refer to a collection of writings at all, but to the communications or
revelations of God, and, as the context shows, probably more immediately
to the Messianic prophecies. The advantage of the Jews, in fact,
according to Paul here, was that to them were first communicated the
Divine oracles: that they were made the medium of God's utterances to
mankind. There seems almost an echo of the expression in Acts vii. 38,
where Stephen is represented as saying to the Jews of their fathers on
Mount Sinai, "who received living oracles ([Greek: logia zônta]) to give
unto us." Of this nature were the "oracles of God" which were entrusted
to the Jews. Further, the phrase: "the first principles of the oracles
of God" (Heb. v. 12), is no application of the term to narrative, as
Dr. Lightfoot affirms, however much the author may illustrate his own
teaching by Old Testament history; but the writer of the Epistle clearly
explains his meaning in the first and second verses of his letter, when
he says: "God having spoken to the fathers in time past in the prophets,
at the end of these days spake unto us in His Son." Dr. Lightfoot also
urges that Philo applies the term "oracle" ([Greek: logion]) to the
_narrative_ in Gen. iv. 15, &c. The fact is, however, that Philo
considered almost every part of the Old Testament as allegorical, and
held that narrative or descriptive phrases veiled Divine oracles. When
he applies the term "oracle" to any of these it is not to the narrative,
but to the Divine utterance which he believes to be mystically contained
in it, and which he extracts and expounds in the usual extravagant
manner of Alexandrian typologists. Dr. Lightfoot does not refer to the
expression of 1 Pet. iv. 11, "Let him speak as the oracles of God"
([Greek: hôs logia Theou]), which shows the use of the word in the
New Testament. He does point out the passage in the "Epistle of Clement
of Rome," than which, in my opinion, nothing could more directly tell
against him. "Ye know well the sacred Scriptures and have studied the
oracles of God." The "oracles of God" are pointedly distinguished from