Source: “Border lines : The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity” By Daniel Boyarin, University of Pennsylvania Press. 2004
4. The Jewish Life of the Word.mp4
4. The Word in the Synagogue.pdf
he Jewish Life of the Logos.wav
This topic explores the presence and significance of Logos theology in Jewish thought before and alongside rabbinic Judaism. It argues that the concept of a divine intermediary, often identified as God's Word (Logos/Memra) or Wisdom (Sophia), was a widespread idea in various forms of early Judaism, not solely a unique development of Christianity. The text highlights how thinkers like Philo of Alexandria and the Aramaic Targums, with their focus on the Memra of God, demonstrate a tradition of understanding this divine entity as active in creation, revelation, and salvation. Ultimately, the author suggests that the theological problem of a "second God" and even forms of binitarian worship were part of a broader Jewish theological landscape, with Christianity and rabbinic Judaism representing differing responses to these ideas rather than fundamentally distinct doctrines of God.
A central theological challenge confronted many thinkers in the ancient world: How can God be understood as a perfect, transcendent Absolute, utterly separate from the corruptible material universe, while also being intimately immanent—directly involved in creating, sustaining, and revealing Himself to that universe? For many Jewish thinkers of the first and second centuries, the solution was not a contradiction to be resolved but a reality to be explained. They did so through the powerful and widespread concept of a divine intermediary: a "second God," a divine Word or Wisdom, who could bridge the chasm between the Creator and the created.
This essay will demonstrate that figures like the philosophical Logos of Philo and the scriptural Memra of the Aramaic Targums were not theological anomalies or mere precursors to Christianity. Rather, they were central expressions of a "religious koine," or theological lingua franca, common to many Jews in this period. This shared binitarian landscape, in which God's relationship with the world was mediated by a second divine power, profoundly shaped the development of both Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. By exploring the sophisticated Logos of the Hellenistic diaspora and the parallel Memra of the Aramaic-speaking synagogues, we can uncover the dynamic theological struggle from which these two great traditions would ultimately emerge.
The core theological problem of the age was one of divine personality. As the historian Erwin Goodenough articulated, this "problematic" arose from a "wide-spread desire to conceive of God as transcendent and yet immanent at the same time." Thinkers struggled to reconcile the philosophical ideal of a perfect, unchanging, and remote God with the biblical depiction of a God who speaks, creates, feels, and interacts directly with humanity.
The solution that emerged was the figure of a divine intermediary. This being, often called Logos (Greek for "Word" or "Reason") or Sophia (Wisdom), functioned as a vital "link... which connected a transcendent Absolute with the world and humanity." This intermediary was not an attribute of God, but an "effulgent Power of God" that shaped and governed the world.