Chapter VIII (2)

But, on the other hand, the opening words of the book bring out in a very clear manner the indispensable need of divine grace for the right exercise of the will:

Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the earth,
Think ye of the Lord with a good mind,
And in singleness of heart seek ye Him;
For He is found of them that tempt Him not,
And is manifested unto them that do not mistrust Him....
For the holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit,
And will start away from thoughts that are without understanding,
And will be scared away when the unrighteous approacheth
(i. 1-5).

(_e_) _The Doctrine of the Messiah._

The didactic character of Ecclesiasticus is sufficient to account for the extreme meagreness of references to the Messiah. In the few cases in which the subject is referred to it is the seed of David to which the Messiah belongs, viz.:

He will not cut off the posterity of His chosen ones,
Nor will He destroy the offspring of them that love Him;
And He will give to Jacob a remnant,
And to the house of David a root from him (xlvii. 22).

And in the eighth verse of the Hymn of Praise which (in the Hebrew only) is inserted after li. 12, occur these words:

Give thanks unto Him that maketh a horn to sprout for the house
of David,
For His mercy endureth for ever.

Ben-Sira, therefore, believes in a Messiah who is purely human, according to the usual Jewish doctrine, and who belongs to the house of David; but his belief is otherwise vague. Apart from the nature of the book itself, it must be remembered that the conceptions of a Messiah were largely conditioned by the historical circumstances of any given period; during the time of Ben-Sira these were not of a nature to call forth Messianic hopes, and therefore the teaching regarding the Messiah was indefinite, and receded into the background. In the Book of Tobit the Messiah is never mentioned, but the renovated Jerusalem which the writer speaks of, and the gathering in of the dispersed Israelites as well as of the Gentiles, gives a picture of what corresponds to the Messianic Kingdom:

O Jerusalem, thou holy city! He will chastise thee for the works
of thy hands,
And will again have mercy on the sons of the righteous.
Give thanks to the Lord with goodness, and bless the everlasting
King,
That thy tabernacle may be builded in thee again with joy,
And that He may make glad in thee all that are captives,
And love in thee all that are miserable and all the generations
of eternity.
A bright light shall shine unto all the ends of the earth;
Many nations shall come from afar,
And the inhabitants of the utmost ends of the earth unto Thy
holy name ...
(xiii. 7-18; see also xiv. 4-6).

No other books of the Apocrypha offer any teaching on this subject until we come to 1 Maccabees, where there is conceivably in the mind of the writer the thought of the Messiah in iv. 46, “... so they pulled down the altar, and laid down the stones in the mountain of the House, in a convenient place, until a prophet should come and decide as to what should be done concerning them.” The reference here is probably to Deuteronomy xviii. 18, which is not a Messianic passage, though it may have been so interpreted in later times. A somewhat more definite reference to the Messiah is perhaps to be seen in xiv. 41: “And the Jews and the priests were well pleased that Simon should be their leader and high-priest for ever, until a faithful prophet should arise.” The words “for ever” mean that the high-priesthood should continue hereditary in the house of the Hasmonæans, so that if by “a faithful prophet” the Messiah is meant, the writer would imply that the Messiah would be of Hasmonæan lineage. In 2 Maccabees there is no reference to the Messiah, though there is to the Messianic Kingdom, for the gathering together of the scattered Israelites in Jerusalem is an undoubted Messianic _trait_: “Gather together our dispersion, set at liberty them that are in bondage among the heathen.... Plant Thy people in Thy holy place” (i. 27); and again in ii. 18: “In God have we hope, that He will speedily have mercy upon us, and gather us together from under the wide heaven to the holy place.”[333] In Baruch the Messianic Kingdom, though not the Messiah, is spoken of in iv. and v., where the destruction of Israel’s enemies is referred to:

... But shortly thou shalt see his [i.e. the enemy’s] destruction,
And shalt tread upon their necks (iv. 25, cf. verses 31 ff.).

The ingathering of Israel is also described:

... O Jerusalem, look about thee toward the east,
And behold the joy that cometh unto thee from God,
Lo, thy sons come, whom thou sentest away,
They come gathered together from the east to the west,
Rejoicing in the glory of God ... (iv. 36-v. 9).

The only other book which has teaching on this subject is the important apocalypse 2 (4) Esdras, and here, as one would expect, the teaching is full. The first point to notice is that as this book is of composite authorship the conceptions of the Messiah differ; thus, in the “Salathiel Apocalypse” (iii.-x.) the Messiah is regarded as purely human: “For my son the Messiah shall be revealed, together with those who are with him, and shall rejoice the survivors four hundred years. And it shall be, after these years, that my son the Messiah shall die, and all in whom there is human breath” (vii. 28, 29). On the other hand, in the “Eagle Vision” (xi.-xii. 39) the pre-existence of the Messiah is taught, though he is to spring from the seed of David: “This is the Messiah, whom the Most High hath kept unto the end of the days, who shall spring from the seed of David ...” (xii. 32). The same is taught in the “Vision of the Man from the Sea” (xiii.): “Whereas thou didst see a Man coming up from the heart of the sea—this is he whom the Most High is keeping many ages ...” (xiii. 25, 26). In this vision the Messiah is of a supernatural character. This truth of the Messiah’s pre-existence is likewise implied in the “Ezra Legend” (xiv.): “For thou shalt be taken up from among men, and henceforth thou shalt remain with my son, and with such as are like thee, till the times be ended” (xiv. 9). Only in the “Salathiel Apocalypse” are the signs which are to precede the Messianic Kingdom (i.e. the “Messianic Woes”) mentioned, but they are given in considerable detail: “Concerning the signs, however—Behold the days come when the inhabitants of the earth shall be seized with great panic, and the way of truth shall be hidden, and the land of faith be barren. And iniquity shall be increased above that which thou thyself now seest or that thou hast heard of long ago. And the land that thou seest now to bear rule shall be a pathless waste; and men shall see it forsaken; if the Most High grant thee to live, thou shalt see it after the third period in confusion. Then shall the sun suddenly shine forth by night, and the moon by day; and blood shall trickle from the wood, and the stone utter its voice. The peoples shall be in commotion, the outgoings of the stars shall change. And one whom the dwellers upon earth do not look for shall wield sovereignty, and the birds shall take to general flight, and the sea shall cast forth its fish. And one whom the many do not know shall make his voice heard by night; and all shall hear his voice. And the earth o’er wide regions shall open, and the fire burst forth for a long period. The wild beasts shall desert their haunts, and women bear monsters. Salt waters shall be found in the sweet. Friends shall attack one another suddenly. Then shall intelligence hide itself, and Wisdom withdraw to its chamber—by many shall be sought and not found. And unrighteousness and incontinency shall be multiplied upon the earth. One land shall also ask another and say: Is righteousness—that doeth the right—passed through thee? And it shall answer: No. And it shall be that in that time men shall hope and not obtain, shall labour and not prosper” (v. 1-12).

Regarding the Messianic Kingdom itself it is to be of limited duration, and, according to the “Eagle Vision” Gentiles as well as Jews are to enjoy it: “And so the whole earth, freed from thy violence, shall be refreshed again, and hope for the judgement and mercy of Him that made her” (xi. 46).[334] In the “Vision of the Man from the Sea” the Gentiles are wholly destroyed by the Messiah, and his kingdom is only for his own people (xiii. 8-13).

In the Book of Wisdom there is no doctrine of the Messiah, nor is there, in the Jewish Palestinian sense, a belief in a Messianic Kingdom; what we do find, however, is that Jewish traditional eschatological conceptions are utilized by the author, and that a glorious future is believed to be reserved for the Jews; there are two passages in which this future is portrayed, viz. iii. 8:[335]

They [i.e. the righteous] shall judge nations, and have dominion
over peoples;
And the Lord shall reign over them for evermore.

The thought that is apparently in the writer’s mind here is that of such passages as Isaiah ii. 4_a_: “And He shall judge among the nations, and shall decide concerning many peoples,” and Isaiah xlix. 23: “And kings shall be thy nursing-fathers and queens thy nursing-mothers; they shall bow down to thee with their faces to the earth ...”; these, it is true, refer to an earthly theocracy, whereas the author of Wisdom is speaking of the hereafter, but the _adaptation_ of Scriptural passages is a very natural procedure; he does not define closely the nature of the eternal kingdom which will be set up hereafter, any more than the prophet does in regard to his ideal earthly kingdom. The other passage is v. 15-23:

But the righteous live for ever,
And the Lord is their reward,
And the care for them with the Most High.
Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom,
And a diadem of beauty from the Lord’s hand;
Because with His right hand will He cover them,
And with His arm will He shield them.

So far this passage, like the other one, is based upon Old Testament Messianic passages such as Isaiah xl. 10, iv. 5, 6, xxviii. 5, 6, lix. 16, 17, and others[336]; but in verses 17-23^{_ab_}, where the Most High goes out Himself as a warrior, a different element enters in. It is true, that here, too, the Old Testament conception of Jehovah as a mighty man of war lies at the back of the passage, but there are also other eschatological, or rather apocalyptic, traits which appear. These elements have been utilized by the author of Wisdom, who has sought to spiritualize them:

He shall take His jealousy as complete armour,
And shall make the whole creation His weapons for vengeance
on His enemies;
He shall put on righteousness as a breastplate,
And shall take judgement unfeigned as a helmet;
He shall take holiness as an invincible shield,
And shall sharpen stern wrath for a sword;
And the world shall go forth with Him to fight against His
insensate foes.
Shafts of lightning shall fly with true aim,
And from the clouds, as from a well-drawn bow, shall they leap
to the mark.
And as from an engine of war shall be hurled hailstones full
of wrath;
The water of the sea shall rage against them,
And rivers shall sternly overwhelm them;
A mighty blast shall encounter them,
And as a tempest shall it winnow them away.
So shall lawlessness make all the land desolate,
And their evil-doing shall overturn the thrones of princes.

These two last lines are strikingly out of harmony with what has preceded, since they deal with this world; such a sudden change of subject is unnatural, the lines cannot originally have stood here.

There is, thus, no doctrine of a Messiah or a Messianic Kingdom in the ordinary Jewish sense; the kingdom which is described has God as its ruler, it is an eternal kingdom which only the righteous shall possess; the writer does not make clear whether it is to be set up on this earth, or whether it is to be a spiritual kingdom hereafter. From the way in which he spiritualizes it is presumably to be a kingdom in the world to come; against this it cannot be urged that there are materialistic _traits_ which point to a kingdom to be set up on this earth, for the writer has clearly borrowed and incorporated traditional eschatological material without intending to utilize more than its outward form. To interpret otherwise would, in view of the spirit of the rest of this portion of the book, be to misunderstand the author.

(_f_) _The Doctrine of the Future Life._

In Ecclesiasticus the teaching on this subject is substantially that of the normal Old Testament type; one or two quotations will suffice to illustrate this:

For what pleasure hath God in all that perish in Hades,
In place of those who live and give Him praise?
Thanksgiving perisheth from the dead as from one that is not,
But he that liveth and is in health praiseth the Lord
(xvii. 27, 28).

The corruption of the body is looked upon as the end of man:

When a man dieth he inheriteth
Worm and maggot, lice and creeping things (x. 11);

though the annihilation of the spirit as well as the body is evidently not contemplated in view of such words as these:

Weep gently for the dead, for he hath found rest (xxii. 11);

and in xxx. 17 death is spoken of as an “eternal rest” (cp. xxxviii. 23, xlvi. 19). This idea of rest for the soul hereafter is “very different from that of death being corruption and the end of all things, which is the more usual one in Ecclesiasticus, and one is perhaps justified in seeing the beginnings of development here, based, it is true, on some Old Testament passages; the conception of the dead resting must involve some sort of a belief beyond the bare existence of the shade hereafter.”[337] It is of particular interest to note that in one or two cases the Greek shows signs of some development of conception regarding the future life where in the Hebrew the normal Old Testament position is maintained; thus in vii. 17 the Hebrew has:

Humble thy pride greatly,
For the expectation of man is worms.

This is rendered in the Greek:

Humble thy soul greatly,
For the punishment of the ungodly man is fire and the worm.

It is clear that the development which is known to have taken place in the doctrine of the future life during the second century B.C. is reflected here. Very noticeable is the fact that a kind of technical sense has become attached to the word “worm,” such as we find in Mark ix. 48 (“... where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched”). In xxi. 9, 10 it is probable that a similar development exists, though in this case it cannot be proved as the Hebrew is unfortunately not extant; but in view of the example just given it is highly probable that the following reading of the Greek likewise represents a developed idea:

Like tow wrapped together is the assembly of the ungodly,
And their end is the flame of fire.
The way of sinners is made smooth without stones,
And at the end thereof is the pit of Hades.

It will be noticed that the parallelism between “the flame of fire,” and “the pit of Hades,” suggests that the latter has developed into Gehenna. Another example is to be found in xlviii. 11, where the reference is to Elijah; only one line of the original couplet is decipherable in the Hebrew, viz.:

Blessed is he that seeth thee and dieth;

i.e. the man who before he died saw Elijah is blessed; the next line is illegible in the Hebrew and corrupt in the Greek; but the point of importance is that the Greek adds this further line:

And we also shall surely live,

the reference being evidently to the life hereafter, since Elijah is the subject of the preceding couplet.

One other passage must be mentioned, not because in itself it points to any development of thought, but because the Old Testament episode (1 Kings xvii. 17-24) to which it refers must sooner or later have suggested the thought of the dead rising; it is also in reference to Elijah (xlviii. 5):

Who didst raise up a dead man from death,
And from Sheol, according to the good pleasure of Jehovah.

The Hebrew and the Greek do not differ materially.

In the Book of Tobit the normal Old Testament doctrine is taught; so, e.g., when Tobit prays: “Command my spirit to be taken from me, that I may be released from off the earth and become earth” (iii. 6); in the same verse Sheol is spoken of as “the everlasting place,” it is a place of “darkness” (iv. 10), and “below the earth” (xiii. 2). In the Book of Judith there is only one reference to the future life, but the passage is an important one as it witnesses to a development of thought similar to that found in the Greek text of Ecclesiasticus vii. 17, xxi. 9, 10, where Hades is a place of punishment; the passage is xvi. 17—Judith speaks as follows:

Woe to the nations that rise up against my race;
The Lord Almighty will take vengeance of them in the day of
judgement,
To put fire and worms in their flesh;
And they shall weep and feel their pain for ever.

Here it is clear that the body is conceived of as suffering anguish hereafter. Something similar to this is adumbrated in the Prayer of Manasses, verse 12. It says here:

... Neither, in Thy continual anger against me,
Lay up evil in store for me;
Nor pass Thou sentence against me
When I am in the lowest parts of the earth.

In the Pharisaic recension of Ecclesiasticus we may also note one or two occurrences of development of doctrine; thus after xix. 17 the following words are added:

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of acceptance by Him,
And wisdom will gain love from Him.
The knowledge of the commandments of the Lord is life-giving
instruction;
And they who do the things that are pleasing unto Him shall
pluck the fruit of the tree of immortality.

Again, reward hereafter for right doing in this life is taught in the addition to xviii. 22:

For the reward of God abideth to eternity.

Two instances of merely verbal additions point in the same direction; in xxi. 10 the second addition in the ordinary Greek text runs:

And at the end thereof is the pit of Hades;

for “the pit of Hades” the Old Latin Version has: “the lowest depth and darkness and punishment.”[338] One other addition, this time of only a single word, witnesses to the belief of the soul, not merely the shade of the departed, existing in Sheol; this is in xlviii. 5, a passage already referred to, where it speaks of Elijah raising a man from death and from Sheol; the secondary Greek text adds “his soul” after “Sheol.” These are, it is true, but slight points, nevertheless they are worth mention as supplementing what has already been said. The next book which contains references to the doctrine of the future life is 2 Maccabees, and here an immense development will be seen to have taken place. We have to note first that Hades is a place of punishment for the wicked, for in vi. 26 Eleazar, in refusing to commit the crime of offering idolatrous sacrifice, says: “Even were I for the moment to evade the punishment of men, I should not escape the hands of the Almighty in life or in death.” For the righteous Hades is only a temporary abode since the resurrection is reserved for them; thus, the second son of the mother whose seven sons are being martyred for their faith before her face, when at the last gasp, says to the king: “Thou cursed miscreant! Thou dost dispatch us from this life, but the King of the world shall raise us up, who have died for His laws, and revive us to life everlasting” (vii. 9); the same truth is taught in verses 23, 29 of the same chapter; but the resurrection is not only that of the spirit, but of the body also; in the account of the martyrdom of the third son it says: “And when he was told to put out his tongue, he did so at once, stretching forth his hands courageously, with the noble words, These I had from heaven; for His name’s sake I count them nought; from Him I hope to get them back again” (vii. 10, 11; see also xiv. 46). It is taught, further, that for the wicked there is no resurrection, thus the fourth son speaks thus to the king: “’Tis meet for those who perish at men’s hands to cherish hope divine that they shall be raised up by God again; but thou—thou shalt have no resurrection to life” (vii. 14, so too in verse 36). The belief in the resurrection is further illustrated by the following passage: “... In this he acted quite rightly and properly, bearing in mind the resurrection—for if he had not expected the fallen to rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead—and having regard to the splendour of the gracious reward which is reserved for those who have fallen asleep in godliness; a holy and pious consideration” (xii. 43-45). It will thus be seen that we have in this book a very advanced doctrine of the future life. In the Book of Baruch two isolated references to the future life occur, and here the teaching is the same as ordinarily found in the Old Testament: “... the dead that are in the grave, whose breath is taken from their bodies, will give unto the Lord neither glory nor righteousness” (ii. 17, cp. iii. 19).

In 2 (4) Esdras there is an extraordinary wealth of material regarding the future life; this is mostly confined to the “Salathiel Apocalypse” portion and the Redactor’s additions—it is therefore to these that we restrict ourselves. For clearness’ sake it will be best to deal with the subject under the three heads: (1) The Resurrection, (2) The Intermediate state, (3) The Judgement; there are some subsidiary points which will be touched upon incidentally.

(1) The doctrine of the _Resurrection_ as taught in the “Salathiel Apocalypse” is not altogether consistent; it is not quite easy to understand how the writer conceived of the resurrection, for it can scarcely have been the resurrection of the body which he thought of since this is regarded as altogether corruptible; thus, in speaking of the future life of those who have kept the ways of the Most High, he says that “they shall be separated from this corruptible vessel” (vii. 88), and in the world to come “they rejoice that they have now escaped what is corruptible, and that they shall inherit that which is to come” (vii. 96); that the body is meant by “what is corruptible” is clear from verse 100, where the seer asks: “Shall time, therefore, be given unto the souls after they are separated from the bodies...?” Later in the book (ix. 36) it is said again: “We who have received the Law and sinned must perish, together with our heart, which has taken it in.” Added to this is the fact that this writer, unlike the Redactor of the book (see below), never speaks of the resurrection of the body, which one would rightly look for had he believed in this; nor is there any mention of the soul being re-united to the body; but he looks upon the body as belonging wholly to this corruptible, material world; he definitely contrasts the spiritual with the material, the two are mutually antagonistic: “How should it be possible for a mortal in a corruptible world to understand the ways of the Incorruptible?” (iv. 11). Whereas in the world to come “corruption is forgotten” (viii. 53). Yet, in spite of what has been said, it would seem that the writer must have pictured to himself a body of some kind in the world to come, for in the Intermediate state (to which we shall refer presently) he must, apparently, have believed in the existence of bodies. The conclusion one is led to is this: the writer believed that the material body became wholly annihilated at death; but that the soul, when released from it, assumed a non-material body in the Intermediate state, and that this body did not undergo any further change at the Judgement; it was non-material (it is difficult to know how else to express it; “spiritual” does not seem the right word to use in view of what is said about the body in the Intermediate state)—it was non-material, and therefore incorruptible, immortal; and for this reason no further change could take place in it at the final Judgement, for it would then be fit for the new world to be created (cp. vii. 75). One is, therefore, led to assume that the resurrection takes place almost immediately after death, i.e. at the end of the seven days of “freedom,” or “rest,” which, according to vii. 101, intervene between the end of this life and the beginning of the Intermediate state, and therefore before the Judgement. As to whether the wicked, as well as the righteous, rise one cannot speak with certainty, the implication seems to be that this is not so, but no definite pronouncement is made on this point; cp. the following words which are put into the mouth of God: “For, indeed, I will not concern myself about the creation of those who have sinned, or their death, judgement, or perdition; but I will rejoice rather over the creation of the righteous, over their pilgrimage also, and their salvation, and their recompense” (viii. 38, 39).

(2) Regarding the _Intermediate state_, minute details are given, but the main points are these; in vii. 78-87 the lot of the wicked is thus described: “When the decisive decree has gone forth from the Most High that the man should die, as the soul from the body departs, that it may return to Him Who gave it, to adore the glory of the Most High first of all;—if it be one of those that have scorned, and have not kept, the ways of the Most High, and have despised His Law, and that hate those who fear God, such souls shall not enter into habitations, but shall wander about henceforth in torture, ever grieving and sad, in seven ways.” These ways are then described. On the other hand the lot of the righteous is as follows: “Of those, however, who have kept the ways of the Most High this is the order, when they shall be separated from this vessel of mortality.... First of all they shall see with great joy the glory of Him Who receives them; and they shall rest in seven orders ...”; these orders are then described; of the seventh it is said that it “exceeds all the aforesaid; they shall rejoice with boldness, be confident without confusion, be glad without fear; for they are hastening to behold the face of Him Whom in life they served, and from Whom they are destined to receive their reward in glory. This is the order of the souls of the righteous ...” (vii. 88-99). As to the duration of this Intermediate state we are given no details.

(3) At the close of the Intermediate state comes the _Judgement_; but here again there is some ambiguity, for from vii. 113, 114 we learn that “the Day of Judgement shall be the end of this age and the beginning of the eternal age that is to come, wherein corruption is passed away, weakness is abolished ...”; but this is inconsistent with the idea that corruption passes away with death (vii. 88), i.e. that the Intermediate state is the beginning of the age to come. Does the writer conceive of the new age, the age of incorruption and eternity, as beginning immediately after death, or at the Judgement? If the former, then it agrees with what he, presumably, believes regarding the resurrection which likewise takes place immediately after death; but if the latter, then the Intermediate state is left out of reckoning. In either case the teaching is inconsistent; evidently the writer’s own mind is not clear on the subject. Upon other points there is, however, no want of definiteness; thus, what the righteous and the wicked have respectively experienced in the Intermediate state is only a foretaste of what will be enormously increased at the Judgement, for the righteous their happiness, for the wicked their torment. The writer is very strong in insisting that on the Day of Judgement no intercession of the righteous will avail on behalf of the wicked. The seer asks “whether in the Day of Judgement the righteous shall be able to intercede for the ungodly, or to intreat the Most High in their behalf ...”; and the reply is: “... so shall none then pray for another on that Day, neither shall one lay a burden on another; for then every one shall bear his own righteousness or unrighteousness ...” (vii. 102-115).

In the other parts of this book these subjects are only slightly dealt with; but there is some important teaching in those portions which have probably been added by the Redactor.[339] He believes in a general resurrection (at any rate he makes no distinction between good and bad) of the body, and though he does not specifically mention the Intermediate state he evidently holds the same belief regarding this as the original writer: “The earth shall restore those that sleep in her, and the dust those that are at rest therein; and the chambers shall restore the souls that were committed unto them” (vii. 32). Here there is thus a clear reference to the re-union of soul and body, but the time at which this takes place is at the beginning of a new age which will begin seven days after the close of the Messianic Age. The Redactor, in seeking to combine the eschatology of the individual with that of the nation, presents the course of the final events in a different way, thus: “For, behold, days come—and it shall be when the signs which I have foretold unto thee [i.e. the Messianic Woes] shall come to pass—then shall the city that is now invisible [i.e. the heavenly Jerusalem] appear, and the land which is now concealed [i.e. the heavenly Paradise] be seen. And whosoever is delivered from the predicted evil, the same shall see My wonders. For My Son, the Messiah, shall be revealed, together with those who are with Him, and shall rejoice the survivors four hundred years. And it shall be, after these years, that My Son the Messiah shall die, and all in whom there is human breath. Then shall the world be turned into the primæval silence seven days, like as in the first beginnings, so that no man is left. And it shall be after seven days that the Age which is not yet awake, shall be roused, and that which is corruptible shall perish” (vii. 26-31); then follows the passage about the resurrection quoted above, and it continues (verses 33 ff.): “And the Most High shall be revealed upon the throne of judgement; and then cometh the end.... And recompense shall follow, and the reward be made manifest; deeds of righteousness shall awake, and deeds of iniquity shall not sleep. And then shall the pit of torment appear; and over against it the place of refreshment. The furnace of Gehenna shall be made manifest, and over against it the Paradise of delight. And then the Most High shall say to the nations that have been raised (from the dead): Look now, and consider Whom ye have denied, Whom ye have not served, Whose commandments ye have despised! Look, now, before you: here delight and refreshment, there fire and torments....” Here, then, we have an eschatological scheme quite different from that of the “Salathiel Apocalypse”; the Messianic Age is preceded by the signs, or woes; then the Messiah is revealed and His kingdom lasts four hundred years; at the end of this period all flesh, including the Messiah, dies, and the world is plunged in primæval silence for seven days; then comes the Resurrection, a bodily resurrection, in which all men, Gentile and Jew, ungodly and godly, partake; this is immediately followed by the Judgement which ushers in the New Age.

Turning now to the Book of Wisdom we note that there is no resurrection of body taught here; this follows naturally from the writer’s doctrine of the inherent evil of matter. The only immortality is that of the soul, and this is gained through “kinship unto wisdom”:

When I considered these things in myself,
And took thought in my heart how that in kinship unto wisdom
is immortality,
And in her friendship is good delight....
I went about seeking how to take her unto myself
(viii. 17, 18);

so that immortality begins on this earth. The Judgement takes place immediately after death; the writer describes fully the lot in the future life reserved respectively for the righteous and the ungodly; in the beautiful and well-known passage (iii. 1-9) the blessedness of the righteous is described in this way:

But the souls of the righteous are in the hands of God,
And no torment shall touch them ...
But they are in peace.
For though in the sight of men they be punished,
Their hope is full of immortality ... (iii. 1-9).

Of the ungodly it is said, on the other hand:

But the ungodly shall be requited even as they reasoned,
They which lightly regarded the righteous man, and revolted
from the Lord ...
And void is their hope, and their toils unprofitable,
And useless are their works ... (iii. 10 ff.).

And again in chapter v. the contrast hereafter between the righteous and the unrighteous is told in the following way:

But the righteous shall live for ever,
And the Lord is their reward,
And the care for them with the Most High.
Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom,
And a diadem of beauty from the Lord’s hand ... (v. 15 ff.);

but the ungodly, on seeing the blessedness of the righteous, will be greatly troubled:

When they see it they shall be troubled with terrible fear,
And shall be amazed at the marvel of His salvation ...

Bitter remorse takes hold of them as they review their former godless life and see that they have now no further hope:

Because the hope of the ungodly is like chaff carried off by
the wind (see v. 1-14).

But in regard to the Judgement the writer of Wisdom is not consistent, for in iii. 8 it is said:

They [i.e. the righteous] shall judge nations, and have dominion
over peoples;
And the Lord shall reign over them for evermore.

On the other hand, in v. 17-23, there is an entirely different eschatological conception:

He [i.e. Jehovah] shall take His jealousy as complete armour,
And shall make the whole creation His weapons of vengeance
on His enemies ...;

this is all described with great vividness in the verses which follow. It seems as though the author were acquainted with more than one Jewish eschatological scheme, and utilized them, but without realizing that they were inconsistent with each other. See further above, section (_e_), on the doctrine of the Messiah. According to this book, then, there is no Intermediate state; if one can speak of a Resurrection at all it is only in reference to the soul; as the soul is immortal both the righteous and the ungodly live hereafter; the righteous in bliss the ungodly in torment of a purely spiritual kind (see iv. 19, v. 2, xvii. 21); it is not said where the scene of the Judgement is. The writer, it will thus be seen, departs widely from Palestinian Jewish belief on this subject, but he is not ignorant of it; though a Jew, his Hellenistic caste of mind makes it impossible for him to accept the Jewish position.

(_g_) _The Doctrine of Angels._

The nature of the contents of Ecclesiasticus is such that one does not look for much reference to angels; nevertheless, in two passages there is a distinct mention of them, viz. xlii. 16 (17):

God’s holy ones have not the power
To recount His wondrous works of might;
Though God hath given strength to His hosts
To endure in the presence of His glory (so the Hebrew).

The meaning of the passage is that even the “holy ones” (i.e. angels, as in Deut. xxxiii. 1. [but see Driver’s _Deuteronomy_, p. 392], Job v. 1, Ps. lxxxix. 7, and often in the apocalyptic books) are unable to recount God’s marvellous works though, by means of special strength given to them, they stand in His very presence. The other passage is xliii. 26:

Through Him His angel prospereth,
And at His word what He wills is done.

The Hebrew text here is a little uncertain, but that a reference to angels is intended is probable because the whole passage of which this is the concluding verse is based upon Psalm civ. 1 ff., verse 4 of which runs: “Who maketh His angels of the winds, His ministers of the flaming fire.” In the Book of Tobit the angel Raphael[340] plays an important part; in xii. 15 he says of himself: “I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels, which present the prayers of the saints, and go in before the glory of the Holy One” (cp. also verse 12). This angel is sent from God, according to iii. 7, to heal Tobit’s blindness, and to bring about the marriage between Tobit’s son Tobias and Sarah, the daughter of Raguel, by binding Asmodeus the evil spirit (cp. vi. 10-17). He accompanies Tobias on his journey to Media, and thus appears as a guardian angel. The angelic host is referred to in viii. 15: “Blessed art Thou, O God, with all pure and holy blessing; and let Thy saints bless Thee, and all Thy creatures; and let all Thine angels and elect bless Thee for ever.” There is no mention of angels in the Book of Judith; but in the Additions to Daniel there are several references; thus in the “Prayer of Azariah,” verses 26, 27, it is said: “But the angel of the Lord came down into the furnace together with Azariah and his fellows, and he drove the flame of the fire out of the furnace, and made the midst of the furnace as it had been a moist whistling wind, so that the fire touched them not at all, neither hurt nor troubled them.” In “Susanna,” again, the activity of angels is referred to in verses 44, 45 (Septuagint Version), where the angel of the Lord is said to have bestowed “a spirit of discernment” upon Daniel; also in verse 55 (Septuagint Version), where the angel of the Lord is about to “cleave the soul” of one of the criminals brought before Daniel; and, once more, it is an angel who carries out the sentence against the two elders: “Then the angel of the Lord cast fire in the midst of them” (verse 62). In Theodotion’s Version the angel of the Lord is referred to in verses 55, 59, and is spoken of in each case as the avenging angel. Then, again, in “Bel and the Dragon,” verses 34-39, there is the curious story of how the angel of the Lord took up the prophet Habakkuk by the hair and transported him from Judah to Babylon in order that he might give food to Daniel in the lion’s den. In the Prayer of Manasses the angelic host is spoken of in verse 15: “For all the host of heaven doth sing Thy praise.” In the Epistle of Jeremy, verse 7, a guardian angel is spoken of as being with the captives in Babylon. The belief in angels is incidentally referred to in the Additions to Esther (Fourth Addition, xv. 13 in R.V.), where Esther compares the king to an angel of God. A somewhat fantastic representation of the activity of angels is given in three passages in 2 Maccabees; in iii. 24 ff. there is an account of how the attempt of Seleucus and Heliodorus to take the temple at Jerusalem was frustrated; on their reaching the treasury “the Sovereign of spirits and all authority prepared a great apparition, so that all who had presumed to enter were stricken with dismay at the power of God, and fainted with sheer terror. For there appeared to them a horse with a terrible rider, and it was decked in magnificent trappings, and rushing fiercely forward it struck at Heliodorus with its forefeet. And the rider seemed to be armed with a golden panoply. Two youths also appeared before Heliodorus, remarkable for their strength, gloriously handsome, and splendidly arrayed, who stood by him on either side, and scourged him unceasingly, inflicting on him many sore stripes....” Again, in xi. 6-10, God is besought “to send a good angel to save Israel”; the prayer is heard, and “a rider appeared at their head, in white apparel, brandishing weapons of gold”; owing to his help the Israelites win the battle. Lastly, in xv. 11-16 belief in angels seems to be connected with dreams; for Maccabæus recounts the following “reliable dream,” which has the effect of greatly encouraging the people: “Onias, the former high-priest, a good and great man, of stately bearing yet gracious in manner, well-spoken, and trained from childhood in all points of virtue—Onias, with out-stretched hands, invoking blessings on the whole body of the Jews; then another man in the same attitude, conspicuous by his grey hairs and splendour, and invested with marvellous, majestic dignity. This, Onias explained to him, is the lover of the brethren, for he prayeth fervently for the people and the holy city, Jeremiah the prophet of God. And Jeremiah held out his right hand to present Judas with a golden sword, and as he gave it he addressed him thus: Take this holy sword as a gift from God, and with it thou shalt crush the foe.” No other books refer to angels until we come to 2 (4) Esdras.

A greatly developed angelology appears in the “Salathiel Apocalypse”; we must content ourselves here with an outline of this only. At the head of the angelic host stand seven archangels; of these only two are mentioned in this book, viz. Jeremiel, who guards the souls of the righteous in the chambers where they are awaiting the final judgement and resurrection (iv. 33-37)[341]; and Uriel, who is sent to the seer in order to show him the inscrutability of God’s ways (iv. 1-11). Elsewhere angels are referred to as speaking in the name of God, e.g. vii. 130; they are instant in fulfilling God’s commands, whatsoever these may be:

Before Whom heaven’s hosts stand trembling.
And at Thy word change to wind and fire (viii. 21);

and their power is much restricted: “As for me, I am unwise and powerless; how then should I essay to speak of these things of which thou questionest me?” (v. 39). Throughout this apocalypse it is by angelic agency that God communicates with the seer.

In the Book of Wisdom the point of interest is that the place of angels is taken by Wisdom, or by the Word, the development of doctrine having eliminated angelology altogether; thus, in x. 17, 18 it is said of Wisdom that:

She rendered unto holy men a reward of their toils;
She guided them along a marvellous way,
And became unto them a covering in the daytime,
And a light of stars through the night....

Here Wisdom has taken the place of the “angel of God” in Exodus xiv. 19. Again, in xviii. 15, 16 it is said:

Thine all-powerful Word leaped from heaven down from the royal
throne,
A stern warrior, into the midst of the doomed land,
Bearing as a sharp sword thine unfeigned commandment,
And standing, filled all things with death;
And while it touched the heaven it trode upon the earth.

Here the Logos has taken the place of the avenging angel, for it is evident that the writer had 1 Chronicles xxi. 15, 16 in his mind: “... And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the angel of the Lord stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword in his hand.” This allegorizing is what one would naturally look for in Wisdom.

(_h_) _Demonology._

It is doubtful whether there is any reference to demons in Ecclesiasticus; possibly, however, xxxix. 28-31 contains such a reference.[342] In Tobit iii. 8 mention is made of Asmodeus, “the evil demon,” who slays men; the angel, however, has power to “unbind” him from people (iii. 17, viii. 3), though apparently the most efficacious way of getting rid of him is by burning the liver and heart of a fish on incense which drives the demon away (vi. 17, viii. 3). The only other reference to demons is in Baruch iv. 35, where it is said that they are to inhabit the desolate city “for a great time.” It is worth pointing out, finally, that in the Book of Wisdom, while there is no demonology in the ordinary sense, there is a belief in the devil:

But by the envy of the devil death entered into the world,
And they that belong to his realm experience it (ii. 24).

* * * * *

Regarding the importance for the study of the New Testament of the doctrines which have been considered see the respective sections of the different introductions to the books of the Apocrypha in Part II.

SUMMARY

The books of the Apocrypha contain only part of the doctrinal teaching of the literature from which they have been, quite arbitrarily, distinguished. It is not possible here to consider all the works which must be consulted for a complete study of the period with which we are dealing, but in restricting ourselves to the Apocrypha there is this compensation, that the more important of its books were recognized by official Judaism as containing good orthodox teaching, so that they supply a useful foundation for further study of the development of doctrine. In some cases, however, recourse must be had to the Apocalyptic Literature, for though the books of the Apocrypha afford a general criterion as to orthodox Jewish teaching from 200 B.C. to A.D. 100, they are in some respects inadequate.

It must again be emphasized that the Old Testament is not the sole background of the Apocryphal books in the domain of doctrine: there have been marked Persian and Greek influences in certain directions. The main current of Palestinian Judaism was affected by these, while the Judaism of the Dispersion in its turn was influenced by both Persian and Greek thought, and the effect of all this is traceable in the Apocrypha. The teaching of the various books must also be followed in chronological order; there are differences of opinion as to actual dates, but there is approximate unanimity as to the centuries to which the books, in almost all cases, belong. In some instances different parts of a book belong to different times, as will be seen from the Chronological Table (p. 320). For discussions of the dates, see the Introductions in Part II.

The doctrine of Wisdom was considered in Chapter VIII; here we have to deal with the doctrines of God, of the Law, of Sin, of Grace and Free-will, of the Messiah, of the Future Life, of Angels, and with Demonology; these cannot always be kept separate, as one leads into another. Only cursory mention will be made of those points where the teaching is identical with that of the Old Testament, though even in these cases the characteristic form in which a doctrine is exhibited will be noted, the main object is to show in what respects the books of the Apocrypha show an advance, or it may be a retrogression, in doctrine as compared with the Old Testament.

(_a_) _The Doctrine of God._

Ecclesiasticus treats of the Unity of God, the Creator of all; His eternity and omnipotence, His activity in nature, His wisdom, holiness, justice, loving-kindness, and mercy, His fatherhood of Israel and sometimes of all flesh (see xlii. 15-xliii. 33). Here the inspiration is drawn largely from the Psalms, but in xlii. 16, and xliii. 28-32, Ben-Sira seems to go beyond anything to be found in the Old Testament. No book of the Apocrypha has such a variety of names for God as Tobit, which is also distinguished by a doctrine of angelic mediation and a universalistic spirit which is in marked contrast to Judith. In the Prayer of Manasses great stress is laid on the Divine compassion. In the secondary text of Ecclesiasticus, which is a Pharisaic recension of the work, the great characteristic is that religious individualism which did so much to foster spiritual worship. The heightened expression of the close relationship between God and His pious ones which the more ardent religious temperament of the Pharisees demanded can be illustrated by a comparison of i. 12, and xvii. 20, with the lines which immediately follow in either instance. This spirit reappears in the Psalms of Solomon.

In the original text of 1 Maccabees all mention of the name of God is deliberately avoided; once or twice, as in iii. 18, a true faith in the omnipotence of God is expressed, and not infrequently there is trust in God as the God of Israel Who will help His people against their foes. In all three of the documents which make up Baruch, stress is laid on God’s guidance of Israel’s destiny, and in the portion, iv. 5-v. 9, the Divine compassion is constantly recalled. 2 (4) Esdras represents the best of the Old Testament teaching concerning the doctrine of God: the Unity of God, His Creatorship without any mediatorial agency, Israel as the chosen nation with which God has entered into a covenant relation, are all insisted upon by the writer, whose faith in God, and conviction that His love is for His people, remains, though he is presented with problems which are insoluble for man. In the Book of Wisdom the religious atmosphere is to a large extent alien to that of Palestine: the presentment of the doctrine of God is entirely different in its two parts, whether these are by two different authors or by one writing at different times in his life. The first part (ii.-xi. 1) is more Greek than Jewish, the idea of God is that of Greek philosophy: a transcendent God Who has no immediate contact with the world, but performs His will through an intermediary, who is Wisdom. In the second part God is again and again spoken of as interfering personally in mundane affairs, and in other respects also the Old Testament doctrine is represented, as in the need of right worship, and the mercy and justice of God.

(_b_) _The Doctrine of the Law._