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II.

CHAP. clearly comprehend in what sense it was applicable to the Messiah, or to the purely moral character of the new religion.

The angels.

It is generally admitted, that the Jewish notions about the angels *, one great subject of dispute in their synagogues, and what may be called their Dæmonology, received a strong foreign tinge during their residence in Babylonia. The earliest books of the Old Testament fully recognize the ministration of angels; but in Babylonia † this simpler creed grew up into a regular hierarchy, in which the degrees of rank and subordination were arranged with almost heraldic precision. The seven great archangels of Jewish tradition correspond with the Amschaspands of the Zendavesta ‡: and in strict mutual analogy, both systems arrayed

* La doctrine de l'existence des anges, fondé sur la révélation, a été beaucoup modifiée par les opinions des peuples qui habitaient sur les rivages du fleuve Cobar, dans la Babylonie, et dans les autres pays de l'Orient, où les deux royaumes d'Israel et de Juda furent dispersés. Sous ce point de vue on peut régarder les Mehestani, ou les sectateurs de Zoroastre, comme ceux qui ont appris beaucoup des choses aux dépositaires de la tradition, et dont les maximes se retrouvent aujourd'hui dans les deux Talmuds. Chiarini, Le Talmud de Babylone, tom. i. p. 101.

Even the traditionists among the Jews allowed that the names of the angels came from Babylon; they are nevertheless pure Hebrew or Chaldean. Mich-a-el (who is as God), Gabri-el, the Man of God. Gesen. Lex. in verb. Bellerman, über die Essaer, p. 30. The trans

ition from the primitive to the Babylonian belief may be traced in the apocryphal book of Tobit, no doubt of Eastern origin. On the Notions of Dæmons, see Jortin, Eccl. Hist. i. 161.

Jonathan, the Chaldean paraphrast, on Gen. ii. 7. "The Lord said to the seven angels that stand before him." Drusius, on Luke i. 19. Seven, however, seems to have been the number of perfection among the Jews from the earliest period. Old Testament, passim.

Six seems the sacred number with the Persians. The Amschaspands are usually reckoned six; but Oromasd is sometimes included to make up seven. See the Yesht of the Seven Amschaspands, in the Zendavesta of Du Perron or Kleuker. Compare also Foucher's Disquisition, translated in Kleuker, Anhang. i. p. 294.

II.

against each other a separate host of spiritual CHAP. beings, with distinct powers and functions. Each nation, each individual had in one case his Ferver, in the other his guardian angel*; and was exposed to the malice of the hostile Dev or Dæmon. In apparent allusion to or coincidence with this system, the visions of Daniel represent Michael, the tutelar angel or intelligence of the Jewish people, in opposition to the four angels of the great monarchies; and even our Saviour seems to condescend to the popular language, when he represents the parental care of the Almighty over children, under the significant and beautiful image, "that in Heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in Heaven."+

of Evil.

The great impersonated Principle of Evil appears Principle to have assumed much of the character of the antagonist power of darkness. The name itself of Satan, which in the older poetical book of Job is assigned to a spirit of different attributes, one of the celestial ministers who assemble before the throne of the Almighty, and is used in the earlier books of the Old Testament in its simple sense of

* In the LXX. the doctrine of guardian angels is interpolated into the translation of Deut. xxxii. 8. Plato adopted the notion either mediately, or immediately, from the East. Polit. et in Critiâ (in init.). Compare Max. Tyrius, xv. 17. Hostanes the Magian held the same opinions. Cypr. de Van. Idol., Min. Fel.

Matt. xviii. 10.
Schleusner, Lex. voc. Satan.
Dr. Russell, in a Dissertation pre-

fixed to his Connection of Sacred
and Profane History, has traced
the gradual development of this
tenet. It is rather singular that
in the work of Theodorus of Mop-
suestia on Magianism (quoted
Photii Bibliotheca, num. 81.), Ze-
ruan is said to have produced Tov
Ορμίσδαν * * καὶ τὸν Σατανᾶν. Οπ
the other side of this question may
be consulted Rosenmuller on Job,
ch. i., and Michaelis, Epimetron
in Lowth, de sacra Poesi.

CHAP.

II.

The Supreme Deity removed from all

with the

material

world.

an adversary, became appropriated to the prince of the malignant spirits the head and representative of the spiritual world, which ruled over physical as well as moral evil.

Even the notion of the one Supreme Deity had undergone some modification consonant to certain connection prevailing opinions of the time. Wherever any approximation had been made to the sublime truth of the one great First Cause, either awful religious reverence or philosophic abstraction had removed the primal Deity entirely beyond the sphere of human sense, and supposed that the intercourse of the Divinity with man, the moral government, and even the original creation, had been carried on by the intermediate agency, either in Oriental language of an Emanation, or in Platonic, of the Wisdom, Reason, or Intelligence of the one Supreme. This Being was more or less distinctly impersonated, according to the more popular or more philosophic, the more material or more abstract notions of the age or people.* This was the doctrine from the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Seat, to the Ilissus; it was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and Indian philosophy; it was the

Mediator.

It is curious to trace the development of this idea in the older and in the apocryphal books of the Old Testament. In the book of Proverbs, the Wisdom is little more than the great attribute of the Deity, an intellectual personification in Ecclesiasticus it is a distinct and separate being, and "stands up beautiful," before the throne of God, xxv. 1.

+ M. Abel Remusat says, of the three Chinese religions, "Parmi

leurs dogmes fundamentaux, enseignés six siècles avant notre ère par Lao-tseu, l'un de leurs maitres, est celui de l'existence de la raison primordiale, qui a crée le monde, le Logos des Platoniciens. Rech. Asiat. 2 ser. i. 38.

In the Indian system Brahm, in the neuter, is the great Primal Spirit. See Baron W. Von Humboldt, über den Bhagavat Gita. Compare Bopp. Conjugations System, 290. 301.

II.

basis of Zoroastrianism*, it was pure Platonism t, it CHAP. was the Platonic Judaism of the Alexandrian school. Many fine passages might be quoted from Philo, on the impossibility that the first self-existing Being should become cognizable to the sense of man; and even in Palestine, no doubt, John the Baptist, and our Lord himself, spoke no new doctrine, but rather the common sentiment of the more enlightened, when they declared that "no man had seen God at any time." In conformity with this principle, the Jews, in the interpretation of the older Scriptures, instead of direct and sensible communication from the one great Deity, had interposed either one or more intermediate beings, as the channels of communication. According to one accredited tradition alluded to by St. Stephen, the law was delivered " by the disposition of angels §;"-according to another, this office was delegated to a single angel, sometimes called the angel of the Law, at others the Metatron. But

* See above.

+ Πᾶν τὸ δαιμονιον μεταξὺ ἔστι Θεοῦ καὶ θνητοῦ — Θεὸς δὲ ἀνθρώπῳ οὐ μίγνυται, ἄλλα διὰ τούτου πᾶσα Lorivý oμilia. Plato, in Symp.

John, i. 18. Compare John,

i. 4. 18. vi. 46.

§ Compare LXX. Transl. of Deut. xxxiii. 2., where the angels are interpolated. 'Hμãy rà кáλora τῶν δογμάτων καὶ τὰ ὁσιώτατα τῶν ἐν τοῖς νόμοις δι' ἀγγέλων παρὰ τοῦ Oεov μalivτwv. Joseph. Ant. xv. 5. 3. Compare Chiarini, i. 307. And on the traces of the JudæoAlexandrian philosophy in the LXX. Dähne, Judisch-Alexandrianische Religions Philosophie, part ii. pp. 49-56.

Compare Gal. iii. 19. Deus Mosen legem docuit: cum autem descenderet, tanto timore perculsus est,ut omnium oblivisceretur. Deus autem statim Jesifiam, Angelum legis, vocavit, qui ipsi legem tradidit bene ordinatam et custoditam, omnesque angeli amici ejus facti sunt. Jalkut Ruben, quoted by Wetstein and Schoetgen, in loco. See also Eisenmenger, 156. Two angels seem to be introduced in this latter tradition, the angelus Metatron, and Jesifya, angelus Legis.

Philo, de Præm, rationalises further, and considers the commandments communicated, as it were, by the air made articulate, ii. 405.

II.

CHAP. the more ordinary representative, as it were, of God to the sense and mind of man, was the Memra, The Word or the Divine Word; and it is remarkable, that the same appellation is found in the Indian*, the Persian †, the Platonic, and the Alexandrian systems. By the Targumists, the earliest Jewish commentators on the Scriptures, this term had been already applied to the Messiah ; nor is it necessary to observe the manner in which it has been sanctified by its introduction into the Christian scheme.§ From this remarkable uniformity of conception, and coincidence of language, has sometimes been assumed a common tradition, generally

*It appears in the Indian sys-
tem: Vach signifying speech. She
is the active power of Brahma,
proceeding from him: she speaks
a hymn in the Vedas, in praise
of herself as the supreme and
universal soul. (Colebrooke, in
Asiatic Researches, viii. p. 402.)
La première parole, que pro-
féra le Créateur, ce fut Oum:
Oum parut avant toutes choses, et
il s'appelle le prèmiér né du Créa-
teur. Oum ou Prana, pareil au
pur éther renfermant en soi toutes
les qualités, tous élémens, est le
nom, le corps de Brahm, et par
conséquent infini comme lui, créa-
teur et maître de toutes choses.
Brahm méditant sur le Verbe divin
y trouva l'eau primitive. Oupnek-
Hat. quoted in De Guignaut, p.644.
Origen, or rather the author of
the Philosophoumena inserted in
his works, was aware of this fact.
'Avro (Brachmanes) ròv Gɛòv puç
εἶναι λέγουσιν οὐχ ὅποιόν τις ὁρᾶ,
ουδ' οἷον ἥλιος καὶ πῦρ' ἀλλὰ ἐστιν
αὐτοῖς ὁ Θεὸς λόγος, οὐχ ὁ ἔναρθρος,
ἀλλὰ ὁ τῆς γνώσεως, δι ̓ οὐ τὰ κρύπτα
τῆς γνώσεως μυστήρια ὁρᾶται σόφοις.
de Brachman.

According to a note, partly by M. le Normant, partly by M. Champollion, in Chateaubriand (Etudes sur l'Histoire), Thoth is, in the hieroglyphical language of Egypt, the Word.

+ In the Persian system the use of the term Honover is by no means consistent; strictly speaking it occupies only a third place. Ormuzd, the good Principle,created the external universe by his Word (Honover): in another sense the great primal spirit is the Word; in another, the Principle of Good.

It is by the latter, as may be seen in the works of Lightfoot, Schoetgen, and other Talmudic writers, and in Bertholdt (Christologia Judaica), that it is applied to the Messiah, not by Philo, who, as will appear, scarcely, if ever, notices a personal Messiah.

Dr. Burton (in his Bampton Lectures) acknowledges, of course, the antiquity of the term, and suggests the most sensible mode of reconciling this fact with its adoption into Christianity.

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