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The Logos is as manna and coriander seed
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THE LOGOS IS AS MANNA AND CORIANDER SEED
And a little further on, referring to the allegorical “manna, ” or heavenly food, “the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat” (Ex. xvi. 13), he writes:
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“Dost thou not see the food of the soul, what it is? It is the Continuing Reason (Logos) of God, like unto dew, encircling the whole of it [the soul] on all sides, and suffering no part of it to be without its share of it [the Logos].
“But this Reason is not apparent everywhere, but [only] in the man who is destitute of passions and vices; yea, subtle is it for the mind to distinguish, or to be distinguished by the mind, exceedingly translucent and pure for sight to see.
“It is, moreover, as it were, a coriander seed. 1 For agriculturalists declare that the seed of the coriander can be divided and dissected infinitely, and that every single part and section [thereof], when sown, comes up just as the whole seed. Such also is the Reason (Logos) of God, profitable in its entirety and in every part, however small it be. ” 2
And he adds a little further on:
“This is the teaching of the hierophant and prophet, Moses, who will say: ‘This is the bread, the food which God hath given to the soul, ’ 3 that He hath given [us] for meat and drink, His own Word, 4 His own Reason, 5 for this [Reason] is the bread which He hath given us to eat; this is the Word. ” 6
THE LOGOS IS THE PUPIL OF GOD’S EYE
Philo also likens the Divine Reason to the pupil of the eye—a figure that will meet us later in considering the meaning of the Κ ό ρ η Κ ό σ μ ο υ (“Virgin of the World”) treatise—for he writes:
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“May not [this Reason] be also likened to the pupil of the eye? For just as the eye’s pupil, though the smallest part [of it], does yet behold all of the zones of things existing—the boundless sea, and vastness of the air, and all of the whole heaven which the sun doth bound from east to west, —so is the sight of the Divine Reason the keenest sight of all, so that it can behold all things; by which [men] shall behold things worthy to be seen beyond white [light] 1 itself.
“For what could be more bright or more far-seeing than Reason Divine, by shining in which the other [lights] drive out all mist and darkness, striving to blend themselves with the soul’s light. ” 2
“MAN SHALL NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE”
And again, in a passage of intense interest we read:
“For He nourisheth us with His Reason (Logos)—the most general [of all things]. . . . And the Reason of God is above the whole cosmos; it is the most ancient and most general of all the things that are.
“This Reason the ‘fathers’ 3 knew not, —not [our] true [eternal] fathers, but those hoary in time, who say: ‘Let us take a leader, and let us return unto’—the passions of—‘Egypt. ’ 4
“Therefore let God announce His [good] tidings to the soul in an image: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word 5 that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, ’ 6—that is, he shall be nourished by the whole of Reason (Logos) and by [every] part of it. For ‘mouth’ is a symbol of the [whole] Logos, and ‘word’ is its part. ” 7
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These “fathers, ” then, are those of the lower nature, and not our true spiritual parents; it is these “fathers” that we are to abandon.
Compare with this Matt. x. 37: “He who loveth father and mother more than Me is not worthy of Me”; and the far more striking form of the tradition in Luke xiv. 26: “If any man cometh unto Me, and doth not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own soul also, he cannot be My disciple. ”
In the Gnostic gospel, known as the Pistis Sophia (341), the mystic meaning of these parents is given at length, as signifying the rulers of the lower nature, and the Master is made to say: “For this cause have I said unto you aforetime, ‘He who shall not leave father and mother to follow after Me is not worthy of Me. ’ What I said then was, ‘Ye shall leave your parents the rulers, that ye may be children of the First Everlasting Mystery. ’”
But the most arresting point is that Matt. iv. 4, in the story of the Temptation, quotes precisely the same words of the LXX. text of Deut. viii. 3 which Philo does, beginning where he does and finishing where he does, both omitting the final and tautological “shall man live”—a very curious coincidence. Luke iv. 4 preserves only the first half of the sentence; but it evidently lay in exactly the same form in which Philo uses it before the first and third Evangelists in their second or “Logia” source. It was, then, presumably a frequently quoted text.
THE LOGOS-MEDIATOR
The Divine Reason is further figured as a true “Person, ” the Mediator between God and man. Thus Philo writes:
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“And on His angel-ruling and most ancient Reason (Logos), the Father who created all, hath bestowed a special gift—that standing between them as a Boundary, 1 he may distinguish creature from Creator.
“He [the Reason] ever is himself the suppliant unto the Incorruptible on mortal kind’s behalf in its distress, and is the King’s ambassador to subject nature.
“And he exulteth in his gift, and doth majesticly insist thereon, declaring: ‘Yea, have I stood between the Lord and you, ’ 2—not increate as God, nor yet create as ye, but in the midst between the [two] extremes, hostage to both: to Him who hath created him, for pledge that the creature never will remove itself entirely [from Him], nor make revolt, choosing disorder in order’s place; and to the thing created for good hope that God, the Merciful, will never disregard the work of His own hands. ‘For I will herald forth the news of peace to the creation from Him who knows how to make wars to cease, from God the Everlasting Peacekeeper. ’” 3
In considering what is claimed to be the elaborate symbolism of the sacred vestments of the High Priest, and the nature of this symbolical office, Philo declares that the twelve stones upon the breast of the High Priest, in four rows of three each, are a symbol of the Divine Reason (Logos), which holds together and regulates the universe; this breastplate, then, is the logion or sacred oracle of God.
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“For it was necessary that he who was consecrated to the Father of the cosmos, should have [His] Son,
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the most perfect in virtue, as intercessor, 1 both for the forgiveness 2 of sins, and for the abundant supply of the most unstinted blessings.
“It probably also imparts the preliminary teaching to the Servant of God, 3 that if he cannot be worthy of Him who made the cosmos, he should nevertheless without ceasing strive to be worthy of that cosmos; for when he has [once] been clothed with its likeness, 4 he is bound forthwith, by carrying about the image of the model 5 in his head, of his own self to change himself as though it were from man into the nature of the cosmos, and, if we ought to say so 6—nay, he who speaks on truth ought to speak truth! —be [himself] a little cosmos. ” 7
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