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Philo, says Sanders, to the obverse: to divinely personify abstractions 3⁄4 impetus of Judaism beneath the influence of Stoicism, whereby divine attributes of the Word, once personified, become “the Word of the Lord,” assimilated to the Stoic λόγος, though “its original connotation had been very different.”106
This prepares the way for λόγος107 to be accepted by the Hellenistic world, adds Sanders, and for the LXX to translate the Hebrew “Word” to “λόγος,” so as to interpret the Genesis Creation Myth as creation by divine reason, familiar notion equating the Stoic “λόγος” with creation “by His Wisdom,” already predicated in the Old Testament teachings (Ps. 104:24; Jer. 10:12, Jer. 51:15).”108
Indeed, once Philo’s λόγος 109 becomes the intermediary between the transcendent God and His created order, it shall no longer be mytho-poetic Grecian Ἑρμῆς, Hermes of Cyllene110 —
106 Sanders, J.N. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia. “The Word.” Ed. Arthur Buttrick and Emory Stevens Bucke. Volume 4. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962. 870.
107 Sanders, J.N. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia. “The Word.” Ed. Arthur Buttrick and Emory Stevens Bucke. Volume 4. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962. 870.
108 Sanders, J.N. The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia. “The Word.” Ed. Arthur Buttrick and Emory Stevens Bucke. Volume 4. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962. 870.
109 Philo distinguishes between God’s λόγος which corresponds to reason in man, and the Λόγος which emanates from God which corresponds to the spoken Word as the revelation of thought. The Word is the rational order manifested in the visible world. It is an instrument by which God makes the world; it is intermediate between God and man. The Λόγος is the mediator between God and Man. Archibald, Alexander. The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia. Ed. James Orr. Volume 3. Michigan: B. Eerdman’s Publishing, 1952. 1913.
110 Apollod. 3.10.1.
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