Now these prototypes of Christian belief had undoubtedly manifested themselves at Alexandria in Philo’s day.  His treatises show traces of them,[218] and the question is whether he countenanced them or tried to summon the theosophists of his generation back to the true Jewish conception of God.  Certain Christian and philosophical critics of Philo, for whom the wish was perhaps father to the thought, have found in Philo’s Logos a conception which is at times impersonal, at times personal, at times an aspect of the One God, and at times a second independent God.  If we take Philo literally, this certainly is the case.  But let it be clearly understood, this interpretation not only involves Philo in inconsistency, but it utterly ruins and destroys his religious and philosophical system.  It means that the champion of Jewish monotheism wanders into a vague ditheism.  And in view of this, the modern commentators of Philo, notably Professor Drummond,[219] have examined his words more carefully and studied them in relation to their context; and they have shown how, judged in this critical fashion, the personality of the Logos is only figurative.  It is, indeed, probable that certain extreme passages, where the Logos is presented most explicitly as a separate Deity, are due to Christological interpolation.  The Church Fathers found in the popular belief in the Divine Word a remarkable support of the Trinity, and regarding, as they did, Philo’s writings as valuable testimony to the truth of Christianity, they had every temptation to bring his passages about the Logos still closer to their ideas.  And between the first and the fifth century, when we first hear from Eusebius of manuscripts of Philo at the Christian monastery of Caesarea—­from which we can trace our texts in direct line—­there was no high standard in dealing with ancient authorities.  It is the Christian teachers who preserved Philo, and they preserved him not as scholars but as missioners.  The best editors have recognized that our text has been interfered with by evidenced-making scribes, as where a passage about the new Jerusalem appears, agreeing almost word for word with the picture of Revelations.  Similarly, not a few passages about the Logos are probably spurious.[220]

Yet, even when we have expurgated our text of Philo, there remain, it will be said, numerous passages where the Logos is spoken of and apostrophized as a person.  This is so, but the conclusion which is drawn, that the Logos is regarded as a second deity, is unjustifiable.  The Jewish mind from the time of the prophets unto this day has thought in images and metaphors, and the personification of the Logos is only the most striking instance of Philo’s regular habit of personifying all abstract ideas.  The allegorical habit particularly conduces to this, for as persons are constantly resolved into ideas, so ideas come to be naturally represented as persons.  There are thus two steps in Philo’s theology, which seem to some extent to counteract each other; in the first place, he resolves the concrete physical expressions of the Bible into spiritual ideas, in the second he portrays those ideas in pictorial language and clothes them in personifications.  The allegorizer requires an allegorist to interpret him aright.