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In our previous article we saw the Persian influence upon the concept of the Jewish Messiah. Let us now go one step ahead and try to understand how this religious concept was altered when Persia was conquered by Greece and Alexander the Great and how the Persian religious ideas not only affected their Jewish captives but how the whole concept of this "Messiah" was altered when it was later subjected to the Hellenistic influence of the Greek victors.
With Alexanders conquest of the Persian Empire Palestine also was drawn within the circle of Hellenistic culture. It was at first a vassal state of the Egyptian Ptolemies, and consequently at the commencement of the second century before Christ came under the overlordship of the Syrian Seleucids. It is very important for the Christian to both know and understand that the customs and intellectual life of Greece forced their way into the quiet isolation of the priest-ruled Jewish state and could not be expelled again, despite the national reaction under the Maccabees against foreign influences. Above all, however, the dispersal of the Jews contributed to bring about a settlement of opposing views. Since the Exile the Jews had spread over all the countries of the East Mediterranean. Some had remained in Babylon, others were permanently settled especially in the ports as tradesmen, bankers, and merchants. They controlled the entire money market and trade of the East through their assiduous industry, mercantile sharpness, their lack of scruples, and the tenacity with which they held together, supported therein by their worship in common in the Synagogue. In the atmosphere of Greek philosophy and morality a still further transformation and purification of YHWH took place. In all of this one man and his influence stands apart; Plato.
Most might not be aware but Plato was religious and wrote extensively concerning religious topics and had described the Godhead. Here the Jews found themselves face to face with the same problem that had long occupied the Greek philosophers. This was the reconciliation of the supernatural loftiness and aloofness from the world of their God with the demands of the religious consciousness that required the immediate presence of Godhead.
Among the ideas which were borrowed by Judaism from the Persian religion belonged those connected with the mediatory “Word.” This began long before the Greeks conquered the Persians. This "Word," as the creative power of the Godhead, the bearer of revelation and representative of God upon earth, the expression “the word” had already appeared in aphoristic literature. Under Graeco-Egyptian influence the term “wisdom” [Sophia] had become the naturalized expression for this "Word of God." “Wisdom” served to describe the activities in regard to man of the God who held aloof from the world. But this "Wisdom" had not been unknown to the Persians before the Jews. In this connection it may be noted that according to Persian ideas “Wisdom” under the name of Spenta Armaiti was considered as one of the six or seven Amesha Spentas (Amshaspands), those spirits that stood as a bodyguard closest to the throne of God and corresponded to the Jewish archangels. She, this "Wisdom," was considered by the Persians as the daughter or spouse of Ahuramazda. Already, in the so-called “Wisdom of Solomon,” written by an Alexandrian Jew in the last century before Christ, she, "Wisdom," was declared to be a separately existing spirit in close relation to God. This is a major point that must be stressed if one is to understand the ancient's understanding of the Godhead. It will be this "concept of Wisdom as separate from God yet of God" which will later be applied to Jesus and which would cause many to consider him God. This "Wisdom" would later come to be understood as half-man yet half-spirit. Under the guise of a half-personal, half-material being-a power controlling the whole of nature-she was described as the principle of the revelation of God in the creation, maintenance, and ruling of the world, as the common principle of life from on high and as the intermediary organ of religious salvation.
Alexandria, Egypt is behind so many religious concepts that have come down to us today and sadly few know or understand of this Alexandrian religious synthesis which most Christians today swallow whole as if "inspired and Divinely ordained." Study would do them well. Just as Plato had sought to overcome the dualism of the ideal and the material world by the conception of a “world-soul,” so “Wisdom” was intended to serve as an intermediary between the opposites, the God of the Jews and his creation. These efforts were continued by the Alexandrian Jew Philo (30 B.C. to 50 A.D.), who tried to bring the Perso-Jewish conception of the “Word” or “Wisdom” into closer accord with the ideas of Greek philosophy than the author of the “Book of Wisdom” had already done. Philo, too, commenced with the opposition between an unknowable, unnameable God, absolutely raised above the world, and material created existence. One must remember that most of what Plato and Philo thought were hypothesis and not facts. Philo imagined this opposition bridged over by means of “powers” which, as relatively self-existing individuals, messengers, servants, and representatives of God, at one time more closely resembled Persian angels or Greek Demons, at another time the Platonic “Ideas,” the originals and patterns of God in creating. In other words Philo expressed Persian religious ideals in Greek concepts. Every nation that defeats another always assimilated the other nation in many ways; often this included a religious syncretism. Essentially, however, these ideas expressed by Philo bore the character of the so-called “Fructifying powers,” those creative forces which infused a soul and design into formless matter and by means of which the Stoic philosophers sought to explain existence. As the first of these intermediate forces, or, indeed, as the essence of them all, Philo considered the “Logos,” efficacious reason or the Creative Word of God as we saw before. Simply said Philo's Logos was the same as the Greek's Sophia, the Greek's Wisdom and the Persian's “Wisdom” under the name of Spenta Armaiti Wisdom. Philo called his Logos/Word the “firstborn son of God” or the “second God,” the representative, interpreter, ambassador, Archangel of God, or Prince of Angels. Philo considered this cosmic reason, this Creative Word of God or this Logos as the High Priest, who made intercession with God for the world, the affairs of which he represented before him as the paraclete, the advocate and consoler of the world, who was the channel to it of the divine promises; as the tool with which God had fashioned the world, the original and ideal of it to which God had given effect in its creation that which operated in all things; in a word, as the soul or spirit of the world, which the Stoics had identified with their God, but which Philo distinguished from the other-world Divinity and looked upon as his revelation and manifestation. Philo only borrowed from the Persians their Spenta Armaiti and redefined it in terms which the Greeks could better understand.
In essence only an expression for the sum total of all divine forces and activities, the Logos of Philo also was sometimes an impersonal metaphysical principle, simply the efficacy of the Godhead, and sometimes an independent personality distinct from God. Just as the Stoics had personified their world-reason in Hermes, the messenger of the Gods, so the Egyptians had raised Amun Ra's magic word of creation to a self-existing personal mediatory being in Thoth the guide of souls; the Babylonians, the word of fate of the great God Marduk in the shape of Nabu; the Persians, the word of Ahuramazda in Vohu mano as well as in the Spenta Armaiti, the good thought of the creative God. And just as according to Persian ideas it was at one time the divine “son” and mediator “Mithras,” the collectivity of all divine forces, at another the ideal man Saoshyant who appeared as Saviour and Deliverer of the world, and just as both mingled in one form, so Philo also at one time described the Word as the collectivity of all creative ideas, at another only as the unembodied idea of man, the ideal man, the direct divine image and immaterial pattern of the material exemplars of humanity, that is effective therein as the subject of all religious redemption. Indeed, he occasionally identified him with the tree of life in Paradise, since both were everlasting and “stood in the middle.”
Now here is where you need to be very familiar with Judaism, Moses, the Prophets, and the Writings of the Jewish Bible in order to see the contrasts and the departure from Divine Revelation given the Jewish people. According to Philo, himself a Jew no less, man is unable of his own strength to free himself from the bonds of earthly existence. This is rather amazing since Philo was a Jew yet such an idea and belief is totally alien to the Jewish Bible, Moses, the Prophets, and the Writings. This is what makes study so difficult; to be able to read and discern error when your read it at the pen of one who is highly esteemed in the academic community. Just because Church History and Secular History esteems an ancient does not mean all of his concepts are correct and until the average believer undertakes a serious study of his faith of Christianity as well as Biblical Judaism as the faith of Jesus/Yeshua then he is set up to be led astray when reading those considered highly esteemed by various authorities.
According to Philo all deliverance depends upon the emancipation of the soul from the body and its sensuous desires. This is not Biblical faith; this is Gnosticism and Jesus/Yeshua was not a Gnostic. Let us read closely as let us see if we can spot this Gnostic thought in what Philo says next. Philo maintained that in conformity with his true spiritual and godlike nature, to become as perfect as God, is the highest virtue and at the same time true happiness. So far so good. Yet this for Philo was not attained by obedience to the written Word of God where one chooses those things pleasing to God and imitating God in one's life-style, but is is attained by an insight into the divine reality of things. This Gnostic special revelation was available to all but sadly few possessed such "hidden knowledge." Thus the lure of these religious cults of Philo's day which promised such hidden salvation knowledge to those who became followers. This for Philo was paramount as one sough to fathom this Logos, Wisdom, and Word and secondary to this was one's whole-hearted trust in God, grateful recognition of the goodness and love bestowed by him which was to culminate in one's piety towards God as well as in charity and justice towards other men. But in addition the Logos itself must be in us and cause for us the insight into our divine nature. The issue boils down to how one was to get this "Logos" inside himself, and as we have seen in past studies into Gnosticism this came from secret knowledge imparted to initiates by those well seasoned in such religious cults.
In closing let us again focus on what we have seen. The non-Jews developed a concept of God that contained the creative power of God as maintained in His Word and this Word was often understood to be His Cosmic reason and Wisdom and this concept was later separated from God itself and becomes a separate entity which is later personified into half-man and half-spirit. This Greek idea, as taken from prior Gentile nations, would serve as the foundation for the early Church Fathers who would apply this Logos/Wisdom/Word to Jesus and thus Jesus becomes like all the sun-godmen before him a Godman himself. In all of this we loose the concept of the human Messiah of Judaism and with the proliferation of apocalytpic writings prior to and following the destruction of the Temple these Essenes would gravitate themselves to prior Persian ideas and religious beliefs that have more in common with sun-god saviors and messiahs of Gentile nations that with what Samuel prophesied for the Jewish nation.
Finally with the Gentile oversight of not only the drafting much of the writing and alteration of New Testament texts these Greek, Persian, Babylonian, and Egyptian ideas concerning their sun-godmen [Spenta Armaiti, Word, Wisdom, Logos] get written into texts which later become the New Testament. Sadly these texts have more in common with the beliefs of Plato and Philo than with Moses, the Prophets, and the Writings and the concept of the Jewish human Messiah is forever altered...that is for those who don't know and who don't study enough to find the truth for themselves. When ones takes the time to serious study this out you can see these things build when one nation conquers another and assimilates prior religious ideas and they all culminate with the Essenes of Israel which left us their literature as well as their influence (Acts 6).
Millions read these texts never suspecting that such beliefs attributed to Jesus [a secondary God or separate Godman] in the New Testament render them idolators before YHWH.
