From this we get a rather strange result, but usual in such teachings: Philo proves the insignificance of creation, and its superiority, and the transience of the world, and its eternity. The frailty of the world is conditioned precisely by its materiality: it is the frailty of sensual creatures that succeed one another in the order of time. On the contrary, the perfection of the world is conditioned by the eternal powers of the Godhead, the eternal plan of the universe, and the eternal activity of the Creator, which is not subject to any conditions of time and is determined only by its inner necessity. Time itself is only the result of universal movement, the product of the world, and from this alone it is impossible to imagine the origin of the world in time. Nevertheless, the universe as such was created in all its parts, properties, and qualities, and it is only by the forces of the Godhead that it is maintained and preserved forever, being in itself perishable and indestructible. The Divinity brings into it light and reason, law and order, and creates it out of the dark chaos that has been conquered from eternity by the creation of the Godhead, His wisdom, goodness, and truth.

The doctrine of the powers of the Godhead complements the doctrine of His absolute transcendence. Since He is thought of in complete opposition to the world and cannot touch it directly, these powers of the Godhead are special principles mediating between Him and the world. It is to these forces that all the allegories of revelation, all its concrete images, belong. In them God is revealed, through them He acts in the world, forms the world, and through them, finally, the world itself is brought into contact with God. Hence the threefold relation of these intermediary principles, or divine powers, of which the Logos is the supreme: 1) they are related to God and, as a manifestation of the essence of God, do not possess any original peculiarity or personality; 2) they relate to the world as forces acting in the world, penetrating it, forming its substance – like the forms of Aristotle or the "spermatic logoi" of the Stoics; 3) they are also different from God,

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and from the world, being, as it were, created and personal intermediaries between God and the world – spirits, whom Philo himself compared to the demons of the Greeks and the angels of the Jews. These different definitions are poorly reconciled with each other, which leads to great confusion in the teaching of Philo himself and to disputes among his critics. But if Philo's contradictions cannot be logically reconciled, then they are perfectly explained from the very essence and from the historical conditions of his worldview. Here all those opposite influences, Greek and Jewish, are crossed, which determine the teaching of our philosopher.

The doctrine of the attributes, powers, and attributes of the Deity develops among the rabbis as the Deity itself becomes more and more transcendent in their conceptions; with them, as with Philo, this teaching is caused by the need to find a medium between the finite and the infinite. It is true that the first written records of the Kabbalah, which developed this teaching, date from a later time than the epoch with which we are concerned, but they, like the Talmudic treatises, serve as an expression of more ancient oral traditions. Individual rabbis indulged in theosophical speculations and initiated their disciples into them[176]. Such speculations undoubtedly penetrated into the Alexandrian midrash even before Philo; traces of personifications and hypostasis of the Divine powers and properties are found in addition to Philo, and he himself spoke of this teaching about the powers of the Godhead, which later formed the main part of the Kabbalah, as a great mystery, which is proper to speak of only in the presence of the "elders" and which is communicated only to the initiated. The very differences in Philo's statements about this mysterious subject are explained most naturally by differences in the very traditions of the synagogue.

Even the most ancient midrashim distinguish the Glory of God (Shekinah) or the manifestation of the Godhead from His hidden Being, and in the difference in the names of God Elohim and Yahweh see

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an indication of the difference in qualities – justice and goodness, or mercy. Philo assimilates this distinction, although, due to his ignorance of the Hebrew language, he falls into the error of explaining the meaning of the names of the Godhead just opposite to the interpretation of the Palestinian scribes. But even apart from such misunderstandings, the Alexandrian doctrine develops in Philo in its own way.

The Being of God has no name. "Lord" and "God" (or Yahweh and Elohim of the Hebrew text) denote the supreme powers or attributes of Deity—the principle of ruling and judging power and the beginning of creative, providential goodness. "Goodness" is manifested in creativity and Providence (it is sometimes called the "Creative Power"), and "dominion", "power" or "kingdom" are manifested in the law, in the world-ruling truth with its "punitive" forces. These two main aspects of the Godhead are constantly encountered in Philo's commentaries: together with the Eternal, they form the Trinity that Abraham saw in the person of the angels who appeared to him. The Divinity appears now as one, now in three persons. It appears as one – to the soul, purified from the world and elevated above all multiplicity and division; and it appears to her in three persons when she celebrates the "Lesser Mysteries," not yet initiated into the great mysteries. In other cases, between God and the Lord, or Goodness and the Kingdom, is placed the Logos, the third supreme power that binds them together (De Cher. 9).

As has been said, the doctrine of forces is not always presented in the same way. Two powers are usually spoken of, sometimes three with the Logos, and sometimes six or seven supreme powers, as we have seen, for example, in the exposition of the contents of the treatise "On Flight": the "creative" force distinguishes from itself the "mercy" or "beneficial" power, and the "royal" distinguishes from itself the "legislative" and the "prohibitive" ("punitive"); Finally, along with these forces, innumerable

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