m is the
addition "a ligno" to "dominus regnavit" in Psalm XCVI., see Credner,
Beitraege II. The treatment of the Old Testament in the epistle of
Barnabas is specially instructive, and exhibits the greatest formal
agreement with that of Philo. We may close here with the words in which
Siegfried sums up his judgment on Philo. "No Jewish writer has
contributed so much as Philo to the breaking up of particularism, and
the dissolution of Judaism. The history of his people, though he
believed in it literally, was in its main points a didactic allegoric
poem for enabling him to inculcate the doctrine that man attains the
vision of God by mortification of the flesh. The law was regarded by him
as the best guide to this, but it had lost its exclusive value, as it
was admitted to be possible to reach the goal without it, and it had,
besides, its aim outside itself. The God of Philo was no longer the old
living God of Israel, but an imaginary being who, to obtain power over
the world, needed a Logos by whom the palladium of Israel, the unity of
God, was taken a prey. So Israel lost everything which had hitherto
characterised her."]

[Footnote 123: Proofs in Friedlaender, Sittengeschichte, vol. 3.]

[Footnote 124: See the chapter on belief in immortality in Friedlaender.
Sittengesch. Roms. Bde. 3. Among the numerous mysteries known to us,
that of Mythras deserves special consideration. From the middle of the
second century the Church Fathers saw in it, above all, the caricature
of the Church. The worship of Mithras had its redeemer, its mediator,
hierarchy, sacrifice, baptism and sacred meal. The ideas of expiation,
immortality, and the Redeemer God, were very vividly present in this
cult, which of course, in later times, borrowed much from Christianity:
see the accounts of Marquardt, Reville, and the Essay of Sayous, Le
Taurobole in the Rev. de l'Hist. des Religions, 1887, where the earliest
literature is also utilised. The worship of Mithras in the third century
became the most powerful rival of Christianity. In connection with this
should be specially noted the cult of AEsculapius, the God who helps the
body and the soul; see my essay "Medicinisches aus der aeltesten
Kirchengeschichte," 1892. p. 93 ff.]

[Footnote 125: Hence the wide prevalence of the cult of AEsculapius.]

[Footnote 126: Dominus in certain circumstances means more than deus;
see Tertull. Apol. It signifies more than Soter: see Irenaeus I. 1. 3:
[Greek: ton