114 PHILO'S POLITICSthose of Greeks (surely Greek gods), upon their sacred ma??oth. Again
if Jews could put images of Nike, Demeter, Tyche, Helios, Orpheus,
and Ares in their synagogues, why not an image of the emperor, unless
it was precisely the emperor whom they did not wish fully to recog
nize? That is, in another aspect of their hellenization the Jews have
again stopped short, logic or no logic, at precisely the same point. And
again we must conclude that it was not the use of images any more than
it was the idea of divinity in humanity which they refused to accept, but
the Roman emperor as the realization of the kingly ideal for Jews. In
deed, the very fact that they completely accepted the pagan theory of
kingship made their rejection of Roman imperial divinity all the more
essential. For if God could give to man his true royal representation
from gentile stock, Judaism as a religion and race alike had become
meaningless. The Jew of that feverish day could, in the long run, take
anything else from the gentiles, even death, but not this.
The power of an idea to survive is not determined by its logical ori
gins. The new religion which regarded itself as the true or completed
Judaism carried over from Judaism both the idea of the saving power
of divinity in humanity and the prejudice against associating this idea
with the Roman emperor. To say nothing of the blending of humanity
and divinity in Jesus Christ, the Christian veneration of the Virgin and
soon of the great company of saints belied their political logic in which
humanity and divinity were still kept in sharp contrast. Similarly Chris
tians could use images, but not images of the emperor. Christians fol
lowed Hellenistic Jews in regarding "the powers that be," however
malevolent, as "ordained by God," and they had no inclination, when
the Empire became Christian, to modify the pagan theory of kingship
otherwise than to discard such statements of the emperor's relation to
God as would imply an emperor cult. For the traditional distinction
was so fundamental a part of the Christian heritage from Judaism that
Christians insisted, when they came into power, upon changing the
formula of "divine nature" to "divine right," in order that the "divinity
that doth hedge a king" might never imply such veneration as was
given to images of the Virgin and the saints.
What it is interesting to see is that the arbitrary logic of Christianity,
which took ancient theories of the king on every point but the king's
personal divinity, was itself a part of the Christian heritage from Juda
ism. When Philo refused to concede any measure of divinity to the