The advantage of the Jews, in fact,
according to Paul here, was that to them were first communicated the
Divine oracles: that they were made the medium of God's utterances to
mankind. There seems almost an echo of the expression in Acts vii. 38,
where Stephen is represented as saying to the Jews of their fathers on
Mount Sinai, "who received living oracles ([Greek: logia zonta]) to give
unto us." Of this nature were the "oracles of God" which were entrusted
to the Jews. Further, the phrase: "the first principles of the oracles
of God" (Heb. v. 12), is no application of the term to narrative, as
Dr. Lightfoot affirms, however much the author may illustrate his own
teaching by Old Testament history; but the writer of the Epistle clearly
explains his meaning in the first and second verses of his letter, when
he says: "God having spoken to the fathers in time past in the prophets,
at the end of these days spake unto us in His Son." Dr. Lightfoot also
urges that Philo applies the term "oracle" ([Greek: logion]) to the
_narrative_ in Gen. iv. 15, &c. The fact is, however, that Philo
considered almost every part of the Old Testament as allegorical, and
held that narrative or descriptive phrases veiled Divine oracles. When
he applies the term "oracle" to any of these it is not to the narrative,
but to the Divine utterance which he believes to be mystically contained
in it, and which he extracts and expounds in the usual extravagant
manner of Alexandrian typologists.
Pages:
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182