[Footnote 8: Matt. ix. 2, and following; Mark ii. 5, and following;
Luke v. 20, vii. 47, 48.]
[Footnote 9: Matt. xii. 41, 42; xxii. 43, and following; John viii. 52, and following.]
We cannot mistake in these affirmations of Jesus the germ of the doctrine which was afterward to make of him a divine hypostasis,[1] in identifying him with the Word, or "second God,"[2] or eldest Son of God,[3] or Angel Metathronos,[4] which Jewish theology created apart from him.[5] A kind of necessity caused this theology, in order to correct the extreme rigor of the old Monotheism, to place near God an assessor, to whom the eternal Father is supposed to delegate the government of the universe. The belief that certain men are incarnations of divine faculties or "powers," was widespread; the Samaritans possessed about the same time a thaumaturgus named Simon, whom they identified with the "great power of God."[6] For nearly two centuries, the speculative minds of Judaism had yielded to the tendency to personify the divine attributes, and certain expressions which were connected with the Divinity. Thus, the "breath of God," which is often referred to in the Old Testament, is considered as a separate being, the "Holy Spirit." In the same manner the "Wisdom of God" and the "Word of God" became distinct personages. This was the germ of the process which has engendered the Sephiroth of the Cabbala, the Æons of Gnosticism, the hypostasis of Christianity, and all that dry mythology, consisting of personified abstractions, to which Monotheism is obliged to resort when it wishes to pluralize the Deity.
[Footnote 1: See especially John xiv., and following. But it is doubtful whether we have here the authentic teaching of Jesus.]
[Footnote 2: Philo, cited in Eusebius, Præp. Evang., vii. 13.]
[Footnote 3: Philo, De migr. Abraham, § 1; Quod Deus immut., § 6; De confus. ling., § 9, 14 and 28; De profugis, § 20; De Somniis, i. § 37; De Agric. Noë, § 12; Quis rerum divin. hæres, § 25, and following, 48, and following, &c.]
[Footnote 4: [Greek: Metathronos], that is, sharing the throne of God; a kind of divine secretary, keeping the register of merits and demerits; Bereshith Rabba, v. 6 c; Talm. of Bab., Sanhedr., 38 b; Chagigah, 15 a; Targum of Jonathan, Gen., v. 24.]
[Footnote 5: This theory of the [Greek: Logos] contains no Greek elements. The comparisons which have been made between it and the Honover of the Parsees are also without foundation. The Minokhired or "Divine Intelligence," has much analogy with the Jewish [Greek: Logos]. (See the fragments of the book entitled Minokhired in Spiegel, Parsi-Grammatik, pp. 161, 162.) But the development which the doctrine of the Minokhired has taken among the Parsees is modern, and may imply a foreign influence. The "Divine Intelligence" (Maiyu-Khratû) appears in the Zend books; but it does not there serve as basis to a theory; it only enters into some invocations. The comparisons which have been attempted between the Alexandrian theory of the Word and certain points of Egyptian theology may not be entirely without value. But nothing indicates that, in the centuries which preceded the Christian era, Palestinian Judaism had borrowed anything from Egypt.]
[Footnote 6: Acts viii. 10.]
Jesus appears to have remained a stranger to these refinements of theology, which were soon to fill the world with barren disputes. The metaphysical theory of the Word, such as we find it in the writings of his contemporary Philo, in the Chaldean Targums, and even in the book of "Wisdom,"[1] is neither seen in the Logia of Matthew, nor in general in the synoptics, the most authentic interpreters of the words of Jesus. The doctrine of the Word, in fact, had nothing in common with Messianism. The "Word" of Philo, and of the Targums, is in no sense the Messiah. It was John the Evangelist, or his school, who afterward endeavored to prove that Jesus was the Word, and who created, in this sense, quite a new theology, very different from that of the "kingdom of God."[2] The essential character of the Word was that of Creator and of Providence. Now, Jesus never pretended to have created the world, nor to govern it. His office was to judge it, to renovate it. The position of president at the final judgment of humanity was the essential attribute which Jesus attached to himself, and the character which all the first Christians attributed to him.[3] Until the great day, he will sit at the right hand of God, as his Metathronos, his first minister, and his future avenger.[4] The superhuman Christ of the Byzantine apsides, seated as judge of the world, in the midst of the apostles in the same rank with him, and superior to the angels who only assist and serve, is the exact representation of that conception of the "Son of man," of which we find the first features so strongly indicated in the book of Daniel.