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The Destiny of the Soul
William Rounseville Alger
CHAPTER VIII.
HEBREW DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.
ON the one extreme, a large majority of Christian scholars have asserted that the doctrine of a retributive immortality is clearly taught throughout the Old Testament. Able writers, like Bishop Warburton, have maintained, on the other extreme, that it says nothing whatever about a future life, but rather implies the total and eternal end of men in death. But the most judicious, trustworthy critics hold an intermediate position, and affirm that the Hebrew Scriptures show a general belief in the separate existence of the spirit, not indeed as experiencing rewards and punishments, but as surviving in the common silence and gloom of the under world, a desolate empire of darkness yawning beneath all graves and peopled with dream like ghosts.1
A number of important passages have been cited from different parts of the Old Testament by the advocates of the view first mentioned above. It will be well for us to notice these and their misuse before proceeding farther.
The translation of Enoch has been regarded as a revelation of the immortality of man. It is singular that Dr. Priestley should suggest, as the probable fact, so sheer and baseless a hypothesis as he does in his notes upon the Book of Genesis. He says, "Enoch was probably a prophet authorized to announce the reality of another life after this; and he might be removed into it without dying, as an evidence of the truth of his doctrine." The gross materialism of this supposition, and the failure of God's design which it implies, are a sufficient refutation of it. And, besides the utter unlikelihood of the thought, it is entirely destitute of support in the premises. One of the most curious of the many strange things to be found in Warburton's argument for the Divine Legation of Moses an argument marked, as is well known, by profound erudition, and, in many respects, by consummate ability is the use he makes of this account to prove that Moses believed the doctrine of immortality, but purposely obscured the fact from which it might be drawn by the people, in order that it might not interfere with his doctrine of the temporal special providence of Jehovah over the Jewish nation. Such a course is inconsistent with sound morality, much more with the character of an inspired prophet of God.
1 Boettcher, De Inferis Rebusque post mortem futuris ex Hebraorum et Gracoram Opinionibus.
The only history we have of Enoch is in the fifth chapter of the Book of Genesis. The substance of it is as follows: "And Enoch walked with God during his appointed years; and then he was not, for God took him." The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, following the example of those Rabbins who, several centuries before his time, began to give mystical interpretations of the Scriptures, infers from this statement that Enoch was borne into heaven without tasting death. But it is not certainly known who the author of that epistle was; and, whoever he was, his opinion, of course, can have no authority upon a subject of criticism like this. Replying to the supposititious argument furnished by this passage, we say, Take the account as it reads, and it neither asserts nor implies the idea commonly held concerning it. It says nothing about translation or immortality; nor can any thing of the kind be legitimately deduced from it. Its plain meaning is no more nor less than this: Enoch lived three hundred and sixty five years, fearing God and keeping his commandments, and then he died. Many of the Rabbins, fond as they are of finding in the Pentateuch the doctrine of future blessedness for the good, interpret this narrative as only signifying an immature death; for Enoch, it will be recollected, reached but about half the average age of the others whose names are mentioned in the chapter. Had this occurrence been intended as the revelation of a truth, it would have been fully and clearly stated; otherwise it could not answer any purpose. As Le Clerc observes, "If the writer believed so important a fact as that Enoch was immortal, it is wonderful that he relates it as secretly and obscurely as if he wished to hide it." But, finally, even admitting that the account is to be regarded as teaching literally that God took Enoch, it by no means proves a revelation of the doctrine of general immortality. It does not show that anybody else would ever be translated or would in any way enter upon a future state of existence. It is not put forth as a revelation; it says nothing whatever concerning a revelation. It seems to mean either that Enoch suddenly died, or that he disappeared, nobody knew whither. But, if it really means that God took him into heaven, it is more natural to think that that was done as a special favor than as a sign of what awaited others. No general cause is stated, no consequence deduced, no principle laid down, no reflection added. How, then, can it be said that the doctrine of a future life for man is revealed by it or implicated in it?
The removal of Elijah in a chariot of fire, of which we read in the second chapter of the Second Book of Kings, is usually supposed to have served as a miraculous proof of the fact that the faithful servants of Jehovah were to be rewarded with a life in the heavens. The author of this book is not known, and can hardly be guessed at with any degree of plausibility. It was unquestionably written, or rather compiled, a long time probably several hundred years after the prophets whose wonderful adventures it recounts had passed away. The internal evidence is sufficient, both in quality and quantity, to demonstrate that the book is for the most part a collection of traditions. This characteristic applies with particular force to the ascension of Elijah. But grant the literal truth of the account: it will not prove the point in support of which it is advanced, because it does not purport to have been done as a revelation of the doctrine in question, nor did it in any way answer the purpose of such a revelation. So far from this, in fact, it does not seem even to have suggested the bare idea of another state of existence in a single instance. For when Elisha returned without Elijah, and told the sons of the prophets at Jericho that his master had gone up in a chariot of fire, which event they knew beforehand was going to happen, they, instead of asking the particulars or exulting over the revelation of a life in heaven, calmly said to him, "Behold, there be with thy servants fifty sons of strength: let them go, we pray thee, and seek for Elijah, lest peradventure a whirlwind, the blast of the Lord, hath caught him up and cast him upon one of the mountains or into one of the valleys. And he said, Ye shall not send. But when they urged him till he was ashamed, he said, Send." This is all that is told us. Had it occurred as is stated, it would not so easily have passed from notice, but mighty inferences, never to be forgotten, would have been drawn from it at once. The story as it stands reminds one of the closing scene in the career of Romulus, speaking of whom the historians say, "In the thirty seventh year of his reign, while he was reviewing an army, a tempest arose, in the midst of which he was suddenly snatched from the eyes of men. Hence some thought he was killed by the senators, others, that he was borne aloft to the gods."2 If the ascension of Elijah to heaven in a chariot of fire did really take place, and if the books held by the Jews as inspired and sacred contained a history of it at the time of our Savior, it is certainly singular that neither he nor any of the apostles allude to it in connection with the subject of a future life.
The miracles performed by Elijah and by Elisha in restoring the dead children to life related in the seventeenth chapter of the First Book of Kings and in the fourth chapter of the Second Book are often cited in proof of the position that the doctrine of immortality is revealed in the Old Testament. The narration of these events is found in a record of unknown authorship. The mode in which the miracles were effected, if they were miracles, the prophet measuring himself upon the child, his eyes upon his eyes, his mouth upon his mouth, his hands upon his hands, and in one case the child sneezing seven times, looks dubious. The two accounts so closely resemble each other as to cast still greater suspicion upon both. In addition to these considerations, and even fully granting the reality of the miracles, they do not touch the real controversy, namely, whether the Hebrew Scriptures contain the revealed doctrine of a conscious immortality or of a future retribution. The prophet said, "O Lord my God, let this child's soul, I pray thee, come into his inward parts again." "And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived." Now, the most this can show is that the child's soul was then existing in a separate state. It does not prove that the soul was immortal, nor that it was experiencing retribution, nor even that it was conscious. And we do not deny that the ancient Jews believed that the spirits of the dead retained a nerveless, shadowy being in the solemn vaults of the under world. The Hebrew word rendered soul in the text is susceptible of three meanings: first, the shade, which, upon the dissolution of the body, is gathered to its fathers in the great subterranean congregation; second, the breath of a person, used as synonymous with his life; third, a part of the vital breath of God, which the Hebrews regarded as the source of the life of all creatures, and the withdrawing of which they supposed was the cause of death. It is clear that neither of these meanings can prove any thing in regard to the real point at issue, that is, concerning a future life of rewards and punishments.
2 Livy, i. 16; Dion. Hal. ii. 56.
One of the strongest arguments brought to support the proposition which we are combating at least, so considered by nearly all the Rabbins, and by not a few modern critics is the account of the vivification of the dead recorded in the thirty seventh chapter of the Book of Ezekiel. The prophet "was carried in the spirit of Jehovah" that is, mentally, in a prophetic ecstasy into a valley full of dry bones. "The bones came together, the flesh grew on them, the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceeding great army." It should first be observed that this account is not given as an actual occurrence, but, after the manner of Ezekiel, as a prophetic vision meant to symbolize something. Now, of what was it intended as the symbol? a doctrine, or a coming event? a general truth to enlighten and guide uncertain men, or an approaching deliverance to console and encourage the desponding Jews? It is fair to let the prophet be his own interpreter, without aid from the glosses of prejudiced theorizers. It must be borne in mind that at this time the prophet and his countrymen were bearing the grievous burden of bondage in a foreign nation. "And Jehovah said to me, Son of man, these bones denote the whole house of Israel. Behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost, and we are cut off." This plainly denotes their present suffering in the Babylonish captivity, and their despair of being delivered from it. "Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, O my people, and bring you into the land of Israel." That is, I will rescue you from your slavery and restore you to freedom in your own land. The dry bones and their subsequent vivification, therefore, clearly symbolize the misery of the Israelites and their speedy restoration to happiness. Death is frequently used in a figurative sense to denote misery, and life to signify happiness. But those who maintain that the doctrine of the resurrection is taught as a revealed truth in the Hebrew Scriptures are not willing to let this passage pass so easily. Mr. Barnes says, "The illustration proves that the doctrine was one with which the people were familiar." Jerome states the argument more fully, thus: "A similitude drawn from the resurrection, to foreshadow the restoration of the people of Israel, would never have been employed unless the resurrection itself were believed to be a fact of future occurrence; for no one thinks of confirming what is uncertain by what has no existence."
It is not difficult to reply to these objections with convincing force. First, the vision was not used as proof or confirmation, but as symbol and prophecy. Secondly, the use of any thing as an illustration does by no means imply that it is commonly believed as a fact. For instance, we are told in the ninth chapter of the Book of Judges that Jotham related an allegory to the people as an illustration of their conduct in choosing a king, saying, "The trees once on a time went forth to anoint a king over them; and they said to the olive tree, Come thou and reign over us;" and so on. Does it follow that at that time it was a common belief that the trees actually went forth occasionally to choose them a king? Thirdly, if a given thing is generally believed as a fact, a person who uses it expressly as a symbol, of course does not thereby give his sanction to it as a fact. And if a belief in the resurrection of the dead was generally entertained at the time of the prophet, its origin is not implied, and it does not follow that it was a doctrine of revelation, or even a true doctrine. Finally, there is one consideration which shows conclusively that this vision was never intended to typify the resurrection; namely, that it has nothing corresponding to the most essential part of that doctrine. When the bones have come together and are covered with flesh, God does not call up the departed spirits of these bodies from Sheol, does not bring back the vanished lives to animate their former tabernacles, now miraculously renewed. No: he but breathes on them with his vivifying breath, and straightway they live and move. This is not a resurrection, but a new creation. The common idea of a bodily restoration implies and, that any just retribution be compatible with it, it necessarily implies the vivification of the dead frame, not by the introduction of new life, but by the reinstalment of the very same life or spirit, the identical consciousness that before animated it. Such is not represented as being the case in Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones. That vision had no reference to the future state.
In this connection, the revelation made by the angel in his prophecy, recorded in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Daniel, concerning the things which should happen in the Messianic times, must not be passed without notice. It reads as follows: "And many of the sleepers of the dust of the ground shall awake, those to life everlasting, and these to shame, to contempt everlasting. And they that are wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever." No one can deny that a judgment, in which reward and punishment shall be distributed according to merit, is here clearly foretold. The meaning of the text, taken with the connection, is, that when the Messiah appears and establishes his kingdom the righteous shall enjoy a bodily resurrection upon the earth to honor and happiness, but the wicked shall be left below in darkness and death.3 This seems to imply, fairly enough, that until the advent of the Messiah none of the dead existed consciously in a state of retribution. The doctrine of the passage, as is well known, was held by some of the Jews at the beginning of the Christian era, and, less distinctly, for about two centuries previous. Before that time no traces of it can be found in their history. Now, had a doctrine of such intense interest and of such vast importance as this been a matter of revelation, it seems hardly possible that it should have been confined to one brief and solitary text, that it should have flashed up for a single moment so brilliantly, and then vanished for three or four centuries in utter darkness. Furthermore, nearly one half of the Book of Daniel is written in the Chaldee tongue, and the other half in the Hebrew, indicating that it had two authors, who wrote their respective portions at different periods. Its critical and minute details of events are history rather than prophecy. The greater part of the book was undoubtedly written as late as about a hundred and sixty years before Christ, long after the awful simplicity and solitude of the original Hebrew theology had been marred and corrupted by an intermixture of the doctrines of those heathen nations with whom the Jews had been often brought in contact. Such being the facts in the case, the text is evidently without force to prove a divine revelation of the doctrine it teaches.
3 Wood, The Last Things, p. 45.
In the twenty second chapter of the Gospel by Matthew, Jesus says to the Sadducees, "But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." The passage to which reference is made is written in the third chapter of the Book of Exodus. In order to ascertain the force of the Savior's argument, the extent of meaning it had in his mind, and the amount of knowledge attributed by it to Moses, it will be necessary to determine first the definite purpose he had in view in his reply to the Sadducees, and how he proposed to accomplish it. We shall find that the use he made of the text does not imply that Moses had the slightest idea of any sort of future life for man, much less of an immortal life of blessedness for the good and of suffering for the bad. We should suppose, beforehand, that such would be the case, since upon examining the declaration cited, with its context, we find it to be simply a statement made by Jehovah explaining who he was, that he was the ancient national guardian of the Jews, the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This does not seem to contain the most distant allusion to the immortality of man, or to have suggested any such thought to the mind of Moses. It should be distinctly understood from the outset that Jesus did not quote this passage from the Pentateuch as proving any thing of itself, or as enabling him to prove any thing by it directly, but as being of acknowledged authority to the Sadducees themselves, to form the basis of a process of reasoning. The purpose he had in view, plainly, was to convince the Sadducees either of the possibility or of the actuality of the resurrection of the dead: its possibility, if we assume that by resurrection he meant the Jewish doctrine of a material restoration, the reunion of soul and body; its actuality, if we suppose he meant the conscious immortality of the soul separate from the body. If the resurrection was physical, Christ demonstrates to the Sadducees its possibility, by refuting the false notion upon which they based their denial of it. They said, The resurrection of the body is impossible, because the principle of life, the consciousness, has utterly perished, and the body cannot live alone. He replied, It is possible, because the soul has an existence separate from the body, and, consequently, may be reunited to it. You admit that Jehovah said, after they were dead, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: but he is the God of the living, and not of the dead, for all live unto him. You must confess this. The soul, then, survives the body, and a resurrection is possible. It will be seen that this implies nothing concerning the nature or duration of the separate existence, but merely the fact of it. But, if Christ meant by the resurrection of the dead as we think he did the introduction of the disembodied and conscious soul into a state of eternal blessedness, the Sadducees denied its reality by maintaining that no such thing as a soul existed after bodily dissolution. He then proved to them its reality in the following manner. You believe for Moses, to whose authority you implicitly bow, relates it that God said, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," and this, long after they died. But evidently he cannot be said to be the God of that which does not exist: therefore their souls must have been still alive. And if Jehovah was emphatically their God, their friend, of course he will show them his loving kindness. They are, then, in a conscious state of blessedness. The Savior does not imply that God said so much in substance, nor that Moses intended to teach, or even knew, any thing like it, but that, by adding to the passage cited a premise of his own, which his hearers granted to be true, he could deduce so much from it by a train of new and unanswerable reasoning. His opponents were compelled to admit the legitimacy of his argument, and, impressed by its surpassing beauty and force, were silenced, if not convinced. The credit of this cogent proof of human immortality, namely, that God's love for man is a pledge and warrant of his eternal blessedness a proof whose originality and significance set it far beyond all parallel is due to the dim gropings of no Hebrew prophet, but to the inspired insight of the great Founder of Christianity.
The various passages yet unnoticed which purport to have been uttered by Jehovah or at his command, and which are urged to show that the reality of a retributive life after death is a revealed doctrine of the Old Testament, will be found, upon critical examination, either to owe their entire relevant force to mistranslation, or to be fairly refuted by the reasonings already advanced. Professor Stuart admits that he finds only one consideration to show that Moses had any idea of a future retribution; and that is, that the Egyptians expressly believed it; and he is not able to comprehend how Moses, who dwelt so long among them, should be ignorant of it.4 The reasoning is obviously inconsequential. It is not certain that the Egyptians held this doctrine in the time of Moses: it may have prevailed among them before or after, and not during, that period. If they believed it at that time, it may have been an esoteric doctrine, with which he did not become acquainted. If they believed it, and he knew it, he might have classed it with other heathen doctrines, and supposed it false. And, even if he himself believed it, he might possibly not have inculcated it upon the Israelites; and the question is, what he did actually teach, not what he knew.
The opinions of the Jews at the time of the Savior have no bearing upon the point in hand, because they were acquired at a later period than that of the writing of the records we are now considering. They were formed, and gradually grew in consistency and favor, either by the natural progress of thought among the Jews themselves, or, more probably, by a blending of the intimations of the Hebrew Scriptures with Gentile speculations, the doctrines of the Egyptians, Hindus, and Persians. We leave this portion of the subject, then, with the following proposition. In the canonic books of the Old Dispensation there is not a single genuine text, claiming to come from God, which teaches explicitly any doctrine whatever of a life beyond the grave. That doctrine as it existed among the Jews was no part of their pure religion, but was a part of their philosophy. It did not, as they held it, imply any thing like our present idea of the immortality of the soul reaping in the spiritual world what it has sowed in the physical. It simply declared the existence of human ghosts amidst unbroken gloom and stillness in the cavernous depths of the earth, without reward, without punishment, without employment, scarcely with consciousness, as will immediately appear.
4 Exegetical Essays, (Andover, 1830,) p. 108.
We proceed to the second general division of the subject. What does the Old Testament, apart from the revelation claimed to be contained in it, and regarding only those portions of it which are confessedly a collection of the poetry, history, and philosophy of the Hebrews, intimate concerning a future state of existence? Examining these writings with an unbiased mind, we discover that in different portions of them there are large variations and opposition of opinion. In some books we trace an undoubting belief in certain rude notions of the future condition of souls; in other books we encounter unqualified denials of every such thought. "Man lieth down and riseth not," sighs the despairing Job. "The dead cannot praise God, neither any that go down into darkness," wails the repining Psalmist. "All go to one place," and "the dead know not any thing," asserts the disbelieving Preacher. These inconsistencies we shall not stop to point out and comment upon. They are immaterial to our present purpose, which is to bring together, in their general agreement, the sum and substance of the Hebrew ideas on this subject.
The separate existence of the soul is necessarily implied by the distinction the Hebrews made between the grave, or sepulchre, and the under world, or abode of shades. The Hebrew words bor and keber mean simply the narrow place in which the dead body is buried; while Sheol represents an immense cavern in the interior of the earth where the ghosts of the deceased are assembled. When the patriarch was told that his son Joseph was slain by wild beasts, he cried aloud, in bitter sorrow, "I will go down to Sheol unto my son, mourning."
He did not expect to meet Joseph in the grave; for he supposed his body torn in pieces and scattered in the wilderness, not laid in the family tomb. The dead are said to be "gathered to their people," or to "sleep with their fathers," and this whether they are interred in the same place or in a remote region. It is written, "Abraham gave up the ghost, and was gathered unto his people," notwithstanding his body was laid in a cave in the field of Machpelah, close by Hebron, while his people were buried in Chaldea and Mesopotamia. "Isaac gave up the ghost and died, and was gathered unto his people;" and then we read, as if it were done afterwards, "His sons, Jacob and Esau, buried him." These instances might be multiplied. They prove that "to be gathered unto one's fathers" means to descend into Sheol and join there the hosts of the departed. A belief in the separate existence of the soul is also involved in the belief in necromancy, or divination, the prevalence of which is shown by the stern laws against those who engaged in its unhallowed rites, and by the history of the witch of Endor. She, it is said, by magical spells evoked the shade of old Samuel from below. It must have been the spirit of the prophet that was supposed to rise; for his body was buried at Ramah, more than sixty miles from Endor. The faith of the Hebrews in the separate existence of the soul is shown, furthermore, by the fact that the language they employed expresses, in every instance, the distinction of body and spirit. They had particular words appropriated to each. "As thy soul liveth," is a Hebrew oath. "With my spirit within me will I seek thee early." "I, Daniel, was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body:" the figure here represents the soul in the body as a sword in a sheath. "Our bones are scattered at the mouth of the under world, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth;" that is, the soul, expelled from its case of clay by the murderer's weapon, flees into Sheol and leaves its exuvioe at the entrance. "Thy voice shall be as that of a spirit out of the ground:" the word "Lhere used signifies the shade evoked by a necromancer from the region of death, which was imagined to speak in a feeble whisper.
The term rephaim is used to denote the manes of the departed. The etymology of the word, as well as its use, makes it mean the weak, the relaxed. "I am counted as them that go down into the under world; I am as a man that hath no strength." This faint, powerless condition accords with the idea that they were destitute of flesh, blood, and animal life, mere umbroe. These ghosts are described as being nearly as destitute of sensation as they are of strength. They are called "the inhabitants of the land of stillness." They exist in an inactive, partially torpid state, with a dreamy consciousness of past and present, neither suffering nor enjoying, and seldom moving. Herder says of the Hebrews, "The sad and mournful images of their ghostly realm disturbed them, and were too much for their self possession." Respecting these images, he adds, "Their voluntary force and energy were destroyed. They were feeble as a shade, without distinction of members, as a nerveless breath. They wandered and flitted in the dark nether world." This "wandering and flitting," however, is rather the spirit of Herder's poetry than of that of the Hebrews; for the whole tenor and drift of the representations in the Old Testament show that the state of disembodied souls is deep quietude. Freed from bondage, pain, toil, and care, they repose in silence. The ghost summoned from beneath by the witch of Endor said, "Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?" It was, indeed, in a dismal abode that they took their long quiet; but then it was in a place "where the wicked ceased from troubling and the weary were at rest."
Those passages which attribute active employments to the dwellers in the under world are specimens of poetic license, as the context always shows. When Job says, "Before Jehovah the shades beneath tremble," he likewise declares, "The pillars of heaven tremble and are confounded at his rebuke." When Isaiah breaks forth in that stirring lyric to the King of Babylon,
"The under world is in commotion on account of thee, To meet thee at thy coming; It stirreth up before thee the shades, all the mighty of the earth; It arouseth from their thrones all the kings of the nations; They all accost thee, and say, Art thou too become weak as we?"
he also exclaims, in the same connection,
"Even the cypress trees exult over thee, And the cedars of Lebanon, saying, Since thou art fallen, No man cometh up to cut us down."
The activity thus vividly described is evidently a mere figure of speech: so is it in the other instances which picture the rephaim as employed and in motion. "Why," complainingly sighed the afflicted patriarch, "why died I not at my birth? For now should I lie down and be quiet; I should slumber; I should then be at rest." And the wise man says, in his preaching, "There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in Sheol." What has already been said is sufficient to establish the fact that the Hebrews had an idea that the souls of men left their bodies at death and existed as dim shadows, in a state of undisturbed repose, in the bowels of the earth.
Sheol is directly derived from a Hebrew word, signifying, first, to dig or excavate. It means, therefore, a cavity, or empty subterranean place. Its derivation is usually connected, however, with the secondary meaning of the Hebrew word referred to, namely, to ask, to desire, from the notion of demanding, since rapacious Orcus lays claim unsparingly to all; or, as others have fancifully construed it, the object of universal inquiry, the unknown mansion concerning which all are anxiously inquisitive. The place is conceived on an immense scale, shrouded in accompaniments of gloomy grandeur and peculiar awe: an enormous cavern in the earth, filled with night; a stupendous hollow kingdom, to which are poetically attributed valleys and gates, and in which are congregated the slumberous and shadowy hosts of the rephaim, never able to go out of it again forever. Its awful stillness is unbroken by noise. Its thick darkness is uncheered by light. It stretches far down under the ground. It is wonderfully deep. In language that reminds one of Milton's description of hell, where was
"No light, but rather darkness visible,"
Job describes it as "the land of darkness, like the blackness of death shade, where is no order, and where the light is as darkness." The following passages, selected almost at random, will show the ideas entertained of the place, and confirm and illustrate the foregoing statements. "But he considers not that in the valleys of Sheol are her guests." "Now shall I go down into the gates of Sheol." "The ground slave asunder, and the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses, and all their men, and all their goods: they and all that appertained to them went down alive into Sheol, and the earth closed upon them." Its depth is contrasted with the height of the sky. "Though they dig into Sheol, thence shall mine hand take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down." It is the destination of all; for, though the Hebrews believed in a world of glory above the solid ceiling of the dome of day, where Jehovah and the angels dwelt, there was no promise, hope, or hint that any man could ever go there. The dirge like burden of their poetry was literally these words: "What man is he that liveth and shall not see death? Shall he deliver his spirit from the hand of Sheol?" The old Hebrew graves were crypts, wide, deep holes, like the habitations of the troglodytes. In these subterranean caves they laid the dead down; and so the Grave became the mother of Sheol, a rendezvous of the fathers, a realm of the dead, full of eternal ghost life.
This under world is dreary and altogether undesirable, save as an escape from extreme anguish. But it is not a place of retribution. Jahn says, "That, in the belief of the ancient Hebrews, there were different situations in Sheol for the good and the bad, cannot be proved."5 The sudden termination of the present life is the judgment the Old Testament threatens upon sinners; its happy prolongation is the reward it promises to the righteous. Texts that prove this might be quoted in numbers from almost every page. "The wicked shall be turned into Sheol, and all the nations that forget God," not to be punished there, but as a punishment. It is true, the good and the bad alike pass into that gloomy land; but the former go down tranquilly in a good old age and full of days, as a shock of corn fully ripe cometh in its season, while the latter are suddenly hurried there by an untimely and miserable fate. The man that loves the Lord shall have length of days; the unjust, though for a moment he flourishes, yet the wind bloweth, and where is he?
5 Biblical Archeology, sect. 314.
We shall perhaps gain a more clear and adequate knowledge of the ideas the Hebrews had of the soul and of its fate, by marking the different meanings of the words they used to denote it. Neshamah, primarily meaning breath or airy effluence, next expresses the Spirit of God as imparting life and force, wisdom and love; also the spirit of man as its emanation, creation, or sustained object. The citation of a few texts in which the word occurs will set this in a full light. "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the spirit of existence, and man became a conscious being." "It is the divine spirit of man, even the inspiration of the Almighty, that giveth him understanding." "The Spirit of God made me, and his breath gave me life."
Ruah signifies, originally, a breathing or blowing. Two other meanings are directly connected with this. First, the vital spirit, the principle of life as manifested in the breath of the mouth and nostrils. "And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh in whose nostrils was the breath of life." Second, the wind, the motions of the air, which the Hebrews supposed caused by the breath of God. "By the blast of thine anger the waters were gathered on an heap." "The channels of waters were seen, and the foundations of the world were discovered, O Lord, at the blast of the breath of thy nostrils." So they regarded the thunder as his voice. "The voice of Jehovah cutteth out the fiery lightnings," and "shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh." This word is also frequently placed for the rational spirit of man, the seat of intellect and feeling. It is likewise sometimes representative of the character and disposition of men, whether good or bad. Hosea speaks of "a spirit of vile lust." In the Second Book of Chronicles we read, "There came out a spirit, and stood before Jehovah, and said, I will entice King Ahab to his destruction. I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets." Belshazzar says to Daniel, "I know that the spirit of the holy gods is in thee." Finally, it is applied to Jehovah, signifying the divine spirit, or power, by which all animate creatures live, the universe is filled with motion, all extraordinary gifts of skill, genius, strength, or virtue are bestowed, and men incited to forsake evil and walk in the paths of truth and piety. "Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created, and thou renewest the face of the earth; thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust." "Jehovah will be a spirit of justice in them that sit to administer judgment." It seems to be implied that the life of man, having emanated from the spirit, is to be again absorbed in it, when it is said, "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."
Nephesh is but partially a synonym for the word whose significations we have just considered. The different senses it bears are strangely interchanged and confounded in King James's version. Its first meaning is breath, the breathing of a living being. Next it means the vital spirit, the indwelling life of the body. "If any mischief follow, thou shalt take life for life." The most adequate rendering of it would be, in a great majority of instances, by the term life. "In jeopardy of his life [not soul] hath Adonijah spoken this." It sometimes represents the intelligent soul or mind, the subject of knowledge and desire. "My soul knoweth right well.". Also the heart, is often used more frequently perhaps than any other term as meaning the vital principle, and the seat of consciousness, intellect, will, and affection. Jehovah said to Solomon, in answer to his prayer, "Lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart." The later Jews speculated much, with many cabalistic refinements, on these different words. They said many persons were supplied with a Nephesh without a Ruah, much more without a Neshamah. They declared that the Nephesh (Psyche) was the soul of the body, the Ruah (Pneuma) the soul of the Nephesh, and the Neshamah (Nous) the soul of the Ruah. Some of the Rabbins assert that the destination of the Nephesh, when the body dies, is Sheol; of the Ruah, the air; and of the Neshamah, heaven. 6
The Hebrews used all those words in speaking of brutes, to denote their sensitive existence, that they did in reference to men. They held that life was in every instance an emission, or breath, from the Spirit of God. But they do not intimate of brutes, as they do of men, that they have surviving shades. The author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, however, bluntly declares that "all have one breath, and all go to one place, so that a man hath no pre eminence above a beast." As far as the words used to express existence, soul, or mind, legitimate any inference, it would seem to be, either that the essential life is poured out at death as so much air, or else that it is received again by God, in both cases implying naturally, though not of philosophic necessity, the close of conscious, individual existence. But the examination we have made of their real opinions shows that, however obviously this conclusion might flow from their pneumatology, it was not the expectation they cherished. They believed there was a dismal empire in the earth where the rephaim, or ghosts of the dead, reposed forever in a state of semi sleep.
"It is a land of shadows: yea, the land
Itself is but a shadow, and the race
That dwell therein are voices, forms of forms.
And echoes of themselves."
That the Hebrews, during the time covered by their sacred records, had no conception of a retributive life beyond the present, knew nothing of a blessed immortality, is shown by two conclusive arguments, in addition to the positive demonstration afforded by the views which, as we have seen, they did actually hold in regard to the future lot of man. First, they were puzzled, they were troubled and distressed, by the moral phenomena of the present life, the misfortunes of the righteous, the prosperity of the wicked. Read the Book of Ecclesiastes, the Book of Job, some of the Psalms. Had they been acquainted with future reward and punishment, they could easily have solved these problems to their satisfaction. Secondly, they regarded life as the one blessing, death as the one evil. Something of sadness, we may suppose, was in the wise man's tones when he said, "A living dog is better than a dead lion." Obey Jehovah's laws, that thy days may be long in the land he giveth thee; the wicked shall not live out half his days: such is the burden of the Old Testament. It was reserved for a later age to see life and immortality brought to light, and for the disciples of a clearer faith to feel that death is gain.
6 Tractatus de Anima a R. Moscheh Korduero. In Kabbala Denudata. tom. i. pars ii.
There are many passages in the Hebrew Scriptures generally supposed and really appearing, upon a slight examination, not afterwards to teach doctrines different from those here stated. We will give two examples in a condensed form. "Thou wilt not leave my soul in Sheol: . . . at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore." This text, properly translated and explained, means, Thou wilt not leave me to misfortune and untimely death: . . . in thy royal favor is prosperity and length of days. "I know that my Redeemer liveth:. . . in my flesh I shall see God." The genuine meaning of this triumphant exclamation of faith is, I know that God is the Vindicator of the upright, and that he will yet justify me before I die. A particular examination of the remaining passages of this character with which erroneous conceptions are generally connected would show, first, that in nearly every case these passages are not accurately translated; secondly, that they may be satisfactorily interpreted as referring merely to this life, and cannot by a sound exegesis be explained otherwise; thirdly, that the meaning usually ascribed to them is inconsistent with the whole general tenor, and with numberless positive and explicit statements, of the books in which they are found; fourthly, that if there are, as there dubiously seem to be in some of the Psalms, texts implying the ascent of souls after death to a heavenly life, for example, "Thou shalt guide me with thy countenance, and afterward receive me to glory," they were the product of a late period, and reflect a faith not native to the Hebrews, but first known to them after their intercourse with the Persians.
Christians reject the allegorizing of the Jews, and yet traditionally accept, on their authority, doctrines which can be deduced from their Scriptures in no other way than by the absurd hypothesis of a double or mystic sense. For example, scores of Christian authors have taught the dogma of a general resurrection of the dead, deducing it from such passages as God's sentence upon Adam: "From the dust wast thou taken, and unto the dust shalt thou return;" as Joel's patriotic picture of the Jews victorious in battle, and of the vanquished heathen gathered in the valley of Jehoshaphat to witness their installation as rulers of the earth; and as the declaration of the God of battles: "I am he that kills and that makes alive, that wounds and that heals." And they maintain that the doctrine of immortality is inculcated in such texts as these: when Moses asks to see God, and the reply is, "No man can see me and live;" when Bathsheba bows and says, "Let my lord King David live forever;" and when the sacred poet praises God, saying, "Thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling." Such interpretations of Scripture are lamentable in the extreme; their context shows them to be absurd. The meaning is forced into the words, not derived from them.
Such as we have now seen were the ancient Hebrew ideas of the future state. To those who received them the life to come was cheerless, offering no attraction save that of peace to the weary sufferer. On the other hand, it had no terror save the natural revulsion of the human heart from everlasting darkness, silence, and dreams. In view of deliverance from so dreary a fate, by translation through Jesus Christ to the splendors of the world above the firmament, there are many exultations in the Epistles of Paul, and in other portions of the New Testament.
The Hebrew views of the soul and its destiny, as discerned through the intimations of their Scriptures are very nearly what, from a fair consideration of the case, we should suppose they would be, agreeing in the main with the natural speculations of other early nations upon the same subject. These opinions underwent but little alteration until a century or a century and a half before the dawn of the Christian era.
This is shown by the phraseology of the Septuagint version of the Pentateuch, and by the allusions in the so called Apocryphal books. In these, so far as there are any relevant statements or implications, they are of the same character as those which we have explained from the more ancient writings. This is true, with the notable exceptions of the Wisdom of Solomon and the Second Maccabees, neither of which documents can be dated earlier than a hundred and twenty years before Christ. The former contains the doctrine of transmigration. The author says, "Being wise, I came into a body undefiled."7 But, with the exception of this and one other passage, there is little or nothing in the book which is definite on the subject of a future life. It is difficult to tell what the author's real faith was: his words seem rather rhetorical than dogmatic. He says, "To be allied unto wisdom is immortality;" but other expressions would appear to show that by immortality he means merely a deathless posthumous fame, "leaving an eternal memorial of himself to all who shall come after him." Again he declares, "The spirit when it is gone forth returneth not; neither the soul received up cometh again." And here we find, too, the famous text, "God created man to be immortal, and made him to be an image of his own eternity. Nevertheless, through envy of the devil came death into the world, and they that hold of his side do find it."8 Upon the whole, it is pretty clear that the writer believed in a future life; but the details are too partially and obscurely shadowed to be drawn forth. We may, however, hazard a conjecture on the passage last quoted, especially with the help of the light cast upon it from its evident Persian origin. What is it, expressed by the term "death," which is found by the adherents of the devil distinctively? "Death" cannot here be a metaphor for an inward state of sin and woe, because it is contrasted with the plainly literal phrases, "created to be immortal," "an image of God's eternity." It cannot signify simply physical dissolution, because this is found as well by God's servants as by the devil's. Its genuine meaning is, most probably, a descent into the black kingdom of sadness and silence under the earth, while the souls of the good were "received up."
The Second Book of Maccabees with emphasis repeatedly asserts future retribution and a bodily resurrection. In the seventh chapter a full account is given of seven brothers and their mother who suffered martyrdom, firmly sustained by faith in a glorious reward for their heroic fidelity, to be reaped at the resurrection. One of them says to the tyrant by whose order he was tortured, "As for thee, thou shalt have no resurrection to life." Nicanor, bleeding from many horrible wounds, "plucked out his bowels and cast them upon the throng, and, calling upon the Lord of life and spirit to restore him those again, [at the day of resurrection,] he thus died."9 Other passages in this book to the same effect it is needless to quote. The details lying latent in those we have quoted will soon be illuminated and filled out when we come to treat of the opinions of the Pharisees. 10
7 Cap. viii. 20.
8 Cap. ii. 23, 24.
9 Cap. xiv. 46.
10 See a very able discussion of the relation between the ideas concerning immortality, resurrection, judgment, and retribution, contained in the Old Testament Apocrypha, and those in the New Testament, by Frisch, inserted in Eichhorn's Allgemeine Bibliothek der Biblischen Literatur, band iv. stuck iv.
There lived in Alexandria a very learned Jew named Philo, the author of voluminous writings, a zealous Israelite, but deeply imbued both with the doctrines and the spirit of Plato. He was born about twenty years before Christ, and survived him about thirty years. The weight of his character, the force of his talents, the fascinating adaptation of his peculiar philosophical speculations and of his bold and subtle allegorical expositions of Scripture to the mind of his age and of the succeeding centuries, together with the eminent literary position and renown early secured for him by a concurrence of causes, have combined to make him exert according to the expressed convictions of the best judges, such as Lucke and Norton a greater influence on the history of Christian opinions than any single man, with the exception of the Apostle Paul, since the days of Christ. It is important, and will be interesting, to see some explanation of his views on the subject of a future life. A synopsis of them must suffice.
Philo was a Platonic Alexandrian Jew, not a Zoroastrian Palestinian Pharisee. It was a current saying among the Christian Fathers, "Vel Plato Philonizat, vel Philo Platonizat." He has little to say of the Messiah, nothing to say of the Messianic eschatology. We speak of him in this connection because he was a Jew, flourishing at the commencement of the Christian epoch, and contributing much, by his cabalistic interpretations, to lead Christians to imagine that the Old Testament contained the doctrine of a spiritual immortality connected with a system of rewards and punishments.
Three principal points include the substance of Philo's faith on the subject in hand. He rejected the notion of a resurrection of the body and held to the natural immortality of the soul. He entertained the most profound and spiritual conceptions of the intrinsically deadly nature and wretched fruits of all sin, and of the self contained welfare and self rewarding results of every element of virtue, in themselves, independent of time and place and regardless of external bestowments of woe or joy. He also believed at the same time in contrasted localities above and below, appointed as the residences of the disembodied souls of good and of wicked men. We will quote miscellaneously various passages from him in proof and illustration of these statements:
"Man's bodily form is made from the ground, the soul from no created thing, but from the Father of all; so that, although man was mortal as to his body, he was immortal as to his mind."11 "Complete virtue is the tree of immortal life."12 "Vices and crimes, rushing in through the gate of sensual pleasure, changed a happy and immortal life for a wretched and mortal one."13 Referring to the allegory of the garden of Eden, he says, "The death threatened for eating the fruit was not natural, the separation of soul and body, but penal, the sinking of the soul in the body."14 "Death is twofold, one of man, one of the soul. The death of man is the separation of the soul from the body; the death of the soul is the corruption of virtue and the assumption of vice."15
11 Mangey's edition of Philo's works, vol. i. p. 32.
12 Ibid. p. 38.
13 Ibid. p. 37.
14 Ibid. p. 65.
"To me, death with the pious is preferable to life with the impious. For those so dying, deathless life delivers; but those so living, eternal death seizes."16 He writes of three kinds of life, "one of which neither ascends nor cares to ascend, groping in the secret recesses of Hades and rejoicing in the most lifeless life."17 Commenting on the promise of the Lord to Abram, that he should be buried in a good old age, Philo observes that "A polished, purified soul does not die, but emigrates: it is of an inextinguishable and deathless race, and goes to heaven, escaping the dissolution and corruption which death seems to introduce."18 "A vile life is the true Hades, despicable and obnoxious to every sort of execration." 19 "Different regions are set apart for different things, heaven for the good, the confines of the earth for the bad."20 He thinks the ladder seen by Jacob in his dream "is a figure of the air, which, reaching from earth to heaven, is the house of unembodied souls, the image of a populous city having for citizens immortal souls, some of whom descend into mortal bodies, but soon return aloft, calling the body a sepulchre from which they hasten, and, on light wings seeking the lofty ether, pass eternity in sublime contemplations."21 "The wise inherit the Olympic and heavenly region to dwell in, always studying to go above; the bad, the innermost parts of Hades, always laboring to die."22 He literally accredits the account, in the sixteenth chapter of Numbers, of the swallowing of Korah and his company, saying, "The earth opened and took them alive into Hades."23 "Ignorant men regard death as the end of punishments, whereas in the Divine judgment it is scarcely the beginning of them."24 He describes the meritorious man as "fleeing to God and receiving the most intimate honor of a firm place in heaven; but the reprobate man is dragged below, down to the very lowest place, to Tartarus itself and profound darkness."25 "He who is not firmly held by evil may by repentance return to virtue, as to the native land from which he has wandered. But he who suffers from incurable vice must endure its dire penalties, banished into the place of the impious until the whole of eternity."26
Such, then, was the substance of Philo's opinions on the theme before us, as indeed many more passages, which we have omitted as superfluous, might be cited from him to show. Man was made originally a mortal body and an immortal soul.
15 Ibid. p. 65.
16 Ibid. p. 233.
17 Ibid. p. 479.
18 Ibid. p. 513.
19 Ibid. p. 527.
20 Ibid. p. 555.
21 Ibid. p. 641, 642.
22 Ibid. p. 643.
23 Ibid. vol. ii. p. 178.
24 Ibid. p. 419.
25 Mangey's edition of Philo's Works, vol. ii. p. 433.
26 Ibid. vol. i. p. 139.
He should have been happy and pure while in the body, and on leaving it have soared up to the realm of light and bliss on high, to join the angels. "Abraham, leaving his mortal part, was added to the people of God enjoying immortality and made similar to the angels. For the angels are the army of God, bodiless and happy souls."27 But, through the power of evil, all who yield to sin and vice lose that estate of bright and blessed immortality, and become discordant, wretched, despicable, and, after the dissolution of the body, are thrust down to gloom and manifold just retribution in Hades. He believed in the pre existence, and in a limited transmigration, of souls. Here he leaves the subject, saying nothing of a resurrection or final restoration, and not speculating as to any other of the details. 28
We pass on to speak of the Jewish sects at the time of Christ. There were three of these, cardinally differing from each other in their theories of the future fate of man. First, there were the skeptical, materialistic Sadducees, wealthy, proud, few. They openly denied the existence of any disembodied souls, avowing that men utterly perished in the grave. "The cloud faileth and passeth away: so he that goeth down to the grave doth not return."29 We read in the Acts of the Apostles, "The Sadducees say there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit." At the same time they accepted the Pentateuch, only rejecting or explaining away those portions of it which relate to the separate existence of souls and to their subterranean abode. They strove to confound their opponents, the advocates of a future life, by such perplexing questions as the one they addressed to Jesus, asking, in the case of a woman who had had seven successive husbands, which one of them should be her husband in the resurrection. All that we can gather concerning the Sadducees from the New Testament is amply confirmed by Josephus, who explicitly declares, "Their doctrine is that souls die with the bodies."
The second sect was the ascetical and philosophical Essenes, of whom the various information given by Philo in his celebrated paper on the Therapeuta agrees with the account in Josephus and with the scattered gleams in other sources. The doctrine of the Essenes on the subject of our present inquiry was much like that of Philo himself; and in some particulars it remarkably resembles that of many Christians. They rejected the notion of the resurrection of the body, and maintained the inherent immortality of the soul. They said that "the souls of men, coming out of the most subtle and pure air, are bound up in their bodies as in so many prisons; but, being freed at death, they do rejoice, and are borne aloft where a state of happy life forever is decreed for the virtuous; but the vicious are assigned to eternal punishment in a dark, cold place." 30 Such sentiments appear to have inspired the heroic Eleazar, whose speech to his followers is reported by Josephus, when they were besieged at Masada, urging them to rush on the foe, "for death is better than life, is the only true life, leading the soul to infinite freedom and joy above."31
27 Ibid. p. 164.
28 See, in the Analekten of Keil and Tzschirner, band i stuck ii., an article by Dr. Schreiter, entitled Philo's Ideen uber Unsterblichkeit, Auferstehung, und Vergeltung.
29 Lightfoot in Matt. xxii. 23.
30 Josephus, De Bell. lib. ii. cap. 8.
31 Ibid. lib. vii. cap. 8.
But by far the most numerous and powerful of the Jewish sects at that time, and ever since, were the eclectic, traditional, formalist Pharisees: eclectic, inasmuch as their faith was formed by a partial combination of various systems; traditional, since they allowed a more imperative sway to the authority of the Fathers, and to oral legends and precepts, than to the plain letter of Scripture; formalist, for they neglected the weightier spiritual matters of the law in a scrupulous tithing of mint, cumin, and anise seed, a pretentious wearing of broad phylacteries, an uttering of long prayers in the streets, and the various other hypocritical priestly paraphernalia of a severe mechanical ritual.
From Josephus we learn that the Pharisees believed that the souls of the faithful that is, of all who punctiliously observed the law of Moses and the traditions of the elders would live again by transmigration into new bodies; but that the souls of all others, on leaving their bodies, were doomed to a place of confinement beneath, where they must abide forever. These are his words: "The Pharisees believe that souls have an immortal strength in them, and that in the under world they will experience rewards or punishments according as they have lived well or ill in this life. The righteous shall have power to live again, but sinners shall be detained in an everlasting prison."32 Again, he writes, "The Pharisees say that all souls are incorruptible, but that only the souls of good men are removed into other bodies."33 The fragment entitled "Concerning Hades," formerly attributed to Josephus, is now acknowledged on all sides to be a gross forgery. The Greek culture and philosophical tincture with which he was imbued led him to reject the doctrine of a bodily resurrection; and this is probably the reason why he makes no allusion to that doctrine in his account of the Pharisees. That such a doctrine was held among them is plain from passages in the New Testament, passages which also shed light upon the statement actually made by Josephus. Jesus says to Martha, "Thy brother shall rise again." She replies, "I know that he shall rise in the resurrection, at the last day." Some of the Pharisees, furthermore, did not confine the privilege or penalty of transmigration, and of the resurrection, to the righteous. They once asked Jesus, "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Plainly, he could not have been born blind for his own sins unless he had known a previous life. Paul, too, says of them, in his speech at Casarea, "They themselves also allow that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and of the unjust." This, however, is very probably an exception to their prevailing belief. Their religious intolerance, theocratic pride, hereditary national vanity, and sectarian formalism, often led them to despise and overlook the Gentile world, haughtily restricting the boon of a renewed life to the legal children of Abraham.
But the grand source now open to us of knowledge concerning the prevailing opinions of the Jews on our present subject at and subsequent to the time of Christ is the Talmud. This is a collection of the traditions of the oral law, (Mischna,) with the copious precepts and comments (Gemara) of the most learned and authoritative Rabbins.
32 Antiq. lib. xviii. cap. 1.33 De Bell. lib. ii. cap. 8.
It is a wonderful monument of myths and fancies, profound speculations and ridiculous puerilities, antique legends and cabalistic subtleties, crowned and loaded with the national peculiarities. The Jews reverence it extravagantly, saying, "The Bible is salt, the Mischna pepper, the Gemara balmy spice." Rabbi Solomon ben Joseph sings, in our poet's version,
"The Kabbala and Talmud hoar Than all the Prophets prize I more; For water is all Bible lore, But Mischna is pure wine."
The rambling character and barbarous dialect of this work have joined with various other causes to withhold from it far too much of the attention of Christian critics. Saving by old Lightfoot and Pocock, scarcely a contribution has ever been offered us in English from this important field. The Germans have done far better; and numerous huge volumes, the costly fruits of their toils, are standing on neglected shelves. The eschatological views derived from this source are authentically Jewish, however closely they may resemble some portion of the popular Christian conceptions upon the same subject. The correspondences between some Jewish and some Christian theological dogmas betoken the influx of an adulterated Judaism into a nascent Christianity, not the reflex of a pure Christianity upon a receptive Judaism. It is important to show this; and it appears from several considerations. In the first place, it is demonstrable, it is unquestioned, that at least the germs and outlines of the dogmas referred to were in actual existence among the Pharisees before the conflict between Christianity and Judaism arose.Secondly, in the Rabbinical writings these dogmas are most fundamental, vital, and pervading, in relation to the whole system; but in the Christian they seem subordinate and incidental, have every appearance of being ingrafts, not outgrowths. Thirdly, in the apostolic age Judaism was a consolidated, petrified system, defended from outward influence on all sides by an invulnerable bigotry, a haughty exclusiveness; while Christianity was in a young and vigorous, an assimilating and formative, state. Fourthly, the overweening sectarian vanity and scorn of the Jews, despising, hating, and fearing the Christians, would not permit them to adopt peculiarities of belief from the latter; but the Christians were undeniably Jews in almost every thing except in asserting the Messiahship of Jesus: they claimed to be the genuine Jews, children of the law and realizers of the promise. The Jewish dogmas, therefore, descended to them as a natural lineal inheritance. Finally, in the Acts of the Apostles, the letters of Paul, and the progress of the Ebionites, (which sect included nearly all the Christians of the first century,) we can trace step by step the actual workings, in reliable history, of the process that we affirm, namely, the assimilation of Jewish elements into the popular Christianity.
