Maurice says,[1] “I must again repeat, that it would be, in the highest degree, absurd to continue to affix the name of Destroyer, to their third hypostasis in the triad,[2] when it is notorious, that the Brahmins deny that any thing can be destroyed, and insist that a change alone, in the form of objects and their mode of existence, takes place. One feature, therefore, in that character, hostile to our system, upon strict examination, vanishes.” He then shews, from the Sephir Jetzirah, that the three superior sephiroths of the Jewish cabala were invariably considered by the ancient Jews in a very different light from the other seven; that the first three were regarded as personalities, but the last seven only as attributes.[3]
Rabbi Simeon Ben Jochai[4] says, “Come and see the mystery of the word Elohim: there are three degrees, and each degree by itself alone, and yet, notwithstanding, they are all one, and joined together in one, and cannot be divided from each other.” This completely justifies what I have formerly said, respecting the words אל al and אלהים aleim, having a reference to the Trinity.
Priestley says, “But Philo, the Jew, went before the Christians in the personification of the Logos, and in this mode of interpreting what is said of it in the Old Testament. For he calls this divine word a second God, and sometimes attributes the creation of the world to this second God, thinking it below the majesty of the great God himself. He also calls this personified attribute of God his ϖροτογονος, or his firstborn, and the image of God. He says that he is neither unbegotten, like God, nor begotten, as we are, but the middle between the two extremes. We also find that the Chaldee paraphrasts of the Old Testament often render the word of God, as if it were a being distinct from God, or some angel who bore the name of God, and acted by deputation from him.”[5]
In reply to this I shall be told that Philo Platonized or was a Platonist. To be sure he was; because recondite, cabalistic, esoteric Judaism, was the same as Platonism. It would have been as correct, probably, to have said that Plato Hebraized: for as it is evident that the Israelites held the doctrine of the Trinity, where was it so likely for him to obtain it as from them? Philo was a Jew of elevated rank, great learning, and the highest respectability; the very man to whom we have a right to look for the real doctrines, both esoteric and exoteric of the Israelites: and we find him maintaining all the doctrines of the Platonic and Oriental Trinity—doctrines held by the nearest neighbours of the Jews, both on the East and West, and from whom Mr. Spencer has shewn, that they took almost all their rites and ceremonies. I contend, therefore, that the doctrines taught by Philo afford the strongest presumption that these were also the doctrines of the Jews.
Of Orpheus, who is said to have brought the knowledge of the Trinity into Greece, very little is known. But Damascius, Περι Αρχων, giving an account of the Orphic theology, among other things acquaints us, that Orpheus introduced τριμορ, a Triform Deity.[6] This was the Platonic philosophy above described.
Of this person Mr. Payne Knight[7] says, “The history of Orpheus is so confused, and obscured by fable, that it is impossible to obtain any certain information concerning him. He appears to have been a Thrasian, and to have introduced his philosophy and religion into Greece; viz. plurality of worlds, and the true solar system; nor could he have gained this knowledge from any people of which history has preserved any memorial: for we know of none among whom science had made such a progress, that a truth so remote from common observation, and so contradictory to the evidence of unimproved sense, would not have been rejected, as it was
