, consider whether this saying "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God," — ^whether these statements be not in agreement with those. (Photius, Bibliotheca, Cod. 235.) The doctrine of Methodius appears to have been that Sophia became incarnate in the First Adam and also in the Second. In the eighth chapter of the Banquet he sums up the results of his mystical investigations as follows : It has been aheady established by no contemptible arguments from Scrip- ture, that the first man may probably be referred to Christ Himself, and is no longer a tjrpe and representation and image of the Only-Begotten, but has actually become Wisdom and Word. THE ORIGIN OF THE PROLOGUE TO ST JOHN 43 There is still a good deal of obscurity in the statements of Methodius, but it is quite clear that the Incarnation of which he speaks is the Incarnation of Wisdom. "Whether it is Christ or Adam or both that are the subject of the Incarnation is not quite clear. Now let us try to restore the Prologue to something Uke its intermediate form. It should run as follows : Prov. viii. 22 ff. : The Beginning was Wisdom, y' Wisdom was with God, (■^« . Sap. Sol. ix. 4: Wisdom was the assessor of God. All things were made by her; Apart from her nothing that was made came to be. Sap. Sol. viJ 26 : With her was Light, and the Light was the Life of men. That Light shone in the Darkness, Sap. Sol. vii 29 : And the Darkness did not overmaster it. For no evil overmasters Wisdom. Wisdom was in the World, In the World which she had made; Prov. i. 28: The world did not recognise her. xxxiv. 6 . : 1 gj^g came to the Jews, and the Jews did not receive her. Enoch xh. 1 ff. : J Sap. Sol. vii. 27 : Those that did receive her became Friends of God and prophets. Sir. xxxiv. 6 : \ She tabernacled with us, and we saw her splendour, the Sap. Sol. vii. 25 : J splendour of the Father's Only Child, Sap. Sol. iii. 9: FuU of Grace and Truth. Ode Sol. 33 : (She declared the Grace of God among us). Sir. XXXV. 15 : From her pleroma we have received Grace instead of Law, For Law came by Moses, Sap. Sol. iii. 19: Grace and Mercy came by Sophia; Sap. Sol. ix. 26 : She is the Image of the Invisible God ; Sap. Sol. vi. 22 : ) She is the only Child of God, in the bosom of the Father, Sir. xxxiv. 6: J and has the primacy. CHRIST AS THE HAND OF GOD When we study the surviving texts of that very early Christian book, known as the Testimonies against the Jews, we find that one of the things which has to be established against the Jews is that Christ is the Hand of God ; one does not at first see the reason for this statement nor for the emphasis laid upon it: yet it is clear that it occupies an early and an important position amongst the 44 CHEIST AS THE HAND OF GOD theses which the primitive Christian nailed on the doors of the Synagogue. In the second book of Cyprian's Testimonies, for example (that section which contains the Christology, — it is important to remember that primitive Christian propaganda is primitive Christology), we find that the fourth place in the hst of propositions to be discussed and defended is the statement that The same Christ is the hand and the arm of Ood. The preceding theses are concerned with the proof that Christ is the Wisdom of God, and the Word of God. Why should these high-level statements in theology drop down to such an unexpected piece of exegetical poverty as that Christ is the Hand of God 1 The first thing that suggests itself is that the author of the theses is following the way of escape, which Jewish theologians of a progressive type had found, out of the temptations to anthropo- morphism in the O.T. We may imagine the situation as it would occur to an Alexandrian of the school of Philo, or to a Palestinian thinker, who has to explain away the speech of God, and the walk of God, and the form of God, and the eyes, hands, organs and dimensions of God. He has to be rid of all these without getting rid at the same time of God and of the activity of God. This can only be done by the introduction of a subordinate being, who shall bear the name of God, and possess in a sufficient degree His attributes, or by the philosophical hypostasis and personification of the attributes themselves, either simply or in combination; that is, an angelic or archangehc person, or a supra-sensual idea. Then, if the Jewish world has already, in the person of its leading thinkers, attained to such a theological re-construction as may secure them, when they revile the Olympians, from a counter- revilement, it will be easy for the Christian polemist to explain to the Jews that they have in reality discovered the Christ; have, in fact, in running away from the dread spectre of a pursuing anthropomorphism, run into his very arms, the arms of God ; the everlasting ones of that species of representation being the arms of Christ ! Such a method of expounding the nature of the first Christian propaganda cannot be altogether wide of the mark: but it is always as well, in reconstructing a lost, or studying a nascent theology, to let the documents talk first, and say all that they have to say on the subject, before we ascend the rostrum ourselves. CHRIST AS THE HAND OF GOD 45 We need to consider, for example, the continuity of the theses discussed, and the Hght thrown on them by contemporary or subsequent literature. Why does the doctrine of the Hand follow so closely on the doctrine of the Wisdom and the doctrine of the Word ? The answer is a curious one : the fourth thesis of the second book of Testimonies against the Jews is based upon an earlier form in which it was said. That the same Wisdom is the Hand of God. We estabUsh this thesis, which takes us to a somewhat different point of view (but not altogether diverse), in the following way. In the Clementine Homilies (which contain so much early contro- versial matter by way of survival), we have in the sixteenth Homily a dispute between Peter and Simon Magus over the Divine Unity. Simon challenges th^ consistency of the doctrine of the Unity with the language of Genesis (i. 26) "Let us make man," etc., and Peter replies as follows : He who said to His Wisdom, Let us make, is one. And His Wisdom is that with which He always, joyed as though it were His own spirit: for She is united as Soul to God : and is stretched out by Him as a Hand for the creation of the world. Kai 6 UeTpos dneKpivaro' els ^arlv 6 rfj avTov ^o(f)ia fiiratv' 7roirj(Tcop,€V avdpcanov ' rj de 2o0ta, r) axyirep lbi<^ irvcvp-arc avTos aei crvve^aipev {Prov. viii. 30). ^vaiTat yap cos ^^X^ ^9^ Sew- eKreiVerat Se vtt' avTov, as x^'*-Pi Srifuovpyova-a tou Kotrjiov. Clem. Horn. XVI. 12. If Wisdom is the Hand of God, and the Creative Instrument, we see why the statement to that effect occupies the position that it does in the Testimony Book. The whole of the passage quoted is of interest,, and is redolent of antiquity. The great stumbhng- block for monotheists in the first chapter of Genesis, is explained by a duaUty in God, rather than a Trinity. Simon says, "Let us make" impUes two or more. There are, says he, evidently two who created. Peter accepts it and identifies the second Creator with the Sophia of the eighth chapter of Proverbs. There is the Begotten God and the Unbegotten; the latter makes the World by the former. When we turn to examine the actual Testimonies quoted in Cyprian we have first a passage from Is. hx. 1, "Is the Lord's hand shortened, etc.," and it is clear from the context that this passage is quoted rather to show the sinfulness of the Jews than, the nature of the Divine Hand. " Your iniquities have separated between you and God," etc. 46 CHRIST AS THE HAND OF GOD Then follows a reference to tke "arm of the Lord," etc. in Is. Iviii. 1, evidently brought in for the sake of the "arm" and contributing nothing immediate to its explanation. After that we come to Is. Ixvi. 1 if., which leads up to the enquiry Hath not my hand made all these things? viz. : Heaven and Earth. This is the creative Hand again. Lower down we have a long passage from Is. xli. 15 if., ending up with The Hand of the Lord hath made all these things: here again we are concerned with creative and redemptive acts attributed to the Hand of God; and for this Divine Hand we have given the primary explanation; it is the Divine Wisdom. It will be interesting to see how this interpretation that the Hand of God is His Wisdom, by which He instrumentally made the world, can be reconciled with correct theology. The interpre- tation is clearly ancient, and it labours under a difficulty, in that it represents God as a Duahty, and not as a Trinity. In the dispute between Peter and Simon Magus in the Clementine story, this is conceded on both sides. It is, however, clear that it will have to be modified, or there will be theological friction. The way of escape is to say that God has two hands or creative instru- ments, viz. : (i) His Wisdom, (ii) His Word, or, comprehending them under a single formula. His Word and His Wisdom. If we want to see the formulae in process of evolution, we may turn to the pages of Irenaeus. We are told (see Iren. p. 218 Mass.) that Adam was made of Virgin earth, and was "fashioned by the Hand of God, i.e. by the Word of God," according to the saying of John that all things were made by Him. Here the Word has been substituted for the Wisdom in the definition of the Hand. Somewhat later (p. 228), Irenaeus repeats the statement that man was formed in the simihtude of God, and was fashioned by His hands, viz., by the Son and the Spirit, those to whom He was speaking when He said. Let us make man. Here the Son has replaced the Logos, and the Spirit stands for Sophia. Both of the Creative Hands are in operation. Further on (p. 253), we come to the statement that the angels could not be responsible for the creation of man, since God had His own Hands. "He had CHEI8T AS THE HAND OF GOD 47 always by Him the Word and the Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit through whom and in whom of His own free will He made all things, and whom He addresses when He says, Let us make man in our own image and hkeness." Here we find the Son and Spirit side by side with the Word and Wisdom with whom they have been equated^. The same interpretation of "Let us make" is found elsewhere in the Fathers ; sometimes it is explained of the co-operation of the Logos, and sometimes of Logos and Sophia. For example, in Theophilus ad Autolycum (c. 18), the two Hands of God are implied, and they are the Word and the Wisdom : He considers the creation of man alone worthy His own hands. Nay, further, as if needing assistance, we find God saying, "Let us make man in our image and likeness" : but He said "Let us make" to none other than His own Logos and Sophia. The same tradition re-appears inProcopiusof Gaza^, " the Hands of God are the Son and the Holy Spirit," where we have clearly an evolution from the earlier statement as to Logos and Sophia. In Clement of Alexandria the doctrine of one hand is commonly involved, for he interprets Troitjawfiev in Gen. i. 26 as addressed to the Logos. The transition from "one hand" to "two hands" in the description of the instruments by which Creation was effected, may be seen very clearly in Tertulhan's Treatise against Hermo- genes : after contesting the behef of Hermogenes as to the eternity of matter on philosophical grounds, he turns to the evidence of the Scriptures and the teaching of the prophets : They did not mention matter but said that Wisdom was first set up, the beginning of His ways for His works (Prov. vui. 22) ; then that the Word was produced through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made (John i. 3).... He (the Word) is the Lord's right hand, indeed His two hands, by which He worked and fashioned. For, says He, the Heavens are the works of thine hands (Ps. cii. 25) wherewith He hath meted out the Heaven, and the earth with a span (Is. xl. 12, xlviii. 13). Adv. Hermogenem, c. 45. ' The Son and the Spirit as the Hands of God will be found again in Irenaeus (p. 327) as follows: "Et propter hoc in omni tempore, plasmatus initio homo per manus Dei, id est, Filii et Spiritus. fit secundum imaginem et simiUtudinem Dei." Here again the reference to the creation of man shows that the first stage of the doctrine which Irenaeus presents was a reflection upon the words "Let us make man," according to which it was explained that God spoke to His Wisdom, which was His Hand, i.e. to the Word and the Wisdom which were His hands, i.e. to the Son and the Spirit. The growth of the successive statements is clearly made out. 2 P. G. 87. 134 A. 48 CHEIST AS THE HAND OF GOD The reasoning borders on the Rabbinical method, but it is not to be condemned on that account as non-primitive; the course of the argument clearly shows the stages by which Wisdom was replaced by the Word, and the Hand of God (His Wisdom or His Word) was replaced by His two Hands, which were His Wisdom and His Word. We shall find that the same theology prevails in the writings of Athanasius and Augustine, both of whom identify Christ with the Wisdom of God by whom the worlds were made, and both of whom apply the title "Hand of God" to Christ. For instance, Athanasius tells us ^ that we may learn from the Scriptures themselves that Christ is the Word of God and the Wisdom, and the Image, and the Hand and the Power." He quotes the appropriate Scriptures, and when he comes to the first three verses of John, tells us that John composed his Gospel, because he knew that the Word is the Wisdom and the Hand of God." And Augustine says expressly that "The Hand of the Father is the Son^." These references may easily be multiplied: they show us clearly that the doctrine that Christ is the Word of God does not arise, in the first instance, from a sentiment adverse to anthropo- morphic representations of God; for, as we have abundantly made clear, we start from the position that Christ is the Wisdom of God, an earher position than the hypostatising of a supposed Memra ; and indeed, the Memra in the sense of the Targums does not appear in our investigations. Neither do we start from Creation, as Creation is described in the first chapter of Genesis. Our point of departure is the Book of Proverbs, especially the eighth chapter, with an occasional divergence into the Psalter; Genesis comes later in the argument; when we explain "Let us make man," Wisdom is introduced, already identified with the Creative Instrument from Proverbs. This Wisdom is either the Divine Conjugate or the Divine Ofispring; it is not quite clear which. If the former, the Logos is her Son; if the latter, the Logos is her brother. The former position leads on to the curious Word of Christ in the Gospel of the Hebrews, " My Mother the Holy Ghost," the latter to the twinship of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, as we find it in the Pistis Sophia. When the Logos becomes also 1 Db Secrelis Nkaenae Syiiodl, § 17 ff. ' InJoann. xlviii. 7. Eiiarr. in Ps. cxviii. Serm. 23, 5 and 143, 14. CHRIST AS THE HAND OF GOD 49 an Assessor Dei, we have the Christian Trinity : but behind this there is the earher stratum of a Christian Duahty (the Holy Spirit being not yet come, in a theological sense, because the Divine Wisdom has not been divided into Logos and Pneuma). We now begin to see that the controversy between Arius and Athanasius is not a mere struggle of an orthodox Church with an aggressive and cancerous heresy: the heretic is the orthodox conservative, and the supposed orthodox champion is the real progressive. The conflict is one between two imperfectly har- monised strata of behef. Arius and Athanasius do not stand at opposite poles: they are really next-door neighbours. This appears, inter alia, from the fact that they practically use the same traditional Scripture proofs ; we have shown elsewhere how painfully faithful Athanasius is to the body of conventional Christian Testimonies. It is not, however, that Arius is at heart a Jew, and must be struck down with the weapons proper to anti- Judaic struggle. Arius is as much anti-Judaic as Athanasius; only his collection of Testimonies has not been completed as to the text, and still less as to the interpretation. Both of the great protagonists begin by sapng the same words. The Lord created me the Beginning, both of them explain that Christ is here speaking in the person of Wisdom. Neither of them doubts that e/cnaev fie (the Lord created me) is appUcable to Christ, though it was a false rendering of the Septuagint : they differ when they come to harmonise the Divine Creation with the other statement that Wisdom was older than the worlds and was the first-born of God. Athanasius explains that the Christ is a creature, but not as one of the creatures ; he saves his proof-text at the expense of its natural meaning: Arius explains away the eternity of the Divine Wisdom, by saying that Wisdom is eternal relatively to the Creation, but not eternal relatively to God^. Now if we bear in mind the facts which we have estabUshed, that the Nicene conflict is concerned with two different strata of the traditional proof-texts for primitive Church doctrine, we shall find it very much easier to see our way through the smoke of the conflict into the real meaning of the battle. That Athanasius ' Hence I was wrong in saying in Testimonia that it was not inept for Athanasius to have felled Arius to the ground with a missile borrowed from Testimonies against the Jews. Both of the combatants were anti-Judaic. H. P. 4 50 CHRIST AS THE HAND OF GOD himself is in possession of the whole story, and the evolution of the doctrine of the Trinity, will be clear now to the readers of his Orations against the Arians, which run over with the matters which the Church had discussed in the centuries that preceded him. In order to illustrate this point we take a single passage from Athanasius and hold it up in the hght of the discoveries which we have made as to the origin and growth of the Christian tradition. In his second Oration against the Arians Athanasius says as follows: "All things that were made, were made by the Hand, and the Wisdom of God, for God Himself says: My Hand hath made all these things (Is. Ixvi. 2 ff. ) and David sings : Thou Lord in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth and the Heavens are the work of Thy hands (Ps. oi. 26). And again in the 142nd Psalm : I remembered the days of old, I meditated on aU thy works ; On the works of thy hands did I meditate. So then the things made were wrought by the Hand of God, for it is written that All things were made by the Word And without Him was nothing made (John i. 3). And again, there is One Lord Jesus, by whom all things are made (1 Cor. vui. 6), and In Him all things exist (Col. i. 17). So it must be obvious that the Son cannot be a work of God, but is Himself the Hand of God and the Wisdom. The martyrs of Babylon understood this, Ananias, A^arias and Misael, and they confute the impiety of the Arians, for they say O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord. They did not say ' Bless the Lord, Logos, and praise Him, Sophia' ; in order to show that all the rest that praise are God's works, but the Logos is not the work of God nor of the company that praise, but is with the Father the object of praise and worship, and is reckoned Divine {OeoXoyovfj-evo^), being the Word and His Wisdom, and the Artificer of His works. The same thing is expressed by CHRIST AS THE HAND OF GOD 51 the Spirit in the Psalms with an excellent distinction between the Word and the Works, The Word of the Lord is right, And all His works are in faith. Just as it says elsewhere, O Lord, how great are Thy works Thou hast made them aU in Wisdom." Here we have gathered together in a single statement as to the origin of the Creation the doctrine that Christ is {a) the Wisdom of God; (&) the Word of God, (c) the Hand of God; and that the two Hands of God are, in fact. His Word and His Wisdom. The difference between Arius and Athanasius is a question whether the Hand of God is co-eternal with God Himself; did God make the Hand by which He made the world? As we have several times indicated, the Christian statements which we find in the Fourth Gospel are not derived immediately from Philo and his speculative Logos. The two evolutions of doctrine are very nearly independent of one another. It is interesting to see that Philo has the same problem before him, of the relation of the hypostatised Wisdom to God, and to observe how differently the problem of the Persons is worked out. In one passage Philo makes Wisdom the Divine conjugate, and the Divine Son is the Cosmos. Thus we have the following Trinity : God = Sophia The only-begotten Son, who is the world. That Sophia is really here the Mother will appear from a study of the passage which we transcribe : "We shall affirm that the Mother of the created thing is Understanding, with whom God had iatercom'se (not in a mundane sense) and begat creation (ea-neipe yivea-iv). She it was who received the Divine seed, and by a perfect child-bearing (reX€o-0dpois wdla-i) brought forth the Only Son, the Beloved, the Perceptible One (alcrBrp-ov), the World." And by one of the Choir of Heavenly Singers Wisdom is introduced as speaking of herself on this wise: "The Jjord possessed me the foremost (wpoirla-Trjv) of his works, and before eternity he founded me. For of necessity all those things which came into being are younger than the One who is the Mother and the nurse of the Universe (tS>v oKav)" Philo, De Ehrietate i. 362. 4—2 52 ON THE ASCEIPTION Here we see Philo wrestling with a similar problem to that of the early Christian thinkers ; he agrees with them in reference to the relation of Wisdom to the Divine Nature, and differs from them altogether with reference to the Divine Son: and, as has often been pointed out by recent theologians, the differences between Philo and St John (or St Paul) are more conspicuous than the agreements. ON THE ASCRIPTION OF SAPIENTIAL TITLES TO CHRIST We have shown in what precedes that the recognition of Christ as the Wisdom of God led to the ascription to Him of all those titles and qualities attached to Wisdom in the Sapiential books, and that the primitive Christology was largely made up out of such ascriptions. Some of these titles were easily recognised from their employment in the Epistle to the Colossians or the Epistle to the Hebrews : but there were others that were not so clearly identified. Take for example, the state- ment that " Wisdom is the unsullied mirror of the Divine activity" ; it was not quite easy to establish the equation between Christ and the Mirror of God in the New Testament; but at this point the Odes of Solomon came to our aid and we found the 13th Ode opening with the statement Behold! the Lord is our mirror! In commenting upon this I drew attention to the occurrence of the identification that we are trying to estabhsh in the pseudo- Cyprianic tract De montibus Sina et Sion. I transcribe portions of the comment referred to. We may also in. this connexion refer to a remarkable passage, which is found in a tract falsely ascribed to Cyprian, and known as De montibus Sina et Sion. We are reminded in this passage first that Christ is the Unspotted Mirror of the Father, as is said of Wisdom in the book called the Wisdom of Solomon (Sap. Sol. vii. 26). Hence the Father and the Son see one another by reflexion. The writer then continues as follows : And even we who believe in Him see Christ in us as in a mirror, as He Himself instructs and advises us in the Epistle of His disciple John to the OF SAPIENTIAL TITLES TO CHKIST 53 people: "See me in yourselves, in the same way as any one of you sees him- self in water or in a mirror " ; and so He confirmed the saying of Solomon about Himself, that "He is the unspotted mirror of the Father." When I wrote this comment I had hardly noticed the under- Ijang identification of Christ with Sophia, and certainly did not recognise that the " mirror " was a part of the identification. Now that the Sophia Christology has come to light, we can understand the language of the Ode and of the author of De montibus a great deal better^. So much concerning Christ as the Spotless Mirror. Now let us try a more diflB.cult case. The same chapter of the Wisdom of Solomon describes Wisdom as a breath (or vapour) of the power of God: ar/^l? t^? tou deov Bvvd/j,ea)<;. The question arises naturally enough whether this term dTiJ,L<; has been taken up into Christology, and apphed to Christ. It hardly seems likely at the first glance: if anything has been transferred from this expression it would be the simple "Power of God" and not anything so doubtful of meaning as "Vapour of the Power of God." Christ the Power of God and the Wisdom of God may very well have been derived from this ; but where shall we find Christ described as ar/it? ? We do find it. If we turn to a fragment of Theognostus of Alexandria (one of the heads of the famous catechetical school) preserved for us in the epistle of Athanasius De Decretis Nicenae Synodi^ we shall find Theognostus speaking of the nature of the Son of God as follows : He was born of the substance of the Father, as the aiTavyaa-f/.a from the light, and as the arfils from the water ; the arixis is not the water ; nor is the diravyao-fia the Sun itself, though not of another nature to it. Christ is an airuppoia from the substance of the Father. So here is drfik coupled with two other Sapiential terms from the same connexion : drfjus yap iiTTLv rijs toO 6eov SwdfieaSf Kai dnoppoia r^? tqv jravTOKparopos do^rjs elXtKptvrjs' drravyao-fia yap eVrti/ cj^coTos dtdiov (Sap. Sol. vii. 25, 26). There can be no doubt that Theognostus is interpreting the seventh chapter of Wisdom and that he equates ar/it? with Christ, ,as well as d'jravyaafji.a and diroppoia. 1 Incidentally we may note that Ephrem had no right to alter the 13th Ode in the interests of Baptism and read it as "The water is our mirror." 2 Routh, Rell. iii., 411. 54 ON THE ASCKIPTION The same interpretation occurs in Dionysius of Alexandria: (jicOTOs fiiv ovv ouTOs Tov SfoC, 6 Xpio-Tos es fiiv to (pas Koi to aTravyaa-fia (pas' dXX* o^X* "^Xo Koi aWo (pas' ovTas kol rj 2o(^ia tov ©eoO. The question as to the nature of the Divine Sophia is raised by Zacchaeus, and answered in terms of the Wisdom of Solomon ; that is very significant; for though the final conclusion is that Christ is ^w? e'« (fxDTo'i as in the Nicene formula. He is also again seen to be Sophia, for He is the dTravyaa-/j,a which Wisdom is declared to be. If we could find out how much of this dialogue is derived from the previous "Jason and Papiscus" we should be able to tell whether the foregoing identifications and their Nicene consequences were trans-Jordanic in their ultimate origin; for the first of the Dialogues in question comes from Pella. DID JESUS CALL HIMSELF SOPHIA? As soon as we have decided that behind the Logos-doctrine there hes a more Jewish and less metaphysical Sophia-doctrine, and that the early Christian preaching about Jesus proclaimed Him as the Wisdom of God, we cannot avoid the enquiry whether Jesus identified Himself with the Wisdom of God and announced Himself as such. The first impulse of response to such an enquiry is to negative the suggestion on the ground (a) that it is inherently improbable, (6) that there is no evidence in support of such an idea either on the Biblical or on the Patristic side. Both of these objections, however, are too d priori. We do not really know without careful enquiry what is likely to have occurred, nor can we tell superficially what is imphed in the Bibhcal and Patristic evidence. We might equally have affirmed that there was no Bibhcal or Patristic evidence for the substitution of Logos in the place of Sophia, and that it was inherently unlikely that Jesus had been the subject of such a change of title. 4—5 58 DID JESUS CALL HIMSELF SOPHIA? Whatever be our views with regard to the nature of the personality of the Lord Jesus, we cannot altogether de-orientalize Him; nor, it might be added, ought we to hyper-philosophize Him. In quite recent times we have had the phenomenon before us of the rise of a new Oriental reUgion and in the Bab-movement have been able to detect remarkable analogies to the early Christian history. Probably nothing surprised us more, at the first presen- tation of the cult to our notice, than the amazing titles given to the leaders of the movement; who would have thought that the end of the nineteenth century could have produced a teacher whose name is Subh-i-ezel or Bawn- of -Eternity ? And as to the adoption of this title by the person himself to whom it was attached, the following note by Professor Browne in his Episode of the Bab (p. 95) may be of interest: "The name alluded to is of co^^rse that of Ezel (the Eternal) bestowed on Mirza Yahya by the Bab. Gobineau calls him Hazrat-i-Ezel (L'Altesse Eternelle), but his correct designation, that which he himself adopts, and that whereby he is everywhere known, is Subh-i-Ezel (the Morning of Eternity)." Eeasoning from analogy, we may fairly argue that a priori objections ought not to settle the question whether Jesus was or was not the Wisdom of God : if He was such, there is nothing to prohibit Him from announcing Himself as such; and if, on the other hand. He was merely a teacher who provoked admiring appellations from His followers, as in the case of the leaders of the Bab movement, or who suggested such appellations to His admiring followers, still there is no a priori objection to such a phenomenon amongst the early Christian teachers and leaders. We can, there- fore, approach the question whether Jesus called Himself the Wisdom of God without the hindrance of antecedent improbabihty. One thing seems quite clear : Jesus did not announce Himself as the Word of God. That title came from His followers and not from the first generation of them : but since we have shown reason to beUeve that Word of God is a substitute for Wisdom of God, it is not unlikely that this latter title, admitted to be antecedent to the second generation of discipleship, may go back to Jesus Himself, for it certainly belongs to the first generation of His followers; and therefore either they gave it to Him or He gave it to Himself. The two things are, in any case, not very far apart chronologically. DID JESUS CALL HIMSELF SOPHIA? 59 Another way in which we approach the subject, without wandering off into comparative religion, is to notice how readily we ourselves recover the title when we are speaking in an elevated strain of His Being and Perfections : for example, amongst modern religious writers, one of the illuminated of the last generation was certainly T. T. Lynch, both as Preacher and Poet ; he says some- where of Jesus : He is the new and ancient Word, All Wisdom man hath ever heard Hath been both His and He: He is the very life of truth, In Him it hath eternal youth And constant victory. Here the writer has taken his flight from St Augustine's "Beauty, Ancient and yet new," to the Logos, who is also the Eternal Wisdom and the Eternal Truth^. And Augustine might be quoted in the very same strain ; for he also accepted Wisdom as an Eternal Divine Hypostasis. We may recall that great passage from the conversation at Ostia : We came to our own minds and passed beyond them, that we might arrive at that region of never-faUing plenty, where thou feedest Israel for ever with the food of truth, and where Life is the Wisdom by whom all these things were made, both what have been and what shall be, and she herself is not made, but is as she hath been, and so shall be for ever ; yea, rather, to have been and hereafter to be are not in her, but only to be, seeing she is eternal. Evidently St Augustine would have found no difficulty in a statement that "Wisdom was with God and that Wisdom was God" : and it was as easy for him as it is possible for us, to recover the lost title "Wisdom of God" for Jesus. Such a title is almost involved in "the Truth and the Life," which Jesus in the Fourth Gospel affirms Himself to be : but we naturally desire more direct evidence and if possible Synoptic evidence as to the use of the term by Jesus of Himself. The passages which Tatian harmonised from Matthew and Luke into ^ It is noteworthy that the same identification occurs in a letter of George Tox to the daughter of Oliver Cromwell : "Then thou wilt feel the power of God, which will bring nature into its course, and give thee to see the glory of the first body. There the Wisdom of God will be received, which is Christ, by which all things were made and created, and thou wilt thereby be preserved and ordered to God's glory." So also C. Wesley in a hymn which ia headed Prov. iii. 13, 18 : "Wisdom and Christ and Heaven are one." 60 DID JESUS CALL HIMSELF SOPHIA? the form "therefore, behold! I, the Wisdom of God, send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes," would be decisive if we could be sure that Tatian had recovered the original meaning or given the original sense to the passage of Q which Matthew and Luke are quoting. It is not an easy point to settle. It is, however, much more hkely that Jesus spoke in the person of the Divine Wisdom, than that the passage is a reference to Scripture either extant or non-extant; and I therefore incUne to beheve that Tatian has given the sense of the passage. It may be asked why we do not quote the passage in which Jesus declares Himself to be greater, in respect to Wisdom, than Solomon. The answer is that whatever indication may be taken out of these words from Q is negatived by the accompanying statement that Jesus is greater than Jonah. If the queen of the south who came to hear the Wisdom of Solomon (Matt. xii. 42, Luke xi. 31) had stood in a text by herself, without the addition of Jonah and the Ninevites, we might have argued that the Wisdom of Jesus, which He affirmed to be superior to that of Solomon, was the Wisdom of God, and so have looked towards the missing formula that we are in search of. It is not safe to lean upon such uncertain evidence. That this Wisdom of Jesus was one of the things that most impressed His contemporaries is evident from the Synoptic tradition. Whence hath this man this Wisdom? (Matt. xiii. 54, Mark vi. 2). According to Luke he was from his earliest years filled with Wisdom and advancing in the same : but this does not necessarily involve the doctrine that Sophia has descended to dwell amongst us (Luke ii. 40, 52). St Paul, it should be observed, not only identifies Jesus with the Wisdom and Power of God, but also affirms Him to be the repository of " all the treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge " (Col. ii. 3). The tradition of his Wisdom is conserved for us in a curious Syriac fragment referred to Mara, the son of Serapion, where we are asked "what advantage the Jews derived from the death of their wise king, seeing from that time their kingdom was taken away?" (Cureton, Spicilegium, p. 72). No doubt it was by His Wisdom that Jesus impressed His own and succeeding generations. DID JESUS CALL HIMSELF SOPHIA? 61 TMsj however, is insufficient evidence for our purpose. Another direction suggests itself, by which we can infer that Jesus identified Himself with the Sophia of the Old Testament. It has been from time to time affirmed that the explanation of many of His sayings is to be found in parallel utterances in the Sapiential books ; as for instance, that the verses in Matt. xi. 28-30 are to be traced back to Sirach xxiv. 19, where Sophia says, Ccmie unto me all ye that desire me, Fill yourselves with my fruits; For my memorial is sweeter than honey, My inheritance than the honey-comb, with Sirach li. 26, Put your neck under her yoke etc. Similarly it is suggested that the Words of Jesus that He that cometh to me shall never hunger. He that believeth on me shall never thirst (John vi. 35) are an antithesis to the language of Sophia in Sirach xxiv. 21, They that eat me shall hunger again, They that drink shall thirst again. If we could be sure that we had traced these sayings of Jesus to their proximate original, it would be easy to infer that He had borrowed the language of Sophia and was speaking in her person. This would very nearly settle the question that we are investigating. Jesus would be Sophia because His invitations would be those of Sophia. In this direction it is possible that further illumination may be forthcoming. Meanwhile we have got far enough in the enquiry to see how completely off the mark was Dr Plummer in his commentary on Luke in the passages under discussion. He tells us : Nowhere does he style himseH "The Wisdom of God," nor does any evangelist give him this title, nor does deov a-n^lav or a-o(pla anh deov (1 Cor. i. 24, 30) warrant us in asserting that this was a common designation among the first Christians so that tradition might have substituted this name for eym used by Jesus Rather it is of the Divine Providence (Prov. viii. 22-31) sending Prophets to the Jewish Church and Apostles to the Christian Church, that Jesus here speaks, "God in his wisdom said." In view of the preceding investigations which we have made into the origin of the Logos-Doctrine, it appears that we might contradict almost every one of the statements here made : or at 62 DID JESUS CALL HIMSELF SOPHIA? least we might say, in imitation of the language of Ignatius, irpoiceiTai, "that is the very point at issue" : and if it is conceded that it was Wisdom of the eighth chapter of Proverbs that is responsible for sending prophets and Apostles, we have given abundant reason for beheving that Jesus was, by the first genera- tion of His followers, identified with this very Wisdom. In that case, €7a) and So^i'a are interchangeable, at least in the mind of His adherents, and perhaps in His own. ST JOHN AND THE DIVINE WISDOM It has been shown in many ways that the identification of Christ with the Wisdom of God is fundamental in the primitive collection of Testimonies employed in the propaganda of the first Christian teachers. It was the first article of the Christian theology, so far as that theology is involved in the archetype of the collection of Testimonies made by Cyprian, and it can be shown to be equally involved in a variety of Christian writings. In a previous chapter we have pointed out that the Cyprianic chapter that "Christ is the hand and arm of God" has behind it the doctrine that "Sophia is the hand of God." There can be no doubt that in the primitive Testimony Booh Christ was equated with Sophia. If, then, we can show that the Fourth Gospel betrays a direct dependence upon the Apostolic collection of Testimonies, we shall then be entitled to affirm that the writer was acquainted with the Sophia-Christ equation and that he made his Logos-Christ equation in view of the previous identification, which he must consequently have modified. This is what we have to prove. It is a priori probable that the case was as we suggest, for if the Testimony Book antedates the Pauline Epistles, it antedates the Fourth Gospel; and as it was certainly an apostolic document, it would not be surprising for the author of the Fourth Gospel to be acquainted with it. An actual proof that this was the case may be obtained by studying the sequence and argument of John xii. 37-40. The writer has been recording the increasing alienation between Jesus and the Jews, until he comes to the point where Jesus is obhged to go into hiding to escape the hostihty of the unbelieving Jews. ST JOHN AND THE DIVINE WISDOM 63 At this point he stops his narration in order to point out, that it had been predicted that they would not beUeve in Him, for had it not been written by Isaiah as follows : Who hath believed our report, And to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? (Is. liii. 1). And the Jewish unbeUef was inevitable, for had not Isaiah also said. He hath blinded their eyes (Is. vi. 9, 10)? So the question arises naturally, whether these anti-Judaic verses belong to a primitive collection of Testimonia adversics Judaeos. In order to answer this question we turn in the first instance to Cyprian. He quotes Is. hii. 1 twice over in the Testimonia, once to prove that Christ is the arm of the Lord ("to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?"), and once to prove that Christ is lowly in His first advent, where Cyprian goes on to prove that Jesus is the root out of a dry ground, etc. In neither of these passages, however, is there an immediate reference to the unbehef of the Jews. We should have expected the quotation to occur in the first book of the Testimonia under some such heading as that it had been foretold that they would not know the Lord nor understand. And we think it must actually have stood' there, for in that very section stands the second Johannine reference, as follows : Vade et die populo isto: aure audietis et non inteUegetis et uidentes uidebitis et non uidebitis. incrassauit enim cor popuU eius, et auribus grauiter audierunt, et ooulos suos concluserunt, ne forte uideant ooulis et auribus audiant et corde intellegant et curem Ulos (Cyp. Test. i. 3). Both of the Johannine quotations are, then, in the Testimony Book according to Cyprian, and one of them is in its right place. We may, therefore, say that John xii. 38-40 has all the appearance of being taken from a collection of Testimonies. Very good ! but then we are face to face with the fact that the extract given above from Cyprian does not agree with reTi(j)Xcovs, Kai (7r(nv , Km la(Topai avrovs ' while it does agree almost exactly with the LXX and with the Greek of Matt. xiii. 14, 15 and of the Acts xxviii. 26, 27, in both Gl ST JOHN AND THE DIVINE WISDOM of which cases in the N.T. the passage is employed in an anti- Judaic sense. Nor is this variation of John from the LXX the only thing to be noted in the history of this famous quotation. It occurs in Justin Martyr, to whom we must now turn. In two strongly anti-Judaic passages in his Dialogue with TrypTio Justin tells his Jewish audience as follows : (a) Dial. c. 12 to. oSra u/iwv nefppaKrat, ol 6(fi6akfJioi v^wv TreTTTjpavTai, Koi Tiena-^fyvTai r) Kapdla. ib) Dial. G. 33 ra 8e tora vfiatv 7r€(j)paKTai, Kat at Kapdiat TreTrrjpavrau The two passages are fragments of the same tradition, the second of the two having got into confusion through dropping a clause. We have now three forms of the passage from Isaiah before us, one of which is the plain Septuagint text ; the other two may be taken, following Papias' suggestion, as independent modifications of a primitive Aramaic. If this be the correct explanation, we must be right in saying that John knew and used the Book of Testimonies ; and he could hardly have done this without knowing its leading proposition that Jesus is the Wisdom of God^. The point reached by our investigation appears to mark an advance in the following sense. Two fresh facts (hitherto un- noticed or almost unobserved) have come to light : first that the tradition of the Testimony Book is earlier than the New Testament, antedates the Gospels, is Apostohc in origin, and the common property of all schools of Christian thought. Second, in accordance with the tradition of the Testimony Book, as well as from several other lines of enquiry, it is clear that the first and foremost article of Christian behef is that Jesus is the Wisdom of God, personified, incarnate, and equated with every form of personification of 1 There is still something queer about the two Justinian forms (a) and (6). If we read we-n-wpavTai. in (6) we are much nearer to the Johannine form. But then what becomes of form (a) ? Shall we read Tii UTa {i/j.uv iTi(l>paKTai, ol d(pdd\p.ol vp-wv ireirTjpujvTatj Kai TreTTttipwrat i) Kapdia, and treat Trewaxwrai as introduced from the LXX ? The variations in the text of Isaiah as quoted are a sufficient evidence of the wide diffusion of the Testimony. On the other hand, the evidence of the Oxyrhynchus Frngments of Sayings of JesMS ("They are blind in their heart") is in favour of attaching Trcn-fipwTai to KapSia. ST JOHN AND THE DIVINE WISDOM 65 Wisdom that could be derived from or suggested by the Scriptures of the Old Testament. Upon the recognition and right evaluation of these two facts our reconstruction of the theology of the first age of the Church will depend. Here is a simple instance, to conclude with, to show the re-action of the argument upon the interpretation of the Epistles. The recognition of the Sapiential origin of the appellation of Christ in the first chapter of Colossians will help us to the under- standing of a passage in Eomans, where we are told that believers are fore-ordained to a conformity to the image (elKcov) of the Son of God, so that He may be the first-born (ttjocdtotoko?) among many brethren. Here the apparatus of the reader of the New Testament naturally suggests for the 'first-born' a reference to Colossians : but since in Colossians i. 15, 16, we have the sequence : Image (cikmv) of the invisible God; First-born (npoiToroKos) of all creation; it is natural to suggest that in Romans i. 29 we have a similar transition. That is to say, we must put a comma after et'/coi^o? and read rov viov avTov in apposition to it: that we may be conformed to the Image, i.e. to His Son, that the Son may be the First-born, i.e. among many brethren. NOTE. Origen and the Sapiential Cheist. The doctrine that Christ is the airoppoia of God appears again in Origen in the following form : Comm. in ep. ad Romanos. vii. 13. Unus autem uterque est Deus, quia non est aliud Filio divinitatis initium quam Pater; sed ipsius unius Paterni fontis (sicut Sapientia dicit) purissima est manatio Filius. Est. ergo Christus Deus super omnia. Quae omnia? Ilia sine dubio quae et paulo ante diximus, Eph. i. 21. 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With ample knowledge at his command and great acuteness, Dr Rendel Harris investigates certain Christian traditions, relating to various twin saints, and shows convincingly, we think, that they preserve in a transformed shape the elements of pagan legends relating to the Dioscuri and their sister Helen We heartily thank Dr Rendel Harris for a most instructive and ingenious essay, very carefully reasoned and resting on a very wide basis of suggestive facts. His investigation amply confirms the idea that in some cases at least, the early Church did not suppress popular beliefs, but transformed the object towards which they were directed. He has thrown a valuable side-light on a stage in the development of folk-lore which has hitherto been remarkably obscure." — Guardian THE CULT OF THE HEAVENLY TWINS Demy 8vo. 6s " There are many curiosities in this book ; the more generally interesting of these will be the suggested presence of the Heavenly Twins — Dioscurism, to use the scientific term — in the Christian Calendar The book is full of curious lore which those interested in such matters should certainly study for themselves." — Spectator BOANERGES Demy 8vo. 15s net "In this volume Dr Rendel Harris continues his inquiry into the antiquity and diffusion of twin cults, thus supplementing his Dioscuri in the Christian Legends and his Cult of the Heavenly Twins. As the title suggests, the New Testament is directly involved, and the book may be said to culminate in ingenious suggestions touching the origin of the accounts of certain miracles and other features in the Gospels We are indebted to Dr Harris for a great store of material and for the light he has thrown upon the folk-lore of twins and upon the more systematic cults." Guardian Cambridge University Press Fetter Lane, London: C. F. Clay, Manager