2 4 6 H A R V A R D T H E O L O G I C A L REVIEW
The lion's share of the Hellenic thinking of early Christianity—and most cen-
trally, Logos theology—was, however, an integral part of the first-century Jewish
world. The following (almost contrary) narrative seems at least equally as plau-
sible: "Judaism(s)" and "Christianit(ies)" remained intertwined well past the first
half of the second century until Rabbinic Judaism in its nativist attempt to separate
itself from its own history of now "Christian" logos theology began to try to imag-
ine itself a community free of Hellenism.11 In some areas, western Asia almost
certainly one of them, Gentile converts began to overwhelm—in numbers—Chris-
tian Jews at a fairly early date. They brought with them, almost inevitably,
"hellenophile" and then "antijudaistic" tendencies.12 But Jewish theology itself
had been for centuries "open towards the thinking of antiquity," and the binary
opposition between the Jewish and the Hellenistic (as well as the binary opposi-
tion between Palestinian and Hellenistic Judaism) requires major rethinking.
Judaism is, from the very beginning, from its very origins, a Hellenistic form of
culture.13 Rabbinic Judaism, on the other hand, can be seen as a nativist reaction
movement that imagines itself a community free of Hellenism.
Thus, the very "Alexandrian" art of interpretation—named by Studer as his
prime exemplum of how "theology itself became more open towards the thinking
of antiquity with its scientific methods," originated in the world of Philo Ioudaios,
"I shall be defending this interpretation in the larger work for which this essay is a study,
tentatively entitled, Making a Difference: How Christianity Created the Jewish Religion.
12The impact of the early Pauline congregations in this area would have been, ex hypothesi,
one of the leading factors in the production of this kind of Christianity, in opposition, perhaps
to the Petrine Christianity that typified Palestine and Syria. Justin, one of the earliest mani-
festations of this form of Christianity, may have been significantly influenced by the Pauline
letters, as argued recently by David Rokéah, Justin Martyr and the Jews (in Hebrew, Kuntresim:
Texts and Studies 84; Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Dinur Center for Research in Jewish
History, 1998). Although this position is contra the consensus of Justin scholarship today, my
own research on Galatians and Justin suggests to me that it is, at least, arguably the case. It
is in Justin's writing that we find for the first time several topoi of a distinct anti-Judaic
Christian identity, among them the notion that Israel has been replaced for its sins by a new
Israel and also the notion that the "Jews" are responsible for pagan hostility to Christians
(Dialogue 17.1, in Justin Martyr: The Dialogue with Trypho [trans. A. L. Williams; Transla-
tions of Christian Literature; London: SPCK, 1930] 34-35), a topos that would appear frequently
later in west Asian texts (Judith Lieu, "Accusations of Jewish Persecution in Early Christian
Sources, with Particular Reference to Justin Martyr and the Martyrdom of Poly carp," in
Tolerance and Intolerance in Early Judaism and Christianity [ed. Graham N. Stanton and Guy
G. Stroumsa; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998] 279-95). For a reconstruction
similar to mine, however without marking its specifically west Asian nature, see Birger Pearson,
"The Emergence of the Christian Religion," in The Emergence of the Christian Religion:
Essays on Early Christianity (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1997) 17.
13"Hellenistic ways of life, thought and expression were integral to Jewish Palestinian
culture from at least the mid-third century [B.C.] on, and these tendencies affected Pharisaism
and later Rabbinic writings. Hellenistic schools were especially influential on Jewish modes
D A N I E L B O Y A R Í N 2 4 7
not, after all, medieval legend to the contrary, with Philo Christianus.14 Christian
exegesis, insofar as it continues this, follows from a "Judaistic" world. Rabbinic
methods, too, can be shown to have been known to the earliest Christian writers.
Along with logocentric interpretation, Logos theology originates in the world of
Philo Ioudaios, and, moreover, is not an idiosyncrasy of only that writer.
• The Logos of the Jews
In dualistic circles of thought, where the tendency was increasingly to
represent the Deity as the Absolute in order to free Him from all asso-
ciation with matter, the Reason of God, tending toward, but not yet
properly having become, a separate personality, that phase of God which
connected God's otherwise Absolute nature with the world[, . . . the]
Logos then in all circles but the Stoic . . . was a link of some kind which
connected a transcendent Absolute with the world and humanity. The
Logos came into general popularity because of the wide-spread desire to
conceive of God as transcendent and yet immanent at the same time.
The term Logos in philosophy was not usually used as the title of a
of organization and expression. The emergence of definable sects, Pharisees, Sadducees, etc.
and more importantly the attention given to them fits most comfortably into the Greco-Roman
world with its recognized philosophical schools, religious societies and craft assocations"
(Anthony Saldarmi, Scholastic Rabbinism: A Literary Study of the Fathers according to Rabbi
Nathan [Chico, Ca.: Scholars Press, 1982] 19). My only emendation to this important state-
ment would be to abandon language of "influence" and simply understand that "Judaism" is
itself a species of Hellenism. See the formulation in Saldarini, Scholastic, 21, which comes
closer, I think, to this perspective. Cf. most recently Lee I. Levine, Judaism and Hellenism in
Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence (The Samuel & Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies;
Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 1998). This perspective entails a revision of
such formulations as, "It has often seemed plausible that a Hellenistic Judaism, like Philo's
but less sophisticated, was the background for Justin's and Theophilus' writing" (Alan F.
Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism
[SJLA 25; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977] 167). See now also M. J. Edwards, "Justin's Logos and
the Word of God," JECS 3 (1995): 261-80. Raymond E. Brown already understood this point
well in his introduction to his commentary on John (The Gospel according to John [2 vols.;
AB; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966] l:lvi). See also Larry W. Hurtado, One God, One
Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (2d ed., 1988; repr., Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1998) esp. 7-9: "So, if we use the term 'Palestinian Judaism' to mean the religion
and culture of the Jews living in Palestine at that time, it designates a bilingual phenomenon
which included within it significant variation."
14J. E. Bruns, "Philo Christianus: The Debris of a Legend," HTR 66 (1973) 141-45. It is not even absolutely and entirely clear that Philo had no Nachleben at all in some Jewish
writing. See S. Poznanski, "Philon dans l'ancienne littérature judéo-arabe," REJ 50 (1905) 10-31.
2 4 8 H A R V A R D T H E O L O G I C A L REVIEW
unique attribute of God, but rather as the most important single name
among many applicable to the effulgent Power of God which reason-
ably had shaped and now governs the world. (E. R. Goodenough)
What Goodenough does not emphasize enough, however, is how thoroughly
first-century Judaism has absorbed (or produced!) these central "Middle Platonic"
theological notions.15 The idea that the Logos/Sophia (and other variants as well)
was the site of God's presence in the world—indeed of God's Word or Wisdom as
a mediator figure—was a very widespread one in the thought-world of first-cen-
tury and even second-century Judaism.16 Rather than treating Logos theology,
therefore, as the specific product of "Christianity," with Philo a sort of Christian
avant la lettre,11 1 wish to explore the evidence for Logos theology as a common
element in much Jewish, including Christian Jewish, religious imagination. As
Dunn has recently written of Wisdom christology: "the usage is Jewish through
and through"1*
A comparative study of Philo's Logos, the Memra of the Targum, and the Pro-
logue to the Fourth Gospel supports this suggestion. Although the targumic material
and Philo have been much discussed as contiguous with the Johannine Logos,
these linkages are currently out of favor,19 so it seems not beside the point to re-
hearse in brief the considerations in favor of these affiliations. One possible
implication of this suggestion would be to counterbalance such a remark as that of
15Erwin Ramsdell Goodenough, The Theology of Justin Martyr: An Investigation into the
Conceptions of Early Christian Literature and Its Hellenistic andJudaistic Influences (Amsterdam: Philo, 1968) 140-41.
16Leslie W. Barnard, Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought (London: Cambridge University
Press, 1967). To the evidence that I shall be offering below in some detail, we might add the
figure Yaho3el, in the probably second-century Apocalypse of Abraham, 10.3 and passim (ed.
and trans. G. H. Box; Apocalypse of Abraham [TED; London: SPCK, 1918] nn.). See the
important discussion in Darreil D. Hannah, Michael and Christ: Michael Traditions and Angel
Christology in Early Christianity (WUNT; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999) 52-54. Also:
"Apparently, Justin Martyr also knew of Jews who allowed one name of God to refer to
something like a Logos, but refused to identify the Logos with Jesus as he had done" (Segal,
Powers, 13). See also W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism: Some Rabbinic Elements in
Pauline Theology (2d ed.; 1955; repr., London: SPCK, 1965) 147-76 and Siegfried Schulz,
Untersuchungen zur Menschensohn-Christologie im Johannesevangelium zugleich ein Beitrag
zur Methodengeschichte der Auslegung des 4. Evangeliums (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1957). I wish to thank Prof. François Bovon for directing my attention to this last source.
17Bruns, "Philo Christianus." See also David T. Runia, Philo in Early Christian Literature:
A Survey (CRINT; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993) 3-33.
18Dunn, Partings, 195 (emphasis original).
l9"Memra is a blind alley in the study of the biblical background of John's Logos doctrine"
(C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes
on the Greek Text [London: SPCK, 1978] 128), and why? Simply because of the assertion that
" K I C D however was not truly a hypostasis but a means of speaking about God without using
DANIEL B O Y A R Í N 2 4 9
Basil Studer, who claims that "first it has to be fully acknowledged that the begin-
ning of trinitarian reflection was made because of the Easter experience, understood
in apocalyptic terms."20 It is at least possible that the beginning of trinitarian re-
flection was precisely in non-Christian Jewish accounts of the second and visible
God, variously, the Logos (Memra), Wisdom, or even perhaps the Son of God.21
• Philo's L o g o s
The doctrine of the Logos, the linchpin of Philo's religious thought . . .
(David Winston)
Winston has pointed out that, although we can know very little of the philosophi-
cal context of Philo's writing, we can determine from the writings themselves that
Logos theology is "something his readers will immediately recognize without any
further explanation."22 The consequences of this point are formidable. Philo was
clearly writing for an audience of Jews devoted to the Bible. If for these, the Logos
theology was a virtual commonplace (which is not to say that there were not enor-
mous variations in detail, of course), the implication is that this way of thinking
about God was a vital inheritance of (at least) Alexandrian Jewish thought. It be-
comes apparent, therefore, that for one branch of pre-Christian Judaism, at least,
there was nothing strange about a doctrine of a deuteros theos, and nothing in that
doctrine that precluded monotheism. Moreover, Darrell Hannah has emphasized
that "neither in Platonism, Stoicism nor Aristotelian thought do we find the kind
of significance that the concept has for Philo, nor the range of meanings that he
gives to the term λόγο?," and, therefore, that "he appears to be dependent upon a
tradition in Alexandrian Judaism which was attributing a certain independence to
his name, and thus a means of avoiding the numerous anthropomorphisms of the Old Testament." It seems never to have occurred to any of those who hold this view how self-contradictory it is, as I will argue later. See also, e.g., Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St.
John (London: Burns & Oates; New York: Herder & Herder, 1968) 484-87.
20Studer, Trinity, 39.
21 Other designations were used as well. See Jarl Fossum, "Jewish-Christian Christology and
Jewish Mysticism," VC 37 (1983) 260-87; Jarl Fossum, The Name of God and the Angel of the
Lord: Samaritan and Jewish Conceptions of Intermediation and the Origin of Gnosticism (WUNT;
Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1985) 333. For the Logos as the "first-begotten son of the Uncreated
Father" in Philo, see David Winston, Logos and Mystical Theology in Philo of Alexandria
(Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1985) 16. Cf. Dunn, Partings, 202-3. Cf. also: "If Philo remains within the spectrum of recognizable and acceptable first-century Judaism, would
the same not be true for Hebrews also? It would be hard to answer anything other than Yes"
(Dunn, Partings, 211), with which "Yes" I heartily concur.
22Winston, Logos, 11. So also Segal, Powers, 163: "There were others in Philo's day who spoke of a 'second god' but who were not as careful as Philo in defining the limits of that term."
2 5 0 HARVARD T H E O L O G I C A L REVIEW
God's word."23 He sees the sources of that tradition as in part growing out of the
Israelite Prophets themselves, at least in their Septuagint hypostasis. As he has
formulated it,
"The Greek OT could be read as affirming that the Xoyos θεού was an
agent of both creation and revelation, roles which Philo attributes to
the Logos. . . . It would appear, then, that Philo drew on a hellenistic
Jewish tradition which asserted that by means of His Word, which was
the same as His Wisdom, God created the world and revealed Himself
to the prophets."24
Philo reveals some of the crucial OT intertexts for his Logos doctrine:25
For this reason, whereas the voice of mortals is judged by hearing, the
sacred oracles intimate that the words of God (TOUS του θεού λόγους)
are seen as light is seen, for we are told that all of the people saw the
Voice (Ex. 20:18), not that they heard it; for what was happening was
not an impact of air made by the organs of mouth and tongue, but the
radiating splendour of virtue indistinguishable from a fountain of reason. . . . But the voice of God which is not that of verbs and names yet seen by the eye of the soul, he (Moses) rightly introduces as "visible."
(Philo, Migr. 47-48)
One of the fascinating and vitally important implications of this text is the close
connection that it draws between the Logos, the Word, and light. This is an association that will immediately arouse associations with the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel, but in reality has much broader early Jewish contexts, as we shall see.
Further, it can hardly be doubted that for Philo the Logos is both a part of God
and also a separate being, the Word that God created in the beginning in order to
create everything else: the Word that both is God, therefore, and is with God. We
find in Philo a passage that could just as easily have fit into Justin's Apologies:
To His Word, His chief messenger, highest in age and honour, the
Father of all has given the special prerogative, to stand on the border
and separate the creature from the Creator. This same Word both pleads
with the immortal as suppliant for afflicted mortality and acts as ambassador of the ruler to the subject. He glories in this prerogative and proudly describes it in these words "and I stood between the Lord and
you" (Deut. v. 5), that is neither uncreated by God, nor created as you,
but midway between the two extremes, a surety to both sides. (Quis
rerum divinarum heres sit 205-206)26
23Hannah, Michael, 80.
24Ibid., 80-81.
25As pointed out by Maren R. Niehoff, "What is in a Name? Philo's Mystical Philosophy
of Language," JSQ 2 (1995) 223.
26See also discussion in Hannah, Michael, 82-83.
D A N I E L B O Y A R Í N 2 5 1
Philo oscillates on the point of the ambiguity between separate existence of the
Logos, God's Son,27 and its total incorporation within the godhead. If Philo is not
on the road to Damascus here, he is surely on a way that leads to Nicaea and the
controversies over the second person of the Trinity.
It becomes, in the light of the centrality of such mediation by the Logos for Philo's
theology, less and less plausible to speak of Philo as having been influenced by
Middle Platonism. Instead, insofar as the Logos theology, the necessity for a media-
tor, is intrinsic to Middle Platonism, that form of "Hellenistic" philosophy may simply
be the Judaism of Philo and his fellows. A "Hellenism" is, after all, by definition the
creative synthesis of Greek and "Eastern" culture and thought, and "Philo's Logos,
jointly formed by the study of Greek philosophy and of the Torah, was at once the
written text, an eternal notion in the mind of the Creator and the organ of his work in
time and space. Under this last aspect, it receives such epithets as Son, King, Priest
and Only-Begotten; in short it becomes a person."28 As eloquently described by
Charles Harold Dodd as well, Philo's Logos is neither just the Wisdom, the Π03Π of
the Bible, nor is it quite the Stoic nor Platonic Xoyos, nor yet just the divine Word,
the " D l of the Hebrew, either, but some unique and new synthesis of all of these.29
That synthesis is arguably the central theological notion of Middle Platonism itself.
If the Logos as divine mediator, therefore, is the defining characteristic of Middle
Platonism, then, not only may Philo's Judaism be Middle Platonism, Middle Platonism
itself may be a form of Judaism and Christianity.30
Maren Niehoff emphasizes that for this aspect of his philosophy, Philo apparently did not have previous Greek sources to draw upon. For his notion of man as an Idea, Philo could draw upon his Alexandrian predecessor, Arms Didymus, but
for the concept of language itself as an Idea, indeed perhaps as the Idea of Ideas,
Philo had no known Platonist models.31 This is, of course, of signal importance for
the present investigation, as it suggests that we look in quite other directions for
the Philonic intertexts for this conceptual world:
27E.g., in De agricultura 51 .
28Edwards, "Justin's Logos," 263.
29Charles Harold Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1960) 269-79.
30This idea was originally suggested to me in conversations with Virginia Burrus, but I take
full responsibility for the formulation. As she points out, the parade example of a "pagan"
Middle-Platonist turns out to be Numenius, a philosopher who, while nominally indeed not
Jewish nor Christian, quotes quite a bit of Scripture for his purpose. See, inter alia, David
Dawson,