It is no doubt true that a vivid personification of the Wisdom of God is found both in the Old Testament and in the Apocrypha.  Thus in the book of Proverbs we have an elaborate ode upon Wisdom as the eternal assessor in the counsels of God:  ’The Lord possessed me in’ the beginning of His way, before His works of old.  I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.  When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains of water ...  When He prepared the heavens, I was there:  when He set a compass upon the face of the deep ...  Then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him:  and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him’ [Endnote 285:1].  The ideas of which this is perhaps the clearest expression are found more vaguely in other parts of the same book, in the Psalms, and in the book of Job, but they are further expanded and developed in the two Apocryphal books of Wisdom.  There [Endnote 285:2] Wisdom is represented as the ’breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty,’ as ’the brightness [Greek:  apaugasma] of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of His goodness.’  Wisdom ‘sitteth by the throne’ of God.  She reacheth from one end to another mightily:  and sweetly doth she order all things.’  ’She is privy to the mysteries of the knowledge of God and a lover of His works.’  God ‘created her before the world’ [Endnote 286:1].  We also get by the side of this, but in quite a subordinate place and in a much less advanced stage of personification, the idea of the Word or Logos:  ’O God of my fathers ... who hast made all things with thy word, and ordained man through thy wisdom’ [Endnote 286:2].  ’It was neither herb nor mollifying plaister that restored them to health:  but thy word, O Lord, which healeth all things.’  It was ‘the Almighty word’ ([Greek:  ho pantodunamos logos]) ’that leaped down from heaven’ to slay the Egyptians.

But still it will be seen that there is a distinct gap between these conceptions and that which we find in Justin.  The leading idea is that of Wisdom, not of the Word.  The Word is not even personified separately; it is merely the emitted power or energy of God.  And the personification of Wisdom is still to a large extent poetical, it does not attain to separate metaphysical hypostasis; it is not thought of as being really personal.

The Philonian conception, on the other hand, is metaphysical, but it contains many elements that are quite discordant and inconsistent with that which we find in Justin.  That it must have been so will be seen at once when we think of the sources from which Philo’s doctrine was derived.  It included in itself the Platonic theory of Ideas, the diffused Logos or anima mundi of the Stoics, and the Oriental angelology or doctrine of intermediate beings between God and man.  On its Platonic side the Logos is the Idea of Ideas summing