ny loophole for doubt, this is not the case with
their contemporary Philo. In one place, he speaks of the words in
Deut. x. 9, 'The Lord is his inheritance,' as an 'oracle' ([Greek:
logion]); in another he quotes as an 'oracle' ([Greek: logion]) the
_narrative_ in Gen. iv. 15: 'The Lord God set a mark upon Cain, lest
anyone finding him should kill him.' [125:3] From this and other
passages it is clear that with Philo an 'oracle' is a synonyme for a
Scripture. Similarly Clement of Rome writes: 'Ye know well the
sacred Scriptures, and have studied the oracles of God;' [125:4] and
immediately he recalls to their mind the account in Deut. ix. 12
_sq._, Exod. xxxii. 7 _sq._, of which the point is not any Divine
precept or prediction, but _the example of Moses_. A few years later
Polycarp speaks in condemnation of those who 'pervert the oracles of
the Lord." [126:1]

He then goes on to refer to Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and
Basil, but I need not follow him to these later writers, but confine
myself to that which I have quoted.

"When Paul writes in the Epistle to the Romans iii. 2, 'They were
entrusted with the oracles of God,' can he mean anything else but
the Old Testament Scriptures, including the historical books?" argues
Dr. Lightfoot. I maintain, on the contrary, that he certainly does not
refer to a collection of writings at all, but to the communications or
revelations of God, and, as the context shows, probably more immediately
to the Messianic prophecies. 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 d