ESARHADDON. See Assyria, VI. 3, § 13
Eschatology (Gk. to eschttta) is the doctrine of the last things. In theology this signifies those events occurring after death which immediately concern man. Without detailed treatment the purpose here is to sketch only the principal lines of the subject.
Belief in some sort of existence after death appears to be a universal characteristic of the human race, though neither the earli r. Primitive est form nor the precise cause of this Views. Belief among prehistoric peoples is known. It may have originated in dreams, or have expressed itself in animism, or have been a prolongation of the instinct of selfpreservation (see Comparative Religion , VI., 1, § a). From 4000 B.C. the daily life of the Egyptians was saturated with this expectation (cf. the " Book of the Dead "). That the belief was widespread from 1500 to 1000 B.C. is evinced in the great literary religious documents which have come down to us. The Homeric Hades is a gloomy underworld to which all the dead go, there to exist as wretched shades beyond the reach of divine help. The Babylonians knew of "a land of no return" ("Lay of Istar's Descent to Hades," see Babylonia , VII., 3, § 5). The later Zoroastrian literature pictures the destinies of the dead with terrible severity (see Zoroaster, Zoroastrianism). Plato (d. 347 B.C.) elaborated his splendid argument for immortality (" PhPedo ")-a, hope repudiated by the Epicureans, and only in part reaffirmed by the Stoic doctrine of a limited survival after death (see Immortality).
According to the Old Testament all the dead go ~ to Sheol (see Hades
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