ScholarlySeeker
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This topic is literally one of the most fascinating, wide-spread, difficult, exalting, wild and woolly, and amazing to ever get into. This Logos thing has so many meanings it is literally inexhaustible, having over 3 entire small print, 2 columns pages defining it in the Liddell-Scott Greek Lexicon, and literally hundreds of thousands of articles, books, and monographs written on it.
So, I just want to possibly at least start the subject, and much more will come, and I am looking forward to seeing what else all you wonderful brains come up with.
In his masterful analysis of the Melchizedek Tradition, Fred L. Horton, Jr., described how Philo of Alexandria, one of the foremost philosopher’s of Jesus’ day, and his contemporary, said that Melchizedek is a representation of the Logos. Now… now… take a deep breath here. This is far vaster than the few mere words it took to type that out. Melchizedek is the Logos. God, according to Philo, and in keeping with what very little biblical tradition we have of this mysterious, fascinating character, possesses a unique and self-taught priesthood, he is without parental lineage, and God set him out from the very first as priest and king.(1)
We are not sure where Melchizedek’s origin as the Logos occurred, whether from the Old Testament sources (which are very few actually, Gen. 17 and Ps. 110), or from the later interpretations or midrash on these sources. But, the note I wish to make is that it is there. Interesting, Philo was known to allegorize the scripture. And Horton shows how it was not the historical Melchizedek (if there was such an one) which Philo was explicating so much as the allegorical Melchizedek as Logos. Since Melchizedek’s priesthood is unique and without antecedents, as priest, Melchizedek is the Logos, says Horton’s understanding of Philo.(2)
So that’s one rather startling note! Yet here is another most amazing concept presented by Eugene Seaich. He notes that the two cherubim of the Ark of the Covenant, following the great Jewish scholar Raphael Patai, and expanding far beyond the discussion which Patai made in his truly ground-breaking book The Hebrew Goddess, were the two faces of God, one of them male, the other female, and when Israel did righteousness, they came together in a copulating form! Israel as Yahweh’s bride became One with him. This concept is incredibly fascinating! But the Hasidic’s who interpreted the cherubim actually went so far as to identify the Shekhinah with the Philonic Logos. They interpreted this as God’s male-female image. This was how God brought about creation, and whose human form was the model for the sexes.(3) Seaich also notes that later the Gnostics take on the Philonic mystery, what is called the “assimilation to God” was all based on the prior kinship with the Divine. In this, the Logos was related to man, which was understood as “the very principle of life within each individual.”(4)
And finally, one more note on this Logos principle, (and it is most fundamentally in the Tarot, but that is another topic and paper for later), Margaret Barker, true to form, did not leave out discussing the fascinating Logos in Greek, Philonic, Jewish, and Christian scripture, lore, and interpretation.
Philo did not get his Logos from the Greeks and Plato, but from the ancient Hebraic sacred priesthood of the First Temple! She shows after extensive analysis how this was done, and he idea is that it was the mythology of the First Temple which Philo adapted, allegorized and made it his Logos. This was a quite unique thrust of Barker, and I found it indeed, quite credible and very spiritually convincing since her work on First Temple Judaism is vastly more than anyone else has ever done. Philo never refers to the Logos as an angel, and he does not identify it with the God of the Old Testament. “The Logos is antecedent to all that has come into existence… eldest and most all-embracing of created things. Philo’s Logos was a deity of some sort; he refers to the Logos as a second God...it was the rational part of man, he said, which was formed as an impression of the Logos. In his allegorizing, he placed the Logos as the Most High God, then he placed the Logos with only the true High God. It ended up that it was the Logos who brought the seeker into the presence of God. And in fact, he called the High Priest the Logos as well! So the Logos was the Mediator. Philo is also certain that it was that the Logos was at the conjunction of the visible and invisible worlds, and thus was the shadow as well as the means for the creation.
The Logos was also the central stem of the Menorah. The seven eyes of God which the Menorah represented were powers which caused creation (the Menorah was a symbol of the Mother!), and it was these powers which are closely associated with the Logos, that they can enter matter. One power was a royal power, another was a creative power, etc. all were associated with the Logos in Philo as Barker interprets him. Time and again she says we find that the Logos is the visible, the manifestation of God. The Logos is Wisdom. The Logos was the key to the Cosmic Covenant and its stability. The Logos was the head of the powers, and it was the Powers which bound the creation together. The oldest Logos of God has put on the universe as a garment! The Logos is the heavenly bread. The Logos was associated with Moses, with the Royal cultus, with Wisdom, and was the key to the mystic ascent. And it goes on and on and on. None of this is caught much in John 1:1 where it merely says the Word is the Logos. Philo gives us vastly more to go on!(5)
So, this opens up an entire new world of exploration for us interested in the esotericism of the West does it not? Much more to come as I have the time.
Endnotes
1. Fred L. Horton, Jr., The Melchizedek Tradition: A Critical Examination of the Sources to the Fifth Century A. D. and in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Cambridge University Press, 1976: 57.
2. Horton, Melchizedek Tradition, p. 58-59.
3. Eugene Seaich, A Great Mystery: The Secret of the Jerusalem Temple: The Embracing Cherubim and At-One-Ment with the Divine, Gorgias Press, 2008: 11.
4. Seaich, A Great Mystery, p. 217.
5. Margaret Barker, “Temple Imagery in Philo: An Indication of the Origin of the Logos?” in Templum Amicitiae: Essays on the Second Temple Presented to Ernst Bammel: JSOT, 1991: I have essentially just picked the highlights throughout her paper.
So, I just want to possibly at least start the subject, and much more will come, and I am looking forward to seeing what else all you wonderful brains come up with.
In his masterful analysis of the Melchizedek Tradition, Fred L. Horton, Jr., described how Philo of Alexandria, one of the foremost philosopher’s of Jesus’ day, and his contemporary, said that Melchizedek is a representation of the Logos. Now… now… take a deep breath here. This is far vaster than the few mere words it took to type that out. Melchizedek is the Logos. God, according to Philo, and in keeping with what very little biblical tradition we have of this mysterious, fascinating character, possesses a unique and self-taught priesthood, he is without parental lineage, and God set him out from the very first as priest and king.(1)
We are not sure where Melchizedek’s origin as the Logos occurred, whether from the Old Testament sources (which are very few actually, Gen. 17 and Ps. 110), or from the later interpretations or midrash on these sources. But, the note I wish to make is that it is there. Interesting, Philo was known to allegorize the scripture. And Horton shows how it was not the historical Melchizedek (if there was such an one) which Philo was explicating so much as the allegorical Melchizedek as Logos. Since Melchizedek’s priesthood is unique and without antecedents, as priest, Melchizedek is the Logos, says Horton’s understanding of Philo.(2)
So that’s one rather startling note! Yet here is another most amazing concept presented by Eugene Seaich. He notes that the two cherubim of the Ark of the Covenant, following the great Jewish scholar Raphael Patai, and expanding far beyond the discussion which Patai made in his truly ground-breaking book The Hebrew Goddess, were the two faces of God, one of them male, the other female, and when Israel did righteousness, they came together in a copulating form! Israel as Yahweh’s bride became One with him. This concept is incredibly fascinating! But the Hasidic’s who interpreted the cherubim actually went so far as to identify the Shekhinah with the Philonic Logos. They interpreted this as God’s male-female image. This was how God brought about creation, and whose human form was the model for the sexes.(3) Seaich also notes that later the Gnostics take on the Philonic mystery, what is called the “assimilation to God” was all based on the prior kinship with the Divine. In this, the Logos was related to man, which was understood as “the very principle of life within each individual.”(4)
And finally, one more note on this Logos principle, (and it is most fundamentally in the Tarot, but that is another topic and paper for later), Margaret Barker, true to form, did not leave out discussing the fascinating Logos in Greek, Philonic, Jewish, and Christian scripture, lore, and interpretation.
Philo did not get his Logos from the Greeks and Plato, but from the ancient Hebraic sacred priesthood of the First Temple! She shows after extensive analysis how this was done, and he idea is that it was the mythology of the First Temple which Philo adapted, allegorized and made it his Logos. This was a quite unique thrust of Barker, and I found it indeed, quite credible and very spiritually convincing since her work on First Temple Judaism is vastly more than anyone else has ever done. Philo never refers to the Logos as an angel, and he does not identify it with the God of the Old Testament. “The Logos is antecedent to all that has come into existence… eldest and most all-embracing of created things. Philo’s Logos was a deity of some sort; he refers to the Logos as a second God...it was the rational part of man, he said, which was formed as an impression of the Logos. In his allegorizing, he placed the Logos as the Most High God, then he placed the Logos with only the true High God. It ended up that it was the Logos who brought the seeker into the presence of God. And in fact, he called the High Priest the Logos as well! So the Logos was the Mediator. Philo is also certain that it was that the Logos was at the conjunction of the visible and invisible worlds, and thus was the shadow as well as the means for the creation.
The Logos was also the central stem of the Menorah. The seven eyes of God which the Menorah represented were powers which caused creation (the Menorah was a symbol of the Mother!), and it was these powers which are closely associated with the Logos, that they can enter matter. One power was a royal power, another was a creative power, etc. all were associated with the Logos in Philo as Barker interprets him. Time and again she says we find that the Logos is the visible, the manifestation of God. The Logos is Wisdom. The Logos was the key to the Cosmic Covenant and its stability. The Logos was the head of the powers, and it was the Powers which bound the creation together. The oldest Logos of God has put on the universe as a garment! The Logos is the heavenly bread. The Logos was associated with Moses, with the Royal cultus, with Wisdom, and was the key to the mystic ascent. And it goes on and on and on. None of this is caught much in John 1:1 where it merely says the Word is the Logos. Philo gives us vastly more to go on!(5)
So, this opens up an entire new world of exploration for us interested in the esotericism of the West does it not? Much more to come as I have the time.
Endnotes
1. Fred L. Horton, Jr., The Melchizedek Tradition: A Critical Examination of the Sources to the Fifth Century A. D. and in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Cambridge University Press, 1976: 57.
2. Horton, Melchizedek Tradition, p. 58-59.
3. Eugene Seaich, A Great Mystery: The Secret of the Jerusalem Temple: The Embracing Cherubim and At-One-Ment with the Divine, Gorgias Press, 2008: 11.
4. Seaich, A Great Mystery, p. 217.
5. Margaret Barker, “Temple Imagery in Philo: An Indication of the Origin of the Logos?” in Templum Amicitiae: Essays on the Second Temple Presented to Ernst Bammel: JSOT, 1991: I have essentially just picked the highlights throughout her paper.
