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Bible Encyclopedias
Iddo
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
or the name of several men in the Old Testament, of different forms in the Hebrew.
1. Iddo' (עַדּוֹ, timely, or born to a festival; Sept. Αδδί, Vulg. Addo), a Levite, son of Joah and father of Zerah (1 Chronicles 6:21); called more accurately perhaps ANDAIA. in 1 Chronicles 6:41.
2. Yiddo' (יַדּוֹ, lovely; Sept. Ι᾿αδδαϊ v , Vulg. Jaddo), son of Zechariah, and David's viceroy of the half tribe of Manasseh east (1 Chronicles 27:21). B.C. 1014.
3. Iddo' (עַדּוֹא, a prolonged form of No. 1; Sept. Αδδώ,Vulg. Addo), the father of Ahinadab, which latter was Solomon's purveyor in the district of Mahanaim (1 Kings 4:14). B.C. cir. 995.
4. Iddo' (עַדּוֹ, same as first name, 2 Chronicles 12:15; 2 Chronicles 13:22; Sept. Ἀδδώ, Vulg. Addo) or Yedo' (יֶעְדּוֹ, 2 Chronicles 9:29, margin, but Yedi', יֶעְדַּוֹ, text; both less accurate forms for the last name; Sept. has Ι᾿ωήλ, Vulg. Addo, A. Vers. "Iddo"), a prophet of Judah, who wrote the history of Rehoboam and Abijah; or rather, perhaps, who, in conjunction with Seraiah, kept the public rolls during their reigns (2 Chronicles 12:15); and who in that capacity recorded certain predictions against Jeroboam (2 Chronicles 9:29; although Bertheau, ad loc., and Ewald, Isr. Gesch., 3rd ed., i, 216, think this a different person). B.C. post 953. It seems from 2 Chronicles 13:22 that he named his book מַדנְרָשׁ, Midradh, or "Exposition." Josephus (Ant. 8:9, 1) states that this Iddo (Ι᾿αδών) was the prophet who was sent to Jeroboam at Bethel, and consequently the same that was slain by a lion for disobedience to his instructions (1 Kings 13) and many commentators have followed this statement Kitto. He is also identified with Oded (see Jerome on 2 Chronicles 15:1).
5. Iddo' (עַדּוֹ, same name as last, Zechariah 1:1, elsewhere עַדּוֹא, id.; but עַדַּיא, Iddi', apparently by error, in Nehemiah 12:16; Sept. Ἀδδώ , but Ἀδαϊ v ας in Nehemiah 12:4, and Ἀδαδαϊ v in Nehemiah 12:16; Vulg. Addo, but Adaja in Nehemiah 12:16), the father of Barachiah and grandfather of the prophet Zechariah (Zechariah 1:1; Zechariah 1:7; comp. Ezra 5:1; Ezra 6:14; Nehemiah 12:16). He was one of the chief priests who returned from Babylon with Zerubbabel (Nehemiah 12:4). B.C. 536.
6. Iddo' (אַדּוֹ, mishap; Sept. omits, Vulg. Eddo), chief of the Jews of the Captivity established at Casiphia, a place of which it is difficult to determine the position. It was to him that Ezra sent a requisition for Levites and Nethinim, none of whom had yet joined his caravan. Thirty- eight Levites and 250 Nethinim responded to his call (Ezra 8:17-20). B.C. 459. It would seem from this that Iddo was a chief person of the Nethinim, descended from those Gibeonites who were charged with the servile labors of the tabernacle and Temple. This is one of several circumstances which indicate that the Jews, in their several colonies under the Exile, were still ruled by the heads of their nations and allowed the free exercise of their worship.
7. (See JADAN). Idealism (from idea) is a term given to several systems of philosophy, and therefore varying in its signification according to the meaning which they severally attach to the word idea. Until the 17th century, when Descartes came forward with his Discourse on Method (1637), it had the signification which Plato gave to it, and was understood to refer to the Platonic doctrine of eternal forms (ἰδέαι ) existing in the divine mind, according to which the world and all sensible things were framed. "Plato agreed with the rest of the ancient philosophers in this-that all things consist of matter and form, and that the matter of which all things were made existed from eternity without form; but he likewise believed that there are eternal forms of all possible things which exist without matter, and to those eternal and immaterial forms he gave the name of ideas. In the Platonic sense, then, ideas were the patterns according to which the deity fashioned the phenomenal or ectypal world" (Reid, Intellectual Powers. Ess. 1, chap. 2). The word was used in this sense not only in philosophy, but also in literature, down to the 17th century, as in Spenser, Shakspeare, Hooker, and Milton. Thus Milton in his Paradise Lost:
"God saw his works were good, Answering his fair idea."
Sir William Hamilton, who informs us that the change of signification of idea was first introduced by David Buchanan in 1636, one year earlier than Descartes, says in his Discussions, p. 70: "The fortune of this word is curious. Employed by Plato to express the real forms of the intelligible world, in lofty contrast with the unreal images of the sensible, it was lowered by Descartes, who extended it to the objects of our consciousness in general. When, after Gassendi, the school of Condillac had analyzed our highest faculties into our lowest, the idea was still more deeply degraded from its high original. Like a fallen angel, it was relegated from the sphere of divine intelligence to the atmosphere of human sense, till at last ideologie (more correctly idealogie), a word which could only properly suggest an a priori scheme, deducing our knowledge from the intellect, has in France become the name peculiarly distinctive of that philosophy of mind which exclusively derives our knowledge from the senses." Instead of employing the terms image, species, phantasm, etc., with reference to the mental representation of external things, as had previously been done, Descartes adopted the word idea. In this use of the word he was followed by other philosophers, as Leibnitz and Locke, who desired the word to stand for "whatever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks." Jence the mental impression that we are supposed to have when thinking of the sun. without seeing the actual object, is called our idea of the sun. The idea is thus in contrast with the sensation, or the feeling that we have when the senses are engaged directly or immediately upon the thing itself. The sensation is the result of the pressure of the object, and declares an external reality; the impression persisting after the thing has gone, and recoverable by mental causes without the original, is the idea. Although the word in this application may be so guarded as to lead to no bad consequences, Reid (Intellectual Powers Ess. 1, chap. 1) most vehemently protested against its use in such a sense, holding that it gave countenance to the setting up of a new and fictitious element in the operations of the mind.. But this raises the great question of metaphysics, namely, the exact nature of our knowledge of an external world. Bishop Berkeley (q.v.), however, must be regarded as the true representative of modern idealism. He held that "the qualities of supposed objects cannot be perceived distinct from the mind that perceives them; and these qualities, it will be allowed, are all that we can know of such objects. If, therefore, there were external bodies, it is impossible we should ever know it; and if there were not, we should have exactly the same reason for believing there were as we now have.
All, therefore, which really exists is spirit, or ‘ the thinking principle' ourselves, our fellow-men, and God. What we call ideas are presented to us by God in a certain order of succession, which order of successive presentation is what we mean by the laws of nature." This mode of speculation of bishop Berkeley, which he defended with so much acuteness, and which Lewis (Hist. of Philippians 2, 283) now goes forth to defend, claiming that the bishop's critics misunderstood him, he held to be the only possible true view of our nature and the government of God. But there is no question that, whatever benefits it may have bestowed upon the bishop and his immediate disciples, it has been found, practically, to lead to skepticism. "By taking away the grounds of a belief which is both natural and universal, and which cannot, at first, be even doubted without a severe exercise of thought, it shook men's faith in all those primary truths which are at once the basis of their knowledge and the guides of their conduct. It seemed to throw distrust on the evidence of the senses, as it really invalidated the spontaneous conclusions which every man inevitably forms from that evidence." This theory is conclusively proved by the conduct of Hume; for, if a main pillar of the edifice could so easily be shaken, what was there to hinder from throwing down the whole fabric? Beginning where Berkeley began, Hume proceeded much farther, and left unassailed hardly one article of human faith. He denied the reality not only of the object perceived, but of the mind perceiving. He reduced all thinking existence to a succession of rapidly fleeting ideas, each one being known only at the instant of its manifestation to consciousness, and then fading away, leaving no surely recognizable trace of itself on the memory, and affording no ground for an anticipation of the future. We do not even know, he maintains, that any one thing depends upon another in the relation of an effect to its cause. We know no true cause whatever, and our only idea of power is a fiction and a blunder. The conclusion of the whole matter, according to his philosophy, is, not the mere negation of this or that positive belief, but universal distrust of the human faculties, considered as means for the acquisition of truth. They contradict each other, and leave nothing certain except that nothing can be known. (See HUME); (See REID).
The German philosophers Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, who are often classed among the idealistic school, used the word idea in the Platonic or transcendental sense. Hegel, on the other hand, modified the use of the word to such an extent that his idealism does not only deserve to be called absolute-idealism, but much more properly pantheistic, no less than the doctrine of the Eleatics anciently, or of Spinoza in modern times. It is thus apparent, from the looseness of the application of the word idea, and the danger of its not conveying a definite signification, that we need a general word in the English language which may more accurately express the contrast to sensation or to actuality. But, as no better has yet been found, it is difficult to avoid the use of ideality, "being what is common to memory and to imagination, and expressing the mind as not under the present impression of real objects, but as, by its own tenacity and associating powers, having those objects to all practical ends before its view. Thus all our sensations, whether of sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell, and all the feelings that we have in the exercise of our moving energies, become transformed into ideas when, without the real presence of the original agency, we can deal with them in the way of pursuit or avoidance, or can discriminate and compare them, nearly as if in their first condition as sensation." Sir W. Hamilton, in his Lectures on Logic (1, 126), has endeavored to avoid employing the word, but other writers on mental philosophy have freely adopted it in the above acceptation. See Chambers, Cyclop. 5, 510 sq.; Krauth's Fleming, Vocab. of Philos. p. 222 sq.; Brande and Cox, Dict. of Science, Lit. and Art, ii, 189; Morell, History of Philos. p. 55 sq.; Lewis, Hist. of Philos. (enlarged ed.), see Index; Farrar, Crit, Hist. of Free Thought, p. 422; M'Cosh, Intuitions of the Mind, p. 317 sq.; Morell's Tennemann, Hist. of Philos. see Index; N. A. Rev. No. 76, p. 60 sq.; Jour. Sac. Lit. 20, 298 sq. (See NIHILISM); (See REALISM). (J. H.W.)
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McClintock, John. Strong, James. Entry for 'Iddo'. Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/tce/i/iddo.html. Harper & Brothers. New York. 1870.
