of God (ερµηνευς και προϕητης); He acts as mediator; He is the real High-Priest, and as
such by His purity takes away the sins of man, and by His intercession procures for us the
mercy of God. Hence Philo designates Him not only as the High-Priest, but as the `Paraclete.'
He is also the sun whose rays enlighten man, the medium of Divine revelation to the soul; the
Manna, or support of spiritual life; He Who dwells in the soul. And so the Logos is, in the fullest
sense, Melchisedek, the priest of the most high God, the king of righteousness
(βασιλευς δικαιος), and the king of Salem (βασιλευς ειρηνης), Who brings
righteousness and peace to the soul.41 But the Logos `does not come into any soul that is dead
in sin.' That there is close similarity of form between these Alexandrian views and much in the
argumentation of the Epistle to the Hebrews, must be evident to all - no less than that there is
the widest possible divergence in substance and spirit.42 The Logos of Philo is shadowy, unreal,
not a Person;43 there is no need of an atonement; the High-Priest intercedes, but has no sacrifice
to offer as the basis of His intercession, least of all that of Himself; the old Testament types are
only typical ideas, not typical facts; they point to a Prototypal Idea in the eternal past, not to an
Antitypal Person and Fact in history; there is no cleansing of the soul by blood, no sprinkling of
the Mercy Seat, no access for all through the rent veil into the immediate Presence of God; nor
yet a quickening of the soul from dead works to serve the living God. If the argumentation of the
Epistle to the Hebrews is Alexandrian, it is an Alexandrianism which is overcome and past,
which only furnishes the form, not the substance, the vessel, not its contents. The closer
therefore the outward similarity, the greater is the contrast in substance.
40. Gen. i. 27.
41. De Leg. Alleg. iii. 25, 26.
42. For a full discussion of this similarity of form and divergence of spirit, between Philo - or, rather,
between Alexandrianism - and the Epistle to the Hebrews, the reader is referred to the masterly treatise
by Riehm (Der Lehrbegriff d. Hebräerbr. ed. 1867, especially pp. 247-268, 411-424, 658-670, and 855-860).
The author's general view on the subject is well and convincingly formulated on p. 249. We must,
however, add, in opposition to Riehm, that, by his own showing the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews
displays few traces of a Palestinian training.
43. On the subject of Philo's Logos generally the brochure of Harnoch (Königsberg, 1879) deserves
perusal, although it does not furnish much that is new. In general, the student of Philo ought especially
to study the sketch by Zeller in his Philosophie der Gr. vol. iii. pt. ii. 3rd ed. pp. 338-418.
The vast difference between Alexandrianism and the New Testament will appear still more
clearly in the views of Philo on Cosmology and Anthropology. In regard to the former, his
results in some respects run parallel to those of the students of mysticism in the Talmud, and of
the Kabbalists. Together with the Stoic view, which represented God as `the active cause' of
this world, and matter as `the passive,' Philo holds the Platonic idea, that matter was something
existent, and that is resisted God.44 Such speculations must have been current among the Jews
long before, to judge by certain warning given by the Son of Sirach.45 46 And Stoic views of the
origin of the world seem implied even in the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon (i. 7; vii. 24; viii.
1; xii. 1).47 The mystics in the Talmud arrived at similar conclusions, not through Greek, but
through Persian teaching. Their speculations48 boldly entered on the dangerous ground,49