The teachers at Alexandria were above all others induced to develop
the Word into the active power, since they seemed thereby to find in
the Bible a remarkable anticipation of Greek philosophy. The Greek
Logos, by which "the Word" was translated in the Septuagint, meant
also thought and reason, and during the Hellenistic age was the
regular term by which the philosophical schools expressed the
impersonal world-force which governed all things. The Logos idea among
the Jews was a modification of intuitive and naive monotheism; among
the Greeks it was a step upwards, demanded by reason, from polytheism
to a monistic view of the universe. By the first century its
recognition as the ruling power in both the physical and moral
universe had become a point of union in all philosophical schools--the
common stamp of philosophical theology. Between the Semitic
ministerial word uttered by a personal Being and the Greek pantheistic
governing reason, there was probably an early connection, due to
Eastern influences which operated upon the founders of Greek
philosophy, which later schools lost sight of. When the Hebrew
Scriptures were translated, the two coalesced more fruitfully in the
Greek term Logos, and a point of union was provided between the
philosophical and the Jewish theology. Moreover the local Egyptian
influence aided the union, for the god Thoth was also identified with
the Logos, which thus appeared as a religious conception common to all
races, the basis of a universal creed.
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