CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF ;'lfred C. BarneB Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029318890 Cornell University Library BT821 .C47 1913 Critical history ,o' .ffiS.i.fiS^ifiiJI^.iiiyilliHtiii" 3 1924 029 318 890 olin A CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE A Critical History OF THE Doctrine of a Future Life In Israel, in Judaism, and in Christianity OR HEBREW, JEWISH, AND CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY FROM PRE-PROPHETIC TIMES TILL THE CLOSE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON BEING THE FIRST JOWETT LECTURES DELIVERED IN 1898-99 BY R. H. CHARLES, D.D., D.Litt. speaker's lecturer in biblical studies fellow of merton college, oxford fellow of the british academy SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK 1913 First Edition published in Nmiemter i8i PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION The present work is the result of studies begun over twelve years ago, and pursued unremittingly for the past ten. This long period of preparation is partly to be explained by the fact that some of the most important books in the history of the development of Jewish eschatology had to be studied afresh and re-edited before their evidence was available for such a work as the present. After a severe and prolonged examination of the Apoca- lyptic and Apocryphal literature of Judaism, I pro- ceeded to carry my investigations backward into the Old Testament and forward into the New, and in both cases, I hope, with fresh and fruitful results. I am painfully aware, however, of the unsatisfactory treatment of some of the books in the New Testa- ment, such as the Apocalypse, and of the need of a deeper and fuller treatment of the Messianic hope of the Nation in the Old Testament. It seemed good, however, not to delay publica- tion further, and accordingly I gladly accepted the invitation of the Jowett Committee to give a course of lectures on the subject of these studies. PREFACE Throughout this work I have been obliged repeatedly to abandon the beaten track in dealing with the eschatology both of the Old and of the New Testament. This has been due in part to the method pursued ; for it became clear to me many years ago that, in order to apprehend the evidence of a passage dealing with the religious hopes of Israel, it was necessary to study it not only in its textual but also in its historical context. All scholars with any pretension to thoroughness have already recognised the duty of studying a passage in its textual context ; but very few have seen that it is just as necessary to study it in its historical context, that is, in its rightful place in the development of religious thought. Thus two writings may be composed within the same decade : yet one may be reactionary in character, and belong to a bygone period of development, while the other may be spiritual and progressive, and in the van of the religious thought of the time. In such cases it is the part of the historian to allow the definitive passages in both writings their full weight, and not to force them into unnatural conformity by spiritual- ising some or materialising others. It is only by such a scientific method of investi- gation that we can hope to arrive at any valid conclusions on such subjects as Universalism, Con- ditional Immortality, or Eternal Damnation. Such conclusions are not to be gathered so much from PREFACE isolated statements in the New Testament books, which may vary in accordance with the spiritual endowments of the writer, as from the consumma- tion to which the eschatological development of the past undoubtedly points, and, above all, from that consummation foreshadowed and implied in the great fundamental truths proclaimed by Christ and variously unfolded in Apostolic teaching. As in nature, so in religion, God reveals Himself in the course of slow evolution. A learned book on the same subject as the present work has recently been published by Prin- cipal Salmond. Since, however, our method and treatment have taken different lines, I have refrained throughout from referring to the work of this well- known scholar. In order to make this book easy to consult, I have provided it with an elaborate index. This index consists of an alphabetical list of names and subjects : but it is more ; for under each subject- heading an analytical treatment is attempted, from which the reader can gather the historical develop- ment of the particular conception through the course of nearly a thousand years. Finally, I wish to express my thanks to Messrs. A. & C. Black, the publishers of the Encyclopcedia Biblica, and to its editors, Drs. Cheyne and Black, for permitting me to use my article on Eschatology in that work as the basis of the present work. viii PREFACE I would also gratefully acknowledge the many helpful suggestions which I owe to Dr. Cheyne, as well as Dr, Black's revision of the proofs, notwith- standing the multitudinous claims on his time and energies.^ 17 Bradmore Road, Oxford, September 1899. PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION In this Edition many slips and inaccuracies of the first edition have been corrected. The sections dealing with some of the authorities have been wholly rewritten, the significance and data of which were unl'in means no more than to take an oalh, seems clearly to be impossible. His words are OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN ISRAEL 23 "elohim," or god, here, we should remember that chap, i, the dead when invoked were termed elohim (see I Sam. xxviii. 13). In Deut. xv. 12-18 this heathen ceremony is robbed of all its primitive religious significance by the omission of the term " god," and given a wholly secular character. Later these but later teraphim were regarded as images of Yahwe (cf. [mapyof'^ Judg. xvii. 5 and xviii. 17 sqq. ; see also i Sam. ^^^'^'^• xix. 13-16); for we can hardly regard it as possible that David, the champion of the religion of Yahwe, would have worshipped the teraphim in their original character as household gods. In Hos. ili. 4 and Zech. x. 2 they may retain their original character as images of ancestors, or, as images of Yahwe, they may have been used like the Ephod in con- sulting the Deity. They are represented in Ezek. xxi. 26 (ver. 21 in E.V.) as being consulted by Nebuchadnezzar. Thus this cult of household gods (Dillmann, A litest. Theologie, 90, 98) was firmly established in the family of Jacob before it went down into Egypt, and must have been observed by Israel during its entire stay in Egypt, seeing that it flourished among the people after their settlement in Canaan, and prevailed down to the latest period of the Monarchy. (ii.) Sacrifices were offered to tfie dead. — The sacrifices ^ ' 1 <- T-\ • offerer' •" object of these sacrifices is clear from Deut. xxvi. dead. (p. 109) : " Liegt nichts im Wege, die Bedeutung der Handlung nur in dem Heften des Ohres an den Thiirpfosten zu sehen, wahrend das Bringen D'n'jNn-'jN, wodurch der Handlung nur ein eidliclier Character aufgepragt wird, bei Wiederholung dieser Verordnung, weil nicht konstitutives Merkmal, unbe- schadet wegfallen konnte." The omission referred to in the concluding words is found in Deut. xv. i2-l8. offered to the 2 4 PRIMITIVE HE A THEN ESCHA TO LOG Y 14: "I have not eaten thereof in my mourning, neither have I put away thereof, being unclean, nor given thereof /"tir the dead" ; Jer. xvi. 7 (?). They are probably implied in Is. viii. 19, xix. 3 ; for when a man wished to consult the dead, he would naturally present an offering. They are referred to in Ezek. xxiv. 17: "Make no mourning for the dead, bind thy headtire upon thee, and put thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover not thy lips, and eat not the bread of mourning."' See also xxiv. 22; 2 Chron. xvi. 14 (see Schwally, 16, 24, 48), xxi. 19. The object of these sacrifices was to give sustenance to the dead and to win their favour.^ In later times this object was lost sight of, and these sacrifices came to be regarded as mere funeral feasts. But this does not seem to 1 I have here followed Bertholet and Toy in emending d'e^jn into d-jW. Thus, instead of the senseless " bread of men " we obtain " the bread of mourning " (cf. Hos. ix. 4). This verse refers to four of the mourning usages : uncovering the head in order to strew it with ashes, putting off the shoes, covering the beard, and eating the bread of the offering to the dead (see pp. 28-30). 2 See Schwally, 21-25; Stade, Gcsck. i. 389, 390; Nowack, ^rr,^. i. 192-198; Wellhausen, Isr. v. jiid. Gesch.^ ICO, 101, 1S99 ; Benzinger, Hebrdische Archdologie, 164-167; Lods, op. cit. i. 160-174; ii. 83-85; Hastings' Ency. i. 446. Just as in the old Semitic, so in the Greek religion, libations were made to gain the favour of the departed (cf. Euripides, Or. 119) 789; El- 676-683; Here. Fur. 491-494; Sophocles, El. 454. See Rohde, Psyche^ i. 242, 243 ; ii. 250). But the value of these is questioned in Eur. Troad. 1 248- 1 2 50, where Hector declares that rich offerings on the grave are of no service to the dead, but only minister to the vanity of the living. el TtXovirlojv Tis TeuJfTai KTepwixAruf Kfvbv 5^ •yaTjpij)jx iffrl twv ^Jjptojp r65€. These lines represent the real view of Euripides. But still more important than these Greek analogies are the similar usages which prevailed in Baby- lonia. The close affinities existing between the early Hebrew and the Babylonian views of the departed are beyond the reach of questioning (see pp. 23, 24, 34, 39-4I)' The burial couch was filled with various kinds of spices, which were of the nature of offerings (cf. 2 Chron. xvi. 14). Offerings of food son. OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN ISRAEL 25 have come about even in the second century b.c. chap. i. Sacrifices to the dead appear to be commended in Sir. vii. 33, " From a dead man keep not back grace " ;^ Tob. iv. 17, "Pour out thy bread on the tomb of the just " ; but derided in Sir. xxx. 18, 19; Ep. Jer. 31, 32 ; Wisdom xiv. 15, xix. 3 ; Or. Sibyl, viii. 382-384. They are referred to in Jubilees xxii. 1 7 as prevailing among the Gentiles. (iii.) The right of offering such sacrifices was Right of limited to a son of the departed. — Ancestor Worship °ff<=""g s"<^h •^ ^ i sacnnces enables us to explain the importance of male off- i™ited to a spring.^ The honour and wellbeing of the dead depended on the worship and sacrifices offered by their male descendants. According to this belief, even in the after-life men could be punished by Yahwe through the destruction of their posterity and water were presented to the departed, not only at the time of burial, but afterwards at certain seasons by their surviving relatives. The comfort of the departed depended on their reception of the proper burial rites and offerings. If they were deprived of the rites of burial, their shades were forced to wander restlessly. Any mutilation of the dead body affected the departed shade. Furthermore, if after burial the body were disinterred, no food could be offered or sacrifice tendered to the shade. In such a case not only the disentombed shade suffered, but also the survivors ; for the shade assumed the form of a demon and afflicted the living. The shades, more- over, possessed great power. They could direct the affairs of the living. To gain their favour offerings and prayers were made to them. They were consulted regarding the future. Hence their abode is at times called Shualu, or "the place of oracles" (so Jastrow, p. 561, who denies Jeremias' ex- planation as ' ' the place of decision," p. 559). At times also they are said to dwell in Ekur, where likewise the gods were supposed to dwell. Thus the departed were brought into close association with the gods. Indeed, certain of the dead received the honour of deification. In Israel, it is true, the departed had no association with any gods. They were, however, themselves addressed as gods by those who consulted them (see pp. 23, 40). See Jeremias, Bab-Assyr. Vorstellungen vom Ltben nach dem Tode, pp. 53-58 ; Jastrow, Religion of Babydonia and Assyria, 511, 512, 568, 582, 598, 599. 2 Besides Schwally and Stade, see Benzinger, Arch. 354 sqq. ; Nowack Arch. i. 348 sqq. 26 PRIMITIVE HEATHEN ESCHATOLOGT (Exod. XX. 5 ; xxxiv. 7 ; Num. xiv. 18; Deut. v. 9), for with the destruction of the latter, sacrifices ceased to be made to the former. On the same principle a man destroyed his enemy and all his sons originally with the object of depriving him of respect and worship in the lower world. We have already remarked that sacrifices could be offered only by the son. But as not unfrequently a man might fail to have male offspring, the difficulty was surmounted by adoption. By such adoption a man passed from his own family or clan to that of the father who adopted him, and thereby took upon himself all the obligations attaching to the latter. Even a slave could be so adopted. Thus in Gen. XV. 2, 3 Eliezer is regarded as Abraham's heir in default of male issue. It is to be presumed, with Stade {Gesch. Isr. i. 391) and Holzinger (on Gen. XV. 2), that he had already been adopted into the family cult. Thus the right of inheritance is derived in principle from Ancestor Worship.^ Only the son 1 The duty of the avenging of blood may be traced originally to the worship of ancestors. This obligation was in Greek religion limited to a body of relations of three generations (an d7x"'"''f'<»)i w'ho in the male line had the same man for father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Now this was the very body to whom the right of succession belonged. With succession to an inheritance the obligation of the avenging of blood was at the same time undertaken. In the earliest times the soul of the departed could be appeased only by the blood of the murderer ; but subsequently, even before the Homeric era, when the worship of ancestors had retired largely into the background, the custom arose of taking compensation or blood-money. In this case the matter is a transaction wholly between the living, and no account is taken of the dead. In the centuries immediately subsequent to Hesiod, when there was a great revival of the worship of the dead, the nearest rela- tive was obliged to avenge the dead. Being a member of an organised community, he was not allowed to do so with his own hand, but could pro- ceed against the slayer before a court of justice, as the State refused to allow a money ransom. If the relative in question failed in this duty through OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN ISRAEL 27 or heir could fulfil its rites. Illegitimate sons could chap. i. not inherit (Stade, Gesch. Isr. i. 391), because their mother had not been admitted by marriage into the cult (cf. Judg. xi. 2). In Num. xxxvi. we see that the law regulating inheritance has already undergone a change. Thus a daughter is there allowed to inherit on condition she married a man belonging to the same family or tribe as her father. In Athens, on the other hand, the property de- scended to the next heir male, but he was obliged to marry the daughter of the deceased. Thus from the above facts it appears that the living and the dead formed one family, and the departed partici- pated in the vicissitudes of their living descendants. Rachel in her grave shared In the troubles of her children in northern Israel (Jer. xxxi. 15, "A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children : she refuseth to be comforted for her children; because they are not"). (iv.) But the necessity of a son for the perform- Hence is to be ance of Ancestor Worship gave birth, where \ly{^it\J«^ there was no such offspring, to the levirate law} negligence, the soul of the slain visited with its wrath its faithless avenger : for such a soul had no rest until its wrongs were avenged. This was the general belief at Athens down to the tenth century (see Rohde, Psyche, 260 sqq.) This stage of ransom was already reached by Israel long before the Monarchy, The legislation of the Priests' Code is directed against this custom of compensation (see Num. xxxv. 31, 32). In Israel the homicide was clearly distinguished from the murderer ; but no such distinction existed in Greece in Homeric times ; but at a later period, when the community took into its own hands the right of the avenger, this distinction was carefully observed. 1 This custom (according to Stade, Gesch. Isr. i. 394) still prevails among the Indians, Persians, Afghans, Circassians, and Gallas, amongst whom Ancestor Worship exists. See also Schwally, 28 sgq. ; Marti,' 48, 49 ; Nowack, Arch. i. 343 sqq. ; Benzinger, Arck. 134, 136, 345, 346; Lods, op. cit. ii. 71-81. PRIMITIVE HE A THEN ESCHA TO LOG Y Family was a sacramentally united cor- poration. II. Mourning usages origin- ally derived from Ancestor Worship. According to this law, it was the duty of surviving brothers to marry the childless widow of their de- ceased brother, or where there was no brother, the duty fell on the nearest male relation of the deceased. The firstborn son of such a marriage was registered as the son of the deceased. Thus the deceased was secured the respect and sacrifices due to him. These could be rendered only by a son legitimately begotten or adopted. This law appears to have been in force in Gen. xxxviii. 26, but its significance is forgotten in Deut. xxv. 5-10. Tamar fulfilled according to old Israelitish views a duty of piety towards her dead husband (Stade, i. 394) and similarly Ruth. The daughters of Lot may have had the same end in view. (v.) The family formed a sacramentally united corporation, within which the above rites were celebrated. The father of the family was its priest. This title was afterwards actually transferred to the priest (Judg. xvii. 10, xviii. 19). Even in historical times the family preserved its special festivals (i Sam. XX. 29). These undoubtedly point back to the family cult. II. The Primitive Mourning Usages in Israel WERE Part and Parcel of Ancestor Worship.^ Such usages had originally a religious significance, and not merely a psychological, as they came subse- quently to possess. They indicate reverence for the > Schwally, Das Leben nach dem Tode, pp. 9-16 ; Stade, Gesch. d. Volks Israel, i. 387 sqq. \ Benzinger, Arch. 102, 165-167; Nowack, Arch. i. 1 92- 1 98 ; Lods, op. cit. i. 88-160. OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN ISRAEL 29 dead, and the confession of dependence upon them. Thus (i) the mourner girt himself with sackcloth (2 Sam. iii. 31 ; i Kings xx. 31 ; Is. iii. 24, xv. 3, xxii. 12; Jer. vi. 26), or laid it on his loins (Gen. xxxvii. 34 ; Jer. xlviii. 37). This practice expresses submission to a superior. Thus the servants of Benhadad go forth in sackcloth from Aphek to Ahab (i Kings xx. 31, 32). (2) The mourner put off his shoes (2 Sam. xv. 30; Ezek. xxiv. 17). The re- moval of the shoes was required in approaching holy- places (Exod. iii. 5, 6 ; Jos. v. 15). This explains its connection with the dead. (3) Mourners cut off their hair (Is. xxii. 12; Jer. vii. 29; Am. viii. 10; Mic. i. 16 ; Ezek. vii. 18, xxvii. 31) and beards (Jer. xli. 5), or both (Is. xv. 2 ; Jer. xlviii. 2,7) ', and made baldnesses between the eyes (Deut. xiv. i, 2). The hair so cut off was designed as an offering for the dead (Robertson Smith, Rel. Sem} 323-336). These rites are condemned as idolatrous in the latter half of the seventh century in Deut. xiv. i, 2; for they are forbidden on the ground " for thou art a holy people to the Lord thy God " (cf. Deut. xvlii. 11, 12 ; Lev. xix. 27, 28). Yet these rites are mentioned by the prophets of the eighth century without any con- sciousness of their impropriety (cf Am. viii. 10, "I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head"; Mic. i. 16, "Make thee bald, and poll thee for the children of thy delight " ; see also Is. XV. 2, xxii. 12). They appear still to have been the universal custom (Jer. xli. 5). At this period their original significance may have largely 30 PRIMITIVE HEATHEN ESCHATOLOGY been forgotten. (4) Mourners made cuttings in their flesh for the dead. Such incisions were re- garded as "making an enduring covenant with the dead" (Rob. Smith, Rel. Sem. 322, 323). Like inci- sions were made by the priests of Baal (i Kings xviii. 28). These rites were forbidden by the Hebrew law in Deut. xiv. i ; Lev. xix. 28, on the same grounds as (3). (5) The covering of the head by the mourner (2 Sam. xv. 30; Esth. vi. 12; Jer. xiv. 3) is probably, with Schwally, to be re- garded as a substitute for cutting off the hair, and similarly the covering of the beard for its removal (Ezek. xxiv. 17). This practice on the part of the mourner expresses his reverence for the dead. The same custom was observed by the worshipper in approaching God. Thus Elijah covered his head in the presence of God on Horeb, and such is the universal usage in the synagogue and mosque at the present day. We have now considered the household gods of Ancient Israel, the sacrifices that were offered to them, that is, to the departed whom they represented, and the restriction of the right of offering such sacrifices to the eldest son, or to the son through a levirate marriage, or the nearest male heir. We have also touched on the mourning usages. All these are essential parts of Ancestor Worship, and for the most part regulate the conduct of the living in their approach to the dead. We have now to con- sider the beliefs that prevailed regarding the dead themselves, i.e. their place of abode, and the nature OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN ISRAEL 31 of their existence there. These beliefs regarding chap. i. the dead are essential constituents of Ancestor Heathen be- Worship no less surely than those we have already the^dead'su"^ considered. They had, moreover, a much more v'™tiii70A.D. extended lease of life ; for, long after the other con- stituents of this worship had become unintelligible, or sunk into complete desuetude, these still flourished in the high places of Judaism, and claimed the adherence of no small portion of the priesthood down to the destruction of the temple by Titus. III. Beliefs regarding the Dead. — We shall ni. Beliefs consider these under the heads of — (i.) Burial ; (ii.) dead. '"^' ^ The family grave ; (iii.) Sheol; (iv.) The dead, or the inhabitants of Sheol (i.) Burial was regarded as indispensable to the (i.)Buriai. comfort of the departed, just as in the religions of Greece and Rome. It was hardly ever withheld in Israel. Criminals who were hanged (Deut. xxi.22,23) or stoned (Jos. vii. 24-26), and suicides (Joseph. Bell, fud. in. viii. 5), were accorded burial, and even the most hostile of the national foes of Israel (Ezek. xxxix. 12). One of the most grievous calamities that could befall a man was loss of burial. This is the sentence pronounced on Jezebel (2 Kings ix. 10). It was the fate that awaited the enemies of Yahwe (Jer. xxv. 33^). This horror at the thought 1 Even the materialistic writer of Eccl. vi. 3 regards such a misfortune as outweighing a whole lifetime of material blessings on earth. But the con- text is against this reference to the loss of burial, and so we must either strike out the entire phrase " and moreover he have no burial," with Hitzig, or else the negative, with Wildeboer. 32 PRIMITIVE HEATHEN ESCHATOLOGY CHAP. I. of being unburied cannot be explained as in the Greek and Roman religions, where it involved the penalty of non-admission to Hades; for according to Hebrew views all without exception descended into Sheol. It maybe explained on two grounds: (i) In earlier times no sacrifices could be offered to the dead unless they had received burial. Sacrifices were offered at the grave ; for the grave was in some measure the temple in Ancestor Worship. (2) The soul was conceived as connected with the body even after death. Hence every outrage to the dead body was also an outrage to the departed soul. This view appears as late as Job's time (see xiv. 22). (ii.) The family (ii.) The family gruve. — Not burial only but burial in the family grave was the desire of every Israelite. Hence the frequent mention that a man was gathered to his fathers (Gen. xv. 15 ; Judg. ii. 10), or his people (Gen. xlix. 29-33; Num. xxvii. 13). The object of burial not merely in a grave but in the family grave was clearly to introduce the departed into the society of his ancestors. In the earliest times this society was conceived to exist either in the family grave or in its immediate neighbourhood. Every one wished to be buried with his father and mother (2 Sam. xvii. 23, xix. 38). The deprivation of such a burial was an act of condemnation (i Kings xiii. 22), and entailed lasting dishonour (Ezek. xxviii. 10, xxxii. 21). Jacob and Joseph direct that their bodies should be carried back to Canaan to be buried in the family grave (Gen. xlvii. grave. OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN ISRAEL 33 30, 1. 25 ; Exod. xiii. 19). The family grave was originally in the house/ Thus Samuel was buried in his own house (i Sam. xxv. i), and Joab (i Kings, ii. 34).^ But as no family stood in isolation, but was closely united with others, and as these together made up the clan or tribe, and the tribes in due time were consolidated into the nation, a new conception arose. According to this all the graves of the tribe or nation were regarded as united in one ; and to this new conception the designation Sheol was given. How early this new conception arose we have no means at present of determining. (iii.) Sheol. — We have just seen that in all prob- ( ability Sheol was originally conceived as a combina- tion of the graves of the clan or nation, and as thus its final abode. In due course this conception was naturally extended till it embraced the departed of all nations, and thus became the final abode of all mankind, good and bad alike. It has already reached this stage in Ezek. xxxii.; Is. xiv. ; Job xxx. 23 ("the house appointed for all living"); Eccl. xii. 5 ("his eternal house"). Strictly regarded, the conceptions of the abode of the dead in the grave and in Sheol are mutually exclusive. But being popular notions they do not admit of scientific definition, and their characteristics are ■ The same usage is said to have prevailed in Ancient Greece (see Rohde, Psyche^ i. 22S), and in Babylonia (see Jastrow's Rel. of Babylon^ 599). 2 Certain kings of Judah (2 Kings xxi. 18, 26) were buried close to the temple. Seeing that graves had originally a sacred character, such sites as human dwellings and the immediate neighbourhood of the temple were natural. But in later times just because of their old association with Ancestor Worship they were declared to be unclean (Ezek. xliii. 7 ; Num. xix. 16), and were marked with white (cf. Matt, xxiii. 27, rd^ois KCKona/j.dvots) in order to guard wayfarers from impurity through contact with them. I Sheol. 34 PRIMITIVE HEATHEN ESCHATOLOGY treated at times as interchangeable (cf. Is. xiv. ii, "Thy pomp is brought down to Sheol . . . the worm is spread over thee, and the worms cover thee ").■' The family grave, with its associations of Ancestor Worship, is of course the older conception. But the conception of Sheol goes back to the period when the Hebrew clans lived in the Valley of the Euphrates, and shared this and other beliefs with the Babylonians of that time.^ Just as a man re- quired burial in the family grave in order to join the circle of his ancestors, so honourable burial was a precondition to an honourable place in Sheol, i.e. to union with his people there. Otherwise they are * The same confusion is to be found frequently in the Greek religion. See Rohde, Psyche^ i. 257 7iote ; ii. 240 note, 366 tiok^ 381 noie^ 3S4 fioie. Rohde is of opinion that the cult of the dead can have no legitimate relation to the soul that has once entered Hades (i. 257 note), though such a relation is often assumed in Greek religion. The same confusion appears also in the Babylonian religion. 2 That the Hebrew and Babylonian conceptions of Sheol are ultimately from the same source is clear if we compare them together. Thus Aralti, the Babylonian .Sheol, is a mighty palace situated under the earth, in the depths of the mountain Aralu (cf. Jonah ii. 6). It is approached by the great ocean into which the sun dips at evening. Hence it appears to be in the west, and in this respect differs from the Hebrew Sheol. It is without light, surrounded by seven walls, and provided with gates and bars. It is covered with dust and filth. The food of its inhabitants is dust, unless offerings of food are received from the living. There is no distinction made between good and bad. They are withdrawn from the control of the gods of the upper world just as the inhabitants of Sheol were supposed to be removed from the jurisdiction of Yahwe. But Aralii, unlike Sheol, had its own gods, Nergal and Allatu. The departed cannot enter Aralu unless they have received burial. In this respect also the Hebrew view differs. It is probable also that in the Babylonian Shu.alu we have the same word as the Hebrew Sheol {so Delitzsch, Jeremias, Jastrow. Jensen, however, doubts the existence of this word in Babylonian ; Zimmern regards the question as still open). The inhabitants of Aralil are naked (cf. Job i. 21). But the more usual Hebrew view was that the departed wore in shadowy guise the customary attire of earth (cf. Ezek. xxxii. ; Is. xiv.) See especially Jeremias (5a3.-aj.r>'r. VorsteUimgen voiii Le^>en jiach dt-m Tode, pp. 106-126) on the relations existing between Babylonian and Old Testament views of the after-life. OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN ISRAEL 35 thrust into the lowest and most outlying parts of the chap. i. pit (Ezek. xxxii. 23). Sheol is said to have different divisions or chambers, mn •'nn (Prov. vii. 27). It is provided with gates (Ps. ix. 14, cvii. 18; Job xxxviii. 17; Is. xxxviii. 10). These are secured with bars (Job xvii. 16). It is the land of disorder (Job x. 22), and of dust (Dan. xii. 2; Job vii. 21, xvii. 16). As regards its position, Sheol was supposed to be situated in the lowest parts of the earth (Ps. Ixiii. 9, Ixxxvi. 13; Ezek. xxvi. 20, xxxi. 14, xxxii. 18, 24), below the sea (Job xxvi. 5), yet above the subter- ranean waters (Ps. Ixxi. 20). It is likewise known as "the pit," ~iS3 (Ezek. xxvi. 20, xxxi. 14, 16, xxxii. 18, 24, 25, 29, 30 ; Lam. iii. 53, 55 ; Is. xiv. 15, 19 ; Prov. i. 12, xxviii. 17; Ps. xxviii. i, xxx. 3, Ixxxviii. 4, cxliii. 7), or nnm (Is. xxxviii. 17, li. 14; Ezek. xxviii. 8; Job xvii. 14, xxxiii. 18, 22, 24, 28, 30). So situated, Sheol is naturally without light. It is "the land of darkness," of thick darkness as dark- ness itself, "where the light is as darkness" (Job x. 21, 22). In the next section we shall deal at some lensfth xwocharnc with the condition of the dead in Sheol. It will be steli."" sufficient here to point out two of its main char- acteristics — (a) Sheol was in early times quite independent of Yahwe, and outside the sphere of His rule. For, as we have seen, Yahwe was originally but the God of the tribe or nation, and His sway for many centuries after Moses was con- ceived to extend not to the whole upper world, much less to the lower, i.e. Sheol, but only to His 36 PRIMITIVE HEATHEN ESCHATOLOG Y CHAP. I. own people and His own land. Sheol preserved its independence undiminished in many respects down to the fourth century. The persistence of this heathen conception of Sheol ^ side by side with the monotheistic conception of Yahwe as Creator and Ruler of the world for several centuries is hard for the Western mind to understand ; for the con- ceptions are mutually exclusive. Thus Israel be- lieved that when a man died he was removed from the moral jurisdiction of Yahwe (Ps. Ixxxviii. 5 : — Like the slain that He in the grave Whom thou rememberest no more And they are cut off from thy hand. Cf. Ps. xxxi. 22), and his relations with Yahwe ceased (Is. xxxviii. 18) : — For Sheol cannot praise thee ; Death cannot celebrate thee. They that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. (p) hs, Sheol is independent of Yahwe, the moral distinctions that prevailed on earth had no currency in Sheol. (iv)The (iv.) The Dead, or the Inhabitants of Sheol. — Death, according to the Old Testament, means an end of the earthly life, but not the cessation of all existence. After death the person still subsists. In I Though God's power is conceived from the eighth century onward (cf. Am. ix. 2 ; I Sam. ii. 6 (very late) ; Job xxvi. 6, xxxviii. 17 ; Prov. xv. II ; Ps. cxxxix. 7) 8 : — Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whitlier shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend into heaven, thou art there, If I make my bed in Sheol, behold thou art there) to extend to Sheol, yet Sheol maintains its primitive character. In the earlier centuries the powers that bore sway in Sheol were the ancestors of the living. inhabitants of Sheol, OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN ISRAEL 37 order to understand so far as possible the nature of chap. i. existence in Sheol, we must first consider the com- posite personaHty of man in the Old Testament, om Testament MP ^ . . , , anthropology an consists 01 two elements, spirit or soul and —the earlier body, according to the older view, and of three """^ "''' '^""■" elements, spirit and soul and body, according to the later view. Now a knowledge of the Old Testa- ment doctrine of the soul is of paramount importance if we wish to understand the eschatological develop- ment of the Old Testament. For convenience sake we shall treat it under the following heads : — (i) The soul, ornephesh (t)5D3), is identical with the (i)Thesoui blood. — As the shedding of blood caused death, the theViood ' soul was conceived to be in the blood (Lev. xvii. II"), or was actually identified with it (Deut. xii. 23 ; Gen. ix. 4, 5). Hence the eating of blood was shunned, and the blood offered to God. Hence likewise blood unjustly spilt on the earth (Gen. iv. 10) cried to heaven for vengeance, i.e. the soul. Though the heart was the central seat of the blood it had no connection with the soul. The heart was regarded as the organ of thought. A "heartless" man was a man without intelligence (Hos. vii. 11); when a man thought, he was said to " speak in his heart." Thought is not ascribed to the soul, though intelligence in a limited degree is. (2) The sotd is the seat of feeling and desire, and, (2) The seat of in a secondary degree, of the intelligence, and is identi- pTrsoLmy. fed with the personality. — Not only are purely animal functions attributed to the soul, such as hunger (Prov, X. 3), thirst (Prov. xxv. 25), sexual desire (Jer. ii. 24), 38 PRIMITIVE HEATHEN ESCHATOLOGY CHAP. I. but also psychical affections, such as love (Is. xlii. i), joy (Ps. Ixxxvi. 4), fear (Is. xv. 4), trust (Ps. Ivii. i), hate (Is. i. 14), contempt (Ezek. xxxvi. 5).^ Indeed these are so essentially affections of the soul that they are hardly ever attributed to the spirit ; yet see p. 46. To the soul also are ascribed wish and desire (Gen. xxiii. 8 ; 2 Kings ix. 15 ; i Chron. xxviii. 9), and likewise, but very rarely, memory (Lam. iii. 20; Deut. iv. 9) and knowledge (Ps. cxxxix. 14). As the seat of feeling and desire and intelligence (in a limited degree) it becomes an expression for the individual conscious life. Thus "my soul" (^tDQ3) = I, "thy soul " = thou, etc. (Lam. iii. 24; Is. li. 23; Ps. xxv. 13, cxxiv. 7, etc. So many souls = so many persons (Gen. xlvi. 18; Exod. i. 5). This designation of the personality by soul (nephesh) points to the limited conception of the personality that prevailed in Israel. "My spirit" (■■nn) was never so used. Soul leaves the (7) The soul kaves the body in death (Gen. xxxv. body in death. ,... .. r^ • t 1_'-\ 18; I Kmgs XVII. 21 ; 2 Sam. 1. 9; Jonah iv. 3).— But this did not always necessarily take place immediately, but it did so apparently on the corruption of the body. In certain cases after outward death the soul was regarded as being still in some sense either in or near the body ; for a dead person is called a "soul," i.e. nephesh (Lev. 1 This Semitic view of the soul is quite distinct from that of the Greeks as it appears in Homer. There the soul is not the seat of any of the menial activities ; for these belong to the Bvp-b^, which is tnerely a function of the body, and disappears on the death of the body. It is only the soul that survives death accordin- to Homer (see Chap. III. pp. 142-144;- OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN ISRAEL 39 xix. 28, xxi. I, xxii. 4; Num. ix. 6, 7, 10; Hag. chap. 1. ii. 13), or a "soul of a dead man," i.e. no tBQ3 (Num. vi. 6; Lev. xxi. 11). This usage, however, can be far more satisfactorily explained from Gen. ii. 7, where the living man is called " a living soul " (see pp. 42, 43). (4) In death the soul dies, but not in an absolute sense, according to primitive Hebrew anthropology. — We have here to deal with a very important question, and one which brings to light in the Old Testament conflicting, and to a certain extent con- Two conflict- current, views on the nature of the after-life in some^LteM Sheol. At this stage we are obliged to part v°ew"of Me company with our predecessors in this field.^ The '° ^''^°'- older view {a) which originated in the period of Semitic heathenism, attributes to the departed a certain degree of knowledge and power in reference to the living and their affairs ; the later (J)), which is derived logically from the monotheistic doctrine of man's nature taught in Gen. ii., iii., but was un- known in preprophetic times, declares that there is neither knowledge, nor wisdom, nor life in the grave. We shall deal with the latter in due course. To return, according to the older view [a), the departed The older possessed a certain degree of self- consciousness xhrdepartcd and the power of speech and movement (Is. xiv.) ; tvith'theafflirl a large measure of knowledge, hence their name °f"ieirde- ^ ^ '-' scendants, and 3'^2"ii>n\ "the knowing ones " ^ (Lev. xix. 31, xx. 6; possess the power of ' Only Stade appears to have apprehended this fact, and that but partially, so far as we may judge from his published works. The new departure taken here is accepted and developed in Lods, op. cil. i. 51-72. '^ The departed spirit when consultetl was also termed 3ix. A necro- mancer was said to possess an nm, or familiar spirit (Lev, xx. 27 ; i Sam. xxviii. 7) ; he was callod " a questioner of the Di.\" (Ucut. xviii. 1 1). helping them. 40 PRIMITIVE HE A THEN ESC HA TO LOG V Customs of this life reproduced in Sheol. Is. xix. 3) ; acquaintance with the affairs of their living descendants, and a keen interest in their fortunes — thus Rachel mourns from her grave for her captive children (Jer. xxxi. 15^); ability to forecast the future, hence they were consulted by the living regarding it (i Sam. xxviii. 13-20, where observe that the dead person invoked is called elohim ; Is. viii. 19, xxix. 4). Hence the practice of incubation (Is. Ixv. 4). We have already shown that the departed were believed to have the power of helping or injuring their descendants (see p. 24). It will be sufficient to observe here that it follows from Is. Ixiii. 16 that Abraham and Israel were conceived as protectors of their descendants (see Cheyne and Duhm zn loc.) The relations and customs of earth were repro- duced in Sheol. Thus the prophet was dis- tinguished by his mantle (i Sam. xxviii. 14), kings by their crowns and thrones (Is. xiv.), the uncircum- cised by his foreskin (Ezek. xxxii.) Each nation also preserved its individuality, and no doubt its national garb and customs (Ezek. xxxii.) Those • According to the Greek religion also, the inhabitants of Hades were acquainted with the affairs of the living. Cf. Pindar, Pyih. v. 9S-103; Olynip. viii. 81-84, xiv. 20-24. See Rolide, Psycht\ i. 201. This view is expressed doubtfully by Demosthenes, Leptin. 87, but it is presupposed in Aeschylus, Choeph, 324, 325, (ftpbvq^a. tou Otxvbvjo^ ov SapA^et Trvpbs /xciXepa yvdffos, and also by the words of invocation addressed to the soul of Agamem- non (139, 147, 148, 156, 157, 477-509); cf. £um. 598. This knowledge of what occurs on earth is ascribed to the dead also in Sophocles, £/. 1066 si/f. ; the dead can avenge themselves on the living (Track. 1201, 1202), or help them [El. 454, 1419, 1420). Similarly in Euripides the soul of the slain father is invoked to help his children (EL bib sjq.), who are convinced that their father hears their appeal (683). The soul of the dead sweeps round the living, and knows all their concerns (Or. 667 sijij.) OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN ISRAEL 41 slain with the sword bear for ever the tokens of a chap. i. violent death in Sheol (Ezek. xxxii. 25), and hke- wise those who died from grief (Gen. xHi. 38). Indeed the departed were regarded as reproducing exactly the same features as marked them at the moment of death. Hence we can appreciate the terrible significance of David's departing counsel to Solomon touching Joab : " Let not his hoar head go down to Sheol in peace " (i Kings ii. 6). In many respects the above view is identical with that of Ancestor Worship, and, though this worship had already withdrawn entirely into the background before the prophetic period, yet many of its usages still persisted in the popular belief till long after the Exile. The leading characteristic of these survivals may be said to be the comparatively large meastire of life, movement, knowledge, and likewise power attributed to the departed in Sheol. The importance of this characteristic will become obvious when we deal with the later and antagonistic views of the condition of the departed in Sheol. (^) This later view, which practically denies knowledge and life to the inhabitants of Sheol, follows logically from the account in Gen. ii. 4-iii., composite according to which the material form when animated acceding "0^" by the spirit became a living soul. " Yah we Elohim '^™' "' '"• formed man of dust from the ground, and blew into his nostrils breath of life {tm -nam), and man became a living soul" (Gen. ii. 7, J). The breath of life (o-'-'n nom^) here mentioned is identical with the spirit of life (□"'^n mi) in vi. 17, vii. 15 (P). PRIMITIVE HEATHEN ESCIIATOLOGY Spirit imper- sonally con- ceived. Man a trichotomy. Soul a func- tion of the quickened body. Thus the spirit of life is found also in the brute creation according to both these passages (see also Ps. civ. 29, 30). A conflation of both these phrases is given in vii. 22 (J), "the breath of the spirit of life" (D^^n n-n-nom:), which the lower creation is said to possess. Since, therefore, "the breath of life," or "the spirit of life," is common to man and the rest of the animal creation,^ the spirit of life conceived as thus existing in all living things is life in an impersonal sense. The spirit, therefore, in man can never in this sense be the bearer of the personality. On the other hand, though the spirit is not per- sonally conceived, yet, since it remains in the man so long as he lives and forms in him a thing apart by itself, it must be regarded as forming part of man's composite personality. Accordingly, we have here a real trichotomy of spirit (mi), soul (toaa), and body (~idi). But if we examine these elements more closely we see that the soul is the result of the indwelling of the spirit in the material body, and has no independent existence of its own. It is really a function of the material body when quickened by the spirit. So long as the spirit is present, so long is the soul "a living soul" (tuna rrri), but when the spirit is withdrawn, the vitality of the soul is destroyed, and it becomes a soul of a dead man (no qjqd), i.e. a corpse (Num. vi. 6 ; Lev. xxi. 1 1 ). The dead body is sometimes simply termed " a 1 According to the story worked up by a late priestly writer in Gen. i. 24 (P), the brute creation is only imlirectly the product of the divine creation, whereas man is such directly (i. 26). OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN ISRAEL 43 soul" (Lev. xix. 28, xxi. i, xxii. 4; Num. ix. chap. i. 6, 7, 10; Hag. ii. 13). According to this view the annihilation of the soul ensues inevitably at death, that is, when the spirit is withdrawn. This dis- Hence solution of the personality at death is frankly extinguished recognised in Eccl. xii. 7, and the impersonal breath "" of life returns to the Supreme Fount of Life : " the spirit shall return to God, who gave it." Thus this anthropological view is logically and historically the parent of later Sadduceism, which taught that there is neither angel nor spirit (Acts xxiii. 8). Thus the consequences of this view were fully drawn in the second and first centuries before the Christian era, but in the three preceding centuries the logic of its representatives was less consistent. They still believed that the soul subsisted after death, though it did not exist. This subsistence is indeed purely shadowy and negative — so negative that in it all the faculties of the soul were suspended, and Sheol, the abode of the souls, became a synonym of Abaddon or destruction (Job xxvi. 6 ; Prov. xv. 1 1, xxvii. 20). If the teaching of Gen. ii., iii. is taken as a com- riie soui is on plete account of man's composite nature, the soul seat oTtU '^ must be regarded not only as the vital principle """'^' of the body, but as the seat of all the mental activities.-' With these the spirit, which is really the impersonal basis of life in man, stands in no direct relation. 1 It is noteworthj' that the soul, according to this ^ew, corresponds to the Homeric conception of the mind (#i/jUiSs). See p. 142. 44 PRIMITIVE HEATHEN ESCHATOLOGY CHAP. I. From these facts it is clear that no advance in the luch a theory dircction of an immortality of the soul can be made octrineofa With such an anthropology ; for in death the soul aconceivabie. ^^ extinguished and only the spirit survives. But since the spirit is only the impersonal force of life common to men and brutes, it returns to the Fount of all Life, and thus all personal existence ceases at death. So the Sadducees concluded, and if we start from the same premises we must inevitably arrive at the same conclusion (cf. the Pauline psychology, p. 467). toui and spirit In the above threefold division of man's person- ssencfand" ^Hty the Spirit and soul are distinct alike in essence '"s>n- and origin. The former is the impersonal basis of life coming from God, and returning on death to God. The latter, which is the personal factor in man, is simply the supreme function of the quickened body, and perishes on the withdrawal of the spirit. This doctrine of Gen. ii., iii. never succeeded in dispossessing the older and rival doctrine.^ These conflicting views of soul and spirit were current together, and not unfrequently the same writers in the Old Testament have used these terms, sometimes ' Its prevalence is attested by the Second Isaiah xlii. 5. It is pre- supposed probably by Deuteronomy, certainly by Ezek. xxxvii., and its diction and influence are conspicuous in Job and certain psalms. Thus in Job xxvii, 3 we find : " The spirit of God is in my nostrils" ; and in xxxiii. 4, "The spirit of God hath made me and the breath of the Almighty giveth me life " ; and in xxxiv. 11-15, "If he cause his spirit to return unto him, and gathereth unlo him his breath, all flush shall perish together " (so Duhm emends). Similarly in Ps. civ. 30-29, "Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created, and thou renewest the face of the earth. Thou takest away their spirit ; they die, and return to their dust" ; and in Ps. cxlvi. 3, 4, " Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man who cannot save. His spirit goeth forth, he returneth to his earth ; in that veiy day his thoughts perish." OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN ISRAEL 45 with one meaning, sometimes with another. Greece chap. i. furnishes us with good analogies (see pp. 142, 143, 146-150). Having now dealt with the later doctrine of man's personality which is taught in Gen. ii., iii., we shall now return to the earlier view with which we have already dealt at some length above. According to this primitive Hebrew view, man was Earlier composed not of three essentially distinct elements ManToJa™' — a trichotomy — spirit, soul, and body, but only of ^ dfchotom'"" two — a dichotomy — spirit or soul and body. The spirit and soul were really one and the same. They were synonymous in their primitive signi- fication as "breath" or "wind." The conception of both was arrived at in the way of observa- tion. When the breath (nephesh or ruach, tDD3 or nin) left the body, death ensued. Thus the principle of life was identified with the soul or spirit. The partial differentiation of these two naturally arose in the course of time. The term "spirit" wasThespiriL appropriated to mark the stronger side of the soul and, as Stade {Gesch. d. Volks Israel^ i. 418) has remarked, designated the stronger and stormier emotions. When once it became customary to personify the psychical affections as nephesh, the practice began of naming the stronger expressions of this personifi- cation as spirit or ruach. Thus anger is an affec- tion of the ruach (Judg. viii. 3 ; see later). So long as a man was wholly master of his powers, he still possessed his ruach, but when he 46 PRIMITIVE HE A THEN ESCHA TOLOG Y CHAP. 1. became lost in amazement, as the queen of Sheba (i Kings X. 5), or despair (Jos. ii. 11), or fainted (i Sam. XXX. 12), his ruach left him, though on his reviving it returned (Gen. xlv. 27 ; Judg. xv. 19). In keeping with this view of the spirit, it is said to be the subject of trouble (Gen. xli. 8), anguish (Job vii. 11), grief (Gen. xxvi. 35 ; Is. liv. 6), contrition (Ps. li. 17 ; Is. Ixvi. 2), heaviness (Is. Ixi. 3). It is the seat of energetic volition and action. Thus the "haughty spirit" (Prov. xvi. 18), the "lowly spirit" (xxix. 23), the impatient spirit (Prov. xiv. 29), etc. As the departure of the ruach entailed a paralysis of the will (see above), it expresses therefore the im- pulse of the will (Exod. xxxv. 21) ; the purposes of man are the outcome of the spirit, mi mfpi?n (Ezek. xi. 5) : the false prophets follow their own spirit rather than that of Yahwe (Ezek. xiii. 3) ; God tries men's spirits (Prov. xvi. 2). Further, it seems to express character as the result of will in Num. xiv. 24, " Caleb . . . had another spirit in him." These various applications were evolved in connection with the earlier conception of ruach. Soul aiKi In the course of a natural development, the in essence and ruach had become the seat of the highest spiritual di^ffJrentiated functions in man. To sum up, then, soul and spirit are at this early stage identical in essence and 07-igin, though differe^itiated in function. The primitive doctrine of the soul has already been discussed (see pp. 37-40). If we compare the doctrine of the soul there given with that of the spirit, which we have just investigated, it will be in function. OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN ISRAEL 47 obvious that soul and spirit at this early stage were chai'. i. identical in essence and origin, though differen- Difference be- tiated in function, whereas according to the later a'ndTatT/ ' "^ doctrine of Gen. ii., iii. they differed alike m essence, '"•■*^'^' in origin, and fimction. According to the primitive view of the spirit as spiHt couia the stronger side of the soul, it is clear that it could into shcoi. not descend into Sheol. The soul, on the other hand, did descend, and enjoyed a considerable degree of life and knowledp-e there. We are now in a position to contrast the earlier st ate of the I I . , r 1 1 1 • departed in and later views on the state ot the departed in sheoiaccord- CU„„1 1 ing 10 the .jiicui. eariier and Thus in opposition to the older view that in ^''" '"'''"■ Sheol there is a certain degree of life, movement, and remembrance, the later view teaches that it is the land of forgetfulness (Ps. Ixxxviii. 12), of silence (Ps. xciv. 17, cxv. 17), of destruction (Job xxvi. 6, xxviii. 22) ; in opposition to the belief that the dead return to counsel the living, the later teaches that the dead cannot return to earth (Job vii. 9, xiv. 12) ; in opposition to the belief that they are acquainted with the affairs of their living descendants, the later teaches that they no longer know what befalls them on earth (Job xiv. 21, "His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not ; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them ") ; in opposition to the belief in their superhuman knowledge of the future— as the " knowing ones " — the later teaches ^ Logically, as we have seen above, there could be no future life for the ioul in Sheol according to the later teaching of Gen. ii., iii. 48 PRIMITIVE HEATHEN ESCHATOLOGY Departed in Sheol not designated as souls till a late period. that all knowledge has forsaken them (Eccl. ix. 5), that they have neither device nor knowledge nor wisdom (Eccl. ix. 10). And whereas according to the older view they were called elohim in invoca- tion, they are termed in the later "dead ones," QTiD (Is. xxvi. 14; Ps. Ixxxviii. 10).^ Finally, the relations of the upper world appear to be more faintly reproduced, if at all ; for all the inhabitants of Sheol, kings and slaves, oppressor and oppressed, good and bad, are buried in pro- found sleep (Job iii. 14-20). Indeed all existence seems to be absolutely at an end. Thus Ps. xxxix. 13, "O spare me, that I may recover strength before I go hence and be no more" ; Job xiv. 7, 10, " There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout out again — but — man giveth up the ghost, and where is he ? " We have now to call attention to one point more before leaving this subject, and this is that though the soiU leaves the body in death, the departed in Sheol are hardly if ever designated as souls in the Old Testament. This fact is probably to be explained by the metaphysical inability of early Israel to con- ceive the body without psychical functions, or the soul without a certain corporeity. Thus the de- parted were conceived as possessing a soul and a shadowy body. In the older days they were called 1 The term " sliades," D'NST (used also in the Phoenician religion ; see Driver, Books of Samuel, p. xxix), was applied to the departed by both views, but possibly with a difference : contrast Is. xiv. 9, 10; xxvi. 14, 19, with Ps. Ixxxviii. lO (Prov. ii. 18, ix. 18, etc.), where it is synonymous with the dead. OF THE INDIVIDUAL IN ISRAEL 49 shades (rephatm), or, when addressed, elohim. chap. i. During the later times when such a doctrine of man's being became current as that in Gen. ii., iii., the departed were called "dead ones," or "shades," as in the older days. We should probably recognise in Job xiv. 22 an instance of the later usage of designating the inhabitants of Sheol as souls: " Only for himself his flesh hath pain, and for himself his soul mourneth." ^ Here the soul is in Sheol, with all its feeling and interests limited to itself, and the body is in the grave. In this passage Job reflects the popular eschatology of his day. Furthermore, According to m xix. 26, 27, where he abandons this eschatology, theology, the- , . . . ...... . .' soul after depth and rises to the expression 01 his highest hopes, he is capable of declares that without the body he will see God, that tlloll""^ is, his sold or spirit will enjoy the divine vision at some period after death. Since only the highest powers of man's soul were capable of the divine vision, it is clear that the writer had a lofty con- ception of the capabilities of the soul apart from the body. We cannot emphasise too strongly the importance of this point, since it is almost univers- ally taught that the Jew had no such conception of the soul till he came under the influence of the Greek (see pp. 72, ^jt^^. We have now done with the treatment of short ^n^mi Ancestor Worship. We have considered it only in ' We seem here to have an idea which is also fotmd in ancient Greek religion. So long as the body in any form still existed, the soul, though separated from it, was conscious of what befell it. This is the presupposition underlying Achilles' ill-treatment of Hector's dead body (see Rohde, Psyche, i. 27). so PRIMITIVE HEATHEN ESCHATOLOGY its eschatological aspects, only so far as it supplied to the individual a doctrine of the future life. We have found that the individual Israelite derived from this source his views as to the nature of the soul and spirit, Sheol, and the condition of the departed there. On these questions no revela- tion was furnished by Yahwism for many centuries ; Yahwism had no eschatology relating to the indi- vidual to begin with. But with the first proclama- tion of Yahwism by Moses the doom of Ancestor Worship and its teachings was already pronounced, though centuries might elapse before this doom was fully accomplished. We have already seen partial ful- filments of this doom in the destruction by Yahwism of all life in Sheol. This step was necessary with a view to the truly ethical doctrine of the future life. In the next chapter we shall deal with the positive preparation made by Yahwism for such a higher doctrine. This preparation proceeded essentially from the new value which came to be set on the individual through Yahwism. CHAPTER II ESCHATOLOGY OF THE INDIVIDUAL RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY In the preceding chapter we pointed out that it R^sum^of would be impossible to understand the eschatology ^^ '"'^ of the individual Israelite in preprophetic times apart from some knowledge of his conception of God. For even a superficial study of the former is sufficient to show that down to the Exile and later the beliefs of Israel in reference to a future life were heathen to the core, and irreconcilable with any intelligible belief in a sole and supreme God. The question therefore naturally arose : Since Israel's preprophetic conception of God was not mono- theistic, of what nature was it ? In our short inquiry into this question, we found that Yahwe had revealed Himself to Israel as a God of justice, righteousness, and purity, and was thereby sundered essentially and absolutely from the other Semitic deities of the time, and yet that He was not regarded by Early Israel as the sole God of the earth, but 52 RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF only as the sole God of Israel, whose influence and authority were in the main limited to His own people and country. As a national God, further, He was popularly conceived as being concerned only with the wellbeing of the nation, and as possessing neither interest nor jurisdiction in the life of the individual beyond the grave. Hence since early Yahwism possessed no eschatology of its own, the individual Israelite was left to his hereditary heathen beliefs. These beliefs we found were elements of Ancestor Worship. Thus the individual Israelite possessed teraphim, or house- hold gods, which he worshipped with sacrifices with a view to secure their favour or avert their wrath. This worship was performed by a son of the departed, and thus in connection with this worship arose the importance of securing a male offspring. The primitive mourning usages in Israel belonged to this worship, and likewise the beliefs entertained regarding the family grave, Sheol, and its inhabitants. Finally we discovered that we have herein a key to difficulties that have hitherto proved insoluble in relation to the conceptions of the soul and spirit in the Old Testament. For the Old Testament attests, not a single and uniform doctrine of the soul and spirit, but two essentially distinct views of these conceptions, the earlier derived ultimately from Ancestor Worship, the later from the monotheistic account in Genesis. The primitive beliefs of the individual Israelite regarding the future life, being thus derived from AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 53 Ancestor Worship, were implicitly antagonistic to Yahwism from its first proclamation by Moses. In its subsequent developments this antagonism be- comes explicit, and results in the final triumph of Yahwism. During the progress of this conflict Yahwism annihilates all existence in Sheol, since the nature of this existence was heathen and non- moral, and could in no sense form a basis on which to found an ethical and spiritual doctrine of the future life. Thus the first stage in this conflict was eminently destructive in character, but this only with a view to a higher reconstruction. For whilst Yahwism was destroying the false life in Sheol it was steadily developing in the individual the consciousness of a new life and a new worth through immediate communion with God. Now it is from the consciousness of this new life, and not from the moribund existence in Sheol, that the doctrine of a blessed future — whether of the soul only immediately after death, or of the soul and body through a resurrection at some later date — was developed in Israel. Thus this doctrine was a new creation, the offspring of faith in God on the part of Israel's saints. A large body of the nation, however, took the provisional stage above referred to to be one of true and eternal significance. This defective view, named in later times the Sadducean, arose in the fifth century B.C., and maintained itself down to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 a.d. When Yahwism had destroyed the false view of 52 RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF only as the sole God of Israel, whose influence and authority were in the main limited to His own people and country. As a national God, further. He was popularly conceived as being concerned only with the wellbeing of the nation, and as possessing neither interest nor jurisdiction in the life of the individual beyond the grave. Hence since early Yahwism possessed no eschatology of its own, the individual Israelite was left to his hereditary heathen beliefs. These beliefs we found were elements of Ancestor Worship. Thus the individual Israelite possessed teraphim, or house- hold gods, which he worshipped with sacrifices with a view to secure their favour or avert their wrath. This worship was performed by a son of the departed, and thus in connection with this worship arose the importance of securing a male offspring. The primitive mourning usages in Israel belonged to this worship, and likewise the beliefs entertained regarding the family grave, Sheol, and its inhabitants. Finally we discovered that we have herein a key to difficulties that have hitherto proved insoluble in relation to the conceptions of the soul and spirit in the Old Testament. For the Old Testament attests, not a single and uniform doctrine of the soul and spirit, but two essentially distinct views of these conceptions, the earlier derived ultimately from Ancestor Worship, the later from the monotheistic account in Genesis. The primitive beliefs of the individual Israelite regarding the future life, being thus derived from AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 53 Ancestor Worship, were implicitly antagonistic to Yahwism from its first proclamation by Moses. In its subsequent developments this antagonism be- comes explicit, and results in the final triumph of Yahwism. During the progress of this conflict Yahwism annihilates all existence in Sheol, since the nature of this existence was heathen and non- moral, and could in no sense form a basis on which to found an ethical and spiritual doctrine of the future life. Thus the first stage in this conflict was eminently destructive in character, but this only with a view to a higher reconstruction. For whilst Yahwism was destroying the false life in Sheol it was steadily developing in the individual the consciousness of a new life and a new worth through immediate communion with God. Now it is from the consciousness of this new life, and not from the moribund existence in Sheol, that the doctrine of a blessed future — whether of the soul only immediately after death, or of the soul and body through a resurrection at some later date- — was developed in Israel. Thus this doctrine was a new creation, the offspring of faith in God on the part of Israel's saints. A large body of the nation, however, took the provisional stage above referred to to be one of true and eternal significance. This defective view, named in later times the Sadducean, arose in the fifth century B.C., and maintained itself down to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 a.d. When Yahwism had destroyed the false view of 54 RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHAP. ir. Doctrine of individual retribution derives its origin from Yahwism. Preludings of the doctrine of a blessed future. Man's creation in God's like- ness not made the basis of Biblical anthropology. the future life, it began to develop an eschatology of the individual in harmony with its own essentia! conceptions. We have now to deal with the foundation laid by Yahwism for this higher doctrine of the future life. This foundation is based on the new value set on the individual through Yahwism. The rise of individualism in Israel must therefore presently engage our attention. But before we enter on this study we must not fail to observe certain beliefs in pre-Exilic religion, which, though they could not be regarded as forming actual stages in the development of the doctrine of a blessed future life, are nevertheless heralds and preludings of this doctrine. Regarded from the standpoint of our present investigation, these beliefs are of various worth. Of such beliefs there are four. Two of these, which ought to have had a determining influence on subsequent Jewish de- velopment, but which apparently had not, we shall discuss first. These are (i.) the creation of man in God's image and likeness in Gen. i. 26, 27. (ii.) The presence of the tree of life in the Garden of Eden (Gen. ii., iii.) We need not linger long over either of these. As regards the former, however we interpret Gen. i. 26, 27, we cannot adopt it as the foundation of a Biblical anthropology, since this doctrine of man's creation in the divine likeness^ • Does the likeness refer to moral qualities? This is possible. Yet it is to be observed that Adam transmits this likeness to -Seth v. 3, and that all men possess it after the fall (ix. 6). On the other hand, it is contended that the divine likeness consists in the fact that man rules all other living creatures on the earth just as God rules the universe. It is to be observed that, had the likeness been one of essence, and this view been accepted in Israel, the doctrine of a future life would have been developed some centuries earlier. AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 55 does not appear, with the exception of Gen. i. chap. u. 26, 27 ; V. I, 3 ; ix. 6, throughout the rest of the Old Testament, (ii.) Next, as to the tree of Hfe. The presence of this tree in the Garden of Eden References to would seem to indicate that primitive man was in- [^^0^0. \\., m. tended from the outset to become immortal. But '""'f '°'i= '" the te.xt. Budde {Bibliscke Urgeschichte, pp. 48-59) has shown that only one tree was spoken of in the original narrative, and that this tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Thus, according to iii. 3, there is only one tree in the midst of the Garden, and the same presupposition underlies iii. 5, 6, II, 12. We find the first mention of the tree of life in ii. 9. But the latter half of this verse, which is in itself syntactically questionable, is irre- concilable with iii. 3. Further, though according to ii. 9 the tree of life occupied the chief place in the Garden, man was not forbidden to eat of it. Yet the eating of it would, according to iii. 22, have made man immortal. But this last idea is at vari- ance with iii. 19. Man's mortality follows not from his being forbidden to eat of the magical tree of life : it rests simply on the will of Yahwe.^ Hence ii. 9', iii. 22, 24 are intrusions in the original narrative. These passages regarding the tree of life, whether we take them as interpolations or not, were without effect on the Old Testament doctrine of a future life. The phrase " tree of life " was, it is true, in the wisdom literature a familiar expression, but in a metaphorical sense; cf. Prov. iii. 18, xi. 30, xiii. 12, XV. 4, and the allied expression, " fountain of 1 See Holzinger on Genesis, pp. 40, 41, in the Kurzer Hand-Commentar, and Gunkel, Gut.^ p. 26. 56 RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHAP. II. life," Prov. X. I i,xiii. I4,xiv. 27,xvi. 22 ; Ps. xxxvi. lo. Two beliefs We procced now to two beliefs which, though not "which provide p.,. ,, , . . . ^ i-ii essential tumishing in themselvcs the basis tor this theology, chn.rcict eristics *i /** 'ii •* i and pre. Y^t providc somc ot its cssential characteristics and thedo«nneo°/ prcsuppositions. Thcsc beliefs have to do with (i.) a future life, [he translation of Enoch and Elijah; (ii.) the power of Yahwe to bring back the soul from Sheol. The former involves certain essential characteristics of the higher doctrine of the future life, and the latter one of its necessary presuppositions. The transia- (i.) T/ie translations of Enoch and Elijah. — tions of Enoch r-r^-t i . r t^ i / r^ \ i and Elijah 1 hesc translations oi Enoch (Gen. v. 22-24) and ess^e'^nLr Elijah (2 Kings ii. ii) are essentially miraculous characteristic jjj character, and on such exceptional incidents, of this doctrine ^ ' .-the future therefore, the doctrine of a future life for man as life tollows , . from present man cannot be built. They are significant, how- ever, in that they teach that death does not end the full and conscious life of all, and that Sheol does not engulf every living energy. They belong to an early period in Hebrew thought when immortality was inconceivable for man if soul and body were sundered. Hence soul and body must be translated together. The belief in such translations does not controvert the ancient view of Sheol as a place whence none can return. It probably springs from a time when the authority of Yahwe was still limited to this side the grave, and the dead were regarded as beyond the exercise of His grace. The dead were beyond recall, but the living could be raised to immortality — that is, to an immortality with the body, not without it, before death, not after it. But Yahwe's power to restore the soul from Sheol. AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 57 since these translations, though miraculous, follow chap. h. distinctively from the moral uprightness of Enoch and Elijah, we see herein an essential characteristic of the subsequent development. As it was a life of communion with God that led, though uniquely, to the translation of Enoch and Elijah,^ so it was from the same spiritual root that the immortality of all who enjoyed such communion was derived in later centuries. (ii.) The power of Yahwe to bring back the soul a blessed froin Sheol. — This view could not have arisen till presupposes monotheism had in some form been accepted. Yahwe's power now extends to Sheol, though it does not influence its non-moral character. This belief is attested in i Kings xvii. 22 and 2 Kings iv. 35, xiii. 21, where Yahwe restores the dead to life through the instrumentality of His prophets. Here again the incidents in question are excep- tional, but they are important as showing that Yahive s power can reach the dead. With this preface we shall now turn to the rise and development of individualism in Israel. ^ What an infinite gulf yawns between the old Greek conception of the translation of Heroes to the Isles of the Blessed and that of the translation of Enoch and Elijah in Israel ! For the translation of the Greek Heroes was due, rot to their moral character or merits of any kind, but to \\vtu physical lelationship to some of the gods. It is on this ground that the "cowardly" Menelaus {fiaXSaKbs alx/J-rirris, II. xvii. 588) is translated [^Od. iv. 561-565). See pp. 39, 40 ; and Rohde, Psyche^ i. 79-81- In the Babylonian religion there is one instance of translation — that of Parnapishtim and of his wife to the confluence of the waters, where they enjoy the immortal life of the gods. For this translation no distinctively ethical grounds were advanced. This place at the "confluence of the waters" may be an island, according to Jeremias. See Jastrow, Rel. of Bab. and Assyr. pp. 488, 493, 494, 577 ; Jeremias, Bab. -as^yr. Vontellungen vom Leben nach dem Todt, pp. 94-99. 58 RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHAP. II. No individual retribution looked for in preprophetic times. No individual retribution looked/or in preprophetic tunes. — The early Israelite was not alarmed by the prosperity of the wicked man or the calamities of the righteous ; for Yahwe was concerned with the well- being of the people as a whole, and not with that of its individual members. The individual was not the religious unit, but the family or tribe. The in- dividual was, as in Ancestor Worship, identified with his family ; a solidarity existed between him and the line of his ancestors and descendants. This identification led to strange consequences. Hence it was regarded as natural and reasonable for God to visit the virtues and vices of the fathers on the children (Exod. xx. 5 ; Lev. xx. 5 ; Jos. vii. 24 ; I Sam. iii. 13), of an individual on his community or tribe (Gen. xii. 17, xx. 18; Exod. xii. 29), while His mercy was shown in postponing the punish- ment of the sinner till after his death ^ and allowing it to fall on his son (i Kings xi. 12, xxi. 29). This principle of retribution gave no difficulty to the prophets of the eighth century. Their message is still directed to the nation, and the judgments they proclaim are collective punishment for collective guilt. It is not till late in the seventh century that the problem of individual retribution really emerged and received its first solution in the teaching of Jeremiah. Popular Towards the close of the kingdom of Judah the seventh-cen- ^ . i i i i • tury view of the popular Sentiment expressed the modern doctnne responsibility of the in- 1 Rewards and punishments were necessarily conceived as limited to the dividual. earlhly life ; for Sheol was regarded as outside the jurisdiction of Yahwe. AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 59 of heredity in the proverb : " The fathers have eaten chap. h. sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge " (Jer. xxxi. 29). In this the people explicitly denied their own responsibility in the overthrow of the nation. It was their fathers that had sinned, and they were involved as by an iron fate in their guilt. Such a view naturally tended to paralyse all personal effort after righteousness, and made men the victims of despair. But implicitly in the same proverb there is expressed, not an humble submission to the divine judgments, but rather an arraignment of the divine method of government. The righteousness of the individual could not deliver him from the doom be- falling the nation. Now in opposition to this popular statement of Criticism of the law of responsibility Jeremiah answers as follows : jeremfaii, Jn,i the days come "when they shall say no more. The rfthe^'new™' fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's fn"^"^^^^ "^'^ teeth are set on edge ; but every one shall die for his springing from . . . )) / T • \ '^'^ personal own miquity (Jer. xxxi. 29, 30). And yet the relation to same prophet had already himself declared that the children suffered for the sins of the fathers : " I will cause them to be tossed to and fro among all the kingdoms of the earth because of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah" (Jer. xv. 4). How, then, are we to account for this new departure in his teaching? It is to be explained from the new relation which God would establish in the coming days between Him- self and the individual Israelite^ which would ' See Duhm, Theologie der Piophcten, 242-247 ; Giesebrecht, Das Buck Jeremia, Einleit. xiii. xiv. pp. 171, 172; Marti, Gesc/i. d. isr. Rel. 153-156. 6o RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHAP. II. supersede the old relation which had existed be- tween Himself and the nation as a whole (Jer. xxxi. 31-34). Heretofore the individual was related to Yahwe only as a member of the nation, and as such shared, whatever his nature and character, in the national judgments, and thus had no individual worth. The nation was the religious unit. Hence- forth the individual would step into the place of the nation in its relation to Yahwe, and the individual would henceforth constitute the religious unit. Nature of new Two great facts determined the nature of this covenant , . . , 1 1 /— t determined by new relation or covenant. I.e. man s need, and Lrod s man's need ^^^^^^^^^ character. First as to man, Jeremiah affirms man's total in- capacity for self-reformation, his inability to convert himself. Just as easily might the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots (xiii. 22, 23). The law imposed under Josiah {i.e. Deuteronomy) had failed to touch the evil : it had led to a righteous- ness merely legal (vii. 4 sqq. ; viii. 9, 10), as external as the physical rite of circumcision (iv. 4), to an outward reformation which cannot stand before Him who tries the reins and the heart (xi. 20, xvii. 10, XX. 12). Hence, since the old covenant had failed to preserve, much more to redeem Israel, Jeremiah promises the institution of this new covenant. Under this new covenant man's spiritual incapacities for obedience to God's law would be removed ; for God would write His law in their hearts, and so beget a willing obedience. Jeremiah has arrived at this conclusion from his own AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 6i experience, his own relation to the law. To him chap. n. the law is not an external commandment provoking opposition, but the word of God written in his heart, renewed from day to day, and evoking within him a passionate loyalty and obedience. His life is fed through constant communion with God. If then God so entered into communion with him, He will likewise in the coming time redeem the nation by writing His law in their hearts (J er. xxxi. 31-34),^ that is, by establishing an immediate relation with each individual, such as God has already established with the prophet. Thus in the face of the coming exile, when the nation would cease to exist and only the individuals remain, Jeremiah was the first to conceive religion as the communion of the indivi- dual soul with God. Thus each individual enters into the privileges of the prophet. Moreover, the and Gods character of God led to a like conclusion. Since character. God could accept none but a true and spiritual worship (xi. 20, xvii. 10), and, since, if this is to be offered, it must spring from the heart of the in- dividual, then God must enter into relation with the individual, and make known His will to him, and hereby a personal relation of the individual with God is established. Thus through Jeremiah the foundation of a true individualism was laid, and the law of individual retribution proclaimed. The further development of these ideas led inevitably to the conception of a blessed life beyond the grave. This teaching of Jeremiah was taken up and developed by Ezekiel. In pre-Exilic times the 1 Duhm denied the authenticity of these verses, but Comill has satisfactorily answered his objections in his Commentary in loc. 62 mSE OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHAP. II. individual soul had been conceived as the property Jeremiah's of the family and the nation, but Ezekiel ^ now in°divi'duai *" teaches that every soul is God's, and therefore EzekiT'^^^ exists in a direct and immediate relation to God (Ezek. xviii. 4). Ezekiel's individualism here receives its most noble and profound expression. Never hitherto had the absolute worth of the individual soul been asserted in such brief and pregnant words as those of the prophet speaking in God's behalf: "Behold all souls are mine." From this principle Ezekiel concluded that if the individual is faithful in his relation to Yahwe, he is unaffected whether by his own past (xviii. 21-28), or by the sins or the righteousness of his fathers (xviii. 20, xiv. 1 2-20). Righteousness raises him above the sweep of the dooms that befall the sinful individual or the sinful nation. And since this righteousness is open to his own achievement, he possesses moral freedom,^ and his destiny is the shaping of his own will (xviii. 30-32). Hence there is a strictly individual retribution : judgment is daily executed by God, and finds concrete expression in man's outward lot. Thus the outward lot of the individual harmonises perfectly with his inner character. According to ix. 3-6 Ezekiel expected that no righteous man would perish in the fall of Jerusalem. This expectation naturally followed ' Ezekiel's individualism is stated in iii. i6-2l, xiv. 12-23, xviii., XXX. 1-20. - On the other hand, we must recognise that Ezekiel emphasises beyond all other Old Testament prophets the absolute sovereignty of God. With this he makes no attempt to reconcile man's free will. This is practically the altitude adopted by the Pharisees in latrr times. It is also that of S. Paul. AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 63 from his doctrine of individual retribution. Only chap. n. twice does he fall into forgetfulness of it, when, in xvi. 21 ; xxi. 3, 4, prophetic insight and actual fact served to deliver him from such doctrinaire views. In these statements Ezekiel has enunciated a False elements great spiritual truth, but has hampered its accept- doctrine"onhe anceand development by associating it with positions ""^'"''"^'• which are demonstrably false. It is true, on the one hand, that the individual can in communion with God break with the iron nexus of his own past and that of his people, and make a new beginning which is different in essence from that past and inexpli- cable from it as a starting-point ; but, on the other hand, it is no less true that this new beginning is always conditioned in some degree by the past of the individual and that of his fathers, and herein lies the truth of heredity which Ezekiel denied. Ezekiel's doctrine rooted itself firmly in the national consciousness. The evil results of such a doctrine are not far to seek. Thus, since in Ezekiel's view all retribution is necessarily limited to this life, and since, further, it has mainly to do with material blessings and is strictly proportioned to a man's deserts, it inevitably follows that a man's outward fortunes are the infallible witness to his internal character and to the actual condition in which he stands before God. Thus by Ezekiel's individualism the community is dissolved into a mass of individual units, each of which pursues independently his own way wholly unaffected by the rest, responsible only for his own acts, and working out his own salvation or his own 64 RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF cHAi'. II. doom. But his individualism proceeds farther still. The very individual is no longer conceived in his unity, but is dismembered into so many outward manifestations of life. Righteousness is not for Religious Ezekiel a uniform divine temper shaping- the whole atomism ... . . of Ezekiel, life in conformity to God's will, but a mass or congeries of separate righteous acts. Hence the iitdividual act is taken to be a true expression of the whole man at the moinent of its occurrence. If this act is wicked on the moment of the advent of the kingdom, then the man will rightfully be destroyed, but if righteous he will be preserved. Within the It is easy to cavil at Ezekiel's doctrine of retri- ITeTierrcon^^ bution, and yet we must admit that no other theory elusions inevit- .^^as posslblc, if we Start from the same premises as the theology of that period. If with Ezekiel we hold that God is righteous, and that all souls are His, we shall be ready to conclude with him, that a righteous retribution must be meted out to every man. If we further held, as we do not, that it is in this life only that a man is under the dominion of God, then we should be forced to conclude that every man must receive the full measure of retri- bution in this life, and that, accordingly, a man's outward fortunes must be the index of his spiritual condition. Logically no other conclusion was possible, and Ezekiel, with a sublime defiance of the actual, maintained this view with a loyalty that hardly ever wavered. Ezekiel's doctrine thus rooted firmly in the national consciousness was variously applied in AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 65 two great popular handbooks, the Psalter and the chap. h. Book of Proverbs. Though the righteous may have currency of many afflictions, the Lord delivereth him out of them jo^J'^'ing^in all : all his bones are kept, not one of them is broken, Psaimsand ^ ^ Proverbs. but evil slays the wicked (Ps. xxxiv. 19-21 ; see also xxxvii. 28, etc.) Similarly, the righteous and the wicked are to be recompensed on earth (Prov. xi. 31). Life is the outcome of righteousness, and this is to be understood as physical life, just as physical death is the outcome of wickedness (Prov. ii. 21, 22 ; x. 2 ; xi. 19; XV. 24, 25; xix. 16, etc.) Doubts, however, as to the truth of this doctrine are found from time to time in the Psalms, and modifications were introduced in the exposition of the now dominant dogma, in order to make it clash less rudely with the facts of religious experience. Trouble and affliction, it was taught, were not always retributive, but were sometimes sent as a discipline to the righteous, but such adversity was always in their case followed by a renewal of outward blessings (Ps. xxxiv. 19-22), and the end of the righteous was always peace (Ps. xxxvii. 25, 37 ; Job viii. 6, 7 ; xlii. 12 ; Prov. xxiii. 18 ; Wisdom iii. 3 ; iv. 7). On the other hand, though the wicked might be prosperous, yet their prosperity was short-lived, and was permitted only with a view to make their fall the more sudden and humiliating (Ps. xxxvii. 20, 35, 36 ; Ixxiii. 18-20). Naturally such a doctrine was a continual tws doctrine stumbling-block to the righteous when in trouble. biocTtotht So long as all went well with him, he was assured ri'g'bYeous, of the favour of God, but misfortune or pain S 66 RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHAP. II. destroyed this certainty ; for as such they were incontrovertible evidence of sin. Hence the right- eous man looked to God to be justified by an outward judgment. If this was granted, then his righteousness was attested to his own conscience, and before men ; but if it was withheld, no other con- clusion could be drawn save that his case was one, not of afflicted righteousness, but hidden wickedne-ss, now unmasked and visited with its fitting retribution, and an Nor was it to the sufferer alone that this doctrine drlnce'to L"ny of rctributiou provcd an insuperable difficulty. So progress to a \q^^ as the natiou was convinced that there was true solution o of the problem. ^ perfectly adequate retribution in this life, no true solution of the problem ^ was possible, nor was there any occasion to question the justice of the prevailing views of the condition of the departed in Sheol, and thus every possibility of progress in this direction was blocked. Hence, as a preparation to the attain- ment of truer views of the after-life, it was necessary that this theory of retribution should be questioned and rejected. This was done subsequently in Job and Ecclesiastes. Now, before dealing with the later developments of the doctrine of Ezekiel, it would be of advantage to define in the briefest compass those elements in it which received the sanction of subsequent re- ligious thought, or called forth its opposition. Now whilst Ezekiel's undying merit in this respect was his assertion of the independent worth of the indi- ^ According to Ezekiel's theory, there was no problem to solve. Every man received his exact due in this life. AN INDIVID UAL IMMOR TALITY 6 7 vidual, his defects lay in two misstatements — [a) chap. n. the individual does not suffer for the sins of his Erroneous fathers, but only for his own ; (b) the individual E^^tei's '° is at present judged in perfect keeping with his 'i°<='™'=- deserts. In other words, sin and suffering, righteous- ness and wellbeing, are always connected : the outward lot of the individual is God's judgment in concrete form.^ Now as regards (a), the experience of the nation must always have run counter to this statement. Indeed, subsequent Jewish literature attests the persistence of the older view, and rightly so, for the elements in every man's nature and lot which lie outside the sphere of his volition are undoubtedly shaped for better or worse in accordance with the merits or demerits of his father and people. Thus in Ps. cix. 13 the writer prays that the posterity of the wicked may be cut off. The son of Sirach declares that such is the fate of the children of sinners (xli. 6), that the offspring of the ungodly put forth few branches (xl. 15), that the children of an adulterous wife will be destroyed (xxiv. 25). That men are punished for the iniquities of their fathers and brethren is freely acknowledged in Ps. cvi. 6 ; Dan. ix. 7, 8, 16 ; Jud. vii. 28 ; Tob. iii. 3 ; Ass. Mos. iii. 5 ; Matt, xxiii. 35 ; Baruch i. 18-21, ii. 26, iii. 8 ; Apoc. Bar. Ixxvii. 3, 4, 10. Ezekiel's second error {b), that the individual's EzekieVs views . , ^ . J . , .1 controverted experience agrees with his deserts, is the corollary by the writers of Job and ' Both {a) and (^) seemed to Ezekiel to follow logically from God's Ecclesiastes. righteousness. 68 RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHAP. II. of {a). We find that this thesis gave birth to a lengthened controversy, of which two notable memorials have come down to us, i.e. Job and Ecclesiastes. Although Ecclesiastes is much the later in time we will, for convenience sake, deal with it first. Protest of Against the statement in ib), that the individual is at present judged in perfect keeping with his deserts, the writer of Ecclesiastes enters at once a decided negative. He declares, in fact, that there is no retribution at all.^ Thus he maintains that evil may prolong a man's days and righteousness curtail them (vii. 15), that the destiny of the wise man and of the fool is identical (ii. 14), and likewise that of the righteous and the wicked (ix. 2) : " All things come alike to all : there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked ; to the good and to the evil ; to the clean and to the unclean ; to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not. The good man fares like the sinner, and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath " ; finally, that the wicked attain to the honour of burial, whilst this is often denied to the righteous (viii. 10). However extravagant the attack of this writer, his book is nevertheless valuable as a counterblast to the no less extravagant doctrine of Ezekiel, that the pre- ' The passages where judgment is threatened (iii. 17, xi. 9', xii. 14) are, according to an increasing number of critics, intrusions in the text, being at variance with the entire thought of the writer, viii. 12, 13 is lilcewise an interpolation, or else no longer exists in its original form. Yet in certain cases the man who fears God has, he thinks, an advantage over others (ii. 26, vii. 18, 26). For a very interesting discussion of this book, see Cheyne's_/«ro. Rel. Life, pp. 183-203. AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 69 visions and claims of faith are realised in the world chap. n. of sight. In the Book of Job the principal elements of Jobs criticism Ezekiel's teaching reappear, and are dealt with in Ezekeiian dramatic form. It is here shown that the doctrines of man's individual worth and a strictly individual retribution are really irreconcilable. The former receives in the person of Job its noblest exposition in all ancient literature, whilst in his actual fortunes the extravagance and untruth of the latter are demon- strated to the full. Conscious in the highest degree of his own worth and rectitude, Job claims that God should deal with him in accordance with his deserts. Like his contemporaries, he believes (for Job and the author of the dialogues may be identified for the present) that every event that befalls a man reflects God's disposition towards him ; misfortune betokens God's anger, prosperity His favour: in short, that there is a strictly retributive judgment enforced in this life. But this belief, Job discovers, is not con- firmed by the fortunes of other men (xxi. 1-15), for the wicked prosper, grow old and go down to the grave in peace, and their seed is established on the earth. Most of all, his own experience emphasises this conflict between faith and experience, and teaches him to conclude that in the world, governed as it is, faith may be without recognition, and the righteous be visited with the penalty of the wrong- doer. Faith, indeed, in order to be sure of its own reality, claims its attestation by the outward judg- ments of God ; yet, despite the absence of all such 70 RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHAP. II. The writer's conclusions point to a moral concep- tion of the future life. attestation, Job resolves to hold on in the way of righteousness independently of both God and man (xvii. 7-9). The world as it is is out of joint ; hence Job appeals from the God of outer providence, from the God of circumstance, to the God of faith.^ The fact that the writer does not seek to solve the anti- nomies of the problem, by making his argument lead up to the doctrine of a future life, shows that this doctrine had not yet won acceptance even amongst the religious thinkers of Israel. And yet the main views and conclusions of Job point in this direction. The emphasis laid on man's individual worth, with his consequent claims upon a righteous God, and the denial that these claims meet with any satisfaction at the hands of the God of the wrongful present, lead naturally to the conclusion that at some future time all these wrongs will be righted by the God of faith. And this thought is not wholly absent from Job. A momentary antici- pation of it appears in xiv. 1-15. May not man revive as the tree that has been cut down ? May not Sheol be only a temporary place of sojourn,'' where man is sheltered from the wrongs of the present life till God, who had once communion with him, summons him back to its renewal ? But the time for realising this axiom of the faith had not yet ^ In keeping with the high conception of the worth of the individual in Job is that of the conscience also, which is unique as regards the Old Testament. Job accepts its verdict over against that of his contemporaries and of the outward events of Providence. ^ This idea of Sheol as an intermediate abode which is here suggested became shortly after 200 B.C. the prevailing doctrine. In xix. 25-27 also Sheol is conceived in some sense as an intermediate place. AN INDl VID UAL IMMOR TALITY 7 1 come. It is but a passing gleam that dispersed the gloom of Job's perplexities, and the darkness speedily prevailed as before. But what appears only as an impassioned desire in chap. xiv. rises into a real, though possibly only momentary, conviction in xix. 25-27 : — But I know that my Avenger liveth, And that at the last he will appear above (my) grave : jAnd after my skin hath been thus destroyed, t "^ Without my body shall I see God : Whom I shall see for myself, And mine eyes shall behold, and not another. Although line 3 is hopelessly corrupt, the rest of the passage is clear. Job declares that God will appear for his vindication, and that after his death (i.e. without the body) he shall witness this vindica- tion, and enjoy the vision of God. But we cannot infer that this divine experience will endure beyond the moment of JoU s justification by God. It is not the blessed immortality of the departed soul that is referred to here, but its actual entrance into and enjoyment of the higher life, however momentary its duration. The possibility of the continuance, much less the unendingness, of this higher life does not seem to have dawned on Job, though it lay in the line of his reasonings. If it had, its overwhelming significance could not have been ignored through the ' See Duhm in loc, who declares that, with the exception of line 3 and a slight transposition in line 2, not a single letter in the rest of the text need be changed. Dr. Cheyne, on the other hand {J.Q.R. Oct. 1897, pp. IS, 16), regards the present form of xix. 26, 27 as corrupt. His restoration removes all reference to a future life. I cannot herein follow him. Both text and thought seem to me to be against him. 72 SISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF Book of Job exhibits the steps whereby the human spirit rose to the apprehen- sion of a blessed life beyond the grave. A new doctrine of the soul in- volved therein. rest of the book. Nevertheless, the importance of the spiritual advance here made cannot be exagger- ated. In order to appreciate this advance we have only to compare the new outlook into the future which it provides with the absolutely hopeless view that was then accepted on all hands. The Book of Job reflects all the darkness of the popular doctrine (see chaps, iii., vii., xiv.), and likewise exhibits the actual steps, whereby the human spirit rose gradu- ally to the apprehension that man's soul is capable of a divine life beyond the grave} Two points require here to be emphasised. The first is that this new view of the next life springs from a spiritual root, and owes nothing to any animistic doctrines of the soul then existing. The second is no less weighty. We have here a new doctrine of the soul. The soul is no longer cut off from all communion with God on death and shorn of all its powers, even of existence, as Job and his contemporaries had been taught to con- ceive it, but is regarded as still capable of the highest spiritual activities, though without the body''' (see 1 I cannot but regard as misleading in the highest degree the statement of Gunkel [Schopfung und Chaos, p. 291 note) that the rise of the resurrection doctrine cannot be traced in the Old Testament. He holds that this belief originated neither in prophetical eschatology nor in the piety of the psalmists. It is owing to the piecemeal and unhistorical method in which the doctrine of a future life in the Old Testament and in Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphal literature has been studied in Germany and England that such assertions are possible. The spiritual basis for the resurrection doctrine is laid in Job and the Psalms, which in part suggest and in part teach the doctrine of a future blessed life of the individual. When we take one step farther, and combine the hope of the individual and that of the nation together, we arrive forthwith at the doctrine of the resurrection. But, according to Gunkel, this doctrine arose in Israel neither from the previsions of faith nor from religious reflection, but was borrowed in its fully developed form from the East ! 2 Thus the new and lofty idea of the after-life has arisen, not from the old animistic conceptions, but amid their ruins. up a definite attitude to it. AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 73 pp. 48, 49). We thus see that it was not necessary chap. n. for Israel to borrow from Greece the idea that the soul could preserve its powers independently of the body. Though the Book of Job does not teach categoric- Though the ally, it undoubtedly suggests, the idea of a future d^°no°/ieaeh life. That this idea was in the air is clear from xiv. categoriuaiiy the " higher 13-15 and xix. 28, 29, but even if they were theology,- it entirely absent, it would still be true ; for through- readers to taice out the rest of this book the antinomies of the present are presented in so strong a light that the thinkers of Israel who assimilated its contents were forced to take up a definite attitude to the "higher theology." Some made the venture of faith and postulated the doctrine of a future life ; others, like the writer of Ecclesiastes, declining this challenge of the Spirit, made the "great refusal," and fell back on unbelief and materialism. We have here arrived at the parting of the ways. It only remains to consider the evidence of the Psalms touching a blessed future life of the soul. Those who maintain the existence of this hope in the Psalter base their view on Pss. xvi., xvii., of a blessed T 1 • ■ • A 11 r 1 future of the xlix., Ixxni. As regards the two former, the evidence soui in the fails to bear out their view. There is nothing that necessarily relates to a future life in Ps. xvi., which expresses the fears and hopes not of the individual but of the community. In Ps. xvii. likewise the psalmist does not speak as an individual (cf. the plurals, vers. 7 and 11), but as the mouth- piece of the Jewish people, who are to Yahwe as the apple of the eye (ver. 8). In fear of a foreign The doctrine 74 JilSE OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHAP. II. invader (vers. 9, 13) the psalmist prays for help. Hence instead of " I shall be satisfied, when I awake with thy likeness " we expect some reference to God's help (so Cheyne and Smend ^). The former reads " I shall feast mine eyes when thy zeal awakes." In any case the context does not admit of a reference to a future life. Psalm xiix. But with regard to Pss. xlix. and Ixxiii. the case is different. The doctrine of a blessed future life appears to be implied. With the present text of xlix. we seem compelled to adopt one or other of two interpretations. In vers. 14, 15 the speaker announces speedy destruction for the wicked, but complete redemption from death for himself But who is the speaker ? Does the " I " here denote the psalmist as a representative pious Israelite or the righteous community.'' In favour of the latter it is argued that the psalmist is here speaking in the name of the righteous who are poor and oppressed over against the wicked who are rich and oppressive : and in the next place that ver. 10 states that "all die, alike the wise man {i.e. the righteous) and the fool." Thus the immortality here expected is that of the righteous community.^ This 1 Smend, ZATW, 1888, p. 95 ; Cheyne, _/««/. Rel. Life, 240 f. Duhm, on the other hand, in his new Commentary on the Psalms, maintains that no change of text is necessary. "To behold God's face " = to visit the temple, as in Ps. xxvii. 4; and "the awaking" here mentioned means nothing more than the awaking next morning, when the psalmist will join afresh in the temple worship (cf. v. 3). 2 See Cheyne's Bampton Lectures on the Psalter, 381-425, where it is contended that the belief of a future life is implied in Pss. xvi. , xvii. , xlix., Ixxiii. In Pss. xlix. and Ixxiii. he finds a protest against the old Hebrew view of Sheol. Dr. Cheyne has since abandoned this view of the psalms in question. AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 75 is the view of Smend, Schwally, and Cheyne. But chap. n. in favour of a future life of the individual it is to be argued that Sheol is represented in ver. 14 as clearly penal in character — a place where the sheoi having wicked rich men are punished. This is still clearer ^.^^^1, xiix!"""^ from Dr. Cheyne's attractively emended text {Jew. neve,'™-' Rel. Life, 2^8): comes the •' ^ ' abode of the Like sheep they sink into Sheol "^'^ Death rules them, terrors affright them ; They go down straight into the grave Sheol is their mansion for ever. Thus in Pss. xlix. and Ixxiii. Sheol is conceived as the future abode of the wicked only ; heaven as that of the righteous. This conception of the penal other penai character of Sheol is all the more credible from the oidXestament. fact that in the Old Testament two other places of punishment for special offenders are already de- veloped. Thus in Is. xxiv. 21, 22 the angelic rulers of the nations and the kings will be imprisoned in "the pit" for "many days," after which they shall receive their (final) punishment. This "pit" must not be confounded with Sheol (cf. i Enoch liv.). Again, Gehenna is alluded to in Is. Ixvi. 24 as the final abode of Jewish apostates. But apart from all emendation, Sheol appears here as the place of punishment for the wicked, and the same view returns in some degree in ver. 20. From Sheol so described the righteous is to be delivered (ver. 15). But the force of the argument will be seen best by bringing forward the salient points of the thought. Thus in vers. 7-9 bodily 76 RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF CHAP. u. death is declared to be the inevitable lot of all : the righteous and wicked alike must physically die (ver. lo). But after death a difference in their respective lots sets in. As regards the wicked rich men, they must perish as the beasts (ver. 12) ; their bodies will be housed for ever in the grave ^ (ver. 11), and their souls descend as helpless sheep into Sheol, there to be shepherded by death ; Sheol will con- sume their phantom forms (ver. 14). But as for the righteous, though they too must die^ (ver. 10), God will ransom them, from the hand of Sheol will He take their soul' (ver. 15). As a place of penal punishment, therefore, Sheol could never become the abode of the righteous. Hence in ver. 15 the righteous expect to escape it after death, and be taken immediately to heaven : " Surely my soul God will set free ; for from the hand of Sheol will he take me." Psalm ixxiii. In Ps. Ixxiii., as in xlix., the writer is troubled by the prosperity of the wicked (vers. 11, 12). He is even tempted to declare that all things fall out > Here I follow tlie l.xx, Syr., Vulg. and Targum, which, by transposing two letters (D"i3p for oanp), read — • Their graves are their houses for ever, instead of Their inward thought is their houses for ever. 2 All must submit to bodily death is the teaching of ver. lo. Duhm, how- ever, thinks that " the wise " spoken of here are not the wise in a religious sense, but are "the wise of this world," and this, he believes, is proved by their being contrasted with "the fools" and "brutish persons" in the parallel member of the verse. But the usage of almost the entire Wisdom literature is against this view, and particularly the usage of the Psalms, which always take the terms "wise man" and "fool" in a religious and ethical sense. This misinterpretation of ver. 10 has led Duhm into his impossible exposition of ver. 15 (see note 2 on p. jj). 2 'i^B] is here taken collectively of all the laithful, as in Vs. xi. 1. AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 77 well with the sinner, but ill with the righteous, but from such an utterance he refrains out of loyalty to the Jewish community (vers. 13-15). Nevertheless, his trouble of heart has driven him to study this inversion of right and wrong in life, but the problem remained an unsolved burden upon him (ver. 16) till he entered into the knowledge of God's secret mysteries ('^s-'mTpo), and learnt the fate of the un- godly, how that they do not escape punishment, but are already the prey of self-delusion (niNimo — so Duhm), and will become the victims of a speedy and utter destruction (vers. 17-19). From such false views of life the righteous are preserved through God's daily chastisements (ver. 14), and enjoy His guidance continually. Their highest blessedness con- sists in unbroken communion with Him— unbroken even by death ; for after this life God takes them to Himself (vers. 23, 24). What earth or heaven, therefore, has in store for them matters not. In comparison with God all the universe is as nothing (ver. 25) : this life ended, God is the true portion of the souls'^ of the righteous for evermore (ver. 26). In interpreting this psalm as referring to in- dividual immortality the present writer has the support of Delitzsch, Davidson, Baethgen, Duhm,^ • Duhm appears to be right in striking out "33^ lis as a false variant of 'aa"?! nxB" ; we should then render: "When my flesh and my heart have perished, God is my portion for ever." 2 Duhm interprets Ps. xlix. 15 of an actual bodily translation, on the ground that npS has here the same technical meaning as in 2 Kings ii. 9, 10 ; Gen. V. 24 ; Ps. Ixxiii. 24. Such an interpretation is simply impossible. Indeed on Ps. Ixxiii. 24 he is obliged to abandon this view, and take the verb as simply meaning translation from this life to a higher state of being. Of what nature this state of being is we gather from Ixxiii. 26, which takes for 78 RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF Conclusions as lo how far the doctrine of an individual immortality of the righteous existed in the OldTestament. The historical attestation of this doctrine confirmed by the logical necessities of thought. though there is great divergence in the exposition of details. We have now done with the question of in- dividual immortality so far as it is dealt with in the Old Testament. Its attestation is meagre. In Job it emerges as a strong aspiration, but falls short of being an abiding spiritual conviction. To the latter stage it has already risen in Pss. xlix. and Ixxiii But even if the evidence of the Psalms were doubtful, the evidence of Job is in itself sufficient to prove that, amongst a few at any rate in Israel, the hopes of the individual had at last come in sight of their destined goal, even the future blessed life of the righteous. But, further, even if all such evidence were wanting, we should be obliged to postulate the existence of this doctrine from the logical neces- sities of thought ; for the doctrine of the resurrection which was developed towards the close of the fourth century, or at latest early in the third, is a complex idea, and presupposes in Israel^ the prior existence of its two chief components, namely, the doctrine of an individual immortality of the righteous and that of the Messianic kingdom. When once the granted the discmhoiiied existence of the righteous after death. In Ps. xlix. also the writer is dealing with the destinies of the righteous and of the wicked after death. Death leads off the latter to Sheol (ver. 14), whereas God takes the souls of the former to Himself (ver. 15). We should observe that /iera- TiO-nfiL, which is the LXX rendering of npV in Gen. v. 24, is used in Wisdom iv. 10 of the translation of the smit. ' That is, unless we assume that Israel borrowed the resurrection doctrine in its completeness. But the Book of Job, supported by Pss. xlix., Ixxiii., makes this assumption at once gratuitous and groundless. AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 79 doctrine of an individual immortality was subsumed chap. h. in the larger doctrine of the resurrection, and had Early super- thus played its part in the evolution of truth, it dottr^/onhe could no longer exist side by side with this larger ■■esurrection. conception, but fell perforce into the background, and for a prolonged period appears to be unknown and undesired in the thoughts and aspirations of the faithful. But with the lapse of nigh 200 years or more it again comes of necessity to the front, when the growing dualism of the times leads to the disintegration of the resurrection hope (as then conceived) into its original constituents, in order that these may pursue afresh and inde- pendently their paths of development with a view to their final synthesis in Christianity. If we should ask why the doctrine of an indi- The ground .... < ■ .1 , ^ , for this super- viduai immortality so soon gave place to that of the session. resurrection, the answer is at hand. The common good was still more dear to the faithful in Israel than that of the individual : in other words, the Messianic kingdom was a more fundamental article of their faith than that of a blessed future life of the indi- vidual. Hence when these doctrines were fused together, the doctrine of the resurrection, which was the direct outcome of this fusion, soon displaced that of the individual immortality of the righteous ; for the latter doctrine could never gain the full sympathies of the Jew, who loved his nation, and had his heart fixed on its blessed future. Thus ^ ,. , Essential the resurrection, stripped of its accidents and con- significance of the resurrec- ceived m its essence, marks the entrance of the ''on- 8o RISE OF THE DOCTRINE OF individual after death into the divine Hfe of the community, the synthesis of the individual and the common good. Thus the faithful in Pales- tine looked forward to a blessed future only as members of the holy people, as citizens of the righteous kingdom that should embrace their brethren. And herein, as throughout this evolution of religion, we can trace the finger of God ; for it was no accident that His servants were unable to anticipate any future blessedness save such as they shared in common with their brethren and nation. The self-centredness, if not selfishness, that marked the Greek doctrine of immortality^ is conspicuous ' Thus in the religious philosophy of Plato, where the immortality of the soul is set forth in its loftiest and purest form, the individual who would secure this immortality is taught to live an ascetic life : not to concern him- self with the community, but with himself (iSiuirfveii' dAXd )vi] dTjuojieieiy, Apol. 32 A) ; to lead a quiet life and mind his own business, like a man who has fallen among beasts {Sia-n-ep tls Brjpia ivdpuiro^ ip.-we(jwv, Rep. vi. 496 D). " Human affairs are not worth any real trouble " (rd twv 6.y6punruy Trpdy/uiTa /ieyd\T)! ovK d^ia. (tttouStJ?, Leg. vii. 803 B). From these and many other passages of like import (see Rohde, Psyche, ii. 288-294) it follows that in pursuit of his own individual good a man should ignore the interests of the community ; for that all the present life is corrupt, and the aim of the individual is to adopt a hostile attitude towards its manifold expressions, and fashion his conduct wholly with a view to his own immortality. Even in his own ideal Republic, the civic and social virtues had no independent value for the philosopher. " Der voUendete Weise hat nicht mehr die oberste Bestim- mung, den Andern, draussen Stehenden, Pflichten zu erweisen; sein eigenes inneres Leben reif machen zur Selbsterlosung, das ist seine wahre und niichste Pflicht " (p. 293). Thus the Greek development was one-sided. It was individu.-ilistic. And yet it could not well be otherwise with its peculiar doctrine of immor- tality, namely, its view that the soul was not only immortal but eternal, alike without beginning and end, and that it was capable of repeated incarnations in human and animal bodies. From this doctrine it follows that the present environment of the soul is only one of the many in which it exists from age to age, and accordingly this community or that can have no abiding signifi- cance. Such a soul can only consider God and itself. In Israel, however, as we have ,ibove seen, the soul was not in itself immortal, but only won such immortality through life in God. AN INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY 8i by its absence in the religious forecasts of tiie chap. h. faithful in Judaism. In true religion unlimited individualism is an impossibility. The individual c&n only attain to his highest in the life of the com- munity alike here and hereafter. CHAPTER III THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE NATION AND THE SYNTHESIS OF THE TWO ESCHATOLOGIES IN THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION. DOCTRINE OF THE SOUL AND OF THE FUTURE LIFE AMONG THE GREEKS. In the preceding chapters we have studied the eschatology of the individual, and in the course of this study we have come down to within a couple of centuries of the Christian era. We have now to study the eschatology of the nation, and for this purpose we must retrace our steps and go many a hundred years back into Israel's past. Though Israel became a nation at the Exodus, it would be difficult to express what were the hopes and aspirations they cherished at that early date or for many subsequent centuries. Long before they came into existence as a nation, promises are ex- pressed in connection with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Gen. xii. 2,3; xvii. 2, 4-6; xviii. 18; xxii. 17, 18; xxvi. 3, 4 ; xxvii. 29 ; xxviii. 14 ; xxxii. 12) as to the ultimate greatness of Israel and its destination as a source of blessing to all mankind. But since the ESCHA TO LOG Y OF THE NA TION 83 passages in question were, according to recent chap. m. criticism, written eight hundred years or more sub- sequently to the Exodus, we shall confine ourselves in the present work to such eschatological facts and hopes as appear in the prophets. As these cluster ai the outset round the familiar concep- tion, " the day of Yahwe," we may with advantage study the eschatology of the nation in connection Eschatoiogy of .... . y. ... . nation may be With this conception from preprophetic times down treated as to the close of the Old Testament. But the day of the'^coifception, Yahw^ does not in itself constitute the blessed yihwf -^ °^ future, but only the divine act of judgment which inaugurates it. Hence the eschatology of the nation Eschatoiogy of centres in the future national blessedness introdiiced centres in the by the day of Yahwe. This future is variously con- wl^^Xessto' ceived. According to the popular conception which J'^ introduced was current down to the eighth century, it was vahw^. merely a period of material and unbroken prosperity which the nation was soon to enjoy through Popular non- Yahwe's victorious overthrow of Israel's national tion^of thi^'^''^ foes. With this non-ethical expectation we shall p^"°'^- not occupy ourselves further than to notice the con- ception of the day of Yahwe, associated with it. But this conception of the future gave place in the eighth century, at all events amongst the spiritual leaders of the people, to the prophetic Prophetic doctrine of the coming kingdom. According to the a°r"egTn"rat7d prophets, this kingdom was to consist of a re- exirt'i^t"!^der generated nation, a community in which the divine national forms ° . . . '" which the will should be fulfilled, an organised society inter- divine win penetrated, welded together, and shaped to ever fuimied. 84 ESCHATOLOGY higherissues by the actual presenceofGod. This ideal we shall henceforth, for convenience sake, designate shortly as the Messianic or theocratic kingdom. It will be observed that throughout this work the Kingdom of God is defined as the regenerated community, in which the divine will should be realised, but this is not the meaning that has been generally assigned to it. Dalman {The Words of Jesus, translated from the German, p. 94) states that " both in the Old Testament and in Jewish literature, mD^D when applied to God means always the kingly rule, never the kingdom as if it were meant to suggest the territory governed by Him." But no sound scholar would take it in the latter sense ; and yet as regards the former, I cannot agree that Professor Dalman's attempt to limit the phrase always to this meaning is right. It is difficult to apply this meaning in Mt. viii. 11 ( = Luke xiii. 20), where the text speaks of "sitting down in the kingdom of heaven," though Dalman boldly renders this " sitting down in the sovereignty of God." The same difficulty applies to the passage in Luke xiv. 15, " Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God." The right meaning in these passages, as in most others in the Gospels, is that which has been maintained throughout this work, i.e. the community in which the divine will is realised. How otherwise could the words of our Lord be explained, Mt. xix. 14, "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven," i.e. the divine community in which God's OF THE NATION 85 will is realised, and not "such is the sovereignty chap. m. of God." Dalman, it is true, is inclined to admit other shades of meaning, but in no case does he give that which we have put forward. Whether this kingdom was constituted under mon- The Messiah archical, hierarchical, or purely theocratic forms was partrfThls in itself a matter of indifference. Since the Messiah °'en7concep- formed no organic part of the conception, He was ''°°- sometimes conceived as present at its head, some- times as absent. Two factors, and only two, Two factors in were indispensable to its realisation. First, it must '^p™^^ be a comrmmity of Israelites, or of these together with non-Israelites. Secondly, it must be a community in which God's will is fulfilled. If we lose sight of either factor, our view of the kingdom is untrue. That the prophetic conception of the kingdom prevailed from the seventh century onwards is admitted on all hands, but of late years there is a growing body of scholars who maintain that, with the exception of a single passage in Isaiah, no No eighth- prophet of the eighth century preached the advent phet"fOTetoM of this kingdom, and that the unceasing burden of ^^^0^ their message to Israel was solely one of fast ap- ^^™ ^^^'='^' *-* ^ ^ •' ^ according to a proaching and inevitable doom. That most of the p-owingbcdy A TT T'l 1 t^ If ' \ ^^ scholars. passages m Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah which promise the advent of the Messianic kingdom and of the Messiah are intrusions in the text from a later time, may be regarded, on the whole, as a sound conclusion of criticism. But that they are all with one exception interpolations of a later date, and particularly that all the passages which tell of the Messiah are without exception of this character, 86 ESCHATOLOGY CHAP. III. cannot be regarded as an established result of criticism. '^"'"I's If the following: pages betray at times signs of conclusion is... oio / o still to be mdecision, they do but reflect the present attitude ot visionaiiy. the Writer ; for though he has elected to follow the conclusions of the more advanced critics, it is with great hesitation that he has done so. All the following statements on the above contro- versy regarding the eighth-century prophets are to be regarded as provisional. As regards the day of Yahwe, no such critical Our study difficulty exists. Our study of the eschatology of the the day of nation, therefore, will begin with this unquestioned deveTopsXto element in Israel's expectations of the future, and of'thrkmgdom trace its subsequent enlargement and various de- it introduces, velopments from a judgment of individual nations to a judgment of all mankind. In pre-Exilic times this conception constitutes all but exclusively the subject of the prophetic teaching as to the future ; but from the Exile onwards this is not so. Henceforth it serves only to introduce the eternal kingdom of God on earth. From the Exile onwards eschatological development begins to grow in complexity, for from that period the nation, no less than the individual, begins to maintain his claims to righteous treatment. The Day of Yahw^ Thisconcep- This conceptiou is related to the people as a tioc relates to ^ ^ '■ the nation, wholc, and not to the individual. It means essen- individuai. tially the day on which Yahwe manifests Himself in OF THE NATION 87 victory over His foes, that is, the national foes of chap. m. Israel. Day amongst the Hebrews, as among the Arabs, occasionally had the definite signification of "day of battle." Thus in Is. ix. 4 "the day of Midian" is the day of victory over Midian. The belief in this day was older than any written prophecy. It was a popular expectation in the time of Amos. This popular conception, which was as unethical and nationalistic as the kingdom it was expected to establish, was adopted by the prophets and trans- formed into one of thoroughly ethical and universal significance. We shall now deal with the various forms it assumed in the Old Testament. I. T/ie popular conception of the day of Yahwe Popular and as a judgment on Israels national enemies^ eighth conception of century B.C. and earlier. — This conception originated, dayofvahwe. no doubt, from the old limited view of Yahwe as merely the national God of Israel. The relation of Yahwe to Israel, in the minds of Amos' con- temporaries, was not an ethical, but, to a large extent, a natural one. They conceived themselves to be solely Yahwe's people, and Yahwe to be solely Israel's God (Am. iii. 2). Israel's duty was to worship Yahwe, and Yahwe's to protect Israel. This worship consisted in ritual and sacrifice, and to its due discharge the morality of the worshipper was a thing indifferent. Hence, since they were faithful in the duties of worship and sacrifice and tithing (iv. 5 ; v. 5, 21, 22), they could with confidence not only look forward to, but also pray for, " the 88 ESCHATOLOGY day of Yahwe " as the instrument of their vindica- tion against their enemies. The " day of Yahwe " is thus the day of Israels vindication against their enemies through Yahwe} But "the day of Yahwe," Amos warns Israel, is no such day as they expected. The day of Yahwe, the God of righteousness, cannot for an unrighteous people be a day of salvation, but of woe ; not a day in which Israel would be vindicated against its enemies, but in which Yahwe's righteousness would be vindicated against wrong- doing, whether in Israel or its enemies. Prophetic conception of the day of Yahwfe. I. Pre- Exilic period. (a) directed against Israel in Amos Amos {circa 760 B.C.) This assault of Amos on the popular conceptions of the day of Yahwe provides us, at the same time, with the prophetic conception of this day. Accord- ing to the prophets of the eighth century, this day was to be one (0) of judgment directed, first and chiefly, against Israel. In opposition to the popular view that Yahwe is Israel's national God, Amos avoids the very phrase " God of Israel," and designates Him as "the Lord Yahwe," "the God of Hosts," or " Yahw6 of Hosts." ^ Yahwe is the Moral Ruler of all the earth. His "day,"^ therefore, is, as we have seen, the day ' This belief that Yahwe must save His people survived, despite the prophets, till the captivity of Judah in 586 B.C. 2 Yahw6 of Hosts means in the prophets the Omnipotent, the Lord of the armies of heaven as well as of earth. See p. 9 for an earlier meaning. 3 The day of Yahwe, in its double character as a day of punishment and blessing, is also spoken of as "that day" (Is. xvii. 7, xxx. 23, xxviii. 5, xxix. 18; Hos. ii. 18 ; Mic. ii. 4, iv. 6, v. 10; Zech. ix. 16, xiv. 4, 6, 9), "that time" (Jer. xxxi. i, xxxiii. 15, 1. 4; Zeph. iii. 19, 20; Joel iii. I), "the day" (Ezek. vii 10; Mic. iii. 6), "the time" (Ezek. vii. 12). OF THE NATION 89 in which He manifests Himself for the vindica- tion of Himself and of His righteous purposes, and not of Israel. In Amos, to whom we owe this new meaning of the phrase, the day of Yahwe appears only in its darker side} as directed against Israel. It will bring about the overthrow of the kingdom (v. 1-3), Samaria will be destroyed (iii. 11, 12), and Israel carried into captivity (v. 5, 27 ; vi. 7 ; vii. 1 1 ; ix. 4). This day is " darkness and not light " for Israel (v. 18). Other nations will feel it in pro- portion to their unrighteousness, but since un- righteous Israel is specially related to Yahwe, they will, for that reason, experience His severest judg- ments (iii. 2) : "You only have I known of all the families of the earth : therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities." 1 ix. 8-15, which promises a happy future for Israel and the house of David, is rejected as an Exilic addition by Wellhausen, Smend, Cheyne, G. A. Smith, Marti, Nowack, Volz. Driver, on the other hand, defends this passage, but with some hesitation [Joel and Amos, 119-123). In this rejected passage we have the promise of the restoration of the dynasty of David in all its former splendour over reunited Ephraim and Judah (ix. 11) : — In that day will I raise up the fallen tabernacle of David, And close up the breaches thereof ; And I will raise up his ruins, And I will build it as in the days of old. The land is to be blessed with prosperity (ix. 13), and the exiles to be restored (ix. 14) : — And I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel, And they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them, etc. And Israel thus restored will never again be removed from its own land (i"- 15)- The Messianic kingdom is limited strictly to Israel. The neighbouring nations, particularly Israel's ancient foe Edom, should come under the suzerainty of Israel, as in David's time (ix. 12). 9° ESCHATOLOGY CHAP. III. HOSEA (746-734 B.C.) and in Hosea. Hosca IS of One mind with Amos.^ It is against Israel that the day of Yahwe is directed. Though the phrase itself is not found in Hosea, the judg- ment it designates is foretold. The whole nation is utterly corrupt : " There is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land" (iv. i). They have gone after Baal, and become worshippers of graven images (v. 3, viii. 4, xi. 2). Wherefore Israel "shall fall by the sword : their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up" (xiii. 16). So dire will be their tribulation that " they shall say to the mountains, Cover us ; and to the hills. Fall on us " (x. 8). It was a fate from which there was no escape.^ " The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up : ' The clauses referring to Judah in i. 7 ; iv. 15 ; v. 5, 10, 12, 13, 14; vi. 4, II ; viii. 14 ; x. II ; xi. 12 ; xii. 2 are rejected by Marti as inter- polations. Nowack, Die kleine Prophetett, 1897, excises all these references except V. 5- 2 Most of the passages which predict the establishment of the kingdom under the Messianic King are rejected by a variety of scholars. Thus i. 10- ii. I, iii. 5, iv. 15° are condemned as interpolations by SXait (Gesch^ 577 note). In addition to these, ii. 16, vi. 11, and most of xiv. 1-9, have been rejected by Wellhausen. The latter, however, and Nowack, defend some of the passages which promise the future blessedness of Israel, *'The complete destruction of Israel is for him (Hosea) an inconceivable thought" (Well- hausen, Gesch.^ 116). Similarly Nowack [Die kl. Propheten^ p. 81). Nowack, notwithstanding, denies the originality of i. 7; i. lo-ii. I, 14-16, 20-23 ; '■'• 5 ; iv. 15" ; vi. 1 1 ; xiv. 7, 9. The passages of a similar character which he accepts are v. 15-vi. 3 ; xi. 8 ; xiv. 6, 8. G. A. Smith adopts a like attitude to Wellhausen and Nowack. Cheyne (in W. R. Smith, Proph.^ pp. xvii, jr/j?.) rejects i. 7 ; i. lo-ii. i ; iii. 5 ; iv. 15" ; v. 15-vi. 4, 11 ; vii. i ; viii. 14; and xiv. 1-9 in its entirety. Marti (Gesch. d. isr. Rel. pp. 181, 182) appears to regard Hosea as the prophet of inexorable doom like Amos. Similarly Volz ( Vorexilisch. YahwcpfOphetie^ 32 sqq.) See Driver, Pntrod. to Old Testament,'^ 306, 307. Taking the text as it stands, the eschatology is as follows: " At the end OF THE NATION 91 his sin is laid up in store. . . . From the hand of chap. m. Sheol shall I ransom them : from death shall I redeem them ; . . . compassion is hid from mine eyes" (xiii. 12-14). Isaiah (740-701 b.c.) (b) Day of Yahwe mainly against Judah. — In (,}) directed Isaiah and Micah the day of Yahwe receives a new judah^^^*'"' application : it is directed against Judah. Like the two preceding prophets, Isaiah^ aimed his warn- ings of judgment against Israel (ii. 6-21, viii. 1-4, First against o ■• ••• NTl^ri-M ^L Israel, as in IX. 8-20, xvu. i-ii, xxvui. 1-4). By Yahwe s wrath preceding should the land be burnt up ; its people should be as p^p'^'^'^- the fuel for fire (ix. 19) ; in one day should head and tail, palm-branch and rush be cut off (ix. 14) ; its warriors shall not be spared, nor its widows nor orphans receive compassion (ix. 17). The doom shall come like a tempest of hail, a destroying storm, as a tempest of mighty waters (xxviii. 2). And the lofty looks of man shall be brought low, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the of days" (iii. 5) Israel will be converted and return to God (v. 15), for He will revive them from their spiritual death (vi. 2), and betroth them to Him for ever " in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving kindness, and in mercies " (ii. 19). And Israel will be called " sons of the living God," and become innumerable as the sand of the sea, and Judah and Ephraim will be reunited under one king (i. 10, 11), even under a scion of the house of David (iii. 5). And the exiles will return to their own land (xi. 10, 11). In this period the earth will be blessed with fruitfulness (ii. 22), the wild beasts will become tame, and all the weapons of war will be destroyed (ii. 18). 1 In my references to Isaiah I have adopted provisionally Dr. Cheyne's critical results in his Introduclion to Isaiah, 1895, but have supplied those of Duhm, Marti, Gray, and others where they differed. 92 ESCHATOLOGY Judgment on Judah. Isaiah once prophesied the advent of the kingdom. Lord shall be exalted in that day (ii. 11-17). And men shall cast away their idols of silver and of gold to the moles and the bats, and go into the caves of the rocks to hide themselves from before the terror of the Lord, when He ariseth to shake mightily the earth (il. 19-21). Thus judgment fell on Israel, and since Judah vv^as no less corrupt, it too must be destroyed (i. 10-17, 21-26; iii. 1-15 ; v. 8-24; xxviii. 14-22; xxix. 1-4; xxx. 8-17; xxxi. 4), and all the more surely as it sought help from the neighbouring world-powers (xxviii. 14-22, xxxi. 3). The judgment on Jerusalem shall come suddenly : it shall receive doom from the Lord of Hosts with thunder and with earthquake and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire (xxix. 6 ^). Thus Isaiah was, like Amos, a prophet of doom. In one passage, however, he prophesies the advent of the kingdom, but in a very modest form. i. 24-26. "Therefore this is the oracle of the Lord, Yahwe Sebaoth, the Hero of Israel: Ha! I will appease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me on mine enemies ; 25. and I will bring back mine hand upon thee, and will smelt out in the furnace thy dross and will take away all thy alloy ; 26. and I will bring back thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors at the beginning : afterwards thou shalt ' If we accept the last as it stands, the views of Isaiah as to the in- violability of Jerusalem wavered. Thus in xxix. 7, 8 ; xxxi. 5 he definitely prophesies that Zion can never be taken by its foes. This latter view is rejected by Cheyne, who pronounces xxix. 5) 7, 8 an intrusion, and xxxi. 5 to be hopelessly corrupt. OF THE NATION 93 be called Citadel of Righteousness, Faithful City " chap. m. (Cheyne's translation). The nation is thus to be restored as aforetime, but on a righteous foundation. All that was evil was to be purged out of it. It is to be observed, however, that there is no mention of the Messiah in connection with it. There is no world -judgment in Isaiah. Judg- No worid- .,, , 1 T- T- 1 ■ judgment in ment, it is true, will be executed on ligypt, bthi- isaiah. opia, Tyre, Philistia, Moab, and Syria, and all nations will be concerned in Yahwe's purpose of "breaking Assyria." These nations, however, are dealt with by the prophet only in relation to his own people. The conception of a world -judgment wherein every nation was to be judged inde- pendently of Israel was of a later date.^ In ili. 13, where there appears to be a reference to it, the text is corrupt.^ The idea of its uni- versality seems to be given in ii. 11-21, but the language is poetical. Isaiah nowhere extends the blessings of the kingdom to the heathen world. Israel alone should enjoy them. Most of the Messianic passages in Isaiah i.-xxxix. are due to later interpolations.^ 1 Cheyne, Itttrod. pp. 53, 246. 2 Jbid, 391 note; Marti, z'« loc. 3 All the Messianic passages save one (Is. i. 24-26) are rejected as the work of a later age by Cheyne ; also wholly or in part by Duhni, ilackmann, Marti, Briickner, G. A. Smith, etc. The chief passages are Is. ii. 2-4, iv. 2-6, ix. 1-7, xi., xvi. 5, xix. 18-25, xxv. 6-8, xxviii. 16, xxix. 16-24, XXX. 18-26, xxxii. i-S', XXXV. l-io. With ii. 2-4, xix. iS-25 we shall deal under post-Exilic prophecy. The post-Exilic date of iv. 2-6 is practically admitted by G. A. Smith (Hastings' BiMe Dictionary, ii. 488) ; likewise of xi. 10-16, xvi. 5, xxv. 6-8, and xxxv. i-IO, pp. 492, 493. On the other 94 ESCHATOLOGY MicAH (circa 723-700 b.c.) Destruction of In Micah the doom of Jerusalem is pro- Jerusalem. , - , ^ , . - , , No Messianic nounced, and no nope 01 ultimate redemption is kingdom. hand, this scholar strongly contends against Marti, Volz, and Briickner, who deny that the Messiah appeared at all in pre-Exilic prophecy. Apart from arguments based on language and historical allusions, these writers argue that the functions of the Messiah are purely political and not religious. He is a national leader, and exercises the offices of neither prophet, priest, nor leader, and belongs therefore to the Exilic and post-Exilic periods. G. A. Smith vigorously assails this view. He contends (Hastings' Bible Dictionary, ii. 488, 489) that this national conception of the Messiah suits the pre-Exilic and not the later periods : that it belongs naturally to the pre-Exilic forms of the Messianic kingdom : that the Isaianic passages ascribe to the Messiah the duties prescribed by the time, the deliverance of Israel from the Assyrian invasion, and the establishment of a righteous kingdom over the people of Yahwe. If we accept the chief Messianic passages as Isaianic, we obtain a very striking picture of the Messiah. Thus, according to ix. 6, 7 (Cheyne's translation) : — A child is born unto us, a son is given unto us, And the government is upon his shoulders, and his name is called Wonder-counsellor, God-hero, Father of booty. Prince of Peace. Increased is the government and of peace there is no end, Upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, In establishing and supporting it by justice and righteousness from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of Yahwfe Sebdoth will accomplish this. In these verses we have a description of the Messiah as a great warrior and ruler. In the following verses as a righteous judge, inspired by the Spirit of Yahwe, equally great in knowledge and in practice, xi. 1-5 : — And a shoot shall come forth from the stock of Jesse, And a scion from his roots shall bear fruit. And the spirit of Yahw6 shall rest upon him, A spirit of wisdom and discernment, a spirit of counsel and might, a spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Yahw^. And he shall not judge according to that which his eyes have seen, Nor arbitrate according to that which his ears have heard, But with righteousness shall he judge the helpless. And arbitrate with equity for the humble in the land ; And he shall smite tyiants with the rod of his mouth, And with the breath of his lips shall he slay the ungodly. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins. And faithfulness the girdle of his reins. OF THE NATION 95 held out:^ iii. 12. " Zion, for your sake, shall be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest." In the above prophets the judgment of the Gentiles is never conceived independently, but only in relation to the judgment on Israel or Judah. Nahum (664-607 B.C.) and Habakkuk (605-600 B.C.) When we pass from these four great prophets of the eighth century to those of the latter half of the seventh, namely Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, we find that religious thought on our subject has in The nature of the lower creation will be transformed, xi. 6-8 : — • And the wolf shall lodge with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid, And the calf and the young lion, and the fatling together, whilst a little child ieadeth them. And the cow and the bear shall feed, together shall their young ones lie down. And the lion shall eat straw like the ox ; And the suckling shall play at the hole of the asp, And the weaned child shall stretch out his hand to the eyeball of the basilisk. XXX. 26 : — Moreover the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, And the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days. 1 Only chaps, i.-iii. (with the exception of ii. 12, 13, which promise the return from the Exile) are assigned to Micah. Chaps, iv.-vii. {with the excep- tion of iv. 9, 10, and v. i, 10-14) ^''^i according to Nowack (Kleine Fyofheten, 187, 188, 204^^^.), derived from different authors and different periods. Stade, Smend, Wellhausen, Marti, and Cheyne reject iv., v. in their entirety, and most critics since Ewald's time reject vi., vii. See Stade, ZATIV, 1881, pp. 161- 172; 1883, 1-16 ; 1884, 291-297; Smend, ATliche Theol. 225; Driver, Introd. vii. 329-334. According to the rejected chapters, Yahwe will again restore the kingdom to Israel (vii. 7-9). The exiles will be restored (ii. 12 ; iv. 6, 7). The Messiah from Beth Ephratah will rule in Yahwe's name (v. 2), and with His reign will begin the eternal Messianic kingdom (v. 3-7), and He will crush Assyria (v. 5-7), and henceforth idolatry and wickedness and warfare will be at an end (v. 10-14). 96 ESCHATOLOGY Modification of conception of day of Yahw^ in seventh cen- tury. Yahw4 must intervene for Israel because Israel is righteous. part advanced and in part retrograded. The retro- gression is manifest in the books of Nahum and Habalckuk. In these prophets we have a modified renewal of the old popular conception of the day of Yahwe ; for they conceive it as an intervention on h^2\{ oi righteous Israel against the rozV/^^af Assyria. According to the primitive view, Yahwe was bound to intervene on behalf of His people on the ground of the supposed natural affinities existing between them, whereas according to the view of Nahum and Habakkuk ^ His intervention must follow on the ground of ethical affinities ; for Israel and the Gentiles are related to each other as the righteous, p-ins, and the wicked, umT (Hab. i. 4, 13). The grounds for this renewal in a modified form of the old view of the day of Yahwe are to be found partly in the sufferings experienced by Israel at the hands of their oppressors, and partly in the confidence which Josiah's reforms had begotten in the people that they were truly Yahwe's people. Israel's sufferings at the hands of their oppressors had given birth to unutterable bitterness and resent- ment. The pressure of foreign influences in worship and morals also naturally made the religious leaders in Judah set all the higher value on their national worship and ancestral customs. The religious party therefore tended to become more and more ' Ilalj. i. 5-1 1 is an interpolation according to Giesebrecht, Wellhausen, Nowack, etc. Likewise chap. iii. The former passage is probably earlier and the latter much later in date than Ilabakkuk. With the later date of iii. Davidson and Driver agree, but both defend i. 5-u. ii. 11-14 is rejected by Nowack. OF THE NATION 97 national in sympathy and aims. Nahum appears chap, m, as the spokesman of this party. He does not stand, as the preceding prophets, in opposition to the ruling party in the state, but rather gives expression to their sentiments. The cause of Yahwe and of Israel is one and the same. In the next place, owing to the reforms under Josiah, the people felt themselves to be Yahwe's people, and accordingly were confident of His help. They felt themselves to be righteous — neither in Nahum nor Habakkuk is there any mention of Israel's sin— hence over against the glaring wickedness of the Gentiles the actual Judah was regarded as righteous (see Hab. i. 4, 13). The righteous- ness of Judah was thus, it is true, only a relative righteousness. Judah could claim to be righteous only in contrast with the wickedness of the heathen. We have herein the beginnings of the thought that The Israel is right over against the world — the begin- thfbdiefthai nings ; for in Nahum and Habakkuk this view is rfghfover applied only to the single nation of the Assyrians ^p'"" "^® and not, as in later times, to all the Gentiles. Hence the impending judgment will strike, not righteous Israel, but the godless Gentiles. Under the influence of Habakkuk's example the usage was developed later of designating the Gentiles abso- lutely as the godless, sxtn, and Judah as the righteous, pns (cf Is. xxvi. 10; Pss. ix. 5, 17, x. 2, 3, 4, Iviii. 10, Ixviii. 2, cxxv. 3). Henceforth in most subsequent representations of the future the destruc- tion of the Gentiles stands as a central thought. 98 ESCHATOLOGY The Messianic kingdom to follow on the destruction of Assyria in Nahum. But i. z-ii. 2 may be post-Exilic. In that case Nahum would possess no reference to the Messianic future. In Nahum i.-ii. 2 we have a description of the day of Yahwe and the setting up of the Messianic kingdom. It begins with a reference to the attri- butes of Yahwe and their manifestation in nature (i. 2-6). The writer then deals with the utter end that is to be made of the enemies of His people, particularly of Assyria (i. 7-14). The Messianic kingdom is apparently to follow on the destruction of Nineveh. For the humiliation of Judah is at an end (i. 12): "Though I have afflicted thee, I will afflict thee no more." ^ The hour of redemption is at hand (i. 15): "Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace." God will restore Israel and Judah (ii. 2) : " Yahwe bringeth again the excellency of Jacob, as the excellency of Israel." If, however, Bickell, Gunkel, and Nowack are right in their views that i. 2-ii. 2 is not a prophecy but an alphabetical psalm describing under traditional forms the coming of Yahwe to judge the enemies of His people and the establishment of the Messianic kingdom,^ they will be no less right in maintaining that it is not from Nahum's hand but from a much later date. In that case the original prophecy of Nahum would deal with the judgment of Nineveh (ii. 3-iii.) and not possess a single reference to the Messianic 1 These uords might be rendered : "When I afflict, I will afflict thee no more," that is, the atlliction would be thorough and final. In this case the verse would apply to Assyria. 2 See Gunkel, ZATIV, 1S93, pp. 223 sqq. ; Bickell, Sitznngsberichte der kaiserl. Akad. der Wiss. in Wieii, Abhandl. v. 1894; Gunkel, Schopfimg und Chaos, 102, 103, 1895 ; Nowack, Kleine Prcpheten, pp. 227, 231-237, 1S97 ; Davidson on Nahum, pp. 18-20, criticises this view unfavourably. OF THE NATION 99 future. The real beginning of this prophecy was chap. m. according to this view thrust out when i. 2-ii. 2 was amalgamated with ii. 3-iii. In Habakkuk the only words that could be con- inHabakkuk strued as referring to the kingdom are ii. 4, " The just shall remain in life through his integrity," at the judgment, and ii. 14, "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of Yahwe, as the waters cover the sea."^ Zephaniah (before 621 b.c.) But whilst Nahum and Habakkuk are retrogres- sive, an important advance in the development of the idea of divine judgment is attested in Zephaniah, by whom the day of Yahwi is conceived as the judgment Day of vahw^ of the whole world resulting in the sui'vival of a judgment righteous remnant of Israel. s"v'rafof° In Zephaniah the judgment appears for the first ''"?'" time to be universal. Its universal scope is the i^raei. necessary corollary to the monotheistic faith of the prophet ; for Yahwe as the God of the whole earth, and pre-eminently as the God of righteousness, must summon all the nations to judgment. The judgment deals with Jerusalem (i. 8-13), with Philistia, Ethiopia, and Assyria (ii. 1-6), with all nations (iii. 8), with all the inhabitants of the earth (i. 18). It extends even to the brute creation (i. 2, 3). There is, however, a certain inconsistency in the picture. The instruments of judgment are a 1 This verse, however, is regarded by many scholars as a later addition. Leous remnant in loo ESCHATOLOGY CHAP. m. mysterious people, called " the guests " of Yahwe (i. 7) — probably the Scythians — who do not themselves come within the scope of judgment. Thus the con- ception is wanting in definiteness and comprehen- sion. Zephaniah moves in the footsteps of Isaiah in the account of the impending judgment, but, whereas, in the latter, judgment on Israel and the nations stands in inner connection with his con- ception of the divine character and purposes, in Zephaniah it is without definite aim,^ if with certain critics we reject ii. 8-1 1, iii. 8-10: its various constituents appear to represent already current eschatological expectations, while its wide sweep shows the operation of the prevailing monotheism. The day of Yahwe is a day of battle and assault on the defenced cities (i. 16), a day of trouble and dis- tress, of wasteness and desolation, of supernatural terrors, of darkness, clouds and thick darkness (i. 14- 18). The nations are to be assembled in order to be destroyed by the fierce anger of Yahwe (iii. 8). Zephaniah This last feature, that is, the destruction of the th^ judgment natious generally, appears first in Zephaniah. This of au nations, j^^^ j^ ^ further development of the earlier doctrine that only the nations hostile to Judah should be destroyed, which is found in ii. 1-7 (i.e. the Philistines, Moab, and Ammon, etc.), Jer. xxv. 15- 24 {i.e. the genuine portions), and Is. xvii. 12, 13 {i.e. the Assyrians). In the eighth-century prophets 1 ii. 8-1 1 are rejected by Wellhausen and Nowack (I.e. 275-277) ; also by Budde and Cornill. iii. 9, lo generally held to be later. Davidson defends the integrity of the entire book. See Driver, Introd. 342, 343. 02^ THE NATION in this connection it is the destruction of definite and chap. m. present foes that is announced, but in the later it is that of the nations generally. Of these later pro- phets it forms a prominent and constantly recurring characteristic, as we see in Jer. xxv. 32, ^ili (the addition of a reviser) ; Ezek. xxxviii.-xxxix., the fifth-century passages in Is. xxxiv., Ixiii. 1-6 ; Zech. xii. 1-3, and the much later anonymous fragments in Is. Ixvi. 16, 18, 19 ; Zech. xiv. 1-3, 12-15. The scene of this judgment on the nations, which Zephaniah leaves indeterminate, is declared by later prophets to be Jerusalem (Zech. xiv. 2, 12, 13 ; Joel ili. 2 ; Is. Ixvi. 15). At the close of the judgment there will be left The Messianic a small and righteous remnant in Israel (iii. 12, 13) : '°^ °™' " I will leave in the midst of thee an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of Yahwe. The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth : for they shall feed and lie down, and none shall make them afraid." These are those who are urged in ii. 3 to seek righteousness, if haply they may be hid in the day of Yahwe. There is a wide universalism in Zephaniah if ah the nations ii. II and iii. 9, 10 are original, ii. 11. " Men shall YaVw^!*""^ worship him, every one from his place, even all the coast lands of the nations." iii. 9. " Then will I turn to the peoples a pure lip, that they may all call upon the name of Yahwe, to serve him with one consent." In Zephaniah, as in Nahum and Habakkuk, there No Messiah. is no mention of a Messianic king. ESCHATOLOGY Contrast between the pre-Exilic and Exilic con- ceptions of judgment. The Exile con- tributes to the individualisa- tion of religion. Jeremiah^ (626-586 b.c.) and Ezekiel (593-571 B.C.) We have now done with the pre-Exilic concep- tions of the day of Yahwe. In pre-Exilic times divine judgment was -mainly conceived collectively as one of doom on the nation as a nation : in Exilic and subsequent times the divine judgment is con- ceived as dealing with the individual Israelite, and thus as presenting a favourable or unfavourable side according to the character of the individual. As a result of this judgment a righteous community was to emerge, forming the nucleus of the Messianic kingdom. This difference in the conceptions of the two periods was brought about, at all events externally, by the destruction of the State. For the political annihilation of Israel may be regarded from two standpoints : from the one it was the inevitable doom of the impenitent nation ; from the other, and that the one of most moment to our present study, it formed an indispensable factor in the develop- ment of religion ; for it contributed to the indi- vidualisation of religion, alike in its essential nature and its expectations of the future. Thus the eschatology of the individual becomes henceforth a factor in the eschatology of the nation. I Jeremiah (626-586 B.C.) belongs, it is true, to the pre-Exilic period. Since, however, his teaching on the relation of man to God is so diverse from that of his contemporaries and predecessors, and in many respects so nearly akin to that of Ezekiel {who was herein his disciple), I have thought it best to discuss their doctrines together, and treat Jeremiah as though he were a prophet of the Exile. OF THE NATION 103 We have seen above that the message of the chap, m, pre-Exilic prophet to Israel was mainly one of con- contrast demnation, and that only In a few cases was the Exmrand'^^ prospect held out of a regenerated national life. p^J^ph'^J^y"^ to But with the Exile the burthen of prophecy is no ''^^ Messianic '^ '■ ^ kingdom. longer doom and destruction, but promise and bless- ing, and such is its unfailing characteristic till the close of the Canon. Judgment is still of necessity preached. But its character is very differently con- ceived in the succeeding centuries accordingly as we study the spiritual founders of Judaism or the large-hearted prophets who prepared the way for Christianity. According to Jeremiah and his spiri- The kingdom tual successors, the role of judgment is only vindic- a°uhTnattons, tive with the finally impenitent : in the case of all f <=°'"''"?g '° J ^ Jeremiah. Others its character is corrective and disciplinary. Its object is to prepare the way for the external Messianic kingdom in which all the nations shall participate. But, according to Ezekiel and subsequent writers For israei oniy, of the same school, judgment was conceived as a Ezekiei"^ '° purging of Israel from its evil elements with a view to the establishment of the eternal Messianic kingdom ; but for the nations it meant only de- struction, partial or complete, or, under the most favourable construction, absolute political subjection to Israel. According, therefore, to the eschatology of the Exiifc'rance Exile, the Messianic kinzdom was -blaced in tJie ''°°^ °f "''^ Y -' day of Yahwe forefront of both prophetic and popular expectation. ^'^'^ of *e This kingdom was to be introduced by the day ^kingdom. 104 ESCHATOLOGY CHAP. III. Yahwe — conceived no longer merely as injlichng collective punishment for collective guilt, but as metifig out individual retribution. As the result of this judgment a new and regeiierate Israel emerges -^the Messianic kingdotn. Into this kingdom the nations enter by conversion, according to Jeremiah, but according: to Ezekiel, even those which had sur- er ' vived the day of Yahwe are for ever excluded from it. We have above dealt with Jeremiah and Ezekiel's doctrine of Individualism (see pp. 59-68). The individualising of religion in these prophets was the precondition of the restoration of Israel after the fall of Jerusalem. -"In God's visitations only the Ezekiel's wickcd in Israel, according to Ezekiel, should be eschatoiogiel " dcstroyed. When a new Israel was thus created, °*^*V.?;''°" Yahwe would further intervene to vindicate His and of the individual, honour and sole sovereignty over the world, and Israel would be restored to its own land, and the Gentiles destroyed. In Ezekiel a synthesis of the eschatologies of the nation and of the individual is attempted wholly within the sphere of this life. We have now arrived at a new period in the development of eschatological thought in Israel. Prophecy of Israel is on the eve of exile. But this exile is to lingl'm'by" be Only of temporary duration. Yahwe's thoughts Jeremiah. j.^ Israel are thoughts of peace and not of evil (Jer. xxix. 11). After an exile of 70 years^ in Babylon (xxv. ri, xxix. 10), Israel will be converted and brought back to its own land, and an ever- ' what a fruitful source of apocalyptic systems this number became we shall see later OF THE NATION 105 lasting Messianic kingdom be established. This chap. m. kingdom will be ruled over either by Yahwe or His servant the Messiah. Some scholars, it is true, maintain that the references to the Messiah in this prophet do not belong to the original text.^ Although the judgment of Israel is not strictly individualistic in Jeremiah, as it is in Ezekiel, we shall give his eschatological views with those of Ezekiel ; for the latter are built on the former. In Jeremiah the day of Yahwe is directed first and principally against Judah ; the enemy will come in from the north (i. 11-16); the city and the temple will be destroyed (xxxvii. 6-10). But account is taken also of other nations, which are to drink of the cup of the wine of the fury of Yahwe — Egypt, Palestine, Edom, Moab, Ammon (xxv. 15-24; cf. i. 18). The further details of the judgment (xxv. 27-33, which expand it into a day of universal judgment) are interpolations from a later date. But there is a hopeful outlook. Israel will be restored (xxiii. 7, 8 ; xxiv. 5, 6). This restoration will be Restoration of preceded by repentance (iii. 13, 19-25), and accom- iccomp°anied panied by a change of heart wrought by Yahwe. ^^^^^'^^'^^^ °^ Through this change of heart each member of the nation will know Yahwe and obey Him (xxiv. 7) : "And I will give them a heart to know me, that I am Yahw^ ; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God : for they shall return unto me with their whole heart"; cf xxxii. 39. The same ' See, however, Cornill and Murti on Jer. xxm. 5 sq. io6 ESCHATOLOGY Messianic kingdom and the Messiah, the latter representing a dynasty. The nations will be con- verted and incorporated in the king- dom. promise is made, but more clearly and fully, in xxxi. 33, 34 : " But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith Yahwe : I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it ; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people ; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know Yahwe, for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith Yahwe : for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more." When restored to their own land, Yahwe will give them a righteous Branch of the house of David to rule over them (xxiii. 5, 6) : " Behold the days come, saith Yahwe, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute judgment and justice in the land. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, Yahwe is our righteousness." Elsewhere Jeremiah speaks of the rulers of restored Israel as Shepherds (iii. 15, xxiii. 4). The Messiah, therefore, is con- ceived of as a dynasty, and not as an individual. Other Messianic passages, as xxx. 8, 9, 2 1 ; xxxiii. 14-26, are rejected by Giesebrecht. But the blessings of the kingdom will not be limited to Israel. The nations also will be con- verted, even those who have been hostile to Israel (xii. 14, 15) : " Thus saith Yahwe : Against all mine evil neighbours, that touch the inheritance which I OF THE NATION 107 have caused my people Israel to inherit : Behold I chap. m. will pluck them up from off their land, and will pluck up the house of Judah from among them. And it shall come to pass, after that I have plucked them up, I will return and have compassion on them ; and I will bring them again, every man to his heritage, and every man to his land." And elsewhere it is declared (iv. 2) : " The nations shall bless themselves in Yahwe, and in him shall they glory" ; (xvi. 19) : " O Yahwe, my strength and my stronghold, and my refuge in the day of afflic- tion, unto thee shall the nations come from the ends of the earth, and shall say, Our fathers have inherited nought but lies, even vanity and things wherein there is no profit." iii. 17, which gives evidence in the same direction, is rejected by Giesebrecht. All the nations shall be converted, and only the impenitent will be destroyed (xii. 16, Oniythefinaiiy 17): "And it shall come to pass, if they will b™de"'troye4 diligently learn the ways of my people, to swear by / my name, As Yahwe liveth ; even as they taught my people to swear by Baal ; then shall they be built up in the midst of my people. But if they will not hear, then will I pluck up that nation, plucking up and destroying it, saith Yahwe." The individualism appearing in Jeremiah is, as we have seen above, developed in Ezekiel to an Teaching of extreme degree. Judgment will proceed individu- ally on Israel, but collectively on the Gentiles. Yahwe will give a new heart to Israel (xi. 17-21, xxxvi. 25-32), and restore Israel and Judah to their io8 ESCHATOLOGY Messianic kingdom. The Messiah not an in- dividual, but a series of successive kings. Invasion of Palestine by Gog. This prophecy arises from an unfulfilled prophecy of Jeremiah and Zephaniah. Unfulfilled prophecy a source of Apocalyptic. Hopeless destiny of the surviving Gentiles own land, where, as the Messianic kingdom (xvii. 22-24), they shall be ruled by the Messiah (xxi. 27), by one king, even David (xxxiv. 23-31, xxxvii. 21-28). But the Messiah is not conceived here as an individual, but as a series of successive kings (cf. xlv. 8, xlvi. 16). But after the establishment of the kingdom under the Messiah in Palestine, the heathen powers will join in a vast confederation against it. Under Gog, from the land Magog, will they march, but will all be de- stroyed through the might of Yahwe (xxxviii., xxxix.) This is the foe whose invasion of Israel from the north had been prophesied by Jeremiah (iii.-vi.) and Zephaniah (i. 7), but whose coming had hitherto been looked for in vain. Since this prophecy had remained unfulfilled, Ezekiel edits it anew, and adjourns its accomplishment. It is of Gog that Ezekiel thus speaks : " Thou art he of whom I spake by my servants the prophets of Israel, which prophesied in those days for many years, that I would bring thee against them " (xxxviii. 17^). This reduplication of judgment first appears in Ezekiel. To this re-editing of unfulfilled prophecy is to be traced one of the sources of Apocalyptic. On the Gentiles which survive the final over- throw in the land of Israel, no gleam of divine compassion will for ever light.^ I have given side by side the views of Jeremiah 1 See Bertholet on Ezekiel xxxviii. 17. ^ Sonne scholars find in xvii. 23 a promise that the Gentiles will seek refuge under the rule of the Messiah ; but xvii. 24 shows that this interpreta- tion is unsound. The Gentiles are symbolised not by the "birds of every OF THE NATION 109 and Ezekiel, the great prophets of the Exile and the chap. m. years immediately preceding it, as the best means of displaying their undoubted affinities, and their no less indubitable diversities. This parallel presenta- jeremiah and tion of their views will be helpful, since these two fou'nders of prophets were the sources of two concurrent but d7v°erseTchoois very diverse streams of development. °*^ deveiop- Both prophets are teachers of monotheism. With Jeremiah this doctrine was a living and fruit- ful principle, and teaches him to see, not in Israel only but in all the nations, the objects of the saving purposes of Yah we. Jeremiah's universalism marks him out as the true spiritual successor of the great prophets of the eighth century. Ezekiel's particular- ism, on the other hand, shows his affinities to Nahum and Habakkuk of the seventh. For in Ezekiel mono- theism is but a barren and lifeless dogma. Though theoretically he conceives Yahwe to be the sole Creator and God of all the earth, his belief has no influence on his views as to the destinies of the Gentiles. Israel alone will experience the salvation ^ . -^ of Yahwe : but as for the Gentiles, their end is partly destruction and partly an unblessed existence under the malign rule of an ever hostile and ever unappeasable deity. We shall deal first with those prophets who followed in the wake of Jeremiah, and developed his teaching to its legitimate consequences. In this wing" in xvii. 23, but by "the trees of the field," xvii. 24. As "the cedar," xvii. 23, represents the kingdom of Israel, so "the trees of the field" represent the Gentile kingdoms. The only object with which the latter seem to be spared is that they may recognise the omnipotence of Yahw^. ESCHATOLOGY CHAP, III. Universalistic conception of the Messianic kingdom. post-Exilic development (550-275 B.C.) the thought of judgment, of the day of Yahwe, all but wholly disappears before that of an all-embracing Messianic kmgdom^a kingdom initiated not through Judgment but through the missionary efforts of Israel and the willing conversion of the nations. Restoration of the exiles ; rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple. Voluntary conversion of nations, and their submis- sion to Israel. The Second Isaiah, xl.-lv. (545-539 b.c.) According to the Second Isaiah, there is instore for Jerusalem not punishment but mercy, for already she has received double for all her sins (xl.2). Moreover the Chaldean power will be overthrown through Cyrus (xli. 25; xliii. 14; xlv.-xlvii. ; xlviii. 14, 15). Yahwe's people will then come forth from Babylon (xlviii. 20, Hi. II, 12). All difficulties in the way of the return- ing exiles will be removed (xl. 3-5 ; xli. 18, 19 ; xliii. 2-7; xlviii. 20-22; xlix. 8). Jerusalem and the temple will be rebuilt by the help of Cyrus (xliv. 28, xlv. 13). The desolation of Z ion will be at an end, her wilderness will become like Eden and her desert like the garden of the Lord (li. 3), and Jerusalem will be built of precious stones (liv. 11, 12), and its inhabitants will be disciples of Yahwe (liv. 13). And the land will be too strait for its inhabitants (xlix. 18-23, ''^- i)- ^"'^ never more will Jerusalem be assailed nor any arm raised up against her (xlix. 24-26, liv. 8-10, 14-17). The cities of Judah will again be inhabited (xl. 9, xliv. 26), and Israel will possess the nations (liv. 3). Egypt and Ethiopia will of their own free will submit themselves unto OF THE NATION Israel, confessing : " Only in thee is God, and there chap. m. is none beside — no Godhead at all " (xlv. 14). Yea, all the nations will become subject to Israel (xlix. 22, 23).' But the conception of Israel's purpose and future The kingdom is more nobly conceived in the " Songs of the israei and the Servant" (xlii. 1-4, xlix. 1-6, 1. 4-9, Hi. 13-liii. 12), estebiishe°d^'' which can hardly be of the same authorship as the ''^''""g'' ''*« ■' ^ Servant of rest of Isaiah (xl.-lv.) " They form a connected cycle Yahwfe," •1 T •II9T1' o according to of poetical meditations. In this poem the Servant "Songs of is the pious remnant of the people. They have been elected by God to a special service, and this service is the conversion of mankind to the worship of Yahwe. Hence the function of this true Israel is a missionary one. Their first task is the con- version of the rest of the nation — to " bring back Jacob unto him, and that unto him Israel might be gathered " (xlix. 5). Then their work is to extend to all the ends of the earth. The Servant should become the light of the nations ; judgment shall be established on the earth, and the coast lands shall wait for His law (xlix. 6, xlii. 4). In these " Songs " the nations are considered only as subjects of the divine mercy, and never of judgment, as in Is. xlii. 13-17. There is no thought of Israel's political supremacy. A representation of the future somewhat similar The nations to that in the Second Isaiah appears in the post- seWeTundCT the tutelage * In xlii. 13-17 we have a description of the day of Yahwe in the Second of Yahw^ Isaiah. In this passage it is the heathen and idolatrous world that is judged. (Is. ii. 2-4). Israel does not come within its scope (cf. li. 23). ^ Cheyne, Introd. p. 305. ESCHATOLOGY CHAP. HI. Exilic passages Is. ii. 2-4 = Mic. iv. 1-3, according to which the nations should of their own free will submit themselves to Yahwe. Isaiah ii. 2-4 : "And it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of Yahwe's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills ; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many peoples shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of Yahwe, to the house of the God of Jacob ; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths : for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of Yahwe from Jerusalem. And he shall judge between the nations, and reprove many peoples, and they shall beat their swords into plow- shares, and their spears into pruning hooks ; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." A like conception is probably at the base of the post- Exilic Is. xi. 9 = Hab. ii. 14 (both editorial additions ?), which declare that the earth shall be full of the knowledge of Yahwe as the waters cover the sea. Psalms xxii., Ixv., Ixxxvi., Ixxxvii. In the Psalms. The Same thought ' is set forth in the Psalms : " All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to Yahwe, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before him" (xxii. 27-31) : yea, "all nations . . . should come and worship," for God is their • Cf. also the addition in Zeph. iii. 9, 10. OF THE NATION 113 Creator (Ixxxvi. g).-* God is said to be " the con- chap. m. fidence of all the ends of the earth" (Ixv. 5); all flesh is to come to Him as "the hearer of prayer " (Ixv. 2).^ But in Ps. Ixxxvii. we have a noble con- ception which sums up in itself all the highest thought of the past in this direction. Jerusalem is to be the mother city of all the nations, " the metropolis of an ideally Catholic Church " (Cheyne) ; whole nations should enter the Jewish Church (Ixxxvii. 4), but as individuals (Ixxxvii. 5) ; and this should be their universal song : " All my fresh springs are in thee " (Ixxxvii. 7). Only three more works, Malachi, Jonah and Is. xix. 16-25, call for attention, but these are beyond measure remarkable. Malachi (before 458 b.c.) A wide universalism is apparently found in Mai. i. Recognition of II, where, in regard to the surrounding nations, the ^°n°"i«.'"ic prophet declares : " From the rising of the sun even '^'^'^en , . , r 1 . religions by unto the gomg down 01 the same, my name is great Maiacw. among the Gentiles ; and in every place incense is offered unto my name and a pure offering." Here the writer recognises the monotheism underlying the heathen religions. At this date the divine • Cf. also XXV. 6 in the small apocalypse in Is. xxiv. ; xxv. 6-8 ; xxvi. 10-20; xxvii. I, 12, 13. This Cheyne assigns to the fourth century, Duhra and Marti to the second. This later date, which is, however, difficult on other grounds, would help to explain the very advanced eschatology which appears in xxiv. 21-23, which speaks of a preliminary judgment, and then after a very long interval of the final judgment. On the latter follows the theocratic kingdom (xxiv. 23). ^ On the expectation that proselytes shall be admitted into the congrega- tion of Yahwc's worshippers, see also Is. xiv. i, xxv. 6, Ixv. 3, 6. 8 114 ESCHATOLOGY CHAP. III. designation "the Most High God" existed con- temporaneously among the Phoenicians, Samaritans, and Jews. The words, however, are not to be taken in an absolute, but in a relative sense. The offer- ings of the heathen are made, though unconsciously, to Yah we, and are more pleasing to Him than the faulty and deceitful sacrifices of Israel. That the words are to be construed in some such limited sense is clear from the next chapter (ii. lo), where Yahwe is represented as the Father and Creator of all the members of Judaism, and of these alone ; ^ for on this statement is based an argument against the taking of heathen wives. And yet, however much we limit the words, it is indisputable that in Malachi heathenism is not conceived as a power hostile to God, as it is in Haggai and Zechariah. Despite the severe visitations which the nation had experienced in the past, Israel proved again unfaithful when restored to its own land. Some seventy years earlier Haggai and Zechariah had promised the advent of the kingdom on the rebuild- ing of the temple. Within a few years the temple had been rebuilt, but the promise remained un- fulfilled. With Malachi the temple still holds this central position. Yahwe will suddenly come to it after that His messenger has prepared the way. But this coming will be for judgment ; for Israel has, alike in ^ These conflicting views show that althougli the n:ionotheistic conception of God was a central article of the Jewish creed of the time, it was not a living and growing principle, and so its transforming influence on the rest of this creed svas in the main nullified. OF THE NA TION 1 1 5 private morals (iii. 5, 14) and public worship (i. 6, chap. m. 14), gone back to evil pre-Exilic ways. Judgment was therefore impending, but before Dayofvahwe that "great and terrible day " Elijah should be sent °" ^'^'"^ °"^ to " turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to the fathers" (iv. 5, 6). This judgment, which in Hag. ii. 5 sqq., 21-23, and Zech. i. 15, ii. i sqq., vi. 1-8, was conceived as an annihilation of the heathen powers, is in Malachi limited to Israel (Ii. 17, iii. 3, 5, 13 sqq}j This day will " burn as a furnace," and destroy " all the proud and all that work wickedness." Only the righteous Oniy the will be delivered. For them there is a book of [nleAthe"' remembrance written before Yah we. "And they '""S'^°"^- shall be a peculiar treasure unto me, saith Yahwe of Hosts, in the day that I prepare ; and I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him " (iii. 17); "and all nations shall call you happy; for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith Yahwe of Hosts" (iii. 12). Jonah {circa 300 b.c.) The Book of Jonah was written with a didactic The most purpose. It is not a piece of history, nor is it a pure manife'sto of invention. Many of the materials of the narrative i^XroM^"' are drawn from tradition,^ which the author freely Testament. recasted in such a form as would best bring home to his readers the truths he sought to enforce. ' Very remarkable parallels to individual elements in Jonah, as well as to the story as a whole are found in Greek and Babylonian and Old Egyptian Mythology, but above all in Buddhistic, ii6 ESCHATOLOGY Though many subordinate lessons are to be drawn from the book, the main object of the writer was to teach, in opposition to the narrow exclusive- ness of the Jews, that the divine mercy embraced not Israel alone, but all mankind. While Israel claimed to be the elect and sole people of God, our author would teach that the other nations were no less the objects of the divine compassion and love, and that the nations, in fact, were more ready to repent than Israel with all its unique advantages (cf. Jer. xviii. 7, 8), and that it was the duty of Israel to carry as missionaries the knowledge of God to the nations. The keynote of the entire book is given in the confession of Jonah iv. 2, " I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and full of compassion, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, and repentest Thee of the evil." The implication of the entire book is that these words describe the attitude of God, not to Israel only but to all men. It is the most remarkable pronouncement of Universalism outside the New Testament. Israel, Egypt, and Assyria to form a spiritual confederacy. Isaiah xix. 16-25 {circa 275 B.C., Cheyne : 180 B.C., Gray : post 160 B.C., Duhm and Marti) In Is. xix. 16-25 the "hopes of Ps. Ixxxvii. reappear, but are far outbid in universality. Jerusalem, though the source of spiritual blessed- ness to Egypt and Assyria (Syria), is neither nationally nor spiritually paramount over them ; rather do they form a spiritual and national confederacy in which Israel holds not the first but the third place (Is. xix. 21, 23-25): "And OF THE NATION 117 Yahwe shall be known to Egypt, and the Egyptians chap. m. shall know Yahwe in that day ; yea, they shall worship with sacrifice and oblation. . . . In that day shall there be a high way out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrians shall come into Egypt and the Egyptians into Assyria ; and the Egyptians shall worship with the Assyrians. And in that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth ; for that Yahwe of Hosts hath blessed them, saying : Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance." We have now dealt with the prophetic writers who, following in the wake of Jeremiah and the Second Isaiah, foretold the incorporation of the Gentiles into the Messianic kingdom. But con- currently with this large-hearted universalism there existed a variety of narrow and one-sided views, which held more or less closely to the particularism which originated with Nahum and Habakkuk, but especially with Ezekiel. According to Ezekiel and The future, his successors, the future world, the Messianic age, Eze'kiei"a1id° belonged to Israel— to Judah and Israel reunited *>'= ="=<^"="^- (Hos. iii. 5; Mic. v. 3*; post-Exilic) under the Messianic descendant of David (Is. ix. 1-6, xi. 1-8; Mic. V. 2-4; all Exilic or later) : in it the Gentiles had no share at all, or only in a subordinate degree as dependants or servants of Israel. Their destiny was subjection or destruction, generally the latter, and always so in the case of those that had been hostile to Israel. According to these teachers — ii8 ESCHATOLOGY CHAP. III. The day of Yahwe was to be a day of dehveratice, ParticdZristic initiating the Messianic kingdom on earth for Israel, thTdTy of °^ ^'^'■^ (^) ^ period of ministry or bondage, or (b) else ^f.-^-'^^^i^^'^'i of partial or complete destruction for the Gentiles} Messianic -^ ■* ^ -' kingdom. Some post-Exilic Fragments of Isaiah Various (^) In the Messianic future the Gentiles are to post-Exilic escort the returning: Israelites to Terusalem, and be- fragments of o J ' Isaiah. comc their servants and handmaids (Is. xiv. 1-3,^ Ixvi. 12-16, i8*-20^): they should build up its walls (Ix. 10), and bow themselves and become subject to Israel (Ix. 14), or else perish (Ix. 12) ; they should become Israel's herdsmen, and ploughmen, and vinedressers (Ixi. 5).* Very noble descriptions of the Messianic kingdom are given in iv. 2-6, xxvii. 6, xxix. 16-24, XXXV. I- 10, but these speak only of Israel in relation to the Messianic age. {b) But at times the partial or complete de- struction of the Gentiles predicted. In Is. xxxiv., XXXV. (450-430 B.C., Cheyne) there is a universal judgment described in which all the nations are to be destroyed (xxxiv. 1-3).^ In the fifth-century 1 Though in Haggai and Zechariah, and other post-Exilic writings, the day of Yahwe is essentially a day of destruction for the Gentiles, in Malachi, as we have already seen, its range is limited to Israel (see ii. 17— iii. 6, iii. 17-1V. 3)- ^ Cheyne regards these verses as alien to Is. xiii. 2-xiv. 21. This idea of the nations escorting the exiles back to Zion is found also in the Second Is. xlix. 22, 23. ■* According to Cheyne, Ix. and Ixvi. 6-16, l8*-22 belong to the age of Nehemiah and Ezra. '* These passages are post-Exilic, Ix., Ixi. being about 432 B.C. (Cheyne). 6 We have a world-judgment described in xiii. 6-22, though the judgment is there directed primarily against Babylon (cf. xiii. II, 19), just as in xxxiv. it is specially against Edom. OF THE NATION 119 fragment lix. 1 5^-20 the nations hostile to Yahwe chap. m. and Israel ^ are singled out for destruction, while those that are spared fear the name of Yahwe (lix. 18, 19);^ whereas in another fragment of the same date, Ixiii. 1-6, which closely resembles the preceding passage in subject and phraseology, only the destruction of the Gentiles is announced. Haggai (520 B.C.) The exiles have already returned sixteen years, Messianic and the Messianic kingdom has not yet come.^ That be"«tabiished it is at hand the prophet Haggai is assured. A few °" '^^ ''°'": ^ ^ 00 pletion of the years more and it will be manifested. So he infers buiwing of ... iri- T-iT '''^ temple. from the political upheavals of the time. But Israel has not done its part. The temple is still lying in ruins. When it is rebuilt, the time will have arrived. Yahwe will in a little while shake the heavens and the earth, and the kingdoms of the nations will be overthrown, and their wealth will be brought to the temple, and though all the world round about be tumbling into ruin, peace will reign in Jerusalem (i. 8, ii 6-9). That the dawn of this kingdom has 1 In the post-Exilic (?) passage ix. 1-7 it is the Messiah that destroys the oppressors of Israel (ix. I). This active role of the Messiah is rare in the Old Testament. ^ Cf. the world-judgment in the small apocalypse Is. xxiv. , xxv. (fourth century according to Cheyne, second century according to Duhm, Marti and others), where after the judgment (xxiv. 18-23) the surviving Gentiles shall be admitted to the worship of Yahwe (xxv. 6). It is very remarkable that in xxiv. 21, 22 an intermediate place of punishment is spoken of. The judgment, therefore, is conceived as consisting of two distinct acts. It is possible that we have here some traces of Mazdeau influences. See Stave, Uebsr dm Einfluss des Parsismus aiif das Judenthum, 176, 177. ^ The prophecies of Jeremiah and Ez.ekiel imply that the return from the Exile and the advent of the kingdom will synchronise. I20 ESCHATOLOGY CHAP. iir. already appeared is made clear by a prophecy de- The h^hen Hvcred two months later. For Yahwe will presently destroyed and Overthrow all the heathen powers, and set on zerubbabei j-^g throoe of the Messianic kingdom a prince of chosen to be ^ o i Messiah. the house of David, even Zerubbabei, who was already in their midst (ii. 20-23). Thus the establishment of the Messianic king- dom was expected to follow on the completion of the building of the temple ; ^ and the day of Yahwe was conceived to be a destruction of the heathen powers. What a falling-ofif there is in Haggai as com- pared with the great pre-Exilic prophets! No religious reformation of the individual and of the community is demanded by this prophet to prepare for the kingdom. They have only to build the temple. Zechariah i.-viii. (520-518 B.C.) The thoughts of Haggai are more fully developed Advent of by his Contemporary Zechariah. He expects the immediate advent of the kingdom when once the temple is rebuilt. As in Haggai (ii. 20-22), so in Zechariah there will be a day of Yahwe in which all the hostile heathen powers will be destroyed (i. 18-21). In this passage the complete heathen world is symbolised by the "four horns," i.e. the four quarters of the world. Since this world was • ForYahwJ^ the temple is indispensable as His dwelling-place. It is not through moral reformation, but through divine intervention, that the kingdom is to be introduced. The importance of the temple also testifies to the growing importance of the priesthood. Hence the Messiah is less important in Haggai and Zechariah than in Jeremiah. Messianic kingilom on building of the temple. OF THE NATION hostile to Israel, which was to Yahwe as the apple chap. m. of His eye (ii. 8), it must be annihilated. This destruction of the heathen powers is a precondition of the Messianic time. We have in Haggai and Zechariah further developments of that opposition between the kingdom of God and of the world- kingdoms which has already appeared in Nahum, Habakkuk, and Ezekiel, and which is presented in its sharpest features in Daniel. Zechariah agrees also with Haggai in naming Zembbabeito Zerubbabel as the Messianic king. After the and to buUd example of Jeremiah (xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15), he names "'^'^p''^- him the Branch (iii. 8, 9; vi. 12). But whereas Jeremiah designated a dynasty by this term, in Zechariah it is applied to an individual already in their midst. Zerubbabel will rebuild the temple (vi. 12), and thus Yahwe will dwell among them (ii. 12, 13 ; viii. 23). The exiles will return (ii. vi.) Zechariah differs from Haggai in requiring moral Entrance into purity and uprightness in the members of the king- ethicaUy ran- dom (vii. 9, 10 ; viii. 16, 17). The nations also that jtws"anV°' survive the day of Yahwe will become worshippers 5"™"^ of Yahwe (ii. 11, viii, 20, 21, 23). Joel (about 400 b.c.) In Joel the enemies of Judah are not actual and judgment and i- 1 . ,7 ,• 77 T^i annihilation present toes, but the nations generally. 1 hese are to of aii the be gathered together in order to be annihilated (iii. ^°" ^'' I, 2). The place of judgment is mentioned — the valley of Jehoshaphat — which is obviously chosen ESCHATOLOGY on the ground of the etymological meaning of the term. Yahwe will there sit in judgment upon them (iii. 12), and all the Gentiles will be destroyed. Here we have a nearer approximation to the idea of a final world -judgment than elsewhere in the Old Testament save in Dan. vii. 9, 10. But the judgment is one - sided. Yahwe appears as an advocate for Israel against the nations (iii. 2). The day of Yahwe does not morally sift Israel, as in the pre- Exilic and some Exilic prophets, and the exceptional post-Exilic Mai. iii. 2-5, iv. 1-3, 5, but serves only to justify Israel (ii. 25-27, iii. 16, 17) against the world.^ On the other hand, it is to be observed that Israel here is not the achial but the purified and restored Israel, a spiritually transformed people (ii. 28, 29) worthy of Yahwe's presence (iii. 21). This spiritual transformation, however, is not ex- tended to any of the nations. They are to perish irrevocably. Before the day of Yahwe all the members of the nation will be filled with the spirit of God (ii. 28, 29) : " And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh ; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions : and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit." siRnsofthp Then signs of the approaching judgment will appear in nature (ii. 30,31): "And I will show wonders in the heaven and in the earth, blood and ' Cf. the interpolation in Second Isaiah, i.e. xlv. 25. diivof Valuv.: OF THE NATION 123 fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned cHAf- ■"■ into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of Yahwe come." Those who call upon Yahwe in Jerusalem (ii. 32) will be saved. Henceforth Jerusalem is to be holy, Jerusalem the 11 -11 I 11 ■\ r\ • /••• \ centre of the and there wul be no heathen to defile it ; (ui. 17) : etemai " So shall ye know that I am Yahwe your God, kingdom^ dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain : then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more " ; (iii. 18, 20) : " And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountains shall drop down sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the brooks of Judah shall flow with waters ; and a fountain shall come forth of the house of the Lord, and shall water the valley of Shittim. . . . But Judah shall abide for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation." There is no mention of the Messiah. With Joel and his successors prophecy has joei apocaiyp- largely changed into apocalyptic. The forecasts Qf "='"<= ^^ctcr. these prophets do not as a rule stand in a living relation with the present and its needs, but are frequently the results of literary reflection on former prophecies. This is specially clear in Joel's " day of Yahwe," which has no organic relation with the present, as it has in the earlier prophets. Zechariah ix.-xlv. [circa 300 or 160 B.C.) "' According to Zech. ix. i-xiii. 6, all the Gentiles will attack Jerusalem and be destroyed before it 124 ESCHATOLOGY CHAP. HI. (xii. 3, 4, 9), but in xiv. it is only the hostile nations that are to be annihilated (Zech. xiv. 12, 13), and The non- the remnant to be converted to Judaism, and to to be converted attend the yearly Feast of Tabernacles (Zech. xiv. ojuaism. ^^ 16-21). This fragment is further peculiar in that divine help does not intervene till Jerusalem is in the hands of the Gentiles (xiv. 2, 3). The later date suggested above of this section of Zechariah, i.e. 160 B.C., is not improbable. It would in that case provide us with a description of one of the Jewish parties of the time, i.e. the legalistic wing of the Chasidim. According to this party a Kingdom of God was to be established, in which the ceremonial Law of Moses was to be observed, the holiness of Jerusalem was to be of a Levitical character (ch. xiv. 20, 21), and a yearly participation in the Feast of Tabernacles, as we have already mentioned, was to be obligatory on all. In the view of this writer, as in that of his contemporaries, the Law was absolutely supreme. Accordingly, there was no room for any kind of prophecy, and the writer, who was probably a priest, states cate- gorically, that all prophets, as such, should be put to death by their parents (xiii. 1-5). Under this benumbing yoke of the Law, there was no room for the man who came with a fresh message from God unless he issued it under the name of some ancient worthy of Israel. Thus Prophecy or Apocalyptic had of necessity become pseudepi- graphic in this century, and Enoch and Daniel are Absolute supremacy of Law makes Prophecy impossible. OF THE NATION 125 the first great representatives of this type of prophecy chap. hi. or apocalyptic. Daniel (165 b.c.) Between the years 168 and 165 B.C. when the political subjection of the Jews was complete, and their High Priestly leaders were betraying the religious interests of the nation, and yielding them- selves as the mere tools of Antiochus in the Helleni- sation of the Jewish faith, there arose a man of God amongst the Chasidim, who felt that he was divinely commissioned to be one of the means of saving Israel, in this, one of the worst crises of their national history. He belonged to the Apocalyptic side of the Chasidim. Had he lived two hundred years earlier he would have come forward as a prophet, and addressed the people directly in the name of Yahwe, but he had fallen on evil days, seeing that the absolute autocracy of the Law had made prophecy impossible. Accordingly, if the Prophet or Seer at this period wished to secure a hearing for his message he was obliged to publish it under the name of some great personality in Israel's prophetic past. It is thus that we have in Daniel the first great pseudepigraph in Judaism. 126 ESCHA TOLOG Y CHAP, III. It is by no means likely that it was the first work of this class, for certain chapters of i Enoch are probably older ; but this was by far the greatest of these early pseudepigraphs, and it was the only one that won its way into the Jewish Old Testament Canon.' We shall now touch on the salient points in the Apocalypse of Daniel, but only in the briefest man- ner, as we shall have to deal with it later at greater When evil length Under various heads. When evil reaches its climax. God Culmination, and the need of the saints is greatest andjudgrthe (vii. 21, 22) xii. i) (in the time of Antiochus Epi- worid. phanes), the Ancient of Days will intervene, and His throne of judgment will be set up (vii. 9), and the world-powers overthrown (vii. 11, 12), and ever- lasting dominion given to His saints (vii. 14, 22, 27), and these will "break in pieces and consume" all the kingdoms of the world (ii. 44), and all the surviving nations will serve them (vii. 14). And the The Messianic rightcous martyrs of Israel shall rise to share in this the resurrec- Mcssianic kingdom, but the apostate Jews shall be "°"' cast into Gehenna (xii. 1-3). With the question of the resurrection we shall deal presently. That the The view that the world's history will terminate will termina°te in the Culmination of evil, and that Israel will be minat1on"'of dclivcred by supernatural help in the moment of its ' This is not quite certain, for anonyraoiis elements had been incorporated in most of the Old Testament prophets, and it is not at all unlikely that Is. xxvi. I-I9was an actual pseudepigraph, written under Isaiah's name. It was certainly composed while the Law was absolutely supreme, and since it contains teaching above and beyond the Law, its author would naturally have shrunk from issuing it in his own name. If not pseudonymous it was at all events anonymous. OF THE NATION 127 greatest need, derives originally from Ezekiel, and chap. m. after reproduction in various forms in his spiritual gvii h^e- successors attains to classical expression in Daniel, ap"cJ"ti(, and henceforth becomes a permanent factor in dogma. Jewish Apocalyptic. Isaiah Ixv., Ixvi. (before 400 B.C.) In defiance of historical sequence I have reserved The doctrine the consideration of the composite chapters Is. Ixv., he^venlnd Ixvi. to the last. These call for special treatment, a°™«a"h i^ ' in Is. Ixv. 17 because apparently they present a nevi? development ^'^^ '^^'- ^^ as regards the scene of the Messianic kingdom: it dean sources?) was to be a new heaven and a new earth. In Ixv. Jerusalem is to be especially blessed : it is to under- go a spiritual and a gradual physical transformation ^ — there appears to be no question here of the New Jerusalem : it is the same material Jerusalem as before, but supernaturally blessed. They still build houses and plant vineyards in it (Ixv. 21, 22), sinners are still found in it (Ixv. 20), and death still prevails. To the question of this creation of a new heaven and a new earth ^ in Is. Ixv. 17 we shall return two pages later. In the Messianic age here fore- ' The word Kin does not appear to imply a physical or actual creation in Ixv. 18, therein differing from its sense in Ixv. 17. 2 The older doctrine was the eternity of the present order of things. This doctrine is attested in Ps. civ. 5, "Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever"; Eccl. i. 4, "The earth abideth for ever." See also Pss. xciii. i, xcvi. lo, cxlviii. 6. This was the received view in Palestine down to the close of the second century B.C., with the exception of a few passages in the Old Testament, which we shall deal with presently. About or after lOO B.C. the destruction of the present heaven and earth was taught in I En. xci.-civ., and some decades later this doctrine, together with the creation of a new heaven and a new earth, in i En. xxxvii.- 128 ESCHATOLOGY shadowed men live to a patriarchal age, and the animal world, as in an earlier prophecy (xi. 6-9), loses its ferocity, and shares in the prevailing peace and blessedness (Ixv. 25). In Ixvi. 6-16, 18*- 22 we have a fragmentary apocalypse (see Cheyne, Introd. to Isaiah, 374-385) which describes the judgment of the hostile nations (Ixvi. 16, i8^ 19). Those of the Gentiles who escape are to go to the more distant nations and declare to them the divine glory (Ixv. 19). There- Ixxi. In this last book the doctrine of a new heaven and a new earth is set forth for the first time in Jewish Uterature with logical consistency. In the Old Testament passages where such a view appears, it is, as we have seen above, at variance with other eschatological features therein described. Is. li. 1 6, which apparently speaks also of a new heaven and a new earth is, as Cheyne [Introduction, p. 303) and Duhm (Isaiah, p. 359) have shown, a piece of mosaic interpolated at a later date. Hence the doctrine of a new heaven and a new earth appears to be adopted eclectically in the Old Testament, and is thus of the nature of a foreign element. It may there- fore be a loan from Mazdeism, as Kohut has pointed out (ZDMG, xxx. 716, 717). On the other hand, it must be recognised that the way for such a doctrine was prepared for in the Old Testament by the post-Exilic view that the present heaven and earth should be destroyed. Thus in Is. li. 6 this view is expressed, not indeed as an eschatological doctrine, but purely poetically. Not only the inhabitants of the world but the world itself will perish ; only God's salvation and God's righteousness abide for ever. " The heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner, but my salva- tion shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished." The further dissolution of the heavens and earth is pronounced in a distinctly eschatological passage of a late date, i.e. Is. xxxiv. Thus in ver. 4, " The heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll, and all their host shall fade away." Finally, in Ps. cii. 25, 26, which, according to Baethgen, was prob- ably, and, according to Duhm, was certainly, written in Maccabean times, the destruction of the present heaven and earth, and their creation anew, are poetically described : " Of old thou hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure : yea, they shall all wax old like a garment : as a vesture thou shait change them, and they shall be changed." The important thought here, it is true, is not the transitoriness of the world, but the eternity of God : though heaven and earth pass away, God abides. But if this psalm be Maccabean, we have probably here the reflection of the new doctrine of the futvire heaven and earth, though there is no other reference to it in the literature of the second century. OF THE NATION 129 upon the latter are to go up to Jerusalem, escorting chap. m. the returning exiles. This apocalypse concludes with the promise : " For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me ... so shall your seed . . . remain " (Ixvi. 22). How is this verse to be interpreted."* Does the new creation take place at the beginning of the Messianic kingdom, or at its close ? If the words are taken literally, it cannot be at its beginning ; for the earth is practically what it was before : and not at its close ; for the kingdom here has apparently no close. Hence Is. Ixv. 17, Ixvi. 2 are to be taken as meaning that the physical nature of man and of the earth will be transformed ^art />assu with man's spiritual transformation, as in Jubilees i. 29 (where see my note), iv. 26, xxiii. 26-28.' We have now completed the study of the escha- tologies of the individual and of the nation, in their concurrent and separate developments, from pre- prophetic times to the fourth or rather the second century before the Christian era. Down to the period of the Exile these developments pursue an independent course, but from the Exile onwards they begin to exert a mutual influence on each other. This mutual interaction, however, does not lead to any true synthesis till the close of the third century or the early decades of the second, when they are both ' Is. li. 16 and Ix. 19 can hardly be quoted in support of Ixv. 17, Ixvi. 22 ; for in the two last passages the language is obviously meant to be literal, whereas in the former it is metaphorical. It is possible that the idea is derived from the Persian religion. The renewal of the earth, according to this faith, was to follow after the final judg- ment and the destruction of the evil powers. Yet see note on pp. 127, 128. 9 I30 SYNTHESIS OF THE TWO ESCHATOLOGIES CHAP. III. seen to be the two complementary sides of a religious system, that subsumes and does justice to the essential claims of both. Thus, when the doctrine of the blessed immortality of the faithful is connected with that of the coming Messianic kingdom, the Synthesis of Separate eschatologies of the individual and of the eschatoiogies nation issue finally in their synthesis : ^ the righteous t°on oahe'^''''" individual, no less than the righteous nation, will israei°to^the participate in the Messianic kingdom, for the Messianic ri^hteous dead of Israel will rise to share therein. kingdom. " -^ _ We have considered the question of the day of Yahwe and the Messianic kingdom in relation to Israel and the Gentiles as they were conceived by pre-Exilic, Exilic, and post-Exilic writers. We have seen that whereas the advent of Yahwe to exercise judgment meant all but universally a crisis of doom for Israel in the pre-Exilic period, in sub- sequent times it came all but universally to be regarded as marking the advent of Messianic blessedness for Israel. Concurrently with the establishment of the Mes- sianic hope in the national consciousness the claims of the individual had, as has already been shown, pressed themselves irresistibly on the notice of religious thinkers — so irresistibly, in fact, that no representation of the future could ultimately hope for acceptance which failed to render them adequate ' A synthesis of these two eschatologies was attempted by Ezekiel wholly within the sphere of this life. But this reconciliation was achieved only through a misconception and misrepresentation of the actual facts of the problem. And yet this theory of retribution gave such general satisfaction that the need of a theory that did justice to the facts of the problem was not experienced, save by isolated thinkers, till the era of the Job literature. IN DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION 131 satisfaction. Thus naturally these two questions chap. m. came to be considered as essentially related, as in fact they were. The righteous individual and the righteous nation should be blessed together — or rather the righteous individual should ultimately be recompensed — not with a solitary immortality in heaven or elsewhere, but with a blessed resurrection life together with his brethren in the coming Messi- anic kingdom. We saw above how the doctrine of an individual immortality failed to establish itself per- manently in the Old Testament, and the grounds for such a failure were not far to seek. But the objections against the belief in a blessed immortality of the righteous man apart from the righteous community are actual arguments in favour of the resurrection of the righteous to share in the Messianic kingdom. The obvious lesson in such a development is that the individual should not seek to be blessed apart fi'om his brethren — nay, rather that his blessedness, his highest well-being, is impossible of realisation except through the common life. The doctrine of the resurrection is clearly enun- ciated in two passages of great interest : as a spiritual conception in Is. xxvi. 1-19, and as a mechanical conception in Dan. xii. 2, 3. Is. xxvi. 1-19 (anonymous or pseudepigraphic ?) Doctrine of the forms an independent writing (Cheyne) composed spHmTiiy"" about 334 B.c.^ He calls it "a Liturgical Meditation." "-^^"^^^f '" ^ Smend and Kuenen assign chaps, xxiv. -xxvii. to the fourth century; Driver to an early post-Exilic date ; Duhm (Das Buck Jesaia, p. xii.) to the close of the second century B.C. ; so also Marti and Kennett. Even if the last date is right, the doctrine is most probably not later than the third century B.C. 132 RESURRECTION OF THE CHAP. III. The writer looks forward to the setting up of the Icingdom, to the city of strength, whose walls and bulwarks are salvation, and whose gates will open that the righteous nation may " enter in " (xxvi. i, 2). And since the nation was but few in numbers, the righteous dead shall rise and share the blessedness of the regenerate nation (xxvi. 19). This notable verse should, with Duhm and Cheyne, be read as follows: "Thy dead men (Israel!) shall arise, and the inhabitants of the dust shall awake ^ and shout for joy ; ^ for a dew of lights is thy dew, and the earth shall produce the shades." Criticism of In this passage of Isaiah, as we have above his doctrine. i i i • i • /- , remarked, there is a true synthesis of the escha- tologies of the nation and of the individual. A true synthesis, and yet defective. A true synthesis ; for justice is done to the claims of the righteous nation and the righteous individual, and the blessedness of the individual and that of the nation receive their perfect consummation together. A defective syn- thesis ; for the righteous who die before the advent of the Messianic kingdom are, till that kingdom appears, committed to the unblessed existence of Sheol,* where they are shut out from the life of God. 1 The designation of death as a sleep did not arise from the resurrection hope ; for it is found in books that were unacquainted with this hope. Thus death is described as "sleep" in Gen. xlvii. 30; Deut. xxxi. 16; Job vii. 21, xiv. 12 ; as " the eternal sleep " in Jer. li. 39, 57. Hence in later times, when the belief in the resurrection was firmly established, and the state of the departed is described as a " sleep," the word is not necessarily to be taken in its literal meaning. 2 vn' and 'nSaj are omitted by these scholars as interpolations, and instead of H311 M^\>^ they read uni is'i'^ni. ^ In this synthesis Sheol on the one hand maintains its primitive heathen RIGHTEOUS IN ISAIAH 133 Yet if we are to disregard this defect, which was chap. m. inevitable under the circumstances, this passage of Isaiah presents us with a truly spiritual doctrine of the future life ; for that life stands in organic and living relation to the present life in God, which the faithful enjoy on earth. And since the faithful alone stood in this relation, only the resurrection of the righteous was conceivably possible. This limitation of the resurrection to the righteous is the primitive form of this conception. It is the genuine product of Jewish inspiration, and not derived from any foreign source. For even if the Mazdean doctrine of the resurrection of the righteous and the wicked be of an earlier date, it could not be the parent of the higher spiritual form with which we have just dealt. This spiritual form of the resurrection doctrine is The doctrine the genuine product of Jewish inspiration ; for all Hgtteois l^e its factors are indigenous to Jewish thought. The™^'^'!'^ ^ genuine pro- way was prepared for it, as we have seen, in the '^"'='. °f J<=*'='i independent and concurrent eschatologies of the in- dividual and the nation, the synthesis of which could not admit of any other resurrection save that of the righteous. But long before any such synthesis was effected the idea of a spiritual resurrection had character in that it is still an unspiritual, godless region ; but on the other it undergoes a certain transformation in that, though heretofore the eternal abode of all the departed, it henceforth becomes only the intermediate abode of righteous Israelites, though it continues to be the eternal abode of all else. Thus for the time being the progress achieved by the writers of Pss. xlix. and Ixxiii. is lost sight of. These, we remember (pp. 73-78), held that death could not break off the communion of the righteous with God, and accord- ingly that the soul of the faithful could not descend into Sheol, as popularly conceived, but must be taken home to God. 134 RESURRECTION OF THE CHAP. III. established itself in Israel. Thus in Hos. vi, 2 The idea of a (possibly of Exilic or post-ExiHc origin) a religious resumction— transformation of character is described as a spiritual chief°soiSces— ^esurrection : " After two days will he revive us : on already f^g third day he will raise us up so that we shall live lamiUar to ... Judaism before him." This is done on a large scale in Ezek. and Ezekiei. xxxvii. The rcsurrection there described of the dry bones imports, no doubt, a political restoration of Israel, but it is a restoration ethically conditioned. The people so restored are to be God's people (xxxvii. 13) ; they will be cleansed from all their sins and transgressions (xxxvii. 23) ; they will walk in the statutes and judgments of God, and be ruled by the Messiah of David's line (xxxvii. 24, 25) ; God will make an everlasting covenant of peace with them, and dwell with them for ever (xxxvii. 26, 27). Hence the resurrection in Ezekiei, though national, postulates a moral regeneration of the people. This harmonises with the view enforced elsewhere in Ezekiei that the conversion of the individual Israelites is the pre- condition for the restoration of the kingdom. Determination We havc on an earlier page (see pp. 79-81) "hou^funder- referred to the thought underlying this spiritually lying this conceivcd doctrine of the resurrection. We must doctrme. here deal with it more closely. According to Is. xxvi. the righteous individual is at some period after death to be restored to communion with God and The resurrec- witli tlic rigkteous coTumunity. This dozible restora- d'oub™?e'sTor'a- i^on to commu7iion with God and to communion with reswritton to ^^^ commtmity of the faithful after death constitutes communion j-j^g rcsurrection in its essential aspects. That there RIGHTEO US IN ISAIAH 1 3 5 should be any delay to this restoration to coinniunion chap. m. with God after death in Is. xxvi. is, as we have above „ith God, and seen, due to the imperfect thought conditions of the HghTeous'" time. Till the Messianic kingdom was established, community. even the righteous must abide in Sheol apart from God. In later times, however, when this heathen idea of Sheol was displaced by the doctrine of Paradise, or heaven, as the abode of the faithful immediately after death, death made no breach in the communion of the faithful with God. Hence (a) Restoration the first constituent of the resurrection doctrine is with°G™dTo°t" not really subject to any time -conditions. The co3°t[oDJd second constituent, however, restoration to com- because un- broken by munion with the community of the righteous, seems death. at first sight to be so conditioned ; for this second {t) Restoration requirement cannot he/u//y realised till the kingdom with the "°'™ of God is consummated either in this world or in the "ommunUy next. In other words, the blessedness of the in- '^ "^"iporaiiy -^ conditioned dividual is conditioned by that of the commtmity as a ^^ regards its 11 T-i (-1 1 r • 1 \ r • • consummation, whole. But further, it m the definition "restora- tion to communion with God and to communion with the community of the faithful after death " we omit the words "after death," we have in what bm not as remains a description of the spiritual change which spfntu^'"^ the faithful must already experience in the present ^hrspiritua"! life, and which really forms in itself the essence of ■"'^sun'^ction ^ ^ can be experi- the resurrection. Such a spiritual change constitutes, ™<:ed in the in Pauline language, a spiritual resurrection. Thus it appears that man can appropriate the spiritual side of this doctrine already here : can, through abjuring the life of self and sin, enter into the new life of God 136 RESURRECTION OF THE CHAP, III. Moreover, since the life of the faithful beyond the grave is in communion with God and the faithful departed, this life is the resurrection life, though but in its beginnings. Prevalence of resurrection doctrine indirectly attested. and of the community of the faithful. Thus the spiritual resurrection can already be experienced by the faithful on this side of the grave. But we may press on farther, and ask : If this Old Testament doctrine of the time of the resurrection of the faithful is manifestly based on the faulty conceptions of that age, when do the faithful rise to the resurrection life beyond the grave? The answer is clear in the light of later developments. Since the life of the faithful be- yond the grave consists in communion with God and communion with the faithful who form the kingdom of God, though but in its beginnings, then the faithful in a certain degree enter into the resurrection life immediately after death, into the true resurrection life, though not indeed into its consummated form ; for that cannot be realised till the consummation of the righteous community, or the kingdom of God. Thus it is only from the standpoint of its constcntmation that the second essential factor of the resurrection can be said to be temporally conditioned. The currency of the doctrine of the resurrection is attested in Ps. Ixxxviii. 10, where, indeed, the resurrection of the righteous is only mentioned in order to be rejected : "Wilt thou show wonders to the dead ? Shall the shades arise and praise thee?" That this psalmist should reject the resur- rection hope is not to be wondered at ; for in the Psalter this psalm stands solitary and alone as the expression of a pessimistic despair. A similar RIGHTEOUS IN ISAIAH 137 rejection of the resurrection doctrine may possibly chap. m. be found in Ecclesiastes vii. 14. We must assume that a considerable period of Doctrine of the . . , . . P , . -, . resurrection time elapses between the ongm of this doctrine as mechanically attested in Isaiah and the next and final form in """'^'^"'^ • which it appears in the Old Testament, i.e. in Dan. xii. 2 : "And many of them that sleep in the land of dust shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt." Here there is an absolute transformation of the The resurrec- , . T T « , y y tion doctrine resurrection doctrine. Heretofore it was tfie sofe pre- has already rogative of the righteous Israelite ; now it is extended fn'to^fefJst* to the pre-eminently good and bad in Israel. Accord- ^ogma. ingly, between the rise of the doctrine enunciated in Isaiah and that in Daniel there was probably a considerable interval — an interval sufficiently long to account for the loss of the original significance of the resurrection as a restoration to the life of communion with God which had been broken off by death. During this interval, at all events within a small circle of pious Israelites, the spiritual doctrine has passed into a current and somewhat lifeless dogma, in which the real essence of the conception has been forgotten ; for without any consciousness of impro- priety, the writer of Daniel can speak of the resur- rection of the wicked. The resurrection is thus severed from the spiritual root from which it sprang, and transformed into an eschatological property or device, by means of which certain members of the nation are presented in the body before God for judgment. tion to the wicked. 138 DOCTRINE OF RESURRECTION CHAP. III. Thus the doctrine of the resurrection was probably familiar to the Jews for many generations previous to Daniel ; unless we are to assume that the later conception in Daniel is due to Mazdean influences. Grounds for But though the possibility of extending the resur- of'the^resurrrc- rection to the wicked is to be explained by the lifelessness of this article of the faith, we have not as yet learnt why the writer was obliged to resort to this idea. The ground for such a necessity is clearly to be discovered in his belief that Sheol is still exempt from the divine sway, and that, though God can raise souls from thence, He cannot influ- ence them for good or evil so long as they are there. Hence, if any inhabitants of Sheol are to be re- warded or punished, they must first through resur- rection return to earth and come within the bounds of the divine rule. Thus this new application of the resurrection conception ' in Daniel follows logically from two beliefs of the writer — the doctrine of Gods retributive righteousness, and the heathen conception of Sheol} It is most noteworthy that this doctrine of the resurrection of the wicked ^ is attested only three or, 1 This doctrine of a partial resurrection of the wicked is taught also in I En. i.-xxxvi. (see Chap. XXII.) This section may be earlier than Daniel. A general resurrection of all Israel is found probably in 2 Mace. xii. 42, 43, and 4 Ezra vii. 37. 2 Sheol is still the " land of dust," Dan. xii. 2. ^ This resurrection to punishment, or a belief somewhat akin, is found in contemporary work, xxiv. ; xxv. 6-8; xxvi. 20, 21 ; xxvii. I, 12, 13, a fragment- ary apocalypse of 334 B.C. (Cheyne), a date which seems too early, as that of Duhm (Das Buck Jesai'a, p. xii. ), i.e. 128 B.C., seems much too late. Thus in xxiv. 21, 22, the "host of heaven," i.e. angelic rulers of the nations, and the kings of the earth, are to be imprisoned in the "pit," and "after many days IN ISAIAH NOT BORRO WED 139 at most, four times in Jewish literature prior to the chap. m. Christian era. In these two conflicting doctrines of the resurrec- tion we have the parents of all subsequent specula- tion on this subject in Judaism and Christianity. We have now traced the rise and development of Resurrection the doctrine of a blessed future so far as it appears in xxvl™9 the ^' the Old Testament. We have seen how thoroughly fe'wuh'inlpira- native to the Jewish genius has been the nature of ''°"' and in no ism. sense borrowed this development. It is therefore a matter of |rom Mazde- surprise that some scholars have sought to affiliate this doctrine on that of the Mazdean religion, and to treat it accordingly as borrowed from the teaching of Zoroaster. But in the case of any religion such a method of explanation is mechanical, and only to be admitted when it is clearly proved that the elements for an internal and organic development were wanting. In the case of Israel, however, these elements were present, and that in a very high degree, and were slowly but surely shaped under the influence of the supreme and formative idea of God. Further, even were the resurrection doctrine in Israel the exact equivalent of that in Mazdeism, the evidence would not justify us in concluding that the former was borrowed from Mazdeism, but only that the latter exercised a formative influence in shaping the Jewish doctrine. But as a matter of fact the to be visited " with punishment. This punishment of the angelic rulers of the nations and the kings is found also in I En. liv., xc. 25. According to later views, God did not punish a nation until He had first humiliated its angelic patron (Shir, rabba xxvii.'') Moreover, the future judg- ment of the Gentile nations will be preceded by the judgment of these angelic chiefs {Tanchuma, Beshallach 13) ; see Weber, L. d. 'I almud,''' 170. I40 ESCHATOLOGY OF THE INDIVIDUAL Resurrection doctrine in Daniel has certain affinities with that of Mazdeism, Jewish doctrine, as it appears in its earliest form in Is. xxvi., is essentially different from the Maz- dean. Thus (i.) Whereas the former is spiritually conceived as the prerogative of only the righteous in Israel, the latter is a mechanical and ethically in- different dogma, in accordance with which good and bad alike are raised. Thus whereas the former is specifically the result of right conduct, the latter has no relation to conduct at all. (ii.) According to the former, only a limited number — the faithful in Israel — are raised ; according to the latter, all men of all nationalities and of all times, (iii.) According to the former, the resurrection was at the beginning of the Messianic kingdom ; according to the latter, at its consummation in connection with the final judg- ment. Thus we see that the resurrection doctrine in Is. xxvi. cannot in any sense be derived from that of the Mazdean religion. We may observe here, in the way of anticipation, that this spiritual form of the resurrection is the prevailing one in Judaism down to the Christian era. But as regards this doctrine as it appears in Daniel, the case is very dissimilar. There are several points in common between Daniel's doctrine of the resurrection and that in Mazdeism. Thus — (i.) both alike teach a resurrection of the righteous and the wicked ; and (ii.) both alike combine it with the final judgment. Since there are some other points of contact between the eschatologies of the two, it is not impossible that we have here traces of the influence of the Mazdean religion. On the other AMONG THE GREEKS 141 hand, we must recognise that certain differences chap. m. exist. Thus the resurrection in Daniel is not ex- but in~other tended to all Israelites, but is limited to the martyrs strong" at and the apostates, whereas in Mazdeism it is abso- ^'^riance with lutely universal. Again in Daniel, Sheol — the inter- mediate abode of the saints and apostates — preserves its ancient godless character, whereas in Mazdeism the intermediate abode of the souls of the righteous and of the wicked are respectively heaven and hell. Finally, in Daniel the final judgment is at the beginning of the Messianic kingdom, in Mazdeism at its close. Thus even in Daniel's eschatology the influence of Mazdeism was, on the most favourable assumption, but slight. We conclude, therefore, that though Mazdeism may have exerted some influence in shaping the mechanical doctrine of the resurrection in Daniel, the evidence is wholly against the assumption of any such influence on the spiritual doctrine of the resurrection as taught by Is. xxvi. Judaism, as we are aware, came under Greek Grounds for a influences as early as the third century B.C. It is a ^heOreek^doc- matter, therefore, of great moment to ascertain to louflnd 'tht what extent these influences operated in the forma- ^'^"^'^ "''^• tion of the Jewish doctrines of the soul and of the future life. It has long been the fashion to exaggerate these influences, and to derive from Greek sources certain undoubtedly indigenous developments. Such exaggerations have been due in many instances to indefinite ideas both of Judaism and of Greek religion. Their best refutation will 142 ESCHATOLOGY OF THE INDIVIDUAL CHAP. III. be to append to our history of Jewish eschatology a short sketch of Greek reUgion in so far as this relates to the soul and the future life. Doctrine of the Soul and the Future Life among the Greeks^ Homeric Only One part of man's composite nature sur- ^ M^trine of the yj^g^j death accotding to Homer. This was the soul (->//'v%»?). But the Homeric conception of the soul is peculiar. It enjoys an independent and secret existence in the body, and on the death of the body independently withdraws itself It exer- cises no function of the human spirit, whether of thought, will, or emotion. These belong to the " mind " (^v/io?), which resided in the diaphragm {(f)peve'i, II. xxii. 475). The Svyi,b<; is the most comprehensive expression in Homer for the various mental activities. Now this ^u/xo?, and such faculties of the mind as are represented more or less de- finitely by voo