But whilst we consider the copyists of the MSS. which we have quoted justly entitled to censure for their negligence, in making so many blunders in a single chapter of Isaiah, we must acknowledge the care of those who have used these MSS. either for copying or collation, in not allowing any one of these errors to find its way into their copies. The negligence of some copyists does not diminish the value of the fact that many of the MSS. have been written with the greatest care and fidelity, and considering the very close resemblance of some Hebrew letters to others, the wonder is that they have been able to execute their work with so few errors. J. R." THE LOGOS OF ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL. ALL who consider with any attention the affirmation contained in the first chapter of St. John's Gospel, that Jesus Christ is the Word, feel that it is something more than the addition of a name of honour, or an attribute of dignity given to our Saviour, and that it involves the proposition that some office or character known by those to whom the Evangelist wrote was actually borne by him. Until we endeavour to place before ourselves some notion of what was meant by this mysterious name, we shall fall far short even of that imperfect understanding of this, and some other passages of Holy Writ, which is all that we dare hope for here below. What is said in the New Testament itself as to the Word of God; what we can derive from a fair explication of the term itself; and lastly, the use of it by prior and contemporary writers, are all distinct sources from whence we may derive an elucidation of this most deeply interesting point. The opening passage of St. John's Gospel is one that all Christians have felt to be of no ordinary importance. The abstract nature of the propositions, standing by themselves in all their fulness, not limited by any circumstances of the persons to whom they are addressed or of the connection in which they stand, gives us every reason to feel assured that here we may search for absolute n This article was written during the last weeks of a long and painful illness, and finished only a few days before death. For a short account of the esteemed and venerable author, our readers are referred to the Obituary.-Ed J. S. L. truth, and that without fear of seeming to extract more meaning from the words than they were meant to convey. It appears to us, we confess, that in this glorious passage there is a great and surpassing weight of meaning. a) It seems that the Evangelist tells us that the Word of God which came unto Abram in a vision saying, "Fear not Abram, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward" (Gen. xv. i.) was Jesus Christ. B) It seems to tell us that that "Word of Jah" of whom the Jewish Targumists had written as God holding converse and relationship with his people, was more expressly manifested than ever before in him whom the priests and people of the Jews rejected and crucified. 7) Philo had spoken of the most holy Word as the image of the absolutely existing being De Confus. Ling., s. 20. Edit. Mang., i. 419); as the first begotten son (id. s. 14, i. 415,) who like the viceroy of a great king was to be charged with the government of the whole creation of God (De Agna, s. 12, i. 308); as the man of God immortal and incorruptible De Confus. Ling., s. 11, i. 411); and as the agent in the creation of the world. Philo had used many other expressions with regard to the Word, often dark and mystical and mingled with notions borrowed from the Platonic philosophy, and yet such as we cannot read without something even of wonder. The writer of the Wisdom of Solomon, too, in all probability another Alexandrian Jew, if he were not Philo himself, had likewise spoken of the all-powerful Word as the agent in the world's creation (ix. 1), as the guide and healer of the children of Israel in their wilderness journey (xvi. 12), and the destroyer of the first born of their oppressors (xviii. 15). All that there was of truth in this remarkable language of the Alexandrians, St. John seems to gather up in this passage of his Gospel and to apply to Christ our Saviour. 8) In this passage he seems to say to the Gnostics, that true it was, as they asserted there was a Word, but to affirm also that this Word was in the beginning, that the Word was God, and that all things were made by him, each of which truths was a refutation of part of the Gnostic scheme of doctrine. e) And lastly, this passage of St. John seems to challenge and appropriate to the despised and crucified Jew, all these dark and half-understood sayings of the Grecian philosophers, in which they had spoken of a Word, sometimes as the supreme reason and guide of man, sometimes as the spirit and ruler of the world. Some parts of this matter have occupied the attention of writers, but so far as we know, no general elucidation of the subject in anything like the amplitude we have suggested, has ever been made or even attempted; and yet we feel sure that such an enquiry would richly repay the student. We shall now only make a few remarks on the last branch of the subject just sketched out. To some persons it may appear highly improbable that the passage of St. John should have any reference, however remote, to the speculations of Grecian philosophers. But this improbability is perhaps not so great as may appear. The gospel of Christ being a revelation of absolute truth, gathered up, and was designed to gather up and absorb in itself, all the scattered rays of truth which had here and there struggled through the darkness of the heathen world. Heathendom was not without its "unconscious prophecies," and of its bards and philosophers it has been said with no less truth than beauty, "As little children lisp and tell of heaven, So thoughts beyond their thoughts to those high bards were given." We shall never, we think, understand as much even as we may of the length and breadth of the Gospel, until we look upon it in relation not merely to the Jewish ritual but to Grecian speculation, and as the unfolding of what there was of eternal truth that lay implicitly in both these. "We," says Clement of Alexandria, speaking of the relation of the Christians to the heathen Greeks, "hold all their possessions to be our own, because all things are of God” (ἡμεῖς ἀυτοὶ τὰ ἐκείνων ἴδια йуоúμεvoi oтi Táνта тоû eôν, Strom. v., c. 4,-s. 19). St. Paul had preached Christ to the Athenians from the inscription on the altars, and had quoted Aratus and Cleanthes as bearing witness to the truth of his doctrine. It need not therefore seem strange if the language which St. John held, and that at a time when it was already made known to the church that the Gospel was for the Gentile as well as for the Jew, should have some reference to the teachings of Grecian philosophy. Another consideration will lead us to the same result. Philo and the Alexandrian Jews of his day seem to have been the first to use the epithet Xóyos in the same sense as that in which we find it in the first chapter of St. John. Considering the position which Philo occupied in the middle point and junction of Jewish and Grecian learning, and his studied effort to harmonize and connect them, it would seem highly improbable that he used the epithet in question without reference to the preceding usage of the Greek philosophers. Indeed, it seems to us not improbable that this may in part have induced their adoption of Xóyos in the sense in which pua appears to have been used by the Seventy in their version of the Hebrew scriptures. Again, it is scarcely we think to be supposed that St. John wrote what he did without VOL. IV.-NO. VII. I some knowledge of, and reference to, Philo: so that in this indirect way we may with great probability regard the language of the Greeks about the word as illustrating the passage of the New Testament in which that epithet is applied to Christ. We shall be glad if these observations should call to this point the attention of any one capable of fairly elucidating it. We will conclude this short paper with a reference to a few passages of the heathen writers which seem to us relevant, and which have come across us in our reading and may possibly assist some future enquirer. First, we will call attention to the remarkable passage of Epicharmus presented to us by Clement of Alexandria in Strom., lib. v., c. xiv., p. 719; Potter; and by Eusebius in the Præp. Evang., lib. xiii., p. 682; edit. Viger. Col. 1688. Εἰ ἔστιν ἀνθρώπῳ λογισμὸς, ἔστι καὶ θεῖος λόγος, This is the reading of the passage in the editions of Clement by Potter and Klotz. But it is to be remarked that the words Móyos at the beginning of the second line are wanting in the Parisian and one other MS. of Clement, and are judiciously placed in brackets by Klotz. We cannot help venturing to think that they are corrupt, and to suggest in substitution, o μὲν γὰρ, which would mean λογισμός, and render the whole passage more sensible than at present. As it now stands, the dè ye of the third line is the same as the & Xóyos of the preceding, by which we lose the contrast which the author appears to have intended between the mere natural, we might almost say animal cunning of man, and his higher reason. With this alteration, the passage seems to refer to three several objects. First, -the natural reason or cunning of man; secondly, the reason or highest faculty in him, which is the emanation from the divine reason, and in that sense is itself divine (line 1) and lastly, the divine word or reason, in the fifth line identified with the Deity, which communicates to man the arts of life and civilization which he would by himself be unable to attain to, and teaches him what is right and fitting for him to do. : To the stoical writers, the name of the Word was very familiar to express the Deity, or all-pervading Soul of the world. Zeno-to follow the abstract of his doctrine which we have in Diogenes Laertius (vii. 134), held that the principles of the universe were two; the one passive, the other active; that the passive was matter, and the active the Word or Deity residing in and pervading it: “ τὸ δὲ ποίουν, τὸν ἐν ἀυτῇ (ὐλῃ) λόγον τὸν Θεόν. Τουτον γὰρ ὄντα ἀΐδιον διὰ πάσης αυτης δημιουργεῖν eKaσTа." And Plutarch, discussing the relation of evil and matter and quoting apparently from Chrysippus, uses language which shews this identification of the Deity with the word in the Stoic nomenclature. "Matter of itself their writers allege does not produce evil of itself, for it is without quality, and all the differences which it admits of are derived from that which moves it and gives it form,” adding, “ κινει δ' αυτὴν ὁ λόγος ἐνυπάρχων καὶ σχηματίζει, μήτε κινεῖν ἑαυτὴν μὴτε σχηματίζειν πεφυκυίαν. Ωστ' ἀνάγκη τὸ κακὸν, εἰ μὲν δι' οὐδεν, ἐκ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος· εἰ δὲ διὰ τὴν κινοῦσαν ἀρχὴν, ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ γεγονὸς ὑπάρχειν.” (Adv. Stoic. c. 34). Cleanthes in his hymn to the Supreme Deity, speaks of— -κοινὸν λόγον ὅς διὰ πάντων Φοιτᾶ μιγνύμενος. but evidently conceives of it as some all-pervading principle in subordination and subjection to the commands of the Supreme God than as absolutely one with the Deity. There are many passages which might be adduced from Marcus Antoninus to a similar effect; but these being posterior in date are of course only secondary, and improper evidence in reference to the writings of St. John. It is familiar to every scholar that from the time of Anaxagoras downwards, the Deity was often spoken of as the voûs. In the proper significations, as applied to the constitution of man, the words vous and λóyos, express different parts of that mental system, or at least the same faculty in different relations; and it appears to us very worthy of enquiry whether the heathen philosophers in their use of these words as applied to the Deity, did not, sometimes at least, retain some such distinction, and whether that may not rightly be imparted into the significance of the latter word as used in the Christian Scriptures. If it be so, the application of it to Jesus Christ will inform us that as the Móyos in man is his mind going out into relation with things around him, so Christ is the manifestation of the Deity in relation with the world and in communication with our fallen but not deserted race. Lincoln's Inn, Jan. 1856. E. F. |