Trinitarian Dr. H. R. Boer also tells us:

"Philo...put a mediator between God and the world. This mediator he found in the Logos. He is the greater of the powers with which God is surrounded [these 'powers', the angels of God, are sometimes called 'gods' by Philo, the first Christians, and even in the Bible itself - RDB]. In him Philo saw a divine power that is less than God [cf. John 1:1c, AT and Moffatt], standing between God and the world. Through him God has created all things [cf. John 1:3]. Later, this thought played a large role in the attempt of Christian thinkers to explain the relationship of Christ to God." - A Short History of the Early Church, 1976, p. 12.

"Philo of course conceives of the Logos - which he occasionally calls divine (qeoV) [literally, 'a god'], but never 'God' (o qeoV) - as the highest angel and as the highest idea at the same time...." - p. 126, John 1, Haenchen, Fortress Press, 1984.

We even find Philo saying: the Divine Logos "has been anointed" [Messiah/Christ means the 'Anointed One'] and "his father being God, who is likewise Father of all" - p. 69, Philo, vol. 5, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press.

The Encyclopedia Britannica also tells us about Philo's "Logos":

"Thus there is close similarity of symbolism between Philo and the fourth evangelist [John], and they move in the same [Jewish] world of thought ...." - p. 251, vol. 14, 1968.

And the respected, trinitarian Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, p. 833, also admits:

"Though it is clear that the author [of John] was influenced by the same background of ideas as Philo, his identification of the Logos with the Messiah was entirely new." - Oxford University Press, 1990. (But, of course, we have seen a connection between one who has been anointed [messiah] and the Logos in the works of Philo described in Philo, vol. 5, quoted above.)

Yes, as we have seen above, a large number of highly distinctive descriptions of the Logos by Philo have also been used by John to describe his Logos: Jesus! These terms are used by Philo alone, not by other trinitarian-proposed sources of John's Logos concept!

Philo alone took the term "Logos" from the Greek concept and modified it to match Old Testament scriptural concepts (including "Wisdom" - Prov. 8:22-30 and "Word" in Ps 33:6).

"There is evidence, however, especially in Philo, that the form of the Logos was virtually identical in substance with that of Wisdom [in Prov. 8:22-30]." - p. 126, John 1, Ernst Haenchen, Fortress Press, 1984.

After discussing all other trinitarian-proposed origins of John's concept of the Logos (including, of course, those of the Stoics; the OT Wisdom concept; etc.) and rejecting them all, a highly-respected trinitarian work concludes:

"In the question of the origin of the Logos-concept [by John], pre-eminent significance is therefore to be attributed to Hellenistic Judaism [Philo]." - p. 1117, vol. 3, The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 1986, Zondervan.

Even the famed Hastings' Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics tells us that John must be referring to Philo's conception of the Logos:

"It is clear from the tone of the Prologue [John 1:1-18] that Philo's conception of the Logos, or something akin to it, was already familiar to those for whom the Evangelist [John] wrote. No explanation of the word Logos is given [anywhere in the entire Gospel]; and almost every verse in this Prologue might be paralleled from Philo [and only Philo]."{2} - p. 136, vol. 8.

Noted Trinitarian scholar C.H. Dodd also tells us:

"It can hardly be an accident ... that even where the term logoV [Logos] is not used [in John's Gospel], functions which in Philo belong to the Logos are assigned to Christ. .... I conclude that the substance of a Logos-doctrine similar to that of Philo is present all through the gospel". - p. 279, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, Cambridge University Press, 1995 printing.

And the trinitarian The Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Inter-Varsity Press, Tyndale House Publishers, 1980, says

"Only the Philonic Logos-teaching [Philo's teaching of the Logos] provides a clear theological scheme in which the Word possesses a like unity with God and a like distinction from him, and in which both creative and sustaining activity in the universe and revelatory activity towards man is ascribed to it. Further, the necessarily unique concept of incarnation is nevertheless a proper development of the identification of Philo's [and only Philo's] Logos with the Ideal Man [Jesus]." - vol. 2, p. 909 (also see the New Bible Dictionary, pp. 703-704, 2nd ed.).

"... in the cosmology explicit in the Prologue [verses 1:1-18 of the Gospel of John] and elsewhere there is evidently close kinship to the Philonic allegory." - p. 934, New Bible Dictionary (trinitarian), 2nd ed., Tyndale House Publ. (trinitarian), 1984.

"With striking vigour and originality of thought Philo built up a religious philosophy, in which the Logos is endowed with personality" - [something all other Logos concepts did not have, but which the author of the Gospel of John certainly used for his Logos!] - A Dictionary of the Bible, Hastings (ed.), p. 283, Supplement, 1988 printing, Hendrickson Press.

I don't intend to accuse the Apostle John of actually adopting part of Philo's theosophy (and certainly not the pagan philosophy of the Greeks), but if he were making a comparison between Christ and a popularly understood concept of the word Logos by Hellenistic Jews at that time, he would have used the popular Logos concept of Philo, the Jewish theosophist who at least based his theosophy "as its direct foundation on the Jewish scriptures as an inspired revelation."{3}

As The Expositor’s Greek Testament tells us in its introduction to the Gospel of John: “The idea of the Logos was a Jewish-Alexandrian idea, and that the author sought to attach his Gospel to this idea is unquestionable…. But the term and the idea of the Logos are used by the author to introduce his subject to the Greek readers. As Harnack says: ‘The prologue [John 1:1 - John 1:18] is not the key to the understanding of the Gospel, but it is rather intended to prepare the Hellenistic reader for its perusal’.” - p. 671, Volume One.

And if John were writing to a group of the "many ... Hellenistic Jews" who had become a part of the Church (or who were at least interested in Christianity), there would be no need to explain the Logos concept which they were already very familiar with from Philo's Hellenistic Judaism.{4} (The lack of any explanation of his Logos concept by John has been very troubling to many students of the Prologue of the Gospel of John.) And that concept is that the Logos (although the second highest power in the universe, the Son of God, the Mediator between God and Man, the one through whom God created all things) is an intermediate being who is not the Most High God but is 'a god'!
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(Notes are found in part 3)

  

Edited 3 times by tigger 2 Oct 10 11 6:42 PM.