Psalm:(591) "God standeth in the
congregation of God," is translated by the Targum, "The divine Presence
(_Shekinah_) resteth upon the congregation of the godly." Instead of the
conclusion of the speech to Moses, "Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I
may dwell among them,"(592) the Targum has, "And I shall let My Presence
(_Shekinah_) dwell among them." Thus in the view of the rabbis _Shekinah_
represents the visible part of the divine majesty, which descends from
heaven to earth, and on the radiance of which are fed the spiritual
beings, both angels and the souls of the saints.(593) God himself was
wrapped in light, whose brilliancy no living being, however lofty, could
endure; but the _Shekinah_ or reflection of the divine glory might be
beheld by the elect either in their lifetime or in the hereafter. In this
way the rabbis solved many contradictory passages of Scripture, some of
which speak of God as invisible, while others describe man as beholding
Him.(594)

2. Just as the references to God's appearing to man suggested luminous
powers mediating the vision of God, so the passages which represent God as
speaking suggest powers mediating the voice. Hence arose the conception of
the divine _Word_, invested with divine powers both physical and
spiritual. The first act of God in the Bible is that He spoke, and by this
word the world came into being. The _Word_ was thus conceived of as the
first created being, an intermediary power between the Spirit of the world
and the created world order. The word of God, important in the cosmic
order, is still more so in the moral and spiritual worlds. The Word is at
times a synonym of divine revelation to the men of the early generations
or to Israel, the bearer of the Law. Hence the older Haggadah places
beside the _Shekinah_ the divine _Word_ (Hebrew, _Maamar_; Aramaic,
_Memra_; Greek, _Logos_) as the intermediary force of revelation.

Contact with the Platonic and Stoic philosophies led gradually to a new
development which appears in Philo. The Word or Logos becomes "the
first-created Son of God," having a personality independent from God; in
fact he is a kind of vice regent of God himself. From this it was but a
short step toward considering him a partner and peer of the Almighty, as
was done by the Church with its doctrine that the Word became flesh in
Christ, the son of God.(595) In view of this the rabbinical schools gave
up the idea of the personified Word, replacing it with