SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES

TO

SECT. II.

Note [A] p. 409.

"Upon the whole, then, how are we to determine the sense of this singular phrase in the Targumim? Although we consider it neither as a reciprocal, nor as intended to designate the second Person in the Trinity, who becoming incarnate lived and died for us (of which perhaps the Targumists themselves might have had at best but indistinct, or even incorrect ideas), yet may we most probably regard it in its general use, as indicative of a divine Person. That it properly means the word of the Lord, or his will declared by a verbal communication, and that it is sometimes literally so taken, cannot be denied. But it seems impossible to consult the numerous passages, where personal characteristics are attributed to it, and to conceive, that it does not usually point out a real person. Whether the Targumists contemplated this hypostatical word, as a true subsistence in the Divine nature, or as a distinct emanation of Deity, it may be useless to enquire, because we are deficient in data adequate to a complete decision of the question. If we suppose, that the doctrine of a Trinity was originally known to the Jews, and ever after religiously preserved among them, we shall be inclined to adopt the former opinion; but if, on the other hand, in the absence of direct proof, we think such a supposition improbable, we must embrace the latter. And in this case perhaps we may be disposed to identify the theology of the Targumists with that

of Philo the Alexandrian, and regard both as influenced by what is conceived to have been at the time the favourite philosophy of the East. Philo, like them, frequently alludes to the Word of God, λόγος Θεξ, and we know that he every where ascribes to this Word personal powers and operations, and denominates him the second God, δεύτερος Θεός.”—Dr. Rich. Lawrence's Dissert. on the Logos, p. 13, 14.

Note [B] p. 410.

Χριστιανοῖς ἐγκαλεῖ ὡς σοφιζομένοις ἐν τῷ λέγειν τὸν Ὑιὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ εἶναι ̓Αντολόγον· καὶ ὄιεταί γε κρατύνειν τὸ ἔγκλημα, ἐπεὶ, Λόγον ἐπαγγελλόμενοι Υιὸν εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἀποδείκνυμεν ου Λόγον καθαρὸν καὶ ἅγιον, ἀλλὰ ἄνθρωπον ἀτιμότατον, ἀπαχθέντα, καὶ ἀποτυμπανισθέντα.—Ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ πολλοῖς Ἰουδαίοις καὶ σοφοῖς γε ἐπαγγελλομένοις εἶναι συμβαλών, ουδενὸς ἀκήκοα ἐπαινοῦντος τὸ, Λόγον ἐῖναι τὸν Ὑιὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ, ὡς ὁ Κέλσος ἔιρηκε· καὶ τοῦτο περιάπτων τῷ τοῦ Ἰουδαίου προσώπῳ λέγοντος, ὡς ἐίγε ὁ Λόγος ἐστὶν ὑμῖν Υιὸς τοῦ Θεοῦ, καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐπαινοῦμεν. “ He charges the Christians with being deceivers when they say that the Son of God is the Word Himself; and he conceives that he establishes his accusation in that, when we have announced the Word to be the Son of God, we exhibit, not a pure and holy Word, but a man in the lowest degree of meanness, dragged to punishment, and tortured to death.—I have had intercourse with many Jews, and those such as professed to be men of learning, but I have never heard of any one who admitted that the Son of God is the Word, as Celsus has affirmed; and this he attaches to the person of a Jew whom he represents as saying, If your doctrine be that the Word is the Son of God, this we also admit.” ORIGENIS Opera; ed. de la Rue, Par. 1733 1759. Tom. i. Ρ. 413.

Celsus, the first and ablest literary opponent of the Christian religion, flourished within seventy or eighty years of the last surviving apostles. Brucker, in his Hist. of Philos. says that, while the extracts made by Origen prove Celsus to have been an inveterate enemy of Christianity, they shew that he was not destitute of learning and ability. We have reason to believe that Origen, in his reply, has preserved nearly the whole of his adversary's work, in his own words.

SECT. III.

ON THE WRITINGS OF THE ALEXANDRIAN JEWS, COMMONLY CALLED THE APOCRYPHA.

MANY Jews were forcibly carried into Egypt, and others were induced to settle in that country, by Ptolemy the son of Lagus. They were chiefly settled at Alexandria, where the Macedonian Greek, with a large infusion of Hebrew and Chaldaic idioms, became their vernacular language, and was transferred to their religious services. To these Jews and their descendants we owe, not only the Version of the Old Testament called the Septuagint, but those various writings, moral, historical, and mythic, the collection of which is called the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. All of those books are curious, and some of them extremely valuable. The earlier of them

It is to be regretted that the just rejection of these books from the Scriptural Canon by the Reformed Churches, has occasioned the opposite extreme of an entire disregard to them in many serious and studious Christians. As a collection of the most ancient Jewish works next to the inspired books, as documents of history, as lessons of prudence and often of piety, and as elucidating the phraseology of the New Testament, the Greek Apocrypha well deserves the frequent perusal of scholars, and especially of theological students.

seem to have been compiled or translated from materials written within a century after the last of the inspired prophets,* and the latter of them, interpolations excepted, were probably composed some years before the birth of Christ.t

In reading these productions of the Alexandrine Jews, one cannot but remark the decline of religious intelligence, and the low point to which the knowledge and hope of a Messiah had sunk. They countenance incantations and other heathen superstitions; they speak of angels as intercessors with God for men; prayers and sacrifices for the souls of those who died in sin, they extol as "holy and pious;" and, so miserably lax had the current notions of morality become, that suicide and assassination are the subjects of encomium. The term Messiah, or its translation Christ, does not even once occur, as a designation of the promised Saviour. The passages which have been adduced as intimations of belief or expectation with regard to him, contain, at the utmost, but very few and faint traces of any such reference. A per

* See the Prologues of Jesus the son of Sirach.

+ The 2d Book of Esdras (in the Roman Catholic enumeration, the 4th) is not included in this opinion. It is not extant in Greek, and was probably written after the commencement of Christianity. The two apocryphal books of Esdras, and the Prayer of Manasseh, are rejected from the canon by the church. of Rome.

Tob. iii. 8. vi. 16. xii. 15. 2 Macc. xii. 40-46. xiv. 41, 42. Judith ix. 2—4.

sonification of sacred wisdom occurs,* which some have been willing to accept as a description of "Christ, the Wisdom of God:" but if the far more strong and beautiful picture of the same kind in the genuine Book of Proverbs,† cannot be satisfactorily proved to be a designed description of the Saviour's person, much less can such an interpretation be established on the apocryphal imitation. In two or three places, the word of God is mentioned, in a way on which stress has been laid : but I cannot discover evidence that it signifies any thing more than, either the divine command, or God himself according to the Chaldaic usage before stated. The appearances and revelations which the earlier records of the Old Testament attribute to the Angel of Jehovah, are thus referred to; "God-appeared upon earth, and was conversant with men:"§ and in their

* Wisd. Sol. ch. vii-xi.

+ Ch. viii. ix.

↑ Wisd. Sol. ix. 1. xvi. 12, 26. xviii. 15. The last passage has the most of a personal appearance. "When still silence embraced all things, and night in its own speed had reached its midway, thine all-powerful word, from heaven out of royal thrones, leaped, a fierce warrior into the midst of the land of destruction, bearing a sharp sword, thine undissembled commandment; and standing up it filled all things with death; and whilst it touched heaven, it stalked upon earth." This laboured bombast appears to be an injudicious imitation of passages in the Greek Poets. (Not improbably a passage in Callimachus's Hymn to Ceres, v. 30—59, which the scholiast says was written for the Eleusinian festival instituted at Alexandria by Ptolemy Philadelphus.) But surely none will attribute to the Messiah to have been the agent of destruction in the land of Egypt. § Bar. iii. 35-37.