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In Scripture and in the Tradition that embraces it, the Word of God acquires a very special value and content inherent only to it. It is not that outside the Jewish and Christian religions there has never been a concept of divine words. On the contrary, this idea is the most widespread, the most common in the most primitive religions. But the comparison not only does not affect the uniqueness of the Biblical Word, it makes it possible to single it out with greater prominence.

Everywhere people had the feeling that they were entering into relations with the divinity, particularly through oracles. It would be difficult, for example, to ignore their significance in any more or less detailed and profound exposition of Greek religion. In the foreground, the Oracle of Delphi undoubtedly had much more influence on ancient thinkers than is usually thought. It is possible that the ancient Greeks themselves ascribed more to it than they should have. But these pious exaggerations themselves show the duration of the fascination that emanated from that sacred place on the Greek soul. And now, it is still difficult for a traveler to penetrate into the Delphic valley without experiencing an irresistible feeling of some divine presence ready to enter into communion with man. {}

And yet, what did the oracle of Apollo give to Greek thought (in particular, religious Greek thought)? Apparently, some general impression of common sense, of measured balance, gradually stood out from the answers to the very practical, rather base questions that were put to him. Flexibility in the wording, sufficient to ensure that the facts never contradict them, may have played a role. But apart from this more or less constant coloring, no unbroken line, no general view of the history of the people or of the fate of man has stood out from this heap of scattered predictions and prescriptions. And if something of this kind is sometimes depicted, then it is only too clear that the Pythia was influenced by certain groups, which, of course, did not contain anything supernatural. {}

Nevertheless, from the common sense we have already noted, combined with the atmosphere of the place, also already mentioned, the image of the god was gradually formed, which was finally expressed in the myth of Apollo, who is cleansed from the murder of the serpent Python. And it is undeniable that this image dominates the Greek ideal, the ideal which is glorified in the famous speech which Thucydides put into the mouth of Pericles. It is the image of the god of pure light, of harmony 'without any excesses', and in the depths of the god who says, 'Know thyself.' It is difficult to deny the religious beauty of this ideal. But it is also undeniable that as he rises and purifies, he separates himself from the personality of the Pythian Apollo. In the end, the latter is not so much revealed as dissolved in concepts and feelings that are valuable in themselves. It may remain their symbolic and poetic core. But their reality will no longer depend on the reality of his own existence. To tell the truth, on the contrary, with the rise and development of Greek rationalism, the Delphic god will become useless and unnecessary to the very extent that the very principles which he represented will triumph.

The analysis we have made will not be in vain if it enables us to grasp the sterility of the concept of the "divine word" contained in the oracles of primitive religions, and where their voices accompanied the most remarkable phenomenon of human progress: the miracle of ancient Greece. Neither about the formation of man, nor about the personality of God, the oracles revealed anything essential. If they rise above divination on particular questions, it is only to fall into the abstraction of commonplaces, which they in turn overcome only when, forgetting their god and the sayings attributed to him, they simply express the genius of a healthy and bright humanity.

But if we abandon primitive religion, and pass from the beginning to the end of the development of Hellenic culture, and deal with its last period, when decline and regeneration were inseparably intertwined, we shall at first get an entirely different impression. The 'sacred word' — 'hieros logos' — is already presented here as a heavenly revelation in the full sense of the expression. Here we have already left the realm of vague utterances and almost unenlightened premonitions, which are only gradually refined and refined under the inner influence of the human mind. Here, we are told, there really is a communication of divine mysteries, 'mysteries', to which the human mind cannot reach. This 'logos' reveals to the initiate, at the same time, both the inner life of the gods and the way by which he can reach the otherworldly celestial spheres. The dependence of Hermeticism on the mystery religions is undoubtedly evident here, not only in the terminology it borrows from their initiation ritual, but also in the saturation with that "sacred" principle with which they have been enveloping their verbal expressions. Hermeticism includes all this in its mysterious philosophical formulas, but this philosophy itself has an increasing tendency to become soteriology, a doctrine of salvation. {}

In this way, the "divine word" in Hellenism really became the bearer of the most religious concepts that it could have worked out. At the same time, the "divine word" itself regains its sacred character, which it gradually lost in the development of rationalistic Greek thought.

But on closer examination, this impression is weakened to a great extent. First of all, what is the content of Hermetic revelation? Apart from the old dualistic ideas, borrowed from the Orphic tradition and now artificially revived, we find only a web of cosmogonic fantasies, the extreme complexity of which does not hide its inner emptiness. The desert of this thought is filled with difficulty by the heap of 'aeons' with their genealogies. This underdeveloped antiquity does not so much satisfy the new needs of the religious soul as it unwittingly testifies to their existence.

If we turn to the form in which these supposed revelations are clothed, it turns out to be mere literary fiction. In the confusion and capitulation of rationalistic thinking, the "divine word" serves only as a universally applicable pretext that can be mastered by any author or popularizer of new fantastic inventions. But those who use this formula believe in it themselves, without a doubt, the least of all. The conditional theme is exploited automatically: it is felt everywhere. Meanwhile, the halo of "noumena" surrounding it rests entirely, or almost entirely, on the tenacious prestige that the Far East enjoys in the eyes of Western snobs, compared with what is closer and more familiar to them.

Nevertheless, it remains indisputable that these last, undoubtedly decadent, forms of Hellenism, of which Apuleius of Madaura is a typical representative, are at any rate permeated with a sacred breath. The origins of this new phenomenon, which is also undeniable in other respects, are unanimously sought by historians of the mystery religions and of their intellectual offspring, Hermeticism, in Semitic influences. There they see the primary source of this revival of the idea of divine revelation and its attractive power. From there, in their opinion, comes the desire to know the dromenon, the sacred history of the suffering, struggling, and finally triumphant god, and at the same time to receive initiation, not only the intellectual, but also the vital inclusion of man in this superterrestrial epic. It seems that on this path the Hellenistic man, tired of the deceptive perfection of his 'cosmos', if not quite came, then came close to the hope of obtaining immortality through the immersion of the immortals themselves in the vicissitudes of our own fate.

To put it more precisely, the prestige which the concept of the "divine word" again enjoyed at the beginning of our era is connected with the revival, in the Hellenic world, of that type of people whom the Greeks themselves called "prophets." Both sincere dreamers and clever charlatans tried to decorate themselves with their halo. By "prophet" here we should understand not the one who "predicts" (such an interpretation is incorrect etymologically), but the one who "speaks for" a certain deity. {} It is not even quite accurate to talk about the revival of this concept in the Hellenic world. Previously, the Greeks had never ascribed such a meaning to prophecy. Only the Semites were able to develop this concept along with the general development of their culture. On the contrary, Greek culture, with its frank rationalism, seems to have paid for it by the disappearance of the prophets who existed in Greece at its origin, as well as among all emerging peoples.

In the atmosphere of classical Greece, the Delphic Pythia and the like seem to be only remnants. As for the other phenomena of "rapture" (in the etymological sense of divine ecstasy), which accompanied, for example, the cult of Dionysus, they must be regarded rather as disturbing outbursts of repressed instincts. In fact, all this was also in contradiction with the development of the Hellenic "city" and Hellenic wisdom. In the Semitic East, on the other hand, the "prophet," the man whom God possessed, remained, on the other hand, a wise man par excellence and the guide of his fellow citizens.

How did he preserve this prestige, among a society that, after all, had already left the state of childhood?