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117 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA Eltaholta Emanation unimportant work in the sphere of historical the ology. Important in exegesis are his Annotationes in Lamm Gal. ii. 1-YO (SchBnthaler Programm, 1852) and Quceationes et observatitmea tad philologiarn aacrarn Nevi Teatamenti pertinent" (Tabingen, lsso). (Ro$ERT x$BELt.> ELY: A small town of England in Cambridge shire (18 m. n.n.e. of Cambridge). It is the seat of an important bishopric, erected in 1107, which for a long time, owing to its remote situation amid the marsh-lands of East England, enjoyed a quasi palatine authority second only to that of the see of Durham (q.v.). A convent was founded on the Island of Ely in 673 by Etheldreda, queen of Northumbria (see ETHELDREDA, SAINT), W110 Con tinued abbess till her death. In 1070 Ethel wold, bishop of Winchester, restored the buildings after the ravages of the Danes and filled them with monks instead of nuns. In 1083 Abbot Simeon commenced the conventual church, which Henry VIII. made the cathedral. The present buildings date from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries, affording examples of every period of English Gothic, and especially as restored in the nineteenth century, with the beautiful painting executed as a labor of love by Mr. Gambier Parry, are among the principal attractions of English ecclesiastical architecture. BIBLIOGRAPHY: W. E. Dickson, Ely Cathedral, London, 1897; C. W. Stubbs, Historical Memorial* o/ Ely Cathe dral, ib. 1897; Handbook to the Cathedral, Ely, 1898; Ely Diocesan Remsmlmanar. Cambridge . 1898 eqq.; W. D. Bweeting, Cathedral Church o/ Ely, London, 1901. EMANATION. Definition and Distinctions U 1). Hindu, Persian, and Greek Phases (¢ 2). Philonic and Early Christian Doctrine ($ 3). Dionysian, Scholastic, and Mystic Doctrine ($ 4).
The doctrine of emanation holds that all derived
or secondary things proceed or flow from the more
primary. It is distinguished from the doctrine
of creation by its elimination of a definite will in
the first cause, from which all things are made to
emanate according to natural laws and without
conscious volition. It differs from the theory of
formation at the hands of a supreme
I. Defini- artizan who finds his matter ready
flea and to his hand, in teaching that all
Diatinc- things, whether actually or only ap
tions. parently material, flow from the primal
principle. Unlike evolution, again,
which includes the entire principle of the world,
material and spiritual, in the process of develop
ment, emanation holds to the immutability of
the first principle as to both quality and quantity,
and also in the tendency of the development
evolution implying one which goes from leas to
more perfect, while emanation involves a eerier of
descending stages. Evolution may be classed
under the general head of pantheism; emanation
can not, since its primary essence does not enter
into the world. The vagueness prevalent in the
definition of emanation is due partly to the con
stant use of metaphors in describing it; indeed the
term emanation itself is a metaphor taken from the
flowing of liquid. Of these analogies perhaps the best is that taken from light, the beams of which go out continually without any diminution of the original source, and become more feeble the further they get away from it.
In the Upanishads of the Veda there are not a few passages which point, if obscurely, to this doctrine. One frequently quoted passage asserts that "From this Atman originated space, and from space the wind, and from the wind the fire, and from fire water, and from water the earth, and from the earth plants, and from plants food, and from food the seed of man, and from the seed of man himself." This, however, does not s. Hindu, clearly assert an emanation, but
Persian, merely marks the stages of descent and Greek that separate man from the Atman.
Phases. Attempts have often been made to derive the Gnostic doctrine of emana tion from the Avesta, but with doubtful success. Even if we may assume another higher power ante cedent to the two hostile powers set forth in this dualistic system and comprising them both, still the independence of these two, as well as of the angels or half-divine beings who surround them, is not clearly asserted as owing to their emanation from the primal principle. In the ancient Egyptian religion, in which polytheism early appeared, there is no question of either emanation or evolution. In Greek philosophy emanations (aporrhoiai) occur at as early period, as in Empedoclea, who accounts for sensual perceptions as emanations or effluxes proceeding from the objects percei ed. Similarly Democritus spoke of effluxes of moms from the thing perceived, by which images (eidola) are pro duced, which strike our senses. But these views do not come under the general head of emanation, since they do not touch the origin of the atoms. Nor does the teaching of the Hylozoists, like Hera clitus, with his doctrine of the transformation of all things into fire, and then of fire into all other things. The same is true of the Stoics; some of the later ones, like Marcus Aurelius, speak of the soul se an aporrhoaa of God, but this means a part of God, not an emanation from an undiminished source. The first real mention of the doctrine in Greek or Hellenistic philosophy is iz the Wisdom of Solomon, where wisdom is described as " the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence (alOOr rhoia) flowing from the glory of the Almighty." These and the following expressions may, indeed, be poetical, not involving a personification of wis dom apart from the Godhead; but the way in which wisdom is spoken of throughout the book makes for the conception of an independent cosmic power which is an efflux from the Godhead.The doctrine of emanation is a little more explicit in Philo, though he dote not teach it clearly and consciously, still leas purely and logically. It assumes its most definite form for Greek philosophy in Vie works of the Neoplatoniats-though their speculations are largely derived from the Gnostic mythological systems of Basilides and Valentinus, in which emanation played a prominent part. According to Basilides, a whole series of eons emanated in successive stages from the uabegotten