[Footnote 6:  Matt. xvii. 18, 19; Luke xvii. 6.]

[Footnote 7:  Matt. ix. 8.]

[Footnote 8:  Matt. ix. 2, and following; Mark ii. 5, and following; Luke v. 20, vii. 47, 48.]

[Footnote 9:  Matt. xii. 41, 42; xxii. 43, and following; John viii. 52, and following.]

We cannot mistake in these affirmations of Jesus the germ of the doctrine which was afterward to make of him a divine hypostasis,[1] in identifying him with the Word, or “second God,"[2] or eldest Son of God,[3] or Angel Metathronos,[4] which Jewish theology created apart from him.[5] A kind of necessity caused this theology, in order to correct the extreme rigor of the old Monotheism, to place near God an assessor, to whom the eternal Father is supposed to delegate the government of the universe.  The belief that certain men are incarnations of divine faculties or “powers,” was widespread; the Samaritans possessed about the same time a thaumaturgus named Simon, whom they identified with the “great power of God."[6] For nearly two centuries, the speculative minds of Judaism had yielded to the tendency to personify the divine attributes, and certain expressions which were connected with the Divinity.  Thus, the “breath of God,” which is often referred to in the Old Testament, is considered as a separate being, the “Holy Spirit.”  In the same manner the “Wisdom of God” and the “Word of God” became distinct personages.  This was the germ of the process which has engendered the Sephiroth of the Cabbala, the AEons of Gnosticism, the hypostasis of Christianity, and all that dry mythology, consisting of personified abstractions, to which Monotheism is obliged to resort when it wishes to pluralize the Deity.

[Footnote 1:  See especially John xiv., and following.  But it is doubtful whether we have here the authentic teaching of Jesus.]

[Footnote 2:  Philo, cited in Eusebius, Praep.  Evang., vii. 13.]

[Footnote 3:  Philo, De migr.  Abraham, Sec. 1; Quod Deus immut., Sec. 6; De confus. ling., Sec. 9, 14 and 28; De profugis, Sec. 20; De Somniis, i.  Sec. 37; De Agric.  Noe, Sec. 12; Quis rerum divin. haeres, Sec. 25, and following, 48, and following, &c.]

[Footnote 4:  [Greek:  Metathronos], that is, sharing the throne of God; a kind of divine secretary, keeping the register of merits and demerits; Bereshith Rabba, v. 6 c; Talm. of Bab., Sanhedr., 38 b; Chagigah, 15 a; Targum of Jonathan, Gen., v. 24.]

[Footnote 5:  This theory of the [Greek:  Logos] contains no Greek elements.  The comparisons which have been made between it and the Honover of the Parsees are also without foundation.  The Minokhired or “Divine Intelligence,” has much analogy with the Jewish [Greek:  Logos]. (See the fragments of the book entitled Minokhired in Spiegel, Parsi-Grammatik, pp. 161, 162.)