And besides the world-reason of
the philosophers, another Greek influence no doubt tended to further
the development of the Logos in Jewish thought. One of the most marked
characteristics of the Hellenistic age is the renascence of wonder at
the institutions of human life, and more especially at numbers and
speech.
Numbers were held to contain the essence of things, and the marvellous
powers of four, seven, and ten received honor from all sects and
schools. Words, too, were regarded almost as a mystic power, distinct
from thought, incorporeal things which made thought real and gave it
expression. The mystical susceptibility of Philo to the power of
numbers has been noticed by every critic and exaggerated by not a few;
his mystical valuation of words and speech, though far more important
in his thought, has been commonly passed over. The analysis which
Greek writers made of the relation between the mental thought, the
sound which utters it, and the mind which thinks it, was invested with
special importance for the Jewish thinker, who transferred it from the
human to the Divine sphere. He applied it to interpret the constant
Biblical phrases "and God said" or "and God spoke," according to
notions in which philosophy and theology are mixed; and propounded a
mystic idealism and a mystic cosmology, in which God's thought or
comprehensive Word becomes the archetype of the visible universe, His
single words the substantive universe and the laws of nature.
Pages:
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153