CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
THE BEGINNINGS OF THEOLOGY
IN ALEXANDRIA
(a) City and Country We do not know how the Christian Church was first planted in Egypt; nor do we know its history during the first two centuries A.D. It is possible to make certain guesses, but hard to produce evidence in support of them. During this period, however, an important movement of theological thought was going on in Egypt; and about this we can gather a certain amount of information. If at the same time we take into account the story of non-Christian philosophy, we can write the history of it with hardly any gaps; and even if we limit ourselves to the Jewish and Christian sources, what emerges is a reasonably complete picture.
The city of Alexandria was founded in the year 332 or 331 B.c. by Alexander the Great, and bore the name of its founder. The purpose of its foundation was strategic. Egypt was the greatest wheat-producing country in the Mediterranean region; an adequately large and safe harbour would help to ensure the regular delivery of corn from Egypt to Alexander's home, Macedonia. And, as a matter of fact, until the end of the Roman empire, Alexandria was its principal harbour for the export of corn to Rome. This accounts for the economic prosperity to which the city soon attained, and for the animated life of which it was the scene. Into Alexandria, as into other great ports, men streamed from far and near, bringing with them all that their home lands could offer both of merchandise and of spiritual wealth. dh
After Alexander's death his kingdom was divided among a number of succession-states. Alexandria became the capital of the kingdom of the Ptolemies and the residence of its kings; under the Roman empire it was the capital of the Roman province of Egypt. The city was laid out after the pattern of a Greek city. Under the rule of the later Ptolemies it was in danger of losing its Greek character, but this was restored with the coming of the Romans. This reminds us that the non-Greek element in the population was considerable; both Egyptians and Jews were very numerous. This variety of races is reflected in the ceaseless unrest from which the city suffered. In earlier times the trouble had been rivalry between Greeks and Egyptians; after the time of Christ this was replaced by ill-will between Jews and Greeks, which frequently broke out in violent conflicts with heavy loss of life. To understand the gravity of these conflicts we have only to take into account the strength of the Jewish population—in two out of the five regions into which the city was divided, the majority of the inhabitants were Jews. The Alexandrians were notorious for their passionate temper and _their rebellious spirit; but also for their diligence and their love of gain.
Alexandria was at the same time a great centre of Greek culture. There were numerous schools, supported by private enterprise or by the state; the most famous was the Museum, a kind of academy of learned men. Here was to be found the greatest library of the ancient world. The arts and sciences flourished. Every type of philosophy had here its distinguished representatives. In this period of ancient history, religion and philosophy were drawing nearer to one another, and each benefited by the influence of the other.
It was this movement of thought which made of Alexandria the great city of syncretism, i.e. the mingling of religions.
The various forms of religion and worship which existed
here did not remain in strict separation. They took over rites and myths from one another, and philosophy helped to weld all these different ingredients into a single whole.
Neither Judaism nor Christianity remained untouched by this process; and this general movement of syncretism explains why it was in Alexandria that Gnosticism reached its highest level of development.
The people of that time realized this state of affairs and were impressed by it. This is how the situation is represented in a letter which is attributed to the Emperor Hadrian
(A.D. 117-138), though almost certainly it was not written by him:
Dear Servius, You praised Egypt to me very highly; but I have found it to be a very superficial and light-minded country, prone to every kind of idle talk. There the worshippers of Serapis are Christians, and those who are called bishops of the Christians worship
Serapis. There is not a single superintendent of a Jewish synagogue, not a single Samaritan or Christian presbyter, who is not also an astrologer, a soothsayer or a mountebank ..
. The people are very insubordinate, boastful and unjust; but the city is great, splendid and luxurious. No one here lives idly. Some are blowers of glass; others are makers of writing tablets, yet others linenweavers. Everyone is master of some trade, and attached to the service of it. There is work for those suffering from gout; there is work for the blind. Even those whose hands are paralysed find something to do. Their only god is money. That is the god whom all—Christians, Jews, pagans all alike—really worship.
In Alexandria the different religions and philosophies were willing to enter into contact with one another, to learn from one another and to exercise a mutual influence. But alongside such syncretism, we find also mission and apologetic; this means that one set of convictions tried to establish itself as superior to all the rest. Yet here too the close connection g
between religion and philosophy exercised its influence. It was not merely that the philosophies thought of themselves as religions; the religions were encouraged to understand themselves in terms of the findings of philosophy.
Christianity in Alexandria underwent this transformation.
But what later happened to Christianity had already happened to Judaism. We must give some account of this process for two reasons: first, because the experience of Judaism serves as a kind of sketch of what was later to take place in Christianity; secondly, because the results of the contacts between Judaism and philosophy were taken over and developed further by the Church. In reality we are dealing only with two successive phases of the same movement.
(b) The Transformation of Jewish Wisdom (1) The most important witness to the contact between Jewish and Greek thought in Egypt is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, commonly called the Septuagint. The name (meaning "seventy") originates in a Jewish legend, recounted in the so-called Letter of Aristeas. There we read that King Ptolemy II Philadelphos wished to have for his library a translation of the Jewish law; so he asked the high priest Eleazar to send him six translators from each of the twelve tribes—seventy-two translators in all—and these completed the work of translation in seventy-two days. The Jews immediately realized that they had in their hands a most useful instrument for their missionary work. Philo the Jew, about whom we shall have a good deal to say later on, gives us an account of a festival of thanksgiving for the Septuagint translation:
So, up till the present time, every year a festival and a festival gathering are observed on the island of Pharos. This is attended not only by Jews but also by a vast multitude of others, who
cross the water to celebrate that place from which first the light of this translation streamed forth, and to give thanks to God for this benefit which though old is ever new. After the prayers and the thanksgiving, some take their festal meal in tents which they have erected on the sea-shore; others reclining on the sandy beach itself with friends and relatives under the open heaven; and at this time they regard the sea-shore as more splendid than the most splendid palace.
(De Vita Mosis, 2:7. 41) The history of the Greek Bible differs from that of the Hebrew. At a time when the Canon of the Hebrew Bible was in practice already closed, new books were accepted into the Greek Canon and were regarded as divine revelation.
We find some of these in the appendix to our Bible, which is commonly called the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha includes certain books, the later wisdom literature, which begin to enter into the problems and the concepts of Greek philosophy.
By now the meaning of the word "wisdom" has changed.
In Hebrew the word stood for "prudent common-sense directions for living under the eyes of God". In these later books, "wisdom" embraces the whole Law of God, and presents it as the way of salvation, by means of which the soul can find its way to God. But, more than this, "Wisdom" no longer means the doctrine of wisdom; it has transformed itself into a personal being, who is now regarded as the mediator of revelation. This process was to be of the greatest importance for the development of Christian theology.
(2) Ecclesiasticus Let us start with the book of Jesus the Son of Sirach, which is called by the Latin name Ecclesiasticus in our
English Bibles. This was translated into Greek in Alexandria in 132 3.c. by the grandson of the original author. The problem which the author (or perhaps the translator) had to
face was this: the Old Testament constantly speaks of God in anthropomorphic terms, as though it was speaking of a man. But this suggests so primitive a concept of God as to make almost impossible any fruitful exchange of ideas between Hebrew religion and Greek philosophy. For the Alexandrian philosophy had long been dominated by the idea of the exalted character of God, His transcendence. Philosophers held that man could not come to any knowledge of this God without revelation; and their central problem was the difficulty of understanding or imagining any action of this distant, transcendent God upon the world. How could the Jew, with his anthropomorphic understanding of God, find an answer to so subtle a question as this?
Ecclesiasticus gives us an answer. Powers go forth from God and form themselves into independent beings. These beings are the mediators between the distant God and the world. The first and greatest of these beings is the divine
Wisdom. There are traces in early writings of a tendency to think of Wisdom in personal terms; but it is in the writing of the son of Sirach that this idea is for the first time clearly expressed:
I came-forth from the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth like a mist.
I dwelt in high places, and my throne was in a pillar of cloud.
Alone I have made the circuit of the vault of heaven, and have walked in the depths of the abyss . . .
From eternity, in the beginning he created me, and for eternity I shall not cease to exist... .
Come to me, you who desire me, and eat your fill of my produce.
For the remembrance of me is sweeter than honey, and my inheritance sweeter than the honeycomb.
(Ecclus. 24:3, 9, 19, R.S.V.)
(3) The Wisdom of Solomon carries-us a step further on the way marked out by the son of Sirach. In form, Wisdom is not unlike the earlier book; the contents, however, show how much further the author has gone than his predecessor. What his book contains is not wise rules for the conduct of life, but essays on wisdom and hymns in praise of wisdom. The discussion is not limited to the functions of wisdom; discussion of the nature of wisdom is now possible. This new feature is all-important. It shows that the mind of the writer is no longer moving in the world of the Old Testament. And when he requires of the student of wisdom that he should adopt an ascetic way of life, it is clear that he has moved very far away from the Bible, and has drawn near to the outlook of that pagan world whose beliefs he secks to refute.
It is not possible to date the book exactly. The progress of thought indicates that it is later than the other writings we have so far been discussing; but it is earlier than Philo, to whom we shall shortly direct our attention. It may with probability be assigned to the first century B.c.
We limit ourselves to one quotation, in which we shall recognize subjects that have already been touched on in quotations from the earlier writers:
May God grant that I speak with judgment and have thoughts worthy of what I have received, for he is the guide even of wisdom and the corrector of the wise...
For it is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements; the beginning and end and middle of times, the alternations of the solstices and the changes of the seasons, the cycles of the year and the constellations of the stars, the natures of animals and the tempers of wild beasts, the powers of spirits and the reasonings of men,
the varieties of plants and the virtues of roots . . .
For in (wisdom) there is a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible, beneficent, humane, steadfast, sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all, and penetrating through all spirits that are intelligent and pure and most subtle . . .
Though she is but one, she can do all things... in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets.
(Wisdom 7:15, 17-20, 22-23,27, R.S.V.) (4) Philo The Old Testament understands salvation in terms of history rather than of idea. The speculations of the Wisdom of Solomon have already carried us a considerable distance away from this point of view. If we take one step further, we come to the Jew Philo; his speculations no longer bear any relation to the Hebrew way of thinking, as this is found in the Old Testament.
Philo was born about a generation before Christ, and belonged to a distinguished family in Alexandria. We can roughly calculate the dates of his life, as he tells us that when he headed an embassy to the court of Rome in the year
A.D. 40 he was already an old man. Many of his works have been preserved. The Church Fathers knew how much they owed to him; and it was the Christian Church which preserved his writings. For it was Philo who taught the Church to read back into the Old Testament its own Christian philosophy, which in reality was a late form of the philosophy of Plato.
Naturally Philo could not work magic. If he was able to
discover the conclusions of the Platonic philosophy in the Old Testament, this was possible only through the use of the allegorical method of the interpretation of the Bible.
The basis of all allegorical interpretation is a particular doctrine of inspiration. Only if a text is believed to be divinely inspired is it sensible to interpret it allegorically. So Philo, like all other Bible expositors of his school, assumes the verbal inspiration of the Bible—the writers of the biblical books were prophets who wrote down exactly what the Holy
Spirit had dictated to them. This is wholly different from the picture of the prophets given to us in the Bible, where each prophet retains his own individual character and freedom.
For Philo the prophets have become simply tools in the hands of God, with no will of their own:
For the prophet utters nothing of his own; he is rather the spokesman, into whose mouth Another puts everything that he brings forth. When he is inspired he falls into unconsciousness, for thought vanishes and has deserted the fortress of the soul, while the divine Spirit has entered in and taken up his dwelling there. The Spirit moves the vocal chords of the prophet to sound and utterance, so that he pronounces clearly what the Spirit has inspired him to say.
(De specialibus legibus 4:49) The second basic principle of allegorical interpretation is that man, with his dull carnal senses, can never attain to the immediate knowledge of divine and spiritual things. Only if the true spiritual sense is wrapped up in a material covering, which distorts it, can it be apprehended by man. Man could never direct his attention to divine, invisible things, unless they had been in some way made visible to him. For this reason all knowledge of God must necessarily come to man first in veiled form. Man's task is to make his way through the husk to the kernel, through matter to spirit. The holy
and inspired Scriptures do bring to man the knowledge of God; but the spiritual meaning is concealed under a more or less material covering. The covering is the literal sense which man first apprehends with his physical eyes; from this he must move onwards to the spiritual sense, which the spirit alone can apprehend.
So Philo recognizes two meanings in the Bible—the literal and the allegorical. The question as to whether there is an allegorical meaning is simply not raised. This is taken for granted; it was for the sake of this meaning that the Scriptures were given, and it is the task of the interpreter to make this meaning plain. The status of the literal sense is much more difficult to determine. Has it a positive significance of its own?
Or is it simply the veil in which the allegorical sense is enclosed, and which is of no value once the allegorical sense has been understood? On the whole Philo seems to take this second view. "Who could ever imagine that a woman, or any kind of human creature, could emerge out of the side of a man?" (De legum allegoria, 2:19 on Genesis 2:21.)
But, from the fact that Scripture demands of man that he should always enquire after the hidden sense, Philo deduces a third use of the Holy Scriptures. This we may call the educational use—it lies somewhere between the literal and the allegorical meanings. It will help to guide the intelligent man on the way from the verbal to the spiritual sense; and will also help to convey knowledge to the unintelligent majority, in so far as they are capable of receiving it.
Some, when they hear these words, imagine that That Which Is is furious and angry. But God cannot be touched by any emotion. Anger is an emotion that is characteristic of human weakness. But neither the unreasoning passions of the soul, nor the parts and members of a body have anything to do with God.
None the less, the Lawgiver does speak of such things, in so far as they can serve as elementary instruction, in order to teach
those who could not be brought to their senses in any other way.
For instance, if we take the laws governing commands and prohibitions (laws, that is, in the strict sense of the word), we find that two guiding principles are laid down regarding him who is the source of the laws: the first, that God is not like a man (Num.
23:19), the second, that he is like a man (Gen. 1:27). The first is authenticated by the most assured truth; the second is introduced only for the education of the unintelligent majority.
(Quod deus sit immutabilis, 11.52 ff. on Genesis 6:7) We might be inclined to think that this world of allegorical interpretation is a world of sheer caprice. But this is not so.
Such interpretation is related to a very definite picture of the world, and the interpreter does his utmost to guard against Capricious interpretation.
In the philosophy of ancient times, themes were closely associated with certain recurring illustrations and metaphors.
The mention of one metaphor will immediately call up in the mind of the hearer all the other metaphors connected with it. And certain rules were gradually formed as to the meaning which might in most cases be attached to certain metaphors.
This method, which finds a close parallel in the methods of dream-interpretation used in modern "depth psychology" is constantly at work in the writings of Philo. Beasts are almost always interpreted in terms of sensual passions or physical processes. The relation of various kinds of animals to particular emotions or parts of the body follow certain biological views, which were generally accepted in the time of Philo. Useful plants stand for virtues, harmful plants for vices. The male usually represents intelligence, the female the life of the senses. The significance of numbers follows a practically established rule, and the same interpretations recur again and again.
Philo's idea of God is complex. We find in it a strain of
W.C.B.—52
biblical piety, and again traits that are drawn from philosophical thinking. But at a number of decisive points the thought of Philo is derived from the Greek tradition, and not from the Hebrew understanding of God as we find it in the Bible:
Then the Lorp God said "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him" (Gen. 2:18). Why,
O prophet, is it not good that man should be alone? Because, he says, it is good that only the One-and-Only should be alone. . .
God is alone, and is One—not a composite being, but one single unified Being; each one of us, on the contrary, and every other created being, is made up of many things. I, for example, am many things in one. I am soul and body. The soul consists of a rational and an irrational part; the body of different properties, warm and cold, heavy and light, dry and moist. But God is not a composite being; He does not consist of many parts, and is unmingled with anything else. For anything that could be associated with God must be either better or worse than He, or equal to Him. But there is nothing better than God or equal to Him. And nothing less than He could be joined with Him; otherwise He would become less than He now is, and that would mean that He would be perishable—a thought which it is sinful even to entertain. So "God" is identical in meaning with BeingOne and Being-Alone; or rather Being-Alone is identical with God. For everything that can be numbered is later in origin than the Cosmos; and so is time. But God is older than the Cosmos, and is its Creator.
(De legum allegoria, 2:1-3) The Greek philosophers and the writers of the Old Testament were alike monotheists; but this did not prevent their inserting intermediate beings between God and the world.
Their aim was to build a bridge between the holiness of God and the material world, or between His transcendence and His immanence. We may recall the importance of angels,
especially of "the angel of the Lorp", in the Old Testament; and we have traced the various stages in the development of the idea of Wisdom. Greek philosophy recognized many such beings. But by far the most important of them was the Logos, "the Word" or "Reason". Indeed, in the thought of the Stoics, the Logos is hardly to be thought of as an intermediate being; "Logos" is really a name for the highest, though immanent, God, who may also be called
"providence" or "Creative Nature" or "Zeus". The Logos has in fact here taken over all the functions of the highest intermediary in the Platonic system of thought; and in Philo he takes that immensely significant role, which he was never afterwards to lose, especially in the world of Christian theology.
"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." This song is appropriate on the lips of every godly man, but still more so as the song of the Universe itself. For as the shepherd leads his flock, so God the great shepherd and king guides earth and water, air and fire, and all the plants and animals, perishable and imperishable existents alike
. he guides them according to righteousness and law, in that he has appointed his true Logos, his first-born son, to undertake the ordering of this holy flock as the representative of the Great King. .
. So let the whole world, this great and perfect flock of the true God say, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."
(De Agricultura 50f.) While God is indeed one, his highest and chief powers are two, namely goodness and sovereignty. Through his goodness he begat all that is, through his sovereignty he rules what he has begotten. And in between the two there is a third which unites them, Logos; for it is through reason (logos) that God is both ruler and good.
(De Cherubim, 27)
From this last quotation we learn Philo's opinion that God, who in Himself is transcendent, cannot be directly the Creator of the world. For that He has need of a mediator. This mediator is the Logos; he mediates not only between God and the world, but between the two principal powers by means of which God carries out His work in the world.
These are God's creative power, and His ruling power; as Creator He is known by the name "God", as ruler by the name "Lorp"':
(Speaking of the Cherubim above the ark) . ..
I would maintain that these two represent in symbolic form the two highest and most excellent powers of Him-who-truly-is — the creative and the ruling powers. His creative power, by which He has brought all this into being and created it and set it in order, is known by the name of "God"; but His royal power, by which He governs the creation, and rules it steadfastly with justice, is known as "Lorp". For He alone is the One-whotruly-is, and the One who undoubtedly has created, since He has brought that which was not into being; and He is by nature
King, since none can rightly rule over the created things except their Creator.
(De Vita Mosis, 2:20, 99) These two powers of God are not exercised directly on matter; in between we have to insert yet another mediating level—the world of the ideas—things exist in the mind of God before they are brought to physical existence.
And even now our list is not yet complete. Every link in the chain is a reflection of that which goes before it. The Logos is a reflection of God. The ideas reflect the Logos; the ideas in their turn are reflected in the visible world.
So far we have been dealing with the linking of one philosophical idea with another. But Philo's thought moves also in another and quite different world—that of the mystery
religions. These mysteries are a group of archaic religions, in which the initiates are brought into the closest fellowship with the deity, undergo a voluntary death and rising again in the power of the godhead, and so are delivered from the fate of mortality. We find mystery-language in many connections in the writings of Philo.
Why does Philo the Jew make use of such language? His use of it is related to his practical concern. The theology of the mysteries is better adapted than the philosophical theology to help the soul of man to find that way on which it can rise upward towards God and towards the attainment of immortality. The elucidation of ths meaning of philosophical ideas is not enough; it must be supplemented by the call to moral transformation. Only virtue, the daughter of the earthly wisdom and the reflection of the heavenly wisdom, makes fellowship with God possible for men.
There is another and deeper reason for Philo's use of the language of the mysteries. He is deeply concerned about the problem of the visible world around us. As time went on, the thinkers of the ancient world took a lower and lower view of this world. By the time of Philo, it was almost impossible any longer to believe in the goodness of the creation that has come forth from the hand of God. In early times, men had written of the beauty of the world, of its adaptation to its purpose, and of the knowledge of God which could be derived from it. In Philo's time such teaching was not absolutely rejected; but it was understood as referring not to the visible world, but to the immaterial, spiritual world, the kingdom of ideas.
A sharp contrast is drawn between that higher world and the visible world of matter. Matter is regarded as the prison, the bondage of the soul; it hinders man in his quest for the vision of God. Therefore, in order to enjoy the blessing of fellowship with God, man must withdraw himself from
matter and devote himself to wisdom. But he cannot do this of himself, since the spirit of man has become imprisoned in the dark house of the body. His eyes must be opened to the spiritual vision. This takes place in the great mystery of awakening, the opening of man's eyes with the help of Moses the great leader and spiritual guide. But first the lesser mysteries of the freeing of man's spirit from the life of the senses must be accomplished.
Actually Philo is trying to do something which is quite clearly impossible. He should have made up his mind once and for all whether he is going to regard the world as God's good creation, and the use of the bodily senses as a faculty which God has implanted in man; or whether he is going to hold that attention paid to this world necessarily involves turning away from reality to appearance, and that the use of the senses can lead on only to possible or actual delusions.
But Philo was not able to make up his mind, and in consequence he loses himself in contradictions. It is God who has given man perception through the senses (in the form of Eve); but the use of the senses does involve man in a falling away from God. We speak of the senses as a gift from God, yet we cannot place any confidence in them. Philo is trying to make a compromise between two mutually exclusive views, and he has not been successful. He cannot unhesitatingly affirm that the created world is good; since he regards that world as the source of that seductive influence which draws man away from the spiritual world, and leads him to give himself up to the world of the senses.
This is the real reason for Philo's acceptance of the point of view of the mystery-religions. Once he has taken this step, the creation and the visible world are no longer a problem to him. Whatever the nature of the world may be, it is man's duty to turn from it to God. Man must recognize that he stands between God and the world; if he turns to
the world, he is turning away from God; he cannot come to the knowledge of God unless he turns away from the world:
There is, however, another spirit, which is more perfect, and more completely cleansed—the spirit of a man who has been initiated into the great mysteries. This spirit . .
. leaps beyond all that is created, so that it receives a clear impression of Thatwhich-is-eternal, and so that it receives within itself both him and his shadows, that is to say, the Logos and this world. This spirit is Moses, who says to God "Reveal thyself to me that I may see and know thee" (Ex. 33:13). The meaning of this is:
Do not reveal thyself to me through heaven or earth, through water, air or any other creaied thing. Let me not see thine image reflected in any other thing, but only in thee who art God. For reflections that come through created things pass away; the reflection in that which is eternal (which has not come into being) remains permanent, unshaken and eternal.
(De legum allegoria, 3:100) We must never forget that this mystery-language, for all its importance for Philo, is to be taken only in a metaphorical sense. When we translate it into practical terms, what it really means Is active piety, the practice of virtue in all its forms.
Negatively this is asceticism and renunciation of the world, and more positively diligent attention to Wisdom; and that means for Philo attention to the study of the Old Testament.
Philo has written very little about all this as from his own experience. He just gives hints here and there about fasting, self-restraint, nightly vigils and so on. Instead he has left us a book about a community which, in Philo's eyes, lives and "philosophizes" in an exemplary fashion. ""Those who decide to enter this community do not come from custom, nor because they have heard the community praised and are thus encouraged to join it; they come constrained by heavenly love, and they are taken hold of by the Spirit until they behold that after which they long." Philo tells us that these people are ps,
called "'Therapeutae"', which means "healers", and he explains the term from the care that they have for the health or healing of their souls.
These Therapeutae forsook their families and their possessions and withdrew into solitude. We can well understand that the Church Fathers, when they read Philo's account, thought that they were reading a description of the earliest
Christians. Philo maintained—and we have no means of checking the accuracy of his statement—that there were
Therapeutae everywhere in the world; but specially by Lake Mareotis in the neighbourhood of Alexandria. The choice of this place was an excellent one; the climate was admirable, and it offered every kind of shelter that can be imagined. Here the members of the community lived, each in a separate hut.
In each of these a sacred area, called "the monastery', was marked off. No food was brought within this area, but only the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament. The whole day was spent in the study and exposition of these Scriptures.
Only after sunset did they take food, and they observed the utmost moderation in the use of it. Every seven days a festival was observed in common; and at the end of every period of seven weeks they observed a day of special celebrations, during which they continued the whole night long in singing and solemn dances.
This picture bristles with difficulties; and it seems impossible to give a wholly convincing account or explanation of the Therapeutae in the light of what we know of the history of religion at that time. If the account that Philo has given us of these people is reliable, they must have been members of a Jewish sect, but a sect which departed very widely in its customs and its worship from Judaism as ordinarily understood. But the existence of such a community shows us that in Egypt more easily than elsewhere sects of mixed origin and confused identity could come into being. Moreover the
earliest Christian groups in Egypt~of which we have any knowledge were groups of exactly this mixed and shifting type—the Gnostic sects, which may have been present in other parts of the world, but were certainly present in Egypt.
(c) The Christian Gnostic Sects We have no clear information as to the beginnings of Christianity in Egypt. It is, however, probable that it was from the coastal cities of Palestine that the Gospel spread into Egypt.
The earliest records tell us of the distinction between the Aramaic-speaking Christians of Palestine and those converts who spoke Greek. The latter were much more open to the idea of missionary work among the Gentiles; it was in all likelihood through Christians of this circle that the Gospel first came to Egypt. Later tradition spoke of Mark as the founder of the Church in Alexandria; but for this there is no historical evidence.
One thing is clear. In Asia Minor and in Rome the Church kept itself to a large extent isolated from the currents of thought around it. This was not so in Egypt; here the Church was open both to give and to receive. It was deeply affected by the prevailing syncretism, and was profoundly influenced by the great religious movement, which at that time was influencing every form of living religion in the Mediterranean world—Gnosticism (the name comes from the Greek gnostikos, "a knowing one" and gnosis, "'knowledge'').
We have already taken notice of the two-fold preparation for this movement.
On the one hand, philosophy had drawn near to religion.
The philosophers had become convinced that it was impossible for man to attain to the knowledge of God without revelation.
Therefore philosophy was looking everywhere for sources of revelation. Some found it in the divinely-inspired poets of an earlier age in Greece; others in the teaching of philoso-
phers, who were regarded as almost divine. It was only one step further to ask whether there were utterances of gods, either native or foreign, which could be accepted as revelation.
On the other hand, we noted the influence of the mysteryreligions. The aim of all these mysteries was to create an inner fellowship between the initiate and his god; this was achieved through special and mysterious knowledge, imparted to the one who desired to be initiated; in many cases unity with his god was realized in some kind of vision—the eyes and other senses of the initiate had to be opened. Here too we encounter the idea of revelation: salvation comes to man through the gift of special knowledge.
The young Church in Alexandria was caught up into these processes of thought. The same thing happened elsewhere; but in most places the Church defended itself strenuously against these outside influences. In Alexandria there is hardly a trace of any such defence; at least Christian faith untouched by Gnostic ideas plays a much smaller part in the life of the Church there than in other places. There appear to have been a whole variety of forms of Christian syncretism. There were pagan fellowships for worship which accepted Christ as one of their divinities. There were philosophers who looked for confirmation of Plato's doctrine of God not, like Philo the Jew, in the Old Testament, but in the Christian revelation.
And there were other varieties of mixture as well. Everything was possible—except one thing, the ability to detect in all these mixtures that which was directly contrary to the essence of the Christian faith. The Alexandrians had no understanding of the significance of history—of the fact that Jesus Christ was a living person who lived and died once and for all.
This meant that they were really without defence against the dangers by which they were surrounded.
The Greeks had never developed such an understanding of history as takes seriously the fact that things happen only
once, that the moment that is passéd can never be recalled, and yet sees the things that happen as full of meaning and purpose. This was true even in the great days of Greek thought. As that thought-world began to break up, and the gap between immanence and transcendence became too wide to be bridged, it came to be taken for granted that what happens in this world is entirely meaningless. It is an endless circular movement of becoming and perishing, from which there is no way out. In this world man is in chains, in prison.
The purpose of the Gnostic religion is to teach him how to escape from his prison.
We shall deal here especially with the Christian forms of 'Gnosis, since it was these alone that could constitute a grave peril to the Church. For Christian Gnosticism the primary source of revelation was the Old Testament. Now it is quite clear that ideas and points of view such as we have been sketching are not readily to be found in the Old Testament.
Philo was never able completely to fit his own system into the Old Testament, and had to put up with a number of obscurities and inconsistencies. But the Gnostics, whom we are now to study, were not Jews. They had none of the Jewish loyalty which caused Philo so much inconvenience; and they could carry much further than he that "spiritual" interpretation which can read into a given text the exact opposite of its original meaning.
As an example of this kind of interpretation, we will give some quotations from a Gnostic propaganda-writing, in which the author is imparting to an educated lady her first and elementary instruction in Gnostic methods of interpretation of Scripture.
Dear Sister Flora, Not many in earlier times have rightly understood the law given by Moses, since they had no accurate knowledge either of ah
the lawgiver or of his laws. I think that you will find it easy to grasp this, if you consider the contradictory views of the matter that have been held. Some say that this law was given by God and the Father. Others take exactly the opposite view and affirm that the law was given by the adversary, the devil who is the author of destruction. They ascribe to him also the creation of the Universe, and say that he is the creator and father of all that exists. Both are completely in error, though in different directions; both have failed to judge aright and to reach a true understanding of the matter with which they are dealing.
It is quite evident that the law was not given by God the Father. This follows from the fact that it is imperfect and has to be completed by another. Furthermore, it contains commandments which are not in accordance with the being and the attitude of this God. On the other hand, it is impossible to ascribe to the unrighteous adversary any law the aim of which is to do away with iniquity. This view could be held only by those who have failed to appreciate what follows logically from their view, according to the words of our Lord: "No city or house," he said, "can endure, unless it is at unity with itself". .
We can at once see that the whole of the law, as it is found in the five books of Moses, was not given by one lawgiver. What
I mean by that is that it was not given by God only, but that some of the commandments have been introduced by men. The words of our Saviour teach us that the law is to be divided into three parts. One part is to be ascribed to God Himself, and to His activity as lawgiver. One part is to be ascribed to Moses, in so far as he did not simply receive laws from God, but added others which rest on his own understanding. A third part is to be ascribed to the elders of the people. I will now explain to you how it can be proved from the words of our Saviour that this is the state of the case.
(The writer adduces the illustration of divorce—"For your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it was not so" (Matt. 19:8); and also
Mark 17:18 (speaking to the elders): "You make void the
word of God through your tradition'. He distinguishes three types of law. (a) The pure and undefiled law of God, the ten commandments, which the Saviour came to fulfil. (b) The laws which are mixed with defilement; these the Saviour abrogated. (c) The typical and symbolic laws, which the Saviour raised from the level of the perceptible and visible to the level of the spiritual and unseen.)
I will sum up briefly. . . . It remains to identify the God who is the giver of the Law. If you have listened carefully to what has been said, I think you will find that the answer has already been given. As I explained to you, this law was given neither by the perfect God nor by the devil—this last idea is wholly unacceptable. Therefore the giver of the law must be one who is different from both of these. He is the creator and fashioner of this whole world and of all that is in it. In nature he is different from both
God and devil. He stands between the two. For this reason he may rightly be called an intermediate being. The perfect God is good by nature—our Saviour has said that only one is good, the God whom he came to reveal. The adversary is bad and evil by nature, and is characterized by unrighteousness. If the intermediate being, who stands between the two, is neither good nor bad, nor yet unrighteous, he should be regarded specifically as the righteous one, since he is "umpire" and "prizegiver" according to his own righteousness. This god is more dependent than the perfect God, and subject to His righteousness, for he is begotten, and not unbegotten; there is only one who is unbegotten, namely the Father, from whom all things proceed, and on whom all things depend. He is, however, stronger and mightier than the adversary, and he is of an essence and a nature different from the essence of either God or the adversary. For the essence of the adversary is corruption and darkness—he is of material substance and composite—whereas the nature of the unbegotten Father of all is incorruption and light, which is selfexistent, simple and unitary. The essence of the creator god is
Greek, literally, 'the Midst'.
the product of a two-fold power, he himself being the reflection of the higher.
Dear Sister Flora, I have not wearied myself by writing for you this brief explanation. .
. This will be of the greatest value to you for the future, if like a fair and good field which has been sown with good and productive seed, you later allow the fruits of this teaching to appear.
(Epistle of Ptolemaeus to Flora, preserved by Epiphanius, Heresies, 33. 3-7.) Teaching of this kind was near enough to the teaching of the Church to make an impression on educated Christians.
It seemed to offer them both things—a genuine revelation from God, and an explanation of that revelation in terms of the scientific methods of that time. Here the Christian message had been harmoniously inserted into the Platonic understanding of the world that was then current.
The Gnostics were not the only ones who were trying at that time to work out a Christian philosophy in the forms and concepts of Platonism. This was exactly the concern of the Christian apologists—but in Egypt there were no apologists, only Gnostics. The Church, in its defence against the Gnostics, was driven to work out all the difficult problems posed by their philosophy; and this explains how it came about that the Gnostics played a great part in preparing the way for the later development of Christian doctrine. Their Christian faith was certainly not that of the Church. The point at which they departed from the Church's faith was their failure to maintain the belief in the real historical character of the revelation given in Jesus Christ, in those things which in Him happened once and for all. This belief the apologists firmly held; thus they play a part within the history of the development of doctrine. It was in conflict with the Gnostics that the Church was driven to the further developments of its doctrine.
And yet the Gnostics do stand within the continuity of historical development. We saw that in Philo two sources of thought are present—revelation, and myth or mystery. The apologists started from the idea of revelation, and thought it through in Christian terms. Their thought was taken up and still further developed by Clement of Alexandria, and used as a help to the rejection of Gnostic speculation. The Gnostics developed the other line, that of mythological speculation, taking as the starting point of their thinking the problem of the being of God. Both lines come together in the thought of the greatest and most significant thinker of the time—Origen.
To the Christian development of these ideas we now turn.