The allusion here is to the preceding chapters of the Dialogue, wherein, with special reference (c. 100) to the passage which has a parallel in Luke i. 35, quoted by Tischendorf in the preceding illustration, Justin narrates the birth of Jesus.
This reference very appropriately leads us to a more general discussion of the real source of the terminology and Logos doctrine of Justin. We do not propose, in this work, to enter fully into the history of the Logos doctrine, and we must confine ourselves strictly to showing, in the most simple manner possible, that not only is there no evidence whatever that Justin derived his ideas regarding it from the fourth Gospel, but that, on the contrary, his terminology and doctrine may be traced to another source. Now, in the very chapter (100) from which this last illustration is taken, Justin shows clearly whence he derives the expression: "only-begotten."
In chap. 97 he refers to the Ps. xxii. (Sept. xxi.) as a prophecy applying to Jesus, quotes the whole Psalm, and comments upon it in the following chapters; refers to Ps. ii. 7: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee," uttered by the voice at the baptism, in ch. 103, in illustration of it; and in ch. 105 he arrives, in his exposition of it, at Verse 20: "Deliver my soul from the sword, and my(1) only-begotten [———] from the hand of the dog." Then follows the passage we are discussing, in which Justin affirms that
1 This should probably be "thy."
he has proved that he was the only-begotten [———] of the Father, and at the close he again quotes the verse as indicative of his sufferings. The Memoirs are referred to in regard to the fulfilment of this prophecy, and his birth as man through the Virgin. The phrase in Justin is quite different from that in the fourth Gospel, i. 14: "And the Word became flesh [———] and tabernacled among us, find we beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father" [———], &c.
In Justin he is "the only-begotten of the Father of all" [———], and he "became man [———] through the Virgin," and Justin never once employs the peculiar terminology of the fourth Gospel, [———], in any part of his writings.
There can be no doubt that, however the Christian doctrine of the Logos may at one period of its development have been influenced by Greek philosophy, it was in its central idea mainly of Jewish origin, and the mere application to an individual of a theory which had long occupied the Hebrew mind. After the original simplicity which represented God as holding personal intercourse with the Patriarchs, and communing face to face with the great leaders of Israel, had been outgrown, an increasing tendency set in to shroud the Divinity in impenetrable mystery, and to regard him as unapproachable and undiscernible by man. This led to the recognition of a Divine representative and substitute of the Highest God and Father, who communicated with his creatures, and through whom alone he revealed himself. A new system of interpretation of the ancient traditions of the nation was rendered necessary, and in the Septuagint translation of the Bible we are fortunately able to trace
the progress of the theory which culminated in the Christian doctrine of the Logos. Wherever in the sacred records God had been represented as holding intercourse with man, the translators either symbolized the appearance or interposed an angel, who was afterwards understood to be the Divine Word. The first name under which the Divine Mediator was known in the Old Testament was Wisdom [———], although in its Apocrypha the term Logos was not unknown. The personification of the idea was very rapidly effected, and in the Book of Proverbs, as well as in the later Apocrypha based upon it: the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Sirach, "Ecclesiasticus:" we find it in ever increasing clearness and concretion. In the School of Alexandria the active Jewish intellect eagerly occupied itself with the speculation, and in the writings of Philo especially we find the doctrine of the Logos—the term which by that time had almost entirely supplanted that of Wisdom—elaborated to almost its final point, and wanting little or nothing but its application in an incarnate form to an individual man to represent the doctrine of the earlier Canonical writings of the New Testament, and notably the Epistle to the Hebrews,—the work of a Christian Philo,(1)—the Pauline Epistles, and lastly the fourth Gospel(2)