Hi Earnest,
it could be argued that the important role played by Alexandria in the history of Judaism and Christianity receives less attention than it deserves. First the Jewish community and later the Christian Church flourished there for a period that spanned nearly a millennium. These two communities had their own Bible in a version which has remained canonical in the Eastern Church to this very day.
i find it odd that you would imply that "the concept of the Logos which was already known to both Judaism and Stoicism"(ubove post) is a foreign Greek philosophical "concept". to contrast the trinity you invoke "the simplicity of john". ( ibid.) are you saying that john was speaking of a concept that was with God and a concept that was God? the fact is the Biblical term Logos is found only in the Johannine writings: in the Apocalypse (19:13), in the Gospel of John (1:1-14), and in his First Epistle (1:1; cf. 1:7 - Vulgate). these are the only places we find the word Logos in the Epistles of Paul the theology of the Logos had made its influence felt. This is seen in the Epistles to the Corinthians, where Christ is called "the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (I Cor., 1:24) and "the image of God" (II Cor., 4:4); it is more evident in the Epistle to the Colossians (1:15 sqq.); Most of all in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the theology of the Logos lacks only the term itself, that finally appears in John. In this epistle we also notice the influence of the Book of Wisdom, especially in the description which is given of the relations between the Son and the Father: "the brightness of his glory, and the figure of his substance" (cf. Wis., vii, 26). This resemblance suggests the way by which the doctrine of the Logos entered into Christian theology; [b]another clue is furnished by the Apocalypse, where the term Logos appears for the first time (19:13), and not concerning any theological teaching, but in an apocalyptic vision, the content of which has no suggestion of Philo but rather recalls Wisdom 18:15.[b]
What is the precise value of this concept in the writings of St. John? The Logos has not for him the Stoic meaning that it so often had for Philo: it is not the impersonal power that sustains the world, nor the law that regulates it; neither do we find in St. John the Platonistic concept of the Logos as the ideal model of the world; the Word is for him the Word of God, and thereby he holds with Jewish tradition, the theology of the Book of Wisdom, of the Psalms, of the Prophetical Books, and of Genesis; he perfects the idea and transforms it by showing that this creative Word which from all eternity was in God and was God, took flesh and dwelt among men. This difference is not the only one which distinguishes the Johannine theology of the Logos from the concept of Philo, to which not a few have sought to liken it. The Logos of Philo is impersonal, it is an idea, a power, a law; at most it may be likened to those half abstract, half-concrete entities, to which the Stoic mythology had lent a certain personal form. For Philo the incarnation of the Logos must have been absolutely without meaning, quite as much as its identification with the Messias. For St. John, on the contrary, the Logos appears in the full light of a concrete and living personality; it is the Son of God, the Messias, Jesus. Equally great is the difference when we consider the role of the Logos. The Logos of Philo is an intermediary: "The Father who engendered all has given to the Logos the signal privilege of being an intermediary (methorios) between the creature and the creator . . . it is neither without beginning (agenetos) as is God, nor begotten (genetos) as you are [mankind], but intermediate (mesos) between these two extremes "(Quis rer. divin. haeres sit, 205-06). The Word of St. John is not an intermediary, but a Mediator; He is not intermediate between the two natures, Divine and human, but He unites them in His Person; it could not be said of Him, as of the Logos of Philo, that He is neither agenetos nor genetos, for He is at the same time one and the other, not inasmuch as He is the Word, but as the Incarnate Word (St. Ignatius, "Ad Ephes.", vii, 2).
sometimes, influenced by [b]Jewish tradition[b], Philo represents the Logos as the creative Word of God ("De Sacrific. Ab. et Cain"; cf. "De Somniis", I 182; "De Opif. Mundi", 13);
at other times he describes it as the revealer of God, symbolized in Scripture by the angel of Jahveh ("De Somniis", I, 228-39, "De Cherub.", 3; "De Fuga", 5; "Quis rer. divin. haeres sit", 201-205).
Oftener again he accepts the language of Hellenic speculation; the Logos is then, after a Platonistic concept, the sum total of ideas and the intelligible world ("De Opif. Mundi", 24, 25; "Leg. Alleg.", I, 19; III, 96),
or, agreeably to the Stoic theory, the power that upholds the world, the bond that assures its cohesion, the law that determines its development ("De Fuga", 110; "De Plantat. Noe," 8-10; "Quis rer. divin. haeres sit", 188, 217; "Quod Deus sit immut.", 176; "De Opif. Mundi", 143).
PS. I would like to apologies for my lengthy absence and thank you for giving me something substantial to research.
