Peacefulpete wrote:
It seems many of the Jews assign that role to the Logos.
Actually this was only what Philo wrote, not what Jews believed or understood about the universe or God, etc..
Philo's work is still studied by many scholars today for its historical and philosophical significance. While he was a Jew, he was not necessarily always writing as a Jew or claiming that what he was saying was representing wide stream Jewish through. There is no such thing. There is general Jewish practice, but there is no and never has been a single mainstream Jewish dogma. (As the saying goes: two Jews, three synagogues.)
Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE--50 CE) was neither a rabbi or a Jewish theologian. He was a Hellenistic philosopher. He just so happened to be of Jewish descent, so people tend to think that because he had Jewish DNA everything he said or wrote about was a Jewish thesis representing official Jewish thought or worthy of some Jewish version of the imprimatur. Not so.
Philo was experimenting with breaking through to his Jewish contemporaries by introducing to them what he loved about Greek philosophy, particularly Platonism, and thought he could reconcile Greek philosophy with Jewish theology somehow in order to get Jews to somehow become what he was, namely a Hellenist.
Philo's work heavily influenced Christians, especially the theology of the Gospel of John where Jesus Christ is identified as the incarnate Logos. However there are significant differences between Philo's philosophical theories and the Christian incarnation. Philo saw the Logos as Divine Reason and a Creative Power, often as an intermediary being between God and the created world.
Philo's teachings were not accepted by mainstream Judaism because Philo was attempting to replace religious concepts with Greek philosophy, particularly Platonism, using these ideas as a substitute for the Hebrew Scriptures. As you might imagine, such a suggestion did not sit well with the Jewish scholars and rabbinical teachers of the time. (A similar suggestion was made by Rabbi Sherwin Wine in the late 1960s, suggesting that Humanism replace theistic language in the Reform liturgy, which as you can imagine was met with a similar response.)
Philo left more of a mark on Christianity than an on his own people as the Christians employed Hellenistic thought to help explain facets of the Trinity. Judaism speaks of the universe in very naturalistic terms and has since its beginnings. While there have been attempts, like Philo and even during the Persian Era to introduce various philosophies and dabbles with the supernatural, the view that God is part of the natural universe and vice versa always tends to win out (though again, there is no one dogmatic set of doctrines on the matter).
