KINGSHIP IIIbecause it has no such technical association with monotheism as our
"divine." The Greek could use "divine" absolutely, as the adjective from
o Geoc, the word for the one supreme God; or he could use it loosely as
the adjective of S^oc without the article, when it implied no greater
divinity than Philo associated with the Patriarchs, and Christians with
the saints, conceptions which in their minds did not in the least qualify
their monotheism. The Greek or Roman would express reverence to a
"godly man" in cult form in accordance with his religious terminology
without prejudicing his monotheism, just as, again, Christians, still
monotheists, venerated the Virgin and saints. Such is the practice of
Shintoism today, a practice which in politics conservative Christians
still refuse to understand. The king was, in the terms of Ecphantus,
"more divine" than other men because he had a larger share than they
of that "divine part" which had been breathed in lesser measure into
everyone. The king's saving and governing power over men rested upon
that quantitative distinction from them. Philo in the Mystery applied
all these categories to the Patriarchs quite as literally as does Ecphantus
to the king, and, as a result, is caught at least once praying to Moses.^110
Refusal to do as much for the emperor, then, was not a reservation from
the point of view of monotheism, but was simply a refusal to recognize
that in a given pagan emperor was to be found the "more divine
thing." Philo has spoken of the dead Augustus and Tiberius as highly
as could any gentile. Yet he praises Augustus for not insisting upon rec
ognition as a divinity, and would obviously have refused to revere his
statue just as emphatically as the statue of Gaius.
Hellenistic Jewish description of the Patriarchs, men "more divine
than we are," was later paralleled in Christian reverence for the saints.
The Church, which refused in face of torture to permit sacrifice to the
emperor, came to encourage liturgical reverence at shrines of the Vir
gin, and certainly came nearer to fully deifying the Virgin than pagan
ism ever did to fully deifying one of the emperors. When Ecphantus
burned a pinch of incense before an image of his king or emperor he
had no more idea that he was worshipping the supreme deity in this act
than have Christians when they light a candle before an image of the
Virgin or one of the saints: he would have been completely baffled at
the Christian distinction which made one a breach of monotheism and
the other not. He would have been just as puzzled at Philo, who ac-
IIO. By light, light, 233.