RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEW TESTAMENTS<\/p>\n
INTRODUCTION<\/p>\n
From the times of the primitive Church down to the last century it was the generally accepted view, except in the case of a few isolated scholars, that the Old Testament was closed in the fifth century B.C., and that in the interval between the fifth century and the New Testament no divine voice had broken the silence, no divine message been sent to the faithful remnant of Israel, and no development had been achieved by the righteous seekers after God in Palestine. All these positions have now been abandoned by scholars and by the vast body of educated people. So far from the Old Testament being closed in the fifth century, it is now acknowledged, even by the most conservative Old Testament critics, that portions of it, such as Daniel and the Maccabean Psalms, belong to the second century B.C.; while progressive scholars are more and more recognising that late elements are to be found in the Old Testament in a far larger degree than had hitherto been surmised. Old Testament criticism has, therefore, narrowed down the so-called \u201cperiod of silence\u201d to something under two centuries. But recent research has shown that no such period of silence ever existed. In fact, we are now in a position to prove that these two centuries were in many respects centuries of greater spiritual progress than any two that had preceded them in Israel. The materials for such a proof are to be found in a minor degree in the Apocrypha (see chap. vii.), but mainly in the Pseudepigrapha (see chap. viii.)\u2014that not inconsiderable body of literature which was written between 180 B.C. and A.D. 100 and issued pseudonymously, i.e. under assumed names, which are always the names of various ancient worthies in Israel anterior to the time of Ezra.
\nOwing to the efforts of Ezra and his spiritual successors the Law came to be regarded as the complete and last word of God to men. When this view of the Law became dominant it is obvious that no man, however keenly he felt himself to be the bearer of a divine message to his countrymen, could expect a hearing.
\nHence with a view to gain a hearing such men published a series of books\u2014only a portion of which has been preserved\u2014under the names of Ezra, Baruch, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Moses, Enoch, etc.
\nThis literature was written probably for the most part in Galilee, the home of the religious seer and mystic. Not only was the development of a religious but also of an ethical character. In both these respects the way was prepared by this literature for the advent of Christianity, while a study of the New Testament makes it clear that its writers had been brought up in the atmosphere created by these books and were themselves directly acquainted with many of them.
\nOwing to these religious thinkers and visionaries (which include the writers of Daniel, Is. 24\u201327, etc.) the hopeless outlook of the faithful individual in the Old Testament was transformed into one of joy. The expectation of the Old Testament saint was an everlasting existence in the unblessed abode of Sheol or Hades. This expectation was transformed by this school of writers into the hope of a blessed immortality.
\nAnd what holds true here holds true of the entire world of the Old Testament conceptions. They all underwent modification and development, but not in the same measure; the religious ideas of this period were in a state of constant flux, in which, though the movement was on the whole progressive and spiritual, the less worthy elements were almost as frequently in the ascendant as the more noble.
\nBut with the advent of Christianity this heritage from the last two centuries was all but wholly transformed, and the New Testament represents in one of its main aspects the consummation of the spiritual travail of Israel\u2019s seers and sages, and especially of those of the last two centuries.
\nOwing to the transformation of the Old Testament ideas in this literature and especially in the New Testament the student must expect to find that what was the meaning of a word or phrase in the Old Testament is no longer the same in the New Testament. Let me take as an illustration the phrase \u201cstrangers and sojourners.\u201d
\nIn the Old Testament we find the saints in Israel spoken of as being \u201cstrangers and sojourners with God\u201d (Lev. 25:23; Ps. 39:13), that is, God was regarded as their temporary host, with whom they sojourned for a few years and then passed to their eternal home beyond His jurisdiction. When, however, we pass to the New Testament the phrase has assumed a directly opposite significance. There the saints are designated, it is true, as strangers and pilgrims on the earth (Heb. 11:13), or as \u201cstrangers and sojourners\u201d (Eph. 2:19), but they are so designated, just because their true citizenship is even now in heaven (Phil. 3:20), in the city that God has prepared for them (Heb. 11:16); and so far from being sons of earth they are even now full citizens of the sacred commonwealth, and sons of God\u2019s own house (Eph. 2:19).<\/p>\n
CHAPTER I<\/p>\n
PROPHECY AND APOCALYPTIC<\/p>\n
All true growth in religion springs from the communion of man with God, wherein man learns the will of God, and thereby becomes an organ of God, a personalised conscience, a revealer of divine truth for men less inspired than himself. The truth thus revealed through a man possesses a divine authority for men; for all such true knowledge of God can be verified in a greater or lesser degree by personal experience. There are amongst the faithful those who assimilate and verify the truths of the past and thus preserve the spiritual tradition; for spirit is born of spirit as flesh is born of flesh. There are others who do more: they not only verify the religious truths of the past but they add to them others won in personal communion with the immediate Living God. Now, if revelation is to be progressive, each new disclosure must build on those which have gone before, and under the conditions of life in the ancient world this could take place only within a society or nation, which had assimilated the sum of such past revelations. Such a process could not be international in the ancient world; for though there was some interchange of ideas between nation and nation, yet it was sporadic and not continuous. Thus only within one and the same nation could there be the free communication of thought and spiritual life, which an unbroken prophetic succession postulates. Outside this society or nation there might be some true knowledge of God: nay more, there was some such knowledge of God in various nations, embodied in their myths and religious traditions by isolated mystics, seers, thinkers and schools of seekers after God, but somehow the prophetic succession outside Israel always failed prematurely or became corrupt. But in this respect Israel proved itself the chosen nation; for in it the succession of seers, prophets, wise men and apocalyptists was unbroken, and lasted till under the providence of God the Greek and Roman empires had destroyed the old barriers that divided nation from nation, and so prepared the way, whereby Christianity could go forth from the narrow confines of Palestine and become the religion of the world.
\nIn the religious development of Israel, the chief agents in pre-Exilic times were seers and prophets, and, during the Exile and after it, prophets, biblical students and apocalyptists. With the latter period we are mainly concerned at present, and particularly with apocalyptic and its relation to prophecy, and the relation of both to Christianity.
\nThe current view on these questions in the past, not only amongst the laity but also amongst scholars generally, was that to prophecy was due all or practically all the religious development of Israel; that between Malachi and the Christian era there was a period of silence, in which there was no inspiration and no prophet, and no development in religious thought and experience, and that Christianity practically leapt full grown into life at the beginning of the Christian era, unbeholden to these so-called years of silence. These ideas have been rudely shattered by the research of recent years, and the vast services of apocalyptic not only to Judaism but still more to Christianity are now steadily coming into recognition. But owing to wide-spread misapprehensions of the meaning of apocalyptic, these services have been misconceived and misrepresented by notable scholars such as Harnack in Germany and Professor Porter in Yale University. Harnack regards apocalyptic as \u201can evil inheritance which the Christians took over from the Jews,\u201d and yet one which \u201cencircled the earliest Christendom as with a wall of fire and preserved it from a too early contact with the world.\u201d Harnack has not been a close student of apocalyptic and his errors in this field are therefore excusable. But what shall we say of Porter, who has studied apocalyptic seriously and written that excellent little work entitled The Messages of the Apocalyptic Writers, and who yet states that \u201cprophecy and apocalyptic represent two contrasted conceptions of the nature of revelation, two ideas of the supernatural, two estimates of the present life, two theologies, almost two religions (op. cit., p. 71). Now it can be shown that Old Testament prophecy and apocalyptic are not opposed to each other essentially: that fundamentally they have a common basis and use for the most part the same methods: that apocalyptic no less than prophecy is radically ethical: that, while some of the leading conceptions of prophecy became untenable in the face of the problems stated in Job and Ecclesiastes, the answers to these problems, which in developed forms all religious men accept this day, were first given by apocalyptic and not by prophecy.
\nWe shall now enumerate, but only enumerate, the points wherein prophecy and apocalyptic are essentially at one and those wherein they diverge. We shall thus best apprehend the contributions of both to the religious history of the world.
\n1. First, the channels through which prophet and apocalyptist either sought or came to learn the will of God, or think God\u2019s thoughts after Him, are in the main the same. Thus the prophet\u2019s knowledge came through visions, trances, and through spiritual, and yet not unconscious, communion with God\u2014the highest form of inspiration.
\n2. Again, prophecy and apocalyptic have each its own eschatology. I must pause here for a moment to emphasise the fact that eschatology is not to be identified either with prophecy or apocalyptic. With each it is in part synonymous. Eschatology is strictly doctrine of the last things: and is no more to be identified with apocalyptic than it should be with prophecy\u2014a most radical blunder that has been made recently by many English and German scholars. Prophetic eschatology is the child of prophecy, and apocalyptic eschatology is the child of apocalyptic. As might be expected, the two eschatologies by no means agree. To some of the differences between the prophetic and apocalyptic eschatologies I will now draw your attention.
\nDifferences between the eschatologies of prophecy and apocalyptic. The eschatology of prophets dealt only with the destiny of Israel, as a nation, and the destinies of the Gentile nations, but it had no message of light or comfort for the individual beyond the grave. For all men ultimately, whether of Israel or of the Gentiles, Sheol, the unblessed abode of the shades, was the final and everlasting habitation.
\nEvery advance on this heathen conception we owe to apocalyptic. (1) The belief in a blessed future life springs not from prophecy, but from apocalyptic. With this doctrine the Old Testament prophet qu\u00e2 prophet was not concerned. Not even a hint of it is to be found in Old Testament prophecy. On the other hand, the apocalyptist made it a fundamental postulate of his belief in God. Thus it is stated as an unquestionable truth in Daniel, in the late Apocalypse, which was incorporated in Isaiah 24\u201327, in the apocalyptic Psalms 49 and 73, and the foundations of the doctrine are to be found in Job, which exhibits the characteristic features and questionings of Jewish apocalyptic. Only the beginnings of this doctrine, it is true, are to be found in the Old Testament. Its further development and spiritualisation were carried on in the later apocalyptic school. It is a genuine product of Jewish inspiration, and at the beginning of the Christian era was accepted by the entire Jewish nation, with the exception of the larger and radical wing of the Sadducean party.
\n(2) Again, the Christian expectation of a new heaven and a new earth is derived not from prophecy but from apocalyptic. The prophetic expectation of a blessed future for the nation, however pure from an ethical standpoint, was materialistic. Old Testament prophecy looked forward to an eternal Messianic kingdom on the present earth, which should be initiated by the final judgment, but in apocalyptic this underwent a gradual transformation, till the hopes of the righteous were transferred from a kingdom of material blessedness to a spiritual kingdom, in which they were to be as the angels and become companions of the heavenly hosts. This transference of the hopes of the faithful from the material world, took place about 100 B.C. At this period the earth had come to be regarded as wholly unfit for this kingdom, and thus new conceptions of the kingdom arose, and it was taught by many that the Messianic kingdom was to be merely of temporary duration, and that the goal of the risen righteous was to be\u2014not this temporary kingdom or millennium\u2014but heaven itself. This conception, combined with kindred apocalyptic beliefs, begat an attitude of detachment from this world. The faithful while in the world were not of it. This temper of apocalyptic but not of prophecy finds expression in the New Testament in the words: \u201cHere we have no continuing city\u201d: \u201cWe look for a city whose builder and maker is God.\u201d
\nIf we try to appreciate these revolutions in religious thought, we shall in some degree apprehend their vast significance. In the kingdom of God, as expected by the Old Testament prophets, though righteousness was to be therein supreme, there was a large element of materialism. The emphasis was laid on the community, on its security and permanence and happiness. But the thought was almost wholly of the community and not of the individual.
\nOnly the faithful who survived till that blessed era should enjoy it and none others. Furthermore, though the kingdom itself was to be for everlasting, there was no such promise for the individual who lived to share its glories. He should enjoy it for an indefinite period and then depart from God\u2019s presence to Sheol.
\nIf we penetrate beneath the surface of such conceptions, we discover that they imply that things were of more concern than souls, it matters not whether these things be things celestial or things terrestrial. These conceptions, therefore, are somewhat of a materialistic character. But with the advent of the belief in a blessed immortality of all the faithful, and in a kingdom of spiritual blessedness, the emphasis was transferred from the material to the spiritual, from things to souls. Whatever the things may be, souls are of infinitely higher worth.
\n(3) One more doctrine which has been adopted into later Judaism and the New Testament, not from prophecy, though the germs of it are there, but from apocalyptic, is that the end of the present world will be catastrophic. According to science, there are two possible endings of the earth. Either it will perish slowly through cold, owing to the failing energies of the sun, and life revert to a savagery beyond our imaginings, and the last men die in mortal strife for the last faggot and the last crust of bread; or the earth will suddenly be destroyed catastrophically by the impact of some other heavenly body, or by the outburst of its own internal fires. While science of necessity can only predict two possible endings of the world, apocalyptic declared that the end of the present order of things will be catastrophic.
\nThis teaching of apocalyptic cannot fail to commend itself to the faith of every thoughtful man. For if we believe the teaching of science as to the conservation of energy\u2014even of the lowest forms of it\u2014then still more must we believe in the conservation of the highest forms of energy that have appeared on earth, the personalities of saints and heroes, yea, and of the nameless and numberless multitudes, in whom have been realised the divine energies of courage and truth, of faith and of unfailing hope, of love and boundless self-sacrifice.
\n(4) Again, prophecy, though mainly devoting itself to the present and to the future so far as it rose organically out of the present, occasionally took account of the past (Jer. 3:6 seqq., Ezek. 16). Its object in so doing was to show the true nature of that past, and to bring to light the real principles and agencies that moulded that past, and to show the inevitable goal to which they led. This, too, is characteristic of apocalyptic, but in a far greater degree. Thus Dan. 2:31, 32, 37\u201338; 4:7\u201312; 7; 8 deal with the present or immediate past; 1 Enoch lxxxv.\u2013vi. with all the past preceding the life of Enoch; 2 Baruch liii., lvi.\u2013lxix. with the leading crises in the history of the world down to Baruch\u2019s time; the Sybillines iii. 819 seqq., ii. 5\u2013290 with an account of the beginnings of history down to the Deluge. But the classical example of this treatment of the past is to be found in the New Testament Apocalypse, chap. 12, where the birth of Christ, and certain other great events prior to the date of the Apocalypse are recounted. Other examples discover themselves in chap. 13:1\u20134, 11\u201312, 14, etc.
\nBut whilst prophecy and apocalyptic occupy to some extent the same province, the scope of apocalyptic is incommensurably greater. Thus, whereas prophecy incidentally dealt with the past and devoted itself to the present and the future as rising organically out of the past, apocalyptic, though its interests lie chiefly in the future as containing the solution of the problems of the past and present, took within its purview things past, present, and to come. It is no mere history of such things. While the ordinary man saw only the outside of things in all their incoherence and isolation, the apocalyptist sought to get behind the surface and penetrate to the essence of events, the spiritual purposes and forces that underlie and give them their real significance. With this end in view apocalyptic sketched in outline the history of the world and of mankind, the origin of evil, its course, and inevitable overthrow, the ultimate triumph of righteousness, and the final consummation of all things. It was thus, in short, a Semitic philosophy of religion, and as such it was ever asking, Whence? Wherefore? Whither? and it put these questions in connection with the world, the Gentiles, Israel and the individual. Apocalyptic and not prophecy was the first to grasp the great idea that all history, alike human, cosmological, and spiritual, is a unity\u2014a unity following naturally as a corollary of the unity of God preached by the prophets.
\nSuch problems arose inevitably in Israel, owing to Israel\u2019s belief in monotheism and the righteousness of God. The righteousness of God postulated the temporal prosperity of the righteous, and this postulate was accepted and enforced by the Law. But the expectations thus founded and fostered had been falsified, and thus a grave contradiction had emerged between the prophetic ideals and the actual experience of the nation and of the individual. To the difficulties affecting the individual prophecy could give no answer at all. The prophets could promise a blessed future for the nation, but for the individual they could foretell, as we have seen, only Sheol. Ezekiel, it is true, said there was no problem and no difficulty; for that every man was recompensed in this life exactly as he deserved, that his outward lot harmonised perfectly with his inner character. This is the last word that prophecy had to say on the destiny of the individual, and so Ezekiel\u2019s view became the orthodox dogma of Judaism. But such a shallow dogma was presently challenged and controverted by Job and Ecclesiastes, and but for the services of apocalyptic in this field, true religion could not have survived in Palestine save in the case of a handful of mystics.
\nSince study and reflection entered largely into the life of the apocalyptist, and his chief studies were confined to the sacred books of Israel, it follows that a not unimportant element in apocalyptic is that of unfulfilled prophecy. Unfulfilled prophecy had been clearly a matter of religious difficulty to the prophets themselves. The unfulfilled prophecies of the older prophets were re-edited by the later.
\nThus Ezekiel takes up one such prophecy and reinterprets it in such a way as to show that its fulfilment is yet in the future. The prophets Jeremiah (3\u20136) and Zephaniah had foretold the invasion of Judah by a mighty people from the North. But this northern foe had failed to appear. And yet appear he must; for was not inspired prophecy pledged thereto? Hence Ezekiel re-edits this prophecy in a new form, and adjourns its fulfilment. Thus, according to Ezek. 38:8, 16, a mighty host (i.e. Gog) in the future will attack Jerusalem from the North. This host, Ezekiel declares, is the foe foretold by the prophets: \u201cThou 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\u201d (38:17).
\nMany other traces of the apocalyptic type of thought discover themselves in Ezekiel, and it is not without reason that Duhm has called Ezekiel the spiritual founder of apocalyptic.
\nThe non-fulfilment of prophecies relating to this or that individual event or people served, no doubt, to popularise the methods of apocalyptic, but only in a very slight degree in comparison with the nonfulfilment of the greatest of all prophecies\u2014the advent of the Messianic kingdom. Thus, though Jeremiah had promised that after seventy years (25:11; 29:10) Israel should be restored to their own land (24:5, 6), and there enjoy the blessings of the Messianic kingdom under the Messianic King (23:5, 6), this period had passed by, and things remained as of old. A similar expectation was cherished by Ezekiel, but this no more than that of Jeremiah was destined to be fulfilled. Next, Haggai and Zechariah promised that, when the temple was rebuilt, the Davidic kingdom should be established and the glories of the Messianic time appear. The temple was presently rebuilt, but the kingdom failed to appear. Through century after century the hope for the advent of the kingdom still persisted, and was possibly sustained with fresh reinterpretations of ancient prophecy.
\nAt any rate, in the first half of the second century B.C. we have two notable reinterpretations of the old prophecy of Jeremiah. In both of these works the problem is solved by adjourning the hour of fulfilment. In the first\u2014the Book of Daniel, circa 168\u2013165 B.C.\u2014the writer (9:25\u201327) interprets the 70 years of Jeremiah as 70 weeks of years = 490 years. Since 69\u00bd of these had already expired, there were only 3\u00bd years to run before the destruction of the Greek power and the consummation of the Theocracy. In the second, and almost contemporaneous work\u20141 Enoch lxxxiii.\u2013xc., circa 166\u2013161 B.C.\u2014a somewhat analogous solution of the problem is given. The writer takes the 70 years of Jeremiah to denote the 70 successive reigns of the 70 angelic patrons to whom God had committed the care and administration of the world. Since the sway of these angelic rulers was to terminate within the present generation, the Messianic kingdom was, therefore, at hand.
\nBoth the above periods came and passed by, and again the expectations of the Jews were doomed to disappointment. The Greek empire in the East was indeed overthrown, and an independent kingdom of Judah set up under the Maccabean dynasty. But this latter speedily showed itself to be in many respects the antithesis of the promised kingdom of God. Thenceforward the Messianic hopes undergo an absolute transformation. They are still cherished, indeed, but their object is no longer an eternal but only a temporary theocracy established on the present earth. The solutions of Daniel and Enoch (lxxxix., xc.) have been perforce abandoned for the time, but the number seventy still possesses a strong fascination for the Jewish writer of apocalyptic. Thus in 1 Enoch xci.\u2013civ. (circa 105\u201395 B.C.) the whole history of the world is divided into ten weeks, each apparently of seven generations. The Messianic kingdom is to be established at the beginning of the eighth week, and to terminate with the seventh day of the tenth. The writer is living at the close of the seventh week (1 Enoch xciii. 10). Hence the kingdom is close at hand. But this hope no more than its predecessors met with fulfilment.
\nWe shall now pass over a period of a century and a half. During this interval, a new and more ruthless power had taken the place of the Greek empire in the East. This new phenomenon called, therefore, for a fresh reinterpretation of Daniel. The fourth and last empire, which, according to Dan. 7:19\u201325, was to be Greek, was now declared to be Roman by the writer of 2 Baruch xxxvi.\u2013xl. (circa A.D. 50\u201370), and likewise by the author of 4 Ezra 10:59\u201312:35 (circa A.D. 90) In the latter work the writer implies that the vision in Dan. 7:7, 8 was misinterpreted by the angel in 7:23\u201325.
\nProphecy has always been recognised as the greatest ethical force in the ancient world. Such also was apocalyptic in its time, and yet an attempt has recently been made by advanced liberals to differentiate prophecy and apocalyptic on the ground that apocalyptic and ethics are distinct, and that ethics are the kernel and apocalyptic the husk, which Christianity shed when it ceased to need it. But apocalyptic was essentially ethical. To use the mixed metaphor of St. Paul, it was rooted and grounded in ethics, and that an ethics based on the essential righteousness of God. In every crisis of the world\u2019s history, when the good cause was overthrown and the wrong triumphant, its insistent demand was ever: \u201cShall not the Judge of all the earth do right?\u201d and its uncompromising optimism, its unconquerable faith under the most overwhelming disasters was: \u201cGod reigns, and righteousness shall ultimately prevail.\u201d
\nWhat else than an inexpugnable sense of truth, and duty to truth, inspire the refusal of the three children in Daniel to fall down and worship the image that the king had set up? When the king demands, \u201cWho is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?\u201d mark the splendid heroism of their reply: \u201cThere is a God whom we serve who is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace; and He will deliver us out of thy hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up\u201d (3:17 sqq.). Now let us turn to the apocalyptic books outside the Canon, and hear what the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs say of the faithful doer of the word of God.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery man that knoweth the law of the Lord shall be honoured,
\nAnd shall not be a stranger whithersoever he goeth\u2014
\nFor though there be a leading into captivity,
\nAnd cities and lands be destroyed,
\nAnd gold and silver and every possession perish,
\nThe wisdom of the wise can nought take away,
\nSave the blindness of ungodliness,
\nOr the callousness that comes of sin.
\nEven among his enemies shall wisdom be a glory to him,
\nAnd in a strange country a fatherland,
\nAnd in the midst of foes shall prove a friend.\u201d
\nT. Lev. xiii. 3, 7\u20138.<\/p>\n
Or again, when to faithless men excusing their moral derelictions on the ground of Adam\u2019s transgression the apocalyptist denies the right of such an excuse, and retorts in the pregnant words, \u201cNot Adam, but every man is the Adam of his own soul.\u201d
\nThere are numberless other passages showing the moral depth and inwardness of this literature. What nobler advice could the best ethical Christian teacher give to a defeated rival than this, \u201cIf a man is prospered beyond you, do not be vexed, but even have recourse unto prayer on his behalf, that he may be prospered to the full\u201d (T. Gad. vii. 1); or again, \u201cIf any man seeketh to do evil unto you, do him a good turn, and pray for him, and so from all evil ye shall be redeemed of the Lord\u201d (T. Jos. xviii. 2); or again, \u201cThe holy man is merciful to him that revileth him, and holdeth his peace\u201d (T. Benj. v. 4)?
\nThe ethical teaching on these subjects in apocalyptic is a vast advance on that of the Old Testament, and forms the indispensable link which in this respect connects the Old Testament with the New.
\nFrom these facts it follows that prophecy and apocalyptic are, in the main, concerned with the same objects, that they use, in the main, the same methods, but that, whereas the scope of prophecy was limited, as regards time and space, that of apocalyptic was as wide as the universe and as unlimited as time. Moreover, inasmuch as prophecy had died long before the Christian era, and its place had been taken by apocalyptic, it was from the apocalyptic side of Judaism that Christianity was born\u2014and in that region of Palestine where apocalyptic and not legalism held its seat\u2014even in Galilee, from whence, as we know, came our Lord and eleven of His disciples.
\nThe existence of two forms of Pharisaism in pre-Christian Judaism, i.e. the apocalyptic and the legalistic, which were the historical forerunners respectively of Christianity and Talmudic Judaism, demands here further notice. When we speak of apocalyptic and legalistic Judaism, it must not be inferred that in pre-Christian times these two were essentially antagonistic. This would be a wholly mistaken inference. Fundamentally their origin was the same. Both started from the basis of the Law. This is obvious with regard to legalistic Pharisaism, but it is true no less of apocalyptic. The most universalistic and ethical of all the apocalyptic writings, i.e. the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs, declares that \u201cthe law is the light that lighteth every man.\u201d To every Jewish apocalyptic writer the Law was of eternal validity. We have evidence of this conjunction of legalism and apocalyptic in the canonical Book of Joel. The Law is there recognised as authoritative, its ritual is a matter of the highest import, and the thoughts of the community are directed to the closely impending advent of the Kingdom of God, which is depicted in apocalyptic colouring and with apocalyptic features. Legalism and apocalyptic are for the time welded together.
\nI have emphasised the original and fundamental identity of apocalyptic and legalistic Pharisaism in respect to devotion to the Law, because Jewish scholars in the past, and to a great extent in the present, have denied to apocalyptic its place in the faith of pre-Christian orthodox Judaism. Such an action on their part is absurd, seeing that Talmudic Judaism, no less than Christianity, owes its spiritual conceptions of the future to apocalyptic. The affinity between Jewish apocalyptic and legalism is essential, since the Law was for both valid eternally; but we shall find that when apocalyptic passed over into Christianity, it abandoned this view of the Law, and became in a measure anti-legalistic. The way was already prepared in part for this abandonment by apocalyptic of the Law; for the natural tendency of the apocalyptic and legalistic sides in Pharisaism was to lay more and more emphasis on the chief factor of its belief and study, to the almost complete exclusion of the other. Thus legalistic Pharisaism in time drove out almost wholly the apocalyptic element, and became the parent of Talmudic Judaism, whereas apocalyptic Judaism developed more and more the apocalyptic, i.e. prophetic, element, and in the process came to recognise, as in 4 Ezra, the inadequacy of the Law for the salvation not only of Israel as a nation, but even of a mere handful of Israelites, unless the works of these few were supplemented by faith and accepted through the mercy of God. Thus apocalyptic Pharisaism became, speaking historically, the parent of Christianity, which in the great New Testament Apocalypse exhibits a decidedly anti-legalistic character. The Law is not once mentioned in the New Testament Apocalypse. To repeat, then: the Judaism that survived the destruction of Jerusalem was not the same as the Judaism of an earlier date.
\nWe have now dealt with the main characteristics which apocalyptic and prophecy possess in common, and those which in some degree mark them off each from one another. But there is still another characteristic, and this is, that, whereas prophecy generally bears the genuine name of its author, apocalyptic is generally pseudonymous. Generally, I repeat, for all Old Testament prophecy does not belong to the prophets under whose names it is given, considerable portions of it being in fact anonymous, as the 2nd Isaiah; and all apocalyptic is not pseudonymous, for some apocalypses appear under the names of their authors: Joel can justly be described as a genuine apocalypse in the Old Testament; while in the New Testament we have the Johannine apocalypse, and the Pauline apocalypse in 2 Thessalonians 2; and outside the canonical books the Shepherd of Hermas: others moreover are anonymous or pseudonymous, as Isaiah 24\u201327, and Zechariah 9\u201314, the fragmentary Jewish apocalypse in Mark 13, and parallels, and a few others that can be detected in the sources used by the author of the New Testament Apocalypse.
\nFrom this brief statement of the facts, it follows that apocalyptic was, with the exception of Joel, always pseudonymous or anonymous in Judaism, down to A.D. 1300, but that it lost its pseudonymous character, in Christianity at all events, in the first century A.D. Is there any explanation of these strange and conflicting phenomena?
\nBefore entering on this question I wish to confess that neither in my own books nor in those of any other writer has any satisfactory explanation been given. But that there is such an explanation a fresh and comprehensive study of the facts has convinced me, and this explanation will now be laid before the reader. The anonymity of a great part of the Bible helps us to understand in some degree the adoption in later times of pseudonymity. The Hebrew writer was almost wholly devoid of the pride of authorship, and showed no jealousy as to his literary rights. He was apparently devoid of the desire of personal fame; his sole object was the service of God and the well-being of the nation. Accordingly the post-Exilic writer adopted freely the work of his predecessors and recast it according to the needs of his own time, or in other cases, as in that of the scribe, he re-edited the works of the ancient prophets, and introduced under their names anonymous fragments of prophecy. It is to this process of re-editing that we owe their preservation. Such additions are in a certain sense pseudonymous, and prepare us for the luxuriant growth of pseudonymous prophecy in later times; but they are not truly pseudonymous, and as yet we have no explanation.
\nAgain, it has been urged by Gunkel that these writings were in a sense not really pseudonymous, since much of their material was derived from really ancient traditions, already current under the names of Daniel, Enoch, Noah. The final editor of such traditions, being conscious that he had not originated but only reinterpreted these traditions, might reasonably feel justified in attaching to his work an ancient name associated with such traditions. There is a very slight substratum of truth is this view; for to a certain extent the apocalyptist did re-edit and republish earlier traditions, but it is wholly inadequate to explain the adoption of pseudonymity. I will now attempt to give what I consider a reasonably adequate explanation of this strange phenomenon.
\nBeginning with Jewish prophecy, we observe that whereas pre-Exilic prophecy was first spoken and then written, post-Exilic prophecy was first written and not necessarily spoken at all, and that whereas the greatest pre-Exilic prophecies were published in the names of their authors, Isaiah, Hosea, or Amos, much post-Exilic prophecy was anonymous. The concluding chapters of Isaiah and Zechariah 9\u201314 are apocalyptic. In Isaiah 24\u201327, moreover, the writer deals with the ultimate destinies of the world, of the angels, and of men, and proclaims for the first time in existing Jewish literature the resurrection of righteous Israelites. Thus we find that apocalyptic has not only its roots and early growth in the Old Testament: it has already arrived at a high degree of maturity within the Canon of the Old Testament, and that without including in our purview the Book of Daniel.
\nAt this period we have the new type of prophecy, i.e. prophecy of a literary character. Like the earlier prophecy it was based in part on visions and personal revelations. When once this literary type of prophecy had firmly established itself, any one who, like the ancient order of prophets, appeared personally before the people as a representative of God, independent of traditional law or ordinance, was practically regarded as an impostor. Thus the writer of Zechariah 13 declares that if any man attempt to prophesy in the pre-Exilic fashion his father and mother will put him to death as a deceiver. Joel in the fourth century could still promise an outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh. This had been a living thought in Joel, the expectation of a Jewish pentecost, but later Jewish writers held that this promise was already fulfilled in the Law. Thus the author of the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs declares that the Law is the light that lighteth every man; and the author of the Book of Jubilees is never weary of insisting that the Law is not the expression of the moral consciousness of a particular age, but is valid for all eternity. When once this idea of an inspired Law\u2014adequate, infallible, and valid for all time\u2014had become an accepted dogma of Judaism, as it became in the post-Exilic period, there was no longer room for independent representatives of God appearing before men, such as the pre-Exilic prophets. God had, according to the official teachers of the Church, spoken His last and final word through the Law, and when the hope is expressed that in the coming age a prophet will arise, he was only conceived as one whose task was to decide questions of ritual or priestly succession, or legal interpretation in accordance with the Law. Thus in 1 Macc. 4:46 the stones of the defiled altar of burnt-offering were to be put aside till a prophet arose, and in 14:41 (cf. 9:27) the high-priesthood of Simon was to be provisionally acknowledged similarly till a prophet arose who could decide on the validity of his high-priesthood. Accordingly the first fact we are to recognise is, that from the time of Ezra and Nehemiah the Law has not only assumed the functions of the ancient pre-Exilic prophets, but it has also, so far as lay in its power, made the revival of such prophecy an impossibility. The prophet who issued a prophecy under his own name after the time of Ezra and Nehemiah could not expect a hearing unless his prophecy had the imprimatur of the Law.
\nThis is exactly the view of the Rabbinic scholars. Thus they taught that, whereas the Prophets and Hagiographa will in the future cease to be, for there is nothing in them which is not suggested in the Law (Jer. Meg. 70d; Taanith, 9a), \u201cThe Law itself would endure for ever\u201d; and that \u201cAny prophet who attempted to annul one of its laws would be punished by death\u201d (Tosephta xiv. 13), and that \u201cthough all mankind should combine, they could not abolish one yod of it\u201d (Cant. R. v. 11; Lev. R. xix.; Num. R. xvii. etc.). See Jewish Encyc. xii. 197.
\nIt is now clear, I think, that from Nehemiah\u2019s time onward prophecy could not gain a hearing, whether the prophecy was genuine, that is, appeared under the name of its actual author, or was anonymous, unless it was acceptable in the eyes of the Law.
\nFrom the class of genuine and anonymous works we pass on to the third division, the pseudonymous. There are at all events two of them in the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes and Daniel. With the former we have here no concern. But how are we to explain the pseudonymity of Daniel and the other apocalyptic works of the second century B.C. such as Enoch, Jubilees and the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs? This pseudonymity has already in part been explained. These apocalyptists do not simply repeat the old truths, which in so many cases had become the mere shibboleths of a petrified orthodoxy, they not only challenged many of the orthodox views of the time and condemned them, but they also carried forward the revelation of God in the provinces of religion, ethics, and eschatology. Against the reception of such fresh faith and truth, the Law stood in the way, unless the books containing them came under the \u00e6gis of certain great names in the past. Against the claims and authority of such names, the official representatives of the Law were in part reduced to silence, at all events in the case of the Book of Daniel. But there is another ground for the adoption of pseudonymity, and when we combine it with the autocracy claimed and exercised by the Law we have the grounds for which we are in search. This second ground is the formation of the threefold Canon of the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa. Before the formation of the prophetic Canon anonymous prophetic writings could gain currency and acceptance on the ground of their inherent worth, but, when once the prophetic Canon was closed, no book of a prophetic character could gain canonisation as such. Now the collection of the Prophets existed pretty much in its present form about 200 B.C., though additions may have been made to Hosea, Isaiah, and Zechariah, subsequently to that date. Into the Hagiographa were received all books of a religious character, of which the date was believed to go back as far as the time of Ezra. To this third division of the Canon books were admitted down to A.D. 100, and the last were Canticles, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. Daniel was admitted to this third Canon at some period in the second century B.C., in the belief that it was written by the ancient worthy of that name, but not among the prophets; for the prophetic Canon was closed. The example of Daniel was followed by Jewish apocalyptic down to the thirteenth century A.D. It was pseudonymous, and it remained pseudonymous; for the Law was supreme, inspiration was officially held to be dead, and the Canon was closed. Moreover, all the great Jewish apocalypses which were written before A.D. 10, and which carried on the mystical and spiritual side of religion as opposed to the legalistic, Judaism dropped and banned after its breach with Christianity, just as it dropped and banned the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
\nThereupon Legalism became absolute, and determined henceforth the character of Judaism. Apocalyptic, which had exercised a determining influence in many of the great crises of the nation, and had given birth to and shaped the higher theology of Judaism, was driven from its position of secondary authority, and either banished absolutely or relegated wholly into the background. Owing to this fact Jewish scholars like Jost and Graetz have denied the great significance of apocalyptic in Judaism. But this blunder is every day becoming more impossible, and now we find that Jewish scholars like Buttenwieser (Jewish Encyc. i. 676) maintain that the courage and persistency of the Jews in their faith, their indomitable hope under persecution, their scorn of death, were all nourished by apocalyptic from the time of the Maccabees down to the thirteenth century A.D. \u201cThe darker the present grew \u2026 the more eagerly did their minds turn to the comfort offered by apocalyptic promises, which predicted the end of their suffering and the dawn of their delivery.\u201d
\nAll Jewish apocalypses, therefore, from 200 B.C. onwards were of necessity pseudonymous, if they sought to exercise any real influence on the nation; for the Law was everything, belief in inspiration was dead amongst them, and the Canon was closed.
\nBut with the advent of Christ we enter upon a new and larger atmosphere recalling, and yet far transcending, what had been best in the prophetic and apocalyptic periods of the past. Again the heavens had opened and the divine teaching had come to mankind, no longer merely in books bearing the names of ancient worthies, but on the lips of living men, who came in person as heaven-sent messengers of God before His people. Thus the spirit of prophecy descended afresh on the faithful, belief in inspiration awoke anew, and for many generations no exclusive Canon of Christian writings was established. The causes, therefore, which had necessitated the adoption of pseudonymity in Judaism, had no existence in the Christianity of the first century, and accordingly there is not a single a priori reason for regarding the New Testament Apocalypse as pseudonymous. Whether the John who wrote the apocalypse is the Apostle, or some other John, is a question that cannot be discussed here. But our immediate concern is to protest against the uncritical readiness with which scholars in the past and present have stated that pseudonymity is a universal characteristic of apocalyptic. Pseudonymity is no more a universal characteristic of apocalyptic than it is an essential one. Whether it is pseudonymous or not depends, as we have seen, on things external to itself. In 2 Thess. 2 and 1 Cor. 15 we have the Pauline apocalypse given under its author\u2019s name, and every kind of evidence tends to prove that the greatest of all the apocalypses was written by the prophet John, who claims to have been its author.
\nBut in the case of later apocalypses, history repeats itself. Apocalypses again become pseudonymous. Some are simply Christian editions of Jewish apocalypses: others are purely of Christian composition. The belief in prophecy began to disappear, and in due course the Canon was closed.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER II<\/p>\n
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE<\/p>\n
The kingdom of God\u2014what meaning are we to attach to this phrase? According to Dalman this phrase means \u201cthe sovereignty or rule of God\u201d in rabbinic literature. Both he and Edersheim maintain that this is in every instance the primary meaning of the phrase in the New Testament. But Dalman goes further and states categorically that no doubt can be entertained that both in the Old Testament and in Jewish literature \u201ckingdom,\u201d when applied to God, means always \u201ckingly rule,\u201d never the \u201ckingdom,\u201d as if it were meant to suggest the territory governed by Him. It would be rash to call in question Dalman\u2019s authority as a scholar in rabbinic literature, and his ex cathedra statements in that province may with safety be accepted. Few, however, will be found to agree with his sweeping statement as to the meaning of the expression \u201ckingdom of God\u201d in the New Testament and earlier Jewish literature. Here, rather, while in many, perhaps in most, of the New Testament passages we may admit his contention, in others we must maintain that the phrase \u201ckingdom of God\u201d is used eschatologically and signifies \u201cthe divine community in which the will of God will be perfectly realised.\u201d This is the sense in which the expression is to be taken when applied to apocalyptic literature, in what follows. I shall not delay further here on this subject, but merely add that the expression hardly ever occurs in apocalyptic, though the thing itself is presupposed. In Chapter III the chief characteristics of the kingdom are dealt with.
\nFrom this brief consideration of the significance of the kingdom of God in this literature, we pass on to a like brief consideration of the chief phases this idea assumed therein from about 200 B.C., or earlier, to the fall of the Jewish State.
\nBut in order to know the contribution made by apocalyptic literature to this conception we must first of all define this expectation as it was current in prophecy. According to the prophets the kingdom of God was to be established on the present earth. A few passages, indeed, in Isaiah (65:17; 66:22) speak of a transformation of the earth, but this transformation was not so much of the physical as of the moral world of man. The kingdom was to be under the immediate rule of God. Its members, according to the narrower school of the prophets, were to be composed only of the righteous Israelites who had survived its advent: but, according to the larger hearted prophets, the righteous in Israel were to form the centre of the kingdom, and the Gentiles were to be brought into it by conversion. Its blessings were to be at once spiritual and material. The kingdom was to endure for everlasting, but its members were not to enjoy immortality but lives of patriarchal duration.
\nThis is the kingdom according to the prophets. Now the importance of apocalyptic may be gauged from the fact that every subsequent development of this conception, till it is reborn in Christianity, is due to apocalyptic literature. In order to make clear the various changes which this conception underwent during this period, we shall first of all enumerate the books or passages which represent the first stage, and next, eschewing detail, sketch in barest outline the doctrine they present. The books in question are Isaiah 26:1\u201319, Daniel, 1 Enoch xxi.\u2013xxxvi., lxxxiii.\u2013xc.; Test. XII. Patriarchs, Jubilees\u2014in other words, the apocalyptic works of the second century B.C.
\nThe first stage of apocalyptic represents the synthesis of the two eschatologies of the individual and of the nation. The eschatology of the individual dealt with his future destinies as an individual. Down to the fourth century or later the individual in Judaism had no higher expectation than an unending existence in Sheol, where social and national distinctions prevailed but not moral; for good and bad fared exactly alike. Finally, however, the hope of the individual was raised through the experience of personal communion with God, such as we meet with in Job and certain of the Psalms, into belief in a blessed immortality. The eschatology of the nation dealt with the future destinies of the nation as a whole: its expectation was from the first fixed on God\u2019s intervention on behalf of His own people, and this expectation gradually developed into belief in the Messianic kingdom or the kingdom of God. Down to the Exile these two developments pursued an independent course, but from the Exile onwards they began to exert an influence on each other. This mutual interaction, however, did not lead to any true synthesis till the third century or even the beginning of the second, when they were both seen to be complementary sides of one and the same religious doctrine, namely, the doctrine of the resurrection, which subsumes and does justice to the essential claims of both. Thus when the belief in the blessed immortality of the faithful is connected with that of the coming Messianic kingdom, the separate eschatologies of the individual and of the nation issue finally in their synthesis: in other words, we arrive at the doctrine of the resurrection of the righteous; for the righteous dead of Israel are to rise to share in the kingdom. Thus the righteous individual and the righteous nation should be blessed together\u2014or rather the righteous individual should ultimately be recompensed\u2014not with a solitary immortality in heaven or elsewhere but\u2014with a blessed resurrection life together with his brethren in the coming Messianic kingdom. The obvious lesson of such a development was that the individual was not to be blessed apart from his brethren; for that his blessedness, his highest well-being was impossible of realisation except through the common life.
\nThus conceived, the doctrine of the resurrection is a genuine product of Jewish inspiration; for all its factors are indigenous to the thought and religious experience of Judaism.
\nWhether this completed doctrine is earlier than the second century is a debatable question; but, however this may be, the entire literature, or almost the entire literature that attests its existence belongs to this century. In order to encourage the faithful under the savage persecution of Antiochus, religious thinkers of the period consolidated and developed into more or less consistent theodicies the products of present and past inspiration. While their contemporary, the author of Sirach, was proclaiming that Sheol was outside the sphere of moral government; and that<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether it be for a thousand years, for a hundred or for ten,
\nIn Sheol there are no corrections of life\u201d
\n(41:4),<\/p>\n
these writers insisted most strongly on the fact of retribution in the next life, and that the essential distinctions now existing between the righteous and the wicked must one day be outwardly realised. Hence, all with one accord proclaim the certainty of judgment on the Advent of the Messianic kingdom, while some go so far as to teach that immediately after death men enter into a state of bliss or woe in Sheol, which is but the prelude to their final destiny. The righteous as a whole, both quick and dead (1 Enoch li., lxxxiii.\u2013xc.; Test. XII. Patriarchs), or only the martyred righteous (Isa. 26:19 (?); Dan. 12:1, 2), were to be recompensed to the full in the eternal Messianic kingdom, and the blessed future of the righteous individual and the righteous nation were to be consummated together. Our authorities differ as to the mode in which the kingdom was to be ushered in. Some held that it was to be introduced suddenly and catastrophically by God Himself (Daniel, 1 Enoch lxxxiii.\u2013xc.), others that there was to be a gradual renewal of creation, introduced pari passu with the spiritual transformation of man (Isa. 65\u201366; Jub. iv. 26, xxiii. 26\u201328). The nature and length of the life of the members of the kingdom are in certain cases difficult to determine. According to 1 Enoch i.\u2013xxxvi. the righteous are to eat of the tree of life and live as long as the patriarchs of old, and beget 1000 children and have unnumbered material blessings. It is not improbable that all the authorities of this period held similar sensuous conceptions of the Messianic time; for after all these were derived from the Old Testament, the ideal of which was a life of perfect righteousness combined with perfect physical enjoyment\u2014in other words, the complete realisation of the entire man constituted as he is in this life. The prevailing view as to the comprehensiveness of the kingdom was that of the larger hearted prophets of the Old Testament. Jubilees alone represents the narrow Jewish Particularism, which excludes all Gentiles from the kingdom, following herein the school of Ezekiel. So bitterly did the circle represented by the writer of Jubilees hate the Gentiles, that he declares that it is written in the statute book of heaven, that any Israelite that gave his daughter in marriage to a Gentile would perish for ever. But Jubilees here belongs more to the first century B.C. than to the second.
\nThe last notable fact that calls for attention in this period is the all but universal absence from the kingdom of the Messiah descended from Judah. Thus there is not a single reference to him to be found in Isa. 24\u201327; Daniel; 1 Enoch i.\u2013xxxvi., and only one bare allusion in Jubilees. In 1 Enoch lxxxiii.\u2013xc. alone is there a statement regarding the Messiah, but it is of little significance, since no function is assigned to him, and the passage seems to be due to literary reminiscence.
\nIt is in part no doubt the almost total disappearance of this hope of the Messiah from Judah, that made possible a most remarkable though temporary revolution in Jewish belief, which we find alluded to in the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs. This book proclaims the coming of a Messiah not from Judah, but from Levi. This novel expectation was due to the descent of the great Maccabean family from Levi. All that is noble and memorable in the Jewish history of this period is connected directly or indirectly with this family, and it is not a matter of surprise that the zealous Jews who were anxiously awaiting the advent of the kingdom, thought that it was to be introduced by the Maccabees, or even that the Messiah himself was to spring from this family. This expectation is voiced in a noble Messianic hymn in the Testament of Levi, and the same expectation appears to lie at the base of Psalm 110, which is addressed, according to Duhm, Bickell and other scholars, to Simon the Maccabee, and indeed forms an acrostic on Simon\u2019s name.
\nWe must soon pass from the beliefs of the second century to its successor, but we should first observe that though in most questions the synthesis of the eschatologies of the nation and the individual continues unquestioned, there are not wanting signs of its approaching resolution into its original factors, in order that they may again pursue their separate lines of development until, attaining their full-grown stature, they may coalesce in a final and complete synthesis. One notable sign of this approaching resolution is to be seen in the fact that the writer of 1 Enoch lxxxiii.\u2013xc. has become conscious that the earth, however purged and purified, is no fitting scene for an eternal kingdom. If the Messianic kingdom is to be of eternal duration and God is to be present with man, then His habitation and that of the blessed must be built not of things earthly and corruptible, but of things heavenly and incorruptible. Hence this writer represents the creation of a heavenly Jerusalem in place of the earthly as the centre of the kingdom. This view clearly springs from the dualism that was making itself increasingly felt in Judaism.
\nAs we pass from the second century B.C. to the first we become conscious of a great gulf dividing the eschatologies of the two centuries. The chief authorities for this century are 1 Enoch xci.\u2013civ., xxxvii.\u2013lxxi.; 1 Maccabees, Pss. Solomon, Book of Wisdom. In this literature the hope of an eternal kingdom of God on the present earth, which had been taught by the Old Testament prophets and the apocalyptic literature of the past, is now, except in one work, absolutely abandoned for ever. The earth unchanged, untransformed, has now come to be regarded as wholly unfit for the manifestation of this kingdom. Thus the dualism which had begun to affect the forecasts of religious thinkers in the preceding century has in this century leavened their expectations as a whole. The doctrine of the divine immanence has given place to that of the divine transcendence, and the time-honoured hope of an eternal Messianic kingdom, which should abide for ever on earth ruled and sustained by the immediate present Deity, has been sorrowfully abandoned by the Jews of this later age, save in the case of the Parables of Enoch.
\nHenceforward the Messianic kingdom is only conceived as of temporary duration, and thus ceases to be identical with the kingdom of God. At best it can only be regarded as a partial and temporary manifestation of it. This revolutionary conception led perforce to others. So long as the Messianic kingdom was held to be eternal in duration, its advent was of necessity preceded or accompanied by the final judgment, and it was to share in this kingdom that the righteous dead were raised; but when this hope was abandoned, the resurrection and the final judgment were adjourned to its close. A temporary earthly Messianic kingdom could not be the goal of the risen righteous, their faith could find satisfaction only in a blessed immortality in heaven itself. In the thoughts of these writers the belief in a personal immortality had thus detached itself from the doctrine of the earthly Messianic kingdom, and the synthesis of the two eschatologies is resolved into its elements, never again save once (1 Enoch xxxvii.\u2013lxx.) to be spiritually fused together in the sphere of pre-Christian Judaism.
\nIn most of the writings of this period the resurrection is not a resurrection of the spirit and body, but of the spirit only. This follows naturally from the changed conception of the Messianic kingdom. Men rose not to this kingdom, but to share in heaven itself. But a remarkable phenomenon meets us in the literature of this century in the Parables of Enoch, which form an independent book written probably before 64 B.C. This very original work lies outside the general line of development. Its author pursues a path of his own. The present earth could not, he held, be regarded as the scene of the eternal kingdom, no more indeed could the present heaven; its only fitting scene could be a new heaven and a new earth. In this new heaven and new earth, forming one new and indivisible kingdom, the righteous should have their mansions differing in glory according to their deserts. Since this kingdom was for everlasting the resurrection and final judgment would, of course, take place before its advent. This writer has thus united for the last time in Judaism the severed eschatologies of the individual and the nation.
\nOf no less startling character is the conception entertained of the coming Messiah, who is here for the first time designated as the Son of Man. This conception is unique in Judaism. The way, of course, had in some measure been prepared. The phrase \u201ca son of man\u201d had already appeared in the Book of Daniel, but there it merely served to symbolise Israel as distinguished from the preceding world empires, which were represented by various beasts. Now, though it must be at once conceded that this phrase \u201ca son of man\u201d had no Messianic significance in the mind of the writer of Daniel, it could hardly fail to acquire it in the course of time. For it is a general rule in apocalyptic visions that angels, individual men and nations are not described as such, but are referred to under certain symbols. Thus in the most extensive piece of writing that we have of this nature (1 Enoch lxxxiii.\u2013xc.) Abraham and Isaac are represented by white bulls, the righteous Israelites by white sheep, the apostates by black sheep, the Egyptians by wolves, the Philistines by dogs, the Edomites by wild boars, but an angel is always spoken of as a man. Thus when a being in a symbolic apocalyptic vision is represented as a man, we may a priori assume that the being in question is of heavenly origin, though we may find on examination subsequently, that the context makes this interpretation impossible in exceptional instances. But the claims of the context never proved an obstacle to Jewish interpreters, nor indeed to the vast majority of Christian. Hence Daniel 7:13\u2014\u201cI saw in the night-visions, and behold there came with the clouds of heaven one like unto a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days\u201d\u2014was from the first century B.C. onward interpreted messianically; for the being in such a vision would naturally be conceived as angelic or superhuman. The New Testament references to it as such are numerous, but the earliest historical interpretation in a Messianic light is that given in the Parables of Enoch.
\nThus from the standpoint of apocalyptic interpretation we are prepared to find in the Son of Man in Enoch a being of superhuman origin. The growing dualism of the time likewise prepared the way for such a conception. The further God was removed from man, the more necessary it became to fill up the gulf between God and man. We must not, however, dwell further on this subject here, as it is specially dealt with elsewhere (see chap. iii.).
\nWe must now close this study with a brief outline of the character of the Messianic kingdom in the first century of the Christian era. The authorities for this period are the Assumption of Moses, Philo, 2 Enoch, 4 Maccabees, 1 Baruch, 4 Ezra, Sibylline Oracles iv., Josephus.
\nThe growth of dualism, which was so vigorous in the preceding century, attains in this to its final development. Not only has the thought of the eternal Messianic kingdom passed absolutely from the minds of men, but even the hope of a temporary Messianic kingdom is abandoned by many apocalyptic writers. From temporary manifestations of the kingdom of God on earth, the thoughts of religious men have passed to the supramundane abode of God, even to heaven itself. In some books which still cling to the Messianic hope the actual duration of the temporary kingdom is defined. According to 4 Ezra it was to last 400 years (7:28, 29), and, as a special privilege, the martyrs, or at all events certain uniquely righteous men (cf. Dan. 12:1, 2), were to rise to share in it. Thus we arrive at the doctrine of the first resurrection as it appears in the New Testament Apocalypse (20:4), where the Christian martyrs rise to reign with Christ for 1000 years.
\nThe breach which had set in between the eschatologies of the individual and of the nation in the preceding century has still further widened in this. Either the nation has no blessed future at all or at best only one of temporary duration. On the loss of this national hope extreme individualism in religion follows. The interest of the individual is centred wholly on his own lot in the after life. To that life he rises purely as a spirit, or as a spirit clothed in the glory of God, or, if his earthly body rises, it is only for purposes of mutual recognition, after which transformation is at once to follow into the nature of the angels. But this religious individualism leads to a further development in regard to the resurrection of the spirit. Heretofore the righteous spirit did not rise from its intermediate abode in Sheol till after the final judgment, but now several writers such as Philo, and the authors of the Book of Wisdom (first century B.C.), and 4 Maccabees regard the righteous as entering on the blessed immortality immediately after death. But no Palestinian Pharisee supported this view so far as I can discover, and we may on good grounds conclude that the tradition of Palestinian Judaism always taught the doctrine of an intermediate abode for the righteous\u2014perhaps for all souls. While Alexandrian Judaism made death the absolute end of man\u2019s probation, and represented the soul as at once entering on its eternal and unchangeable destiny of good or evil, Palestinian Judaism, by holding fast to the doctrine of an intermediate state, left open the possibilities of further moral development in the spirits of the departed, and thus made feasible the achievement of more ethical conceptions in this province.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER III<\/p>\n
THE MESSIAH IN PROPHECY AND APOCALYPTIC<\/p>\n
If we would understand Jewish Messianic prophecy in relation to its fulfilment in the New Testament, we must study first the Messianic kingdom or the kingdom of God, as foreshadowed in that prophecy, and next the characteristics of the expected Messiah. The subject is immense: we must therefore confine ourselves to the salient characteristics of each conception.
\nFirst, then, the expected kingdom. In pre-prophetic times this expectation, so far as we can discover, was fixed on the future national blessedness, that was to be introduced by the day of Yahweh. According to the popular conception which was current down to the eighth century and later, this golden age was to be merely a period of material and unbroken prosperity, which the nation was to enjoy when Yahweh overthrew Israel\u2019s national enemies. In this pre-prophetic period monotheism was non-existent in Israel. Israel had its own deity, Yahweh, just as the neighbouring nations had their own deities, and Israel questioned the existence of the latter just as little as that of the former. Originally the sovereignty of Yahweh was conceived as conterminous with His own land and His own people, and His interests as absolutely identical with those of Israel. Though Yahweh might become temporarily estranged, He could never forsake His people, and to them were confined all His redemptive acts and gracious purposes. This very ancient view of Yahweh was still the popular one in Israel in the eighth century, as we learn from the Prophet Amos. But this low nationalistic conception of God was overthrown by the monotheistic teaching of the great eighth century prophets. Yahweh, they taught, was the God of all the earth and there was no God beside Him. As such all nations were His, and they no less than Israel were the subjects of His judgments and His redemptive purposes. Yet the old nationalistic claims, that Yahweh considered Israel only, survived side by side with the prophetic monotheism, which logically rendered them nugatory and anachronistic, and of these claims even some of the prophets made themselves the mouthpiece.
\nThus we come to distinguish two lines of prophetical succession in Israel. The first is that which frankly accepts monotheism with the universalism that naturally flows from it, that is, the inclusion of the Gentiles within the sphere of divine judgment and divine blessing. The second is that which accepts monotheism yet illogically excludes either wholly or in part the Gentiles from God\u2019s care and love, and limits His gracious purposes to Israel alone.
\nOf the former attitude, Jeremiah may be taken as the typical exponent: of the latter, Ezekiel; and thus these two great prophets of the exile may be regarded respectively as the spiritual forerunners of Christianity and Judaism.
\nBut abandoning for the present the consideration of this radical difference in the Hebrew prophets, let us turn to those expectations in which they were agreed. The chief of these, we find, was the establishment of God\u2019s actual reign on earth. All or nearly all the pre-Exilic prophets teach the advent sooner or later of this kingdom. It was, they universally agreed, to be introduced by a national judgment\u2014collective judgment for collective guilt\u2014limited in its scope according to earlier prophecy, but worldwide according to the prophets of the seventh, century and onwards. Over this kingdom either God Himself was to reign or the Messiah. This kingdom itself was to last for ever and its scene was to be the present earth, according to pre-Exilic prophecy.
\nWith the two great prophets of the Exile the Messianic expectation enters on a fresh stage of devlopment. Before the Exile the nation was the religious unit, and the individual as such had no religious worth and could not approach God except through priest or prophet. But with the deportation of the nation to Babylon and the overthrow of the temple and its settled order of priests and sacrifices, the individual came of necessity into direct and immediate relation with God, and henceforth constituted the religious unit. Man must stand face to face with God: God\u2019s law must be written on man\u2019s heart. The new teaching thus proclaimed to a certain degree a kingdom of God within man. This kingdom within man was not indeed to be a substitute for the Messianic kingdom, but a preparation. The spiritual transformation of Israel, individual by individual, became henceforth an indispensable condition for entrance into the coming kingdom of God. On this condition of entrance into the kingdom all post-Exilic prophets are at one, but, as we have already seen, they were utterly at variance as to the destined comprehensiveness of the kingdom.
\nJeremiah held that it was to embrace all the Gentiles, who should enter it by conversion: Ezekiel and his successors that even those Gentiles who survived the judgment were to be excluded from it for ever. Thus Jeremiah and Ezekiel founded or rather refounded two very diverse schools of development. Jeremiah taught universalism, that is, that God\u2019s gracious purposes embraced all mankind, and that Zion was to be the spiritual mother of the nations: Ezekiel taught particularism, that is, that the Jews only were the objects of God\u2019s love. Thus in this otherwise noble prophet of the Exile, the heathenism of primitive Israel survives so far as to represent God\u2019s attitude to the Gentiles as that of an omnipotent and merciless deity.
\nThis view of Ezekiel tends at first sight to shock the reader; but he soon comes to condone it, when he reflects that Ezekiel\u2019s heathenism in this respect is as nothing compared with the inexpugnable heathenism of one great branch of the Christian Church which would exclude from the kingdom of God on earth not heathen communities as did Ezekiel, but Churches of Christ no less but rather more Christian than itself; and whereas Ezekiel\u2019s ostracism of the non-Israelite was limited to this life only, the Latin Church would condemn to eternal destruction the members of other Churches of Christ, which are no less fruitful than itself in good works and are immeasurably richer in knowledge and wisdom.
\nBut to return. Let us emphasise the three chief notes of the kingdom enunciated in the prophetic school of Jeremiah and his successors:
\nFirst, the kingdom was to be within man: religion was to be individualised: God\u2019s law to be written on man\u2019s heart (Jer. 31:31\u201333): man\u2019s soul was to be the dwelling-place of the Most High: \u201cThus saith the high and holy One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is holy: I dwell in the high and holy place with him that is of a contrite and humble spirit\u201d (Isa. 57:15).
\nSecondly, the kingdom was to be worldwide, embracing all the nations of the earth.
\nIt is now our task to trace the development of the third note of the kingdom. Hitherto prophecy had looked forward to the present earth as the scene of the Messianic kingdom, but about the middle of the fifth century a new view appears on the horizon in Isaiah 65\u201366, for which the past indeed had made some preparation. Not the earth in its present condition, this later prophet declares, but a transformed heaven and earth were to be the scene of the kingdom. If the traditional text is correct, this transformation was not to take place instantaneously and catastrophically, but gradually, advancing pari passu with the spiritual transformation of man. In the course of this spiritual and physical transformation the wicked were apparently to be gradually eliminated from the community. The righteous were to attain the full limit of their years\u2014no doubt 1000\u2014and the sinner was to be cut off prematurely at the age of 100. This peculiar view reappears but twice more in Judaism in the Book of Jubilees, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, which belong to the second century B.C.; but though it did not hold its ground it prepared the way for the next and final form of this eschatological hope, which furnishes the third chief note of the kingdom. This final form arose about the close of the second century B.C., when in the growing dualism of the times it was borne in alike on saint and sage that this present world could never be the scene of the eternal Messianic kingdom, and that such a kingdom demanded not merely a new heaven and a new earth akin in character to the old, but a new and spiritual heaven and earth, into which flesh and blood could not find an entrance. Here at length we have arrived at the third note of the kingdom. The eternal Messianic kingdom can attain its consummation only in the world to come, into which the righteous should enter through the gate of resurrection.
\nTo recapitulate: we have now the three chief notes of the coming kingdom of God. First, this kingdom was to be a kingdom within man\u2014and so far to be a kingdom realised on earth. Secondly, it was to be worldwide and to ignore every limitation of language and race. Thirdly, it was to find its true consummation in the world to come.
\nLet us now turn to the New Testament and inquire if the kingdom introduced by our Lord possesses the three notes of Old Testament prophecy and apocalyptic. The matter can be dispatched in a few words; for these three notes summarise in the shortest possible way the actual characteristics of the kingdom established by Christ. Thus in answer to the Pharisees asking when the kingdom of God should come, our Lord declares: \u201cThe kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, There! for lo! the kingdom of God is within you\u201d (Luke 17:20, 21). Again, Christ\u2019s kingdom is universal. \u201cThe kingdom of God,\u201d declares our Lord, speaking to the Jews, \u201cshall be taken away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof\u201d (Matt. 21:43); and \u201cMany shall come from the east and from the west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven: but the sons of the kingdom shall be cast into outer darkness\u201d (Matt. 8:11, 12). Elsewhere in the Parable of the Sower He states that \u201cthe field,\u201d that is, the scene of the kingdom\u2019s activity, \u201cis the world\u201d (Matt. 13:38). This second note of the kingdom follows naturally from the first. If character is the sole qualification for admission into the kingdom, then, wherever that character is found, there the kingdom of God is already actually present. Finally, it was to be consummated in the risen life. \u201cThe Son of Man shall send His angels, and they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend and them that do iniquity.\u2026 Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father\u201d (Matt. 22:41). This is the kingdom of God come \u201cwith power,\u201d as St. Mark (9:1) describes it.
\nWe thus see that the kingdom established by Christ corresponds in its deepest aspects to that foreshadowed in the prophetic and apocalyptic writers. It embodies the permanent elements in the past development and fuses them into one organic whole.
\nNot so, however, with Judaism. Still clinging to their claim to be the only true Church of God, the Jews could not accept the universalism of the greater prophets or this universalism as embodied in the teaching of Christ. God was the God of the Jews only, they held, and of the Gentiles only so far as they were admitted to Judaism. There was no real hope either here or hereafter for the world outside the Jewish pale, though individual Gentiles might be saved through the uncovenanted mercies of God. Thus the Jews, by refusing to part with the spiritual particularism of the past, unfitted themselves for the reception of the higher revelation of the present, and whilst seeking to exclude the Gentiles from the kingdom of God succeeded only in excluding themselves.
\nThis must be the natural nemesis of all such exclusiveness or particularism in Judaism or Christianity.
\nWe have now dealt with the chief characteristics of the expected kingdom. We have next to deal with those of the expected Messiah. Here our attention must not be fixed on points of detail, nor must we seek out the manifold instances of minute correspondence between this hope in the Old Testament and its realisation in the New. It would be an ignoratio elenchi to press the fulfilment of special predictions as proofs of the divine guidance of events, where we regard the whole movement as divine. Here again our views of the expected Messiah must be drawn from the broad view of prophecy as a whole.
\nBut greater difficulties beset the study of this subject than that of the kingdom. Biblical critics are divided as to the date when certain of the chief factors of this expectation arose. Thus some would bring the prediction of the ideal King down to Exile times. But on the present occasion we may safely waive the consideration of such questions, and address ourselves forthwith to the main question before us, that is, the relation of the Messiah to the kingdom of God. The student of the New Testament naturally looks on these two ideas as strict correlatives. To him the Messianic kingdom seems inconceivable apart from the Messiah. But even a cursory examination of Jewish prophecy and apocalyptic disabuses him of this illusion. The Jewish prophet could not help looking forward to the advent of the kingdom of God, but he found no difficulty in conceiving that kingdom without a Messiah. Thus there is no mention of the Messiah in Amos, Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Joel, Daniel: none even in the very full eschatological prophecies of Isaiah 24\u201327, or in the brilliant descriptions of the future in Isaiah 54:11\u201317; 60\u201362; 65\u201366, which spring from various post-Exilic writers. Nor is the situation different when we pass from the Old Testament to the subsequent Jewish literature. The figure of the Messiah is absent altogether from the Books of the Maccabees, Judith, Tobit, 1 Baruch, certain sections of 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, the Book of Wisdom, the Assumption of Moses. Hence it follows that, in Jewish prophecy and apocalyptic the Messiah was no organic factor of the kingdom. Sometimes he was conceived as present, but, just as frequently, as absent. When he was absent, the kingdom was always represented as under the immediate sovereignty of God. Thus Jewish prophecy and apocalyptic represent the kingdom either as under the direct rule of God, or of the Messiah as God\u2019s representative. Judaism carefully differentiated these two conceptions, and never represented the Messiah\u2019s jurisdiction as trenching on the divine, save in the Parables of 1 Enoch written in the first century before Christ. The supreme prerogatives of forgiveness, of judgment, of lordship over death, were always, except in this work, reserved in Judaism to God alone. We shall return to this point when we come to deal with the fulfilment of these expectations in the New Testament.
\nHaving now recognised that the Messiah was not an organic factor of the kingdom, we must shortly consider His chief characteristics in Old Testament prophecy and apocalyptic. We may consider these under the usual distinctions of the ideal King, the ideal Prophet, and the ideal Priest.
\nThe prophecies which centre in these three conceptions are no longer submitted, as they were in the past, to the perverted ingenuity of commentators and preachers, who seemed to believe that prophecy consisted of a series of riddles and conundrums, the interpretation of which was to be achieved by the cleverest guesser. Such a view no longer prevails. We do not now suppose that the prophets had definitely before them even the chief events of Christ\u2019s life, as Dr. Sanday points out in his Bampton Lectures (p. 404), or any distinct conception of that great Personality. What they saw in prophetic vision was the ideal figure of King, or possibly of Prophet, or of Priest, figures suggested by the events of their own days, and projected into the future and that a future ever close at hand. Where the Messiah is expected it is all but universally as the ideal King. The personal ideal Prophet is nowhere distinctly sketched, but is rather to be inferred from the great picture of the prophetic nation portrayed by the second Isaiah. These two hopes were never combined in Old Testament prophecy. Indeed, prior to the advent of Christianity, Jewish exegetes seem never to have apprehended the Messianic significance of the suffering Servant of Yahweh. The idea of a crucified Messiah was an impossible conception to the Judaism of that period.
\nBut the indistinctness which attaches to the expectation of the Messiah as Prophet does not attach to that of the Messiah as the ideal Priest in the Old Testament. This expectation, which did not arise earlier than the second century B.C., is clearly attested in the 110th Psalm. The older exegetes, indeed, held that this Psalm spoke of the ideal Priest of David\u2019s line, and they assigned this Psalm to the authorship of David. This date and interpretation, as Dr. Driver shows (Literature of Old Testament, 7th ed., p. 385), can no longer be sustained, and the Psalm is now referred by many of the ablest scholars to Maccabean times. While some are of opinion that Jonathan the brother of Judas, and others that Hyrcanus the son of Simon, was the subject of this Psalm, Dr. Cheyne, in his Bampton Lectures, has advocated with superabundance of argument, that it was addressed to Simon the Maccabee, after that he had been constituted \u201cruler and high priest for ever,\u201d by a decree of the nation, in the year 142 B.C. (1 Macc. 14:27 seqq.). A confirmation of this view has lately been brought to light by Bickell, a distinguished Roman Catholic scholar, who has recognised that the first four verses of this poem form an acrostic on the name Simeon. That Simeon or Simon, according to its Greek pronunciation, was regarded as introducing the Messianic kingdom appears also from a passage in 1 Maccabees 14. Finally, we may remark that the only Jewish high priests who ever bore the title \u201cpriests of the Most High God,\u201d were the Maccabean\u2014a title which they assumed as reviving the order of Melchizedek when they displaced the Zadokite priesthood of Aaron.
\nWe have therefore in this Psalm a combination of the two offices of priest and king in the person of Simon. These titles were most probably used by its writer in the hope that the Messianic kingdom would be established in Simon\u2019s days. If now we pass from the Canonical to the non-Canonical books we find analogous expectations.
\nThe chief authorities for Jewish Messianic expectations in the second century B.C. outside the Canon are the older sections of 1 Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs, and 1 and 2 Maccabees. In studying these works the reader is at once struck by the all but entire absence of the figure of the Davidic Messiah or the Messiah descended from David and Judah. Where this hope is expressed (1 Enoch xc.; Jubilees; Test. Jud. 24) it is practically without significance, and its belated appearances seem due mainly to literary reminiscence. And yet this century is far from wanting in descriptions of the Messianic King; but His descent is no longer traced to Judah but to Levi. This expectation is clearly set forth in the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs. How can such a novel expectation, so much at variance with all the past, have arisen? There can be hardly a doubt that it was owing to the descent of the great Maccabean family from Levi. Around the various members of this family everything that is noble in the Jewish history of the second century revolves. Is it a matter for wonder, then, that the zealous Jews, who were looking for the speedy advent of the kingdom of God, thought that this kingdom was to be introduced by the Maccabees, or even that the Messiah himself was to spring from this family? At all events, an apocalyptic visionary, who wrote when Judas the first great Maccabee was still living, held that Judas would go on warring successfully against Syria and the Gentile nations, till the Messianic kingdom was ushered in by God, and the Messiah himself appeared. In 1 Enoch lxxxix.\u2013xc., where angels are symbolised by men and men are symbolised by the various animals, the writer expresses his expectation of the advent of the Messiah at this period in the following words (xc. 38): \u201cAnd I saw till all their generations were transformed, and they all became white bulls; and the first among them became a lamb, and that lamb became a great animal \u2026 and the Lord of the sheep rejoiced over it and over all the oxen.\u201d But Judas fell in 161. The fullness of the times had not yet come. The place of Judas was forthwith taken by his brother Jonathan, who assumed the high priesthood in 153, and in him, possibly, the Messianic hopes of many in the nation centred for a time; but Jonathan fell by his sword in 142, and the hope passed on to Simon, the subject of the 110th Psalm. Simon was the first Maccabee whose high priesthood was recognised by the entire nation, and this they did in words which significantly described him as \u201cruler and high priest for ever.\u201d A hymn describing the Messianic blessedness of his reign is preserved in the Sadducean work 1 Maccabees 14:8 seqq.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen did they till their ground in peace,
\nAnd the earth gave her increase,
\nAnd the trees of the field their fruit.<\/p>\n
The ancient men sat in the streets,
\nThey all communed together of good things,
\nAnd the young men clad themselves gloriously but not with garments of war.
\n(So Syriac.)<\/p>\n
For every man sat under his own vine and figtree,
\nAnd there was none to make them afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simon was succeeded by John Hyrcanus in 135 B.C., in whose honour was written a noble Messianic hymn of the second century preserved in the Testament of Levi xviii. 2 seqq.<\/p>\n
\u201c2. Then shall the Lord raise up a new priest,
\nAnd to him all the words of the Lord shall be revealed,
\nAnd he shall execute a righteous judgment upon the earth for a multitude of days.<\/p>\n
9. And in his priesthood the Gentiles
\nShall be multiplied in knowledge upon the earth,
\nAnd enlightened through the grace of the Lord:
\nIn his priesthood shall sin come to an end,
\nAnd the lawless shall cease to do evil.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another hymn in praise of John Hyrcanus is to be found in Test. Judah xxiv. 1\u20132 (A).<\/p>\n
\u201c1. And after these things shall arise the star of peace,
\nAnd shall walk with men in meekness and righteousness.<\/p>\n
2. And the heavens shall be opened unto him,
\nAnd the blessings of the Holy Father will be poured down upon him.\u201d<\/p>\n
John Hyrcanus seemed at last to realise the expectations of the past; for according to a contemporary writer Hyrcanus embraced in his own person the triple office of prophet, priest and civil ruler. He is referred to in Test. Levi viii. 14: \u201cA King shall arise in Judah and shall establish a new priesthood.\u2026 15. And his presence is beloved as a prophet of the Most High.\u201d A statement to the same effect is found twice in Josephus. It is said, moreover, in the former second century authority that Hyrcanus \u201cwould die (on behalf of Israel) in wars visible and invisible\u201d (Test. Reuben vi. 12). For some thirty or forty years the hope of a Messiah from Judah was abandoned in favour of a Messiah from Levi.
\nBut alas for the vanity of human wishes! This most highly gifted member of the Maccabean family was also the last that could in any sense be regarded as noble and religious. From henceforth the ablest Maccabeans became Sadducean in the most evil sense of that term.
\nFrom the second century B.C. we pass to the first, and witness a revolution in the expectations of the people corresponding to that in the character of the Maccabees. As the Maccabees in the second century were leaders in all that was best in religion and morals, so the Maccabees of the next century were foremost in godlessness and immorality.
\nThe religious thinkers of Judaism accordingly abandoned the hope of a Messiah sprung from Levi, but the hope of a Messiah itself did not die, but reasserted itself afresh in the first century B.C. in two forms. The first of these is found in a work of a very original writer (1 Enoch xxxvii.\u2013lxxi.), who sought to direct the expectations of his countrymen to a conception of the Messiah which is unique in Jewish literature\u2014the supernatural Son of Man. The student of apocalyptic can recognise the germ of this conception in Daniel, but a world of thought divides the symbolic expression, which in Daniel stands for the righteous Israel, and the personal designation in 1 Enoch, which denotes the supernatural Messiah.
\nThis Son of Man pre-existed from the beginning (xlviii. 2), he possesses universal dominion (lxii. 6), and all judgment is committed unto him (lxix. 27). Four titles applied to him for the first time in literature are afterwards reproduced in the New Testament. These are \u201cthe Christ\u201d (xlviii. 10), \u201cthe Righteous One\u201d (xxxviii. 2; Acts 3:14), \u201cthe Elect One\u201d (xl. 5; Luke 9:55), and \u201cthe Son of Man.\u201d
\nThe following passages from this work give different aspects of this conception.<\/p>\n
xlvi. 1:
\n\u201cAnd there I saw one who had a head of days
\nAnd His head was white like wool,
\nAnd with him was another being whose countenance had the appearance of a man.
\nAnd his face was full of graciousness like one of the holy angels.\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
ver. 3:
\n\u201cAnd he answered and said unto me:
\nThis is the Son of Man who hath righteousness,
\nWith whom dwelleth righteousness.<\/p>\n
And who revealeth all the treasures of that which is hidden:
\nBecause the Lord of Spirits hath chosen him,
\nAnd whose lot hath the pre-eminence before the Lord of Spirits in uprightness for ever.\u201d<\/p>\n
xlv. 3:
\n\u201cOn that day Mine Elect One shall sit on the throne of glory,
\nAnd shall try their works,
\nAnd their places of rest shall be innumerable.\u201d<\/p>\n
xlviii. 2:
\n\u201cAnd at that hour that Son of Man was named
\nIn the presence of the Lord of Spirits,
\nAnd his name before the head of Days.\u201d<\/p>\n
ver. 4:
\n\u201cHe shall be a staff to the righteous whereon to stay themselves,
\nAnd he shall be the light of the Gentiles,
\nAnd the hope of those that are troubled of heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
xlix. 2:
\n\u201cFor he is mighty in all the secrets of righteousness,
\nAnd unrighteousness shall disappear as a shadow,
\nAnd have no continuance;<\/p>\n
Because the Elect One standeth before the Lord of Spirits,
\nAnd his glory is for ever and ever
\nAnd his might unto all generations.\u201d<\/p>\n
lxix. 27:
\n\u201cAnd he sat on the throne of his glory,
\nAnd the sum of judgment was given unto the Son of Man,
\nAnd he caused the sinners to pass away from off the face of the earth,
\nAnd those who have led the world astray.\u201d<\/p>\n
I have quoted many of the above passages because of their important bearing on the New Testament.
\nSuch was one of the two forms assumed by the Messianic hope during the first century B.C. The second was not of the same original character, but was a revival of the Old Testament expectation of the kingly Messiah sprung from David. This expectation is attested in the first century additions to the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs. Thus we have Judah declaring to his sons in T. Jud. xxiv. 5\u20136:<\/p>\n
\u201cThen shall the sceptre of my kingdom shine forth,
\nAnd from your root shall arise a stem;
\nAnd from it shall grow a rod of righteousness to the Gentiles,
\nTo judge and to save all that call upon the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the main source of this teaching in this century are the Psalms of the Pharisees\u2014usually designated the Psalms of Solomon. In these Psalms the Messiah is conceived as embracing in his own person all the patriotic aspirations of the nation. The Messiah is, it is true, the righteous ruler of Israel, but he is no less assuredly the avenger of their wrongs on all the heathen nations. He is to be a militant Messiah of the house and lineage of David: 17:23\u201325:<\/p>\n
\u201cBehold, O Lord, and raise up unto them their King, the son of David,
\nAt the time in the which Thou seest, O God, that he may reign over Israel Thy servant,
\nAnd gird him with strength that he may shatter unrighteous rulers,
\nAnd that he may purge Jerusalem from nations that trample her down to destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n
He will make Israel a holy people, 17:29, 30, 36:<\/p>\n
\u201cHe shall not suffer unrighteousness to lodge any more in their midst,
\nNor shall there dwell with them any man that knoweth wickedness;
\nFor he shall know them that they are all sons of their God.\u201d<\/p>\n
No stranger or sojourner shall dwell in Jerusalem (17:31), and the ungodly nations shall be destroyed by the word of his mouth (17:27), and when these are destroyed, the rest shall become subject to him.
\nThus the warlike character of the Maccabean priest-kings had left its impress, and not for good, on the revived hope of the Davidic Messiah, and the Pharisaic party was henceforth committed to political interests and movements, and henceforth in the popular doctrine, the Old Testament Messiah, the Prince of Peace, became a Man of War. Such a doctrine, it is true, was offensive to some of the noblest Pharisees, such as the author of the Assumption of Moses, who, writing in the early decades of the Christian era, lifted up his voice in protest against the leavening of religion with earthly political ideals; but he protested in vain, and the secularisation of the Pharisaic movement culminated in the fall of Jerusalem.
\nWe have now sketched briefly the characteristics of the Messiah and the Messianic kingdom in the Old Testament and in later pre-Christian literature. We have seen how the kingly, prophetic and priestly conceptions of the Messiah arose. When we come to the New Testament it is not difficult to see how these were fulfilled in the Christ, and at the same time to recognise that they fail to exhaust the fullness of His claims and personality. Apart from the Enochic Son of Man it seems clear that a purely human personality could have given a fairly adequate fulfilment of the above threefold office of king, prophet and priest.
\nCertainly the Jews had no difficulty in recognising such a fulfilment in John Hyrcanus, though the prophetic gift in his case was synonymous merely with prediction, and hence falls short of the prophetic ideal.
\nBut in connection with our Lord\u2019s use of the title Son of Man, which, as we have seen, is first found as a personal designation of the Messiah in 1 Enoch, there are difficult problems to be solved.
\nA few scholars, indeed, have declared that there is no problem to be solved, for that the title is an interpolation in the Gospels. But this last view is quite unsatisfactory. The evidence pronounces in favour of our Lord\u2019s adoption of this title as a self-designation. But if so, in what sense is to it be understood? Various answers have been given, but the present writer is of opinion that no satisfactory explanation can be given apart from 1 Enoch and the passages in Isaiah dealing with the suffering Servant of Yahweh. While retaining the supernatural associations which it possessed in 1 Enoch, this title underwent transformation in our Lord\u2019s use of it, a transformation that all Pharisaic ideas, so far as He adopted them, likewise underwent. And just as His kingdom in general formed a standing protest against the prevailing Messianic ideas of temporal glory and dominion, so the title \u201cthe Son of Man\u201d assumed a deeper spiritual significance; and this change we shall best apprehend if we introduce into the Enoch conception of the Son of Man the Isaiah conception of the Servant of Yahweh. These two conceptions, though outwardly antithetic, are through the transformation of the former reconciled and fulfilled in a deeper unity\u2014in the New Testament Son of Man. This transformation flowed naturally from the object of Jesus\u2019 coming, the revelation of the Father. The Father could be revealed not through the self-assertion of the Son, but through His self-renunication and service (Phil. 2:6). Whilst, therefore, in adopting the title \u201cthe Son of Man\u201d from 1 Enoch, Jesus made from the outset supernatural claims, yet these supernatural claims were to be vindicated not after the external Judaistic conceptions of 1 Enoch, but in the revelation of the Father in His life, death, and resurrection. Thus in the life of the actual Son of Man the Father was revealed in the Son, and supernatural greatness in universal service. He that was greatest was likewise the servant of all. This transformed conception of the Son of Man is thus permeated throughout by the Isaiah conception of the Servant of Yahweh; but though the Enochic conception is fundamentally transformed, the transcendent claims underlying it are not foregone. If, then, we bear in mind the inward synthesis of these two ideas of the past in one ideal, nay, in a Personality transcending them both, we shall find little difficulty in understanding the startling contrasts that present themselves in the New Testament in connection with this designation. Thus, though the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head (Matt. 8:20), yet He can release men from their sins (Matt. 9:6); though He is to be despised and rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be put to death (Luke 9:22), yet He is to be the judge of all mankind (John 5:27).
\nThough the phrase was to some extent a current one (cf. Jer. Taanith ii. 1), our Lord\u2019s use of it must have been an enigma, not only to the people generally, but also to His immediate disciples, so much so that they shrank from using it; for it is used in the Gospels only by our Lord in speaking of Himself.
\nBut again. All the Old Testament and apocalyptic ideals, though realised in one personality, cannot justify the tremendous claims made by the Son of Man in the New. For whereas the Messianic kingdom in Old Testament prophecy and apocalyptic is just as frequently conceived without the Messiah as with Him, in the New Testament the Messiah forms its divine Head and Centre, and membership of the kingdom is constituted first and chiefly by a living relationship to Him.
\nThus our Lord allows no rival claim, however strong, to interfere between Himself and the soul of His disciple. \u201cHe that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me (Matt. 10:37); \u201cIf any man cometh unto Me, and hateth not his father and mother and wife and children, he cannot be My disciple\u201d (Luke 14:26). Again, this imperious claim to devotion extends to the life of the disciple in its deepest issues: \u201cCome unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest\u201d (Matt. 11:28). Only through Him can man have access to the Father: \u201cNone knoweth the Father save he to whom the Son willeth to reveal Him\u201d (Matt. 11:27; Luke 10:22).
\nAs other claims which are without any parallel in the Old Testament prophecy of the Messiah, though found in part in 1 Enoch, we should mention, first, His claim to judge the world: next, to forgive sin; and, finally, to be the Lord of life and death. In the Old Testament these prerogatives belong to God alone as the essential Head of the kingdom, and appear in those prophetic descriptions of the kingdom which ignore the figure of the Messiah, and represent God as manifesting Himself amongst men. Here, then, we have the Christ of the Gospels claiming not only to fulfil the Old Testament prophecies of the various ideals of the Messiah, but also to discharge the functions of God Himself in relation to the kingdom.
\nIf to the synoptic conception of Christ to which we have confined ourselves hitherto we add the Johannine and Pauline, the parallel between the relation of Christ to the kingdom in the New Testament and the relation of God to the promised kingdom in the Old becomes still more complete.
\nIt is needless to press this subject further. We shall only add that though in the gracious Figure depicted in the New Testament we have a marvellous conjunction of characteristics drawn from the most varied and unrelated sources in Old Testament prophecy and apocalyptic, yet the result is no artificial compound, no laboured syncretism of conflicting traits, but truly and indeed their perfect and harmonious consummation in a personality transcending them all. So far, indeed, is the Christ of the Gospels from being the studied and self-conscious realisation of the Messianic hope of the past, that it was not till the Christ had lived on earth that the true inwardness and meaning of those ancient ideals became manifest, and found at once their interpretation and fulfilment in the various natural expressions of the unique personality of the Son of Man.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER IV<\/p>\n
THE RISE AND DEVELOPMENT IN ISRAEL OF THE DOCTRINE OF A BLESSED FUTURE LIFE<\/p>\n
This subject is a living and practical one, and hence every circumstance connected with the origin and every phase in the development of this doctrine cannot fail to be of the deepest moment. This belief in Israel arose not in the abstract reasonings of the schools, but in the mortal strife of spiritual experience, and thus, though our present task is to deal with the subject historically, it cannot be a matter of merely historical interest, but is full of practical importance for all who are seeking to live the life, not of nature\u2019s ephemera, but of the children of God. For in this progress from the complete absence of such a belief in Israel to a positive and spiritual faith in a blessed future life, all alike can read writ large in the page of history from 800 B.C. to A.D. 100 a transcript of their own spiritual struggles as they toil up the steep ascent that leads to the city of God. It is a national Pilgrim\u2019s Progress, which every child of man must repeat in his own spiritual experience, whatever his mental or moral endowments may be, and the goal is as assured to the wayfaring man, though a fool, as it is to the learned and the wise.
\nBefore we enter on the history of this religious development it is advisable to define the term eschatology, as it will frequently recur as we proceed.
\nEschatology is, strictly, the doctrine of the last things. As such it can form a division of prophecy or of apocalyptic, and so we have an eschatology of prophecy and an eschatology of apocalyptic. But if we wish to have clearer conceptions, we must proceed further, and distinguish prophecy and apocalyptic.
\nTo a certain extent prophecy and apocalyptic occupy the same field, but the scope of the latter is incommensurably greater. Prophecy devoted itself to the present, and only to the future as rising organically out of the present. It concerned itself mainly with the nation and its hopes, and gave birth in due time to the national hope of a Messianic kingdom. Later prophecy, it is true, concerned itself also with the lot of the individual, and developed a doctrine of individual responsibility of an intensely ethical character in certain respects. But its outlook, notwithstanding its lofty monotheism, was wholly confined to this life. No hope of a blessed future life had dawned on the prophets.
\nApocalyptic, on the other hand, was, like prophecy, interested in the present\u2014not so much in the present as a thing in itself, but as a stage in the development of the divine plan. With this end in view it sketched in outline the history of the world and of mankind, the origin of evil and its course, the future destinies of the individual and the race, the ultimate triumph of righteousness, and the final consummation of all things. It was thus, in short, a Semitic philosophy of religion, and as such it was ever asking: Whence? Wherefore? Whither?
\nTo Jewish apocalyptic we owe three great doctrines\u2014in some respects conceived, it is true, rather crudely. The first of these is the belief in a blessed future life. Not even a hint of this doctrine is to be found in Old Testament prophecy. The second doctrine embodies the expectation of a new heaven and a new earth, and the third that the end of the present world will be catastrophic. These three doctrines passed over from Jewish apocalyptic into Christianity, and have become imperishable elements of the Christian faith.
\nWe shall now address ourselves to our subject, and begin with the eschatology of pre-prophetic times, and speedily pass on to that of the later centuries. But there can be no profitable study of eschatology apart from theology proper, i.e. the doctrine of God; for on the conception of God hinges every other religious conception of the nation ultimately, though the former may for long fail to wield its legitimate influence in the sphere of religion. In its earlier stages the religion of Israel was monolatrous; that is, while the existence of other gods was admitted, Yahweh (that is, Jehovah, according to a late and wrong pronunciation), and Yahweh alone, was Israel\u2019s God. The claim of Yahweh, then, might be expressed in the words, \u201cThou shalt have none other gods but Me.\u201d The existence of independent deities outside Israel was acknowledged by Israel\u2014such as Chemosh, Milcom, Ashtoreth. Each nation had its own god, whose jurisdiction was limited to his own country and to his own people, just as Yahweh\u2019s dominion was originally conceived as limited to Israel and Palestine. Since Yahweh\u2019s dominion did not extend beyond Palestine, it could in no case be regarded as extending to or embracing Sheol.
\nYahweh was concerned with the individual only so long as the individual was living and within the confines of Palestine. When he died \u201che was cut off,\u201d as Psalm 88 expresses it, \u201cfrom the hand or jurisdiction of Yahweh.\u201d At this period, therefore, Yahwism, or the religion of Yahweh, could furnish no eschatology for the individual, and the individual Israelite was left to his own hereditary heathen beliefs. Now these beliefs relating to the soul and spirit, Sheol and the condition of the departed were heathen to the core. There was no blessed outlook for the Old Testament saint. Sheol was the final abode alike of the righteous and the wicked.
\nThe primitive hope of the Israelite, like that of the ancient Greek and Roman, and his view of the future life were gloomy in the extreme. Sheol was the scene of a shadowy life that faintly reflected the realities of the upper world, and there accordingly not moral but social distinctions were observed, and a man held among the shades a position corresponding to the social position he had enjoyed in his earthly life. That such a realm was not under the sovereignty of Yahweh was to be expected, since His jurisdiction was limited to the upper world, and there to His own people and His own land. Thus the heathen view of the future life is in no respect inconsistent with the Hebrew belief in Yahweh in its earliest stage. In other words, before the eighth century B.C. no conflict between Hebrew theology and eschatology of the individual was possible, since their provinces were mutually exclusive.
\nAlthough at this period Yahwism and the eschatology of the individual are independent of each other, they nevertheless stand in implicit antagonism\u2014an antagonism which becomes explicit in the subsequent developments of Yahwism\u2014that is, when Yahwism ceased to be monolatrous and became monotheistic. When once the great doctrine of monotheism emerged in Israel, all other beliefs, whether relating to the present life or the after-world, were destined sooner or later to be brought into unison with it, but in the case of eschatological beliefs later rather than sooner; for eschatological beliefs are universally the last of all beliefs to be influenced by the loftier conceptions of God.
\nBy the rise of monotheism the relations of theology and eschatology were essentially transformed; for when Yahweh was once conceived as the Creator and God of all the earth, the entire existence of men, here and hereafter, came logically under His jurisdiction. To the western mind this is an obvious conclusion. When once it is conceded that God is the Creator and God of all the world, then man\u2019s future life, as well as his present, must be subject to Divine Providence. And yet, though Israel possessed a monotheistic faith as early as the eighth century, it did not arrive for some centuries at this conclusion, which appears to us to have been inevitable from the first. This is a startling fact which shows that man was destined by God to discover the doctrine of a blessed future life\u2014not through logical processes of the intellect, but through religious experiences, and thus to achieve a truth for all men that shall be verifiable by all men, should they be willing to surrender themselves to a like religious experience. And thus we are hereby taught at the outset, and for all time, that the only belief in a future life, that can really endure, is that which we arrive at through the life of faith. But to return. Though monotheism was implicitly at strife with the traditional eschatology of the individual, the antagonism, as we have already stated, was not explicitly felt till some centuries later. The heathen beliefs of Israel as to the future died hard. For centuries the conflict raged between monotheism and these heathen survivals, till at last Yahwism had annihilated all existence in Sheol. Thus the first stage of this conflict was destructive in character, but only with a view to a higher reconstruction. For, while Yahwism was destroying the belief in the false life in Sheol, it was steadily developing in the individual the consciousness of a new life and of a new worth through immediate communion with God, as we see in the Psalms and kindred literature. Now it is from the consciousness of this new life in God and not from a moribund existence in a heathen Sheol, that the doctrine of a blessed immortality was developed in Israel. It was a new creation\u2014the offspring of faith in God on the part of Israel\u2019s saints.
\nBut religious life and thought had a long journey to accomplish before they reached this goal. Before the new monotheism had solved the problem of the future it was called upon to deal with very pressing problems of the present, to which it had itself given birth-So long as Yahweh was merely one God among many these could not arise. But, since Yahweh was now conceived as perfectly righteous and infinitely powerful, the religious leaders of the seventh century inevitably formulated the doctrine that the righteous must prosper and the wicked must suffer adversity.
\nAgainst this primitive postulate of faith no valid objection can be raised. If the world is created and ruled by a righteous God, it must sooner or later be well with the righteous. But according to these ancient teachers, it must be well with the righteous now and in this life, or not at all; for, according to the views of their time, the faithful had communion with Yahweh only here; in the after-world they and all others were to be wholly removed from the sway of His Providence.
\nThus from the welding together of a true theology and a heathen eschatology there resulted inevitably the conclusion, that the righteousness of the righteous and the wickedness of the wicked must be recompensed in this life. The sphere of retribution was thus necessarily limited to this world. The inclusion of this false conception of the future in Israel\u2019s theology leads, as we shall find, to still more extravagant views in the sixth century.
\nThis doctrine appears on a great scale in Deuteronomy and other pre-Exilic and later writings. The large element of truth it embodied won for it a general acceptance, and so long as the doctrine was regarded as a general statement and not applied individually, its inherent viciousness escaped criticism.
\nBut the time for such an application was fast approaching through the development of individualism.
\nDown indeed to the sixth century, no individual retribution had been looked for. The early Israelite was not alarmed by the prosperity of the wicked man, or the calamities of the righteous; for Yahweh was concerned in the well-being of the nation as a whole, and not with that of its individual members. The individual was not the religious unit, but the family, the tribe, or nation. But no right view of the present or future destinies of the righteous could be reached till monotheism had taught the worth of the individual soul, its immediate relation with Yahweh, and the inevitable responsibilities attaching thereto. This was first done in the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.
\nSince the old covenant had failed to preserve, much more to redeem, Israel, Jeremiah promises the institution of a new covenant. Under this new covenant man\u2019s spiritual incapacities for obedience to God\u2019s law would be removed; for, just as God had written His law on the heart of the prophet, so would He write it on the heart of the individual Israelite (Jer. 31:32\u201334), and thus a new relation would be established between God and the individual, which would supersede the old relation, which had existed between God and the nation as a whole, and the individual would thus step into the place of the nation and become the religious unit. Heretofore the individual had approached God either through priest or prophet. Henceforth he was to have direct access to God and enter into the privileges of the prophet.
\nThe teaching of Jeremiah was taken up and developed by Ezekiel. In pre-Exilic times the individual soul had been conceived as the property of the family and the nation, but Ezekiel teaches that every soul is God\u2019s and therefore exists in a direct relation with Him (Ezek. 18:4). Ezekiel\u2019s individualism here receives its most noble and profound expression. Never, hitherto, had the absolute worth of the individual human soul been asserted in such brief and pregnant words as those of the prophet speaking in God\u2019s behalf: \u201cAll souls are mine.\u201d From this principle Ezekiel concluded that, if the individual was faithful in his immediate relation to Yahweh, he ceased to be the thrall of his own sin or that of his forefathers (18:21\u20139; 14:12\u201320), and became a free man, even God\u2019s man, wholly unaffected alike by his own past, or that of the nation. Hence every man should receive a recompense, and a recompense exactly adequate to his deserts. And since Ezekiel, like his predecessors, believed in the traditional view of Sheol as the unblessed abode of the shades removed from the sway of Yahweh, he could not but conclude that the perfect recompense which he taught was awarded in this life. Thus the exact measure of that which was his due was meted out to the individual in this life; and the outward lot of the individual became on this view an infallible index to his character and his actual condition before God. His prosperity was a divine testimony to God\u2019s good pleasure in him, his adversity was no less surely a sign of the divine displeasure. 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.
\nEzekiel\u2019s individualism became, with minor modifications, the orthodox doctrine of Judaism, and was variously applied in the two great popular handbooks, the Psalter and the Book of Proverbs.
\nNotwithstanding, this doctrine proved a continual stumbling-block in the interpretation of life. If all went well with the righteous man he was assured of God\u2019s favour, but misfortune or pain destroyed this certainty; for as such they were evidence of unfaithfulness. His personal friends, it is true, might in their charity construe his affliction as a discipline of God, but the popular conscience was only too ready to arraign it as the penalty of sin.
\nThis orthodox doctrine, moreover, barred the way of all progress to a higher solution of the problem. So long as the nation was convinced that there was a perfectly adequate retribution in this life, there was no occasion to question the truth of the current view on the condition of the departed in Sheol. But profound dissatisfaction with the dominant doctrine prevailed in thoughtful circles of the opposite character, which waged a secret and long-sustained attack on the doctrine of Ezekiel and of the Church of their own time, and of this attack two very notable memorials have come down to us: the Books of Job and Ecclesiastes, the former an anonymous work, the latter a pseudonymous.
\nAlthough Ecclesiastes was written some two hundred years later than Job, we shall notice its protest first, since its services were purely destructive, and not, as in the case of Job, destructive and constructive. We may dismiss the former in a sentence. To him the life of the individual was simply a vanity of vanities, for the occasional references to judgment are Pharisaic interpolations of a later date: there was no retribution, either here or hereafter, no difference between the ultimate destiny of the righteous and the wicked, and none apparently between that of man and the brute.
\nThe Book of Job was written at all events about or before 400 B.C. Its concern from first to last is the current doctrine of retribution, and its aim is to show that the doctrine of man\u2019s individual worth and a strictly individual retribution are really irreconcilable. Like his contemporaries, Job accepted the traditional teaching that every event, whether of good or ill, that befalls a man reflects God\u2019s disposition towards him, and that a strictly retributive judgment is enforced in this life. But this belief, Job found, was not confirmed by the fortunes of other men (21:1\u201315); for the wicked prosper and go down to the grave in peace; and his own bitter experience emphasised to the full the conflict between faith and experience.
\nHuman faith, in order to assure itself of its own reality, claims an outward attestation at the hands of God (17:3\u20134); but as all such outward attestation was withheld, Job concluded that the righteousness of God could not be discovered in the outer world as ruled by God; and that this world was a moral chaos; hence from the God of such a world, the God of outer providence, the God of circumstance, he appealed to the God of faith, though to this appeal he looked for an answer not in this world, but in the next (19:25\u201327).<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that my Avenger liveth,
\nAnd that at the last He will appear above (my) grave:
\nAnd after my skin has been destroyed,
\nWithout my body I shall see God:
\nWhom I shall see for myself,
\nAnd my eyes shall behold, and not another.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this momentous passage, which is the first approach in Jewish literature to the idea of a blessed life after death, Job declares that God shall appear for his vindication against the false charges of his friends and the false ordinances of the orthodox law of retribution. He declares, further, that he shall himself witness this vindication, and enjoy the vision of God. But we cannot infer that this divine experience would endure beyond the moment of Job\u2019s justification by God. The possibility of the continuance, much less of the unendingness, of this higher life does not seem to have dawned upon him, though it lay in the line of his reasonings. If it had, it could not have been ignored throughout the rest of the book.
\nThough the Book of Job does not teach categorically the idea of a future life, it undoubtedly suggests it. That the idea was in the air is clear from 14:13\u201315; 19:25\u20137; but even if these passages were absent it would still be true, for throughout the rest of the book the antinomies of the present are presented in so strong a light that the thinkers of Israel who assimilated its contents were forced henceforth to take up a definite attitude to the new and higher theology. Some made the venture of faith, and so reached forward to the doctrine of a future life; others, like the writer of Ecclesiastes, declining the challenge of the Spirit, made the \u201cgreat refusal,\u201d and fell back on materialism and unbelief. We have here arrived at the parting of the ways. From Job we should naturally pass to the consideration of Psalms 16; 17; 49; 73, in the latter two of which, at all events, clear conviction of a blessed immortality is expressed. In Psalm 73 the writer declares that the highest blessedness of the righteous is unbroken communion with God; what heaven or earth has in store for him matters not. In comparison with God, all the universe is nothing; this life ended, God is the portion of the souls of the righteous for evermore (73:23\u20136).
\nSo far we have taken no account of the doctrine of the resurrection in the Old Testament. To this subject we must now turn. At the outset we called attention to the two hopes cherished by Israel\u2014the hope of the individual, which gave birth in due course to the belief in an individual immortality, and the hope of the nation, which developed ultimately into the expectation of the Messianic kingdom. In this kingdom, as originally conceived, only the righteous who lived at the time of its advent, and none others, should share. For several centuries these two hopes pursued, side by side, their own lines of development, and it was not till the third century B.C., at earliest (?) that they were seen to be complementary sides of one and the same religious truth, a truth that subserves and does justice to the essential claims of both. Thus when the doctrine of the blessed immortality of the faithful is combined with that of the Messianic kingdom, the separate eschatologies of the individual and of the nation issue in their synthesis. Not only should the surviving righteous participate in the Messianic kingdom, but the righteous dead of Israel should rise to share therein. Thus the righteous individual and the righteous nation should be blessed together.<\/p>\n
\u201cThy dead men (Israel) shall arise
\nAnd the inhabitants of the dust shall awake and shout for joy\u201d (Isa. 26:19).<\/p>\n
Thus the resurrection, stripped of its accidents and considered in its essence, marks the entrance of the individual after death into the divine life of the community; in other words, the synthesis of the individual and of the common good. The faithful in Palestine 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. The self-centredness, nay the selfishness, that marked the Greek doctrine of immortality is conspicuous by its absence in the religious forecasts of the faithful in Israel. In true religion unlimited individualism is an impossibility. The individual can only attain to his highest in the life of the community, alike here and hereafter.
\nAnother characteristic of the original form of the doctrine of the resurrection in Israel should be observed. The resurrection was conceived to be the sole prerogative of the righteous as it appears in Isaiah 24\u201327. From this standpoint there can be no resurrection of the wicked. But the spiritual significance of the conception is lost in Daniel, where the resurrection is limited on the one side to the martyrs, and extended on the other to the apostates of Israel. In most writings during the next three centuries it is taught or implied that only the righteous shall have part in the resurrection.
\nBefore leaving the Old Testament we might add that the above doctrines are the beliefs or aspirations of only a few of the faithful in Israel. The mass of the people still clung to the older views. The higher theology had still to win over the nation.
\nFrom the Old Testament we pass to the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, which were written between 180 B.C. and A.D. 100. These centuries, especially the two preceding the Christian era, were till recently regarded as the centuries of silence, during which no fresh voice or teaching of God reached the nation. There could hardly be a more mistaken idea. So far from being ages of spiritual stagnation and darkness, they might with justice be described as the two most fruitful centuries in religious life and thought in the history of Israel. No New Testament scholar can understand the New Testament as the culmination of the spiritual development of the past apart from this literature, nor can the Jew explain how Talmudic Judaism came to possess its higher conceptions of the future life, unless he studies this literature as the sequel of the Old Testament. For there is not a single reference to a blessed future life in the Pentateuch nor in the Prophets strictly so called. Only in two Psalms and in three apocalyptic writings\u2014Job, Isaiah 26 and Daniel\u2014is the question dealt with. Judaism owes these beginnings of the higher theology not to the Law as such, but to the Apocalyptic School in Judaism, and yet the works of this school were banned and destroyed by Rabbinic Judaism after the first century of the Christian era.
\nWe are not, however, to suppose that all the Jewish literature of these centuries inculcated the higher theology. The very important work of Sirach, the Book of Tobit, and 1 Maccabees represent the older theology, which, in its outlook on the next life, was decidedly of a heathen character. All retribution is confined to this life (cf. Sirach 41:3, 4):<\/p>\n
\u201cFear not death \u2026
\n(Be it) for a thousand years, for a hundred, or for ten (that thou livest)
\nIn Sheol there are no corrections concerning life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Or, again, 27:27, 28:<\/p>\n
\u201cFor what pleasure hath God in all that perish in Hades,
\nInstead of the living and those that give Him praise?
\nThanksgiving perisheth from the dead as from one that is not,
\nBut he that liveth and is in health praiseth the Lord.\u201d<\/p>\n
So far, then, as the doctrine of a blessed future life is concerned, these works are reactionary and belong to the past, and have no share in developing the few and tentative efforts that appear in this direction in the Old Testament. This task was committed to a small body of zealous Jews, who were known as Chasidim or Asid\u00e6ans, i.e. \u201cpious ones.\u201d The first reference to these as forming a religious organisation is found in 1 Enoch, xc. 6 (circ. 161 B.C.). In this passage they are described in allegorical terms: \u201cBut behold lambs were borne by those white sheep, and they began to open their eyes, and to see and to cry to the sheep.\u201d The \u201cwhite sheep\u201d here are the faithful adherents of the Theocracy, the lambs are the Chasidim. The lambs are distinguished from the white sheep, because the movement initiated by the Chasidim marked a new and severer rule of life and worship than had hitherto been observed. From the Maccabean revolution they held aloof for some time, because it had broken off relations with the high priest of the time, the religious head of the nation, but at last they were forced to support it owing to the hopeless corruption of the high-priesthood. So long as the Maccabean family fought simply for the restoration of the Theocracy, they commanded the entire allegiance of the Chasidim, but the moment that Jonathan assumed the high-priestly office, they gradually withdrew their support and abandoned the arena of public life. For almost half a century they are unknown to history. When they once more reappear in the public arena, they are known as the Pharisees, and from henceforth for good or ill mould the destinies of the nation. However corrupt this movement became in later times, it was incomparably noble in its early days. To this comparatively small body of men was entrusted the defence, confirmation, and development of the religious truths that were to save the world.
\nNow this task it achieved in the two centuries before the Christian era, and the steps by which it did so are to be found in the apocalyptic books of Enoch, Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs, Jubilees, the Book of Wisdom, the Psalms of Solomon, the Assumption of Moses, and others.
\nWe are not, indeed, to imagine that these books simply took up and popularised the few teachings of the Old Testament on this subject. Not so. The apocalyptic writers simply took these writings as a startingpoint, and developed a series of eschatological systems by means of which the heathen survivals in the Old Testament are displaced and comparatively consistent and spiritual views of the future are developed. It is impossible on the present occasion to trace even the chief phases of this development. We must not, however, neglect to mention one change of surpassing importance in the conception of the kingdom, as well as some individual developments made in this period. This great transformation in the Messianic hope took place about 100 B.C., and, owing to it, a great gulf divides the eschatology of the following centuries from that of the past. Thus the hope of an eternal Messianic kingdom on the present earth, which had been taught by the Old Testament prophets and cherished by every Israelite, was then abandoned. The earth had come to be regarded as wholly unfit for the manifestation of the kingdom. As a consequence of this breach between the things of earth and the things of heaven, subsequent writers were forced to advance to new conceptions of the kingdom. Some taught that the Messianic kingdom was henceforth to be of merely temporary duration, and that the goal of the risen righteous was to be not this transitory kingdom or millennium, but heaven itself. From this abandonment of the hope of an eternal Messianic kingdom it followed further that not only the resurrection but also the final judgment were adjourned to its close, though in the Old Testament they had always served to initiate the kingdom.
\nOnly a few other developments can be noticed. Whereas in the Old Testament and the literature of the second century the righteous were raised to live again on the present earth with glorified but earthly bodies, wherewith they could marry and be given in marriage, after 100 B.C. a transcendent view of the risen righteous is developed\u2014the risen righteous enter immediately into heaven itself or an eternal Messianic kingdom in a new heaven and a new earth. To such spiritual abodes there could be no mere bodily resurrection. Hence, either there would only be a resurrection of the spirit, and the righteous would, as an old writer says, be as the angels of God in heaven, or else they would rise in garments of light and glory. Moreover, throughout the first century B.C., it is all but universally taught that only the righteous should have part in the resurrection.
\nAs regards Sheol, a whole history is wrapped up in the uses of this term. Amid the various divergent conceptions of it in the Old Testament two features always persist. First, it is a place where social and not moral distinctions prevail; and secondly, though an abode of misery and wretchedness, it is not like Gehenna\u2014a place of torment by fire. Now in the course of apocalyptic literature these views are abandoned. From 180 B.C. onward Sheol is generally conceived as a place of moral distinctions, and shortly after 100 B.C. Sheol is described for the first time as an abode of fire, as in the New Testament.
\nI will here give the first passage in Jewish literature which attests the transformation of Sheol into a place of moral distinctions. Thus, in 1 Enoch xxii. 9\u201313, three divisions for spirits or souls in the after-world are described: the first for righteous spirits; the second for the spirits of sinners, who died without suffering retribution in this world. To both these classes Sheol will be an intermediate place from which they shall rise to inherit respectively blessedness and torment at the day of judgment. The third division is for the spirits of sinners who have met with retribution in this life. For them Sheol has become an eternal abode. xxii. 9\u201313: \u201cThese three have been made that the spirits of the dead might be separated. And this division has been made for the spirits of the righteous, in which there is the bright spring of water. (10) And this has been made for sinners when they die and are buried in the earth and judgment has not been executed upon them in their lifetime. (11) Here their spirits shall be set apart in this great pain, till the great day of judgment, scourgings and torments of the accursed for ever, so that (there may be) retribution for their spirits. There shall He bind them for ever. (12) And this division has been made for the spirits of those who \u2026 were slain in the days of the sinners. (13) \u2026 who are godless \u2026 but their spirits shall not be punished on the day of judgment, nor shall they be raised from thence.\u201d
\nIt is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this revolution in Jewish thought on the nature of the after-life. But, after all, the conception of Sheol is only imperfectly ethical. The destiny of each soul is regarded as accomplished at death, and its place in Sheol, or ultimately in Gehenna, is absolutely and irrevocably defined according to its character on earth. Hence, at its best, Sheol thus conceived is only a place of petrified moralities and suspended graces. It begins with being moral and ends in being purely mechanical.
\nDuring this period Gehenna undergoes transformation. We cannot here enter into its various developments. We shall only observe that it was originally conceived as the future abode of apostate Jews, in which they suffered both in body and spirit. The former idea was soon abandoned, and it was regarded as the final abode of punishment of the souls or spirits of the wicked. Another idea came to be associated with this conception in the second century B.C., i.e. that the punishment of the wicked was carried out in the presence of the righteous. By the first century A.D. this attribute of Gehenna has already been transferred to Sheol or Hades, as we see from the Parable of Dives and 4 Ezra.
\nAmongst the many other notable transformations and developments of Old Testament conceptions which took place in subsequent apocalyptic, we can only notice those of the soul and spirit. Into the very complicated history of the relations of these two conceptions in the Old Testament and late Jewish and Christian literature we cannot here enter. It will be sufficient here to point out that in the Old Testament the soul is in all passages save one in Daniel the bearer of the personality. Accordingly it is the soul and not the spirit that descends into Sheol. In the Old Testament there are, in fact, two anthropologies. According to the older Hebrew view the spirit and soul were practically identical. Man was a dichotomy, i.e. composed of spirit, or soul, and body. The term \u201cspirit\u201d was appropriated to mark the stronger side of the soul, and the stronger and stormier emotions. Accordingly, when a man fainted or died, it was because his spirit had left him. Thus the soul, which was conceived to be weak and shorn of the strength which it enjoyed when conjoined with the spirit, alone went down into Sheol. But in Genesis 2\u20133 there is quite a different conception of man. There man is represented as a trichotomy of spirit, soul and body: the spirit is the breath of God, and the soul only a function of the quickened body. According to this view, when the spirit is withdrawn the personality is extinguished at death. This dissolution of the personality at death is frankly recognised in Ecclesiastes 12:7, and the impersonal breath of life returns to the Supreme Fount of Life: \u201cthe spirit shall return to God who gave it.\u201d This anthropological view is logically and historically the parent of later Sadduceeism, which taught that there was neither angel nor spirit (Acts 23:8).
\nThus we see that, according to the two different conceptions of man in the Old Testament, the spirit was not the bearer of the personality, and could not descend into Sheol. In the apocalyptic, however, of the second and first centuries B.C. there is a complete reversal of this view. The spirit is just as frequently, or rather more frequently, spoken of as the bearer of man\u2019s personality in the future life. In fact spirit and soul are practically conceived as identical at this period, and likewise in the New Testament, save in the Pauline Epistles. In the Pauline Epistles the soul and spirit are carefully discriminated, and, in contradistinction to the Old Testament view that the soul is the bearer of the personality, St. Paul held that the spirit was the bearer of the personality, and accordingly he always (save once in his earliest Epistle) speaks of the saving of the spirit, not of the saving of the soul. His matured view apparently was that it was the spirit and not the soul that survived death.
\nWhat happens in the case of the conceptions just dealt with happens in the case of all technical eschatological terms. There is constant movement, constant development; and the movement is, on the whole, towards a more spiritual conception of the future, in the course of which the lower survivals of the past are steadily dropped and higher conceptions set in their place. But, as is natural, throughout the entire development eschatological thought always stands on a lower spiritual plane than the theological conception of God.
\nWe have now traced the steps taken by the religious thinkers in Israel as they rose to the conception of, and faith in, a blessed future life. The belief is, of course, still in an initial and immature stage. We have mentioned a few of its subsequent developments in apocalyptic literature. Its further growth and enrichment in the New Testament shall soon claim our attention.
\nWhen we pass from Jewish literature to that of the New Testament we find ourselves in an absolutely new atmosphere. It is not, indeed, that we have to do with a wholly new world of ideas and moral forces, for all that was great and inspiring in the past has come over into the present, and claimed its part in the formation of the Christian Church. But in the process of incorporation this heritage from the past has been, of necessity, largely, but not in every case wholly, transformed. These forces and ideas no longer constitute a heterogeneous mass in constant flux, but gradually fall into their due subordination, and contribute harmoniously to the purpose of the whole. For the Christ assumes a position undreamt of in the past, and membership of the kingdom is constituted firstly and predominatingly through personal relationship to its divine Head.
\nThe synthesis of the hopes of the race and of the individual is established in a universal form finally and for ever. The divine kingdom begins on earth and will be consummated in heaven. It forms a divine society, in which the position and significance of each member are determined by his endowments, and his blessedness conditioned by the blessedness of the whole. Thus religious individualism becomes an impossibility. On the one hand, while it is true the individual can have no part in the kingdom save in a living relation to its Head, yet, on the other, this relation cannot be maintained and developed save through life in and for the brethren; and so closely is the individual life bound up in that of the brethren that no soul can reach its consummation apart.
\nWe have already seen that at all periods in the history of Israel there existed, side by side, in its religion incongruous and inconsistent elements. On the one side there was the doctrine of God, ever advancing in depth and fullness; on the other, eschatological and other survivals, which, however justifiable in other stages, are in unmistakable antagonism with the theistic beliefs of the time. The eschatology of the nation is always the last part of its religion to experience the transforming power of new ideas and new facts. The eschatology of Israel was at times six hundred years behind its theology.
\nThe recognition of these facts is of transcendent importance when we deal with New Testament eschatology. It prepares us for the occurrence to some extent of similar phenomena in the New Testament, and makes us ready to acknowledge their existence and give them their full historical value. Standing at variance as they do with the Christian fundamental doctrines of God and Christ, they must be condemned as survivals of an earlier and lower stage of religious belief. In Christianity there is a survival of alien Judaistic elements, just as in the Hebrew religion there were for centuries survivals of Semitic heathenism. Let us take two concrete instances. In the Hebrew religion Sheol, as a place of social and national distinctions, was a purely heathen conception. The first decisive stage in its moralisation took place early in the second century B.C., when it was transformed into a place of moral distinctions. But this moralisation was very inadequately carried out. According to the Judaistic conceptions, souls in Sheol were conceived as insusceptible of ethical progress. What they were on entering Sheol, that they continued to be till the final judgment. This conception is mechanical and unethical, if judged in the light of Christian theism. It precludes moral change in moral agents who are under the rule of a Being of perfect love and righteousness. The doctrine of eternal damnation, also, is a Judaistic survival of a still more grossly immoral character. This doctrine is antagonistic in the highest degree to the Sermon on the Mount, where a man is taught to love his enemies even as God does, and to labour unceasingly on their behalf, and to the Johannine teaching which finds its highest expression in the divinest utterance in all literature\u2014\u201cGod is love.\u201d In connection with this, the highest conception of God possible, the conception of Hades must make its final ethical advance and become a place where moral growth and moral declension are alike possible. This advance is really implied in 1 Peter 4 Furthermore, the old Judaistic conception of Hell as a place of eternal damnation must be abandoned. Sin, according to the Johannine view, is the destroyer of life\u2014physical, spiritual, and ontological. Now to check the ultimate effects of this process of destruction and preserve the sinner in a state of ever-growing, ever-deepening, and yet ever-inevitable sin could in no sense be the work of the God so conceived.
\nHence the theology of the New Testament with its doctrine of the Fatherhood of God demands a transformation of the Jewish doctrine, and postulates our acceptance either of Conditional Immortality, or, as Origen of old taught, of Universalism. So far as the Christian Churches hold fast to the doctrine taken over from Judaism at the Christian era, their eschatology is nearly two thousand years behind their doctrine of God and Christ. We are all ready, I hope, in some fashion to recognise the possibility of a further probation. Some of us may only go so far as to hold probation as a purely speculative question and a matter of grace on the part of God. But there are others amongst us who regard it in quite a different light, and who cannot simply relegate it to the region of God\u2019s uncovenanted mercies, seeing that it affects so deeply the character of God Himself. Nay, they would hold it a dishonour to the God they revere and serve even to admit the possibility that He should visit with a never-ending punishment the errors and shortcomings, nay more, the wilful sins of a few dim and mistaken years of earth, and limit to a handbreadth of time the opportunities and irremediable issues of a never-ending eternity.
\nThis study of the rise and development of the doctrine of a blessed future life enforces its own lesson. It was only through a strenuous life of faith that Israel won its belief in a blessed immortality, a belief that with the passing generations assumed higher and more spiritual forms, till in Christianity its transfiguration became all but complete. And what has been won through religious experience cannot be preserved and developed otherwise than by religious experience. And in such experience we not only keep what we have won but we go from strength to strength, rising, as we advance, into an ever higher and fuller life, and the assurance of this life grows in the measure of our faithfulness, just as the consciousness of it grows dim if we live as though it were not, till at last the faculty for its discernment is itself lost\u2014at all events for the time\u2014through atrophy and disuse.
\nTo such, philosophy or even psychical research may render some negative help, but into the full inheritance of the faithful the individual cannot enter by such arguments. Only through personal communion with the Fount of Life is man enabled to rise into the eternal life. In such communion his doubtings vanish, his assurance of a share in the blessed hereafter grows in strength and volume, and the essential interests and issues of his life are more and more lifted above the horizons of time and set in divine relations, that are commensurate only with the limits of an immortal\u2019s years.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER V<\/p>\n
MAN\u2019S FORGIVENESS OF HIS NEIGHBOUR\u2014A STUDY IN RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT<\/p>\n
When we study the teachings of the Old and New Testaments on this subject, we are at once struck with the vast ethical gulf that severs the latter from the former, not, indeed, on the question of God\u2019s forgiveness of man, but of man\u2019s forgiveness of his neighbour. In the New Testament, from the first page to the last, with the exception of certain passages in the New Testament Apocalypse, it is either explicitly stated or implicitly understood that a man can only receive the divine forgiveness on condition that he forgives his neighbour. Indeed, in their essential aspects these two forgivenesses are one and the same. But in the Old Testament it is very different. There, indeed, God\u2019s forgiveness is granted without money and without price to the sinner who truly seeks it. But the penitent in the Old Testament could accept and enjoy the divine pardon and yet cherish the most bitter feelings towards his own personal enemy. There are, indeed, some noble passages in the Old Testament which forbid the indulgence of personal resentment. Though few in number, and indeed but as voices crying in the wilderness, they are yet of transcendent import; for they form the beginnings of that lofty doctrine of forgiveness which reaches its highest expression in the New Testament, as we shall now proceed to show. The presence of such passages in the Old Testament is evidence that already the more spiritual minds in Judaism were working towards loftier conceptions of forgiveness than those that had prevailed in the past or were current among their contemporaries. We shall now try to show the chief steps in the advance to this more ethical attitude towards an enemy.
\nI. One of the oldest statements in the Bible which shows a consciousness that as a man dealt with his fellow men so would God deal with him, is found in Judges 1:6, 7, and the reflection on this point is, strangely enough, put in the mouth of a Canaanitish king Adoni-bezek: \u201cAnd Adoni-bezek fled, and they pursued after him and caught him, and cut off his thumbs and his great toes. And Adoni-bezek said: Threescore and ten kings having their thumbs and their great toes cut off gathered their meat under my table: as I have done, so God hath requited me.\u201d The primitive human law of exact retaliation, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life, is here described as the law of divine procedure. In Exod. 21:23 seqq. this law is to be observed by the judges in Israel. In the hands of the late scribes and legalists this law was often crassly conceived, and in Jubilees and 2 Maccabees the history of the deaths of notable evildoers is often rewritten so as to furnish examples of this law of retribution. Spiritually conceived, it represents a profound religious truth enunciated repeatedly in the New Testament. But to return, this doctrine, that with what measure we mete it is measured to us again, is found in Ps. 18:25 seq.:<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the merciful Thou wilt show Thyself merciful \u2026
\nWith the pure Thou wilt show Thyself pure,
\nAnd with the perverse Thou wilt show Thyself froward.\u201d<\/p>\n
II. The belief in such a connection between a man\u2019s treatment of his neighbour and his treatment by God is sufficient to explain the use of such negative commands as Prov. 20:22:<\/p>\n
\u201cSay not thou, I will recompense evil:
\nWait on the Lord and He shall save thee.\u201d<\/p>\n
Or in Prov. 24:29:<\/p>\n
\u201cSay not, I will do to him as he hath done to me;
\nI will render to the man according to his work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Or in Job 31:29 seq.:<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I rejoiced at the destruction of him that hated me,
\nOr lifted up myself when evil found him;
\nYea, I suffered not my mouth to sin
\nBy asking his life with a curse.\u201d<\/p>\n
These precepts are noteworthy since they are opposed to the principle of retaliation in itself, and that at a time when such a principle was universally current.
\nIII. But there are one or two notable passages that go beyond these and contain positive commands that when we find our enemy in difficulty or distress we are to help him. Thus it is enjoined in Exod. 23:4, 5: \u201cIf thou meet thine enemy\u2019s ox or his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again. If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under its burthen, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt surely help with him.\u201d And again in Prov. 25:21, 22:<\/p>\n
\u201cIf thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat,
\nAnd if he be thirsty, give him water to drink;
\nFor thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head,
\nAnd the Lord shall reward thee.\u201d<\/p>\n
This last noble passage, however, occurs in close proximity to a vile direction, that a man was not to rejoice over the affliction of an enemy lest God should see it and remove the affliction. And yet this base precept implies the existence of a higher one, that a man should not rejoice over a fallen enemy\u2019s misfortunes.
\nIV. But the Old Testament ethics reaches its highest point of development in Lev. 19:17\u201318, a passage the importance of which it would be hard to exaggerate.
\nThis passage runs: \u201cThou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt surely rebuke thy neighbour, and not bear sin because of him. Thou shalt not take vengeance nor bear grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.\u201d
\nHere all hatred of a brother is forbidden. In case a man\u2019s neighbour does a wrong he is to admonish him. If he has himself suffered a wrong, he is not to avenge himself on his neighbour, but to love him as himself. We have here a true foundation for subsequent ethical development on the subject of forgiveness. It is true that the sphere of the precept is limited here absolutely to Israelites or to such strangers or ger\u00eem as had taken upon themselves the yoke of the Law. Neighbour here means an Israelite or Jew. Notwithstanding the passage is epoch-making, and served in some degree to fashion the highest pronouncement on forgiveness in later Judaism that we find in the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs.
\nV. Finally, we have the notable instance of Joseph\u2019s forgiveness of his brethren; but this act of grace on Joseph\u2019s part does not seem to have impressed later Old Testament writers, or led them to urge Joseph\u2019s conduct as worthy herein of imitation.
\nWe have now given practically all the higher teaching on forgiveness in the Old Testament; but side by side with this higher teaching there are statements of a very different character, which exhibit the unforgiving temper in various degrees of intensity. Our classification of them is logical rather than chronological.
\nI. In the first stage this temper manifests itself in a most unblushing and positive manner in one of the Psalms, where the righteous man prays to Yahweh to make him strong enough to pay out his enemies: \u201cDo thou, O Lord, have mercy upon me, and raise me up that I may requite them\u201d (Ps. 41:10). Side by side with this prayer we might place the unforgiving spirit of David\u2014the man after God\u2019s own heart\u2014when on his death-bed he charged Solomon not to let Joab\u2019s hoar head go down to the grave in peace; and commanded him to deal similarly with Shimei, though David had promised to preserve Shimei\u2019s life.
\nII. But this thirst for immediate personal vengeance could not, unless exceptionally, indulge itself when once order and law were established in the land. The person wronged could take to heart the words of the Deuteronomist, that God would \u201cavenge the blood of His servants\u201d (32:43), for that \u201cVengeance is Mine and recompence\u201d (32:35), and so might relinquish the desire of personally executing the vengeance; but if so, then in many instances he prayed all the more vehemently for God to undertake the vengeance for him. Under this heading comes the most appalling exhibition of vindictiveness to be found in religious literature, i.e. the Imprecatory Psalms. No amount of explaining away or allegorising can excise the malignant venom in these productions; nor in such utterances as Ps. 137, where the writer in his fury against Babylon declareth: \u201cHappy shall he be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the rock.\u201d The use of such Psalms in Christian worship cannot be justified. And yet the faithful Jew felt no hesitation in believing that God would fulfil such prayers. He writes:<\/p>\n
\u201cGod is mine helper;
\nThe Lord is of them that uphold my soul:
\nHe shall requite the evil unto mine enemies,\u201d<\/p>\n
and then closes the Psalm with the expression of sated vengeance:<\/p>\n
\u201cMine eye hath seen my desire upon mine enemies\u201d
\n(Ps. 54:4, 5, 7).<\/p>\n
Or again in 118:7:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Lord is on my side among them that help me:
\nTherefore shall I see my desire upon them that hate me.\u201d<\/p>\n
This revengeful temper is ascribed to the ideal righteous man by the Psalmist in 112:9, 8.<\/p>\n
9. \u201cHe hath dispersed, he hath given to the needy;
\nHis righteousness endureth for ever.\u201d
\n8. \u201cHis heart is established, he shall not be afraid,
\nUntil he see his desire upon his adversaries.\u201d<\/p>\n
These passages more than justify our Lord\u2019s summary of the teaching of the Old Testament on this question in Matt. 5:43. \u201cYe have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.\u201d
\nIII. But as time went on the teaching of the nobler spirits began to make itself felt, and so the faithful came to feel that there was something wrong in the vindictive spirit in itself and in its joy over an enemy\u2019s misfortune. We have already given some passages attesting such a higher temper, but I shall quote still another, and that one of the most remarkable in the Old Testament for its distorted ethics:<\/p>\n
\u201cRejoice not when thine enemy falleth,
\nAnd let not thy heart be glad when he is overthrown,
\nLest the Lord see it and it displease Him,
\nAnd he turn away His wrath from him.\u201d
\nProv. 24:17, 18.<\/p>\n
Here we are bidden not to rejoice over an enemy\u2019s overthrow lest God see our malicious joy and so restore our enemy to prosperity. Though this precept shows an ethical advance on the part of some circle in the community\u2014a consciousness that vindictive rejoicing over an enemy\u2019s fall is wrong\u2014yet the temper of the man who gave this precept and of him who observed it is immeasurably lower than that of the plain man who prayed bluntly to God to raise him up that he might pay off old scores against his enemy.
\nFrom the two conflicting series of passages on forgiveness we have now dealt with, we see that there was no such thing as a prescribed and unquestioned doctrine of forgiveness in the Old Testament, and that a Jew, however he chose to act towards his personal enemy, could justify his conduct from his sacred writings. It is easy to deduce the natural consequences of such a state of ethical confusion.
\nWhen a man, and that, too, a good man, has suffered wrong, his usual course is not to ask what is the very highest and noblest line of conduct he could take towards his enemy, but generally what is the least exacting and yet ethically acceptable amongst his orthodox contemporaries. And in a book where every jot and tittle was equally authoritative, if he chose the precepts that accorded best with his personal feelings, how could he be blamed? If he chose to indulge his personal animosities, he could do so without forfeiting his own self-respect or that of the religious leaders of the community; for he could support his action by sanctions drawn from sacred Psalmist and sainted hero. It is true, indeed, that if he were an exceptionally spiritually minded man he could not fail to recognise the fact that there were a few Old Testament passages that conflicted with his natural feelings; and if he were an exceptionally good man, he might forgo his desire of vengeance; as no doubt many an Israelite did, and render actual positive help to a Jewish enemy in distress. But to good Israelites generally such isolated precepts were only counsels of perfection, and their fulfilment could not be held necessary to salvation, nor could they be said to possess any higher objective authority than those precepts and examples that conflicted with them in the same sacred books. With these isolated teachings, which represent only the highest the Old Testament was striving towards, let us compare a few of those which are characteristic of and central in the New Testament.
\n\u201cForgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.\u2026 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses\u201d (Matt. 6:12, 14, 15).
\n\u201cWhensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have aught against any one, that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses\u201d (Mark 11:25, 26).
\n\u201cBe not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good\u201d (Rom. 12:21).
\n\u201cLove your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.\u2026 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.\u2026 And ye shall be sons of the Most High: for He is kind toward the unthankful and evil\u201d (Luke 6:27, 28, 31, 35).
\n\u201cHow oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Until seven times? Jesus saith unto him: I say not unto thee Until seven times; but Until seventy times seven\u201d (Matt. 18:21, 22)
\n\u201cIf thy brother sin against thee, go, show him his fault between thee and him alone: if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother\u201d (Matt. 18:15).
\n\u201cIf thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he sin against thee seven times in a day, and seven times turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou shalt forgive him\u201d (Luke 17:3, 4).
\n\u201cLet all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and railing be put away from you, with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God also in Christ forgave you\u201d (Eph. 4:31, 32).
\n\u201cYe have heard that it was said: Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be the sons of your Father which is in heaven; for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust\u201d (Matt. 5:43\u201345).
\nLet us now contrast in a few words the teaching of the Old and New Testaments, and herein accept only that which is highest in the former. First, whereas the Old Testament in a few passages denounces the cherishing or manifestation of personal resentment against a fellow countryman, the New Testament requires universally the annihilation of the passion itself as regards fellow countrymen and strangers. Again, while in two or more passages the Old Testament inculcates that a man should do positive kindness to a hostile fellow countryman when in distress, the New Testament everywhere explicitly and implicitly requires him to render such services, whether the wrongdoer be Christian or non-Christian, prosperous or the reverse.
\nWe have now before us the startling contrast which the teachings on forgiveness in the Old and New Testaments present. How are we to explain it? In the past some scholars have ignored the question, while others have regarded the New Testament doctrine of forgiveness as a wholly original contribution of Christianity. But such a view is no longer possible, now that recent research has brought to light the evidence of the apocryphal and apocalyptic books on this and other New Testament subjects.
\nA study of the literature that comes between the Old and New Testaments shows that there was a steady development in every department of religious thought in the centuries immediately preceding the Christian era. This fact has already been fully recognised in the department of eschatology. And on the doctrine of forgiveness new light has come through a critical study of the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs. However, before we discuss the bearing of this work on the development of this doctrine, we must deal with a noteworthy section in Sirach 27:30 to 28:7, which attests some advance on the Old Testament doctrine and yet one not so advanced as that in the Testaments. In 28:3\u20135 Sirach teaches the duty of forgiveness, but in the main as a measure of prudence. Forgiveness is befitting the frailty of sinful man, he urges:<\/p>\n
\u201cMan cherisheth anger against another,
\nAnd doth he seek healing from God?
\nOn a man like himself he hath no mercy,
\nAnd doth he make supplication for his own sins?
\nHe being flesh nourisheth wrath:
\nWho will make atonement for his sins?\u201d
\n(28:3\u20135.)<\/p>\n
This advice is good, but strikes no very lofty note. Verses 1, 2, 6\u20137, are, however, some advance on Old Testament doctrine.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe that taketh vengeance shall find vengeance from the Lord,
\nAnd his sins He will assuredly keep in remembrance.
\nForgive thy neighbour the injury done unto thee,
\nAnd then when thou prayest thy sins will be forgiven.\u2026
\nRemember thy last end and cease from enmity,
\n\u2026 And be not wroth with thy neighbour.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here the doctrine of divine retribution makes more explicit the teaching of the Psalmist:<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the merciful thou shalt show thyself merciful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moreover, it is now clearly implied that forgiveness is better in itself than vengeance; and that a man should forgo wrath against his neighbour, for that the Jew who forgives his neighbour is forgiven of God. The recurrence of this teaching in later purely Jewish sources confirms the genuineness of the passage in Sirach, and proves that Jewish thought on the subject of forgiveness was developing on the highest lines laid down in the Old Testament. In Philo (De Humanitate 15) a high note is adopted where he speaks of the Law \u201cteaching men by remote examples not to be delighted at the unexpected misfortunes of those that hate them,\u201d and further points out that if a man confers a favour on his enemy there \u201cfollows of necessity a dissolution of the enmity.\u201d
\nA less noble note is struck in 2 Enoch l. 4 (A), \u201cIf ill requitals befal you return them not to neighbour or enemy, because the Lord will return them for you and be your avenger on the day of great judgment.\u201d
\nWe might here quote some very fine sayings on this subject from the Talmud. \u201cIf a friend be in need of aid to unload a burden, and an enemy to help him to load, one is commanded to help his enemy in order to overcome his evil inclination\u201d (Baba Mezia 32). Again, \u201cBe amongst the number of the persecuted, not of the persecutors\u201d (Baba Qama 93b). Again, \u201cWho is strong? He who turns an enemy into an friend\u201d (Ab. R.N. xxiii). And again the saying of Rab in Rosh haShanah 17a: \u201cWhom does God pardon? The man who passes by transgression,\u201d and another of Rab\u2019s which is repeated four times: Joma 23a, 87b, Meg. 28a Rosh haShanah 17a: \u201cIf a man is forbearing (or \u201cforgiving\u201d), all his transgressions are treated with forbearance\u201d (or \u201cforgiven\u201d).
\nThese sayings belong to a much later period than that we are dealing with. They are, however, valuable, as we have already observed, as evidence that Jewish sages were developing the best elements of the Old Testament and advancing to conceptions of forgiveness that would have been unintelligible to most Old Testament saints.
\nBefore we leave Sirach we might remark that on the whole we must regard this section on forgiveness as enforcing the wisdom or prudence of forgiveness, if we are to interpret it in keeping with the practically universal tone of that author. Notwithstanding it is some advance on Old Testament teaching, and forms in a slight degree a preparatory stage for that of the New Testament. That Judaism after the rise of Christianity did not stop at this immature stage I have already shown. It must be concluded, however, that forgiveness is only incidentally dealt with in Talmudic writings, and is not made the central doctrine of the religious life that it is in the New Testament.
\nOn the other hand, there is a genuine Jewish work of the second century B.C. in which a doctrine of forgiveness is taught that infinitely transcends the teaching of Sirach, and is almost as noble as that of the New Testament. Moreover, this doctrine of forgiveness does not stand as an isolated glory in the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs as in other Jewish writings, but is in keeping with the entire ethical character of that remarkable book, which proclaims in an ethical setting that God created man in His own image, that the law was given to lighten every man, that salvation was for all mankind through conversion to Judaism, and that a man should love both God and his neighbour.
\nLet us now turn to this book and to the section in it which formulates the most remarkable statement in pre-Christian Judaism on the subject of forgiveness.
\nTest. Gad vi. 3. \u201cLove ye one another from the heart; and if a man sin against thee, cast forth the poison of hate and speak peaceably to him, and in thy soul hold not guile; and if he confess and repent, forgive him. 4. But if he deny it, do not get into a passion with him, lest catching the poison from thee he take to swearing, and so thou sin doubly. 6. And though he deny it and yet have a sense of shame when reproved, give over reproving him. For he who denieth may repent so as not again to wrong thee: yea, he may also honour and be at peace with thee. 7. But if he be shameless and persist in his wrongdoing, even so forgive him from the heart, and leave to God the avenging.\u201d
\nThese verses show a wonderful insight into the true psychology of the question. So perfect are the parallels in thought and diction between these verses and Luke 17:3; Matt. 18:15, 35, that we cannot but assume our Lord\u2019s acquaintance with them. The meaning of forgiveness in both cases is the highest and noblest known to us, namely, the restoring the offender to communion with us, which he had forfeited through his offence. And this is likewise the essence of the divine forgiveness\u2014God\u2019s restoration of the sinner to communion with Him, a communion from which his sin had banished him. But our author shows that it is not always possible for the offended man to compass such a perfect relation with the offender, and yet that the offended, however the offender may act, can always practise forgiveness in a very real though in a limited sense. He can get rid of the feeling of personal wrong, and take up a right and sympathetic attitude to the offender, though he cannot but reprobate his conduct. Thus forgiveness in this sense is synonymous with banishing the feeling of personal resentment, which arises naturally within us when we suffer wrong, and which, if indulged, leads to hate. When we have achieved this right attitude towards the offender, the way is open for his return to a right relation with us, which of course can only be effected, when he admits his wrong-doing. Moreover, so far as we attain this right attitude, we reflect the attitude of God Himself universally to His erring children.
\nThis is the first and essential duty in all true forgiveness, and it is often all that a man can compass; and apparently the divine forgiveness has analogous limitations\u2014at all events, within the sphere of the present life.
\nReturning now to our text, we can better appreciate the thought of our author. If a man does you a wrong, you are first of all to get rid of the feeling of resentment and then to speak gently to him about his offence. If he admit his offence and repent, you are to forgive him. But if he refuse to admit his offence, there is one thing you must not do: you must not lose your temper lest he get infected by your angry feelings and in addition to his wronging he take to cursing you as well, and thus you become guilty of a double sin\u2014his unbridled passion and his aggravated guilt. In such a case, therefore, you must refrain from further reproof; for one of two things will take place. The offender, though outwardly denying his guilt, will, when he is reproved, feel a sense of shame or he will not. If he feels a sense of shame, he may repent and honour you and be at peace with you. But if he have no sense of shame and persist in his wrong attitude to you, he must in that case be left to God.
\nIt would be hard to exaggerate the importance of this passage. It proves that in Galilee, the home of the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs and of other apocalyptic writings, there was in the second century B.C. a deep spiritual religious life, which having assimilated the highest teaching of the Old Testament on forgiveness, developed and consolidated it into a clear, consistent doctrine, that could neither be ignored nor misunderstood by spiritually minded men. This religious development appears to have flourished mainly in Galilee. The section on forgiveness in Sirach is little better than a backwater from the main current of this development, and is of importance as showing that even the Sadducean priest and cultured man of the world could not wholly escape the influence of this bounding spiritual life that had its home in Galilee.
\nBut the teaching of the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs was never accepted officially or otherwise by the Pharisees. It was never authoritative save in certain circles of Pharisaic mystics, who must in due time have found a congenial home in the bosom of the rising Christian Church. So little did the Pharisaic legalists\u2014the dominating power in Pharisaism\u2014appreciate this work that they did not think it even worth preserving. For its preservation the world is indebted to the Christian Church.
\nIt is further significant that it was not from Judea, the stronghold of Pharisaic legalism, but from Galilee, the land of the religious mystic and seer, that Christ and eleven of His apostles derived their origin and their religious culture.
\nWe shall not be surprised, therefore, that when we come to the Sermon on the Mount we find the teaching of the Testaments is accepted\u2014accepted and yet lifted into a higher plane, and the doctrine of forgiveness carried to its final stage of development. We are to cherish the spirit of forgiveness towards those that have wronged us, for two reasons. First, because such is and always has been God\u2019s spirit towards man; and secondly, because such must be our spirit if we are truly to be His sons. By having God\u2019s spirit we show our kinship with God. \u201cLove your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you, that so you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth His rain on the just and on the unjust.\u201d And this forgiveness He has proclaimed through His Son, as St. Paul teaches: \u201cForgiving one another, even as God in Christ hath forgiven you.\u201d
\nThus divine and human forgiveness, being the same in kind though differing in degree, are linked indissolubly together, and in the heart of the prayer given for the use of all men are set the words which own this transcendent duty, \u201cForgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.\u201d The man who forgives his enemy is himself so far forgiven of God, and has therein, whatever his Church may be, shown his essential kinship with God.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER VI<\/p>\n
REINTERPRETATION AND COMPREHENSION<\/p>\n
One of the strongest impressions experienced by the reader who studies in their historical order the Canonical and non-Canonical Books of the Old Testament is the consciousness of the continuous, and in most instances the progressive, reinterpretation of traditional beliefs and symbols. This holds true alike of the most sacred and fundamental conceptions of Judaism as of its less essential elements. Thus the modern theologian knows how in its earlier days the religion of Israel was monolatrous; that is, while the existence of independent deities outside Israel was acknowledged by Israel, Yahweh and Yahweh alone was Israel\u2019s God. Each nation had its own god, whose jurisdiction was limited to his own country and to his own people, just as Yahweh\u2019s dominion was originally conceived as limited to Israel and Palestine. So conceived, Yahweh\u2019s dominion could in no case be regarded as extending to or embracing Sheol. In other words, the after-life of man was outside the jurisdiction of Yahweh, and the theology and the eschatology of that period were mutually exclusive.
\nBut in due time the monolatrous conception of God gave way to the monotheistic in the eighth century B.C., and, when once the great doctrine of monotheism emerged in Israel, all other beliefs, whether relating to the present life or the after-world, were destined sooner or later to be brought into unison with it, but in the case of eschatological beliefs later rather than sooner; for eschatological beliefs are universally the last of all beliefs to be influenced by the loftier conceptions of God.
\nThe principle of reinterpretation was, in fact, continuously applied to traditional beliefs and symbols. The application of this principle was, no doubt, often unconscious, but it always persisted amongst the religious minority, to whose hands God had entrusted the spiritual and moral progress of the nation.
\nDown to the fourth century B.C., progress was slow and hesitating, but from the third century onwards the work went on apace, not through the efforts of the official religious leaders of the nation, but mainly through its unknown and unofficial teachers, who issued their writings under the names of ancient worthies in Israel. The anonymity or pseudonymity that characterised all the progressive writings in Judaism from the third century B.C. onwards, was, as I have shown elsewhere, due to the absolute position that the Law had won through the legislation of Ezra. Owing to his efforts and those of his successors it came to be an accepted dogma in Judaism that the Law was the complete and final word of God, and so valid for all eternity. Such a conception of the Law made the renewal of prophecy impossible. If any real advances were to be made towards a higher theology, they could only be made in works of a pseudonymous character under the \u00e6gis of some great name in Israel earlier in time than that of Ezra.
\nThus it came about that all real progress in this direction was confined to a school of mystics and seers, to whom we owe such works as Isa. 24\u201327 and Daniel in the Old Testament, and the valuable pseudepigraphs that followed, such as 1 Enoch, the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs, Jubilees, the Psalms of Solomon, Wisdom and the like. In these the task of reinterpretation, whether carried out consciously or unconsciously, was not a principle of recent adoption. Notable instances of its application go back even to the sixth century B.C. and earlier. Let us touch on one of these which relates to the advent of the Messianic kingdom. Jeremiah had promised that after seventy years Israel would be restored to its own land and enjoy the blessings of the Messianic kingdom. But this period passed and things remained as of old. Next Haggai and Zechariah foretold that, when the temple was rebuilt, David\u2019s kingdom would be restored. The temple was rebuilt, but the kingdom failed to appear. Early in the second century B.C. we find two notable reinterpretations of the prophecy of Jeremiah above referred to. In Daniel the seventy years are said to mean seventy weeks of years, i.e. 490 years. In 1 Enoch, the seventy years of Jeremiah are taken to denote seventy successive reigns of seventy angels, to whom God had committed the administration of the world.
\nSince these periods were to culminate respectively within three and a half years in the Book of Daniel or within the generation of the seer in 1 Enoch, the Messianic kingdom was therefore at hand.
\nBut the above periods came and passed by, and the promised time still tarried. Let us now pass over a period of more than two centuries. During this interval a new and more ruthless power had taken the place of the Greek empire in the East, i.e. Rome.
\nThis new phenomenon called, therefore, for a fresh reinterpretation of Daniel. The fourth empire, which, according to Daniel was the Greek, was now declared to be the Roman by the authors of 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, and this new interpretation had been adopted earlier by our Lord and the various writers of the New Testament.
\nI have given the above example to show what was taking place throughout the whole province of religious thought and expectation. Every conception was undergoing development or reinterpretation. Whole histories centre round such conceptions as soul, spirit, Sheol, Paradise, the Messianic kingdom, the Messiah, the Resurrection. Where the spiritual life was active no religious conception could remain unaltered. If it belonged characteristically to an earlier period of development, it had either to be discarded or transformed. If it was capable of growth, it grew: otherwise it proved a stumbling-block to the faithful and an obstacle to spiritual progress.
\nThis reinterpretation of traditional beliefs and symbols was, as we have seen, due to the prophetic succession of seers and mystics, which were seldom lacking in Judaism from the Exile onwards. But the task of reinterpretation was not wholly confined to them. The very legalists, who, as true sons of Ezra, had by their glorification of the Law as absolute and final made the office of the prophet impossible, came in due course not only to borrow the elements of the higher theology contained in apocalyptic, but also to interpret Old Testament beliefs that belonged to an earlier and lower stage of development in conformity with this higher theology. Indeed it is not possible to see how otherwise continuous spiritual progress could have been maintained in Judaism. And what is true of Judaism is true of all Churches. No Church which makes this right of reinterpretation impossible can continue to be a spiritual leader of mankind. Spiritual and intellectual growth without it is impossible, and so far as the leaders of a Church succeed in making such growth impossible, so far they succeed in limiting its membership to the mere traditionalist, the reactionary and the obscurantist, in short, to the intellectual and moral minors of the race. This right of reinterpretation was exercised by every prophet, seer and great teacher from the Exile onwards: it was naturally exercised in an unparalleled degree by our Lord in dealing with the Law, and in a very drastic fashion by St. Paul, and in some measure by every other writer of the New Testament. The bulk of the Old Testament books had been written by prophets, historians and psalmists, whose beliefs in regard to a future life were essentially heathen. And yet even the legalistic Pharisees reinterpreted, as we have already stated, these books in the light of the higher theology of the apocalyptic school, and the significance which our Lord read into the words, \u201cI am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,\u201d as a proof of the resurrection of the dead, is essentially a reinterpretation after the manner of the apocalyptic school of Pharisaism. Many analogous reinterpretations are to be found in the New Testament.
\nWe have now seen that in pre-Christian Judaism progress in the direction of a higher theology was achieved through the spiritual life and writings of a succession of seers and mystics, who, owing to the unconditional and final character of the Law as conceived in orthodox Judaism, were obliged to issue their works under the names of bygone worthies in Israel.
\nAlthough these seers and mystics must have felt the claims of the Law a severe strain on their obedience, they never betray a single sign of disloyalty in their utterances with regard to it. In every work emanating from their school the supremacy and everlastingness of the Law are maintained.
\nBut when we pass from Jewish apocalyptic to Christianity we are struck with the absolutely different attitude assumed towards the Law. It is true that our Lord said, \u201cThink not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law till all things be accomplished\u201d (Matt. 5:17 seq.). In these words the old attitude to the Law seems to be maintained. But this is not so, as is clear\u2014first from the fact that our Lord deliberately broke the law of the Sabbath and justified Himself by declaring, \u201cthe Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath\u201d: next from His abolition of the distinction between clean and unclean meats (Mark 7:14 seq.), on which the Law laid such overwhelming weight, and thirdly from His criticism and reinterpretation of other parts of the Law in the Sermon on the Mount. Yet He had come not to destroy the Law but to release from their obsolete forms the spiritual elements that underlay them: to teach by word and example that selfishness was to be destroyed and not restrained, and the flesh crucified and not circumcised. Thus alike by His teaching and life our Lord showed that the Law was neither unalterable nor infallible. So conceived for the past few centuries, it had been the great obstacle to the open exercise of prophecy and to spiritual progress. But now that its supremacy was overthrown and that it was relegated into the second place, it became possible for apostle and prophet to come forward with their higher gifts and in their own persons to deliver their divine message to the people.
\nWhat is true of our Lord\u2019s attitude to the Law is in a still stronger degree true of that of St. Paul, who classes Sabbaths with new moons and Mosaic distinctions of things clean and unclean, and described circumcision as a mere mutilation of the flesh. In the Christian apocalypse the Law is not even once mentioned, and Judaism, so far as it stands for a bondage to the letter of a bygone legislation in opposition to the freedom of the Christian Church, is branded by its author as the synagogue of Satan.
\nFor a few generations the Christian Church enjoyed a wide latitude both as regards creed and ritual. At this period the Church was composed of the body of faithful people who served God as revealed through Christ and professed a life guided in all respects by the teaching of Christ. Christianity and religion were at this stage practically identical. Christianity was a divine life\u2014not an intellectual creed, nor a system of ritual observance, though it naturally postulated both, as an expression of its spiritual experience\u2014an expression which must vary with the age to which it belongs.
\nLet us observe now a very important result that follows therefrom. Since Christianity was first of all the realisation of the divine life in the individual and the community, offences against this life were necessarily dealt with as acts of spiritual high treason, and, if unrepented of, were visited with excommunication from the society. Thus St. Paul demanded the expulsion of those guilty of flagrant immorality, as similarly did our Lord in the case of persistent and unrepentant offenders against the spiritual life of the community (Matt. 18:15\u201317). But Christianity might be regarded in a secondary degree as an intellectual creed and a system of ritual. Since, however, these did not constitute the essence of Christianity, but were simply the outward expression, more or less adequate, of this essence, offences against creed and ritual were regarded in quite a different light from offences against the divine life in the individual and in the Church. Thus St. Paul did not expel from the Christian Church those who denied the Resurrection, but treated them as persons to be reasoned with and instructed.
\nHow widely have all the Churches of Christendom departed from the spiritual and Apostolic conception of the Church? Herein history has repeated itself. For as religion in Judaism had come to be identified with the acceptance of an infallible and unalterable Law, so in Christianity it came to be identified not firstly and chiefly with a spiritual life in Christ, but firstly and chiefly with the acceptance of certain intellectual beliefs about Christ, that were maintained to be alike infallible and unalterable; and just as in Judaism spiritual progress was carried on not by the official representatives of the Jewish Church, but by the seers and mystics, so when religion was to a considerable degree divorced from life in the official Christendom of the Middle Ages and identified with an intellectual system, it was the Christian mystics and thinkers that led the way to the recovery of a primitive and evangelistic Christianity. But the confusion of a body of intellectual conceptions with religion was not confined to the Middle Ages: it has prevailed to the most recent times, and this irreligious conception of religion has been so effective that many of the prophets could only work outside the official Church, and amongst them may be reckoned not merely actual Christian teachers but also great students of science, whose discoveries in search of truth have revolutionised our modern theology, but for whom no place could be found in past centuries within the Church owing to its narrow and mechanical and irreligious intellectualism.
\nThe Church, which declares its formularies to be incapable of reinterpretation and which maintains them to be unalterable, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, cannot hope ultimately to escape the same end that befel that great empire.
\nIn the comparison which I have just made between the Jewish and Christian Churches, I have shown that in both there was the same tendency to identify religion with the acceptance of an intellectual system.
\nOwing, however, to the divisions of Christendom this intellectualism was not as destructive as it would otherwise have been: many of its evil effects were largely discounted by the rise of nonconformities, dissents, schisms and heresies. In this way the identification of religion with its intellectual expression at any one period of the Church\u2019s history was in part rendered null and void.
\nBut it must be admitted that such a condition is in the highest degree undesirable. Instead of a number of Christian Churches in a nation refusing to recognise one another, working exclusively and excluding one another, we should have as in Judaism one national Church with many parties. Every national Church has its own contribution to make to the Church Universal.
\nThe appearance of frequent schisms and divisions in the Church is symptomatic of something radically wrong in its constitution and conception, and the evil from which they spring is frequently the identification of religion with the acceptance of a hard and fast intellectual Creed.
\nBut no Church that is living and advancing spiritually, morally and intellectually, can maintain that its formularies or sacred books are incapable of reinterpretation. Let us take as an example the Church of England which is admittedly of the nature above described. In this Church every intelligent man reinterprets the account of the Creation in six days, as given in the opening Chapters of Genesis, and refuses to hold himself bound either by the time limits therein given or by the order of the events narrated. He regards this cosmogony as a recast of the Babylonian one, but with this vast distinction that the world was the work not of a variety of gods but of one only, from whom it comes and in whom it consists. On this fundamental truth all true religion and science must ultimately rest.
\nAgain, every thoughtful man reinterprets the last five commandments of the Decalogue on the lines laid down by our Lord, who transfers the sense of obligation from the outward act to the motive and the heart.
\nBut the need of reinterpretation is still more inevitable with regard to the fourth commandment. We hear this commandment read out by the officiating clergyman in our morning service, and at its close we utter the response: \u201cLord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.\u201d But in our minds we have already discounted a great portion of this commandment. We do not keep the seventh day and we admit of no obligation to keep it. We further regard it as wholly inadequate for the expression of our Christian duty on the first day of the week. This fourth commandment is all but purely negative: it simply enjoins abstinence from every form of unnecessary work, whereas, when reinterpreted from the Christian standpoint, it is positive as well: it requires worship as well as rest. Every day of the week is a day on which man should worship God, but owing to the necessary labours of the week this worship can generally be only that of the individual or of the family, whereas on the first day of the week all but the necessary labours of man are suspended, that man may not only rest in mind and body but take his part in public worship along with his brethren; for, so far as we forsake the assembling of ourselves together on the first day of the week, we deprive ourselves of one of the strongest aids to the spiritual and ethical life.
\nStill more even than in the case of the Ten Commandments is the need felt for reinterpreting the Psalms in our private and public worship. I do not now speak of our reading into them a continuous reference to a blessed future life\u2014an idea that was unknown or incredible to the minds of their authors except in two or three instances. I refer rather to those Psalms wherein the authors amidst the noblest expressions of faith in and devotion to God incorporate requests for vengeance and victory over their personal foes: and yet more to the Imprecatory Psalms, which exhibit a passion of hate and malignity without parallel in any of the higher religions.
\nWe might pursue this subject at much greater length with regard to the Old Testament, but enough has been done to show that the sacred books, which we have taken over from the Jewish Church, need to be reinterpreted in the light of the Christian revelation and the development of the Christian life within the Church.
\nBut we cannot pause here. The need of reinterpretation is not confined to the books and symbols we have accepted from the Jewish Church. We have already observed that Christianity was in its essence a divine life, and not an intellectual creed nor a system of ritual observance, though it naturally postulated both as an expression of its spiritual experience. But just as in Judaism religion came to be identified with the acceptance of an unchangeable Law, so it was not long till in Christianity religion came to be identified with the acceptance of a body of intellectual formulas and obedience to a certain system of ritual. But a creed at its best is nothing more than the intellectual expression of the religious life of the age to which it belongs, and to claim that any creed is the final and unalterable expression\u2014I do not say of the absolute truth, but of truth so far as it is ultimately accessible to man in this world\u2014is to run counter to the true conception of religion and to Christ\u2019s promise of ever fuller truth under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
\nLet us take the simplest and most primitive of the three Creeds. In the so-called Apostles\u2019 Creed there are statements which cannot be accepted unless they are submitted to a drastic reinterpretation. For example, the phrase, \u201cdescended into hell\u201d assumes a region underlying the surface of the earth peopled by disembodied spirits. It is needless to say we no longer accept this statement in its present form. Again the phrase \u201cascended into heaven\u201d localises the abode of the blest in a fashion contrary to modern thought. But the worst offence to the modern Christian is to be found in the words \u201cthe resurrection of the flesh\u201d (carnis resurrectionem, \u03c3\u03b1\u03c1\u03ba\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03ac\u03c3\u03c4\u03b1\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd). It is true that in the Morning and Evening Services the phrase runs, \u201cresurrection of the body.\u201d But this is a mere substitution for the original clause in the Creed, introduced first, it is said, in 1543 in the Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of any Christian Man, published with the approval of Henry VIII. But the true rendering\u2014\u201cthe resurrection of the flesh\u201d\u2014is still preserved in the Offices for Baptism and the Visitation of the Sick. This materialistic view, which was that of the Church down to modern times, can no longer receive the suffrage of any educated man. Nay, more, even the substituted phrase \u201cresurrection of the body\u201d cannot be said to be scriptural or tolerable, unless we reinterpret it. According to the New Testament persons are raised and not bodies, and if we adopt the Pauline language we cannot rightly speak of the resurrection of the body, unless we practically identify the body with the expression of the personality. The body is the organ of the spirit adapted to the environment in which the spirit is placed.
\nViews, moreover, of inspiration, original sin and the atonement, which were essential articles of faith with our forefathers have become untenable for the thoughtful man of the present day. The highest expression of any divine truth at a given time cannot do more than set forth the highest religious consciousness of that time. Hence, while we retain the ancient formularies, we must recognise frankly their obsolete character in certain aspects, and be prepared to reinterpret them in such a way as will bring them into line with the highest spiritual, moral and scientific truths of our own age.
\nThere can be no final expression of divine truth here. In this world we can only see through a glass darkly.
\nIn this reinterpretation of the conclusions of the past in accordance with the findings of the present, we are but following in the steps of the prophets of Israel, of the seers and mystics of Judaism, and above all of our Lord and His apostles, and of all the great spiritual leaders of religious thought since the foundation of the Church. Reinterpretation wisely and judiciously carried out is, then, we conclude, a necessary precondition of a living and spiritual Church in the present.
\nWhen the right of reinterpretation is duly recognised by a Church, its Comprehensiveness or Catholicity follows as a matter of course.
\nHere, again, we have an important lesson to learn from Judaism; for the Jewish Church prior to A.D. 70 could open its doors to all the spiritually minded men of the nation, but no Christian Church since the Reformation can make any such claim. For, since all stages of development from the agnostic attitude of the Sadducee to the most spiritually conceived creed of the Pharisee were represented and recognised as alike tenable in Judaism when an established Church, it follows that the Jewish Church attained a degree of comprehensiveness that the entire Christian Church, Anglican and Protestant, Greek and Roman combined, cannot rival.
\nLet us mark well the intellectual diversity of opinion amongst not only the worshippers themselves, but also amongst the priests in the Temple. And this diversity existed not merely between the extreme opposing parties of the Sadducees and the Pharisees, between those who denied a blessed future life, and those who upheld it, but even amongst the Pharisees themselves to such a degree that there was no such thing as uniform intellectual belief amongst them on the great questions as to the nature of the resurrection, the kingdom of God, the Messiah, the duration of His kingdom, the ultimate destiny of the Gentiles.
\nThus Sadducee and Pharisee, Herodian and Essene worshipped in the Temple, bound together not by uniformity of intellectual belief but by unity of spirit in the worship of the same God, as revealed by Moses and the prophets. Within that ancient Church intellectual and spiritual growth were possible in a degree unexampled in subsequent times, or in any Church. Such a Church was well fitted to be the Mother of Christianity, and it is noteworthy that our Lord exemplified in His teaching and bearing to others the full-orbed comprehensiveness, of which the various parties in the Jewish Church were but broken and partial representatives. Thus we find that in all His teachings in the Synoptic Gospels only once did He lay supreme stress on a dogmatic question, and even that can hardly be so designated; for the belief in a future life is not merely an article of religion, but a postulate of the reason, and an axiom of every life that transcends a purely material outlook.
\nAnd yet, though the Sadducees denied a future life, our Lord did not on that account refuse to attend the Temple services conducted by the Sadducean priesthood.
\nNor do we find Him frequently testing His followers as to their creed, expelling one as a sceptic and inhibiting another as an unbeliever. Sceptics they were one and all during their time of tutelage, a genuine society of doubters. But doubt and uncertainty, so long as they were honest, our Lord always treated with the utmost consideration, whereas He had nought but reproofs for the children of the untrimmed lamp, the unused talent, the ungirded loin: and nought but denunciation for those who saw their neighbour naked and clothed him not, sick and visited him not, repentant and forgave him not.
\nThe one test that He gave His disciples whereby to distinguish His true followers from the false, was the rule: By their fruits ye shall know them.
\nTo moral excellence wherever found\u2014even outside the wide portals of the Jewish Church\u2014He ever extended a willing and glad recognition, such as to the faith of the Syro-Ph\u0153nician woman, and the goodness of the Samaritan\u2014examples that the Churches that bear His name have honoured in the breach, rather than in the observance.
\nBut the worship in the Temple was not confined to the Jew only; not only our Lord, but also His apostles including St. Paul, the great opponent of the Law, worshipped there, together with Sadducee and Pharisee, while of St. James, the first head of the Church in Jerusalem after the ascension of Christ, it is recounted that his knees became hard as a camel\u2019s, because of his habitual prayers in the Temple on behalf of the people.
\nNow with the history of such a great Church in the past before us, are we not encouraged to look forward to the time when the National Church of England will in one respect\u2014namely, its comprehensiveness\u2014resemble the Jewish Church of that period, and become the spiritual mother of all true spiritually-minded Englishmen\u2014all who worship God as revealed by Christ and His disciples? Spiritual unity\u2014not intellectual conformity\u2014would be the essential mark of such a Church.
\nSuch a hope cannot be simply set aside as visionary and ideal; for a Church still more comprehensive did exist\u2014an established Church, and on the roll of its members was the Founder of Christianity and all His apostles without exception. Judaism, then, was a comprehensive Church, but it was only comprehensive so long as it was an established Church. When it ceased to be an established Church with the destruction of the Temple by the Romans, the liberty of interpretation in a spiritual and progressive sense was suppressed, Judaism lost its comprehensiveness, the legalistic party succeeded in crushing every rival form of religious thought and worship, and so Judaism became in its essentials a mere sect.
\nThis history of the past is instructive. The severance of Church and State was disastrous to Judaism, and what was true then is no less true now. I cannot here set forth how necessary in a Christian nation, Church and State are to each other, and how in reality they represent only two sides of one and the same Christian Society. I will content myself by emphasising the fact that all the great work that Judaism did for the world was done when the Church and State were one, and that when the State was destroyed and consequently the close relation of Church and State was brought to an end, Judaism was hopelessly crippled and became a Sect, and has remained such down to the present day.
\nTo the thoughtful students of the past and of the present it is not disestablishment, but re-establishment of national Churches that is now necessary, if the Church and State of the various Christian nations would each achieve their highest.
\nThe members of the Church, therefore, who at various times have sought to make the Church comprehensive, have for their sanction their Master\u2019s example and the practice of the apostolic circle, and from this strong position they can rightly urge that the renewal of such a wide comprehensiveness is surely not impossible in these latter days. Could not faithful men, who find in Christ the guide and inspiration of their own religious life, however they differ in their conception of His nature and being, agree to worship God, as revealed in Christ, side by side, bound together in the unity of the same Spirit? In such a Church no one would think of whittling down his convictions to suit his neighbours\u2019, nay, rather he would hold firmly to the truth as it was revealed to him, and, whilst he could not for the sake of others relinquish a single serious conviction, he would never think of exacting from others conformity with his own. And thus, while one man would give his whole-hearted belief to the very letter of the forms in which the traditional faith of the Church has expressed itself, another, no less truly a member of the Church, could give his adhesion only to the spiritual truth behind the forms.
\nThus might be realised at last that ideal of the Church, which is defined in our Book of Common Prayer as, \u201cthe blessed company of all faithful people.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER VII<\/p>\n
THE LITERATURE\u2014THE OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA<\/p>\n
(I) The Old Testament Apocrypha, or the Apocrypha Proper, and (II) the Pseudepigrapha are the usual designations of the Jewish non-canonical books written between 200 B.C. and A.D. 100.
\nI. APOCRYPHA PROPER.\u2014Under this title are ranked the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, which consist of the following books: 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Additions to Esther, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, Epistle of Jeremy, Additions to Daniel (Song of the Three Holy Children, History of Susannah and the Elders, and Bel and the Dragon), Prayer of Manasses, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees. Thus the Apocrypha Proper constitutes the surplusage of the Vulgate or Bible of the Roman Catholic Church over the Hebrew Old Testament. In the course of history two verdicts in the main have been passed upon these books. (1) The Church of Rome declared them to be fully canonical at the Council of Trent 1546 A.D.: \u201cHe is also to be anathema, who does not receive these entire books, with all their parts, as they have been accustomed to be read in the Catholic Church, and are found in the ancient editions of the Latin Vulgate, as sacred and canonical.\u201d The weight that scholars in general will attach to this decree cannot but be influenced by the fact, that of the prelates who formed this Council none came from Germany or Switzerland or from any of the northern countries; none knew Hebrew, only a few had some knowledge of Greek, and there were even some whose knowledge of Latin was of a doubtful character. (2) The second view is that held universally by the Protestant Churches that only the books in the Hebrew collection are canonical. But amongst the Reformed Churches a milder and a severer view have prevailed as to the Apocrypha. While many of these Churches have banished these books wholly from their public worship, the Church of England has decreed that they should be read in her public services \u201cfor example of life and instruction of manners.\u201d
\nIt is hardly possible to form any classification of the Apocrypha Proper that is not open to serious objection. In any case the classification must be regarded as provisional, since scholars are still far from unanimous as to the original language, date and place of composition of some of the books which come under our classification. We may distinguish (i) the Palestinian and (ii) the Hellenistic literature of the Old Testament. The former was generally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, and seldom in Greek. Next within these literatures we shall distinguish three or four classes according to the nature of the subject with which they deal. Thus they may be classed as (a) Historical, (b) Legendary (or Haggadic), (c) Apocalyptic, (d) Didactic or Sapiential.<\/p>\n
I. i. Palestinian Jewish Literature:\u2014
\n(a) Historical.
\n1 (i.e. 3) Ezra.
\n1 Maccabees.<\/p>\n
(b) Legendary.
\n1 Baruch (i.e. Book of Baruch).
\nJudith.<\/p>\n
(c) Apocalyptic.
\n2 (i.e. 4) Ezra.<\/p>\n
(d) Didactic.
\nSirach.
\nTobit.
\nPrayer of Manasses.
\nEpistle of Jeremy.
\nBook of Wisdom.<\/p>\n
ii. Hellenistic Jewish Literature:\u2014
\nHistorical and Legendary.
\nAdditions to Daniel.
\nAdditions to Esther.
\n2 Maccabees.<\/p>\n
Arranged according to the date of their composition their order approximately would be\u2014<\/p>\n
200\u2013100 B.C.
\nSirach.
\nTobit.
\nJudith.
\nAdditions to Daniel\u2014
\nSong of the Three Children.
\nSusannah.
\nBel and the Dragon.<\/p>\n
100\u20131 B.C.
\n1 Maccabees.
\n2 Maccabees.
\n3 Maccabees.
\nBook of Wisdom.
\n1 (or 3) Esdras.
\nAdditions to Esther\u2014
\nEpistle of Jeremy.
\nPrayer of Manasses.<\/p>\n
1\u2013100 A.D.
\n1 Baruch.
\n2 (or 4) Esdras. (This book is dealt with in the next Chapter.)
\n4 Maccabees.<\/p>\n
SIRACH<\/p>\n
There is considerable doubt as to the original form of the title of this book, but most probably it was \u201cThe Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach.\u201d This form is found in most of the Greek MSS., while the Syriac Version has \u201cWisdom of the Son of Sirach,\u201d and some Latin MSS., \u201cThe Book of Jesus the Son of Sirach.\u201d In the Hebrew fragments which have been discovered in recent years the first two chapters are missing, but at the close of the book the subscription runs, \u201cThe Wisdom of Simeon, the Son of Jeshua, the Son of Eleazar, the Son of Sira,\u201d while in the Talmud it is called \u201cThe Book of Ben Sira.\u201d The title \u201cEcclesiasticus\u201d has been in use in the Western Church since the third century. It gained this name from its practical use as a Church Lectionary or \u201cBeading Book.\u201d
\nThe author\u2019s name is variously given as \u201cJesus Sirach,\u201d or \u201cSirach,\u201d in the Greek MSS., as \u201cBen Sira\u201d among the later Jews, and in a lengthy form in the Hebrew MS. of Sirach, which is thought to be corrupt for \u201cJesus, the Son of Eleazar, the Son of Sirach.\u201d
\nA broad and tolerant spirit pervades the book, and to enthusiasm unless in its mildest forms he is strongly opposed. Though at times he inculcates a disinterested devotion to virtue and good works, he not infrequently enjoins a line of conduct that is merely prudential and self-centred. His work is invaluable as exhibiting the thoughts and views of a cultured and genuine Jew and the main questions of his day from the standpoint of the ruling Sadducean priesthood.
\nThe book was written in the first quarter of the second century B.C. (200\u2013175 B.C.).
\nThere can be no question as to the original language of the book. It was written in Hebrew, but the original text appears to have undergone at a later date, as Smend shows, a comprehensive and deliberate revision undertaken in the interests of the dominant Pharisaism. This late revision of the Hebrew text has not in the main affected the best Greek MSS. As early probably as the last century B.C. there were current two types of the Greek text. The older type is preserved in the uncials \u05d0 A B and certain cursives, the later in the cursives 248, 253 and others, and in the Old Latin and Syriac versions. Both were translated from the Hebrew. In the later type as found in the 248 group of cursives there are a hundred and fifty stichoi, which have no attestation in the older text. But others are found in the Old Latin and others still in the Syriac version. Hence it is concluded that the divergencies between the two types of text were originally much greater, and owing to the character of these additions and alterations in the later text it has been inferred that these were due to a Pharisaic recension of the text.
\nThe best General Introduction to the book, and English translation with critical and exegetical notes by Box and Oesterley, will be found in Charles\u2019 Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, i. 268\u2013517. See also Oesterley, Ecclesiasticus in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, 1912.<\/p>\n
TOBIT<\/p>\n
This book was probably written in Aramaic towards the close of the third century B.C. Its author appears to have belonged to a settlement of orthodox Jews in Egypt. \u201cPopular religious and magical speculations, current mythology and demonology, ethical and moral maxims of the day, traditional folk-lore and romantic legend, all contributed their quota to the education of the author. They widened his outlook on life without vitiating the spirituality of his religion or the reality of his adhesion to Judaism. They endowed him with the culture necessary to a writer whose appeal was probably directed to the educated pagan as well as the enlightened Jew of the Diaspora in its early days.\u201d The writer just quoted goes on to show that the author of Tobit was indebted mainly to four sources: The Old Testament, the Story of Ahikar, the fable of the Grateful Dead and a tractate of the god Khons. In the last work mentioned the Egyptian god Khons of Thebes heals, by means of his messenger, a demon-possessed princess in Ecbatana (?). In Tobit, which was issued as a rival production, it is Jahweh who is shown to possess the sole sovereignty alike over the spiritual and material worlds. The fable of the Grateful Dead, which appears to have been current in nearly every country in the past, deals with the supernatural blessings bestowed by the departed spirit, whose body had owed its burial solely to the self-sacrificing kindness of a stranger. Such a fable would naturally appeal to the ancient world, which all but universally believed that the departed spirit suffered in the world of Shades if his body had not received burial.<\/p>\n
JUDITH<\/p>\n
This book was written in Hebrew in the last quarter of the second century B.C. No trace of the Hebrew original survives. All the existing versions go back through the Greek to this lost original.
\nThe book is probably an historical fiction written with the view of reviving the spirit of patriotism and encouraging the Jews to resist the oppression of the Syrian power. The story is placed at the time of the Return from the Captivity. Ball has shown with much probability that the names used by the author are pseudonyms and stand for really historical persons. Thus Nebuchadnezzar represents Antiochus Epiphanes, the Assyrians the Syrians, Nineveh Antioch, and Arphaxad Arsaces of Persia, with whom Antiochus went to war. Robertson Smith, Wellhausen and others think that the framework of the story was suggested by the campaign of Artaxerxes Ochus against Egypt, Ph\u0153nicia and the Jews in 350 B.C., in which two of the generals were Holofernes and Bagoas, who also play a part in the Book of Judith. Further, Torrey has shown that in all probability Bethulia, in which the Jews were besieged according to this book, was Shechem. Shechem was conquered by John Hyrcanus within ten years of his accession.
\nA good account of the book together with a critical translation is given by Cowley in Charles\u2019 Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, i. 242\u2013267. See also Encyc. Bibl., Hastings\u2019 Bible Dictionary and the Jewish Cyclopedia in loc.<\/p>\n
ADDITIONS TO DANIEL<\/p>\n
I. The Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Children.\u2014This Addition consists of sixty-eight verses, and was inserted in Daniel after 3:23. Verses 1, 2 connect the Addition with the narrative; 3\u201322 forms the Prayer of Azariah, one of the \u201cThree Children,\u201d in the midst of the fiery furnace; 23\u201327 tells of the further heating of the furnace and the descent of an angel into the furnace on behalf of the Three Children; 28\u201365\u2014The Song of the Three Children, the Benedicite\u2014the well-known Canticle in the Anglican Prayer Book; 66\u201368, a later addition.
\nIn the Greek MSS. the three Additions are without a title, but in A the present Addition appears in the Appendix to the Psalter, under the titles \u201cPrayer of Azarias\u201d and \u201cHymn of the Father,\u201d while other MSS. give \u201cSong of the Three Children.\u201d This Addition appears in the LXX and Theodotion with only trifling variations.
\nThe Prayer and the Song were probably written in Hebrew: and have some organic connection with the text\u2014at all events verses 23\u201328; for they help to explain the astonishment and the words of the king in 3:24 seqq.
\nThe Prayer and the Song appear to have been of quite independent origin. The former points to a time (ver. 15) when there was neither priest nor prophet, neither sacrifices nor place of public worship. Hence it may have been written early in the Maccabcan struggle for religious liberty, 168\u2013165 B.C. The Song, on the other hand, springs from a prosperous period (cf. \u201cTemple of Thy holy glory,\u201d ver. 31)\u2014possibly after the Maccabean revolt had become successful.
\nII. Susannah.\u2014This Addition was placed by Theodotion before chap. 1 and Bel and the Dragon at its close, whereas the LXX and the Vulgate reckoned Susannah as chap. 13 after the twelve canonical chapters, and Bel and the Dragon as 14.
\nThe legend tells how in the early days of the Captivity Susannah, a beautiful Jewess, was walking in her husband\u2019s garden and was there seen by two elders, who were also judges. Inflamed with lust they made infamous proposals to her, and, when repulsed, they brought against her the charge of adultery. When charged before the assembled people she was condemned to death and was on the way to execution when a youth, named Daniel, interposed, and by examining the elders apart proved their evidence to be contradictory, and thus convinced the people of the falsity of the charge. The first half of the story appears to be based on a tradition of two elders, Ahab and Zedekiah, who in the Captivity led certain women astray under the delusion that they should become the mother of the Messiah. But the latter part was written to illustrate the value of the cross examination of witnesses. Between the years 95\u201380 B.C. the Pharisees were attempting to bring about a reform in the administration of the law courts. According to the Sadducees, a man convicted of falsely accusing another of a capital offence was not to be put to death unless his victim had already incurred the capital penalty; but the Pharisees insisted on his execution in either case. Susannah was probably written 80\u201350 B.C.
\nIII. Bel and the Dragon.\u2014We have here two independent narratives in both of which Daniel appears as the destroyer of heathenism. In the first story (verses 1\u201322) there was in Babylon an image of Bel, which Daniel refused to worship in the matter of supplying the god with food. When the king pointed to him the immense quantity of food consumed by the god as a proof of his deity, Daniel rejoined that Bel was a mere idol and ate nothing. Thereupon the king became wroth, but Daniel undertook to prove that the food was not eaten by Bel, and asked that the king should seal the doors of the temple after the king had laden the table with food. When the priests had departed and before the doors were sealed, Daniel had the floor strewn lightly with ashes. In the morning when the seals were broken and the doors opened, the food was found to have disappeared, but Daniel showed the king by the traces of the bare feet on the ash-strewn floor, that the priests had entered by secret doors and removed the food. Whereupon the king had the priests put to death.
\nIn verses 23\u201342 we read of Daniel\u2019s destruction of the dragon, which the people worshipped with divine honours, by casting certain pitchy substances into its jaws. When at the instigation of the people, Daniel was cast into the lion\u2019s den, he was there miraculously supplied with food brought by the prophet Habakkuk (cf. Ezek. 8:3) from the land of Jud\u00e6a. Habakkuk was carried by an angel to the lions\u2019 den in Babylon by the hair of his head, from Jud\u00e6a and back again.
\nThe above works may have been written in Hebrew in the first century B.C.
\nOn the above works, see Bennett in Charles\u2019 Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, i. 625\u2013637, on No. I.; Kay (op. cit., 638\u2013651) on No. II.; and Witton Davies (652\u2013664) on No. III.<\/p>\n
1 MACCABEES<\/p>\n
This book, which covers the period of forty years from the accession of Antiochus Epiphanes (175 B.C.) to the death of Simon the Maccabee (135 B.C.), forms the chief historical source we have for the Jewish struggle for religious and civil independence during these years. It begins with a brief sketch of the conquests of Alexander the Great, and proceeds to the invasion and oppression of Antiochus Epiphanes. It is then shown how the attempt of this Syrian monarch to destroy the religion and nationality of the Jews led to the national revolt under the Maccabees. Having so introduced his subject, the author recounts the struggle for independence, beginning with Mattathias and closing with Simon and a brief reference to John Hyrcanus.
\nThe actual title of the book in its original form is unknown. The Greek title, \u039c\u03b1\u03ba\u03ba\u03b1\u03b2\u03b1\u03ca\u03bb\u03ac, is derived from the surname applied to Judas (1 Macc. 2:4, 66), and subsequently to all the sons of Mattathias. Origen (Euseb., Hist Eccl. vi. 25, 2) gives as a transliteration of the title \u03a3\u03b1\u03c1\u03b2\u1f74\u03b8 \u03a3\u03b1\u03b2\u03b1\u03bd\u03b9\u03ad\u03bb (= \u05e1\u05e4\u05e8 \u05d1\u05d9\u05ea \u05d7\u05e9\u05de\u05d1\u05d0\u05d9 = \u201cBook of the Hasmon\u00e6ans\u201d). But this title is Aramaic, whereas the original is now generally taken to have been written in Hebrew.
\nThe author is with good reason held to have been a Sadducee of a deeply religious type. Thus he was zealous for the Law, the religious institutions of the nation, the Scriptures and the Temple. The priesthood are throughout represented in a favourable light and there is no reference to the renegade priests, Jason and Menelaus. On the other hand, it is marked off from the later work, 2 Maccabees, in that it does not once refer to the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the dead in contexts where such a reference would have been natural. Hence a Pharisaic authorship appears to be excluded.
\nThe book was written probably in Palestine 137\u2013105 B.C.
\nThe chief commentaries are as follows:<\/p>\n
Grimm in Kurzgefasstes exeg. Handbuch (1853). Fairweather and Black, The First Book of Maccabees (1897). Oesterley in Charles\u2019 Apoc. and Pseudep., i. 59\u2013124.<\/p>\n
2 MACCABEES<\/p>\n
2 Maccabees is an anonymous digest (2:26, 28) of a larger work of five books on Maccabean history, which had been composed by one Jason of Cyrene. It covers only a period of fifteen years, i.e. from 176 to the death of Nicanor 161 B.C. It is thus not a sequel to 1 Maccabees but a second book on the Maccabean struggle.
\nNeither the date of Jason nor that of this work can be determined except within approximate limits. The inferior limit is fixed by the use of 2 Maccabees in 4 Maccabees and Philo, while the superior limit is set by the date of Nicanor\u2019s defeat by Judas in 161 B.C. Although the epitomizer was a Pharisee, he appears to have been an opponent of the Maccabean dynasty. If this bias of the book is emphasized, then the superior limit is brought down to 108\u2013106 B.C., when the breach between John Hyrcanus and the Pharisees took place. At all events 2 Maccabees may be reasonably referred to the first half of the first century B.C. (See Moffatt in Charles\u2019 Apoc. and Pseudep.)
\nThe epitomizer\u2019s interests are religious rather than historical. In fact, his history is faulty in many respects, where the truer view is to be found in 1 Maccabees. On the other hand, Niese has succeeded in establishing the historicity of 2 Maccabees in certain details that are peculiar to it. It is further worth observing that its eschatological outlook as regards the nature of the resurrection and the scene of the Messianic kingdom belongs essentially to the second century B.C.<\/p>\n
3 MACCABEES<\/p>\n
The scene of this book is laid in the reign of Ptolemy IV (Philopater), at the time of the battle of Raphia, 217 B.C. It was apparently written about 100 B.C., and combines in its narrative two distinct incidents\u2014Ptolemy IV\u2019s attempt to enter the Temple, and a persecution of the Jews in Egypt by Ptolemy Physcon.
\n\u201cThe book,\u201d according to Mr. Emmet\u2019s excellent study (Charles\u2019 Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, i. 162), \u201cseems to belong to the strict and conservative school of the Chasidim, devoted to the Law, and finding its inspiration in the lessons of national history (2:2\u201320; 6:1\u201315). It expresses a bitter opposition to the attempts at hellenizing, which so nearly overwhelmed Judaism in the second century B.C., and shows no sympathy with the developments of thought and doctrine, which at that time were growing up within the Jewish Church.\u201d \u2026 There are no references to the Messianic hope, or \u201cthe future life.\u201d<\/p>\n
THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON<\/p>\n
This very attractive book is a pseudepigraph. There can be no question that its author, or at all events the author of 7\u20139, assumes the r\u00f4le of Solomon and intended his readers to accept it as of Solomonic authorship. Hence the title given in the Greek Uncials \u05d0 A B as \u03c3\u03bf\u03c6\u03af\u03b1 \u03a3\u03b1\u03bb\u03b1\u03bc\u1ff6\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 (or variants of the same) is perfectly justifiable. In other sources it is variously described as \u201cThe Allvirtuous Wisdom,\u201d \u201cThe Book of Wisdom,\u201d \u201cThe Divine Wisdom,\u201d etc.
\nScholars have for over a century differed as to the unity and homogeneity of the book. In 1777, Houbigant was of opinion that the earlier chapters had originally been written in Hebrew by Solomon, and that a later writer had translated these and subjoined the rest himself. Eichhorn divided the book into two parts, 1\u201311:1, written in the author\u2019s mature years, and 11:2\u201319, written in his youth. Eichhorn\u2019s analysis has been accepted by Holmes (Charles\u2019 Apoc. and Pseudepigrapha, i. 321\u2013324), and substantiated by a philological study of the Greek. Another line is taken by Goodrick, Book of Wisdom, 1913, pp. 72 seqq. He is of opinion that the book falls into three sections, 1\u20136:23; 7\u20139, and 10\u201319, written by one and the same author; the last section, exhibiting a very faulty knowledge of Greek, was written in his early years, 1\u20136:23, at a later date, representing \u201cthe writer\u2019s Greek at its best:\u201d and 7\u20139 in the latest period of his development. This theory is very specious at first sight, but it breaks down, when tested by the facts brought to light by Holmes. This scholar has taken 1\u201310 as a whole, and contrasted it with 11\u201319. As Goodrick (p. 70) remarks, \u201cthe learner of a new language, if he belongs to an intelligent race accustomed to fluency of talk, is apt to appropriate the rhetorical element in the foreign tongue almost before he learns its grammar.\u201d To this statement no objection can be made, but combined with the facts that emerge from a philological scrutiny of the text, it makes havoc of Goodrick\u2019s theory. According to this theory we should find the Greek particles seldom used in part 2\u201311\u201319, and frequently used in part 1\u20131\u201310. But Holmes has shown that \u03bc\u03ad\u03bd is used 27 times in part 2, but only 3 times in part 1; \u03b4\u03ad 82 times in part 2, but 52 in part 1; \u1f35\u03bd\u03b1 21 times in part 2 and 7 in part 1; \u1f00\u03bb\u03bb\u03ac 17 times in part 2 and 4 in part 1; \u03b3\u03ac\u03c1 102 times in part 2 and 52 in part 1. An examination of ten other particles by Holmes results in the conclusion that these occur 5 times more frequently in part 2 than in part 1. But this is not all. If we take individual particles such as \u1f04\u03bd (which occurs 4 times in part 2, 2 in part 1), then over against one idiomatic use of \u1f04\u03bd in part 1, we have 3 in part 2, i.e. in 14:4 (same use as in part 1), 11:24, 25 (with aor. indicative to express an impossible supposition), and in 15:12, where \u03ba\u1f04\u03bd is used with the suppression of the verb. Again, while \u1f35\u03bd\u03b1 is used 3 times as often in part 2 as in part 1, it is also used in two idiomatic meanings in part 2 (one of these in 15:4, being very rare and late), but only in one in part 1.
\nFrom these facts it follows that the writer of part 2 made a much more frequent use of the Greek particles and shows a greater acquaintance with their various uses. The obvious conclusion is that the two parts come from distinct authors. It is not likely that a man, who was according to Goodrick\u2019s theory steadily mastering the Greek language, should show less knowledge or make less use of exactly those parts of the language which testified to a knowledge of the language.
\nThe Book of Wisdom has been variously dated. Grimm dates the book 145\u201350 B.C.; Gregg, 125\u2013100 B.C.; Holmes, 50\u201330 B.C. for part 1, and 30 B.C.\u2013A.D. 10 for part 2. Goodrick, A.D. 37\u201341.
\nThe books falls into three parts. The first part, 1\u20136:8, deals with eschatological questions: the second, 6:9\u201311:1, is a glorification of wisdom; and the third part, 11:2\u201319 is of the nature of a Jewish Midrash, the primary object of which is the glorification of the Jews.
\nLiterature. Gregg\u2019s serviceable Commentary in the Cambridge Bible, 1909, Holmes\u2019 Commentary in Charles\u2019 Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, i. 518\u2013568, which forms an undoubted contribution to the subject, and Goodrick\u2019s The Book of Wisdom, 1913, which constitutes a veritable treasury of learning on the book, though many of the conclusions appear questionable.<\/p>\n
I ESDRAS<\/p>\n
This book has been variously entitled as 1 Esdras in the Greek Uncials A B, in the Latin and Syriac Versions, and in English Bibles since the Genevan edition of 1560; and as 3 Esdras in Latin Bibles since the time of Jerome. This latter designation is found also in the \u201cGreat Bible\u201d and in the Sixth of the Thirty-nine Articles.
\n1 Esdras was used by Josephus, who observes the order of events as given in it, and is influenced by its language. In the chief Greek Uncials it precedes the Canonical Ezra and Nehemiah. Many scholars have regarded it as a recast of the Greek translations of Ezra and parts of Nehemiah and Chronicles, but the prevailing view now is that it is translated from a Hebrew or Aramaic original. As far back as 1644 Grotius suggested that it was an independent version older than the Greek of the Canonical books\u2014a suggestion that has been accepted and confirmed by many scholars, including Howorth and Torrey. Furthermore, the Greek Version of Ezra and Nehemiah does not appear to have been the original LXX. At all events it shows undoubted affinities with that of Theodotion\u2019s version of Daniel, while 1 Esdras exhibits no less indubitable affinities with the LXX of Daniel, and the Syriac Version of 1 Esdras claims to be made from the LXX. 1 Esdras, therefore, holds to-day a more authoritative position than it has since the days of Jerome. It can no longer be taken for granted that the Massoretic text with its Greek translation represents throughout a more trustworthy record of the period it deals with, and that 1 Esdras is less veracious and arbitrary. Imperfections of a serious character attach to both.
\nWith the exception of one original section\u2014that of Darius and the three young men, 1 Esdras contains essentially the same materials as Ezra and parts of Nehemiah and 2 Chronicles. The beginning of the book seems imperfect; its conclusion is undoubtedly so, as it breaks off in the middle of a sentence.
\nThe date of the book lies between 300 B.C. and A.D. 100, when it was used by Josephus. Cook assigns it to the first century B.C. His conclusion as to the relative value of the two works is as follows (Charles\u2019 Apoc. and Pseudep., i. 19). \u201cAll the data suggest that 1 Esdras and Ezra and Nehemiah represent concurrent forms which have influenced each other in the earlier stages of their growth. They are rivals, and neither can be said to be wholly older or more historical than the other. The endeavour was made to correct 1 Esdras to agree with the Massoretic text \u2026 and the presence of such efforts and in particular of the doublets are of essential importance in indicating that 1 Esdras\u2019 text does not precisely represent a Hebrew-Aramaic work, and that when all allowance is made for correction and revision of the Greek, problems of the underlying original text still remain. But it was impossible to make any very satisfactory adjustment. 1 Esdras diverged too seriously from the Massoretic, which had cut the chronological knot by the excision of the story of Zerubbabel, and we may suppose that this facilitated the desire for the more literal translation of Theodotion.\u201d
\nThe contents of 1 Esdras with their parallels in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah are here subjoined.<\/p>\n
Chap. 1 = 2 Chron. 35:1\u201336:21. Josiah\u2019s passover and death; his successors down to 586 B.C.
\n2:1\u201315 = Ezra 1. Edict of Cyrus and the restoration of the sacred vessels to Jerusalem.
\n2:16\u201330 = Ezra 4:7\u201324. Opposition of the Samaritans to the rebuilding of the Temple in the reign of Artaxerxes, 465\u2013425 B.C.
\n3:1\u20135:6. This section is peculiar to 1 Esdras. Contest of the three pages at the court of Darius and the victory of Zerubbabel, to whom Darius decrees as a reward the return of the Jews and the restoration of the Temple.
\n5:7\u201373 = Ezra 2:1\u20134:5, 23. List of Exiles who returned with Zerubbabel. Rebuilding of the Temple prevented till the second year of Darius (520).
\n6\u20137 = Ezra 5\u20136. Temple rebuilt (516) under Zerubbabel.
\n8:1\u20139:36 = Ezra 7\u201310. Return of Exiles under Ezra. Mixed marriages forbidden.
\n9:37\u201355 = Neh. 7:73\u20138:13a. The reading of the Law by Ezra.<\/p>\n
A most thoroughgoing and judicious account is given by S. A. Cook (Charles\u2019 Apoc. and Pseudep., i. 1\u201358).<\/p>\n
ADDITIONS TO ESTHER<\/p>\n
These additions were originally written in Greek and subsequently interpolated in the LXX version of the canonical book of Esther. They consist of six passages, which are ingeniously distinguished by Dr. Swete in his edition of The Old Testament in Greek by the letters A, B, C. D, E, F, and their contents are as follows:
\nA. Mordecai\u2019s dream and the conspiracy of the two eunuchs. This is prefixed as an introduction to the canonical book. The statement in this addition (ver. 2) that Mordecai was already in the king\u2019s service in the second year of his reign conflicts with Esther 2:16, which speaks of the seventh year; also that in A 13 that Mordecai had informed the king of the conspiracy of the eunuchs conflicts with Esther 2:21\u201323, and that in A 16 that Mordecai had been rewarded conflicts with Esther 6:3, 4, while A 17 is at variance with Esther 3:5.
\nB. The edict of the king decreeing the destruction of the Jews. This addition follows Esther 3:13.
\nC. The prayers of Mordecai and Esther following on Esther 4:17.
\nD. Esther\u2019s appearance before the king. This addition follows immediately on the preceding, and is an amplification of the events in Esther 5:1\u20132.
\nE. The king\u2019s second edict, cancelling the former edict and decreeing the protection of the Jews. This follows Esther 8:12. In this addition (ver. 22) the Persians as well as the Jews are required to keep the feast of Purim. Contrast Esther 9:20\u201328.
\nF. The interpretation of Mordecai\u2019s dream. This follows Esther 10:3.<\/p>\n
These six additions do not appear to be from one and the same hand. They may have been written in the time of the Maccabees. Their aim in part, at all events, was to supply the religious element which is completely lacking in the canonical work.
\nIn the Vulgate these additions were all relegated to the end of the canonical book by Jerome\u2014an action that rendered them meaningless. The Old Latin, however, contains the six additions in their original settings save that it omits some verses in A, and contributes others peculiar to itself in B, C and D.
\nThe Greek appears in four forms\u2014in the unrevised text of the third century; A, B and some cursives; in Origen\u2019s recension, and in the Hesychian and Lucianic recensions.
\nSee Gregg (Charles\u2019 Apoc. and Pseudep., i. 665\u2013684).<\/p>\n
THE EPISTLE OF JEREMY<\/p>\n
The Epistle of Jeremy purports to have been written by Jeremiah to the Exiles who were already in Babylon. The fact that Jeremiah (29:1 seqq.) was known to have written such a letter may have suggested to a later Jew the idea of a second epistolary undertaking and other passages of Jeremiah (10:1\u201316; 29:4\u201323) may have determined its character and contents.
\nThe writer warns the Exiles that they are to remain in captivity seven generations (ver. 3). It is not improbable that these words give a clue to the time of our author. If, as Ball proposes, we allow forty years for each generation the seven generations would embrace a period of 280 years. If now we reckon with Ball from 586 B.C., the date of the final captivity, we are brought to the year 306 B.C. The Babylon referred to is the actual Babylon where large numbers of the Jews had settled and adopted in large measure the manners and customs of the land of their exile, and assumed Babylonian names, which implied at all events an identification of Yahweh with Bel-Merodach or Nebo. The writer in ver. 43 refers to the extraordinary manner in which the Babylonians were accustomed to honour the goddess Mylitta (= Aphrodite), and which had already been observed by Herodotus, i. 199. Other incidental references to various features in the Babylonian religion are, as Ball points out, to be found in vers. 4, 11, 15, 30\u201332, 41.
\nThis letter has been generally regarded as having been written in Greek, but Ball has shown that it is only through retranslation into Hebrew that the meaning of the text can be recovered with tolerable certainty in vers. 11, 54, 72, and with much probability in others.
\nThe writer admonishes his readers to hold aloof from all idol-worship; for that idols were nothing save the work of men\u2019s hands without powers of speech, hearing or self-preservation. They could not benefit their worshippers in the smallest concerns of life; they were indifferent to their moral qualities, and of less worth than the commonest household utensils.
\nThe best study of this book from the linguistic side is that of Ball in Charles\u2019 Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, i. 596\u2013611.<\/p>\n
THE PRAYER OF MANASSES<\/p>\n
This fine penitential prayer, the style of which is dignified and simple, falls naturally into three parts: (1) invocation to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Creator of heaven and earth, who is of great compassion, longsuffering and abundant in mercy, who has promised forgiveness that sinners may repent and appointed repentance that men may be saved (vers. 1\u20137); (2) a confession of sin (vers. 8\u201310); (3) a supplication for forgiveness (vers. 11\u201315).
\nThe preservation of this prayer we owe to an early Christian writing entitled the Didascalia, which was subsequently incorporated into the Apostolical Constitutions\u2014a work of the fourth or fifth century. From its place in the Apostolical Constitutions it was probably copied into the LXX, where it is now found in some uncials and many cursives.
\nAs regards the date Ryle says no more than that it is earlier than the third century A.D. The fact, however, that it is of Jewish authorship enables us to fix an earlier limit; for it is not likely that the Christians would have adopted a Jewish work after A.D. 130. Fritzsche, Ball and Ryssel favour a Maccabean date, but there are not sufficient materials at hand to define it exactly.
\nAs regards the original language Ewald was of opinion that Greek was the original language. Ball takes it to be a free rendering of a lost haggadic narrative based on the older document, from which the chronicler in 2 Chron. 33:12 seq., 18 seq. drew his information. Fritzsche and Sch\u00fcrer favour a Greek original, the fullest evidence for which is given by Ryle, who, notwithstanding, is not definitely opposed to the hypothesis of a Hebrew original. The present writer has sought to show that only by retranslation into Hebrew (or Aramaic) can certain corruptions in the text be removed.
\nFor most scholarly commentaries see Ryle (Charles\u2019 Apoc. and Pseudep., i. 612\u2013624): and Ball in the Speaker\u2019s Commentary, Apocrypha, ii. 361\u2013371.<\/p>\n
1 BARUCH (The Book of Baruch)<\/p>\n
This book falls naturally into three parts: (A) 1\u20133:8, (B) 3:9\u20134:4 and (C) 4:5\u20135.
\nA. 1:2, 3b\u20133:8. This is a prose work and consists of an Introduction, 1:1\u201314 in which it is stated that Baruch wrote this book in Babylon and sent it to the high priest in Jerusalem with the request that it should be read and confession of sin made on the feast day in God\u2019s house. The confession then follows, 1:15\u20132:5 intended for the use of the inhabitants of Judah and 2:6\u20133:8 of the Exiles.
\nB. 1:1, 3a, 3:9\u20134:4. This section is written in verse: it sets forth the cause of Israel\u2019s sufferings and exile and the source whence wisdom is to be found.
\nC. 4:5\u20135. This section, also in verse, begins with a lamentation of Jerusalem over her children and the assurance of deliverance and everlasting joy, 4:5\u201329, and closes with God\u2019s words of consolation addressed to Jerusalem, 4:30\u20135, in which are foretold the triumphant return of her children.
\nAs regards the original language many of the earlier critics held that the original was in Greek, but later scholars\u2014Ewald, Hitzig and Kneucker\u2014advocate a Hebrew original. Marshall is of opinion that 1\u20133:8 was written in Hebrew, 3:9\u20134:4 in Aramaic and 4:5\u20135 in Greek. The latest critic\u2014Dr. Whitehouse\u2014takes the three sections A, B, C, to be derived from three different authors, A and B having been written in Hebrew and C in Greek. This is the view also of Sch\u00fcrer and others. But the present writer is of opinion that C was written in Hebrew, and that C and Ps. Sol. 11 in their present Greek form are independent renderings of the same original.
\nEwald assigns A to the period subsequent to the conquest of Jerusalem by Ptolemy I. 320 B.C.: Fritzsche and Toy to the time of the Maccabees: Sch\u00fcrer and Whitehouse to a date subsequent to A.D. 70. The entire silence of the book on questions of the Messiah, the future life, the resurrection, are in favour of an earlier date than that assumed by Sch\u00fcrer and Whitehouse. In fact A (cf. 2:17) does not seem to have advanced beyond the ancient conception of Sheol in the Old Testament, and possibly belongs to the early decades of the second century B.C.
\nIt is assumed by some scholars that Daniel 9:4\u201319 is the source from which much of the phraseology in 1 Baruch 1:15\u20132:17 is derived. But this is an unproved hypothesis. Daniel 9:4\u201319 is in all probability itself an interpolation in Daniel; for in 9:16 the very words show that the prayer was written by a resident in Jud\u00e6a. For an enumeration of the grounds for excising these verses in Daniel see Von Gall\u2019s Die Einheitlichkeit des Buches Daniel and the present writer\u2019s Commentary on Daniel, pp. 96\u201397.
\nThe best book on the subject in English is by Whitehouse (Charles\u2019 Apoc. and Pseudep., i. 569\u2013595).<\/p>\n
THE FOURTH BOOK OF MACCABEES<\/p>\n
The Fourth Book of Maccabees is a homily or lecture addressed to Jews only. Its title is due to the fact that the main part of its material is based on the record of the Maccabean martyrs given in 2 Macc. 6:18\u20138:22. Its use of Jewish history is with a view to edification. But the book has further a distinctly philosophical character, and it appears at a comparatively early date with the title On the Supreme Power of Reason. But it is not with the mere reason as such that our author is concerned, but the pious reason, and at the outset he states that it is his intention to show that the pious reason is the complete master of the passions. In a single sentence (1:12) in his prologue he states the nature and scope of his discourse, i.e. first, a philosophical discussion of the proposition that the pious reason is the master of the passions; and secondly, the illustration of this truth in the history of the martyrs. Thus the rest of the book falls into two parts. The first (1:13\u20133:18) defines the various terms and attempts to show that the passions are under the lordship of the pious reason. The second part embraces the rest of the discourse and deals at length with the noble testimony of Eleazar, the seven youths and their mother to the Law of God, their fortitude and martyrdom.
\nThe homily is the work of a man of culture. Though primarily aiming at enforcing a religious end it makes prominent at the beginning its philosophical character. The philosophy is of a Stoic type. He accepts \u201cthe four cardinal virtues,\u201d but he rejects the Stoic doctrine that the passions are to be extirpated. The passions, he holds, were implanted by God and are not to be rooted out but to be brought under the control of the pious reason. His philosophy, therefore, does not run counter to his faith. He preaches a Judaism of the most thoroughgoing type and displays a zeal for the ceremonial law worthy of any Pharisee. Only the adherents of this faith were capable of attaining virtue. But while he holds fast to legalistic Judaism, he betrays his Hellenistic Judaism by teaching, not the resurrection of the dead (as in 2 Macc.), but the immortality of the soul.
\nSee Townshend in Charles\u2019 Apoc. and Pseudep., ii. 653\u2013685.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER VIII<\/p>\n
THE PSEUDEPIGRAPHA OF THE OLD TESTAMENT<\/p>\n
The books of this division are on the whole rightly named Pseudepigrapha, or works written under an assumed name. It is obvious, however, that the Book of Wisdom and 4 Ezra, which are classed under the Apocrypha proper, belong really to this division.
\nIn the present work we are concerned mainly with the non-Canonical Pseudepigrapha, though we shall have occasion to refer to canonical members of this group. Thus, only to mention those which most nearly concern us, we have the following Pseudepigraphs in the Old Testament.<\/p>\n
i. Canonical.
\nIsaiah 24\u201327; 33; 34\u201335.
\nEzekiel 2:8; 38\u201339.
\nJoel 3:9\u201317.
\nZechariah 9\u201314.
\nEcclesiastes.
\nDaniel.<\/p>\n
To one or more members of this enumeration some doubt may attach as to whether they were anonymous or pseudepigraphic. The bulk of them, however, are most probably the latter, and were written after 200 B.C.
\nSince the Pseudepigrapha as a whole were apocalyptic in character we shall simply divide them into Palestinian and Hellenistic, arranged according to the certain or probable dates of their composition.<\/p>\n
ii. Non-Canonical.<\/p>\n
(a) Palestinian, 200\u2013101 B.C.
\nBook of Noah.
\n1 Enoch vi.\u2013xxxvi., lxxii.\u2013xc.
\nTestaments of the XII. Patriarchs.
\nBook of Jubilees\u2014Haggadic in character.<\/p>\n
100\u20131 B.C.
\n1 Enoch i.\u2013v., xxxvii.\u2013lxxi., xci.\u2013civ.
\nAdditions to Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs, i.e. T. Lev. x., xiv.\u2013xvi., T. Jud. xxi. 6\u2013xxiii., T. Zeb. ix., T. Dan. v. 6, 7.
\nPsalms of Solomon.
\nFragments of a Zadokite Work.<\/p>\n
1\u2013100 A.D.
\nAssumption of Moses.
\n2 Baruch or the Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch.
\n4 Ezra.<\/p>\n
(b) Hellenistic.
\nLetter of Aristeas.
\n2 Enoch or the Book of the Secrets of Enoch (1\u201350 A.D.).
\nSibylline Oracles (from second century B.C. to first century A.D., excluding Christian portions).<\/p>\n
I shall now give a short description of the above works.<\/p>\n
BOOK OF NOAH<\/p>\n
Though this book has not come down to us independently, it has been in part preserved in 1 Enoch. Of the existence of this book we know independently from the Book of Jubilees x. 13, xxi. 10, and of a Book of Noah from later Hebrew sources. But as we have already stated considerable fragments of the older work have been preserved. Thus the contents of 1 Enoch lx., lxv.\u2013lxix. 25, prove conclusively that they are from this source: also those of cvi.\u2013cvii. Furthermore, vi.\u2013xi. are derived from the same work. These chapters refer not to Enoch but to Noah. Moreover, where the author of Jubilees in vii. 20\u201325 describes the laws laid down by Noah for his children and Noah\u2019s accounts of the evils that had brought the Flood upon the earth, he borrows not only the ideas but also the very phraseology of these chapters. Chapters liv. 7\u2013lv. 2 probably belong to the same source. Finally we are able to fix the terminus ad quem of the book. Since lxxxviii.\u2013lxxxix. 1 of 1 Enoch, which was written about 161 B.C., presupposes a minute acquaintance with chapter x., which is a fragment of the Book of Noah, it follows that the Book of Noah was written at some period anterior to this date.<\/p>\n
1 ENOCH OR THE ETHIOPIC BOOK OF ENOCH<\/p>\n
The Book of Enoch is for the history of theological development the most important pseudepigraph of the first two centuries immediately preceding the Christian era. Some of its authors\u2014and they were many\u2014belonged to the true succession of the prophets, and it was simply owing to the evil character of the period that these enthusiasts and mystics were obliged to issue their works under the \u00e6gis of some ancient names. The Law, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, could tolerate no fresh message from God, and so when men were moved by the Spirit of God to deliver their spiritual message they could not do so openly, but were forced to resort to pseudonymous publication.
\nThe Book of Enoch comes from many workers and almost as many periods. It touches upon every subject that could have arisen in the ancient schools of the prophets, but naturally it deals with these subjects in an advanced stage of development. There is movement everywhere, and dogmatic fixity and finality nowhere.
\nNo unity as to time, authorship or teaching is to be looked for in the book as it stands at present. It incorporated large sections of the pre-Maccabean Book of Noah as we have seen in the preceding section.
\nAs regards the Enoch elements, the oldest portions are likewise pre-Maccabean, i.e. xii.\u2013xxxvi. and probably xciii. 1\u201310, xci. 12\u201317, i.e. the Apocalypse of Weeks. The Dream-Visions, i.e. lxxxiii.\u2013xc. were in all probability written when Judas the Maccabean was still warring, 165\u2013161 B.C., lxxii.\u2013lxxxii. before 110 B.C., the Parables, xxxvii.\u2013lxxi. and xci.\u2013civ., 95\u201364 B.C. The authors of all these sections were Chasidim or their successors the Pharisees.
\nThe Book of Enoch, like the Book of Daniel, was written originally partly in Aramaic and partly in Hebrew, and much of the original text was written in verse.
\nInto an account of the very composite section, vi.\u2013xxxvi., we cannot here enter. It appears to have been written before 170 B.C. Chapters lxxii.\u2013lxxxii. (written before 110 B.C.) are an attempt on the part of its author to bring the many utterances in the Old Testament regarding physical phenomena into one system, which is put forward as the genuine and biblical one as opposed to other systems. Its aim is to give the laws of the heavenly bodies. Like the Book of Jubilees it upholds the accuracy of the sun and stars as dividers of time over against the moon. Chapters lxxx.\u2013lxxxi. are an addition to this treatise and introduce quite a different type of thought.
\nChapters lxxxiii.\u2013xc. This section was written before the death of Judas Maccab\u00e6us in 161 B.C. It forms in short compass a philosophy of religion from the Jewish standpoint. It is divided into two visions, the former of which deals with the first world judgment of the Deluge, and the latter with the entire history of the world till the final judgment. In the writer\u2019s view it was not the sin of man, but the sin of the angels who fell that brought about the first world judgment. The second vision deals with the successive world empires, especially in their relation to Israel, till we come to the time of the Syrian oppression and the successful efforts of the Maccabean party. While Judas is still warring the hour of the final judgment is to strike and all the wicked are to be judged. The New Jerusalem is to be set up by God Himself, the dispersion to be brought back, the righteous dead to rise, the Messiah to appear in the community of the faithful, and the surviving Gentiles to be converted. This kingdom was to last for ever on the present earth.
\nSee Charles, The Book of Enoch (Second Edition), 1912, and Apoc. and Pseudep., ii. 163\u2013281.<\/p>\n
SIBYLLINE ORACLES (JEWISH)<\/p>\n
The Sibylline Oracles, as we now have them, are in some respects little better than a chaotic medley. They consist of twelve books\u2014there were originally fifteen\u2014which were written at various times between 160 B.C. and the fifth century A.D. They are of both Jewish and Christian authorship, but the latter largely preponderate. Since much of the subject material is of a neutral character, it is at times impossible to distinguish between the two. They were of a propagandist character, and addressed themselves to heathen readers under the cloak of some name that was influential in the heathen world. As regards the Jewish Sibyllines their aim was indirectly or directly the propagation of Judaism among the Gentiles. Whilst the work attributed to Aristeas belongs to the former category, the Sibyllines are distinctly of the latter. See Lanchester in Charles\u2019 Apoc. and Pseudep., ii. 368\u2013406.<\/p>\n
THE LETTER OF ARISTEAS<\/p>\n
This Epistle claims to have been written by Aristeas, an officer at the court of Ptolemy Philadelphus (285\u2013247 B.C.), to his brother Philocrates, during the lifetime of Queen Arsinoe 278\u2013270 B.C. Its subject ostensibly is an account of the manner in which the Jewish law was translated into Greek. It is at once an apologetic in defence of and a panegyric upon the Jewish law and Jewish wisdom in the mouth of a heathen. The bulk of the work was probably written 170\u2013130 B.C. and subsequently edited and enlarged, as Andrews (Charles\u2019 Apoc. and Pseudep., ii. 83\u2013122) conjectures, about the beginning of the Christian era<\/p>\n
TESTAMENTS OF THE XII. PATRIARCHS<\/p>\n
The Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs were written in Hebrew in the latter years of John Hyrcanus\u2014in all probability after his final victory over the Syrian power and before his breach with the Pharisees\u2014in other words, between 109 and 106 B.C. Their author was a Pharisee who combined loyalty to the best traditions of his party with the most unbounded admiration of Hyrcanus. The Maccabean dynasty had now reached the zenith of its prosperity, and in its reigning representative, who alone in Judaism possessed the triple offices of prophet, priest and king, the Pharisaic party had come to recognise the actual Messiah. To this prince the writer addresses two or more Messianic hymns, and already sees in him the Messianic kingdom established. But herein we have a notable instance of the vanity of man\u2019s judgment and prescience. This book had hardly been written when Hyrcanus, owing to an outrage done to him by the Pharisees, broke with their party and joining the Sadducees, died a year or two later. His successors proved themselves the basest of men. Their infamy is painted in lurid colours by contemporary writers, and by a strange irony fragments of the work of one of these assailants of the later Maccabees have been interpolated in the chief manifesto that was issued on behalf of one of the earlier members of this dynasty. This later writer returns to the hope of a Messiah from Judah.
\nThe value of the work in regard to the Messianic expectation is hard to exaggerate, but its main worth lies in another direction, i.e. in its ethical teaching, which has attained a real immortality by influencing the thought and diction of the writers of the New Testament, and even of the Sermon on the Mount. This ethical teaching forms alike the warp and woof of the book.
\nOn the other hand, the dogmatic Christian interpretations are patches differing alike in colour and texture from the original material, stitched on at times where originally there was no rent at all, and at others rudely thrust in where a rent had been deliberately made for their insertion.
\nSee Charles, Testament of the Patriarchs, 1908; Apoc. and Pseudep., ii. 282\u2013367.<\/p>\n
THE BOOK OF JUBILEES<\/p>\n
The Book of Jubilees is, in certain limited respects, one of the most important of the Pseudepigrapha. Without it we could, of course, have inferred from Ezra and Nehemiah, the Priests\u2019 Code, and the later chapters of Zechariah, the supreme position the Law had achieved in Judaism, but without Jubilees we could hardly have imagined such an absolute supremacy of the Law as finds expression in this book.
\nAnd yet this triumphant manifesto of legalism contained within its pages the element that was destined to dispute its supremacy, and finally to reduce the Law to the wholly secondary position that alone it could rightly claim. This element is, of course, apocalyptic, which was the source of the higher theology in Judaism, and in due course the parent of Christianity, wherein apocalyptic ceased to be pseudonymous and became one with prophecy.
\nThe Book of Jubilees was written in Hebrew by a Pharisee, between the year of the accession of John Hyrcanus to the high-priesthood in 135 B.C., and his breach with the Pharisees some years before his death in 105 B.C. As the chronicler had rewritten the history of Israel and Judah from the basis of the Priests\u2019 Code, so our author re-edited from the Pharisaic standpoint of his time the history of events from the Creation to the publication, or, according to the writer\u2019s view, the republication of the Law on Sinai. His object was to defend Judaism against the Hellenistic spirit which had been in the ascendant early in this century, and to prove that the Law was of everlasting validity. Though revealed in time, it was superior to time. It had been kept in heaven from the beginning by the angels, and to its observance there was no limit henceforward in time or eternity.
\nSee Charles, The Book of Jubilees, 1902; Apoc. and Pseudep., ii. 1\u201382.<\/p>\n
100\u20131 B.C.<\/p>\n
1 ENOCH I.\u2013V., XXXVII.\u2013LXXI.<\/p>\n
1 Enoch i.\u2013v. These chapters appear to have been written as an introduction to the entire book by the final editor. As to their date, they probably belong to the early part of the first century B.C.
\nChapters xxxvii.\u2013lxxi. (94\u201364 B.C.). These chapters (= \u201cThe Parables\u201d), which form the well-known section dealing with the Son of Man, are in a fragmentary condition. They contain many extensive interpolations from the Book of Noah, as we have already seen. Even when these have been removed, we soon recognise that the parables are based on two independent sources, of which the theme of one was the Son of Man, and that of the other the Elect One.
\nThe author of this remarkable section has no interest save in the moral and spiritual worlds. The doctrine of the Messiah is unique in Jewish literature. The scene of the Messianic kingdom is to be a new heaven and a new earth: its duration is to be eternal, and the life of its members eternal.
\nSee Charles\u2019 2nd edition, pp. 2\u20133, 64\u201368.<\/p>\n
PSALMS OF SOLOMON<\/p>\n
The Psalms of Solomon were written by various authors between the years 70 and 40 B.C. The last two present a different eschatology from that which appears in the first sixteen, and mark the return of the faithful in Judaism to the hope of a Messiah descended from Judah. The nearly contemporaneous appearance of this sketch of the Messiah from Judah in this book, and of that of the supernatural Son of Man in the Parables, shows in some degree the intensity with which the expectation of a personal Messiah would naturally be cherished in the opening years of the first century of the Christian era, and likewise the guise in which the people expected Him to appear.
\nThe first sixteen Psalms contain no reference to the Messiah, but dwell on the Messianic kingdom. To this kingdom the righteous do not rise, but to an eternal life in the spirit.
\nSee Ryle and James\u2019 excellent commentary, The Psalms of the Pharisees, 1891; Gray in Charles\u2019 Apoc. and Pseudep., ii. 625\u2013652.<\/p>\n
THE TESTAMENTS OF THE XII. PATRIARCHS<\/p>\n
(First Century B.C. Additions)<\/p>\n
We have seen above that the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs were written towards the close of the second century B.C., and we have there drawn attention to the fact that at a later date additions were made to the text, the theme of which was at variance with the theme of the work itself. These additions, which were written about 70\u201340 B.C., had a very definite object, and this object was the overthrow of the Maccabean high-priesthood, which, in the first century B.C. had become guilty of all lewdness and baseness. These additions are:\u2014<\/p>\n
Test. Levi x., xiv.\u2013xvi.
\nTest. Judah xvii. 2\u2013xviii. 1, xxi. 6\u2013xxiii., xxiv. 4\u20136.
\nTest. Zebulun ix.
\nTest. Dan. v. 6\u20137, vii. 3.
\nTest. Naphtali iv.
\nTest. Gad viii. 2.
\nTest. Asher vii. 4\u20137.<\/p>\n
These additions single out three of the Maccabean priest-kings for attack, the first of whom they charge with every abomination. They declare that the people are apostate, and that retribution will speedily follow in the laying waste of the Temple and the carrying into captivity of the nation. Thence they will, on repentance, be restored to their own land and enjoy the blessedness of God\u2019s presence under a Messiah sprung from Judah.<\/p>\n
FRAGMENTS OF A ZADOKITE WORK<\/p>\n
(18\u20138 B.C.?)<\/p>\n
This work represents the beliefs and expectations of a body of reformers who sprang up in the second century B.C. within the priesthood, and called themselves, at all events in the first century, \u201cthe Sons of Zadok.\u201d The reformation, in which they were the chief movers, was the result of a slow but steady religious revival, which took place between the years 196 and 176 B.C. or thereabouts (i. 6), and which culminated at the close of this period in the formation of a party within the priesthood. This party\u2014\u201cthe penitents of Israel\u201d\u2014appears to have attempted the reform of irregularities connected with the Temple, but having failed in the attempt they left Jerusalem and the cities of Israel, either voluntarily or under compulsion, and withdrew to Damascus under the leadership of \u201cthe Star,\u201d otherwise designated as \u201cthe Lawgiver,\u201d where they established the \u201cNew Covenant\u201d\u2014\u201cthe Covenant of Repentance.\u201d Thus the first breach of the party was with their brethren the Sadducean priesthood. After the institution of the New Covenant, the party appears to have returned from Damascus and made the cities of Israel the sphere of their missionary efforts. For an unspecified period of years till the coming of the Teacher of Righteousness, they were to obey faithfully the interpretation of the Law laid down by the Lawgiver above referred to. It was probably during this period that they first came into open antagonism with the Pharisees\u2014an antagonism which grew in bitterness with the growing years. The most virulent attacks in our book are directed against the Pharisees. The ground for these attacks can be best understood from the knowledge of the origin of the party. The movement that gave them birth was of an intensely ethical and religious character, and naturally tended to lead them to recognise the prophets as of great worth, even if not of equal worth with the Law, and therein to differentiate themselves from both Pharisee and Sadducee. This was one cause of the breach with the Pharisees. Another arose from the fact that whereas the Pharisees were upholding and developing a vast body of oral tradition, the reformed Sadducees absolutely opposed its acceptance except in a few particulars. They clung fast to the written Law and would have none of the oral. Furthermore, since they claimed to represent the true Israel, especially on the priestly side, to them belonged the covenants and the priestly functions, and the rights of teaching and judging Israel\u2014which latter functions had been usurped by the Pharisees; to them also belonged the Temple at Jerusalem as their Sanctuary, to them belonged Jerusalem and \u201cthe holy city.\u201d
\nThe precepts of the Law as expounded by the Lawgiver were to be obeyed till the coming of the Teacher of Righteousness. This Teacher was to come \u201cin the end of the days.\u201d It was probably during this time that the party assumed the name \u201cthe Sons of Zadok.\u201d
\nAfter the death of the \u201cTeacher of Righteousness,\u201d whose teaching and activities are not recounted\u2014a fact which points to the defectiveness of our MSS.\u2014a considerable period elapses, much more than forty years. We have now arrived at the date of our author. He is living \u201cin the end of the days,\u201d and the advent of the Messiah \u201cfrom Aaron and Israel\u201d is momentarily looked for. If I am right in my interpretation of this phrase, the Messiah was to be a son of Mariamne and Herod (i.e. from Aaron and Israel), and the book was therefore written between 18 and 8 B.C. Herod put his two sons to death in 8 B.C., since they were the popular idols of the nation, and so this hope, like so many that preceded it, failed to reach fulfilment.
\nI have given this rather full account of this book as it has only been brought to light within the last three years.
\nSee Charles, Fragments of a Zadokite Work, 1912.<\/p>\n
A.D. 1\u2013100<\/p>\n
THE ASSUMPTION OF MOSES<\/p>\n
The Assumption of Moses was in all probability a composite work, and consisted of two originally distinct books, of which the first was the Testament of Moses, and the second the Assumption. The former was written in Hebrew, between A.D. 7 and 29, and possibly also the latter. A Greek version of the entire work appeared in the first century A.D. Of this a few phrases and sentences appear to have been preserved in Acts 7:36; Jude 9, 16, 18, 2 Baruch, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and other Greek writers.
\nThe book was written by a Pharisaic Quietist and was designed by its author as a protest against the growing secularisation of the Pharisaic party through its fusion with political ideals and popular Messianic beliefs. Its author sought herein to recall his party to the old paths, which they were fast forsaking, of simple unobtrusive obedience to the Law. He glorifies accordingly the old ideals which had been cherished and pursued by the Chasid and Early Pharisaic party, but which the Pharisaism of the first century B.C. had begun to disown in favour of a more active r\u00f4le in the life of the nation. And yet he was full of patriotism; for he looked for the return of the Ten Tribes, the establishment of the theocratic kingdom, the triumph of Israel over its foes. But though a patriot he was not a Zealot. The duty of the faithful was not to resort to arms, but simply to keep the law, and prepare, through repentance, for the personal intervention of God in their behalf. Accordingly, though he depicts in all its horrors the persecution under Antiochus, he leaves unmentioned the great achievements of the Maccabean leaders and only once refers to the entire dynasty from 165 to 37 B.C., and that in most disparaging terms. For him the true saints and heroes of the time were not Judas and his great brethren, but an obscure group of martyrs\u2014Eleazar and his seven sons, who unresistingly yielded themselves to death on behalf of God and the Law. In setting forth his ideal saints and heroes our author idealised deliberately the facts of history and represented as a single incident two distinct events\u2014a pardonable liberty on the part of an apocalyptist\u2014not to speak of an unconquerable optimist and idealist. His action in regard to the Maccabean movement was the natural outcome of his conception of religion, and reflected his attitude towards the present dominant form of Pharisaism; for he clearly saw the growing secularisation of the religion of his time, and perhaps foresaw the doom to which his country was hurrying, and laboured with all his power to stay its downward progress. But all in vain. He but played afresh the part of Cassandra. The leavening of Pharisaism with earthly political ideals went on apace, and the movement thus initiated culminated finally in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70.
\nIt adds no little to the interest of the book that it was written during the early life of our Lord, or possibly contemporaneously with His public ministry, and that its conception of spiritual religion, as opposed to an alliance of religion with politics generally or with any specific school of politics, was in many respects one with His.
\nSee Charles, The Assumption of Moses, 1897; Apoc. and Pseudep., ii. 407\u2013424.<\/p>\n
2 ENOCH, OR THE BOOK OF THE SECRETS OF ENOCH<\/p>\n
The Book of the Secrets of Enoch has, so far as is yet known, been preserved only in Slavonic.
\n2 Enoch in its present form was written somewhere about the beginning of the Christian era. Its final editor was an Hellenistic Jew, and the place of its composition was Egypt.
\nWritten at such a date, and in Egypt, it was not to be expected that it should exercise a direct influence on the writers of the New Testament. On the other hand, it occasionally exhibits striking parallelisms in diction and thought, and some of the dark passages of the latter are all but inexplicable without its aid.
\nAlthough the very knowledge that such a book ever existed was lost for probably twelve hundred years, it nevertheless was much used both by Christian and heretic in the early centuries. Thus citations appear from it, though without acknowledgment, in the Books of Adam and Eve, and Apocalypses of Moses and Paul (A.D. 400\u2013500), the Sibylline Oracles, the Ascension of Isaiah and the Epistle of Barnabas (A.D. 70\u201390). It is quoted by name in the later portions of the Testaments of Levi, Dan, and Naphtali. It was referred to by Origen and probably by Clement of Alexandria, and used by Irenaeus, and a few phrases in the New Testament may be derived from it.
\nBut it was not only on Christian literature that the influence of 2 Enoch is manifest. A Hebrew book entitled \u201cthe Book of Enoch\u201d (\u05e1\u05e4\u05e8 \u05d7\u05d1\u05d5\u05da) and twice \u201cthe Book of the Secrets of Enoch\u201d (\u05e1\u05e4\u05e8 \u05e8\u05d6\u05d9\u05df \u05d3\u05d7\u05d1\u05d5\u05da) in the Zohar exhibits very close affinities with 2 Enoch. R. Ishmael, a martyr of the Hadrianic persecution, is claimed to be its author, but its composition belongs most probably to a later date. It is, however, possible, that this Hebrew Book of Enoch has preserved in some cases the Hebrew original, from which apparently portions of 2 Enoch are derived. But the influence of 2 Enoch is not confined to this Hebrew Book of Enoch. Traces of it are found also in the apocalyptic fragment published by Jellinek, Beth ha-Midrasch, vi. 19\u201330, and also in the Zohar.
\nThe passages presupposed by the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs must be of a pre-Christian date. These passages may belong to an older form of the Enoch tradition than 2 Enoch. 2 Enoch in its present form was written probably between 30 B.C. and A.D. 70. It was written after 30 B.C., for it makes use of Sirach, 1 Enoch, and the Book of Wisdom (see my edition of 2 Enoch, pp. xxv. seq.), and before A.D. 70; for the Temple is still standing. We may, therefore, reasonably assign its composition to the period A.D. 1\u201350.
\nThe author belonged to the orthodox Hellenistic Judaism of his day. Thus he believed in the value of sacrifices, xlii. 6; lix. 2; lxvi. 2; but he is careful to enforce enlightened views regarding them, xlv. 3; lxi. 4, 5; in the Law, lii. 9\u201310; and likewise in a blessed immortality, l. 2; lxv. 10; in which the righteous shall wear \u201cthe raiment of God\u2019s glory,\u201d xxii. 8. In questions affecting the origin of the earth, sin, death, etc., he allows himself the most unrestricted freedom and borrows freely from every quarter. Thus, Platonic (xxx. 16, note in my edition), Egyptian (xxv. 2, note), and Zend (lviii. 4\u20136, notes) elements are adopted into his system. The result is naturally syncretistic.
\nThis book is of great value in showing the continued existence of the school of high ethical teaching of which we have the noblest monument in the Testaments of the XII. Patriarchs. Its description of the Seven Heavens also serves to throw light on several dark passages in the New Testament.
\nSee Charles, The Book of the Secrets of Enoch.<\/p>\n
2 BARUCH, OR THE SYRIAC APOCALYPSE OF BARUCH<\/p>\n
The Apocalypse of Baruch, which for the sake of convenience will be designated 2 Baruch, is a composite work written in the latter half of the first century of the Christian era. Its authors were orthodox Jews and it is a good representative of the Judaism against which the Pauline dialectic was directed.
\nIn this Apocalypse we have almost the last noble utterance of Judaism before it plunged into the dark and oppressive years that followed the destruction of Jerusalem. For ages after that epoch its people seem to have been bereft of their immemorial gifts of song and eloquence, and to have had thought and energy only for the study and expansion of the traditions of the Fathers. But when our book was written, that evil and barren era had not yet set in; breathing thought and burning word had still their home in Palestine, and the hand of the Jewish artist was still master of its ancient cunning.
\nThis beautiful Apocalypse, with the exception of nine chapters towards its close, which under the title \u201cthe Epistle of Baruch\u201d or a similar one, were incorporated in the later Syriac Bible, was lost sight of for quite 1,200 years.
\nWritten originally in Hebrew, it was translated into Greek, and from Greek into Syriac. Of the Hebrew original every line has perished save a few still surviving in rabbinic writings. Of the Greek version, a small fragment has been recovered from the papyri, while many phrases and sentences have been preserved in the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch (i.e. 3 Baruch) and in the Rest of the Words of Baruch (i.e. 4 Baruch). Happily the Syriac has come down to us in its entirety in a sixth-century MS.
\nThis Apocalypse is, as has already been stated, composite. The editor has made use of a number of independent writings, belonging to various dates between A.D. 50 and 90, and emanating indirectly at all events from the School of Hillel, just as 4 Ezra is derived from the School of Shammai. They are thus contemporaneous with the chief New Testament writings, and furnish records of the Jewish doctrines and beliefs of that period, and of the arguments which prevailed in Judaism in the latter half of the first century, and with which its leaders sought to uphold its declining faith and confront the attacks of a growing and aggressive Christianity. Written by Pharisaic Jews as an apology for Judaism, and in part an implicit polemic against Christianity, it gained nevertheless a larger circulation amongst Christians than amongst Jews, and owned its very preservation to the scholarly cares of the Church it assailed. But in the struggle for life its secret animus against Christianity begat an instinctive opposition in Christian circles, and so proved a bar to its popularity. Thus the place it would naturally have filled was taken by the sister work 4 Ezra. This latter work, which forms in fact an unconscious confession of the failure of Judaism to redeem the world, was naturally more acceptable to Christian readers, and thus, in due course, our Apocalypse was elbowed out of recognition by its fitter and sturdier rival.
\nAs I have remarked at the outset the book in very composite. There are three Messianic Apocalypses xxvii.\u2013xxx. 1; xxxvi.\u2013xl.; liii.\u2013lxxiv., which for convenience\u2019 sake I designate A1, A2, A3, and a short original Apocalypse of Baruch B1. In the remaining sections B2, B3, the contents of which we shall determine presently, the doctrine of a Messianic kingdom is absolutely relinquished.
\nDifferent documents behind the Text. Thus A1, A2, A3, B1 agree in presenting an optimistic view of Israel\u2019s future and inculcating the hope of a Messianic kingdom: whereas in B2, B3 the hopes of the righteous are directed to the immediate advent of the final judgment and the spiritual world.
\nBut at this point a difference between A1, A2, A3 and B1 emerges. The former look for a Messiah at the head of the kingdom, but B1 for a kingdom without the Messiah.
\nThe relations of B1, B2, B3 to each other. Since B3 consists of a single chapter we shall deal with it first.
\nB3 = lxxxv. This chapter agrees with B1, B2 in being written after A.D. 70; but differs from B1 and agrees with B2 in despairing of a national restoration, and in looking only for spiritual blessedness in the world of incorruption. But again it differs from B2 also, in that B2 was written in Jerusalem or Jud\u00e6a.
\nB1, B2\u2014their extent and characteristics. Even the elimination of the preceding sections does not leave a coherent whole as we have already seen. Thus i.\u2013ix. 1, xxxii. 2\u20134, xliii.\u2013xliv. 7, xlv.\u2013xlvi., lxxvii.\u2013lxxxii., lxxxiv., lxxxv. seq. (= B1) are optimistic and hopeful as to this world, whereas x.\u2013xxv., xxx. 2\u2013xxxii. 1, xxxii. 5\u2013xxxv., xli. seq., xliv. 8\u201315, xlvii.\u2013lii., lxxv. seq., lxxxiii. (= B2) are decidedly of an opposite character. In B1 the dispersion is to return, lxxvii. 6, lxxviii. 7, but in B2 no such restoration is expected. In B1 the earthly Jerusalem is to be rebuilt, i. 4, vi. 9, xxxii. 2\u20134, lxxviii. 7 (see notes in my edition), but not in B2: cf. x. 10, xx. 2. In B1 Jeremiah is not sent to Babylon, lxxvii. 12, but in B2 he is sent, x. 2, xxxiii. 2.
\nSee Charles, Apocalypse of Baruch, and Apoc. and Pseudep., ii. 470\u2013526.<\/p>\n
4 EZRA<\/p>\n
This is the most profound and touching of the Jewish Apocalypses. It stands in the relation of a sister work to 2 Baruch, but though the relation is so close the points of divergence are many and weighty. Thus whereas 2 Baruch represents the Judaism of the first century of the Christian era, which approximates to the school of Hillel and is related closely to later Rabbinical Judaism, the teaching of 4 Ezra on the Law, Works, Justification, Original Sin and Freewill approximates to the school of Shammai.
\nTo the question propounded in the New Testament\u2014\u201cAre there few that be saved?\u201d 4 Ezra states categorically 8:3, \u201cMany have been created, but few shall be saved.\u201d This accords well with the school of Shammai, whereas the contrary statement in 2 Baruch xxi. 11, represents the school of Hillel. Again the sufferings of the wicked in the next world are so great that it were better according to 4 Ezra and the school of Shammai that man had not been born: cf. 7:66, 116\u2013117. In 4:12 the nexus of sin and suffering is put still more strongly: \u201cIt would have been better that we had never been created than \u2026 to live in sins and suffer and not to know why we suffer.\u201d While 2 Baruch (liv. 19) declares that \u201ceach one of us is the Adam of his own soul,\u201d and therefore takes a hopeful view of the future, 4 Ezra holds that man is all but foredoomed through his original evil disposition or through the fall of Adam (7:118): \u201cO Adam, what hast thou done! for though it was thou that sinned, the fall was not thine alone but ours also, who are thy descendants!\u201d
\nAgain, whereas 2 Baruch with the School of Hillel would show some mercy to the Gentiles (lxxii. 4\u20136) in the Messianic period, none according to 4 Ezra (9:22 seq.; 12:34; 13:37 seq.), and the Shammaites (Toseph., Sanh. xiii. 2) will be extended to them.
\nFinally, whereas the Law is the source of life according to 2 Baruch and Hillel, it is a source of fear to 4 Ezra and apparently in a minor degree to the Shammaites. Thus while Hillel declared \u201cWhoever has gotten to himself the words of Torah has gotten to himself the life of the world to come\u201d (Aboth, ii. 8), 2 Baruch regards the Law as the protection of the righteous (xxxii. 1), their source of justification (li. 3), and their neverfailing stay (xlviii. 22, 24). In 4 Ezra even the righteous man trembles before the Law, for all have sinned (8:35). Only a few will be saved through divine compassion (7:139) or through good works (7:77).
\nMr. Box\u2019s analysis of this composite book is as follows (Charles\u2019 Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, ii. 542)\u2014
\n\u201cThe Ezra-Apocalypse proper corresponds to chapters 3\u201314 of the 2 Esdras of our Apocrypha (or the Fourth Book of Ezra of the Vulgate) \u2026 In its present form it is a compilation made by an Editor or Redactor (R), and was published by him about the year A.D. 120, in the early part of the reign of Hadrian. The sources utilised by R were\u2014
\n\u201c(1) a Salathiel-Apocalypse (S) which was originally published in Hebrew in the year A.D. 100. It is contained in chapters 3\u201310, together with a certain amount of interpolated material.
\n\u201c(2) To this have been appended three independent pieces, extracts from other apocalypses, viz. the Eagle-Vision (= ch. 11\u201312), the Son of Man Vision (= ch. 13) and the Ezra-legend: (ch. 14 mainly).
\n\u201c(3) Extracts from another source have also been utilised by R and interpolated in S. These are from an old Ezra-Apocalypse and detail the signs which precede the end of the world (4:52\u20135:13a and 6:11\u201329). This source may also have been utilised by R in his compilation of the passages 7:26\u201344 and 8:63\u20139:12.
\n\u201cThe whole has been compiled in its present form by R, the different material being welded together by redactional links and adjustments. But the distinctive features of the sources have not been seriously affected. The purpose of the compilation appears to have been to commend the apocalyptic literature to certain Rabbinical circles which were hostile, and to secure for it a permanent place within orthodox Judaism. With this end in view the Redactor invested the whole composite work with the name of Ezra\u2014a name specially honoured in the Rabbinical Schools.\u201d
\nSee Box, The Ezra-Apocalypse, 1912, and his contribution in Charles\u2019 Apoc. and Pseudep., ii. 542\u2013624.<\/p>\n
title Religious Development between the Old and the New Testaments},<\/p>\n
author Charles, R. H<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEW TESTAMENTS INTRODUCTION From the times of the primitive Church down to the last century it was the generally accepted view, except in the case of a few isolated scholars, that the Old Testament was closed in the fifth century B.C., and that in the interval between the … <\/p>\n