Footnote 106:[ (return) ]
There is the less need for treating this more fully here, as no New Testament Christology has become the direct starting-point of later doctrinal developments. The Gentile Christians had transmitted to them, as a unanimous doctrine, the message that Christ is the Lord who is to be worshipped, and that one must think of him as the Judge of the living and the dead, that is, 'ως περι θεου. But it certainly could not fail to be of importance for the result that already many of the earliest Christian writers, and therefore even Paul, perceived in Jesus a spiritual being come down from heaven ( πνευμα) who was εν μορφη θεου, and whose real act of love consisted in his very descent.
Footnote 107:[ (return) ]
The creation of the New Testament canon first paved the way for putting an end, though only in part, to the production of Evangelic "facts" within the Church. For Hermas (Sim. IX. 16) can relate that the Apostles also descended to the under world and there preached. Others report the same of John the Baptist. Origen in his homily on 1 Kings XXVII. says that Moses, Samuel and all the Prophets descended to Hades and there preached. A series of facts of Evangelic history which have no parallel in the accounts of our Synoptists, and are certainly legendary, may be put together from the epistle of Barnabas, Justin, the second epistle of Clement, Papias, the Gospel to the Hebrews, and the Gospel to the Egyptians. But the synoptic reports themselves, especially in the articles for which we have only a solitary witness, shew an extensive legendary material, and even in the Gospel of John, the free production of facts cannot be mistaken. Of what a curious nature some of these were, and that they are by no means to be entirely explained from the Old Testament, as for example, Justin's account of the ass on which Christ rode into Jerusalem, having been bound to a vine, is shewn by the very old fragment in one source of the Apostolic constitutions (Texte u. Unters II. 5. p. 28 ff.); 'οτε ητψεν 'ο διδασκαλος τον αρτον και το ποτηριον και ηυλογησεν αυτα λεγων τουτο εστι το σωμα μου και το 'αιμα, ουκ επετρεψε ταυταις (the women) συστηναι 'ημιν ... Μαρθα ειπεν δια Μαριαμ, 'οτι ειδεν αυτην μειδιωσαν. Μαρια ειπεν ουκετι εγελασα. Narratives such as those of Christ's descent to Hell and ascent to heaven, which arose comparatively late, though still at the close of the first century (see Book I. Chap 3) sprang out of short formulæ containing an antithesis (death and resurrection, first advent in lowliness, second advent in glory: descensus de cœlo, ascensus in cœlum; ascensus in cœlum, descensus ad inferna) which appeared to be required by Old Testament predictions, and were commended by their naturalness. Just as it is still, in the same way naively inferred: if Christ rose bodily he must also have ascended bodily (visibly?) into heaven.
Footnote 108:[ (return) ]
The Sibylline Oracles, composed by Jews, from 160 B.C. to 189 A.D. are specially instructive here: See the Editions of Friedlieb. 1852; Alexandre, 1869; Rzach, 1891. Delaunay, Moines et Sibylles dans l'antiquité judéo-grecque, 1874. Schürer in the work mentioned above. The writings of Josephus also yield rich booty, especially his apology for Judaism in the two books against Apion. But it must be noted that there were Jews, enlightened by Hellenism, who were still very zealous in their observance of the law. "Philo urges most earnestly to the observance of the law in opposition to that party which drew the extreme inferences of the allegoristic method, and put aside the outer legality as something not essential for the spiritual life. Philo thinks that by an exact observance of these ceremonies on their material side, one will also come to know better their symbolical meaning" (Siegfried, Philo, p. 157).
Footnote 109:[ (return) ]
Direct evidence is certainly almost entirely wanting here, but the indirect speaks all the more emphatically: see § 3, Supplements 1, 2.
Footnote 110:[ (return) ]
The Jewish propaganda, though by no means effaced, gave way very distinctly to the Christian from the middle of the second century. But from this time we find few more traces of an enlightened Hellenistic Judaism. Moreover, the Messianic expectation also seems to have somewhat given way to occupation with the law. But the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as well as other Jewish terms certainly played a great rôle in Gentile and Gnostic magical formulæ of the third century, as may be seen, e.g., from many passages in Origen c. Celsum.
Footnote 111:[ (return) ]
The prerogative of Israel was for all that clung to; Israel remains the chosen people.
Footnote 112:[ (return) ]
The brilliant investigations of Bernays, however, have shewn how many-sided that philosophy of religion was. The proofs of asceticism in this Hellenistic Judaism are especially of great interest for the history of dogma (See Theophrastus' treatise on piety). In the eighth Epistle of Heraclitus, composed by a Hellenistic Jew in the first century, it is said (Bernays, p. 182). "So long a time before, O Hermodorus, saw thee that Sibyl, and even then thou wert" ειδε σε προ ποσουτου αιωνος, Ερμοδωρε 'η Σιβυλλα εκεινη, και τοτε ησθα. Even here then the notion is expressed that foreknowledge and predestination invest the known and the determined with a kind of existence. Of great importance is the fact that even before Philo, the idea of the wisdom of God creating the world and passing over to men had been hypostatised in Alexandrian Judaism (see Sirach, Baruch, the wisdom of Solomon, Enoch, nay, even the book of Proverbs). But so long as the deutero-canonical Old Testament, and also the Alexandrine and Apocalyptic literature continue in the sad condition in which they are at present, we can form no certain judgment and draw no decided conclusions on the subject. When will the scholar appear who will at length throw light on these writings, and therewith on the section of inner Jewish history most interesting to the Christian theologian? As yet we have only a most thankworthy preliminary study in Schürer's great work, and beside it particular or dilettante attempts which hardly shew what the problem really is, far less solve it. What disclosures even the fourth book of the Maccabees alone yields for the connection of the Old Testament with Hellenism!
Footnote 113:[ (return) ]
"So far as the sensible world is a work of the Logos, it is called νεωτερος 'υιος (quod deus immut. 6. I.277), or according to Prov. VIII. 22, an offspring of God and wisdom: 'η δε παραδεξαμηνε το του θεου σπερμα τελεσφοροις ωδισι τον μονον και αγαπητον αισθητον 'υιον απεκυησε τον δε τον κοσμον (de ebriet 8 I. 361 f). So far as the Logos is High Priest his relation to the world is symbolically expressed by the garment of the High Priest, to which exegesis the play on the word κοσμος, as meaning both ornament and world, lent its aid." This speculation (see Siegfried. Philo, 235) is of special importance; for it shews how closely the ideas κοσμος and λογος were connected.
Footnote 114:[ (return) ]
Of all the Greek Philosophers of the second century, Plutarch of Chäronea, died c. 125 A.D., and Numenius of Apamea, second half of the second century, approach nearest to Philo; but the latter of the two was undoubtedly familiar with Jewish philosophy, specially with Philo, and probably also with Christian writings.
Footnote 115:[ (return) ]
As to the way in which Philo (see also 4 Maccab. V. 24) learned to connect the Stoic ethics with the authority of the Torah, as was also done by the Palestinian Midrash, and represented the Torah as the foundation of the world, and therewith as the law of nature: see Siegfried, Philo, p. 156.