Logoj The Significance of Jesus Christ
By Kerry A. Shirts
(Note: My endnote footnotes in the main text are in parenthesis, e.g. (1), (2), etc. I am dealing with so many numbers and ideas that it is confusing otherwise.)
Continuing the look into the Early Christian ideas of Gematria and Sacred Geometry, it is now time to look into the Logos and to gain a greater appreciation and significance of why Jesus is equated with this Greek term.
We are by now, all familiar with the almost inane conceptual understanding of John 1:1:
0En a0rxh hn o9 Lo9goj, kai o9 Lo9goj hn pro0j to0n Qeo0n, kai Qeo0j hn o0 Lo9goj.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Jesus is the Word. But that tells us next to nothing. Why is Jesus significance being the Word? We are not told here, but it simply states such. Now there is serious significance and reason why this situation is thus, and to the Greeks and Jews, this could very well have been a simply electrifying statement. We have no idea about that electricity because we are so far removed from the ancient culture in both time and space, that we simply read off the words and accept their statement as rather matter of fact.
What I wish to do in this paper is prepare the reasons why this is so powerful. I want to explore the dimensions and philosophy behind the meaning of the "Word," and why it would have caused people to take a double look and wonder wide eyed about equating Jesus with the Word. This idea was the earthquake to the minds of the ancient Jews and Christians when it was proclaimed, because of just what being the Word entailed as far as doctrine, history, significance, dimension and depth of meaning in truth and reality this word, WORD, meant. We have lost that shock, that wonder, that awe. I wish to show why it was so shocking, awe-striking, and incredible. First the Greek background and parallels with Jesus as the Christians presented him in the Gospels. This is not to "paganize" Jesus, rather to bring up from the depths the fullest range of meaning and understanding concerning Jesus as the Logoj.
The Greek Idea of the Logoj:
It is a remarkable correlation to see that the ancient God Hermes was considered "The Shephard," an epithet that is reflected in the Gnostic work Poimandres, which means "Man-Shephard" in Greek. He was a Guide of both the material and spiritual natures, and as such, Hermes was the Logos, the god of roads, pathways, and boundaries, including the byways and paths of the thing we understand to be consciousness. We learn that what was sacred to him was THE PATH or THE WAY ( 9H 9ODOS), which by gematria is 352, one unit less than his name, which amounts to 353. It is to be noticed as well that "the life," ( O Bioj) also is equal to 352.(1) Jesus said simply, e0gw9 ei0mi h9 a0lh9qeia kai h9 zwh9, "I am the way, the truth, and the life…" (John 14:6). Why this equation is so important is due to the nature of the Logos, which represents "the path between opposites," for it is through the agency of the Logos that the polarities of creation are reconciled and transcended in a higher unity.(2)
How the ancient Greeks understood the Logos as a principle is as man is the microcosm of the macrocosm, which is, by essence, the reflection of the universe, "we are not cut off from the order of the universe, but embody it at every level. Therefore, one way to experience the harmony of the logos is to turn quietly within, and attentively listen to the silent voice from the center."(3)
It is utterly fantastic to us when we consider Heraclitus of Ephesus "is reported to have taught that men received the logoj by breathing in (di a0napnohj)."(4) What does breathing have to do with the logos? And we receive one surprise after another as we gather in the various etymologies and constructs of the idea. R. B. Onians provides us with an insight from the Kaushitaki Upanishad, which says speech, sight, hearing, and mind were knows as breaths (prana), for the vital breath is all these. "As a unity, verily, the vital breaths, every single one, cause to know all things here. All the vital breaths speak along speech when it speaks, all the vital breaths see along with the eye when it sees, and so on."(5) This is why it is understandable then, that theories about vision from the ancient Greeks, such as Alcmaeon of Croton, an associate of Pythagoras in the 6th century B.C. thought that the passages from the eyes, which is how vision occurs, are supposed to be full of natural breath. Diogenes of Apollonia, who identified the governing consciousness of mankind with air in the chest, believed that sight was also effected by a fusion of the image in the pupil of the eye, and the air found within the head. This is how the Greeks believed the soul itself was a "vapour," and spoke of the logoi as "winds of the soul."(6) Hence we can appreciate better their view that the cosmic logoj = speech, thought conceived materially as breath, spirit, pneuma (pneuma) and the logoi as the "winds of the soul." It now appears as an intelligent view that the logos is "in-breathed." To the Stoics, the soul is thought of as fiery breath centered in or around the heart and in some views, the head, hence the idea that the eyes could be flaming or fiery, as in Plato’s Timaeus, where he notes:
And of the organs they first contrived the eyes to give light, and the principle according to which they were inserted was as follows. So much of fire as akin to the light of everyday life, and the pure fire which is within us and related thereto they made to flow through the eyes in a stream smooth and dense, compressing the whole eye and especially the center part, so that it kept out everything of a coarser nature and allowed to pass only this pure element…For from the communion of the internal and external fires, and again from the union of them and their numerous transformations when they meet in the mirror, all these appearances of necessity arise when the fire from the face coalesces with the fire from the eye on the bright and smooth surface.(7)
This fiery breath, is the pneuma (pneuma), that is, the Spirit, the same which the Bible itself records God breathed into man:
hyx #pnl Md)h yhyw Myyx tm#n wyp)b xpyw
Literally: "and he breathed into the nostrils of him the breath of life, and he became (the man) into-being, living." (Gen. 2:7).
The Koran in similar style, indicates that God "breathed into her [John’s wife] of Our inspiration, and made her and her son a sign for the nations." (Sura 17:91, in Maulana Muhammad Ali’s translation, The Holy Quran, 1995: 641)
It was the breath of God breathed into man that caused him to live. To the Greeks, the breath is one aspect of the logos. In the Hermetic writing of Kore Kosmu, we read that God after having mixed the four elements together he then kai zwopoion emfusHsaj – kai zoopoion emphushsas - "breathed into them a certain life-giving substance…"( 8) Walter Bauer in the lexicon notes that the phrase o0 speireij ou0 zwopoieitai e0a0n mh a0poqa0nh is the sprouting of seed.(9) Cicero in The Dream of Scipio, says that men’s souls were from the "everlasting fiery elements."(10)
"To Greek thinkers, Logos meant not only the word, phrase, speech, but also the reason and the intellect, ideas and the depths of a being’s meaning, even divine thought itself. The Stoics regarded the word as the rationality immanent in the universal structure…It is the individual’s truth and light."(11)
Jane Harrison showed how the Eleuthernae tablet says "whence art thou?… I am the son of Earth and of Starry Heaven."(12) The idea along with the Petelia Plate, is that the avowal of origin is claimed as divine. "We have in the avowal of the soul the clearest possible statement of the cardinal doctrine of Orphic faith – immortality is possible only in virtue of the divinity of humanity."(13)
The Logos ties in with this powerfully. Walter Wili examined the idea of the spirit in antiquity and has some observations worth noting. The German word Geist goes back to the Indo-Iranian gheizd, meaning "to move powerfully," originally then a "motive force."(14) It is the "vital force," of which we have seen in the Upanishads as the "vital breath." The conception of the interaction of three ideas, the pneuma, nouj, logoj as pneuma, spirit; nous, intelligence or mind, and logos, the thought which has become the word, was powerfully developed in late antiquity, stemming from the Greeks, and being worked into the Christian theology in fascinating ways, not as a way of apostatizing fomr the truth, but as a more complete all-encompassing advocation of the truth, an increase in power and understanding of the universality of Jesus Christ.
Wili notes that Heraclitus, who flourished around 480 B.C. said the cosmos originally was fire, and Anaximenes looked upon this most important of the forms was assumed by the pneuma, spirit. "There is an exchange: all things for fire and fire for all things." Hence the cosmos, which is uncreate and eternal, undergoes cyclic changes; it is everliving fire, kindled in measure, and quenched in measure… it is the cause which renews the cosmos and is the cause that will end it."(15)
Could this be another reason why Elijah anciently could call down fire from heaven? In a provocative study, Robert Eisenman discusses the "eschatalogical rain" idea in relation to the coming of judgment of the Messiah! The interesting incongruity of rain imagery along with the fire of judgment is thought provoking. He mentions Elijah'’ rain making miracle, and discusses the Dead Sea Scrolls rain imagery as well as one coming like the Son of man in judgment on the clouds of heaven with the angels, etc. he even quotes Matthew 2:10f, "the fire that is in the fan and the straw ready for the burning," as eschatalogical (that is end times, judgment, etc.), is most interesting. The Habakkuk pesher has something about judgment as well, according to Eisenman. There is to be a shower of judgement from the heavenly clouds and many themes in the whole complex of apocalyptic imageries being put together in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament.(16) John J. Collins noted the Messiah spoken of in the Dead Sea Scrolls, as the one whom heaven and earth would obey, is presumed to be Elijah, whose command of the heavens was legendary. Quoting Sirach he shows "By the word of the Lord he shut up the heavens and also three times brought down fire."(17) We know the Spirit of God like a fire is burning, because of the description of heaven in the Dead Sea Scrolls fragment of the Book of Enoch, which plainly states:
[…the top] of the throne was [of sapphire. I saw a burning fire; beyond those mountains there is a place on the other side of the great earth,] and there [the heavens e]nd. [Then I was shown a great abyss between pillars of heavenly fire and I saw] in its pillars [of fire which go down to the bottom: its height and its depth were immeasurable…(18)
Many Attributes of the Logos:
There are several varying aspects of the Logos from the ancient Greeks which bear looking into concerning the understanding they had of this important concept.
Logos spermatikos
Logos prophorikos
Logos endiathetos
Logos elengchos
The Logos spermatikos involves the inner interrelationship between the macrocosm and the microcosm (heaven & man as its reflection). This is the germinal spirit of the universe, which works in cycles. The idea here is that God was at first with Himself in the beginning, and all the substance that was in the air, he turned into water. As the seed is contained in the produce, so too, God being the seminal principle (logos spermatikos) of the world, remained behind in moisture. The generative process of mankind and the human spirit is one and the same. "The sperm not only contains the logos, but is substantially pneuma, spirit-breath. Hence it is from the sperm that the logos develops in the child, and the logos begins to attain full growth when the child himself has acquired the power of generation."(19) Hence the Stoic idea of "generation." It is the cycle of generative power which is both in the corporeal and the spiritual; the interval in which the seed from which the father had been engendered becomes seed again in the son. At death, the souls of mankind, with this generative power, returns to the logos spermatikos of the universe. As in the universe the logos permeates all things, so in the sperm, the logos permeates all men and is the foundation of the brotherhood of mankind.(20) "In the doctrine of the logos spermatikos, the universe is not seen only in its rhythm but also in its cycle; to conform with nature the spirit of man must travel in a similar cycle. Therefore the thinking of the spirit must be cyclical, annulling contradictions, thus differing from rational thought, which is rectilinear, which excludes contradiction, which progresses and is progressive…thus the logos spermatikos achieves its fulfillment rhythmically and in the cyclical movement of the universe."(21)
The principle behind the idea of the logos endiathetos is finding God himself as the ordering spirit, and Christ, the son of God, in the spirit turned outward. Plotinus taught that "the first beginning is logos and all things are logos. This is so because in the Stoic doctrine, both in the cosmos as well as man, there are two forms of spirit. The spirit which fulfills the order of the universe (Logoj e0ndiaqetoj) and the spirit which carries itself outward (Logoj proforixoj), which is, as it were, the product of the first.(22)
"An original Greek element remains in this conception, hence arises the logos prophorikos (= oration) which is the principle manifestation of the spirit. This word is not only a gift of the spirit, it is the spirit itself bestowed upon us; it is the epiphany of the spirit, it is revelation.(23) As Schökel notes, "The motion of the Spirit hovers over the language act of the sacred writer, and makes of it an act of revelation." Hence the context of the logos and the context of the Spirit unite ontologically.(24)
The Early Christian Logos:
Max Pulver’s analysis of Philo concerning the Logos begins to bring us into the early Christian times.
Anciently we have the famous doctrine of the four elements, earth, air, fire, water. For Philo the pneuma, "spirit" was a fifth element. "Learning for Philo serves a purpose only if it leads to an understanding of the Creator, only if it gives rise to immersion in God."(25) Philo moved away from the Stoic conception of pneuma which becomes a more refined substance and actually becomes the divine logos itself. Pneuma, logos, and sophia (wisdom) are now equated in Philo.(26) I will return to the sophia idea momentarily. It is in line with the Wisdom tradition associated with John 1:1, the Word. It is too often skipped over in analysis of John 1:1, yet is a most important subject correlating with the logos.
Philo contended that "The Spirit of God lives in each individual man as his conscience; the logos becomes the logos elengchos, the logos of ethical testing, our conscience and hence the intermediary between man and God. Philo’s divine nous, as the conscience in man, suggests the doctrine of the holy ghost."(27)
Philo’s conception is that the human souls are of the same stuff as the heavenly bodies. The stars are gods, and hence so are the human souls. The pneuma is supernatural, a God-given force which is bestowed upon man from time to time also. "Philo’s pneuma becomes identical with knowledge, and with sophia. This knowledge is universal reason, the divine logos. From this all-pervading logos God takes some part, ‘as one takes light from a flame,’ and deposits it in certain chosen men. But this gift of God, this pneuma-logos, remains in the human soul only for a limited time."(28) So it is that this pneuma, the logos, which comes from God, is the "fluid which governs the universe, and when the human spirit is detached from the body it mingles with this fluid, which is the material vehicle, the refined substance in which the mystical forms of knowledge are grounded."(29) This Logos, the divine reason-principle is the "active element of God’s creative thought, and is often spoken of as the ‘place’ of the ideas. Through the influence of the Logos, the ideas become seminal reason-principles (logoi spermatikoi)… but the Logos is only the sum-total of the Ideas in activity, as the intelligible cosmos was only their [the Greeks] sum-total viewed as being at rest. As Logoi spermatikoi, the Ideas serve as the models and creative principles of the physical world."(30)
In the Hermetic writings, these mystical forms of knowledge were shared between Hermes Trismegistus, and a pupil in dialogue. Hermes Trismegistus was the Greek version of the Solar Logos, which was the revealer of knowledge, while Christ for the Christians took the role of the Logos – Gnostic revealer – bestowing liberating knowledge and heavenly wisdom. Hermes is called Trismegistus because he is, according to the ancient view, "an eternal spirit who exists on all three levels of creation. Now am I embodied between the Above and the Below."(31) This is the same principle which Max Pulver has noted concerning the Acts of St. John the Apostle, an Apocryphal New Testament text which describes Jesus’ Round Dance with the Apostles and their wives, as they are initiated into the mysteries to become one with God in the cosmos. His summary of the hymn they sang as they were taught by Christ reads in part:
Know me then as the praise of the Logos,
The transfixing of the Logos, the Blood of the Logos,
The wound of the Logos, the hanging of the Logos,
The suffering of the Logos, the impaling of the Logos,
The death of the Logos.(32)
Christ, as the Logos, functioned on all three levels as well, the heavenly, earthly, and other-worldly, as portrayed in say the Transfiguration, His baptism, etc. So an analysis of John 1 here begins to bear fruit for our understanding of why the early Christians equated Jesus with the Logos.
James H. Charlesworth has demonstrated that the milieu in John’s day, i.e., the thinking of the time, was that the "Word" was the Creator.(33) The Odes of Solomon indicate the belief that the Word is what searched out invisible things, and revealed His thought. "It is He who made the earth broad, and placed the waters in the sea. He expanded the heaven, and fixed the stars, and He fixed creation and set it up, and then rested from his work."(34) This Word, is what John 1 equates with Jesus.
0En a0rxh hn o9 Lo9goj, kai o9 Lo9goj hn pro0j to0n Qeo9n, kai Qeo0j hn o9 Lo9goj
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
When we look at this we realize the author could have chosen either the aorist or the imperfect verb tense. As it is translated, was the Word, simply does not convey the Greek verb tense well. The aorist refers to a single, completed occurrence, while the imperfect tense defines that which lies beyond time. It’s an ongoing, continuous state. The Word already existed in the beginning, so what we have here is the Logos being before time, eternal. The Word already existed in a timeless state. Charlesworth notes that both the Odes and John say the Creator is called the Word. Both sources indicate the Word was conceived of as being Pre-existent, the Creator, incarnate, equated with light, the essence of Love, truth, and life, especially immortal life.(35)
From the relationship which John sets out - kai o9 Lo9goj hn pro0j to0n Qeo9n – Waetjen contends this shows an "objectification of truth by drawing humans into the same union that it enjoys with the Creator, namely by incarnation."(36) Miller shows how Anaximander and Philo identified the mystical metaphysical a0rxh9 with the fundamental elements (stoixei=a), God, and Logos. Augustine, in his exposition of the first clause in John, 0en a0rxh he interprets a0rxh as the ultimate metaphysical principle of things and takes the preposition 0en as local: the Logos was in (in the sense of ‘within’) the principium, the ultimate principle or Cause of all things, that is, in God. A0rxh can also bear the meaning of ‘power’ or ‘dominion.’(37)
Warren Carter notes that in the first verse of John 1, the anarthous Qeo9j is "best explained not as an adjectival statement (divine) but as establishing this being as both separate from God, while also guarding against ditheism. Veres 3-4 further identify the non-created, divine being in ascribing a unique and all embracing role as creator (panta di auton egeneto – all things came into being through him). The Prologue thus opens with a heavenly setting, presenting an eternal divine being in close relationship with God; the community confesses this one to be Jesus the Christ, Son of God (Cf. 1:18, 20:31)."(38)
Tolmie indicates the relationship between the Father and the Logos is also applied to the relationship exactly between humans and the Logos. He notes in John 14-18 that God is now characterized as path9r which means the glory possessed by the Logos is described as the glory belonging to the unique (Son) from the Father. The relationship is even more enhanced as Jesus is described as monogenh0j qeo9j literally the "unique God." This possibility of a close relationship between God and human beings happens as it does with God the Father, and His Son, in verses 12-13 where it is said humans can become tekna qeou= e0gennh9qhsan. This can be considered an extraordinary relationship, since it is the result, as Tolmie says, "of a divine act of procreation, conditioned by receiving the Logos…although the notion of tekna qeou= certainly suggests that God thereby becomes the Father of the human beings who accept the Logos, this is not stated explicitly."(39) But I would suggest it doesn’t have to be so stated. It’s in the idea of John’s Gospel especially as we understand John 17, the great prayer of Jesus, where the closest possible intimacy between the Father, and Jesus, His Son, and humans can possibly get, literally becoming "One."
Wisdom/Sophia Tradition Behind the Logos of John
The scene behind the scene, so to speak, involves the Wisdom tradition as well. Wisdom and Logos are closely tied together. Waetjen contends rather than the subversion of the Wisdom tradition, what the Gospel of John does is display the Logos , in assuming the role of Sophia, transcends the Sophia tradition.(40) Lets take a look at this Sophia tradition to better understand it.
In his chapter titled "Shekhinah; The Feminine Element in Divinity," Gerschom Scholem indicated that it was Philo of Alexandria who first expounded on the figure of Wisdom where she appeared in an "unequivocally female form."(41) Philo, according to Scholem, noted that the Father is called the Creator [Demiurge], who created the entire universe, while we call Knowledge [Episteme, identical in Philo with Sophia] Mother, whom God knew and procreated [i.e., through her] Creation, albeit not in human fashion. However, she received the divine seed and bore with labor the one and beloved son… the ripe fruit that is this world. And Scholem notes that here we have a genuine Hieros Gamos, the sacred marriage metaphor… here too in other passages of Philo, we find him saying that the Father is the Husband of Wisdom, who sows the seeds of eudaemonia in the good and virginal earth.(42)
As the Ras Shamra texts were being discovered and translated and correlated within the Ancient Near East with the religion of the ancient times, Asherah as the Mother-Goddess became better known and understood. Through studies of parallels and ideas found in the Old Testament, as well as other archaeologically uncovered texts, scholars pieced together the scene of the ancient Goddess. D. Nielsen noted: Diejenige Muttergöttin, die verschwinden muß - und unter dem Namen Asherah hier wie anderswo tatsächlich auch verschwindet - ist die Muttergöttin im physischen Sinne des Wortes, die wirkliche Mutter der Götter und wirkliche Urmutter der Menschen, von welcher sie in physischer Weise abstammen. "The one mother-goddess, who must vanish, - and under the name Asherah here like elsewhere actually also vanishes - is the mother-goddess in the physical sense of the word, the real mother of the God and real original mother of the people, from which they descend in physical manner."(43)
There were other Mother-Goddesses in other pantheons in the Ancient Near East, and my suspicion is that they never were totally stamped out and forgotten, rather they went underground, so to speak. The Jews retained her memory in identifying her with Wisdom. This was also indicated by Nielsen:
Reste der ethischen Muttergöttin der Schöpfungsreligion sind auch im Alten Testament vorhanden, und zwar in weniger verschleierter Form, innerhalb der legitimen jüdischen Theologie. Diese Muttergöttin ist nicht zu einer menschlichen Person degradiert worden wie die physische Urmutter in den Genesis-Genealogien, sondern thront im Himmel neben Gott und war ihm, bei der Schöpfung behilflich. In Hiob 28, in Proverb 1-9, besonders in Kapital 8:23-31 in der sogenannten Weisheitsliterature (Weisheit Salomos, Henoch, Sirach) wie im theologischen System des Philo Alexandrinus ist die Rede von einer weiblichen göttlichen Hypostase oder Person, die selbständig neben Gott Elohim, Jahwe auftritt und speziell bei der Schöpfung der Welt tätig war. Auf diese Weise ist Gott Vater und sie Mutter der Welt. Sie wird Weib Gottes genannt, ist sein Besitz und Eigentum, wird von Gott geliebt und lebt mit ihm als Ehefrau zusammen, obwohl sie andererseits, Proverb 8, als Geschöpf Gottes charakterisiert wird, bei Philo als seine Tochter.
Translated: Remains of the ethical mother-goddess of the creation-religion are also existing in the Old Testament, in fact [they are] in less veiled form, within the legitimate Jewish theology. This mother-goddess has not been degraded to a human person like the physical Great Mother in the Genesis-Genealogy, but sits in state in heaven beside God and was helpful to him with the creation. In Job 28, and in Proverbs 1-9, particularly in chapter 8:23-31 in the so-called Wisdom Literature (Wisdom of Solomon, Enoch, Sirach) as in the theological system of Philo ofAlexandria, the divine speech of a female Hypostasy or person, that is independently beside God, Elohim/Yahweh, appears and was specifically active with the creation of the world.This way is God the Father and she the Mother of the world. She is named the wife of God, is his property, and property is loved by God and lives together with him as His wife, although, on the other hand, in Proverbs 8 she is characterized as a creature of God, and is [so characterized] by Philo as God’s daughter.(44)
Waetjen says in order to draw humans into the same union as the Logos enjoys with the Creator, the Logos assumes the role that is attributed to Sophia in Wisdom 7:27: kai0 kata0 genea0j ei0j yuxa0j o9si9aj metaba9inousa fi9louj qeou= ,,, kataskeua9zei. "But instead of ‘passing over into holy souls and making them friends of God,’ the Logos-Sophia serves as a midwife to give birth to them as ‘children of God.’"(45)
Eugene Seaich has noted that the hypostasis which was especially favored in the Wisdom tradition is that of Hokhmah. He uses Job 28, Ps. 104:24; Prov. 8:22ff; 9:1; Jer. 10:12; 51:15, whose Greek equivalent in the intertestamental era was Sophia.(46) Seaich notes that it was through the Word that God created the world and uses Ps. 33:6. A brief analysis proves interesting here.
M)bc lk wyp xwrbw w#(n Mym# hwhy rbdh
By the Word of Yahweh, the heavens, they were made, and by the breath of his mouth, the hosts of all of them (Psalms 33:6)
Note here the breath of God creating as we saw above the importance of the breath. The breath involves words, speech in other words, i.e. the Word. Peter C. Craigie also makes note that this concept of creation by a divinely spoken word is understood from ancient Egypt in the Memphite theology where the god Ptah declares his original thought in his heart through his mouth by word of command, and hence there is a creation.(47) This idea of divine speech in creation, as well as the importance of the speaking of the names of God in the Kabbalah including the correlation of the importance of the very words of the Torah including the Hebrew letters involved in creation, was expounded on brilliantly by Gerschom Scholem, one of the world’s leading Kabbalistic scholars. He noted that "According to the originally conceived Judaistic meaning, truth was the word of God which was audible both acoustically and linguistically."(48)
Other scriptures which indicate the importance and power of God’s Word are Isa. 55:11
ypm )cy yrbd hyhy Nk
So is my word that goes out from my mouth.
Amos 1:1
g)#y Nwycm hwhy rm)yw
And he said, Yahweh, form Zion he roars… (the Lord roars from Zion) Because of this powerful roaring through speech, the pastures dry up, and the top of Carmel withers.
Seaich also notes that there was an ancient Goddess named "Wisdom," which William F. Albright thought was associated with the Canaanite goddess who was with Baal. Interestingly, Wisdom was also, according to Seaich, associated with male deities also, such as the Babylonian god Marduk who is called "Lord of Wisdom," (ludlul bel nemeqi). Wisdom is also found in the Ras Shamra texts where El or perhaps Baal is described as "Thy decree, O El, is wise; Wisdom with ever – life is thy portion." And in fact, this better explains the idea of the Prologue of John where the Son such as Marduk or Baal is associated with Life and the God. Seaich also notes why this helps explain the term Theos which was still applies to the Philonic logos, while the term ho theos was reserved for the Fons deitatis (pege tou logou), i.e. the Source and Antecedent from whom theos came forth as "water issues forth from a fountain." Pege is literally a spring of water, according to Dodd.(49)
The immediate source of this Wisdom idea is from the book of the Wisdom of Solomon which describes Wisdom as an emanation from the power of God, and an image of his goodness. Wisdom is a pure effluence (aporroia) from the glory of the Almighty. It is indeed, fascinating to note that Albright describes the whole idea of "emanation" as a "euphemistic substitute for the basic idea of creation by sexual act. All figures of early Near Eastern and Hellenic theogonies, both concrete deities and abstractions were created by the outpouring of semen; and the concept was so simple and so capable of receiving philosophical interpretation that it was seized upon by early Greek cosmologists, from Thales on."(50)
The Wisdom of Solomon even described Wisdom as being monogenes (Only Begotten). Philo used his own interpretation as protogonos ("First Begotten").
The relationship of ‘ho theos’ to ‘theos’ in the Philonic and Wisdom traditions, then, must have been derived from the earlier relation of a Father to his literal Son, both of whom reemerge once again in their true identities as the Johannine Father and Sno, though the latter is still traditionally described as the former’s ‘glory,’ ‘Word,’ and ‘monogenes’ ("Only Begotten," John 1:14). That is why John’s Jesus says of his God, ‘the Father is greater than I’ (John 14:28), or that ‘the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do’ (John 5:19), showing that he derived his Godhood from the Father, through the principle of Divine Sonship.(51)
C. F. Burney in his research has shown that in Colossians 1:16-18 St. Paul gives an elaborate exposition of the first word in Genesis ty#)rb beresheith, and interprets reshith as referring to Christ. This same term reshith is applied to personified Wisdom in Proverbs 8:22, ynnq hwhy wkrd ty#)r Adonai kanani reshith darko – "The Lord possessed me form the beginning." This, according to Burney, is an obvious reference in prwtotokoj pashj ktisewj protokos pashes ktiseos – "The Firstborn of every creature." (Colossians 1:15)(52) The significance here is that the term kanani, in Hebrew means, according to Burney a variety of meanings, but the main one as "beget," or "create," "acquire," etc. He says the verb qana is important in the name Elkanah "which can hardly mean anything else than ‘(He whom) God has begotten or created.’"(53) Burney further notes that:
If then Proverbs 8:23 (stage 2) ytbsn means ‘I was woven’ (prenatal growth of the embryo), and in vv 24, 25 (stage 3) ytllwx means ‘I was brought forth with travail’ (birth), the inference is obvious that the figure described in vv 22 by (stage 1) ynnq is ‘beget me’ (act of procreation). We notice in Job 10:10 – the verse which immediately precedes the passage which we have discussed as referring to embryonic growth – runs,
Hast Thou not poured me out like milk,
And curdled me like cheese?
Here without a doubt, the figure is that of (a) procreation, and (b) conception…with close approximation to certainty, the conclusion [is] that ynnq means ‘The Lord Begat me.’
Job 10:11 reads:
With skin and flesh didst Thou clothe me,
With bones and sinews didst Thou weave me.(54)
This idea is the procreation, embryonic gestation, and birth of Wisdom, which tradition was taken over by the Logos. Burney notes the renderings of Proverbs 8:22 translate thus:
"The Lord created me in the beginning of His Creation, and before all his works." The Targum reads: "God created me in the beginning of His Creation, and before His works from the beginning."(55) Burney also notes in the Church Fathers, the notion of the meaning of the verb ektisen does not necessarily mean ‘created out of nothing’, and therefore affords no argument against the eternal generation of the Son of the substance of the Father. Taken absolutely, it may be referred to the mode of generation without change or passion in the Divine Generator.(56)
In Bereshith Rabba, the great Midrashic commentary on Genesis, Rabbi Hoshaiah (c. third century A. D. ) opens with a discussion of Proverbs 8:30, where we find Wisdom making the statement, "Then I was with Him as amon" (Master-Workman). Burney also notes that Christ is the First-Begotten of all creation, for it is written in Proverbs 8:22ff, "The Lord begat me as reshith of His way, the antecedent of His works, from of old. From eternity I was wrought… when there were no deeps was I brought forth." This passage connects to Genesis 1:1 obviously. It is written Bereshith God created the heavens and the earth." Hence we find the meaning of Proverbs 8:22ff as follows. This is where Wisdom (i.e. Christ) is called reshith, gives the key to Genesis 1:1, Bereshith God created the heavens and the earth. Christ is the goal of creation is referred to in Ephesians 1:10 – a0nakefalaiwsasqai ta0 pa9nta e0n tw= Xristw= - "to bring all things under reshith in Christ, who is the head and Sum-Total of creation.(57)
Thus this whole tradition of the Sophia-Wisdom-Logos is credibly applied to Christ as the Logos in John’s Prologue to his Gospel account of the Logos incarnate. Here we see the compact yet profound ideas that the Christ is equated with the Logos of ratio, measure, word, speech, breath, Wisdom, creation, eternal life, light, glory, and Gnostic revealer of the heavens. With the cultural baggage inherent in the Logos, we see the magnification of Christ, the added power, the extraordinary idea that here was the Logos incarnate among men. The eternal laws of mathematical proportion involved in creation was this Logos. The Greek le9go was "computation, reckoning." The Greek also means an explanation or a just cause. It is a case, a ground of action. It can also be an argument or a discourse. As well as be a rule, principle and law. It can be thesis as well as hypothesis, reason and ground. It can be essential definition as well as regulative and formative force. This Logos means understanding, reflection, argument, theory, explanation, discursive reasoning, faculty, narrative, speech delivered in an assembly, talk, words, discussion, debate, and deliberation. An express resolution, the whole matter, as well as a thing talked of, an event, rhythmical language set to music, to be capable of being expressed. Logos is also a balance of an account, a direct address to an audience, rhetoric as a discipline. It is perhaps the richest word in the entire Greek language. There are over 6 solid tight packed columns of examples of its use in the Unabridged Liddell-Scott Lexicon, (1996, with supplement) of which I have skimmed here showing the range of meaning of Logos.
In essence, the meaning of why Jesus was called Logos, was to assure the people that here was the entire reason for their salvation. Their cultural background was understood enough that to see Jesus proclaimed as the Logos incarnate would have simply staggered them. This eternal law of ratio (man to God, and God to man perhaps?) was come to us to point the way back to the Father. He dispensed Wisdom, Law, Words of Heaven, Ratio of good to bad, etc., showing those seeking where the light shone. This was the "light" from heaven, the "Only-Begotten" the Eternal Logos.
Endnotes