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the common principles of human ' ^ infirmity /* . ; . "From all the circumstances , it seems to me the most reasonable conclusion , that the leading acceptation of the memrn or logos , among the Jews of this middle age , was to designate * an intelligent , intermediate agent ; that in the sense of a
Mediator between God and man , it became a recognized appellative of the Messiah ; that the personal doctrine of the worp was the one generally received ; and that the conceptual notion , which Philo interweaves with the other , was purely his own invention , the result of his theological philosophy , and the filling up , as it were , and finishing of a favourite theory . "—Script . Test . Vol . I . pp . 599 , 600 , 2 nd ed .
No one will be surprised that a sufficient number of passages may be found in the writings of Philo , in which the logos is so spoken of ; that taken from their connexion , considered apart from the other doctrines of their author , and with the assumption of inconsistency and error on . his part , whenever it may seem to be required , they may appear favourable to the
doctrine which Dr . S . labours to defend ; but a more particular examination of the opinions and language of the Jewish philosopher will , we think , prove that he has been greatly misunderstood by those who quote him as favouring the pre-existence or Deity of the Messiah , and that his writings can throw little light on Christian controversy , except as an example of that false philosophy which so early corrupted the church .
After rejecting the notion entertained by some , that Philo was a Christian , Dr . S . says , * ' The coincidences of sentiment , and more frequently of phraseology , which occur in the writings of Philo with the language of Paul and of John in the New Testament , must be accounted for on some other principles . Yet it would be contrary to all the philosophy of human nature , not to ascribe these different but similar streams to one primary source . That source , I
venture to propose , is not so much to be sought in the writings of Plato , or in the ethical lectures of the learned Jews of Alexandria , or in the sole speculations and invented diction of Philo himself ;—as in the Sacred Writings of the Old Testament , transfused into the Alexandrian idiom , paraphrased and amplified in the terms and phrases which were vernacular to the Grecian Jews , and mixed in a very arbitrary manner with the speculations both of the Persian and the Greek philosophers . "—Script . Test . vol . I . p . 574 , 2 nd ed .
Dr . S . can hardly mean to deny that many of the most remarkable characteristics of the religious philosophy of Philo are derived from the school of Plato , and if clue weight be given to . his first remark in this passage , that the coincidences between the Jewish writer and , the New Testament are > more frequently of phraseology than of sentiment , and to the copcluding one , that whatever was drawn from the Old Testament was mixed in a very arbitrary manner with the speculations both of the Persian and Greeh philosophers , we see nothing in the rest to which we are disposed materially to object , or the full admission of which has any bearing on the points of difference between us and Dr . S .
There has been much discussion on the question , to what school of philosophy Philo ought to be considered as belonging ; v the general voice of antiquity , declaring him a Platonist , whilst some learned moderns have maintained that he was an Eclectic ; others have supposed him . to represent the prevailing opinions of the Alexandrian Jews of his time ; others , again , regard him as himself the founder of a sect , and the original author of t ( ie doctrines he delivered . It has . been very justly remarked , that there is much less real difference between these several statements than would at first view appear , and
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fir . J \ jP . Smith ' s Scripture Testimony to the Messiufi . ^ ftjf
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1831, page 461, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2599/page/29/
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