designed to make upon the minds of those for whom the original and living presentation of the Gospel must of necessity have been adapted. Now in this book of Enoch we find that "the Name" was especially attached to one called variously "the Son of Man," "the Elect One," "the Anointed" (Messiah in the Hebrew); also " the Son of God." And it is said of Him: * He was chosen and hidden in the sight of God before the world was created; and He shall lie to eternity in His sight; ** before the sun and signs of heaven were created His Name was named in the presence of the Lord of Spirits. The very stars and elements rejoiced greatly because to them was revealed the Name of that Son of Man. And He shall come at the end of all things and all things shall say with one voice, "Praised be the Name of the Lord of Spirits forever." And He shall judge the spirits by the Word of the Name of the Lord. * ** This seems to have gone a step beyond the Targums, and in a somewhat different direction; for here "the Name" belongs to a distinct Hypostasis which, although originating in, or from God, and with a Divine nature of His own, yet at a certain epoch in the history of the universe, its final consummation, is to come out of His secret place in God, and be the efficient actor in the judgment of the worlds. While in the Targums "the Word" or "the Name," or "the Word of the Name" (for they are all used interchangeably), is employed as only their understood mode of saying that "God (represented by the Word or Name) thus does or says." The common ground from which the two diverge, and by which they can both be explained, is Philo; for, though he says very little about the Messiah, he yet represents "the Word" as both a mode of Divine existence, an expression for God Himself in His self-manifestation, and also as possessed of a certain kind of hypostatic personality, to which the notion of a personal Messiah might be very readily attached. "Westcott's "Introduction to the Study of the Gospels," 117-132. Also Lawrence's translation, pp. 48, 56. These extracts by no means represent the large space occupied by the Name in this Book, and many are more striking than those in the text. He connects it also with the creative Word. P. 29, "This is the oath which the Most High revealed to the Holy Ones. He spoke to Holy Michael to discourse to them the Secret Name that they might understand the. Secret Name and thus remember the Oath-that men might tremble at that Name and the Oath. This was the power of that Oath: Heaven was by it suspended; by it the earth had been founded on the flood; by it the sea was made, the sun, the stars-all these (and all creation) confess and laud before the Lord of Spirits. While they laud and exalt the Name of the Lord of Spirits, they glorified because the Name of the Son of Man was revealed to them, and He sat apart upon His throne and the principal part of the Judgment was assigned to Him, the Son of Man." * * * * and the idea of does not mix itself I will present illustrations of both these modes of thought: The Word of God is the beginning of all things, the original species or archetypal idea, the first measure of all things. The Image of God is the Word by which all the world was made. By His own conspicuous and brilliant Word, by one command God makes both things, the idea of mind sensation.3 * The Word of God with the crowd of things which have been created, and will be destroyed, but is at all times accustomed to roam on high; and anxious to be attendant only on the one Supreme Being. The Father who created the Universe, has given to his Archangelic and most Ancient Word a pre-eminent gift; to stand on the confines of both, and separate that which had been created from the Creator. And this same Word is continually a suppliant to the Immortal God on behalf of the mortal race, which is exposed to affliction and misery; and is also the ambassador sent by the Ruler to the subject race; and the Word rejoices in the gift; and, exulting in it, announces it, and boasts of it, saying, "I stood in the midst between the Lord and you." Neither being unbegotten as God, nor yet begotten as you, but being in the midst like a hostage as it were to both parties a hostage to the Creator, as a pledge and security that the whole race would never fly off and revolt entirely; and to the creature, to lead it to entertain a confident hope that the merciful God would not overlook His own work. It was impossible that anything mortal should be made in the likeness of the Most High God, the Father of the Universe; but it could only be made in the likeness of the Second God, who is the Word of the Supreme Being." The Word itself of the Creator is the seal by which each of existing things is invested with form. Of the rational faculty God is the Ruler, and that is the fountain of the most ancient Word. * * It is very evident from these extracts, and many more might be adduced in each direction, that Philo did not confine "the Word" to any one of these significations; and theologians are much perplexed to reconcile his various uses of it under some consistent theory. I think it is quite true, as Dorner says,9 "that it is compounded of heterogeneous elements." These were: I. Platonic idealism. II. The Oriental doctrine of the emanation of the various Divine attributes, and their existence as living spiritual personalities, a system afterwards fully developed in the various forms of ⚫ semi-Christian Gnosticism; and III. The Targum presentation of "the Word" as the Divine Personality Itself in action, or an expression of God's manifestation of Himself in a mode 5 II: 134. Yonge's Philo, IV: 285. 2 III: 194 4 II: 139. I which was at the same time one with Him, yet in a different sense from the hidden self of His inner Being. Under one or the other of these notions all of his representations of the Word can be explained; but sometimes by a combination of the last two elements in a single idea, he advances a step beyond the general conception of the Targums, and, as we have seen, presents "the Word" as both a mode of God's own Being, and also capable of proceeding out into a certain kind of externality of person and existence. The Apocryphal writings show somewhat of this same double tendency to regard "the Word" as both a mode of the Divine Being and a person existing and acting outside of the inner self of the absolute God. Judith refers to "the Name" which in "the Wisdom" is spoken of as "the Incommunicable Name." This also speaks 2 of " 'Thy Word O LORD which healeth all things." Says3 "It is Thy Word which preserveth them that put their trust in Thee." And makes "the Word" the mighty Personal Actor in the destruction of the first born at the Exodus from Egypt.4 "Thine Almighty Word leaped down from Heaven,. out of Thy Royal throne, as a fierce man of war, into the midst of a land of destruction; and brought Thine unfeigned commandment, as a sharp sword, and standing up, filled all things with death; and It touched the Heaven, but It stood upon the earth." It is not probable that the relation of "the Name" to God's real self, or the mode of being of the Word, as an expression of the Divine manifestation, was very clearly discriminated in the mind of either Philo or the writers of the Apocrypha and the Book of Enoch, or even of the Targums. They had no such knowledge of the true distinction of the hidden and the revealed God as made this possible. Their one essential thought was that God had revealed or would reveal Himself by some medium, which at the same time was God, and yet presented to the world a mode of being which in this aspect was distinct from God; and this medium they called the Word" and identified as "the Name" that God gave to Moses as His memorial for ever. Sometimes they thought of it as God's expression in Himself of His own thought, as our word is in us; and all the actual creation was only the coming into outer form of the Divine Word thus spoken in God's inner self. Sometimes it was the act itself, or God regarded as the doer of the various acts He had thus thought in His word, and then He is spoken of as "the Word of the LORD," or "the Word of the Name of the LORD" I 2 Judith ix. 7. Wisdom 'xvi. 12. 3 Wisdom xvi. 26. 4 Wisdom xviii. 15, 16. speaking to Moses, or appearing to Abraham, or redeeming His people, or creating the Universe. And, again, "the Word" is contemplated as clothed with the attributes of a distinct and separate person, expressing in this personality certain phases of the Divine existence, and capable, under certain conditions, of going out from the hidden God, and holding the relations of a person separated from his inner self. As Semisch says in reference to this aspect of the theory of Philo," He regarded the Logos (the Word) as endowed with a personal existence and life, a real subject distinguished from God, an individuality hypostatically separate from the being of God." The extracts already given will afford ample illustration of each of these modes of thought; and need not be repeated or added to here. They will also show that these various conceptions all were held simultaneously, and by the same persons; were each involved, with more or less prominence, in all that remains to us of the Jewish theology at the Christian era, and in the times (how long we need not now inquire) preceding this. And that there was no endeavour to discriminate them sharply, to the exclusion of each other, as there was no contradiction recognized between them, they being regarded as only different aspects under which the one central idea of "the Word, as the expression of God's self-revelation," must from the several points of view be represented. The point of special moment to my purpose is, that at and before the time of Christ the Jewish theology had arrived at the conviction that all the relations of God to His creation were through a spiritual medium, which was, whether by speech or act, His own revelation of Himself. This they called "the Name," or "the Word," and identified with "the Name" of God of the Old Testament; so that whenever these terms were used in their exposition of the Hebrew Scriptures, or their inquiries about God, they always were employed and understood with this significance, save where the nature of the context showed a reference to some other and generally obvious meaning of the phrase. And this usage and conception were not, as we are usually taught, the special property of a few philosophic thinkers, such as Philo, but were the common language of the popular theology. They had entered very largely into the forms of expression adopted by the Seventy, occurred in innumerable passages throughout the Targums, and were so thoroughly. interwoven with all their interpretations of the ancient Semisch's Justin Martyr, II. 176. 6 Scriptures, that Cudworth says, "It was a received doctrine of the Hebrews that 'God and His Name are all one,' or, in the literal rendering of their axiom, He is His Name, and His Name is He.""I We have now brought the history of the opinions among the Jews in reference to "the Name" down to the period of the life of Christ, and the writing of the books of the New Testament. Before entering on its relation to the Christian Scriptures, we will sum up the scattered result of our historical inquiry in a connected order. We shall thus be able to combine in a single view all the different elements that were contained in the final form of their conception of the Word; for whether these arose successively as they have been presented in our sketch, or were from the first inherent in their idea of the Name, we find all the prominent opinions. we have traced out existent in the form under which it comes to us in the Jewish theology of the time of Christ. These all are illustrative of its meaning and importance in the usage of the Old Testament, and are all essential to the understanding of their full conception of " the Word," especially as being the Divine medium of God's self revelation of His truth and will, and the living power by Whom He manifested His activities and presence in the universe. There can be no doubt, as we review the history, that there was a profound reverence, from the very announcement of the Name of God to Moses, for this Sacred Word. From the fact that there was a like feeling among so many of the Ethnic Religions, it was most probably derived from some primitive idea, common to all the ancient peoples. We are indeed told that a special reverence for "the Name" of God was one of the seven universal precepts of the Noahchidæ. In common, too, with most of the Ethnic Religions, the Hebrews considered the significance and virtue of "the Name" to be in "THE WORD" which was its expression, and not in any translation or substitution for this Word. They also shared together the opinion of an intrinsic power in their " Word," by which those who uttered it could exercise the wonder-working might which it possessed. We also learned, that with the Hebrews, at what time we cannot tell, it was identified with the creative or omnific word by which God spake the universe to being, which was also regarded as the ever-during medium through which He rules the world, and by which He reveals Himself to the universe thus spoken into life. And further |