awgiver and prophets of the Hebrew race had attained a conception of
monotheism to which the greatest of the Greek philosophers had hardly
struggled by reason. The Greeks had started with separate
nature-powers, which they had finally resolved into a supreme
nature-force; the Hebrews had started with the historical God of their
fathers, whom they had universalized into the Creator of the world and
Father of all the human race. Wellhausen has suggested that the
intellectual development of Judaism with its tendency to become a
purified monotheism moved in the same direction towards which Greek
thought tended in its philosophical speculation of the universe. The
difference between the two conceptions of God, however, remained even
in their universalized aspect; the one was an impersonal world-force,
the other a personal God in direct relation with individual man.
Elsewhere than in Judaea, it has been well said, religious development
reaches unity only by sacrificing personality. But the prophets, whose
conception of God was imaginative rather than rational, preserved His
nearness while expanding His sway. Israel, to use Philo's etymology,
is the man who sees God,[173] and his religious genius gave to the
world a personal incorporeal Deity, who is both transcendent and
immanent, personal and yet above human conception. It is unnecessary
to quote evidence of this view of the Godhead in the Bible, and it
would be superfluous to adduce passages from the rabbis, did they not
bear a striking similarity to the words of Philo. God to them is not
only the Creator of the world, but also the Father of the world, the
Governor of the world, the Only One of the world, the Space of the
world, filling it as the soul fills the body.[174] Now, this Jewish
conception of God is dominant in Philo. To him also God is not only
the Creator but the Father of the universe.[175] He is the One and the
All.[176] He is ever at rest, yet he outstrippeth everything, nearest
to everyone, yet far removed, everywhere and nowhere, above and
outside the universe, yet filling creation with Himself.[177] Philo
loves to attach to the Deity these opposite predicates, for in this
way alone can we form for ourselves some conception, however
inadequate, of His Being. Strictly, God is unconditioned, and cannot
be the subject of predication, for all determination involves
negation, and hence in one aspect He is not conceivable nor
describable, nor nameable.[178] Siegfr