04_Romanov_391_co_415 30/10/15 13:10 Pagina 402 402 ANDREY ROMANOV 402 The same can be said about Jewish Wisdom. Dunn acknowledges that “within Judaism, the figure of divine Wisdom is not a divine being independent of God”. His analysis of the Jewish Wisdom litera- ture leads him to conclude that Wisdom is a personification of God’s attribute, and the passages which describe Wisdom as an indepen- dent entity should be understood “metaphorically”. Thus, “The Wisdom of God is not something other than God, but God’s wisdom, God in his wisdom” 36. But in 1 Cor 8,6 Paul explicitly points to the complementary functions of two persons; Jesus Christ is presented as the Lord, not as an idea 37. It should be noted that the use of the designation “Lord” is an important aspect of Paul’s argument which is unfortunately almost completely disregarded in recent scholarship. It is overlooked that neither Jewish Wisdom nor Philo’s Logos are ever called “lady” or “lord”; this designation in the Wisdom literature and in Philo was reserved for God only 38. In contrast, Paul surprisingly uses ku,rioj in 1 Cor 8,6 to designate a person other than God the Father (see below more detailed discussion on this). That this designation is not merely a formal address of devotion is clear from the indication of the functions ascribed to Jesus Christ in the verse. All these factors, in my view, question the attempts to find the parallels between Jesus Christ as he presented in 1 Cor 8,6 and contemporary (Hel- lenistic-) Jewish concepts. Also the attempt to explain the meaning of 1 Cor 8,6 through the parallels with two different philosophical traditions (as Sterling, for instance, suggests) is not convincing. The combination of the compared with the similar phenomenon in the human mind). Having similar logoi the Creator and the creatures are able to interact. I argue that Philo uses the Logos to demonstrate how God communicates with the world (including the act of creation) and not to reveal who God’s agent is in this communication. 36 DUNN, Theology, 35, 271. 37 “Since Christ is a person, his personal pre-existence is clearly assumed in this text [1 Cor 8,6]”: D.J. MOO, “The Christology of the Early Pauline Letters”, The Contours of Christology in the New Testament (ed. R.N. LON- GENECKER) (McMaster New Testament Studies 7; Grand Rapids, MI 2005) 178-179. Similarly J. BALCHIN, “Paul, Wisdom and Christ”, Christ the Lord. Studies in Christology presented to Donald Guthrie (ed. H.H. ROWDON) (Leicester 1982) 212. 38 See, e.g., Prov 8,22. On Philo’s understanding of ku,rioj as one of the characteristics of the Jewish God, see N.A. DAHL – A.F. SEGAL, “Philo and Rabbis on the Names of God”, JSJ 9.1 (1978) 1-28, particularly 2-10.