ote 6: _Acts_ viii. 10.]

Jesus appears to have remained a stranger to these refinements of
theology, which were soon to fill the world with barren disputes. The
metaphysical theory of the Word, such as we find it in the writings of
his contemporary Philo, in the Chaldean Targums, and even in the book
of "Wisdom,"[1] is neither seen in the _Logia_ of Matthew, nor in
general in the synoptics, the most authentic interpreters of the words
of Jesus. The doctrine of the Word, in fact, had nothing in common
with Messianism. The "Word" of Philo, and of the Targums, is in no
sense the Messiah. It was John the Evangelist, or his school, who
afterward endeavored to prove that Jesus was the Word, and who
created, in this sense, quite a new theology, very different from that
of the "kingdom of God."[2] The essential character of the Word was
that of Creator and of Providence. Now, Jesus never pretended to have
created the world, nor to govern it. His office was to judge it, to
renovate it. The position of president at the final judgment of
humanity was the essential attribute which Jesus attached to himself,
and the character which all the first Christians attributed to
him.[3] Until the great day, he will sit at the right hand of God, as
his Metathronos, his first minister, and his future avenger.[4] The
superhuman Christ of the Byzantine apsides, seated as judge of the
world, in the midst of the apostles in the same rank with him, and
superior to the angels who only assist and serve, is the exact
representation of that conception of the "Son of man," of which we
find the first features so strongly indicated in the book of Daniel.

[Footnote 1: ix. 1, 2, xvi. 12. Comp. vii. 12, viii. 5, and following,
ix., and in general ix.-xi. These prosopopoeia of Wisdom personified
are found in much older books. Prov. viii., ix.; Job xxviii.; _Rev._
xix. 13.]

[Footnote 2: John, Gospel, i. 1-14; 1 Epistle v. 7; moreover, it will
be remarked, that, in the Gospel of John, the expression of "the Word"
does not occur except in the prologue, and that the narrator never
puts it into the mouth of Jesus.]

[Footnote 3: _Acts_ x. 42.]

[Footnote 4: Matt. xxvi. 64; Mark xvi. 19; Luke xxii. 69; _Acts_ vii.
55; Rom. viii. 34; Ephes. i. 20; Coloss. iii. 1; Heb. i. 3, 13, viii.
1, x. 12, xii. 2; 1 Peter iii. 22. See the passages previously cited
on the character of the Jewish Metathronos.]

At all events, the strictness of a studied theology by no me