lo-am'-i (lo'-`ammi, "not my people"): The 2nd son and 3rd child of Gomer bath-Diblaim, wife of the prophet Hosea (Hos 1:9). An earlier child, a daughter, had been named Lo-ruhamah (lo'-ruchamah, "uncompassionated"). The names, like those given by Isaiah to his children, are symbolic, and set forth Hosea's conviction that Israel has, through sin, forfeited Yahweh's compassion, and can no longer claim His protection. Of the bearers of these names nothing further is known; but their symbolism is alluded to in Hos 2:1,23. This latter passage is quoted by Paul (Rom 9:25 f).
John A. Lees
lo'-de-bar, lo-de'-bar (lo dhebhar): A place in Gilead where dwelt Machir, son of Ammiel, who sheltered Mephibosheth, son of Saul, after that monarch's death (2 Sam 9:4), until he was sent for by David. This same Machir met David with supplies when he fled to Gilead from Absalom (2 Sam 17:27 f). Possibly it is the same place as Lidebir in Josh 13:26 (Revised Version margin). No certain identification is possible; but Schumacher (Northern 'Ajlun, 101) found a site with the name Ibdar about 6 1/2 miles East of Umm Qeis, North of the great aqueduct, which may possibly represent the ancient city. Lidebir, at least, seems to be placed on the northern boundary of Gilead. The modern village stands on the southern shoulder of Wady Samar. There is a good spring to the East, a little lower down, while ancient remains are found in the neighborhood.
W. Ewing
lo-roo-ha'-ma, lo-roo-ha'-ma.
See LO-AMMI .
lof.
See BREAD .
loks ((1) tsitsith, (2) pera'; (3) machlaphah, (4) qewutstsah): See in general the article onHAIR . (1) The first word, tsitsith, means really a tassel, such as is worn by the Jews on the four corners of the prayer-shawl or Tallith and on the 'arba` kanephoth (Dt 22:12), translated in the New Testament by kraspedon (Mt 9:20; 14:36; 23:5; Mk 6:56; Lk 8:44). Once it is applied to a forelock of hair. The prophet Ezekiel, describing his sensations which accompanied his vision of Jerusalem, says: "He put forth the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my head; and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerus" (Ezek 8:3). (2) The word pera` signifies the uncut and disheveled locks of the Nazirite (Nu 6:5) or of the priests, the sons of Zadok (Ezek 44:20). (3) The Book of Judges employs the word machlaphah when speaking of the "seven locks" of Samson (Jdg 16:13,19), which really represent the plaited (etymologically, "interwoven") strands of hair still worn in our days by youthful Bedouin warriors. (4) Qewutstsah (Song 5:2,11) means the luxuriant hair of the Hebrew youth, who was careful of his exterior. It is called bushy (the Revised Version margin "curling") and black as a raven. the King James Version translations also the word tsammah with "locks" (Song 4:1; 6:7; Isa 47:2), but the Revised Version (British and American) has corrected this into "veil," leaving the word "locks" in Song 4:1 margin.
H. L. E. Luering
lo'-kust: The translation of a large number of Hebrew and Greek words:
(1) 'arbeh from the root rabhah, "to increase" (compare Arabic raba', "to increase"). (2) sal`am, from obsolete [?] cal`am, "to swallow down," "to consume." (3) chargol (compare Arabic charjal, "to run to the right or left," charjalat, "a company of horses" or "a swarm of locusts," charjawan, a kind of locust). (4) chaghabh (compare Arabic chajab, "to hide," "to cover"). (5) gazam (compare Arabic jazum, " to cut off") (6) yeleq, from the root laqaq "to lick" (compare Arabic laqlaq, "to dart out the tongue" (used of a serpent)). (7) chacil, from the root chacal, "to devour" (compare Arabic chaucal, "crop" (of a bird)). (8) gobh, from the obsolete root gabhah (compare Arabic jabi, "locust," from the root jaba', "to come out of a hole"). (9) gebh, from same root. (10) tselatsal from [?] tsalal (onomatopoetic), "to tinkle," "to ring" (compare Arabic call, "to give a ringing sound" (used of a horse's bit); compare also Arabic Tann, used of the sound of a drum or piece of metal, also of the humming of flies). (11) akris (genitive akridos; diminutive akridion, whence Acridium, a genus of locusts).
(1), (2), (3) and (4) constitute the list of clean insects in Lev 11:21 f, characterized as "winged creeping things that go upon all fours, which have legs above their feet, wherewith to leap upon the earth." This manifestly refers to jumping insects of the order Orthoptera, such as locusts, grasshoppers and crickets, and is in contrast to the unclean "winged creeping things that go upon all fours," which may be taken to denote running Orthoptera, such as cockroaches, mole-crickets and ear-wigs, as well as insects of other orders.
'Arbeh (1) is uniformly translated "locust" in the Revised Version (British and American). the King James Version has usually "locust," but "grasshopper" in Jdg 6:5; 7:12; Job 39:20; Jer 46:23. Septuagint has usually akris, "locust"; but has brouchos, "wingless locust," in Lev 11:22; 1 Ki 8:37 (akris in the parallel passage, 2 Ch 6:28); Nah 3:15; and attelebos, "wingless locust," in Nah 3:17. 'Arbeh occurs (Ex 10:4-19) in the account of the plague of locusts; in the phrase "as locusts for multitude" (Jdg 6:5; 7:12); "more than the locusts .... innumerable" (Jer 46:23);
"The locusts have no king,
Yet go they forth all of them by bands" (Prov 30:27).
'Arbeh is referred to as a plague in Dt 28:38; 1 Ki 8:37; 2 Ch 6:28; Ps 78:46; in Joel and in Nahum. These references, together with the fact that it is the most used word, occurring 24 times, warrant us in assuming it to be one of the swarming species, i.e. Pachtylus migratorius or Schistocerca peregrina, which from time to time devastate large regions in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean.
Cal`am (2), English Versions of the Bible "bald locust," occurs only in Lev 11:22. According to Tristram, NBH, the name "bald locust" was given because it is said in the Talmud to have a smooth head. It has been thought to be one of the genus Tryxalis (T. unguiculata or T. nasuta), in which the head is greatly elongated.
Chargol (3), the King James Version "beetle," the Revised Version (British and American) "cricket," being one of the leaping insects, cannot be a beetle. It might be a cricket, but comparison with the Arabic (see supra) favors a locust of some sort. The word occurs only in Lev 11:22.
See BEETLE .
Haghabh (4) is one of the clean leaping insects of Lev 11:22 (English Versions of the Bible "grasshopper"). The word occurs in four other places, nowhere coupled with the name of another insect. In the report of the spies (Nu 13:33), we have the expression, "We were in our own sight as grasshoppers"; in Eccl 12:5, "The grasshopper shall be a burden"; in Isa 40:22, "It is he that sitteth above the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers." These three passages distinctly favor the rendering "grasshopper" of the English Versions of the Bible. In the remaining passage (2 Ch 7:13), ".... if I command the locust (English Versions) to devour the land," the migratory locust seems to be referred to. Doubtless this as well as other words was loosely used. In English there is no sharp distinction between the words "grasshopper" and "locust."
The migratory locusts belong to the family Acridiidae, distinguished by short, thick antennae, and by having the organs of hearing at the base of the abdomen. The insects of the family Locustidae are commonly called "grasshoppers," but the same name is applied to those Acridiidae which are not found in swarms. The Locustidae have long, thin antennae, organs of hearing on the tibiae of the front legs, and the females have long ovipositors. It may be noted that the insect known in America as the seventeen-year locust, which occasionally does extensive damage to trees by laying its eggs in the twigs, is a totally different insect, being a Cicada of the order Rhynchota. Species of Cicada are found in Palestine, but are not considered harmful.
The Book of Joel is largely occupied with the description of a plague of locusts. Commentators differ as to whether it should be interpreted literally or allegorically (see JOEL ). Four names 'arbeh (1), gazam (5), yeleq (6) and chacil (7), are found in Joel 1:4 and again in 2:25.
For the etymology of these names, see 1 above. Gazam (Am 4:9; Joel 1:4; 2:25) is in the Revised Version (British and American) uniformly translated "palmer-worm" Septuagint kampe, "caterpillar"). Chacil in the Revised Version (British and American) (1 Ki 8:37; 2 Ch 6:28; Ps 78:46; Isa 23:4; Joel 1:4; 2:25) is uniformly translated "caterpillar." The Septuagint has indifferently brouchos, "wingless locust," and erusibe, "rust" (of wheat). Yeleq (Ps 105:34; Jer 51:14,27; Joel 1:4b; 2:25; Nah 3:15b,16) is everywhere "canker-worm" in the Revised Version (British and American), except in Ps 105:34, where the American Standard Revised Version has "grasshopper." the King James Version has "caterpillar" in Psalms and Jeremiah and "canker-worm" in Joel and Nahum. Septuagint has indifferently akris and brouchos. "Palmerworm" and "canker-worm" are both Old English terms for caterpillars, which are strictly the larvae of lepidopterous insects, i.e. butterflies and moths.
While these four words occur in Joel 1:4 and 2:25, a consideration of the book as a whole does not show that the ravages of four different insect pests are referred to, but rather a single one, and that the locust. These words may therefore be regarded as different names of the locust, referring to different stages of development of the insect. It is true that the words do not occur in quite the same order in 14 and in 2:25, but while the former verse indicates a definite succession, the latter does not. If, therefore, all four words refer to the locust, "palmer-worm," "canker-worm," "caterpillar" and the Septuagint erusibe, "rust," are obviously inappropriate.
Gobh (8) is found in the difficult passage (Am 7:1), ".... He formed locusts (the King James Version "grasshoppers," the King James Version margin "green worms," Septuagint akris) in the beginning of the shooting up of the latter growth"; and (Nah 3:17) in ".... thy marshals (are) as the swarms of grasshoppers (Hebrew gobh gobhay; the King James Version "great grasshoppers"), which encamp in the hedges in the cold day, but when the sun ariseth they flee away, and their place is not known where they are." The related gebh (9) occurs but once, in Isa 33:4, also a disputed passage, "And your spoil shall be gathered as the caterpillar (chacil) gathereth: as locusts (gebhim) leap shall men leap upon it." It is impossible to determine what species is meant, but some kind of locust or grasshopper fits any of these passages.
In Dt 28:42, "All thy trees and the fruit of thy ground shall the locust (English Versions of the Bible) possess," we have (10) tselatsal, Septuagint erusibe). The same word is translated in 2 Sam 6:5 and Ps 150:5 bis "cymbals," in Job 41:7 "fish-spears," and in Isa 18:1 "rustling." As stated in 1, above, it is an onomatopoetic word, and in Dt 28:42 may well refer to the noise of the wings of a flight of locusts.
In the New Testament we have (11) akris, "locust," the food of John the Baptist (Mt 3:4; Mk 1:6); the same word is used figuratively in Rev 9:3,1; and also in the Apocrypha (Judith 2:20; The Wisdom of Solomon 16:9; and see 2 Esdras 4:24).
The swarms of locusts are composed of countless individuals. The statements sometimes made that they darken the sky must not be taken too literally. They do not produce darkness, but their effect may be like that of a thick cloud. Their movements are largely determined by the wind, and while fields that are in their path may be laid waste, others at one side may not be affected. It is possible by vigorous waving to keep a given tract clear of them, but usually enough men cannot be found to protect the fields from their ravages.
Large birds have been known to pass through a flight of locusts with open mouths, filling their crops with the insects. Tristram, NHB, relates how he saw the fishes in the Jordan enjoying a similar feast, as the locusts fell into the stream. The female locust, by means of the ovipositor at the end of her abdomen, digs a hole in the ground, and deposits in it a mass of eggs, which are cemented together with a glandular secretion. An effective way of dealing with the locusts is to gather and destroy these egg-masses, and it is customary for the local governments to offer a substantial reward for a measure of eggs. The young before they can fly are frequently swept into pits or ditches dug for the purpose and are burned.
The young are of the same general shape as the adult insects, differing in being small, black and wingless. The three distinct stages in the metamorphosis of butterflies and others of the higher insects are not to be distinguished in locusts. They molt about six times, emerging from each molt larger than before. At first there are no wings. After several molts, small and useless wings are found, but it is only after the last molt that the insects are able to fly. In the early molts the tiny black nymphs are found in patches on the ground, hopping out of the way when disturbed. Later they run, until they are able to fly.
In all stages they are destructive to vegetation. Some remarkable pictures of their ravages are found in Joel 1:6,7, "For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number; his teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the jaw-teeth of a lioness. He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my figtree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white" (see also 2:2-9,20).
Locusts are instruments of the wrath of God (Ex 10:4-19; Dt 28:38,42; 2 Ch 7:13; Ps 78:46; 105:34; Nah 3:15-17; The Wisdom of Solomon 16:9; Rev 9:3); they typify an invading army (Jer 51:14,27); they are compared with horses (Joel 2:4; Rev 9:7); in Job 39:20, Yahweh says of the horse: "Hast thou made him to leap as a locust?" the King James Version "Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper?" Locusts are among the "four things which are little upon the earth, but .... are exceeding wise" (Prov 30:27). Like the stars and sands of the sea, locusts are a type of that which cannot be numbered (Jdg 6:5; 7:12; Jer 46:23; Judith 2:20). Grasshoppers are a symbol of insignificance (Nu 13:33; Eccl 12:5; Isa 40:22; 2 Esdras 4:24).
The Arabs prepare for food the thorax of the locust, which contains the great wing muscles. They pull off the head, which as it comes away brings with it a mass of the viscera, and they remove the abdomen (or "tail"), the legs and the wings. The thoraxes, if not at once eaten, are dried and put away as a store of food for a lean season. The idea of feeding upon locusts when prepared in this way should not be so repellent as the thought of eating the whole insect. In the light of this it is not incredible that the food of John the Baptist should have been "locusts and wild honey" (Mt 3:4).
See INSECTS .
Alfred Ely Day
(lodh; Ludda):
Ono and Lod and the towns thereof are said to have been built by Shemed, a Benjamite (1 Ch 8:12). The children of Lod, Hadid and One, to the number of 725, returned from Babylon with Zerubbabel (Ezr 2:33; Neh 7:37 (721)). The town lay in the Shephelah, perhaps in ge ha-charashim, "the valley of craftsmen" (Neh 11:35). In the New Testament it appears as Lydda. Here the apostle Peter visited the saints and healed the palsied Arenas (Acts 9:32). Hence he was summoned by messengers from Joppa on the death of Dorcas.
2. History from Maccabean Times:
The three governments of Aphaerema, Lydda and Ramathaim were added to Judea from the country of Samaria by King Demetrius II (1 Macc 11:34). Lydda presided over one of the toparchies under Jerusalem, into which Judea was divided (BJ, III, iii, 5). After the death of Julius Caesar the inhabitants of Lydda and certain other towns, having failed to pay the contributions Cassius demanded, were by him sold into slavery. They were freed by Antony (Ant., XIV, xi, 2; xii, 2). Lydda suffered severely under Cestius Gallus (BJ, II, xix, 1). Along with Jamnia it surrendered to Vespasian (BJ, IV, viii, 1). After the fall of Jerusalem it was noted as a seat of rabbinical learning. The classical name of the city was Diospolis. In the 4th century it was connected with the trade in purple. It became the seat of a bishopric, and the bishop of Lydda was present at the Council of Nicea. At Lydda, in 415 AD, took place the trial of Pelagius for heresy.
Under the Moslems it became capital of the province of Filastin but later it was superseded by er-Ramleh, founded by Khalif Suleiman, whither its inhabitants were removed ( Ya'kubi, circa 891 AD). Mukaddasi (circa 985) says that in Lydda "there is a great mosque in which are wont to assemble large numbers of people from the capital (er-Ramleh) and from the villages around. In Lydda, too, is that wonderful church (of George) at the gate of which Christ will slay the antichrist" (quoted by Guy le Strange, Palestine under the Moslems, 493). It was rebuilt by the Crusaders; but was destroyed by Saladin after the battle of ChaTTin, 1191 AD. It was again restored; but in 1271 it was sacked by the Mengels, and from this blow it has never recovered.
3. Identification and Description:
The ancient Lod or Lydda is represented by the modern village of Ludd, on the road to Jerusalem, about 11 miles Southeast of Yafa. It is a station on the Jaffa-Jerusalem Railway. It occupies a picturesque hollow in the plain of Sharon, and is surrounded by gardens and orchards, the beauty of which intensifies by contrast the squalor of the village. It was the reputed birthplace of George, and here he is said to have been buried. The one ruin of importance in the place is that of the church which perpetuates his name.
The town stood on the great caravan road between Babylon and Egypt, near its intersection with that from Joppa to Jerusalem and the East. Its position on these great arteries of commerce meant trade for the inhabitants. "The manufacture and repair of such requisites for the journey as sacks, saddles and strappings would create the skilled labor in cloth, leather, wood and metal that made the neighborhood once the valley of craftsmen" (Mackie, HDB, under the word). Like many other once prosperous cities on these and similar caravan routes, Lydda suffered from diversion of traffic to the sea; and it may be that for none of them is any great revival now possible.
W. Ewing
lod-e'-us (Loddeus; Swete reads Laadaios with Doldaiosas variant in Codex Alexandrinus; the King James Version Daddeus, Saddeus): The captain, who was in the place of the treasury. Ezra sent to him for men who "might execute the priests' office" (1 Esdras 8:46); called "Iddo" in Ezr 8:17.
loj (lin; kataskenoo, etc.): To stay or dwell, temporarily, as for the night (Gen 32:13,21; Nu 22:8; Josh 2:1 the King James Version; Josh 4:3; Lk 13:19; Mt 21:17, aulizomai), or permanently (Ruth 1:16). In Isa 1:8, "a lodge (melunah) in a garden of cucumbers," the meaning is "hut," "cottage." "Evil thoughts" are said to "lodge" in the wicked (Jer 4:14).
In 1 Ki 17:23, changed in the Revised Version (British and American) to "chamber."
lof'-ti-li, lof'-ti-nes: The first form is only in Ps 73:8, where it means "haughtily," as if from on high. The second is found only in Jer 48:29, where the loftiness of Moab also means his haughtiness, his groundless self-conceit.
Lofty likewise means '"haughty," "lifted up" (compare Ps 131:1; Isa 2:11; Prov 30:13). In Isa 26:5 it refers to a self-secure and boastful city. In 57:15 it is used in a good sense of God who really is high and supreme. Isaiah uses the word more than all the other sacred writers put together.
log, logh, "deepened," "hollowed out" (Lev 14:10-24)): The smallest liquid or dry measure of the Hebrews, equal to about 1 pint.
See WEIGHTS AND MEASURES .
log'-i-a, (Logia):
1. The Word "Logia" and Its History:
The word logion, which is a diminutive of logos, was regularly used of Divine utterances. There are examples in the classics, the Septuagint, the writings of Josephus and Philo and in four passages in the New Testament (Acts 7:38; Rom 3:2; Heb 5:12; 1 Pet 4:11) where it is uniformly rendered both in the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American) "oracles." It is not, therefore, surprising that early Christian writers, who thought of Christ as Divine, applied this term to His sayings also. We find this use, according to the usual interpretation, in the title of the lost work of Papias as preserved by Eusebius, Logion kuriakon exegesis, "Exposition of the Lord's Logia" (Historia Ecclesiastica, III, 39), in that writer's obscure reference to a Hebrew or Aramaic writing by the apostle Matthew (same place) , and in Polycarp's Epistle (section symbol 7), "the logia of the Lord." The modern use of the word is twofold: (a) as the name of the document referred to by Papins which may or may not be the Q of recent inquirers; (b) as the name of recently discovered sayings ascribed to Jesus. For the former compare GOSPELS . The latter is theme of this article.
2. The Discovery of the Logia:
About 9 1/2 miles from the railway station of Beni Mazar, 121 miles from Cairo, a place now called Behnesa marks the site of an ancient city named by the Greeks Oxyrhynchus, from the name of a sacred fish, the modern binni, which had long been known as a great Christian center in early times and was therefore selected by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt for exploration in behalf of the Egyptian Exploration Fund. They began work on the ruins of the town, January 11, 1897, and on the following day discovered a papyrus leaf inscribed with a number of sayings introduced by the formula legei Iesous, "saith Jesus," some of which were at once seen to be quite new. When excavation was resumed in February, 1903, a second fragment was discovered, which must have belonged to the same or a similar collection, as the formula "saith Jesus" is employed in exactly the same way, and the sayings exhibit the same mixed character. The first of these two fragments was named by the discoverers logia, but the short preface to the second fragment suggests that the word used in the original title may have been logoi, which is found in Acts 20:35 as the title perhaps of a collection of sayings of Jesus used by the apostle Paul. It is convenient, however, to retain logia, at any rate for the present. Other remains of early Christian texts have been found on the same site (compare AGRAPHA ) but none of precisely the same character.
The first fragment, found and published in 1897, afterward referred to as A, is a leaf from a papyrus book measuring in its present state 5 3/4 X 3 3/4 inches and having 42 lines on the two pages. As it is broken at the bottom it is impossible, in the absence of another leaf, to ascertain or even conjecture how much has been lost. At the top right-hand corner of one page are the letters iota, alpha, used as numerals, that is 11, and it has been suggested that this, with other characteristics, marks the page as the first of the two. The uncial writing is assigned to the 3rd century, perhaps to the early part of it. The text is fairly complete except at the end of the third logion, for the five following lines, and at the bottom. The second fragment, henceforth referred to as B, found in 1903 and published in 1904, has also 42 lines, or rather parts of lines, but on only one page or column, the Christian text being written on the back of a roll the recto of which contained a survey list. The characters of this, too, are uncial, and the date, like that of A, seems to be also the 3rd century, but perhaps a little later. B is unfortunately very defective, the bit of papyrus being broken vertically throughout, so that several letters are lost at the end of each line, and also horizontally for parts of several lines at the bottom.
4. Logia with Canonical Parallels:
Seven of these sayings, or logia, inclusive of the preface of B, have or contain canonical parallels, namely:
(1) A1, which coincides with the usual text of Lk 6:42; (2) A5a (according to the editio princeps, 6a), which comes very close to Lk 4:24; (3) A6 (or 7), a variant of Mt 5:14; (4) the saying contained in the preface of B which resembles Jn 8:52; (5) B2, ll. 7 f, "The kingdom of heaven is within you," which reminds us of Lk 17:21; (6) B3, ll. 4 f, "Many that are first shall be last; and the last first," which corresponds to Mk 10:31; compare Mt 19:30; Lk 13:30; (7) B4, ll. 2-5, "That which is hidden from thee shall be revealed to thee: for there is nothing hidden that shall not be made manifest," which is like Mk 4:22 (compare Mt 10:26; Lk 12:2). These parallels or partial parallels--for some of them exhibit interesting variations--are, with one exception, of synoptic character.
The other seven or eight logia, although not without possible echoes of the canonical Gospels in thought and diction, are all non-canonical and with one exception new.
Three of them, namely B2 and 3 (apart from the canonical sayings given above) and 5, may be set aside as too uncertain to be of any value. What is preserved of the first ("Who are they that draw you (MS, us) to the kingdom?" etc.) is indeed very tempting, but the restoration of the lost matter is too precarious for any suggestion to be more than an ingenious conjecture. This is seen by comparing the restoration of this logion by the discoverers, Dr. Swete and Dr. C. Taylor, with that proposed by Delssmann (Licht vom Osten1, 329). While the English scholars take helko in the sense of "draw," the German takes it in the sense which it has in the New Testament, "drag," with the result of utter divergence as to the meaning and even the subject of the logion. The logia which remain are undeniably of great interest, although the significance of at least one is exceedingly obscure. The number of the sayings is not certain. Dr. Taylor has shown that in A2 f "and" may couple two distinct utterances brought together by the compiler. If this suggestion is adopted, and if the words after A3 in the editio princeps are regarded as belonging to it and not as the remains of a separate logion, we get the following eight sayings:
(1) "Except ye fast to the world (or "from the world"), ye shall in no wise find the kingdom of God" (A2a); (2) "Except ye keep the sabbath (Taylor "sabbatize the sabbath"), ye shall not see the Father" (A2b); (3) "I stood in the midst of the world, and in flesh wasI seen of them, andI found all men drunken, and none foundI athirst among them" (A3a); (4) "My soul grieveth over the sons of men, because they are blind in their heart and see not their wretchedness and their poverty" (the last clause restored by conjecture) (A3b); (5) "Wherever there are two they are not without God, and where there is one aloneI sayI am with him (after Blass). Raise the stone and (there) thou shalt find me: cleave the wood (Taylor, "the tree") and there am I" (A4); (6) "A physician does not work cures on them that know him" (A5b); (7) "Thou hearest with one ear but the other thou hast closed" (largely conjectural but almost certain) (A6); (8) "(There is nothing) buried which shall not be raised" (or "known") (B4, 1,5).
6. Origin and Character of the Logia:
Attempts have been made to trace the collection represented by these fragments (assuming that they belong to the same work) to some lost gospel--the Gospel according to the Egyptians (Harnack, Van Manen), the Gospel of the Ebionites or the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles (Zahn), or the Gospel according to the Hebrews (Batiffol), but without decisive result. That there is a connection of some kind with the last-mentioned apocryphal work is evident from the fact that B1 ("Jesus saith, Let not him who seeks .... cease until he find Him; and having found Him, let him be amazed; and being amazed he shall reign, and reigning shall rest") is ascribed by Clement of Alexandria to this writing, but that cannot have been the only source. It was probably one of a number drawn on by the compiler. The latter, so far as B is concerned, represents the sayings as spoken by Jesus to ".... and Thomas." In whatever way the gap is supplied--whether by "Philip," or "Judas" or "the other disciples"--one of the Twelve known as Thomas is clearly referred to as the medium or one of the media of transmission. It is possible that the short preface in which this statement is made belongs not to the whole collection but to a part of it. The whole work may, as Swete suggests (Expository Times, XV, 494), have been entitled "Words of Jesus to the Twelve," and this may have been the portion addressed to Thomas. The other fragment, A, might belong to a section associated with the name of another apostle. In any case the Logia must have formed part of a collection of considerable extent, as we know of material for 24 pages or columns of about 21 or 22 lines each. So far as can be judged the writing was not a gospel in the ordinary sense of that term, but a collection of sayings perhaps bearing considerable resemblance as to the form to the Logia of Matthew mentioned by Papias.
The remains of B5, however, show that a saying might be prefaced with introductory matter. Perhaps a short narrative was sometimes appended. The relation to the canonical Gospels cannot be determined with present evidence. The sayings preserved generally exhibit the synoptic type, perhaps more specifically the Lukan type, but Johannine echoes, that is, possible traces of the thought and diction represented in the Fourth Gospel, are not absent (compare A, logia 2 f, and preface to B). It seems not improbable that the compiler had our four Gospels before him, but nothing can be proved. There is no distinct sign of heretical influence. The much-debated saying about the wood and the stone (A4b) undoubtedly lends itself to pantheistic teaching, but can be otherwise understood.
Under these circumstances the date of the compilation cannot at present be fixed except in a very general way. If our papyri which represent two copies were written, as the discoverers think, in the 3rd century, that fact and the indubitably archaic character of the sayings make it all but certain that the text as arranged is not later than the 2nd century. To what part of the century it is to be assigned is at present undiscoverable. Sanday inclines to about 120 AD, the finders suggest about 140 AD as the terminus ad quem, Zahn dates 160-70 AD, and Dr. Taylor 150-200 AD. Further research may solve these problems, but, with the resources now available, all that can be said is that we have in the Logia of Oxyrhynchus a few glimpses of an early collection of sayings ascribed to Jesus which circulated in Egypt in the 3rd century of great interest and possibly of considerable value, but of completely unknown origin.
LITERATURE.
Of the extensive literature which has gathered round the Logia--as many as fifty publications relating to A only in the first few months--only a few can be mentioned here. A was first published in 1897 as a pamphlet and afterward as Number 1 of Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Valuable articles by Cross and Harnack peared in The Expositor, series V, volume VI, 257 ff, 321 ff, 401 ff, an important lecture by Swete in The Expository Times, VIII, 544 ff, 568, and a very useful pamphlet by Sanday and Lock in the same year. B appeared in 1904 in pamphlet form and as Number 654 of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, with a fuller commentary. Dr. C. Taylor's pamphlets on A and B issued respectively in 1899 and 1905, and Swete's lecture on B, The Expositor T, XV, 488 ff, are of exceptional significance for the study of the subject. Compare also Griffinhoofe, The Unwritten Sayings of Christ (A only), 55-67; Klostermann, Kleine Texte, Numbers 8, pp. 11 f and 11, pp. 17 ff; Resch, Agrapha2, 68-73, 353 f; HDB, article "Agrapha," extra vol; also articles on "Unwritten Sayings" in HDB, 1909, and DCG.
William Taylor Smith
log'-os (logos):
II. HEBREW ANTICIPATION OF DOCTRINE
2. Suggestions of Personal Distinctions in Deity
Philo
(b) Relation of Logos to World
(c) Contrast between Philo and John
LITERATURE
The doctrine of the Logos has exerted a decisive and far-reaching influence upon speculative and Christian thought. The word has a long history, and the evolution of the idea it embodies is really the unfolding of man's conception of God. To comprehend the relation of the Deity to the world has been the aim of all religious philosophy. While widely divergent views as to the Divine manifestation have been conceived, from the dawn of Western speculation, the Greek word logos has been employed with a certain degree of uniformity by a series of thinkers to express and define the nature and mode of God's revelation.
Logos signifies in classical Greek both "reason" and "word." Though in Biblical Greek the term is mostly employed in the sense of "word," we cannot properly dissociate the two significations. Every word implies a thought. It is impossible to imagine a time when God was without thought. Hence, thought must be eternal as the Deity. The translation "thought" is probably the best equivalent for the Greek term, since it denotes, on the one hand, the faculty of reason, or the thought inwardly conceived in the mind; and, on the other hand, the thought outwardly expressed through the vehicle of language. The two ideas, thought and speech, are indubitably blended in the term logos; and in every employment of the word, in philosophy and Scripture, both notions of thought and its outward expression are intimately connected.
In this article it will be our aim to trace the evolution of the doctrine from its earliest appearance in Greek philosophy through its Hebrew and Alexandrian phases till it attained its richest expression in the writings of the New Testament, and especially in the Fourth Gospel.
The doctrine may be said to have two stages: a Hellenistic and a Hebrew; or, more correctly, a pre-Christian and a Christian. The theory of Philo and of the Alexandrian thinkers generally may be regarded as the connecting link between the Greek and the Christian forms of the doctrine. The Greek or pre-Christian speculation on the subject is marked by the names of Heraclitus, Plato and the Stoics. Philo paves the way for the Christian doctrine of Paul, Hebrews and the Johannine Gospel.
The earliest speculations of the Greeks were occupied with the world of Nature, and the first attempts at philosophy take the shape of a search for some unitary principle to explain the diversity of the universe.
Heraclitus was practically the first who sought to account for the order which existed in a world of change by a law or ruling principle. This profoundest of Greek philosophers saw everything in a condition of flux. Everything is forever passing into something else and has an existence only in relation to this process. We cannot say things are: they come into being and pass away. To account for this state of perpetual becoming, Heraclitus was led to seek out a new and primary element from which all things take their rise. This substance he conceived to be, not water or air as previous thinkers had conjectured, but something more subtle, mysterious and potent--fire. This restless, all-consuming and yet all-transforming activity--now darting upward as a flame, now sinking to an ember and now vanishing as smoke--is for him at once the symbol and essence of life. But it is no arbitrary or lawless element. If there is flux everywhere, all change must take place according to "measure." Reality is an "attunement" of opposites, a tension or harmony of conflicting elements. Heraclitus saw all the mutations of being governed by a rational and unalterable law. This law he calls sometimes "Justice," sometimes "Harmony"; more frequently "Logos" or "Reason," and in two passages at least, "God." Fire, Logos, God are fundamentally the same. It is the eternal energy of the universe pervading all its substance and preserving in unity and harmony the perpetual drift and evolution of phenomenal existence. Though Heraclitus sometimes calls this rational principle God, it is not probable that he attached to it any definite idea of consciousness. The Logos is not above the world or even prior to it. It is in it, its inner pervasive energy sustaining, relating and harmonizing its endless variety.
Little was done by the immediate successors of Heraclitus to develop the doctrine of the Logos, and as the distinction between mind and matter became more defined, the term nous superseded that of Logos as the rational force of the world. Anaxagoras was the first thinker who introduced the idea of a supreme intellectual principle which, while independent of the world, governed it. His conception of the nous or "mind" is, however, vague and confused, hardly distinguishable from corporeal matter. By the artificial introduction of a power acting externally upon the world, a dualism, which continued throughout Greek philosophy, was created. At the same time it is to the merit of Anaxagoras that he was the first to perceive some kind of distinction between mind and matter and to suggest a teleological explanation of the universe.
In Plato the idea of a regulative principle reappears. But though the word is frequently used, it is nous and not Logos which determines his conception of the relation of God and the world. The special doctrine of the Logos does not find definite expression, except perhaps in the Timaeus, where the word is employed as descriptive of the Divine force from which the world has arisen. But if the word does not frequently occur in the dialogues, there is not wanting a basis upon which a Logos-doctrine might be framed; and the conception of archetypal ideas affords a philosophical expression of the relation of God and the world. The idea of a dominating principle of reason was lifted to a higher plane by the distinction which Plato made between the world of sense and the world of thought, to the latter of which God belonged. According to Plato, true reality or absolute being consisted of the "Ideas" which he conceived as thoughts residing in the Divine mind before the creation of the world. To these abstract concepts was ascribed the character of supersensible realities of which in some way the concrete visible things of the world were copies or images. Compared with the "Ideas," the world of things was a world of shadows. This was the aspect of the Platonic doctrine of ideas which, as we shall see, Philo afterward seized upon, because it best fitted in with his general conception of the transcendence of God and His relation to the visible world. Three features of Plato's view ought to be remembered as having a special significance for our subject: (1) While God is regarded by Plato as the intelligent power by which the world is formed, matter itself is conceived by him as in some sense eternal and partly intractable. (2) While in the Philebus Plato employs the expression, "the regal principle of intelligence in the nature of God" nous basilikos en te tou Dios phusei), it is doubtful if reason was endowed with personality or was anything more than an attribute of the Divine mind. (3) The ideas are merely models or archetypes after which creation is fashioned.
The doctrine of the Logos cannot be said to occupy a distinctive place in the teaching of Aristotle, though the word does occur in a variety of senses (e.g. orthos logos, "right insight," the faculty by which the will is trained to proper action). Aristotle sought to solve the fundamental problem of Greek philosophy as to how behind the changing multiplicity of appearances an abiding Being is to be thought by means of the concept of development. Plato had regarded the "ideas" as the causes of phenomena--causes different from the objects themselves. Aristotle endeavored to overcome the duality of Plato by representing reality as the essence which contains within itself potentially the phenomena, and unfolds into the particular manifestations of the sensible world. This conception has exerted a powerful influence upon subsequent thought, and particularly upon the monotheistic view of the world. At the same time in working it out, the ultimate "prime-mover" of Aristotle was not materially different from the idea of "the Good" of Plato. And inasmuch as God was conceived as pure thought existing apart from the world in eternal blessedness, Aristotle did not succeed in resolving the duality of God and the universe which exercised the Greek mind.
It is to the Stoics we must look for the first systematic exposition of the doctrine of the Logos. It is the key to their interpretation of life, both in the realms of Nature and of duty. Interested more in ethical than physical problems, they were compelled to seek general metaphysical basis for a rational moral life. Some unitary idea must be found which will overcome the duality between God and the world and remove the opposition between the sensuous and supersensuous which Plato and Aristotle had failed to reconcile. For this end the Logos-doctrine of Heraclitus seemed to present itself as the most satisfactory solution of the problem. The fundamental thought of the Stoics consequently is that the entire universe forms a single living connected whole and that all particulars are the determinate forms assumed by the primitive power which they conceived as never-resting, all-pervading fire. This eternal activity or Divine world-power which contains within itself the conditions and processes of all things, they call Logos or God. More particularly as the productive power, the Deity is named the logos spermatikos, the Seminal Logos or generative principle of the world. This vital energy not only pervades the universe, but unfolds itself into innumerable logoi spermatikoi or formative forces which energize the manifold phenomena of Nature and life. This subordination of all particulars to the Logos not only constitutes the rational order of the universe but supplies a norm of duty for the regulation of the activities of life. Hence, in the moral sphere "to live according to Nature" is the all-determining law of conduct.
II. Hebrew Anticipation of Doctrine.
So far we have traced the development of the Logos-doctrine in Greek philosophy. We have now to note a parallel movement in Hebrew thought. Though strictly speaking it is incorrect to separate the inner Reason from the outer expression in the term Logos, still in the Hellenistic usage the doctrine was substantially a doctrine of Reason, while in Jewish literature it was more especially the outward expression or word that was emphasized.
The sources of this conception are to be found in the Old Testament and in the post-canonical literature. The God who is made known in Scripture is regarded as one who actively reveals Himself. He is exhibited therefore as making His will known in and by His spoken utterances. The "Word of God" is presented as the creative principle (Gen 1:3; Ps 33:6); as instrument of judgment (Hos 6:5); as agent of healing (Ps 107:20); and generally as possessor of personal qualities (Isa 55:2; Ps 147:15). Revelation is frequently called the "Word of the Lord," signifying the spoken as distinct from the written word.
2. Suggestions of Personal Distinctions in Deity:
In particular, we may note certain adumbrations of distinction of persons within the Being of God. It is contended that the phrase "Let us make" in Genesis points to a plurality of persons in the God-head. This indefinite language of Genesis is more fully explained by the priestly ritual in Nu (6:23-26) and in the Psalter. In Jer, Ezr and the vision of Isa (6:2-8) the same idea of Divine plurality is implied, showing that the Old Testament presents a doctrine of God far removed from the sterile monotheism of the Koran (compare Liddon, Divinity of our Lord, and Konig).
Passing from these indefinite intimations of personal distinction in the inner life of God, we may mention first that series of remarkable apparitions commonly known as the theophanies of the Old Testament. These representations are described as the "Angel of Yahweh" or of "the Covenant"; or as the "Angel of his presence." This angelic appearance is sometimes identified with Yahweh (Gen 16:11,13; 32:29-31; Ex 3:2; 13:21), sometimes distinguished from Him (Gen 22:15; 24:7; 98:12); sometimes presented in both aspects (Ex 3:6; Zec 1:11). We find God revealing Himself in this way to Abraham, Sarah, Lot, Hagar, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Manoah. Who was this angel? The earliest Fathers reply with general unanimity that He was the "Word" or "Son of God." But while the earlier church teachers distinguished between the "Angel of the Lord" and the Father, the Arians sought to widen the distinction into a difference of natures, since an invisible Being must be higher than one cognizable by the senses. Augustine insists upon the Scriptural truth of the invisibility of God as God, the Son not less than the Father. He will not presume, however, to say which of the Divine persons manifested Himself in this or that instance; and his general doctrine, in which he has been followed by most of the later teachers of the church, is that theophanies were not direct appearances of a Person of the Godhead, but self-manifestations of God through a created being.
A further development of the conception of a personal medium of revelation is discernible in the description of Wisdom as given in some of the later books of the Old Testament. The wisdom of Jewish Scripture is more than a human endowment or even an attribute of God, and may be said to attain almost to a personal reflex of the Deity, reminding us of the archetypal ideas of Plato. In Job, wisdom is represented as existent in God and as communicated in its highest form to man. It is the eternal thought in which the Divine Architect ever beholds His future creation (Job 28:23-27). If in Job wisdom is revealed only as underlying the laws of the universe and not as wholly personal, in the Book of Proverbs it is coeternal with Yahweh and assists Him in creation (Prov 8:22-31). It may be doubtful whether this is the language of a real person or only of a poetic personification. But something more than a personified idea may be inferred from the contents of the sapiential books outside the Canon. Sirach represents Wisdom as existing from all eternity with God. In Baruch, and still more in Wisdom, the Sophia is distinctly personal--"the very image of the goodness of God." In this pseudo-Solomonic book, supposed to be the work of an Alexandrian writer before Philo, the influence of Greek thought is traceable. The writer speaks of God's Word (me'mera') as His agent in creation and judgment.
Finally in the Targums, which were popular interpretations or paraphrases of the Old Testament Scripture, there was a tendency to avoid anthropomorphic terms or such expressions as involved a too internal conception of God's nature and manifestation. Here the three doctrines of the Word, the Angel, and Wisdom are introduced as mediating factors between God and the world. In particular the chasm between the Divine and human is bridged over by the use of such terms as me'mera' ("word") and shekhinah ("glory"). The me'mera proceeds from God, and is His messenger in Nature and history. But it is significant that though the use of this expression implied the felt need of a Mediator, the Word does not seem to have been actually identified with the Messiah.
We have seen that according to Greek thought the Logos was conceived as a rational principle or impersonal energy by means of which the world was fashioned and ordered, while according to Hebrew thought the Logos was regarded rather as a mediating agent or personal organ of the Divine Being. The Hellenistic doctrine, in other words, was chiefly a doctrine of the Logos as Reason; the Jewish, a doctrine of the Logos as Word.
Philo:
In the philosophy of Alexandria, of which Philo was an illustrious exponent, the two phases were combined, and Hellenistic speculation was united with Hebrew tradition for the purpose of showing that the Old Testament taught the true philosophy and embodied all that was highest in Greek reflection. In Philo the two streams meet and flow henceforth in a common bed. The all-pervading Energy of Heraclitus, the archetypal Ideas of Plato, the purposive Reason of Aristotle, the immanent Order of the Stoics are taken up and fused with the Jewish conception of Yahweh who, while transcending all finite existences, is revealed through His intermediatory Word. As the result of this Philonic synthesis, an entirely new idea of God is formulated. While Philo admits the eternity of matter, he rejects the Greek view that the world is eternal, since it denies the creative activity and providence of God. At the same time he separates Divine energy from its manifestations in the world, and is therefore compelled to connect the one with the other by the interposition of subordinate Powers. These Divine forces are the embodiment of the ideai, of Plato and the aggeloi, of the Old Testament. The double meaning of Logos--thought and speech--is made use of by Philo to explain the relation subsisting between the ideal world existing only in the mind of God and the sensible universe which is its visible embodiment. He distinguishes, therefore, between the Logos inherent in God (logos endiathetos), corresponding to reason in man, and the Logos which emanates from God (logos prophorikos), corresponding to the spoken Word as the revelation of thought. Though in His inner essence God is incomprehensible by any but Himself, He has created the intelligible cosmos by His self-activity. The Word is therefore in Philo the rational order manifested in the visible world.
Some special features of the Philonic Logos may be noted: (1) It is distinguished from God as the instrument from the Cause. (2) As instrument by which God makes the world, it is in its nature intermediate between God and man. (3) As the expressed thought of God and the rational principle of the visible world, the Logos is "the Eldest or Firstborn Son of God." It is the "bond" (desmos) holding together all things (De Mundi, i.592), the law which determines the order of the universe and guides the destinies of men and nations (same place) . Sometimes Philo calls it the "Man of God": or the "Heavenly man," the immortal father of all noble men; sometimes he calls it "the Second God," "the Image of God." (4) From this it follows that the Logos must be the Mediator between God and man, the "Intercessor" (hiketes) or "High Priest," who is the ambassador from heaven and interprets God to man. Philo almost exhausts the vocabulary of Hebrew metaphor in describing the Logos. It is "manna," "bread from heaven," "the living stream," the "sword" of Paradise, the guiding "cloud," the "rock" in the wilderness.
These various expressions, closely resembling the New Testament descriptions of Christ, lead us to ask: Is Philo's Logos a personal being or a pure abstraction? Philo himself seems to waver in his answer, and the Greek and the Jew in him are hopelessly at issue. That he personifies the Logos is implied in the figures he uses; but to maintain its personality would have been inconsistent with Philo's whole view of God and the world. His Jewish faith inclines him to speak of the Logos as personal, while his Greek culture disposes him to an impersonal interpretation. Confronted with this alternative, the Alexandrian wavers in indecision. After all has been said, his Logos really resolves itself into a group of Divine ideas, and is conceived, not as a distinct person, but as the thought of God which is expressed in the rational order of the visible universe.
In the speculations of Philo, whose thought is so frequently couched in Biblical language, we have the gropings of a sincere mind after a truth which was disclosed in its fullness only by the revelation of Pentecost. In Philo, Greek philosophy, as has been said, "stood almost at the door of the Christian church." But if the Alexandrian thinker could not create the Christian doctrine, he unconsciously prepared the soil for its acceptance. In this sense his Logos-doctrine has a real value in the evolution of Christian thought. Philo was not, indeed, the master of the apostles, but even if he did nothing more than call forth their antagonism, he helped indirectly to determine the doctrine of Christendom.
We pass now to consider the import of the term in the New Testament. Here it signifies usually "utterance," "speech" or "narrative." In reference to God it is used sometimes for a special utterance, or for revelation in general, and even for the medium of revelation--Holy Scripture. In the prologue of the Fourth Gospel it is identified with the personal Christ; and it is this employment of the term in the light of its past history which creates the interest of the problem of the New Testament doctrine.
The author of the Fourth Gospel is not, however, the first New Testament writer who represents Jesus as the Logos. Though Paul does not actually use the word in this connection, he has anticipated the Johannine conception. Christ is represented by Paul as before His advent living a life with God in heaven (Gal 4:4; Rom 10:6). He is conceived as one in whose image earthly beings, and especially men, were made (1 Cor 11:7; 15:45-49); and even as participating in the creation (1 Cor 8:6). In virtue of His distinct being He is called God's "own Son" (Rom 8:32).
Whether Paul was actually conversant with the writings of Philo is disputed (compare Pfleider, Urchristentum), but already when he wrote to the Colossians and Ephesians the influence of Alexandrian speculation was being felt in the church. Incipient Gnosticism, which was an attempt to correlate Christianity with the order of the universe as a whole, was current. Most noticeable are the pointed allusions to Gnostic watchwords in Eph 3:19 ("fullness of God") and in Col 2:3 ("Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden"), where Paul shows that everything sought for in the doctrine of the Pleroma is really given in Christ. The chief object of these epistles is to assert the unique dignity and absolute power of the Person of Christ. He is not merely one of the Eons which make up the Pleroma, as Gnostic teachers affirm, but a real and personal Being in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells. He is not merely an inferior workman creating glory for a higher Master. He creates for Himself. He is the end as well as the source of all created. things (Col 1:15-20). Though throughout this epistle the word "Logos" is never introduced, it is plain that the eikon, of Paul is equivalent in rank and function to the Logos of John. Each exists prior to creation, each is equal to God, shares His life and cooperates in His work.
In the Epistle to the Hebrews we have an equally explicit, if not fuller, declaration of the eternal Deity of Christ. Whatever may be said of Paul there can be little doubt that the author of He was familiar with the Philonic writings. Who this writer was we do not know; but his Philonism suggests that he may have been an Alexandrian Jew, possibly even a disciple of Philo. In language seemingly adapted from that source ("Son of God," "Firstborn," "above angels," "Image of God," "Agent in Creation," "Mediator," "Great High Priest" "Melchizedek") the author of He sneaks of Christ as a reflection of the majesty and imprint of the nature of God, just as in a seal the impression resembles the stamp. The dignity of His title indicates His essential rank. He is expressly dressed as God; and the expression "the effulgence of his glory" (the Revised Version (British and American) apaugasma) implies that He is one with God (Heb 1:3). By Him the worlds have been made, and all things are upheld by the fiat of His word (Heb 1:3). In the name He bears, in the honors ascribed to Him, in His superiority to angels, in His relationship as Creator both to heaven and earth (Heb 1:10), we recognize (in language which in the letter of it strongly reminds us of Philo, yet in its spirit is so different) the description of one who though clothed with human nature is no mere subordinate being, but the possessor of all Divine prerogatives and the sharer of the very nature of God Himself.
3. Doctrine in the Fourth Gospel:
In the Fourth Gospel the teaching of Paul and the author of He finds its completest expression. "The letter to the He stands in a sense half-way between Pauline and Johannine teaching" (Weizsacker, Apostolic Age, V, 11). It is, however, too much to say that these three writers represent the successive stages of single line of development. While all agree in emphasizing the fact of Christ's Divine personality and eternal being, Paul represents rather the religious interest, the Epistle to the Hebrews the philosophical. In the Johannine Christology the two elements are united.
In discussing the Johannine doctrine of the Logos we shall Speak first of its content and secondly of its terminology.
The evangelist uses "Logos" 6 times as a designation of the Divine preexistent person of Christ (Jn 1:1,14; 1 Jn 1:1; Rev 19:13), but he never puts it into the mouth of Christ. The idea which John sought to convey by this term was not essentially different from the conception of Christ as presented by Paul. But the use of the word gave a precision and emphasis to the being of Christ which the writer must have felt was especially needed by the class of readers for whom his Gospel was intended. The Logos with whom the Fourth Gospel starts is a Person. Readers of the Synoptics had long been familiar with the term "Word of God" as equivalent to the Gospel; but the essential purport of John's Word is Jesus Himself, His Person. We have here an essential change of meaning. The two applications are indeed connected; but the conception of the perfect revelation of God in the Gospel passes into that of the perfect revelation of the Divine nature in general (compare Weizsacker, Apostolic Age, V, ii, 320).
In the prologue (which, however, must not be regarded as independent of, or having no integral connection with, the rest of the book) there is stated: (a) the relation of the Logos to God; and (b) the relation of the Logos to the world.
Here the author makes three distinct affirmations:
(i) "In the beginning was the Word."
The evangelist carries back his history of our Lord to a point prior to all temporal things. Nothing is said of the origin of the world. As in Gen 1:1, so here there is only implied that the Logos was existent when the world began to be. When as yet nothing was, the Logos was. Though the eternal preexistence of the Word is not actually stated, it is implied.
(ii) "The Word was with God."
Here His personal existence is more specifically defined. He stands distinct from, yet in eternal fellowship with, God. The preposition pros (bei, Luther) expresses beyond the fact of coexistence that of perpetual intercommunion. John would guard against the idea of mere self-contemplation on the one hand, and entire independence on the other. It is union, not fusion.
(iii) "The Word was God."
He is not merely related eternally, but actually identical in essence with God. The notion of inferiority is emphatically excluded and the true Deity of the Word affirmed. In these three propositions we ascend from His eternal existence to His distinct personality and thence to His substantial Godhead. All that God is the Logos is. Identity, difference, communion are the three phases of the Divine relationship.
(b) Relation of Logos to the World:
The Logos is word as well as thought, and therefore there is suggested the further idea of communicativeness. Of this self-communication the evangelist mentions two phases--creation and revelation. The Word unveils Himself through the mediation of objects of sense and also manifests Himself directly. Hence, in this section of the prologue (Jn 1:3-5) a threefold division also occurs. (i) He is the Creator of the visible universe. "All things were made through him"--a phrase which describes the Logos as the organ of the entire creative activity of God and excludes the idea favored by Plato and Philo that God was only the architect who molded into cosmos previously existing matter. The term egeneto ("becomes," werden), implies the successive evolution of the world, a statement not inconsistent with the modern theory of development. (ii) The Logos is also the source of the intellectual, moral and spiritual life of man. "In him was life; and the life was the light of men." He is the light as well as the life--the fountain of all the manifold forms of being and thought in and by whom all created things subsist, and from whom all derive illumination (compare 1 Jn 1:1-3; also Col 1:17). But inasmuch as the higher phases of intelligent life involve freedom, the Divine Light, though perfect and undiminished in itself, was not comprehended by a world which chose darkness rather than light (Jn 1:5,11). (iii) The climax of Divine revelation is expressed in the statement, The Word became flesh," which implies on the one hand the reality of Christ's humanity, and, on the other, the voluntariness of His incarnation, but excludes the notion that in becoming man the Logos ceased to be God. Though clothed in flesh, the Logos continues to be the self-manifesting God, and retains, even in human form, the character of the Eternal One. In this third phase is embodied the highest manifestation of the Godhead. In physical creation the power of God is revealed. In the bestowal of light to mankind His wisdom is chiefly manifested. But in the third especially is His love unveiled. All the perfections of the Deity are focused and made visible in Christ--the "glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth" (Jn 1:14).
Thus the Word reveals the Divine essence. The incarnation makes the life, the light and the love which are eternally present in God manifest to men. As they meet in God, so they meet in Christ. This is the glory which the disciples beheld; the truth to which the Baptist bore witness (Jn 1:7); the fullness whereof His apostles received (Jn 1:16); the entire body of grace and truth by which the Word gives to men the power to become the sons of God.
There is implied throughout that the Word is the Son. Each of these expressions taken separately have led and may lead to error. But combined they correct possible misuse. On the one hand, their union protects us from considering the Logos as a mere abstract impersonal quality; and, on the other, saves us from imparting to the Son a lower state or more recent origin than the Father. Each term supplements and protects the other. Taken together they present Christ before His incarnation as at once personally distinct from, yet equal with, the Father--as the eternal life which was with God and was manifested to us.
We have now to ask whence the author of the Fourth Gospel derived the phraseology employed to set forth his Christology. It will be well, however, to distinguish between the source of the doctrine itself and the source of the language. For it is possible that Alexandrian philosophy might have suggested the linguistic medium, while the doctrine itself had another origin. Writers like Reuss, Keim, Holtzmann, Weizsacker, Schmiedel, etc., who contend for the Alexandrian derivation of the prologue, are apt to overlook two considerations regarding the Johannine doctrine: (1) There is no essential difference between the teaching of John and that of the other apostolic writers; and even when the word "Logos" is not used, as in Paul's case, the view of Christ's person is virtually that which we find in the Fourth Gospel. (2) The writer himself affirms that his knowledge of Christ was not borrowed from others, but was derived from personal fellowship with Jesus Himself. "We beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten." This is John's summary and witness upon which he proceeds to base the vivid memories of Jesus which follow. The Johannine doctrine is not to be regarded merely as a philosophical account of the nature of God and His creation of the world, but rather as the statement of a belief which already existed in the Christian church and which received fresh testimony and assurance from the evangelist's own personal experience.
But the question may still be asked: Even if it was no novel doctrine which John declared, what led him to adopt the language of the Logos, a word which had not been employed in this connection by previous Christian writers, but which was prevalent in the philosophical vocabulary of the age? It would be inconceivable that the apostle lighted upon this word by chance or that he selected it without any previous knowledge of its history and value. It may be assumed that when he speaks of the "Word" in relation to God and the world, he employs a mode of speech which was already familiar to those for whom he wrote and of whose general import he himself was well aware.
The truth that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ was borne in upon John. The problem which confronted him was how he could make that truth real to his contemporaries. This he sought to do by using the language of the highest religious thought of his day.
We have seen that the term "Logos" had undergone a twofold and to some extent parallel evolution. On the one hand, it had a Hebrew and, on the other, a Hellenic history. In which direction are we to look for the immediate source of the Johannine terminology?
As a Palestinian Jew familiar with current Jewish ideas and forms of devout expression, it would be natural for him to adopt a word, or its Greek equivalent, which played so important a part in shaping and expressing the religious beliefs of the Old Testament people. Many scholars consider that we have here the probable source of Johannine language. In the Old Testament, and particularly, in the Targums or Jewish paraphrases, the "Word" is constantly spoken of as the efficient instrument of Divine action; and the "Word of God" had come to be used in a personal way as almost identical with God Himself. In Rev 19:13, we have obviously an adoption of this Hebrew use of the phrase. Throughout the Gospel there is evinced a decided familiarity and sympathy with the Old Testament teaching, and some expressions would seem to indicate the evangelist's desire to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of Jewish expectation (e.g. Jn 1:14,29,31; 2:19; 3:14; 6:32,48-50), and the living embodiment of Israelite truth (Jn 1:16; 8:12; 11:25; 14:6). But as against this it has been pointed out by Weizsacker (Apostolisches Zeitalter) that the Word of God is not conceived in the Old Testament as an independent Being, still less as equivalent for the Messiah, and that the rabbinical doctrine which identifies the memra with God is of much later date.
At the same time the Hebrew cast of thought of the Johannine Gospel and its affinities with Jewish rather than Hellenic modes of expression can hardly be gainsaid. Though John's knowledge of and sympathy with Palestinian religion may not actually account for his use of the term "Logos," it may have largely colored and directed his special application of it. For, as Neander observes, that name may have been put forward at Ephesus in order to lead those Jews, who were busying themselves with speculations on the Logos as the center of all theophanies, to recognize in Christ the Supreme Revelation of God and the fulfillment of their Messianic hopes.
Other writers trace the Johannine ideas and terms to Hellenic philosophy and particularly to Alexandrian influence as represented in Philo. No one can compare the Fourth Gospel with the writings of Philo without noting a remarkable similarity in diction, especially in the use of the word "Logos". It would be hazardous, however, on this ground alone to impute conscious borrowing to the evangelist. It is more probable that both the Alexandrian thinker and the New Testament writer were subject to common influences of thought and expression. Hellenism largely colors the views and diction of the early church. Paul takes over many words from Greek philosophy. "There is not a single New Testament writing," says Harnack (Dogmen-Geschichte, I, 47, note), "which does not betray the influence of the mode of thought and general culture which resulted from the Hellenizing of the East." But, while that is true, it must not be forgotten, as Harnack himself points out, "that while the writers of the New Testament breathe an atmosphere created by Greek culture, the religious ideas in which they live and move come to them from the Old Testament."
It is hardly probable that John was directly acquainted with the writings of Philo. But it is more than likely that he was cognizant of the general tenor of his teaching and may have discovered in the language which had floated over from Alexandria to Ephesus a suitable vehicle for the utterance of his own beliefs, especially welcome and intelligible to those who were familiar with Alexandrian modes of thought.
But whatever superficial resemblances there may be between Philo and John (and they are not few or vague), it must be at once evident that the whole spirit and view of life is fundamentally different. So far from the apostle being a disciple of the Alexandrian or a borrower of his ideas, it would be more correct to say that there is clearly a conscious rejection of the Philonic conception, and that the Logos of John is a deliberate protest against what he must have regarded as the inadequate and misleading philosophy of Greece.
(c) Contrast between Philo and John:
The contrast between the two writers is much more striking than the resemblance. The distinction is not due merely to the acceptance by the Christian writer of Jesus as the Word, but extends to the whole conception of God and His relation to the world which has made Christianity a new power among men. The Logos of Philo is metaphysical, that of John, religious. Philo moves entirely in the region of abstract thought, his idea of God is pure being; John's thought is concrete and active, moving in a region of life and history. Philo's Logos is intermediate, the instrument which God employs in fashioning the world; John's Logos is not subsidiary but is Himself God, and as such is not a mere instrument, but the prime Agent in creation. According to Philo the Deity is conceived as an architect who forms the world out of already existent matter. According to John the Logos is absolute Creator of all that is, the Source of all being, life and intelligence. In Philo the Logos hovers between personality and impersonality, and if it is sometimes personified it can hardly be said to have the value of an actual person; in John the personality of the Logos is affirmed from the first and it is of the very essence of his doctrine, the ground of His entire creative energy. The idea of an incarnation is alien to the thought of Philo and impossible in his scheme of the universe; the "Word that has become flesh" is the pivot and crown of Johannine teaching. Philo affirms the absolute incomprehensibility of God; but it is the prime object of the evangelist to declare that God is revealed in Christ and that the Logos is the unveiling through the flesh of man of the self-manifesting Deity. Notwithstanding the personal epithets employed by Philo, his Logos remains a pure abstraction or attribute of God, and it is never brought into relation with human history. John's Logos, on the other hand, is instinct with life and energy from the beginning, and it is the very heart of his Gospel to declare as the very center of life and history the great historical event of the incarnation which is to recreate the world and reunite God and man.
From whatever point of view we compare them, we find that Philo and John, while using the same language, give an entirely different value to it. The essential purport of the Johannine Logos is Jesus Christ. The adoption of the term involves its complete transformation. It is baptized with a new spirit and henceforth stands for a new conception. From whatsoever source it was originally derived--from Hebrew tradition or Hellenic speculation--on Christian soil it is a new product. It is neither Greek nor Jewish, it is Christian. The philosophical abstraction has become a religious conception. Hellenism and Hebrewism have been taken up and fused into a higher unity, and Christ as the embodiment of the Logos has become the creative power and the world-wide possession of mankind.
The most probable view is that Philo and John found the same term current in Jewish and Gentilecircles and used it to set forth their respective ideas; Philo, following his predilections for Greek philosophy, to give a Hellenic complexion to his theory of the relation of Divine Reason to the universe; John, true to ,his Hebrew instincts, seeing in the Logos the climax of that revelation of God to man of which the earlier Jewish theophanies were but partial expressions.
There is nothing improbable in the surmise that the teaching of Philo gave a fresh impulse to the study of the Logos as Divine Reason which was already shadowed forth in the Biblical doctrine of Wisdom (Westcott). Nor need we take offense that such an important idea should have come to the Biblical author from an extra-Biblical writer (compare Schmiedel, Johannine Writings), remembering only that the author of the Johannine Gospel was no mechanical borrower, but an entirely independent and original thinker who gave to the Logos and the ideas associated with it a wholly-new worth and interpretation. Thus, as has been said, the treasures of Greece were made contributory to the full unfolding of the Gospel.
The Johannine Logos became the fruitful source of much speculation in Gnostic circles and among the early Fathers regarding the nature of Christ. The positive truth presented by the Fourth Gospel was once more broken up, and the various elements of which it was the synthesis became the seeds of a number of partial and one-sided theories respecting the relation of the Father and the Son. The influence of Greek ideas, which had already begun in the Apostolic Age, became more pronounced and largely shaped the current of ante-Nicene theology (see Hatch, Hibbert Lectures).
Gnosticism in particular was an attempt to reconcile Christianity with philosophy; but in Gnostic systems the term "Logos" is only sparingly employed. According to Basilides the "Logos" was an emanation from the nous as personified Wisdom, which again was directly derived from the Father. Valentinus, in whose teaching Gnosticism culminated, taught that Wisdom was the last of a series of Eons which emanated from the Primal Being, and the Logos was an emanation of the first two principles which issued from God--Reason, Faith. Justin Martyr, the first of the sub-apostolic Fathers, sought to unite the Scriptural idea of the Logos as Word with the Hellenic idea of Reason. According to him God produced in His own nature a rational power which was His agent in creation and took the form in history of the Divine Man. Christ is the organ of all revelations, and as the logos spermatikos, He sows the seeds of virtue and truth among the heathen. All that is true and beautiful in the pagan world is to be traced to the activity of the Logos before His incarnation. Tatian and Theophilus taught essentially the same doctrine; though in Tatian there is a marked leaning toward Gnosticism, and consequently a tendency to separate the ideal from the historical Christ. Athenagoras, who ascribes to the Logos the creation of all things, regarding it in the double sense of the Reason of God and the creative energy of the world, has a firm grasp of the Biblical doctrine, which was still more clearly expressed by Irenaeus, who held that the Son was the essential Word, eternally begotten of the Father and at once the interpreter of God and the Creator of the world.
The Alexandrian school was shaped by the threefold influence of Plato, Philo and the Johannine Gospel. Clement of Alexandria views the Son as the Logos of the Father, the Fountain of all intelligence, the Revealer of the Divine Being and the Creator and Illuminator of mankind. He repudiates the idea of the inferiority of the Son, and regards the Logos not as the spoken but as the creative word. Origen seeks to reconcile the two ideas of the eternity and the subordination of the Logos, and is in this sense a mediator between the Arian and more orthodox parties and was appealed to by both. According to him the Son is equal in substance with the Father, but there is a difference in essence. While the Father is "the God" (ho theos) and "God Himself" (autotheos), the Logos is "a second God" (deuteros theos). In the Nicene Age, under the shaping influence of the powerful mind of Athanasius, and, to a lesser degree, of Basil and the two Gregories, the Logos-doctrine attained its final form in the triumphant statement of the Nicene Creed which declared the essential unity, but, at the same time, the personal distinction of the Father and Son. The Council of Nicea practically gathered up the divergent views of the past and established the teaching of the Fourth Gospel as the doctrine of the church.
LITERATURE.
(1) On Greek Logos:
Schleiermacher, Herakleitos der Dunkle; Histories of Philosophy, Zeller, Ueberweg, Hitter; Heinze, Die Lehre yore Logos in der Greek Phil. (1872); Aall, Gesch. d. Logosidee in d. Greek Phil. (1896).
(2) On Jewish Doctrine:
Oehler, O T Theol. (1873); Schurer, Lehrbuch d. New Testament Zeitgesch; Schultz, Old Testament Theol.
(3) On Alexandrian Doctrine:
Gfrorer, Philo u. die alex. Theosophie (1831); Dahne, Gesch. Darstell. der jud-alex. Religions-Philosophic (1843); Keferstein, Philos Lehre yon den gottlichen Mittelwesen (1846); Dorner, Entwicklungsgesch. der Lehre v. d. Person Christi; Siegfried, Philo v. Alex. (1875); Drummond, Philo Judaeus (1888); Reville, La doctrine du Logos; Huber, Die Philosophic der Kirchenvater; Grossmann, Questiones Philoneae (1841); Watson, Philos. Basis of Religion (1907).
(4) On Johannine Gospel:
Relative comma. of Meyer, Godet, Westcote, Luthardt, E. Scott (1907); Liddon, Divinity of our Lord ("Bampton Lectures," 1866); Watkins, Modern Criticism on the Fourth Gospel ("Bampton Lectures," 1890); Gloag, Introduction to Johannine Writing, (1891); Stevens, Johannine Theol. (1894); Drummond, Gospel of John; Bertling, Der Johan. Logos (1907); Schmiedel, The Johannine Writings (1908); Weizsacker, Apostolic Age, V, ii; Beyschlag and Weiss, Biblical Theol. of New Testament; Drummond, Via, Veritas, Vita (1894); Hatch, Greek Ideas and Usages, Their Influence upon the Christian Church (Hibbert Lectures, 1888).
(5) Patristic Period:
Harnack, Dogmen-Gesch.; Baur, Kirchen-Gesch.; Dorner, System d. chr. Glaubenslehre; Loofs, Leitfaden fur seine Vorlesungen uber Dogmengeschichte; Atzbergen, Die Logoslehre d. heiligen Athanasius (1880).
B.D. Alexander
loinz (chalats, Aramaic charats, mothen, kecel, yarekh; osphus): This variety of Hebrew synonyms seems to be used rather promiscuously for the loins, though there is no little difference in the secondary meanings of these words. They represent various modes of expressing the loins as the seat of strength and vigor (Job 40:16, Hebrew mothen, here used of Behemoth), the center of procreative power, the portion of the body which is girded about, and is considered as specially needful of covering, even under primitive conditions of life (Job 31:20), and where painful disease most effectually unfits a man for work and warfare.
Jacob receives the Divine promise that "kings shall come out of (his) loins" (chalats, Gen 35:11), and we read of 66 souls "that came out of his loins" (yarekh) which went into Egypt (Gen 46:26). The Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of the Levites as having come out of the loins of Abraham (Heb 7:5).
As the seat of strength (compare LEG ;THIGH ), the loins are girded with belts of leather (2 Ki 1:8; Mt 3:4), or cloth, often beautifully embroidered (Ex 28:39), or of costly material (Ex 39:29; Jer 13:1 f). Girded loins are a sign of readiness for service or endeavor (Ex 12:11; 1 Ki 18:46; 2 Ki 4:29; Job 38:3; Prov 31:17; Lk 12:35; 1 Pet 1:13). Of God it is said that "he looseth the bond of kings, and bindeth their loins with a girdle," i.e. strengthens them (Job 12:18). On the loins the sword is worn (2 Sam 20:8). It is a sign of mourning to gird the loins with sackcloth (1 Ki 20:32; Isa 32:11; Jer 48:37; Am 8:10; see also the First Papyrus of Elephantine, l. 20). A man whose strength is in his attachment to truth, in other words is faithful, is spoken of as having his loins girt about with truth (Eph 6:14). Thus, the Messiah is described: "Righteousness shall be the girdle of his waist, and faithfulness the girdle of his loins" (Isa 11:5). One of the most primitive modes of clothing consisted of a fleece tied around the loins (Job 31:20).
The condition of unfitness for service is described in that the loins (kecel) are filled with a burning (Ps 38:7, the King James Version "loathsome disease"), or that "a sore burden" is laid upon the "loins" (mothen, Ps 66:11). Thus the loins are made "continually to shake" (Ps 69:23), "the joints of (the) loins" (charats) are loosed (Dan 5:6), the "loins are filled with anguish" (Isa 21:3). It is very likely that originally a disabling lumbago or the painful affections of the gall or the bladder (calculus, etc.) are meant, but very soon the expression becomes merely metaphorical to express personal helplessness, especially that which can but rely upon assistance and help from God.
H. L. E. Luering
lo'-is (Lois (2 Tim 1:5)): The grandmother of Timothy, and evidently the mother of Eunice, Timothy's mother. The family lived at Lystra (Acts 16:1). It was on the occasion of Paul's first missionary journey (Acts 14) that Eunice and Timothy were converted to Christ, and it was, in all likelihood, on the same occasion that Lois also became a Christian. Paul speaks of the unfeigned faith that there was in Timothy, and he adds that this faith dwelt at the first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice. This is the only passage where Lois is mentioned; but by comparing 2 Tim 1:5 with 2 Tim 3:15 (the King James Version), where Paul refers to Timothy's having "from a child known the holy scriptures," it would appear that Lois was associated with Eunice, both in a reverent faith in God and in the careful instruction in the Old Testament which was given to Timothy.
John Rutherfurd
lon-jev'-i-ti: In the part of Genesis ascribed to the Priestly Code (P), the names and genealogies of the patriarchs are given (Gen 5; 11). In the three versions which are our chief sources, Massoretic Text, Septuagint and Sam, the age-numbers given for these patriarchs are hopelessly at variance. It is in accord with what we find in the earliest legend of most races that in these chapters a great length of life is ascribed to these; thus Berosus attributes to the first 10 kings of Babylonia a span of 430,000 years, and Hesiod (Works and Days, 129) says that in the Silver Age childhood lasted 100 years, during which a boy was reared and grew up beside his mother. On the other hand the evidence of prehistoric archaeology shows that the rate of development of the individual in the early Stone Age differed very little from that of humanity at the present day. It is possible that, in the case of the Hebrew record, the names of certain pre-Abrahamic patriarchs were derived from an ancient tradition, and that in the desire to fill up the chronology of the period before the call of Abraham, these names were inserted and the time which was supposed to have elapsed was divided among them; on the basis of some such hypothesis as that which is said to have existed among the Jews, that the Messiah should come 4,000 years after Adam.
We know from the archaeological evidence that the antiquity of primitive man extends to a date very much farther back than 4,000 years. Indeed, we can prove that before 4000 BC there were settled nationalities both in the valley of the Nile and that of the Euphrates, and that among these the duration of individual life was much the same as at the present day. The first three dynasties in Egypt, starting at or about 4400 BC, consisted of 25 consecutive kings, the average length of whose several reigns was about 30 years. The biographic sketches of Biblical persons other than those in Genesis showed that their longevity did not exceed that of our contemporaries. Eli was blind and feeble at 98. At 70 David was bedridden and frail. Manasseh, the king of Judah whose reign was longest, died at 67; Uzziah died at 68. The statement in Ps 90:10 attributed to Moses is a correct estimate of what has been the expectation of life at all time.
At the present day among Palestinian fellahin very old men are uncommon. I have never seen anyone among them who could prove that he was 80 years of age; the rate of infant mortality is appallingly high. Maturity is earlier, and signs of senility appear among them sooner than among the same class in Great Britain.
Alexander Macalister
long-suf'-er-ing ('erekh 'appayim; makrothumia): The words 'erekh 'appayim, translated longsuffering, mean literally, "long of nose" (or "breathing"), and, as anger was indicated by rapid, violent breathing through the nostrils, "long of anger," or "slow to wrath." The adjective is applied to God (Ex 34:6 the King James Version, in the name of Yahweh as proclaimed to Moses; Nu 14:18 the King James Version; Ps 86:15 the King James Version; the Revised Version (British and American) "slow to anger," which is also the translation in other places; the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American) Neh 9:17; Ps 103:8; 145:8; Prov 15:18; 16:32; Joel 2:13; Jon 4:2; Nah 1:3); it is associated with "great kindness" and "plenteous in mercy." The substantive occurs in Jer 15:15: "Take me not away in thy longsuffering." In Eccl 7:8, we have 'erekh ruach, the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American) "patient in spirit."
The word in the New Testament rendered "longsuffering," makrothumia (once makrothumeo, "to be longsuffering"), which is the rendering of 'erekh 'appayim in the Septuagint, is literally, "long of mind or soul" (regarded as the seat of the emotions), opposed to shortness of mind or soul, irascibility, impatience, intolerance. It is attributed to God (Rom 2:4; 9:22; 2 Pet 3:9), of His bearing long with sinners and slowness to execute judgment on them. It is, therefore, one of "the fruits of the Spirit" in man (Gal 5:22) which Christians are frequently exhorted to cherish and show one toward the other (Eph 4:2; Col 1:11; 3:12, etc.); it belongs, Paul says, to the love, without which all else is nothing: "Love suffereth long (makrothumei), and is kind" (1 Cor 13:4); The verb makrothumeo is sometimes translated by "patience" (Mt 18:26,29, "Have patience with me"). Lk 18:7 has been variously rendered; the King James Version has "And shall not God avenge his own elect .... though he bear long with them"; the Revised Version (British and American) "and yet he is longsuffering over them," the American Revised Version margin "and is he slow to punish on their behalf?" Weymouth (New Testament in Modern Speech) has "although he seems slow in taking action on their behalf," which most probably gives the sense of the passage; in Jas 5:7,8 the verb occurs thrice, the King James Version "be patient," "hath long patience"; the Revised Version (British and American) also translates by "patient"; this, however, as in Mt 18:26,29, seems to lose the full force of the Greek word. According to Trench (Synonyms of the New Testament, 189), the difference between hupomone ("patience") and makrothumia is that the latter word expresses patience in respect to persons, and the former in respect to things; hence, hupomone is never ascribed to God; where He is called "the God of patience," it is as He gives it to His servants and saints. But in Jas 5:7 it is used with reference to things, and in Col 1:11 it is associated with patience (compare Heb 6:12,15), suggesting patient endurance of trials and sufferings. In Col 1:11 it is also associated with "joy," indicating that it is not a mere submissiveness, but a joyful acceptance of the will of God, whatever it may be. In The Wisdom of Solomon 15:1; Ecclesiasticus 5:4, we have "longsuffering" (makrothumos) ascribed to God; also in Ecclesiasticus 2:11, the Revised Version (British and American) "mercy."
W. L. Walker
look: (1) The uses of the simple verb in English Versions of the Bible are nearly all good modern English. In Isa 5:2, however, "He looked that it should bring forth grapes"--"look" is used in the sense of "expect." Compare the King James Version of Sirach 20:14; Acts 28:6, "They looked when he should have swollen" (the Revised Version (British and American) "They expected that he would have swollen"). In 1 Macc 4:54, the King James Version has inserted "look" (omitted in the Revised Version (British and American)) as a simple interjection, without a corresponding word in the Greek (2) "Look upon" means "fix one's attention on," and is often so used in English Versions of the Bible without further significance (Eccl 2:11; Lk 22:56, etc.); but in 2 Ch 24:22 the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American), "Yahweh look upon it" means "remember." However, continual attention given to an object usually denotes that pleasure is found in it, and from this fact such uses as those of Prov 23:31, "Look not thou upon the wine when it is red," are derived. In particular, God's "looking upon" a person becomes a synonym for "showing favor unto," as in Dt 26:7 the King James Version; Ps 84:9 the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American); Ps 119:132 the King James Version; Lk 1:48 the Revised Version (British and American) only, etc. (the Revised Version (British and American) usually, re-words, in such passages). On the other hand, "look on" may be weakened, as in such phrases as "fair to look unon" (Gen 12:11 etc.), where it means only "fair to the sight." Or as in modern English, "look on" may describe the attitude of the passive spectator, even when applied to God. So Ps 35:17, "Lord, how long wilt thou look on?" (3) "Look to" usually means "pay attention to," as in Prov 14:15; Jer 39:12; 2 Jn 1:8, etc., and the Revised Version (British and American) occasionally uses this phrase in place of AV's "look upon" (Phil 2:4). The reverse change is made in the King James Version's 1 Sam 16:12, "goodly to look to"; Ezek 23:15, "all of them princes to look to," but in the latter verse a more drastic revision was needed, for the meaning is "all of them in appearance as princes." "Look out" may mean "search for" (Gen 41:33; Acts 6:3), but may also be used literally, (Gen 26:8, etc.). The King James Version's "looking after those things" in Lk 21:26 has been changed by the Revised Version (British and American) into "expectation of the things." "Look one another in the face" in 2 Ki 14:8,11 means "meet in battle."
Burton Scott Easton
look'-ing-glas (Ex 38:8 the King James Version margin "brasen glasses").
loom.
See WEAVING .
loop (in plural lula'oth (Ex 26:4 f,10 f; 36:11 f,17)): A ring or fold made of blue thread to fasten into the corresponding golden clasps, or taches upon the curtains of the tabernacle, joining them in sets, or pairs.
See TABERNACLE .
A name or title of God frequently used in the Old Testament, always translated "Yahweh of Hosts" (Yahweh tsebha'oth) in the American Standard Revised Version, since Yahweh, never 'Adhonay, is used in this phrase. Evidently the meaning of the title is that all created agencies and forces are under the leadership or dominion of Yahweh, who made and maintains them (Gen 2:1; Isa 45:12). It is used to express Yahweh's great power.
(he kuriake hemera):
Formerly it was supposed that the adjective kuriakos (translated "the Lord's") was a purely Christian word, but recent discoveries have proved that it was in fairly common use in the Roman Empire before Christian influence had been felt. In secular use it signified "imperial," "belonging to the lord"--the emperor--and so its adoption by Christianity in the sense "belonging to the Lord"--to Christ--was perfectly easy. Indeed, there is reason to suppose that in the days of Domitian, when the issue had been sharply defined as "Who is Lord? Caesar or Christ?" the use of the adjective by the church was a part of the protest against Caesar-worship (see LORD ). And it is even possible that the full phrase, "the Lord's day," was coined as a contrast to the phrase, "the Augustean day" he sebaste hemera), a term that seems to have been used in some parts of the Empire to denote days especially dedicated in honor of Caesar-worship.
"Lord's day" in the New Testament occurs only in Rev 1:10, but in the post-apostolic literature we have the following references: Ignatius, Ad Mag., ix.1, "No longer keeping the Sabbath but living according to the Lord's day, on which also our Light arose"; Ev. Pet., verse 35, "The Lord's day began to dawn" (compare Mt 28:1); verse 50, "early on the Lord's day" (compare Lk 24:1); Barn 15 9, "We keep the eighth day with gladness," on which Jesus arose from the dead." I.e. Sunday, as the day of Christ's resurrection, was kept as a Christian feast and called "the Lord's day," a title fixed so definitely as to be introduced by the author of Ev. Pet. into phrases from the canonical Gospels. Its appropriateness in Rev 1:10 is obvious, as John received his vision of the exalted Lord when all Christians had their minds directed toward His entrance into glory through the resurrection.
This "first day of the week" appears again in Acts 20:7 as the day on which the worship of the "breaking of bread" took place, and the impression given by the context is that Paul and his companions prolonged their visit to Troas so as to join in the service. Again, 1 Cor 16:2 contains the command, "Upon the first day of the week let each one of you lay by him in store," where the force of the form of the imperative used (the present for repeated action) would be better represented in English by "lay by on the successive Sundays." Worship is here not explicitly mentioned (the Greek of "by him" is the usual phrase for "at home"), but that the appropriateness of the day for Christian acts involves an appropriateness for Christian worship is not to be doubted. Indeed, since the seven-day week was unknown to Greek thought, some regular observance of a hebdomadal cycle must have been settled at Corinth before Paul could write his command. Finally, the phrase, "first day in the week" is found elsewhere in the New Testament only in Mt 28:1; Mk 16:2; Lk 24:1; Jn 20:1,19. The word in all passages for "first" is poor Greek (mia, "one," for prote, a Hebraism), and the coincidence of the form of the phrase in Acts 20:7 and 1 Cor 16:2 with the form used by all four evangelists for the Resurrection Day 'is certainly not accidental; it was the fixed Christian base, just as "Lord's day" was to the writer of Ev. Pet.
The hebdomadal observance of Sunday points back of Corinth to Jewish-Christian soil, but it is impossible to say when the custom first began. Not, apparently, in the earliest days, for Acts 2:46 represents the special worship as daily. But this could not have continued very long, for waning of the first enthusiasm, necessity of pursuing ordinary avocations, and increasing numbers of converts must soon have made general daily gatherings impracticable. A choice of a special day must have become necessary, and this day would, of course, have been Sunday. Doubtless, however, certain individuals and communities continued the daily gatherings to a much later date, and the appearance of Sunday as the one distinctive day for worship was almost certainly gradual.
Sunday, however, was sharply distinguished from the Sabbath. One was the day on which worship was offered in a specifically Christian form, the other was a day of ritual rest to be observed by all who were subject? the Law of Moses through circumcision (Gal 5:3; compare Acts 21:20). Uncircumcised Gentiles, however, were free from any obligation of Sabbath observance, and it is quite certain that in apostolic times no renewal of any Sabbath rules or transfer of them to Sunday was made for Gentileconverts. No observance of a particular "day of rest" is contained among the "necessary things" of Acts 15:28,29, nor is any such precept found among all the varied moral directions given in the whole epistolary literature. Quite on the contrary, the observance of a given day as a matter of Divine obligation is denounced by Paul as a forsaking of Christ (Gal 4:10), and Sabbath-keeping is condemned explicitly in Col 2:16. As a matter of individual devotion, to be sure, a man might do as he pleased (Rom 14:5,6), but no general rule as necessary for salvation could be compatible with the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. Evidently, then, the fact that the Christian worship was held on Sunday did not sanctify Sunday any more than (say) a regular Wednesday service among us sanctifies Wednesday, noting especially that the apostolic service was held in the evening. For it was felt that Christian enthusiasm would raise every day to the highest religious plane, the decay of that enthusiasm through the long delay of the Parousia not being contemplated.
The delay occurred, however, and for human beings in the ordinary routine of life there are necessary, not only set periods of worship, but set periods of relaxation from routine to make worship profitable. And the Christian fundamental doctrine of mercy demands that Christianity, where she has the power, shall give to men relief from the drain of continuous toil.
The formulation of general rules to carry these principles into effect, however, belongs to a period outside New Testament times, and so does not come within the scope of this Encyclopedia. It is enough to say that the ecclesiastical rules for Sunday were felt to be quite distinct from the laws for Sabbath observance, and that Alcuin (733?-804) is the first to hold that the church had transferred the Sabbath rules as a whole to Sunday. This principle is still maintained in Roman Catholic theology, but at the Reformation was rejected uncompromisingly by both Lutherans (Augsb. Conf., II, 7) and Calvinists (Helvet. Conf., XXIV, 1-2) in favor of a literally apostolic freedom (Calvin even proposed to adopt Thursday in place of Sunday). The appearance of the opposite extreme of a genuinely "legalistic" Sabbatarianism in the thoroughly Evangelical Scotch and English Puritanism is an anomaly that is explained by reaction from the extreme laxity of the surroundings.
Sunday was fixed as the day for Christian worship by general apostolic practice, and the academic possibility of an alteration hardly seems worth discussing. If a literal apostolicity is to be insisted upon, however, the "breaking of bread" must be made part of the Sunday service. Rest from labor for the sake of worship, public and private, is intensely desirable, since the regaining of the general apostolic enthusiasm seems unattainable, but the New Testament leaves us quite free as to details. Rest from labor to secure physical and mental renewal rests on a still different basis, and the working out of details involves a knowledge of sociological and industrial conditions, as well as a knowledge of religious principles. It is the task of the pastor to combine the various principles and to apply them to the particular conditions of his people in their locality, in accordance with the rules that his own church has indubitably the right to lay down--very special attention being given, however, to the highly important matter of the peculiar problem offered by children. In all cases the general principles underlying the rules should be made clear, so that they will not appear as arbitrary legalism, and it is probably best not to use the term "Sabbath" for Sunday. Under certain conditions great freedom may be desirable, and such is certainly not inconsistent with our liberty in Christ. But experience, and not least of all the experience of the first churches of the Reformation, has abundantly shown that much general laxness in Sunday rules invariably results disastrously.
See further,ETHICS OF JESUS , I, 3, (1).
LITERATURE.
For the linguistic matters, Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, 1910, 361-66. Hessey's Sunday (ed 1880) ("Bampton Lectures," 1860) contains a good summary of the history of the problems. Zockler's "Sonntagsfeier," PRE, edition 3, XVIII, 1906, 521-29 is the best general survey. In Sch-Herz this article ("Sunday") is harmed by abbreviation, but an exhaustive bibliography is added.
Burton Scott Easton
(Mt 6:9-13; Lk 11:2-4): Prayer occupied an important place in the life and the teachings of Jesus. He was emphatically a man of prayer, praying frequently in private and in public, and occasionally spending whole nights in communion with His heavenly Father. He often spoke to His disciples on the subject of prayer, cautioning them against ostentation, or urging perseverance, faith and large expectation, and He gave them a model of devotion in the Lord's prayer.
This prayer is given by the evangelists in two different forms and in two entirely different con nections. In Matthew's account the prayer is given as a part of the Sermon on the Mount and in connection with a criticism of the ostentation usual in the prayers of the hypocrites and the heathen. Lk introduces the prayer after the Galilean ministry and represents it as given in response to a request from one of His disciples, "Lord teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." It gives us, however, no note of time or place, and it is quite possible that the incident which it records took place much earlier. The later form is much shorter than that of Mt and the common parts differ materially in language.
In view of the differences, the reader instinctively inquires whether the prayer was given on two different occasions in these different connections, or the evangelists have presented the same incident in forms derived from different sources, or modified the common source to suit their immediate purposes.
If the prayer was given only on one occasion, there is little doubt that Luke preserves the true historical circumstances, though not necessarily the accurate point of time or place, or the exact form of language. Such a request made at the close of the prayer of Jesus would be natural, and the incident bears every mark of reality. On the other hand, it would be reasonable to assume that the author of Matthew's source, remembering the incident, incorporated the prayer in the Sermon on the Mount as an illustration of the injunctions concerning prayer.
There are many reasons for regarding the Sermon as a collection of sayings spoken on different occasions and summarized for convenience in teaching and memorizing. There is, however, no proof that the prayer was given but once by Jesus. We need not suppose that His disciples were always the same, and we know that He gave instruction in prayer on various occasions. He may have given the model prayer on one occasion spontaneously and at another time on the request of a disciple. It is probable that the two evangelists, using the same or different sources, presented the prayer in such connection as best suited the plan of their narratives. In any case, it is rather remarkable that the prayer is not quoted or directly mentioned anywhere else in the New Testament.
In addition to the opening salutation, "Our Father who art in heaven," the Lord's Prayer consists of six petitions. These are arranged in three equal parts. In the first part, the thought is directed toward God and His great purposes. In the second part, the attention is directed to our condition and wants. The two sets of petitions are closely related, and a line of progress runs through the whole prayer. The petitions of the first part are inseparable, as each includes the one which follows. As the hallowing of God's name requires the coming of His kingdom, so the kingdom comes through the doing of His will. Again, the first part calls for the second, for if His will is to be done by us, we must have sustenance, forgiveness and deliverance from evil. If we seek first the glory of God, the end requires our good. While we hallow His name we are sanctified in Him. The doxology of Mt and our rituals is not found in the leading manuscripts and is generally regarded as an ancient liturgical addition. For this reason it is omitted by the Revised Version (British and American).
The sources of the two accounts cannot be known with certainty. It is hardly correct to say that one account is more original than the other. The original was spoken in Aramaic, while both of the reports are certainly based on Greek sources. The general agreement in language, especially in the use of the unique term epiousios shows that they are not independent translations of the Aramaic original.
Three expressions of the prayer deserve special notice. The words, "Our Father," are new in the Bible and in the world. When God is called Father in the Old Testament, He is regarded as Father of the nation, not of the individual. Even in the moving prayer of Isa 63:16 (the King James Version), "Doubtless thou art our father," the connection makes clear that the reference is to God in the capacity of Creator. The thought of God as the Father of the individual is first reached in the Apocrypha: "O Lord, Father and Master of my life" (Sirach 23:1; compare The Wisdom of Solomon 2:16; 14:3). Here also the notion is veiled in the thought of God as Creator. It was left for Jesus the Son to give us the privilege of calling God "Our Father."
Of the adjective epiousion, "daily" or "needful," neither the origin nor the exact meaning is or is likely to be known. Whether it is qualitative or temporal depends on its derivation from epeinai, or epienai. Our translators usually follow the latter, translating "daily." the American Standard Revised Version gives "needful" as a marginal rendering.
The phrase apo tou ponerou, is equally ambiguous. Since the adjective may be either masculine or neut., it is impossible to decide whether "from the evil one" or "from the evil" was intended. The probability is in favor of the masculine. The Oriental naturally thought of evil in the concrete, just as we think of it in the abstract. For this reason the Authorized rendering "from evil" is more real to us. The evil deprecated is moral, not physical.
The Lord's Prayer was given as a lesson in prayer. As such this simple model surpasses all precepts about prayer. It suggests to the child of God the proper objects of prayer. It supplies suitable forms of language and illustrates the simple and direct manner in which we may trustingly address our heavenly Father. It embraces the elements of all spiritual desire summed up in a few choice sentences. For those who are not able to bring their struggling desires to birth in articulate language it provides an instructive form. To the mature disciple it ever unfolds with richer depths of meaning. Though we learn these words at our mother's knee, we need a lifetime to fill them with meaning and all eternity to realize their answer.
LITERATURE.
The literature of this subject is very extensive. For brief treatment the student will consult the relative sections in the commentaries on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and in the Lives of Christ and the articles on the Lord's Prayer in the several Bible diets. A collection of patristic comment is given by G. Tillmann in his Das Gebet nach der Lehre der Heiligen dargestellt, 2 volumes, Freiburg, 1876. The original comments may be found in any of the standard collections of the Church Fathers.
Among historical studies may be mentioned, F.H. Chase, The Lord's Prayer in the Early Church, Cambridge, 1891, and G. Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, I, Leipzig, 1898, English translation, Edinburgh, 1902.
Among the numerous interpretative treatments, the following are some of the more important: N. Hall, The Lord's Prayer, Edinburgh, 1889; H.J. Van Dyke, The Lord's Prayer, New York, 1891; J. Ruskin, Letters to the Clergy on the Lord's Prayer and the Church, late edition, New York, 1896; E. Wordsworth, Thoughts on the Lord's Prayer, New York, 1898; C.W. Stubbs, Social Teachings of the Lord's Prayer, London, 1900; A.B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve, chapter vi, 4th edition, New York, 1905; L.T. Chamberlain, The True Doctrine of Prayer, New York, 1906; F.M. Williams, Spiritual Instructions on the Lord's Prayer, New York, 1907.
Russell Benjamin Miller
u'-ka-rist
GENERAL
III. PREPARATION FOR THE EUCHARIST
1. Miracles of Loaves and Fishes
IV. HISTORICAL SETTING OF THE EUCHARIST
1. Other Acts and Words of Christ on Eve of the Passion
2. Sacrificial Language of the Institution
3. Sacrificial System of Jewish Dispensation
4. Paschal Background of the Institution of the Eucharist
V. SEQUENCE OF THE INSTITUTION
Points to Be Noted
VI. THE CHURCH'S OBSERVATIONS or THE EUCHARIST
(1) Christians a Priestly Race
(2) Christ, the Eternal High Priest
1. Guidance by the Holy Spirit
1. Outline of Eucharistic Prayer
2. Significance of This for Unity
LITERATURE
Eucharist.--The distinctive rite of Christian worship, instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ upon the eve of His atoning death, being a religious partaking of bread and wine, which, having been presented before God the Father in thankful memorial of Christ's inexhaustible sacrifice, have become (through the sacramental blessing) the communion of the body and blood of Christ (compare Jn 6:54; Acts 2:42; 20:7,11; Rom 15:16; 1 Cor 10:16; 11:23-26).
The New Testament sources of our knowledge of the institution of the Eucharist are fourfold, a brief account thereof being found in each of the Synoptic Gospels and in Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (Mt 26:26-29; Mk 14:22-25; Lk 22:14-20; 1 Cor 11:23-26; compare 10:16,17).
The text of these narratives has been found to need little amendment, save the dropping of a word or two, from each account, that had crept in through the tendency of copyists, consciously or unconsciously, to assimilate the details of parallel passages. The genuineness of Lk 22:19b,20 is absolutely beyond question. Their omission in whole or part, and the alterations in the order of two or three verses in the whole section (22:14-20), characteristic of a very small number of manuscripts, are due to confusion in the minds of a few scribes and translators, between the paschal cup (22:17) and the eucharistic cup (22:20), and to their well-meant, but mistaken, attempt to improve upon the text before them.
The briefest account of the institution of the Eucharist is found in Mk 14:22-24. In it the Eucharist is not sharply distinguished from its setting, the paschal meal: "And as they were eating, he took bread, and when he had blessed, he brake it, and gave to them, and said, Take ye: this is my body. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave to them: and they all drank of it. And he said unto them, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many." This represents a tradition settled within 20 years of the event described.
Mt 26:26-28 gives a few touches by way of revision, apparently from one then present. He adds the exhortation "eat" at the giving of the bread, and puts the personal command, "Drink ye all of it," in place of the mere statement, "and they all drank of it." He adds also of the blood that, as "poured out for many," it is "unto remission of sins."
The Pauline-account, 1 Cor 11:23-26 (the earliest written down, circa 55 AD), was called forth in rebuke of the scandalous profanation of the Eucharist at Corinth. It gives us another tradition independent of; and supplementary to, that of Mark-Matthew. It claims the authority of the Savior as its source, and had been already made known to the Corinthians in the apostle's oral teaching. The time of the institution is mentioned as the night of the betrayal. We note of the bread, "This is my body, which is for you," of the cup, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood," and the redoubled command, "This do in remembrance of me."
The narrative given in Lk 22:14-20 is the latest (circa 80 AD) of our New Testament records. Luke had taken pains to follow up everything to its source, and had reedited the oral tradition in the light of his historical researches (1:2,3), and thus his account is of the highest value. Writing for a wider circle of readers, he carefully separates and distinguishes the Eucharist from the paschal meal which preceded it, and puts the statement of Christ about not drinking "from henceforth of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come," in its proper place as referring to the paschal cup (compare Mt 26:29; Mk 14:25; and Lk 22:15-18). In describing the actual institution of the Eucharist, he gives us an almost verbal identity with the account given by Paul (1 Cor 11:23-25).
We should note the statement appended by Paul to his account of the Institution, wherein he emphasizes the memorial aspect and evidential value of the witness the eucharistic observance would give throughout the ages of the Christian dispensation (1 Cor 11:26). We should also note the fact upon which the apostle bases his rebuke to the profane (Corinthians, namely, the real, though undefined, identity of the bread and wine of the Eucharist with the body and blood of Christ (1 Cor 11:27-29); an identity established through the blessing pronounced upon them, so that the bread and cup have come to be the "communion of the body of Christ" and the "communion of the blood of Christ," respectively (1 Cor 10:15-17). To receive the Eucharist, and also to partake of sacrifices offered to idols, is utterly incompatible with Christian loyalty. To receive the Eucharist after a gluttonous, winebibbing agape, not recognizing the consecrated elements to be what the Lord Christ called them, is, likewise, a defiance of God. Both acts alike provoke the judgment of God's righteous anger (1 Cor 10:21,22; 11:21,22,27-29).
III. Preparation for the Eucharist.
The institution of the Eucharist had been prepared for by Christ through the object-lesson of the feeding of the five thousand (Mt 14:13-21; Mk 6:35-44; Lk 9:12-17; Jn 6:4-13), which was followed up by the discourse about Himself as the Bread of Life, and about eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood as the nourishment of eternal life.
1. Miracles of Loaves and Fishes:
This again was clinched by the second object-lesson of the feeding of the four thousand afterward (Mt 15:32-39; Mk 8:1-9). The Lord Christ's thanksgiving, and His blessing of the loaves and fishes--acts not elsewhere recorded of Him, except at the institution of the Eucharist, and at the self-revealing meal at Emmaus (Lk 24:30)--deeply impressed those present, as indicating the source whence came His power to satisfy the hunger of the multitude (compare Mt 14:19; 15:36; Mk 6:41; 8:6,7; Lk 9:16; Jn 6:11,23).
In the discourse at Capernaum (Jn 6:26-58) Christ led the thought of His hearers from earthly to heavenly food, from food that perished to the true bread from heaven. He declared Himself to be the living bread, and, further, that it is through eating His flesh and drinking His blood that they shall possess true life in themselves, and be raised by Him at the last day. The difficulties raised by this discourse Christ did not solve at the time. His ascension would but add to them. He asked of His disciples acceptance of His words in faith. Under the administration of the Spirit would these things be realized (Jn 6:60-69). The institution of the Eucharist, later, gave the clue to these otherwise "hard" words. Today the Eucharist remains as the explanation of this discourse. A hardy mountaineer, e.g. who had read Jn 6 many times, could form no notion of its purport. When first privileged to be present at the eucharistic service of the Book of Common Prayer, the meaning of feeding upon Christ's flesh and blood forthwith became apparent to him (see The Spirit of Missions, July, 1911, 572-73).
IV. Historical Setting of the Eucharist.
1. Other Acts and Words of Christ on Eve of the Passion:
We should note the setting in which the institution of the Eucharist was placed. Though the Fourth Gospel does not record this, it gives us many otherwise unknown data of the words of Christ spoken upon the eve of His death, in which historically the institution of the Eucharist was set. The symbolic washing of the feet of the disciples (Jn 13:3-10), the "new" commandment (Jn 13:34), Christ as the means of access to the Father (Jn 14:6), love for Christ to be shown by keeping His commandments (Jn 14:15,21,23,24), the sending of the Paraclete Spirit (Jn 14:16,17,26; 15:26; 16:13,14), the intimate fellowship of Christ and His disciples, shown in the metaphor of the vine and its branches (Jn 15:1-9,13-16)--all these throw their illumination upon the commandment, "This do in remembrance of me" (Lk 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24,25). The efficacy of prayer `in Christ's name' (Jn 16:23,24,26-28) after His final withdrawal from the midst of His disciples, and His great prayer of self-oblation and intercession for His church throughout time (Jn 17, especially 17:9-26) must not be forgotten in considering, "This is my body which is given for you" (Lk 22:19), and, "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins" (Mt 26:28).
2. Sacrificial Language of the Institution:
The sacrificial connotation of many of the words used in the narratives of institution should be noted: e.g. "body," "blood," "covenant," "given," "poured out," "for you," "for many" "unto remission of sins," "memorial" (compare Ex 24:6-8; Lev 2:2,9,16; 4:5-7,16-18,34; 17:11,14; 24:7; Nu 10:10; Heb 9:11-28; 10:4-10,19,20). The very elements of bread and wine also suggested the idea of sacrifice to those accustomed to their use in the older system of worship (compare Ex 29:38-42; Nu 15:4-10; 28 and 29 passim).
3. Sacrificial System of Jewish Dispensation:
The general background, moreover, out of which the institution of the Eucharist stands forth, is the sacrificial system of the older dispensation. The chosen people of God, as a priestly race, a holy nation (Ex 19:5,6; Dt 7:6), worshipped God with a sequence of offerings, Divinely molded and inspired, which set forth the sovereign majesty and overloading of God, His holiness, and the awe and penitence due from those who would draw nigh unto Him, and their desire for communion with Him.
The more immediate background of the Eucharist is the Passover, and that without prejudice as to whether the Lord Christ ate the paschal meal with His disciples before He instituted the Eucharist, as seems most probable (compare Lk 22:7-18), or whether He died upon the day of its observance (see article "Preparation,"DCG ,II , 409).
4. Paschal Background of the Institution of the Eucharist:
The Passover was at once a covenant-recalling and a covenant-renewing sacrifice, and the Eucharist, as corresponding to it, was instituted at the time of its yearly observance, and of the immolation of the true paschal lamb, of whose death it interpreted the value and significance (Ex 12:3-28; compare 13:3-10; Dt 16:1-8; 1 Cor 5:7; Jn 6:51; 10:10,11,15,17,18; 15:13; 17:19).
V. Sequence of the Institation.
Let us put before ourselves clearly the sequence of the Lord Christ's acts and words at the institution of the Eucharist ere we proceed to examine the church's mode of celebrating this ordinance.
Points to Be Noted
At the close of the paschal Supper, (1) the Lord Christ "took" the bread and cup, respectively, for use in His new rite; (2) He "gave thanks" over them, constituting them a thank offering to God; (3) He "blessed" them to their new and higher potency; (4) He "gave" them to the apostles (the breaking being a requisite preliminary to distribution of the bread); (5) He bade them "Take, eat," and "Drink ye all of it," respectively; (6) He declared, of the bread, "This is my body given for you," of the cup, "This is my blood of the covenant," or, "This is the new covenant in my blood which is poured out for you," "unto remission of sins"; (7) He adds the reiterated command, "This do for my memorial."
It is obvious that we are bidden to follow out the same series of acts, and statements, as those of Christ Himself. We should take bread and wine, set them apart by rendering thanks to God over them, presenting them to Him as symbols of Christ's body and blood, once for all "given" and "poured out" for us; bless them by asking God's blessing upon them (compare Gen 14:19; Nu 6:23-27; Mk 8:7; Lk 2:34; 9:16; 24:50); and receive and give them as the body and blood of Christ; for, "the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ?" (1 Cor 10:16). It is obvious that we shall not forget, in this connection, the distinction between the natural body of Christ which He took of the Blessed Virgin, and the bread which He held in His hand, and blessed and made to function as His body for our participation and inherence in Him thereby--His sacramental body. The church with her many members united to the Head, and thus to each other, is also called His body mystical (1 Cor 10:17; 12:27; Eph 1:22,23; Col 1:24).
VI. The Church's Observance of the Eucharist.
(1) Christians a Priestly Race:
We should remember the priestly character of the church of Christ, whose sacrifices are made under the dispensation of the Holy Spirit (1 Pet 2:5,9; Rev 1:6; compare Acts 1:2,8); and also the eternal priesthood in the heavens of our risen, ascended and ever-living Lord Christ.
(2) Christ the Eternal High Priest:
He laid down His life in order to take it again (Jn 10:17), and now in the perfection of His glorified human nature, by His very presence in heaven, He is forever the propitiation inexhaustible for our sins (Heb 2:17 through 3:3; 4:14 through 5:10; 7:1 through 8:7; 9:11-28; 10:1-25; compare 1 Jn 2:1,2). As the Lamb slain once for all but alive for evermore, the Lord Christ is the focus of the worship of angels and the redeemed (Rev 1:17,18; 5:6-14; 7:9,10), and the Christian disciple has the privilege of feeding upon that eternal Priest and Victim (Heb 13:10; 1 Cor 10:16).
2. Celebrated Each Lord's Day:
The celebration of the Eucharist was characteristic of the pentecostal church (Acts 2:42), especially upon the Lord's Day (Acts 20:7). Its observance was preceded by the agape (1 Cor 11:20,34) on the eve (for the circumstances of the institution were closely imitated, and the day was reckoned as beginning at sunset after the Jewish fashion), and thus the Eucharist proper came late into the night, or toward morning (Acts 20:11).
The name" Eucharist" is derived from the eucharistesas (" gave thanks") of the institution and was the most widely used term in primitive times, as applied to the whole service, to the consecration of the bread and wine or to the consecrated elements themselves (compare 1 Cor 14:16).
It should be noted that the name, "Lord's Supper," belongs to the agape rather than to the Eucharist; its popular use is a misnomer of medieval and Reformation times.
The term "breaking of bread" (Acts 2:42; 20:7,11) had little vogue after New Testament times.
"Communion" obviously is derived from 1 Cor 10:16.
In connection with the early and frequent use of the word "oblation" (prosphora) and its cognates, we should note Paul's description of his ministry in terms that suggest the rationale of the prayer of consecration, or eucharistic prayer, as we know it in the earliest liturgical tradition: "that I should be a minister of Christ Jesus unto the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be made acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Spirit" (Rom 15:16).
1. Guidance by the Holy Spirit:
The same Spirit who guided the church in the determination of the Canon of the New Testament Scriptures, the same Spirit who guided the church in the working out of her explicit formulation of the Christian doctrine of the Godhead, and of the Christ--that self-same Spirit guided the church in the formation and fashioning of her great eucharistic prayer into its norm in the same 4th century. The historic churches of the East, by their faithful adherence to this norm, have been almost undisturbed by the dissensions and disputes of Western Christendom touching the Eucharist.
The glimpses given us in the earlier Fathers of the Eucharist are in entire accord with the more articulate expression of the church's corporate eucharistic worship, which we find in the liturgical documents and writings of the Nicene era.
The Ignatian Epistles show us the Eucharist as the focus of the church's life and order, the source of unity and fellowship. The Eucharist consecrated by the prayer of the bishop and church is the Bread of God, the Flesh and Blood of Christ, the communication of love incorruptible and life eternal (compare Ephesians, 5,13,10; Trallians, 7,8; Romans, 7; Philadelphians, 4; Smyrnaeans, 7,8; Magnesians, 7).
Justin Martyr tells us that the Eucharist was celebrated on the Lord's Day, the day associated with creation and with Christ's resurrection. To the celebrant were brought bread and wine mixed with water, who then put up to God, over them, solemn thanksgiving for His lovingkindness in the gifts of food and health and for the redemption wrought by Christ. The oblations of bread and wine are presented to God in memorial of Christ's passion, and become Christ's body and blood through prayer. The Eucharist is a spiritual sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving commemorative of Christ's death; and the consecrated elements the communion of Christ's body and blood, by reason of the sacramental character bestowed upon them by the invocation of the Divine blessing (compare 1 Apol., 13,15, 66, 67; Dial. with Trypho, 41,70, 117).
Irenaeus, also, emphasizes the fact that Christ taught His disciples to offer the new oblation of the New Covenant, to present in thank offering the first-fruits of God's creatures--bread and wine--the pure sacrifice prophesied before by Malachi. The Eucharist consecrated by the church, through the invocation of God's blessing, is the communion of the body and blood of Christ, just as He pronounced the elements to be at the institution (compare Against Heresies, i.13,1; iv.17,5; 18,1-6; 33,1; v.22,3).
Cyprian, too, gives evidence of the same eucharistic belief, and alludes very plainly to the "Lift up your hearts," to the great thanksgiving, and to the prayer of consecration. This last included the rehearsal of what Christ did and said at the institution, the commemoration of His passion, and the invocation of the Holy Spirit (compare Epistle to Caecilius, sections 1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 14, 17; Epistle to Epictetus, sections 2, 4; On the Unity of the Church, I, 17; On the Lord's Prayer, section 31; Firmilian to Cyprian, sections 10, 17).
1. Outline of Eucharistic Prayer:
When we proceed to examine the early liturgical remains we find the articulate expression of the church's sacrifice following along these lines. After an introductory summons to the worshippers to "lift up their hearts," the great eucharistic prayer goes on to pour forth sublime praises to God for all the blessings of creation, and for the fruits of the earth; aligning the praises of the church with the worship of the heavenly host around the throne of God. The love of God in bringing about the redemption of fallen man through the incarnation, and through the self-oblation of His only Son upon the cross is then recalled in deep thankfulness. The institution of the Eucharist in the night of the betrayal is next related, and then, taking up, and fulfilling the command of Christ (`Do this for my memorial') therein recited, most solemn memorial is made before God, with the antitypical elements, of the death and of the victorious resurrection and ascension of the Lord Christ. Then, as still further carrying out this act of obedience, most humble prayer is made to the Eternal Father for the hallowing of the oblations, through the operation of the Holy Spirit, to be the body and blood of Christ, and to be to those who partake of them, for the imparting of remission of sins, and the bestowal of life eternal. To this great act of praise and prayer the solemn "Amen" of the assembled congregation assents, and thereafter the sacramental gifts are received by the faithful present, with another "Amen" from each recipient to whom they are administered.
The great eucharistic prayer, as outlined, was the first part of the liturgy to crystallize into written form, and of its component parts the invocation of the Divine blessing upon the elements was probably the first to be written down.
2. Significance of This for Unity:
Around the simplicity and the depth of such a truly apostolic norm of eucharistic worship, alone, can be gathered into one the now dispersed and divided followers of the Christ, for therein subsist in perfect harmony the Godward and the manward aspects of the memorial He commanded us to make as complementary, not contradictory; and the identity of the consecrated bread and wine with the body and blood of Christ is manifested to be in the realm of their spiritual function and potency.
LITERATURE.
E.F. Willis, The Worship of the Old Covenant .... in Relation to That of the New; Frederic Rendall, Sacrificial Language of the New Testament; Maurice Goguel, L'eucharistie des origines a Justin Martyr, 105 ff; W.B. Frankland, The Early Eucharist (excellent); H.B. Swete, "Eucharistic Belief in the 2nd and 3rd Cents.," Journal of Theological Studies, June, 1902, 161 ff; R.M. Woolley, The Liturgy of the Primitive Church; M. Lepin, L'idee du sacrifice dans la religion chretienne; W. Milligan, The Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of our Lord; Thomas Brett, A True Scripture Account of the Nature and benefits of the Holy Eucharist, 1736; id, A Discourse Concerning the Necessity of Discerning the Lord's Body in the Holy Communion, 1720; J.R. Milne, Considerations on Eucharistic Worship; id, The Doctrine and Practice of the Eucharist; H.R. Gummey, The Consecration of the Eucharist; A.J. Maclean, Recent Discoveries Illustrating Early Christian Life and Worship; id, The Ancient Church Orders; L. Duchesne, Origines du culte chretien; J.T. Levens, Aspects of the Holy Communion; John Wordsworth, The Holy Communion; F.E. Brightman, Liturgies, Eastern and Western.
Henry Riley Gummey
HISTORICAL
3. The Eucharist in the Apostolic Church
4. The Eucharist in the Post-apostolic Church
This name of the Lord's Supper is derived from eucharistia, the prayer of consecration, and this in turn points back to Mt 26:27, "And he took a cup, and gave thanks" (eucharistesas). The most common name is "Lord's Supper" (deipnon kuriou (1 Cor 11:20)). It is also called "Lord's table" (trapeza kuriou (1 Cor 10:21 the King James Version)); while the cup is called "the cup of blessing" (poterion tes eulogias (1 Cor 10:16)) and "the cup of the Lord" (poterion kuriou (1 Cor 10:21)). The word koinonia points both to the bread and the cup, whence our common term "communion." In post-apostolic days it became known as leitourgia, a sacred ministration, whence our word "liturgy." It was also named thusia, a sacrifice, and musterion, from its mystic character and perhaps from the fact that it was celebrated only in the closed circle of believers. The Roman Catholic church calls it missa or "mass," from the words congregatio missa est, whereby in post-apostolic times the first part of worship, called the missa cathechumenorum, was closed, and whereby the second part of worship was ushered in, known as the missa fidelium, the sacramental part of worship, only destined for believers.
The origin of the Eucharist is described in Mt 26; Mk 14, and Lk 22. Paul introduces his simple and comprehensive recital of the origin of the institution--the earliest written record of it--with the words: "For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you" (1 Cor 11:23). A comparison between the Gospels and Ex 12 indicates a considerable modification of the original Passover ritual in the days of Jesus (see Smith'sDB , article "Lord's Supper"). The composite Gospel-picture of the institution of the Eucharist shows us the Saviour in the deep consciousness of the catastrophe about to overwhelm Him, surrounded by treason on the part of Judas and a strange and total lack of appreciation of the true situation on the part of the other disciples. He had greatly `desired to eat this passover with them before he suffered' (Lk 22:15), and yet they are wholly unresponsive, the chief question apparently in their minds being the old contention of rank and preeminence. Whether or not Judas was present at the eating of the Supper is a moot point, which we will not discuss here. Neither will we touch the question whether or not this Passover-meal was the true Jewish festive meal or an anticipation of it, called pascha only, in allusion to the great feast, which had brought the hundreds of thousands of Jews to Jerusalem (compare Mt 26; Mk 14 with Jn 12:1; 13:1,2,29; 18:28; 19:14,31).
Both Matthew and Mark leave the exact place of the institution of the Supper in the festive meal indefinite, "as they were eating" (Mt 26:26; Mk 14:22); the words of Lk, "after supper" (22:20), may be a hint in regard to this matter (see Jn 13:1; 1 Cor 11:25). But the custom of the early church of celebrating the Eucharist after the agape or "love feast" appears to be strong evidence that the original institution was separate from the paschal festival and followed it. The entire subject of the Eucharist has been called in question by the radical German critics, who point to the absence of the whole matter in Jn and to the omission of the words, "Do this in remembrance of me," in Matthew and Mark. Its occurrence in Luke is ascribed to Paul's influence over him and to his familiarity with the story of the institution as described by the apostle. But this position is utterly untenable in the light of the unquestioned fact that the Lord's Supper as a fixed part of worship was firmly established from the earliest days of the Christian church. The doctrine of Christ's vicarious suffering is nowhere so clearly enunciated as in the words of the institution of the Supper, "This is my body which is given for you" (Lk 22:19); "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins" (Mt 26:28). Small wonder that those who have utterly done away with the doctrine of the vicarious atonement or of substitution should attack the historicity of the Eucharist and should seek by all means to wipe it from the record.
Jesus bids His followers to observe the new institution "in remembrance of" Him. As Dr. Bavinck says, "The Lord's Supper is instituted by Christ as a permanent benefit to His church; it is a blessing added to all other blessings to signify and to seal them" (Geref. Dogm., IV, 310).
As to the elements used in the original institution of the Supper, they were bread and wine. The bread of course was the unleavened bread of the Passover, during which feast every trace of leaven was removed (Ex 12:19). The Eastern church, perhaps influenced by the bitter Ebionite spirit of the Judaizers, later adopted the use of common bread (koinos artos); the Western church used unleavened bread. Protestantism left the matter among the adiaphora.
As regards the wine, the matter has been in dispute from the beginning (see Kitto's Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature). The early church always used mixed wine, wine and water, following the Jewish custom. Whether the wine used at the institution of the Lord's Supper was fermented or unfermented wine, must of course be determined by the Jewish Passover-customs prevailing at that time. The matter is in dispute and is not easily settled.
Modern Jews quite generally use raisin-wine, made by steeping raisins over night in water and expressing the juice the next day for use at the Passover-meal. The ancient Jews, we are told, used for this purpose a thick boiled wine, mixed with water (Mishna, Terumoth, xi). Whether oinos, the word used in the New Testament, stands literally, as the name indicates, for fermented wine, or figuratively for the mixed drinks, well known to ancient and modern Jews, is a debatable matter. As late as the 16th century the Nestorian Christians celebrated communion with raisin-wine, and the same is said of the Indian Christians ("St. Thomas Christians"). The word "new," used by Christ in Mt 26:29, is believed by some to indicate the character of the wine used by Christ at the institution of the Eucharist, namely, the juice of grapes fresh pressed out (see Clem. Alex., Paed., xi). On the other hand the third Council of Braga explicitly forbade this practice as heretical. It is evident that the whole subject is shrouded in much mystery. Some ancient sects substituted an entirely different element, water and milk, for instance, being used (Epiph., Haer., xlix; Aug., Haer., xxviii). Such customs were utterly condemned by the Council of Braga (675 AD). In general, however, the Christian church, almost from the beginning, seems to have used fermented red wine, either mixed or pure, in the administration of the Eucharist, in order to maintain the correspondence between the symbol and the thing symbolized.
3. The Eucharist in the Apostolic Church:
Originally the apostolic church celebrated communion at every meeting for worship. They continued steadfastly in the apostle's teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers (Acts 2:42,46). Very soon, however, if we may judge from the Acts and the Church Pauline Epistles, its administration was confined to the meeting on the first day of the week. The agape always preceded communion, and at some part of the service the believers, the sexes after the plan of the synagogue being separated, would salute each other with the "holy kiss" (philema hagion) (1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12). But the introduction of the sacrament, with all its accessories, had evidently occasioned grave abuses at Corinth (1 Cor 11:34). Paul corrects these in unmistakable language. Thus we received our first written record of the institution of the Supper. In Corinth it seems to have been restricted from the beginning to the first day of the week (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor 16:2). By a slow transition the deipnon was transferred from the midnight hour to the morning. At least we find that Paul kept it after midnight at Troas (Acts 20:11). It would appear as if the apostle had also partaken of the Lord's Supper, together with his Christian companions, on board the ship, toward the close of his fateful trip on the Adriatic (Acts 27:35).
4. The Eucharist in the Post-apostolic Church:
In the post-apostolic church the Eucharist continued to be celebrated every Lord's day. But it separated itself from the preaching of the Word and from prayers, as in the previous period. It was invested with a mystic meaning, something too holy for the common eye, and thus the missa catechumenorum, the open church-meeting, was separated from the missa fidelium, the gathering of believers only, in which the Eucharist was celebrated. Bread, wine, oil, milk, honey, all the ingredients for the agape, from which the elements for the Supper were selected, were furnished by the free-will offerings of the believers. These were solemnly set apart by the officiating bishop with a consecrating prayer, eucharistia, and thus the sacrament obtained the name "Eucharist." The gifts themselves were called prosphorai, "oblations," or thusiai, "sacrifices." The sacrificial conception of the Supper was thus gradually created (Ign., Phil., iv; Smyrna, vii, viii; Justin, Apol., i. 66; Dial., xii. 70; Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., iv. 18,5). The Eucharist once being conceived as a sacrifice, the conception of the officiating bishop as a priest became logically inevitable. The Apostolical Constitutions, xliii (4) gives us a fair idea of the worship of the church, toward the close of the 3rd century. Even at that early day a well-developed ritual had replaced the simplicity of the worship of the apostolic days. In the African and Eastern churches, baptized children were allowed to partake of communion, through the fear engendered by Jn 6:53. The regenerative conception of baptism largely influenced this custom. The remnants of the consecrated elements were brought by the deacons to the sick and to imprisoned believers. We have not the space in a brief article like this to enter fully into the development of the doctrinal conception of the Supper as found in the Fathers. Suffice it to say that the symbolical and spiritual concept of the Eucharist, usually defined as the "dynamic" view of the Supper, was advocated by such men as Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzen and others. On the other hand Cyril, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom and John Damascenus developed the "realistic" theory of the Eucharist, and this view again divided itself into the "diophysitic" theory, later called "consubstantiation," and the "monophysitic" theory, later known as "transubstantiation." Augustinns, the great Latin Father, knew nothing of theory of tran-substantiation. He taught that communion carries a blessing only for believers, while to the unbelieving it is a curse, and that the true eating of the body of Christ consists in believing (Serm. Ad Infantes, De Civ., x.6; xxii. 10; Tract. 25 in Joann.). Paschasins Radbert (died 865 AD) was the first fully to formulate the realistic view as the doctrine of the Romish church, and although the dynamic view triumphed for a while, the condemnation of Berengarius of Tours (died 1088 AD) proved that by the middle of the 11th century the realistic view of the Supper had become the generally accepted doctrine of the Eucharist.
The Romish church couches its doctrine of the Eucharist in the word "transubstantiation," which means the conversion of the substance of the elements used in the Eucharist. The word was first used by Hildebert of Tours (died 1134 AD) in a sermon. The doctrine of the Supper was finally fixed, together with the new term, by Pope Innocent III, at the Lateran Council 1215 AD. It was decided that the body and blood of Christ are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar, under the species of bread and wine, the bread being transubstantiated into the body and the wine into the blood of Christ, by the Divine power. This has been the Romish doctrine of the Supper ever since. The bread and wine are changed into the veritable body and blood of Christ, by the words of the institution. By the institution of the Supper, Christ made His disciples priests, wherefore the Eucharist may be administered only by an ordained priest. In the miracle of the sacrament, the "accidents" of the elements--bread and wine--remain, but they are no longer inherent in a subject, the substance in which they inhered being replaced by another. This new substance is the body and blood of Christ, which is hidden from observation under the appearance of the elements. The whole Christ is present in each of these elements, hence, it is not necessary to commune under both forms (sub utraque). In the Romish conception of the Supper communion with Christ is a secondary idea. The main idea is that of the transubstantiation itself, for the Supper is more a sacrifice than a sacrament; thus the mass becomes a sin offering. While it feeds faith, keeps us from mortal sin, wards off temporal punishment, unites believers, it also has a potency for those who are not present, and even for the dead in purgatory. Thus the mass became the very heart and center of the entire Romish cult (Conf. Trid., XIII, 21, 22; Cat. Rom., CXII, c. 4; Bellarm, De Sacr. Euch., I, iv; Moehler, Symb., section 34).
The Reformers rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation, the sacrificial conception of the Eucharist, the adoration of the "host," the withholding of the cup, the efficiency of the Eucharist in behalf of the dead, the entire Romish conception of the sacrament of the Supper. The original position of Luther, that the elements in the Supper were signs and seals of the remission of sins, was soon replaced by the doctrine of "consubstantiation." The bitter controversy with Carlstadt, and especially the failure of the Marburg Conference, drove Luther forever into the camp of the realists. As early as 1524 he had outlined his doctrine against Carlstadt. He placed himself squarely on the realistic conception of the words of the institution, and held that "the body of Christ in accordance with the will and omnipotence of God and its own ubiquity is really and substantially present in, with and under the Supper, even as His Divine nature is in the human as warmth is in the iron. Wherefore the Supper is physically partaken of by those who are unworthy, albeit to their own destruction" (Bavinck, Geref. Dogm., IV, 318). This doctrine has been fully developed by the Lutheran divines, and is till this day the view of the Lutheran church.
Zwingli essentially sided with Carlstadt in his controversy with Luther, whom he thereby greatly embittered. He interpreted the words of the institution--"this is"--as signifying "this stands for," "this signifies." This view was fully set forth in a letter to Matthew Alber at Reutlingen in 1524 and was given its final form in his dogmatic tract, Com. de vera et falsa rel. (1525), where he characterizes Luther's doctrine as "an opinion not only rustic but even impious and frivolous." The breach was widened by the Marburg Conference of 1529. Reduced to its last analysis, the eucharistic concept of Zwingli is that of a symbolical memorial of the suffering and death of Christ, although Zwingli does not deny that Christ is present to the eye of faith. On the contrary, He is enjoyed through the word and through faith, i.e. in a spiritual way. In the Supper we confess our faith, we express what that faith means to us, and we do it in memory of Christ's death (Oper., ii.1, 426; iii.239, 326, 459; iv.51, 68). The Zwinglian view has been consciously or unconsciously adopted by a very large portion of the Protestant church.
Calvin's position on the doctrine of the Eucharist tends rather to the Lutheran than to the Zwinglian view. With Zwingli the sacrament is little more than a sign, with Calvin it is both a sign and a seal. The reality of communion with Christ and the benefits of His death, received by a living faith--all this is common to the Lutheran and the Calvinistic views. The Lord's Supper is far more than a mere memorial service, it is a marvelous means of grace as well. Calvin sides with Zwingli in denying all physical, local or substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist. But he differs from him in making the eucharistic act far more than a confession of faith, and he lays far greater stress than Zwingli on the meaning of its true participation. With Luther he holds that Christ is truly present in the Supper, and he lays stress especially on the mystic union of the believer with Christ. In the Supper both the benefits of Christ's death and His glorious person are touched. But Christ does not descend in the Supper to the believer, but the latter ascends to Him in heaven. The central thought of the Calvinistic conception of the Supper is this, that the communicant, through the operation of the Holy Spirit, comes in spiritual contact with the entire person of Christ and that he is thus fed unto life eternal. Every close student of Calvin's works will have to admit that his ideas on the subject are somewhat involved and confusing. This is due no doubt to the mediating position he occupied between Luther and Zwingli. But his position as a whole is quite plain. All his followers agree in holding that (1) Christ is only spiritually present in the Supper; (2) that the participation in the benefits of the Supper must therefore be spiritual, although it is real, and (3) that only true communicants, by a living faith, can communicate therein, and that this participation in the atoning death of the Saviour is sealed to us by the use of the ordained signs of the sacrament.
Henry E. Dosker
LUTHERAN INTERPRETATION
1. Source and Norm of the Doctrine of the Eucharist
2. Interpretation of the Eucharistic Texts
3. Doctrinal Contents of the Eucharistic Passages
2. The Place of Faith in the Sacrament
3. The Words of the Institution
1. The Derivation and Meaning:
"Eucharist" is the anglicized form of the Greek noun eucharistia, which signifies "gratitude," "thanks," or "praise offering." The noun is derived from the verb eucharisteo, which, with the verb eulogeo of kindred meaning in Mt 26:26,27; Mk 14:22,23, is used to describe the action of the Lord in blessing the bread and wine at the institution of the Lord's Supper (Lk 22:19; 1 Cor 11:23). When used absolutely, as in these places, it signifies "the offering up of praise that is prompted by nothing else than God Himself and His revealed glory" (Cremer). The blessing of the physical elements was part of the sacramental action at subsequent celebrations of the ordinance (1 Cor 10:16), and thus eucharistia soon (2nd century) came to mean the blessed elements and the entire ordinance in which these were administered.
Other Scriptural terms for the same ordinance are "Communion" (from koinonia, in the twofold sense indicated in 1 Cor 10:16,17), "Lord's Supper" (kuriakon deipnon (1 Cor 11:20)), "Lord's Table" (trapeza kuriou (1 Cor 10:21)), "Breaking of Bread" (klasis tou artou (Acts 2:42)). The literature of the church developed a great many terms which emphasize one or the other feature of the ordinance. Luther, in his Small Catechism, adopts the name "Sacrament of the Altar," because it is administered at the altar. The Lutheran Confessions occasionally employ the term "mass," however, in the original meaning which the early church, not in that which the Roman church, connects with the term ("mass" derived either from missa, "things sent," because the materials for communion were sent to the place of celebration, or from missio, "a sending (away)," because worshippers who were not members, or minors, were dismissed from the service before the celebration of the Eucharist began; but see McClintock and Strong, Cyclop. of Biblical, Theol., and Eccles. Lit., V, 863).
1. Source and Norm of the Doctrine of the Eucharist:
The "seats of doctrine," i.e. the Scripture texts which must be employed for determining every essential part of the teaching of Scripture regarding the second sacrament of the Christian church, are the words of institution recorded in Mt 26:26-28; Mk 14:22-24; Lk 22:19,20; 1 Cor 11:23-25. Valuable statements, chiefly concerning the proper use of the sacrament, are found in 1 Cor 10:15 ff; 11:20 ff. That these texts are disputed is no reason why a doctrine should not be established from them. No doctrine of the Christian religion could be established, if every text of Scripture had to be withdrawn from the argument, so soon as it had become disputed. Jn 6:32-59 does not treat of this ordinance, because (1) the ordinance must be dated from the night of the betrayal, which was considerably after the Lord's discourse at Capernaum; (2) because this passage speaks of "eating the flesh," not the body, of the Son of man, and of drinking "his blood," in such a manner that a person's eternal salvation is made to depend upon this eating and drinking. If this passage were eucharistic, infants, children, persons in durance among pagans, or temporarily deprived of the ministration of the Christian church, hence, unable to commune, could not be saved.
2. Interpretation of the Eucharistic Texts:
The exposition of the genuine eucharistic texts of Scripture is governed by the common law of Bible exegesis, namely, that every word and statement of Scripture must be understood in its proper and native sense, unless a plain and urgent reason compels the adoption of a figurative interpretation. The writers who have recorded the institution of the sacrament have given no hint that they wish to be understood figuratively. The solemn occasion--the Eucharist being the expression of the last will or testament of the Lord--forbids the use of figurative language (Gal 3:15). The fact that a statement of Scripture transcends our natural powers of comprehension does not justify us in giving it a figurative meaning. If this rationalistic principle were to be applied in explaining Scripture, we could not retain a single revealed doctrine. Besides, those who have adopted a figurative interpretation are not agreed where to locate the figure in the words of institution. Some claim that the word touto, others that esti, others that to soma mou contain a figure, while still others would take the institutional words in their proper sense, but understand the entire ordinance figuratively.
3. Doctrinal Contents of the Eucharistic Passages:
The eucharistic passages contain: (1) a statement fixing the time and occasion of the institution. It was "in the night in which he was betrayed," immediately before the beginning of the passio magna of Christ, and in connection with the celebration of the Jewish Passover (Mt 26:17 ff). The ordinance which Christ instituted was to take the place of the ancient Passover (1 Cor 5:7, which text Luther aptly renders: "We, too, have a passover, which is Christ crucified for us"). Jewish custom at the time of Christ seems to have allowed some latitude as regards the time for eating the paschal lamb. Thus the difference between John (18:28; 19:42) and the synoptists is overcome. our Lord was deeply stirred with thoughts of love and affection for His disciples at the time of the institution (13:1).
(2) An authoritative declaration of Christ, the God-man, fixing the constituent parts of the sacrament, and the essential features of the sacramental act (speciem actus). This declaration names:
(a) The elements of the sacrament, which are of two kinds: bread and wine (materia terrena), and the body and blood of the Lord (materia coelestis) (see Ireneus Adv. Haer., iv.34,363, quoted in Form. Conc. Sol. Decl., Art. VII, number 14, 649). There is no law laid down as regards the quality, form, or quantity of the bread (leavened or unleavened, round or oblong, in large loaves, cakes, or in wafer form ready for immediate distribution). Likewise the color and quality of the wine is left undefined. The expression gennema tes ampelou, "fruit of the vine" (Mt 26:29), sanctions the use of any substance that has grown on the vine, has been pressed from grapes, and has the characteristics of the substance known as wine. That the wine used by the Lord at that season of the year and in accordance with Jewish custom was fermented wine, there can be no doubt (Hodge, Systematic Theol., III, 616). The use of unfermented wine is apt to introduce an element of uncertainty into the sacrament. The heavenly elements are defined thus: "My body, which is given for you," "my blood, which is shed for many." These terms signify the real, substantial, natural body of Christ, and His real, natural blood (Luther: "the true body and blood of our Lord "). Both the earthly and the heavenly elements are really present at the same time in every eucharistic act. To deny either the presence of real bread and wine at any stage during the eucharistic act, as the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation does (against 1 Cor 11:26,28), or the real presence of the true body and blood of Christ, as reformed teaching does, is not doing justice to Scripture.
(b) The relation of the elements to one another: In offering the physical elements to the disciples the Lord employs the locutio exhibitiva, common to every language of men: He names that which is not seen while giving that which is seen. (" Here are your spices," says the grocer delivering the package containing them.) The locutio exhibitiva, except when used by a jester or dishonest person, always states a fact. The bread in the Eucharist is the body of Christ, the wine, likewise, is the blood of Christ. The relation is expressed in 1 Cor 10:16,17 by koinonia, "communion." This term is not the same as metocht, "participation," which would refer to the communicants (Plummer, HDB, III, 149). Koinonia declares a communion of the bread with the body, of the wine with the blood, of Christ. It is impossible to define the mode and manner of this communion of the earthly with the heavenly elements. Such terms as "consubstantiation," "impanation," "invination," are faulty attempts to define the undefinable. All we can assert is, that in a manner incomprehensible to us the body and blood of the Lord are in a sacramental union with the eucharistic bread and wine.
(c) The action required, namely, "take, eat"; "take, drink." These words refer to the distribution and reception of the sacramental elements. These are essential, the mode is not, unless one wishes to emphasize, e.g. by the breaking of the bread, the merely symbolical meaning of the entire ordinance. Accordingly, it is also immaterial whether the administrant place the elements into the hands of the communicant, who then conveys them to his mouth, or whether the administrant conveys the elements directly to the mouth of the communicant. The acts of distributing and receiving, however, extend to the entire sacramental substance, i.e. not the bread, or the wine, alone are distributed and received, but "in, with, and under the bread" the body, "in, with, and under the wine" the blood, of Christ. The eating and drinking in the Eucharist is of a peculiar kind. It differs from mere natural eating and drinking of common food, and from spiritual eating and drinking, which is a figurative expression signifying the believing appropriation of the Saviour's atoning work, and which can never be "for judgment." In natural eating and drinking there would be only bread and wine, not the body and blood of the Lord; in spiritual eating and drinking there would be only the merits of the Redeemer, not bread and wine. In sacramental eating and drinking both the bread and the body, the wine and the blood, of Christ, are sacramentally received, the earthly elements in a natural, the heavenly in a supernatural, undefinable manner, both, however, orally, and both by every communicant. For, according to 1 Cor 11:29, also the unworthy communicant receives the Lord's body, and that for his judgment, "not discerning" it (the King James Version).
(d) The end and aim of the ordinance: The Lord says: "This do in remembrance of me." Paul says: "As often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come." These words make the Eucharist an efficient means for strengthening the spiritual union of the disciples with the Lord until His second coming. They are a call for faith on the part of the communicants, and restrict admission to communion to the believing followers of the Lord. Worthy communicants are those who understand the meaning of Christ's sacrifice and hope for His return in glory. (Luther: "The sacrament is instituted for us Christians.") The duty of self-exploration enjoined upon communicants further emphasizes the purpose of this ordinance. Self-exploration embraces knowledge and acknowledgment of our sinful state, confidence in the ever-present forgiveness of God for Christ's sake, and a sincere purpose to forsake sin and grow in holiness. Accordingly, non-believers, morally irresponsible persons, and persons who lead offensive lives which they will not amend, cannot be admitted to communion (Mt 7:6). In 1 Cor 10:17 Paul names another purpose: the strengthening of the bonds of brotherly love and fellowship by means of communion. Hence, unity of faith and active Christian charity are required in those who are to commune together (Mt 5:23,14), and "close communion," not "open, or promiscuous communion" is in accord with the teaching of Scripture. In the absence of any fixed rule as to the frequency of a Christian's communing, the above reasons suffice to induce him to commune frequently ("as often as").
(3) An authoritative statement of Christ concerning the continued use of the sacrament (exercitium actus): "This do." This means (a) that the action of Christ is to be repeated, i.e., bread and wine should be blessed, distributed and received. The blessing is called the consecration and consists in the reciting of a prayer and the words of the institution. Consecration has no magical effects, it does not produce the sacramental union. On the other hand, it is not a mere meaningless ceremony, but a solemn declaration that in accordance with the will of the Lord, bread and wine are now being separated from their common use, to be devoted to the use which the Lord commanded. It is also a prayer to the Lord to be present in the sacrament; (b) that whenever disciples do as their Lord did, He will connect His body and blood with the earthly substances as He did at the first communion; (c) that besides the blessing of the elements, only the giving, or distribution, and the taking, or reception, of the sacramental elements are proper and essential parts of a sacramental action. A true sacramental action is complete only where these three acts concur: consecration, distribution, reception, and outside of these acts nothing that may be done with the elements possesses the nature of a sacrament or a sacramental action. Offering the consecrated wafer for adoration is no part of the sacrament, but is a form of idolatry (artolatry), because there is no sacramental union except in the act of distributing and receiving the consecrated elements. The withdrawal of the cup from the lay communicants is an unwarranted mutilation of the sacrament (Mt 26:27; Mk 14:23). But the grossest perversion of the sacrament, and a standing reproach to the completeness of the atoning sacrifice of the Lord is the offering up of the consecrated elements as an unbloody sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead, which is being done in the Roman mass (Heb 10:14,18).
"How can these things be?" This question might be raised against every doctrine of Scripture. The union of the natures in the God-man, the imputation of His merit to the believer, the quickening power of the word of Divine grace, the resurrection of the dead, etc., can all be subjected to the same questioning.
2. The Place of Faith in the Sacrament:
"Has faith no place in this sacrament?" Faith does not create, nor help to create the sacrament, neither the administrant's nor the communicant's faith. The sacrament is fully constituted in all its parts by the institutional act of the Lord and by His command to continue the observance of it. Man's faith cannot make, man's unbelief cannot unmake, an ordinance of God. But faith is necessary in order that a communicant may receive the blessings offered in the Eucharist, and testify to his believing relation to the Lord and to his Christian fellowship with the brethren. The sacrament bestows no blessing ex opere operato, i.e. by the mere mechanical performance of the physical act.
3. The Words of the Institution:
"Are the words of the institution part of the sacred text?" Up to the age of Paulus, they were universally regarded so, and the critical labors of Briggs, P. Gardner, Grafe, Immer, Julicher, etc., which can readily be explained by theological position of these men, lack unity of result and are offset by the labors of Scrivener, Schultzen, R.A. Hoffman, Blass, Beyschlag, etc. Christianity as yet sees no reason for discarding the words of the institution and for discontinuing the Eucharist as a Divine ordinance.
W. H. T. Dau
ACCORDING TO THE BELIEF AND PRACTICE OF THE CHURCH OF THE BRETHREN (DUNKERS)
|| I. THE LAST SUPPER WAS NOT THE JEWISH PASSOVER
II. THE PERPETUATION OF THE LAST SUPPER
III. PRACTICE OF THE CHURCH OF THE BRETHREN
IV. THE MEANING AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LOVE FEAST
LITERATURE
The interest of this denomination in the Lord's Supper as related to the Passover consists in two points: (1) that the "Lord's Supper" was not the Jewish Passover, but was eaten the evening before the Jewish feast; and (2) that this "Last Supper" was intended to be perpetuated. This is perpetuated by the Church of the Brethren under the name of "Love Feast" (see AGAPE ).
I. The Last Supper Was Not the Jewish Passover.
John gives five distinct intimations of the date:
(1)) "Now before the feast of the passover" (Pro de tes heortes tou pascha; Jn 13:1). This shows that the washing of the disciples' feet, and the discourses at the Last Supper were before the Passover.
(2) "Buy what things we have need of for the feast" agorason hon chreian echomen eis ten heorten; Jn 13:29). This shows that the Supper (daiphon) was not the Passover feast [@heorten).
(3) "They lead Jesus therefore from Caiaphas into the Pretorium; and it was early; and they themselves entered not into the Pretorium, that they might not be defiled, but might eat the passover" (hina phagosin to pascha; Jn 18:28). This was after the Supper, early on the day of crucifixion, before the Passover.
(4) "Now it was the Preparation of the passover: it was about the sixth hour" (en de paraskeue tou pascha; Jn 19:14). This again shows conclusively that the Passover was not yet eaten. Jesus is before Pilate; it is the day of the crucifixion, and after the Last Supper.
(5) "The Jews therefore, because it was the Preparation, that the bodies should not remain on the cross upon the sabbath (for the day of that sabbath was a high day)," Jn 19:31, etc. Here we have again a reference to the Preparation (paraskeue tou pascha), and also to the Sabbath which, in this case was a "high day" (en gar megale he hemera ekeinou tou sabbatou). This shows that the Passover was eaten on Friday evening after sunset on the 15th of Nisan at the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath. Whenever the Passover fell upon the Sabbath, that Sabbath was a "high day."
Christ is our Passover: died at the time the Passover lamb was slain, hence, after the Last Supper. (1) Christ died at the time the Passover lamb was slain on Friday afternoon, the 14th of Nisan, and thus became Our Passover (1 Cor 5:7), "For our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ." (2) Jesus, the "Lamb of God" (Jn 1:29) corresponds to the Passover lamb (Ex 12:3). "Without blemish" (Ex 12:5) = Jesus, "who did no sin" (1 Pet 2:22-24). The blood of a lamb sprinkled upon houses (Ex 12:7,13) corresponds to salvation by the blood of Jesus (1 Jn 1:7-9). (3) Jesus arose the third day and became "the first-fruits of them that are asleep" (1 Cor 15:4,20,23). The resurrection was on the first day of the week. The sheaf, or first-fruits, was gathered on the 16th of Nisan. Therefore Jesus must have died on Friday the 14th of Nisan, when the Passover lamb was slain; hence, after the Last Supper.
All the early traditions, both Jewish and Christian, agree that Jesus was crucified on the day of Preparation of the Passover, and they distinguish between the Passover and the Last Supper which was eaten the evening before the Jewish feast.
II. The Perpetuation of the Last Supper.
(1) Since the Last Supper was a new institution, there is no more reason for perpetuating one part than another. It is a unit, and each event of that night has its meaning and place. (2) Jesus commanded the disciples to perpetuate feet-washing (see WASHING OF FEET ) (Jn 13:14,15,17), and likewise He commanded the Eucharist to be perpetuated as a memorial of Him (1 Cor 11:24,25). Why not the Agape? (3) The Agape was perpetuated by the apostles and disciples. They certainly understood Jesus to mean that the entire services of the Last Supper should be perpetuated, else they would not have done so.
III. Practice of the Church of the Brethren.
The "Love Feast" commemorates Jesus' Last Supper with His disciples. These Love Feasts are held once or twice each year, always in the evening, by each local church or congregation. Preparatory services on "self-examination" (1 Cor 11:28) precede the ordinances. The church pews are converted into tables. The Supper (deipnon) is made ready beforehand by the deacons and deaconesses. The devotional exercises aim to accomplish special consecration, confession, and reconciliation. Before the eating of the Supper, Jn 13:1-17 is read and explained, whereupon the brethren proceed to wash one another's feet, and the sisters likewise by themselves. All tarry one for another (1 Cor 11:33) until they are ready for the Supper. The officiating elder then calls upon someone to offer prayer for the meal, which is then eaten together. Another prayer of thanksgiving is offered at the close of the meal. After the meal, the officiating elder calls upon one to read the story of Christ's sufferings (Isa 53, or Jn 19). After a short explanation of the meaning of the symbol, the communicants rise while the officiating elder gives thanks for the bread. He then turns to his brother at his right and breaks a piece of the unleavened bread for him with the words, "My beloved brother, the bread which we break is the communion of the body of Christ" (see 1 Cor 10:16). The brethren then break the bread one to the other, with these words. Likewise the sisters in the same manner. Again the congregation rises while the officiating elder gives thanks for the cup, which is then passed by one to the other with the words "Beloved brother (or sister), the cup of the New Testament is the communion of the blood of Christ" (1 Cor 10:16). This is followed by prayers of praise and thanksgiving, then a hymn (Mt 26:30) and a benediction.
IV. The Meaning and Significance of the Love Feast.
All these ordinances or symbols signify some fundamental virtue in the Christian life. We are commanded to follow our Master who is the Way and the Truth. But these symbols have a real significance, apart from merely "following" or "obeying" the Lord's command. (1) Feet-washing symbolized humility and service, and also the partial cleansing which all Christians need. (2) The Agape signifies the bread-and-water covenant of brotherhood and peace. It is not only the symbol of true Christian fellowship, but is productive of such fellowship. It is also symbolic of the "Marriage Supper of the Lamb," which is supremely a symbol of joy. (3) the Eucharist: (a) The broken bread represents the "body of Christ" (1 Cor 10:16) "which is broken for you" (1 Cor 11:24 the King James Version); hence, the symbol of sacrifice. It is a memorial of Christ's sufferings, and a consecration to suffer with Him. It means also feeding on Christ, whose flesh we must eat (Jn 6:35,51,53,54). (b) The cup represents the blood of Christ (1 Cor 10:16; Jn 6:53,54). It is the blood covenant that symbolizes the unity of man with God (Jn 17:21). Jesus is the vine, we are the branches (Jn 15). The same mind, spirit, life and love which are in God and Christ are to be in us.
LITERATURE.
C. F. Yoder, God's Means of Grace; R.H. Miller, Doctrine of Brethren Defended; D. W. Kurtz, Outline of the Fundamental Doctrines (all of Elgin, Illinois, U.S.A.).
Daniel Webster Kurtz
lord, This English word in our Bible represents one Aramaic, 3 Greek and 9 Hebrew words, two of them in two forms. It thus expresses all grades of dignity, honor, and majesty. It is not always possible to be sure of the sense in which the term is to be taken. In Gen 18:3; 19:18, the translators waver between interpreting of the Divine Person and a finite angel (compare marginal readings). It represents the most sacred Hebrew name for God, as their covenant God, Yah, Yahweh, and the more usual designation of Deity, 'Adhonay, 'Adhon, a term which they adopted to avoid pronouncing the most holy designation. They had placed on Lev 24:16 an interpretation that aroused such a dread that they seldom dared use the name at all. When two of the words usually translated "Lord," both referring to God, occur together, the King James Version renders "Lord God," and the American Standard Revised Version "Lord Yahweh." the American Standard Revised Version has adopted the rule of using the covenant name transliterated, instead of the term "Lord," in which the King James Version adopts the rule of the Hebrews to avoid the holy name.
The Aramaic designation, Mare', occurs only in Dan (e.g. 2:47; 5:23), and the same word refers to a man (4:24).
Of the Greek words, Kurios is freely used of both the Deity and men. Despotes, of men in classic usage, occurs only of God, including the ascended Jesus, and is employed only 5 times. Megistanes (plural) is found once, of men (Mk 6:21). Rabboni (Hebrew in Greek letters) is applied only to the Christ, and is simply transliterated in the Revised Version (British and American), but rendered "Lord" in the King James Version (compare Mk 10:51).
Our English versions distinguish the 3 main uses of the term thus: (1) "LORD" represents the Hebrew Yahweh, Septuagint Kurios, except where 'Adhonay or 'Adhon is combined with Yahweh (= "Lord God"); the American Standard Revised Version has in these examples employed the name as it is found in the Hebrew, simply transliterated. (2) "Lord" corresponds to 'Adhonay, 'Adhon, Mare', also Greek Kurios (see (1)), and Despotes, for which the American Standard Revised Version has always "Master" in either the text or the margin. (3) "Lord" ("lord") translates all the remaining 8 Hebrew words and the Greek words except Despotes. It is thus seen that Kurios corresponds to all three forms of writing the English term.
See JEHOVAH .
William Owen Carver
(ceren, same as Hebrew word for "axle," probably a native designation): These "lords" (Josh 13:3; Jdg 3:3; 16:5, etc.; 1 Sam 5:8,11, etc.), elsewhere called "princes" (sar, 1 Sam 18:30; 29:3,4,9), were the petty rulers or kings of the 5 Philistine cities, Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, Gath.
See PHILISTINES .
chaTa "to suffer as one erring, or as a sinner" (Gen 31:39, where Jacob assures Laban that he (Jacob) suffered the loss of all animals of the flock torn by beasts); shekhol, "bereavement" (Isa 47:8 f, where the prophet foretells the humiliation of proud Babylon who shall suffer the loss of her children, and widowhood); shikkulim, "bereavement" (Isa 49:20, translated "bereavement" in the Revised Version (British and American), where the prophet promises to the desolate Zion enlargement). In the New Testament the translations of three Greek words: apobole, "casting away" (Acts 27:22, where Paul assures the crew and passengers that there shall be no "loss" of life from the storm); zemia, "loss" (Acts 27:21, referring to the harm sustained in the storm; Phil 3:7 f, where Paul counts all his natural privileges and attainments as forfeited for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ); zemioo. "to suffer loss" (1 Cor 3:15, where Paul says the man whose works are burned shall suffer "loss"; Phil 3:8, same context as above).
Charles B. Williams
lot:
The man who bore the name Lot (lot; Lot) is mentioned for the first time in Gen 11:27, at the beginning of that section of Genesis which is entitled "the generations of Terah." After Terah's 3 sons are named, it is added that the third of these, Haran, begat Lot.
The reason for thus singling out but one of the grandsons of Terah appears in the next verse, where we are told that "Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity, in Ur of the Chaldees." For that period in the life of this family, therefore, which begins with the migration from Ur, Lot represents his father's branch of the family (Gen 11:31). It is hardly probable that the relation between Abraham and Lot would have been what it was, had not Haran died; but be this as it may, we read this introduction of Lot into the genealogy of Terah as an anticipation of the story to which it furnishes an introduction, and in which Lot is destined to play an important part.
The sections of that story in which Lot appears are: in Gen 11, the migration from Ur to Haran; in Gen 12, Abraham's wanderings; in Gen 13, the separation of Abraham and Lot; in Gen 14, the campaign of the eastern kings against Sodom and Abraham's recovery of the captives; and in Gen 19, the destruction of Sodom.
In Gen 14:14,16 Lot is termed the "brother" of Abraham; but that this does not represent a variant tradition is proved by reference to 14:12 of the same chapter (ascribed to "an independent source") and to 13:8 (ascribed to J; compare 11:28 J).
Lot's life, as the scanty references to him permit us to reconstruct it, falls into four periods. Of the first period--that previous to the migration from Haran--we know nothing save Lot's birth in Ur, the death of his father there, the marriage of his sister Milcah to his uncle Nahor (of another sister, Iscah, we learn only the name), and the journey to Haran in company with Terah, Abraham and Sarah. The fact that Sarah's childlessness and Haran's death are the only two circumstances related of the family history, may serve to explain why Lot went with Abraham instead of staying with Nahor. A childless uncle and a fatherless nephew may well have remained together with the idea that, even if there was no formal adoption, the nephew might become his uncle's heir. Certainly, the promise of a numberless seed, so often repeated to the patriarchs, comes first to Abraham immediately after Lot has separated from him (see Gen 13:6-18).
In the second period of Lot's life, we find him the companion of Abraham on his journeys from Mesopotamia to Canaan, through Canaan to Egypt, and back again to the neighborhood of Beth-el. His position is subordinate, for his uncle is head of the family, and oriental custom is uniform and rigorous in the matter of family rule. Hence, the use of the singular number throughout the narrative. What Abraham did, his whole "clan" did. Yet Lot's position was as nearly independent as these patriarchal conditions admit. When the story reaches the point where it is necessary to mention this fact, the narrator explains, first, the generosity with which Abraham treated his nephew, in permitting him to have "flocks, and herds, and tents" of his own, a quasi-independent economy, and second, that disproportion between their collective possessions and the land's resources which made separation inevitable. Up to this point the only mention of Lot during this period of wandering is contained in Gen 13:1, in the words "and Lot with him." And even here the words are useless (because stating a fact perfectly presumable here as elsewhere), except as they prepare the reader for the story of the separation that is immediately to follow.
That story introduces the third period of Lot's career, that of his residence in the Kikkar (the Revised Version (British and American) "Plain," the Revised Version margin "Circle") and in Sodom. To the fundamental cause of separation, as above stated, the author adds the two circumstances which contributed to produce the result, namely, first, the strife that arose between Abraham's herdsmen and Lot's herdsmen, and, second, the presence in the same country of others--the Canaanites and Perizzites--thus reminding his readers that it was no vacant land, through which they might spread themselves absolutely at will and so counteract the operation of the principal cause and the contributory cause already set forth.
With a magnanimity that must have seemed even greater to minds accustomed to patriarchal authority than it seems to us, and that was in fact much more remarkable than it would be here and now, Abraham offers to his nephew the choice of the land--from the nomad's point of view. In the "we are brethren" (Gen 13:8), the whole force of the scene is crystallized. Lot, who believes himself to have chosen the better part, is thereupon traced in his nomadic progress as far as Sodom, and the reader leaves him for a time face to face with a city whose men "were wicked and sinners against Yahweh exceedingly," while the narrative moves on with Abraham through that fresh scene of revelation which presented to this man of magnanimity a Divine deed to all the land, and to this man, now left without an heir from among his own kindred (compare Gen 15:2,3), a Divine pledge of innumerable offspring.
Lot returns for a moment to our view as the mainspring of Abraham's motions in the campaign of Gen 14. We are expressly told that it was "when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive," that he "led forth his trained men .... and pursued." On the one hand we hear that Lot now "dwelt in Sodom," having abandoned the life in tents that he had led since Mesopotamian days, and on the other hand we find in him a foil to the energetic, decisive and successful figure of his uncle--for Lot plays a sorry role, bracketed always with "the women and the goods."
This period of his life ends with the annihilation of his chosen home, his wealth, his companions, and all that was his save two daughters, who, it would seem, might better have perished with the rest. Genesis 19, coming immediately after the intercession of Abraham for Sodom that poignantly impresses on the reader's mind the wickedness of Lot's environment, exhibits to us the man himself in his surroundings, as they have affected him through well-nigh a score of years (compare 12:4; 17:1). What we see is a man who means well (courtesy, 19:1; hospitality, 19:2,3,6-8; natural shame, 19:7; loyalty, 19:14; and gratitude, 19:19), but who is hopelessly bound up with the moral life of the city through his family connections--alliances that have pulled him down rather than elevated others (19:9,14,26,31-35). The language of 2 Pet 2:7,8 reminds us that Lot was, even at this time of his life, a "righteous" man. Viewed as a part of his environment (the writer has been speaking of Sodom, 19:6), Lot was certainly entitled to be called a "righteous" man, and the term fits the implications of Gen 18:23-32. Moreover, Gen 19 itself shows Lot "vexed .... with their lawless deeds" and "sore distressed by the lascivious life of the wicked" (compare 19:3,7,8,14). Yet the contrast with Abraham is always present in the reader's mind, so that the most lasting impressions are made by Lot's selfishness worldliness vacillation and cowardice, not to mention the moral effect made by the closing scene of his life (19:30-38).
The fourth period of Lot's career is of uncertain duration. #Upon the destruction of Sodom he dwelt at first in Zoar, the "little" city, spared as a convenient refuge for him and his; but at some time unspecified, he "went up out of Zoar," for "he feared to dwell in Zoar"--why, we cannot say. This fear was greater than even the evidently great fear he entertained of dwelling in "the mountain" (Gen 19:19). In this mountain-country of rocks and caves (Driver in HDB, article "Lot," cites Buckingham, Travels in Syria, 61-63, 87, as authority for the statement that people still live in caves in this region), Lot and his two remaining daughters dwell; and the biography of this companion of "the friend of God" ends in a scene of incest, which supplies the logical epilogue to a drama of progressive moral deterioration. This bestial cave-man of Gen 19 is the "brother" of Abraham, but he has reached this goal because his path had led down from Beth-el to Sodom. The origin of the two neighboring and kindred nations, Moab and Ammon, is by the Hebrew tradition traced thus to Lot and his daughters.
III. Place in Later Literature.
In the Bible, Lot finds mention only as the father of Moab and Ammon (Dt 2:9,19; Ps 83:8), and in the passage in 2 Pet already noticed; and, besides these places, in Lk 17:28-32. Here Lot represents the central figure in the destruction of Sodom, as Noah in the flood in the preceding context (compare the association of these two characters in 2 Pet and the Koran). His deliverance is mentioned, the haste and narrowness of that escape is implied, and his wife's fate is recalled. In Jewish and Mohammedan lore (including many passages in the Koran itself), Lot is a personage of importance, about whom details are told which fancy has added to the sober traditions of old Israel. But particularly for Mohammed there was point of attachment in Lot's career, offered in Gen 19:7,14. Like Mohammed to the men of wicked Mecca, Lot becomes a preacher of righteousness and a messenger of judgment to the men of wicked Sodom. He is one of the line of apostles, sent to reveal God's will and purpose to his contemporaries.
IV. Critical Theories about the Figure of Lot.
The common view of those who deny the historical reality of Lot is that this name simply stands for the ethnic group, Moab and Ammon. Wellhausen, e.g., expressly calls "Lot" a national name (Volksname). As to what is told of him in Gen he remarks: "Were it not for the remarkable depression in which the Dead Sea lies, Sodom and Gomorrah would not have perished; were it not for the little flat tongue of land that reaches out into the swamp from the Southeast, Lot would have fled at once to the mountains of his sons, Moab and Ammon, and not have made the detour by Zoar, which merely serves the purpose of explaining why this corner is excepted from `the overthrow,' to the territory of which it really belongs" (Prolegomena 6, 323). Meyer confesses that nothing can be made of Lot, because "any characteristic feature that might furnish a point of attachment is entirely lacking." The first of the families of the Horites of Seir was named Lotan (Gen 36:20,22), and this writer believes it "probable that this name is derived from Lot; but that Lot was ever a tribal name (Stammname) follows neither from this fact (rather the contrary) nor from the designation of Moab and the bene `Ammon as `Sons of Lot' " (Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstamme, 311; Compare 261, 339). If "Horite" was understood as "cave-dweller," the story in Gen 19:30 might be adduced in support of this combination. But the most recent line of reasoning concerning these patriarchal figures makes their names "neither Divine names nor tribal names, whether in actual use or regarded as such, but rather simple personal names like Tom, Dick and Harry. .... Typical names they became .... so that .... Israel's story-tellers would connect the name of Lot with the overthrow of the cities" (Gressmann, article in ZATW, 1910). These names were chosen just because "they were very common at the time when the narratives were stamped into types"; later they became unfashionable, but the story-tellers held fast to the old names. "One sees from this at once into how ancient a time the proper names Abraham and Lot must reach, and understands therefore the more easily how they could be changed into tribal ancestors." It does not require the cautions, uttered by writers of this way of thinking, against regarding their views as a return to the old historical view of the patriarchs, to remind us that, in spite of all that may be said to the contrary, the present trend of thought among the most radical critics of the Genesis-traditions is much mote favorable to that conservative historical view than were the opinions which they have overthrown. So that it may justly be asserted, as Gressmann writes: "Confidence in tradition is in any case on the rise."
Lot's Wife: This woman, unknown by name, figures in the narrative of Lot that relates his escape from Sodom. She is mentioned in Gen 19 only in verses 15-17, where she is commanded to flee from the doomed city with her husband and daughters, and is laid hold upon by the angelic visitors in their effort to hasten the slow departure; and in 19:26, where she alone of the four fugitives disobeys the warning, looks back, and becomes a "pillar of salt" This disobedience, with the moral state it implied and the judgment it entailed, is held up as an example by Christ in Lk 17:32. In the Scriptures this is all that is said of a person and event that furnished the basis for a great deal of speculation. Josephus (Ant., I, xi, 4) adds to the statement derived from Gen, "She was changed into a pillar of salt," the words, "for I visited it, and it still remains even now" (see also The Wisdom of Solomon 10:7).
Among Christian writers contemporary with and subsequent to Josephus, as well as among the Jews themselves and other Orientals, the same assertion is found, and down to recent times travelers have reported the persistence of such a "pillar of salt," either on the testimony of natives or as eyewitnesses. The question of the origin and nature of these "pillars" is a part of the larger question of Sodom and its neighborhood (see SALT ;SIDDIM ;SLIME ); for that no one particular "pillar" has persisted through the centuries may be regarded as certain; nor if it had, would the identification of Lot's wife with it and with it alone be ascertainable. This is just an early, persistent and notable case of that "identification" of Biblical sites which prevails all over the Holy Land. It is to be classed with the myth-and legend-building turn of mind in simple peoples, which has e.g. embroidered upon this Old Testament account of the destruction of Sodom such marvelous details and embellishments.
The principal thing to observe is the vagueness and the simplicity of the story in Gen. For it does not necessarily imply the "metamorphosis" popularly attributed to it, in the strict sense of that word. And it lacks, even in a narrative like this, where the temptation would be greatest, all indications of that "popular archaeology" or curiosity, which according to some critics, is alleged to have furnished the original motive for the invention of the patriarchal narratives. "She became a pillar of salt," and "Remember Lot's wife": this is the extent of the Biblical allusions. All the rest is comment, or legend, or guess, or "science."
J. Oscar Boyd
See DIVINATION .
lo'-tan (loTan): Son of Seir, a chief (the King James Version "duke") of Edom (Gen 36:20,22,29; 1 Ch 1:38 f).
loth-a-su'-bus (Lothasoubos): One of those who stood by Ezra at the reading of the law (1 Esdras 9:44); called "Hashum" in Neh 8:4.
See DIVINATION .
See PURIM .
lo'-tus (tse'elim; the King James Version shady trees): The trees under which behemoth (the "hippopotams") rests; "He lieth under the lotus-trees," "The lotus-trees cover him with their shade" (Job 40:21,22). The Arabic equivalent is the dom tree, Zizyphus lotus, a species of jujube tree (Natural Order Rhamneae); it has many spines and small globular fruit a little bigger than a pea. It is common in the Jordan valley. This plant has nothing to do with the Egyptian lotus.
See LILY .
luv ('ahebh, 'ahabhah, noun; phileo, agapao, verb; agape, noun): Love to both God and man is fundamental to true religion, whether as expressed in the Old Testament or the New Testament. Jesus Himself declared that all the law and the prophets hang upon love (Mt 22:40; Mk 12:28-34). Paul, in his matchless ode on love (1 Cor 13), makes it the greatest of the graces of the Christian life--greater than speaking with tongues, or the gift of prophecy, or the possession of a faith of superior excellence; for without love all these gifts and graces, desirable and useful as they are in themselves, are as nothing, certainly of no permanent value in the sight of God. Not that either Jesus or Paul underestimates the faith from which all the graces proceed, for this grace is recognized as fundamental in all God's dealings with man and man's dealings with God (Jn 6:28 f; Heb 11:6); but both alike count that faith as but idle and worthless belief that does not manifest itself in love to both God and man. As love is the highest expression of God and His relation to mankind, so it must be the highest expression of man's relation to his Maker and to his fellow-man.
While the Hebrew and Greek words for "love" have various shades and intensities of meaning, they may be summed up in some such definition as this: Love, whether used of God or man, is an earnest and anxious desire for and an active and beneficent interest ins the well-being of the one loved. Different degrees and manifestations of this affection are recognized in the Scriptures according to the circumstances and relations of life, e.g. the expression of love as between husband and wife, parent and child, brethren according to the flesh, and according to grace; between friend and enemy, and, finally, between God and man. It must not be overlooked, however, that the fundamental idea of love as expressed in the definition of it is never absent in any one of these relations of life, even though the manifestation thereof may differ according to the circumstances and relations. Christ's interview with the apostle Peter on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias (Jn 21:15-18) sets before us in a most beautiful way the different shades of meaning as found in the New Testament words phileo, and agapao. In the question of Christ, "Lovest thou me more than these?" the Greek verb agapas, denotes the highest, most perfect kind of love (Latin, diligere), implying a clear determination of will and judgment, and belonging particularly to the sphere of Divine revelation. In his answer Peter substitutes the word philo, which means the natural human affection, with its strong feeling, or sentiment, and is never used in Scripture language to designate man's love to God. While the answer of Peter, then, claims only an inferior kind of love, as compared to the one contained in Christ's question, he nevertheless is confident of possessing at least such love for his Lord.
First in the consideration of the subject of "love" comes the love of God--He who is love, and from whom all love is derived. The love of God is that part of His nature--indeed His whole nature, for "God is love"--which leads Him to express Himself in terms of endearment toward His creatures, and actively to manifest that interest and affection in acts of loving care and self-sacrifice in behalf of the objects of His love. God is "love" (1 Jn 4:8,16) just as truly as He is "light" (1 Jn 1:5), "truth" (1 Jn 1:6), and "spirit" (Jn 4:24). Spirit and light are expressions of His essential nature; love is the expression of His personality corresponding to His nature. God not merely loves, but is love; it is His very nature, and He imparts this nature to be the sphere in which His children dwell, for "he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him" (1 Jn 4:16). Christianity is the only religion that sets forth the Supreme Being as Love. In heathen religions He is set forth as an angry being and in constant need of appeasing.
The object of God's love is first and foremost His own Son, Jesus Christ (Mt 3:17; 17:5; Lk 20:13; Jn 17:24). The Son shares the love of the Father in a unique sense; He is "my chosen, in whom my soul delighteth" (Isa 42:1). There exists an eternal affection between the Son and the Father--the Son is the original and eternal object of the Father's love (Jn 17:24). If God's love is eternal it must have an eternal object, hence, Christ is an eternal being.
God loves the believer in His Son with a special love. Those who are united by faith and love to Jesus Christ are, in a different sense from those who are not thus united, the special objects of God's love. Said Jesus, thou "lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me" (Jn 17:23). Christ is referring to the fact that, just as the disciples had received the same treatment from the world that He had received, so they had received of the Father the same love that He Himself had received. They were not on the outskirts of God's love, but in the very center of it. "For the father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me" (Jn 16:27). Here phileo is used for love, indicating the fatherly affection of God for the believer in Christ, His Son. This is love in a more intense form than that spoken of for the world (Jn 3:16).
God loves the world (Jn 3:16; compare 1 Tim 2:4; 2 Pet 3:9). This is a wonderful truth when we realize what a world this is--a world of sin and corruption. This was a startling truth for Nicodemus to learn, who conceived of God as loving only the Jewish nation. To him, in his narrow exclusiveism, the announcement of the fact that God loved the whole world of men was startling. God loves the world of sinners lost and ruined by the fall. Yet it is this world, "weak," "ungodly," "without strength," "sinners" (Rom 5:6-8), "dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph 2:1 the King James Version), and unrighteous, that God so loved that He gave His only begotten Son in order to redeem it. The genesis of man's salvation lies in the love and mercy of God (Eph 2:4 f). But love is more than mercy or compassion; it is active and identifies itself with its object. The love of the heavenly Father over the return of His wandering children is beautifully set forth in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15). Nor should the fact be overlooked that God loves not only the whole world, but each individual in it; it is a special as well as a general love (Jn 3:16, "whosoever"; Gal 2:20, "loved me, and gave himself up for me").
2. Manifestations of God's Love:
God's love is manifested by providing for the physical, mental, moral and spiritual needs of His people (Isa 48:14,20,21; 62:9-12; 63:3,12). In these Scriptures God is seen manifesting His power in behalf His people in the time of their wilderness journeying and their captivity. He led them, fed and clothed them, guided them and protected them from all their enemies. His love was again shown in feeling with His people, their sorrows and afflictions (Isa 63:9); He suffered in their affliction, their interests were His; He was not their adversary but their friend, even though it might have seemed to them as if He either had brought on them their suffering or did not care about it. Nor did He ever forget them for a moment during all their trials. They thought He did; they said, "God hath forgotten us," "He hath forgotten to be gracious"; but no; a mother might forget her child that she should not have compassion on it, but God would never forget His people. How could He? Had He not graven them upon the palms of His hands (Isa 49:15 f)? Rather than His love being absent in the chastisement of His people, the chastisement itself was often a proof of the presence of the Divine love, "for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth" (Heb 12:6-11). Loving reproof and chastisement are necessary oftentimes for growth in holiness and righteousness. Our redemption from sin is to be attributed to God's wondrous love; "Thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption; for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back" (Isa 38:17; compare Ps 50:21; 90:8). Eph 2:4 f sets forth in a wonderful way how our entire salvation springs forth from
the mercy and love of God; "But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ," etc. It is because of the love of the Father that we are granted a place in the heavenly kingdom (Eph 2:6-8). But the supreme manifestation of the love of God, as set forth in the Scripture, is that expressed in the gift of His only-begotten Son to die for the sins of the world (Jn 3:16; Rom 5:6-8; 1 Jn 4:9 f), and through whom the sinful and sinning but repentant sons of men are taken into the family of God, and receive the adoption of sons (1 Jn 3:1 f; Gal 4:4-6). From this wonderful love of God in Christ Jesus nothing in heaven or earth or hell, created or uncreated or to be created, shall be able to separate us (Rom 8:37 f).
Whatever love there is in man, whether it be toward God or toward his fellowman, has its source in God--"Love is of God; and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love" (1 Jn 4:7 f); "We love, because he first loved us" (1 Jn 4:19). Trench, in speaking of agape, says it is a word born within the bosom of revealed religion. Heathen writers do not use it at all, their nearest approach to it being philanthropia or philadelphia--the love betweeen those of the same blood. Love in the heart of man is the offspring of the love of God. Only the regenerated heart can truly love as God loves; to this higher form of love the unregenerate can lay no claim (1 Jn 4:7,19,21; 2:7-11; 3:10; 4:11 f). The regenerate man is able to see his fellow-man as God sees him, value him as God values him, not so much because of what he is by reason of his sin and unloveliness, but because of what, through Christ, he may become; he sees man's intrinsic worth and possibility in Christ (2 Cor 5:14-17). This love is also created in the heart of man by the Holy Ghost (Rom 5:5), and is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22). It is also stimulated by the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, who, more than anyone else, manifested to the world the spirit and nature of true love (Jn 13:34; 15:12; Gal 2:20; Eph 5:25-27; 1 Jn 4:9 f).
God must be the first and supreme object of man's love; He must be loved with all the heart, mind, soul and strength (Mt 22:37 f; Mk 12:29-34). In this last passage the exhortation to supreme love to God is connected with the doctrine of the unity of God (Dt 6:4 f)--inasmuch as the Divine Being is one and indivisible, so must our love to Him be undivided. Our love to God is shown in the keeping of His commandments (Ex 20:6; 1 Jn 5:3; 2 Jn 1:6). Love is here set forth as more than a mere affection or sentiment; it is something that manifests itself, not only in obedience to known Divine commands, but also in a protecting and defense of them, and a seeking to know more and more of the will of God in order to express love for God in further obedience (compare Dt 10:12). Those who love God will hate evil and all forms of worldliness, as expressed in the avoidance of the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life (Ps 97:10; 1 Jn 2:15-17). Whatever there may be in his surroundings that would draw the soul away from God and righteousness, that the child of God will avoid. Christ, being God, also claims the first place in our affections. He is to be chosen before father or mother, parent, or child, brother or sister, or friend (Mt 10:35-38; Lk 14:26). The word "hate" in these passages does not mean to hate in the sense in which we use the word today. It is used in the sense in which Jacob is said to have "hated" Leah (Gen 29:31), that is, he loved her less than Rachel; "He loved also Rachel more than Leah" (Gen 29:30). To love Christ supremely is the test of true discipleship (Lk 14:26), and is an unfailing mark of the elect (1 Pet 1:8). We prove that we are really God's children by thus loving His Son (Jn 8:42). Absence of such love means, finally, eternal separation (1 Cor 16:22).
Man must love his fellow-man also. Love for the brotherhood is a natural consequence of the love of the fatherhood; for "In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother" (1 Jn 3:10). For a man to say "I love God" and yet hate his fellowman is to brand himself as "a liar" (1 Jn 4:20); "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen" (1 Jn 4:20); he that loveth God will love his brother also (1 Jn 4:21). The degree in which we are to love our fellow-man is "as thyself" (Mt 22:39), according to the strict observance of law. Christ set before His followers a much higher example than that, however. According to the teaching of Jesus we are to supersede this standard: "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another" (Jn 13:34). The exhibition of love of this character toward our fellow-man is the badge of true discipleship. It may be called the sum total of our duty toward our fellow-man, for "Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: love therefore is the fulfillment of the law"; "for he that loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law" (Rom 13:8,10). The qualities which should characterize the love which we are to manifest toward our fellow-men are beautifully set forth in 1 Cor 13. It is patient and without envy; it is not proud or self-elated, neither does it behave discourteously; it does not cherish evil, but keeps good account of the good; it rejoices not at the downfall of an enemy or competitor, but gladly hails his success; it is hopeful, trustful and forbearing--for such there is no law, for they need none; they have fulfilled the law.
Nor should it be overlooked that our Lord commanded His children to love their enemies, those who spoke evil of them, and despitefully used them (Mt 5:43-48). They were not to render evil for evil, but contrariwise, blessing. The love of the disciple of Christ must manifest itself in supplying the necessities, not of our friends only (1 Jn 3:16-18), but also of our enemies (Rom 12:20 f).
Our love should be "without hypocrisy" (Rom 12:9); there should be no pretense about it; it should not be a thing of mere word or tongue, but a real experience manifesting itself in deed and truth (1 Jn 3:18). True love will find its expression in service to man: "Through love be servants one to another" (Gal 5:13). What more wonderful illustration can be found of ministering love than that set forth by our Lord in the ministry of foot-washing as found in Jn 13? Love bears the infirmities of the weak, does not please itself, but seeks the welfare of others (Rom 15:1-3; Phil 2:21; Gal 6:2; 1 Cor 10:24); it surrenders things which may be innocent in themselves but which nevertheless may become a stumbling-block to others (Rom 14:15,21); it gladly forgives injuries (Eph 4:32), and gives the place of honor to another (Rom 12:10). What, then, is more vital than to possess such love? It is the fulfillment of the royal law (Jas 2:8), and is to be put above everything else (Col 3:14); it is the binder that holds all the other graces of the Christian life in place (Col 3:14); by the possession of such love we know that we have passed from death unto life (1 Jn 3:14), and it is the supreme test of our abiding in God and God in us (1 Jn 4:12,16).
William Evans
See BROTHERLY LOVE .
luv'-fest.
See AGAPE .
luv'-li ('ahabh, 'ahebh; prosphiles): "Lovely" occurs only 4 times. In 2 Sam 1:23 it is the translation of 'ahebh, "to be loved" ("Saul and Jonathan were lovely and pleasant (the King James Version margin "sweet") in their lives"), where it seems to mean "loving" or "lovable." Two other words are so translated in the Old Testament: machmadch, "desire" a "desirable thing" (Song 5:16, "He is altogether lovely," that is, "lovable," "to be desired," literally, "all of him lovableness," or "desirableness"); `aghabhim "loves," or "charms" (Ezek 33:32, "Thou art unto them as a very lovely song," the King James Version margin "a song of loves," the Revised Version margin "a love-song"; in 33:31 the same word is translated "much love," the King James Version margin "They make loves or jests"); in Phil 4:8 we have prosphiles, "very lovely," or "lovable," "whatsoever things are lovely."
W. L. Walker
luv'-er ('ohebh, 'ahebh): In the Old Testament 'ohebh, from 'ahebh, "to love," is sometimes "lover" in the sense of "friend," in the older English sense of the word (1 Ki 5:1, "Hiram was ever a lover of David"; Ps 38:11; 88:18; Lam 1:2); more frequently it has the meaning of "lover" in the special sense, sometimes in the evil sense of the word (Jer 22:20,22; 30:14; Ezek 16:33,36 f, etc.; Hos 2:5,7,10, etc.); `aghabh, "to love" (Jer 4:30), rea`, "companion" (Jer 3:1), and ahabhim, "loves" (Hos 8:9), are also translated "lovers" in this sense.
In the New Testament the simple word "lover" does not occur, but we have various compound words, philotheos "lover of God" (2 Tim 3:4); philagathos, "lover of good," and philoxenos, "lover of hospitality" (Tit 1:8); philautos, "lover of self" (2 Tim 3:2); philedonos, "lover of pleasure" (2 Tim 3:4).
In the Revised Version (British and American) we have, for "a lover of hospitality" (Tit 1:8), "given to"; for "covetous" (Lk 16:14; 2 Tim 3:2), "lovers of money"; for "not covetous" (1 Tim 3:3), "no lover of money"; for "despisers of them that are good" (2 Tim 3:3), "no lovers of good."
W. L. Walker
luvz (Ps 45:1, title).
See PSALMS .
luv-ing-kind'-nes (hecedh): "Lovingkindness" in the King James Version always represents this word (30 times), but of hecedh there are many other renderings, e.g. "mercy" (frequently), "kindness" (38), "goodness" (12). The word is derived from chacadh, meaning, perhaps, "to bend or bow oneself," "to incline oneself"; hence, "to be gracious or merciful." the English Revised Version has not many changes, but in the American Standard Revised Version "lovingkindness" is invariably employed when checedh is used of God, and, as a rule, "kindness" when it is used of man, as in Gen 21:23; Jdg 1:24 (the King James Version "mercy," the Revised Version (British and American) "deal kindly"); Ruth 3:10; 2 Ch 32:32; 35:26 (the King James Version "goodness,"'); margin "Hebrew: kindness" the Revised Version (British and American) "good deeds"); Job 6:14, etc. Of the uses of the word as on man's part toward God, the only occurrences are: Jer 2:2, "I remember for thee the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals," etc.; Hos 6:4,6, "Your goodness (the Revised Version margin "or kindness") is as a morning cloud," "I desire goodness (the King James Version "mercy," the Revised Version margin "Kindness"), and not sacrifice," which last passage may denote kindness as toward man.
When used of God checedh denotes, in general, "the Divine Love condescending to His creatures, more especially to sinners, in unmerited kindness" (Delitzsch). It is frequency associated with forgiveness, and is practically equivalent to "mercy" or "mercifulness" (Ex 20:6), "showing lovingkindness (the English Revised Version "mercy") unto thousands of them that love me"; Ex 34:6 f, "slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness (the English Revised Version "plenteous in mercy")"; (34:7) "keeping lovingkindness (the English Revised Version "mercy") for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin" (compare Nu 14:18); Mic 7:18, "He retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in lovingkindness" (the English Revised Version "mercy"). This quality in Yahweh was one by which He sought to bind His people to Himself. It is greatly magnified in the Old Testament, highly extolled and gloried in, in many of the psalms (Ps 136 has the constant refrain, "For his lovingkindness endureth forever"). In Dt 7:12 it is associated with the covenant, and in 2 Sam 7:15 with the covenant with David (compare Isa 55:3, etc.). It was something that could always be relied on.
Being such an essential and distinctive quality of God, the prophets taught that it should also characterize His people. It is part of the Divine requirement in Mic 6:8, "to love kindness" (compare Zec 7:9, "Show kindness and compassion every man to his brother"). The want of it in the nation was a cause of Yahweh's controversy with them, e.g. Hos 4:1, "There is no truth, nor goodness (checedh) (the King James Version and the English Revised Version "mercy"), nor knowledge of God in the land"; Hos 12:6, "Therefore turn thou to thy God: keep kindness (the King James Version and the English Revised Version "mercy") and justice, and wait for thy God continually." Cheyne (Encyclopedia Biblica) regards [~checedh as denoting paternal affection on God's part, answered by filial and loyal affection and brotherly love on man's part (philadelphia in the New Testament).
The word "lovingkindness" does not occur in the New Testament, but as its equivalents we have such terms as "mercy" "goodness," "kindness," "brotherly love" (see special articles).
W. L. Walker
See SHEPHELAH .
lo'-land (shephelah; compare Arabic sufalat, "the lowest part"): The western part of Palestine, including the maritime plain and the foothills. There has been an attempt to restrict the term to the foothills, at least as far as the more ancient documents are concerned, but there can be little doubt that the maritime plain should be included. the Revised Version (British and American) has "lowland" throughout for shephelah, while the King James Version has "low country" (2 Ch 26:10; 28:18), "low plains" (1 Ch 27:28; 2 Ch 9:27), "plain" (Jer 17:26; Ob 1:19; Zec 7:7), "vale" or "valley" (Dt 1:7; Josh 9:1; 10:40).
Alfred Ely Day
lo'-zon (Lozon): Head of a family of Solomon's servants (1 Esdras 5:33); called "Darkon" in Ezr 2:56; Neh 7:58.