2. Apocryphal and Later Jewish Views
The Jews before Christ took a threefold attitude
toward the doctrine of immortality, in general
corresponding to the views of Phar-
isees, Sadducees, Essenes. The pre
ryphal and dominant
Daniel-Pharisaic view re
Later Jew- sulted in II Maccabees, in which belief
ish Views. in the resurrection of all Israelites
was regarded as a moral obligation
(xii. 43-45). Death was punishment for sin (vii.
18, 32, 38); but God will raise the bodies of the
pious. The
torment of sinners is strongly em
phasized in IV Ezra. Baruch, Sirach, Tobit, and
I Maccabees still represent the old Mosaic doctrine
of Sheol; on the other hand, in individual paeud
epigraphies, the hope of the future is more definitely
presented. Enoch teaches an absolutely universal
resurrection (xxxvii.-taxi.), yet
other chapters (i.
xxxvi. and lxxii.-cv.) and also the Psalms of
Solomon mention only a resurrection of the pious.
II Maccabees teaches the resurrection of all. The
result of the development of this hope is: belief
in a conscious life after death in a bright paradise
or a dark hades, a communion with the pious of
all ages. Some of the pious, like Enoch and Elijah,
pass at once into perfect communion with God.
A general resurrection precedes the judgment; it
closes with the annihilation of the godless. The
resurrection is variously pictured as a sudden divine
deed, or a gradual development. In the latter
portion
of Enoch (lxi. 12) Paradise (in the east between
heaven and earth) is the meeting-place of all the
blessed; in the other sections only for Enoch and
Elijah. Hades lies in the west. The earth is to be
without men for seven days, then come resurrection,
judgment, and damnation for the majority.
The Sadducees denied the resurrection and endurance
of the soul in connection with a body (Josephus,
Ant. XVIII., i. 4;
Mark xii. 18;
Acts xxiii. 8),
orat
least either regarded it as problematical or ignored it.
The Talmud distinguished the mere continuance of
the soul from the miracle of resurrection by which
body and soul were permanently reunited. The
F.asenes appear to have taught a natural immor
tality of the soul (cf.
Matt. x. 28).
Philo regarded
the soul as essentially imperishable, temporarily
imprisoned in the body. The Book of Wisdom
combined natural immortality and an intimation
of
preexistence (viii. 19 sqq.) with the general
Pharisaic hope. Death, the consequence of sin, due
to the devil's envy, but unnatural to man, is to a
pious and just man a fortunate gift of God; the dead
return to their true form of existence. According
to the Talmud the departed have knowledge of
earthly events; after the judgment some of the
justified have opportunity for moral improvement
(cf. Wisdom xiii. 9). Others are the perfectly pious
who, according to Shammai, having never sinned,
are sealed in the book of life; while a third class,
the hopeless transgressors, are written in the book
of damnation and are handed over to Gehenna (cf.
A. Edersheim, Zrife
and
Times of
Jeans the Mee",
ii. 791-796, New York, 1884). The school of Hillel
taught that obdurate sinners,
whether Jew
or
Gentile, after a twelvemonth's torment in Gehenna,
are destroyed by fire. After Christ the prevailing
doctrine vacillated between eternity of the punishment
of hell, absolute destruction by fire, either
outer or inner, or additions to the doctrine of
restoration or of a gradual purification, transformation,
and glorification.
Jesus and Paul sided with the Pharisaic eschatology
(
Matt. xxii. 23
sqq.;
Acts xxiii. 6
