Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, Vol. 2 of 3 / Olympus; or, the Religion of the Homeric Age

by W. E. Gladstone

Messianic traditions of Scripture.

And first, as to the Deliverer of man. The Redeemer promised was to be human, for He was to be of human birth. As death was the type of the primeval curse, so it was from death that He was to deliver. Again, the woman became a portion of the prophecy, for He was to be the seed of the woman: and while He is thus plainly indicated to us as incarnate, He is, on the other hand, mysteriously identified with the Λόγος, the Divine Word or Wisdom, existing before the world and the race with which He was to be numbered, and invested with the attributes of supreme Deity. Although from a certain period the Wisdom and the Deliverer appear to stand visibly identified, yet the earliest forms of the traditions, as they stand in Holy Writ, are, to a certain extent, ideally separate or separable; and the personality of the former is less clearly, or at least less sharply, marked than that of the latter.

It was always the prevailing tendency of the speculative religions of the East to withdraw the Supreme Being from direct relations with the world, and to assign its ordinary government to the Wisdom, more or less directly impersonated. ‘This,’ says Dean Milman, ‘was the doctrine from the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Sea, to the Ilissus: it was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and Indian philosophy; it was the basis of Zoroastrianism: it was pure Platonism: it was the Platonic Judaism of the Alexandrian School[40].’

Neither were the traditions of the Evil One, more than those respecting the Messiah, limited to a single aspect. On the contrary, they were twofold, and they centred round two ideas: the one, that of force; the other that of fraud: the one, that of a rebellious spirit, whom the Almighty had cast down, with his abettors, from bliss to torment[41]; and the other, that of a deceiver, who lured man by the promise of what he desired, and through the medium of his own free will, away from duty, to his own harm or destruction.

Sum of the primitive traditions.

We may venture rudely to sum up these principal traditions of the first ages as follows:

First, with respect to the Deity.

1. The Unity and supremacy of the Godhead.

2. A combination with this Unity of a Trinity, in which Trinity the several Persons, in whatever way their personality be understood, and whatever distinctions may obtain between them, are in some way of coequal honour.

Secondly, with respect to the Redeemer, or Messiah.