works
of Philo, who would certainly have offered no objection to such a
doctrine, for he himself calls the Logos the first-born Son ({~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH DASIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH VARIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~})(29) When therefore Celsus, the heathen philosopher, admits
through the mouth of the Jew that the Logos is the Son of God, he is
merely on his guard against the identification of any individual with the
Son of God and indirectly with the Logos, that is to say, he does not wish
to be a Christian. At all events we see how general was the view at that
time, that the whole creation was the realisation of the Logos, nay, of
the Son of God; that God uttered Himself, revealed Himself, in the world;
that each natural species is a Word, a Thought of God, and that finally
the idea of the entire world is born of God, and is thereby the Son of
God.

This idea of a Son of God, although in its philosophical sense decidedly
Greek, had, it is true, certain preparatory parallels among the Jews, on
which Christian theologians have laid only too great stress. In the fifth
book of Moses we read, "You are children of the Lord your God." In the
book of Enoch, chap. cv., the Messiah is also called the Son of God, and
when the tempter says to Christ, Matthew iv. 1, "If thou be the Son of
God," it means the same as "If thou be the Messiah."

The question is: Is this Jewish conception of the Son of God as Messiah
the Christian as well? Such it has been, at least in one book of the
Christian church, in the Fourth Gospel, and it found its expression first
in the representation that Joseph was descended from David; secondly, in
the belief that Jesus had no earthly father. We see here at once the first
clear contradiction between Christian philosophy and Christian mythology.
If Joseph were not the father of Jesus, how could Joseph's descent from
David prove the royal ancestry of Jesus? And how does it follow from his
being the Son of God that he had no earthly father? Although he was the
Son of God, he was called the son of the carpenter, and his brothers and
sisters were well known. The divine birth demands the human; wi