his manner of exegesis and his habit of
spiritualizing the material. It is related in Exodus (xvi. 15) that
when the Israelites saw the heavenly food they exclaimed [Hebrew: mn
hu'], "What is it?" and hence the food obtained its name of manna. Now the
Greek Septuagint word for [Hebrew: mn] is [Greek: ti], which means not
only "what" but "anything." Philo sees in the gift of the heavenly
food a symbol of the inspiration of the chosen people by the Divine
Logos, and says that the Logos is rightly called manna, _i.e._,
anything, because it is the "most generic of all things, and that by
which man may be nourished."[215]

The central thought of Philo's system is that God is immanent in all
His work; but it would seem to him sacrilegious to apply to the
Godhead itself this universal, unceasing activity, and so he develops
the Logos as the most ideal attribute of the Deity, and the sum of all
His immanence and effluence. He preferred the Logos to the older
Wisdom, probably because he could by this conception bring his idea of
God into closer relation with Greek philosophical notions, for already
the Hellenistic world had come spontaneously to revere the cosmical
Logos. Only Philo gave to the expression of their physical and
metaphysical speculation a religious warmth new to it, when he
associated it with the word uttered by the personal God. Philosophy,
theology, and religion were all joined and harmonized in his
conception.

If we have followed thus far the spirit of Philo aright, the Logos is
only the immanent manifestation of the One God, who is both
transcendental and immanent, metaphorically, not metaphysically,
separate. In other words, it is the complete aspect of God as He
reveals Himself to the world. Above it and including it is the being
or essence of God, seen in Himself, and not in relation to His outward
activity. But it is often suggested that the Logos appears to Philo as
a second God, subordinate, indeed, to the Supreme Being, but yet a
separate personality. It is said, with truth, that he speaks of it as
a person, now calling it king, priest, primal man, the first-born son
of God, even the second God, and identifying it at other times with
some personal being, Melchizedek or Moses, and apostrophizing it as
man's helper, guide, and advocate.[216] Now we have reason to think
that Gnostic sects of Jews, both in Alexandria and in Palestine, were
at this time tending towards the division of the Godhead into sep