Beausobre also informs us, Maimonides maintains, that this is the only literal and true meaning of the word. And Maimonides is generally allowed to have been one of the most learned of modern Jews. (He lived in the twelfth century.) Beausobre further says, that Chalcidius, Methodius, Origen, and Clemens Alexandrinus, a most formidable phalanx of authorities, give it this sense. The latter quotes a sentence as authority from the work of St. Peter’s now lost. Beausobre gives us as the expression of Clemens, “This is what St. Peter says, who has very well understood this word: ‘God has made the heaven and the earth by the Principle. (Dieu a fait le Ciel et la Terre dans le Principe.) This principle is that which is called Wisdom by all the prophets.’”[1] Here is evidently the doctrine of the Magi or of Emanations.
Of this quotation from Peter, by Clemens, the Christian divine will perhaps say, It is spurious. I deny his right to say any such thing. He has no right to assume that Peter never wrote any letters but the two in our canon; or that Clemens is either mistaken or guilty of fraud in this instance, without some proof.
The following passage of Beausobre’s shews that St. Augustine coincided in opinion with the other fathers whom I have cited on the meaning of the word ראשית Rasit: “Car si par Reschit on entend le Principe actif de la création, et non pas le commencement, alors Moïse n’a plus dit que le Ciel et la Terre furent let premières des œuvres de Dieu. Il a dit seulement, que Dieu créa le ciel et la terre par le Principe, qui est son Fils. Ce n’est pas l’époque, c’est l’auteur immédiat de la création qu’il enseigne. Je tiens encore cette pensée de St. Augustin. Les anges, dit il, ont été faits avant le Firmament, et même avant ce qu’est rapporté par Moïse, Dieu fit le ciel et la terre par le Principe; car ce mot de Principe ne veut pas dire, que le ciel et la terre furent faits avant toutes choses, puisque Dieu avoit déjà fait les anges auparavant; il veut dire, que Dieu a fait toutes choses par sagesse, qui est son Verbe, et que l’Écriture a nommée le Principe.”[2]
By Wisdom, I have no doubt, was the secret, if not the avowed, meaning of the words; and I also feel little doubt that, in the course of this work, I shall prove that the word Αρχη used by the Seventy and by Philo had the same meaning. But the fact that the LXX. give Αρχη as the rendering of Berasit, which is shewn to have the meaning of wisdom by the authorities cited above, is of itself quite enough to justify the assertion that one of the meanings of the word Αρχη was Wisdom, and in any common case it would be so received by all Lexicographers.
Wisdom is one of the three first of the Eight Emanations which formed the eternal and ever-happy Octoade of the oriental philosophers, and of the ten Sephiroth of the Jewish Cabala. See Parkhurst’s Hebrew Lexicon, p. 668, and also his Greek one in voce Αρχη, where the reader will find that, with all his care, he cannot disguise the fact that ראש ras means wisdom. See also Beausobre,[3] where, at large, may be found the opinions of the greatest part of the most learned of the Fathers and Rabbis on the first verse of Genesis.
The Jerusalem Targum, as already stated, is the orthodox explanation of the Jews: it used to be read in their synagogues, and the following is its rendering of this celebrated text, which com-
- ↑ Beausobre, Hist. Manich. Liv. vi. Ch. i. p. 290.
- ↑ Hist. Manich. Liv. vi. Ch. i. p. 291.
- ↑ Hist. Manich. Liv. v. Ch. iii. and Liv. vi. Ch. i.
actif et immediat de toutes choses. Ainsi au lieu de traduire, Au commencement Dieu fit le Ciel et la Terre, ils traduisoient, Dieu fit le Ciel et la Terre Par le Principe, c’est à-dire, selon l’explication du Targum de Jerusalem, Par la Sagesse: Maimonide soutient, que cette explication est la seule littérale et veritable. Elle passa d’abord chez les Chrétiens. On la trouve non seulement dans Chalcidius, qui marque qu’elle venoit des Hébreux, mais dans Méthodius, dans Origène, et dans Clement d’Alexandrie, plus ancien que l’un et l’autre.” Beausobre, Hist. Manich. Liv. vi. Ch. i. p. 290.
