THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE APOCRYPHA.

It is impossible to avoid asking whether there was any movement of thought and life on the subject of the Holy Spirit in the centuries between Malachi and Matthew. Prophecy had given place, first, to the priesthood, and then, to the work of the Scribes, whose duty was the exposition of the Law and its application to daily life. Then, again, contact with Greek thought at Alexandria had its effect on Judaism. What effect, if any, had all this on the doctrine of the Spirit. Is any modification found during this period? There was modification, certainly, but no real additions to the doctrine.

Dr. Swete says:

' In the non-canonical literature of Palestine, references to the Divine Spirit are rare, and when they occur are little else than echoes — sometimes broken and imperfect echoes — of the canonical teaching.... The growing angelology of the Pharisees may possibly have obscured the Biblical conception of the Divine Spirit as the operative force in nature and in man.... When prophecy ceased, it seemed as if the presence of the Divine Spirit had been suspended or withdrawn.' 1

At Alexandria Jewish thought took a somewhat different form.

' The old consciousness of the perpetual activity of the Spirit of God survived, associating itself with the philosophical thought of Hellenism, and growing in its influence into new forms of belief.'2

This was seen more particularly in the connection of Wisdom with the Spirit, a connection found in the Canonical books, but carried much further in the thought of Alexandrian Judaism. But it was mainly intellectual not moral and ethical.

' Of the ethical aspect of the Spirit's work in man Philo has little to say.... Of the Spirit as restoring the moral nature of man we hear nothing.... The omission may be partly due to the circumstance that he employs himself chiefly about the Pentateuch; but it is more probably to be traced to the predominance of the intellectual interest in Alexandrian thought.'3

With this agrees the view of another modern writer, that the eschatological development forms the chief contribution of later Judaistic theology, and that

' the chief lacuna in the religious experience generated by Judaism... is the absence of any adequate development of the Old Testament idea of the Spirit of God.'4

In the same way, Humphries says:

' So far as the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is concerned, there was practically no advance made. One thing which strikes us, as we read the literature of the period, is the paucity of its references to the Spirit. And the few which we find seem to be echoes rather than new and living voices.'5

On the other hand, Denio considers that the evidence is slight but real for a tendency during this period ' to neglect the conception of the Cosmic Spirit and to think more of the personified Spirit of God.'6 But he admits that the language of Wisdom (ch. vii. 22-27), where the Spirit of God is personified under the name of Wisdom, ' is coloured by Greek philosophy, and the personification is doubtless suggested from Proverbs viii.'7

Wood sums up the position as follows:

(a) ' The concept of the Spirit as the essential substance of human life is nowhere clearly stated. It would seem that God had become too far removed from the world of human error and frailty for this idea to be wholly acceptable.'

(b) ' The small part which the idea played in the thought of this period is indicated by the narrow range of literature in which the term occurs. In the books of the Apocrypha it is found only in Judith, Sirach, Susanna, Second Maccabees, and Fourth Maccabees.'8

If it be said that Jewish devotion and patriotism must have come from the Spirit of God, still an explanation of the silence of these books as to the Spirit is required. May it not have been found

' in the growing tendency to put God far away from the world and to avoid any phrase which had an anthropomorphic relation? The angel of Jahveh had disappeared.... In place of it a hierarchy of angels had been developed. This accounts for the meagre use of the Spirit as applied to human experience.'9

Instead of the Old Testament doctrine of the Spirit, there was a speculation on the relation of the Spirit of God to the created universe by means of intermediate beings. But, as it has been well said,

' in these fantastic speculations, which were an attempt to safeguard the transcendence of God, and yet to provide for some part of supernatural contact with the world, we are far removed from the simple faith in God's nearness to man which we find expressed in some of the Psalms, and which came to re-birth in the teaching of Jesus.'10

The chief contribution of this period was the personification of the Spirit as Wisdom, following Greek rather than Hebrew thought. Of this several things need to be said. In the Old Testament the two conceptions of the Spirit and Wisdom occupy different spheres and stand for different realities. The Spirit is concrete; Wisdom is abstract. The Spirit meant power; Wisdom meant knowledge. It is true that in the cosmical aspect of the Spirit the outcome was wisdom and knowledge (Gen. xli. 38, 39; Deut. xxxiv. 9; Isa. xi. 2). But the conception of Wisdom in the Old

IN THE APOCRYPHA 21

Testament never attains to the prominence given to the Spirit, and within the limits of the Old Testament the two ideas never approach identity. This was only effected in the period now under consideration in connection with the fusion of Hebrew and Greek thought in Alexandria. Yet the union was not effected without serious modification and the loss of distinctive elements of the Old Testament:

' Here at last the Hebrew idea of the Spirit of God was identified with that of Wisdom, yet no longer the aphoristic, common-sense wisdom of the Hebrew sages, but a universal cosmic principle, bearing marks of the influence of the great unities of Greek philosophy.'11

And speaking of this book of Wisdom, the same writer remarks:

' At last the old Hebrew antithesis of supernatural Spirit, and natural world-Wisdom is overcome, but in a one-sided way; not by the synthesis of the two ideas into a higher conception, retaining the force of both, but by the absorption of the one into a more abstract form of the other. Nothing of Spirit remains save the name; and Wisdom is no longer a quality of the practical, concrete morality which the Hebrew sage knew, but a world-reason, a universal law whose point of contact with experience and reality is difficult to discover.'12

Farrar says:

' On the Divine side. Wisdom is the Spirit of God, regarded by man under the form of Providence; and, on the human side, Wisdom is trustworthy knowledge... regarded by God as manifested in moral hfe. But one set of terms does service to express both the intellectual and the moral wisdom. The ' wise ' man means the righteous man; the ' fool ' is one who is godless. Intellectual terms that describe knowledge are also moral terms describing life.'13

All this only goes to confirm the truth with which our study commenced, that the doctrine of the Spirit is a Biblical doctrine, and can only be derived from and protected by the Divine revelation. With the cessation of the Divine work of prophecy there was, and could be, no guarantee of protection against error in thought and practice. It is the difference between revelation and discovery; between Divine knowledge and human speculation; between spiritual experience and intellectual abstraction; between God's sunshine and man's candlelight.

' Speculation was able thus to run riot in the region of the supernatural, because there was no immediate experience which was felt to correspond to what the older faith had recognised as the distinct product of the Spirit. Of all the activities attributed by the Old Testament to the Spirit of God, none had been so impressive as the gift of prophecy. But during the period which we are now considering the voice of prophecy was dumb.'14

It should also be observed that another influence was at work in the tendency to identify the Hebrew Wisdom with the Greek Reason (Logos), so that Wisdom, Reason, and Spirit became convertible terms. But in the process the blend of Jewish philosophical thought of Alexandria did not remain true to the old conception of the Hebrew prophets. While unity was gained in one direction practical reality was sacrificed in another.

' The word " Spirit," which meant to the Hebrew thinker the realised operation of a personal God, so that there was always the possibility of the Spirit being itself conceived as personal, was rendered almost superfluous. The religious interest was sacrificed to the intellectual, and a vital element in religion thereby imperilled.15

We may therefore conclude that for all practical and spiritual purposes the period of the Apocrypha made no real contribution to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

' The doctrine of the Holy Spirit's nature or operation makes no important progress in Apocryphal literature. It remains where it was; or rather, the stream of thought regarding it flows underground for two or three centuries, until it re-emerges in the fulness of our Lord's own teaching.'16

It was reserved for the New Testament revelation to correct the dangers of mere intellectual abstraction and to reassert, only with greater clearness, depth, and fulness of meaning, the doctrine of the Spirit of God.

Literature. — Humphries, The Holy Spirit in Faith and Experience, ch. iii.; Wood, The Spirit of God in Biblical Literature, p. 60; Welldon, The Revelation of the Holy Spirit, p. 50; Denio, The Supreme Leader, p. 26; Swete, The Holy Spirit in the New Testament, p. 398; Article ' Holy Spirit ' in Hastings' Bible Dictionary, p. 404; Redford, Vox Dei, p. 171; H. W. Robinson, The Christian Doctrine of Man, p. 71.

1 Swete, Article 'Holy Spirit,' Hastings' Bible Dictionary, p. 404.

2 Swete, ut supra, p. 404.

3 Swete, ut supra, p. 405.

4 H. W. Robinson, Christian Doctrine of Man, p. 74.

5 Humphries, The Holy Spirit in Faith and Experience, p. 96.

6 Denio, The Supreme Leader, p. 26.

7 Denio, op. cit. p. 27.

8 Wood, The Spirit of God in Biblical Literature, p. 67.

9 Wood, ut supra, p. 72.

10 Humphries, op. cit. p. 98.

11 Rees, ' The Holy Spirit as Wisdom,' Mansfield College Essays, p. 294.

12 Rees, ut supra, p. 298.

13 Farrar, 'Introduction to Wisdom,' Speaker's Commentary, Vol. VII. p. 419.

14 Humphries, op. cit. p. 98.

15 Humphries, op. cit. p. 107.

16 Welldon, The Revelation of the Holy Spirit, p. 51.