The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

VII. Source of Revolutionary Concepts of Unseen World

It is apparent that throughout this new inter-Testament apocalyptic literature the hereafter, or life beyond the grave, was unquestionably the predominant theme. By the time of Jesus there was widespread expectation among the Pharisees of life beyond the grave uninterrupted by death. But there was a long and intriguing background behind it all. This concept had developed slowly but steadily during the threehundred-year interval between the Testaments. It sprang from the popular apocalyptic writings produced during this disillusioning period, and was brought in to “brighten the valley of the shadow of death,” as one writer puts it. CFF1 652.1

1. REVOLUTIONARY CONCEPTS DEVELOPED IN TIME OF MACCABEES

As noted, when the Jewish commonwealth fell with the destruction of the Temple under Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian captivity began. At this time synagogues were introduced for nonsacrificial congregational worship, and the thoughts of the Jews turned more and more toward the future life of the individual soul. The very foundations of earthly expectation about them now seemed shattered. CFF1 652.2

Throughout Old Testament times the Hebrew sheol had been considered the vague “abode of all the dead,” for good and bad alike—equivalent to the grave. ¹³ The dark underworld, the nether world of silence and sleep, was like the hades in the Greek. Its inmates were the dead, and it was not a place of conscious torment. But, owing to the outside contacts and influences mentioned, the conviction developed with some that sheol is “not the final curtain to the drama of life,” as aptly expressed. There must be reward or retribution beyond the grave. And, according to Rabbi S. Zeitlin, this conception of rewards and punishments in the next world came into focus and was developed in the time of the Maccabees. ¹⁴ CFF1 652.3

2. PERSIAN IMPACT STRENGTHENS RESURRECTION CONCEPT

It was during the period of exile under Persia that the Zoroastrian stress on Dualism and on the resurrection came to be accentuated among the Jews—the struggle between the forces of good and evil, to end in the triumph of good, and with the resurrection of the dead to vindicate the righteous. But this resurrection to eternal life was to be the sole prerogative of the righteous. And we should pause to observe, just here, that the Jews did not hesitate to appropriate the thought and incorporate the teachings of other peoples or cultures—so long as they did not appear to be alien to the genius of Judaism. This is attested by the scholarly Rabbi Israel Levinthal: CFF1 653.1

“We often do not realize how much the Jews were influenced in their cosmological and eschatological conceptions by the Babylonians, who had a fixed notion of the cosmic system which held sway until the days of Copernicus—who spoke with such authoritativeness about the seven planetary spheres, the seven heavens one on top of the other, and, by way of symmetry, the seven hells, one below the other [appearing in the apocalyptic literature]. And so, too, it is now generally recognized that there was a marked influence through the meeting with the Persians, and their elaborate and intricate teachings about the hereafter. This sudden contact with other minds and cultures was a powerful factor in shaping the eschatological views of the Jews.” ¹⁵ CFF1 653.2

And this principle applies particularly to the inter-Testament period. CFF1 653.3

It should also be emphasized here that apart from its Old Testament origin the truth of the resurrection had found its chief supporting emphasis in Persian Zoroastrianism. It was not found in Egypt or in Greece, and Greek philosophy was antagonistic to it. Thus it was that a Persianized-Pharisaic theology as to the resurrection came to prevail in a substantial section of Jewry. CFF1 653.4

3. SPECULATIONS CRYSTALLIZE AS TO INTERMEDIATE STATE

Then sheol began to be considered by some as an intermediate state—a kind of prelude or vestibule to Heaven or Hell, a preliminary period of punishment (as in the pseudepigraphal Enoch xxii. 9-13), with the righteous, upon death, entering at once into the life of blessedness. And erelong with some, such speculation became belief—if not indeed dogma. CFF1 653.5

Fantastic speculations on Paradise developed (as in the books of Enoch and the Jubilees). Sometimes Paradise was conceived to be on earth, sometimes in Heaven—with an upper paradise, and a lower paradise as a section of sheol, ¹⁶ and Heaven as the abode of the conscious, living, righteous dead. Angelology was stressed, as was the case with other peoples of the time, with a highly developed heavenly hierarchy as instruments to carry out the mission of God. This is found, for example, in the Jubilees, Ethiopic Enoch, 2 Esdras, and 2 Baruch. CFF1 654.1

Dr. Levinthal also interestingly states that “according to the testimony of most scholars, this literature was the product of the Essenes,” who had separated themselves from the common expectations of life. ¹⁷ (This will be noted further as we come to the important witness of the Dead Sea scrolls.) Moreover, in this time the names of angels were brought in, some of them gleaned from Babylon. ¹⁸ And demonology was likewise stressed, with the kingdom of evil ruled by Satan. The picture was filling out. CFF1 654.2

4. CLIMAX REACHED IN PLATONIC CONCEPTS UNDER PHILO

Corning now to the climax in this preview, we find that the Jews of Egypt (particularly of Alexandria) began definitely to adopt the Platonic concept of the Innate Immortality of the soul. In their new environment, surrounded by the subtleties of Greek thought and absorbing its philosophy, they slowly developed a system of Greco-Judaic philosophy, adapted and synthesized according to their own tradition and pattern of belief. It has been appropriately called the Alexandrian Jewish philosophy. CFF1 654.3

This involved a radically new method of interpretation of Scripture—the devastating allegorical system, which was brought to climax by Philo, who was the end product of the great intellectual center of Alexandria, and master of synthesis. He used Greek terminology to describe the accommodated beliefs and institutions of Jewry as to the origin, nature, and destiny of man. This also gives us the time relationship of the development. CFF1 655.1

5. ETERNAL-HELL CONCEPT A PAGAN INVENTION

It should be added here that the aforementioned eschatological concept of an eternal Dualism—an eternal Hell coeval with and forever paralleling an eternal Paradise—is foreign to the original teachings of Judaism. Moreover, such a final Dualism presupposes a metaphysical Dualism of two eternal and incompatible principles at the beginning, which is likewise utterly foreign to pure Hebrew concepts. CFF1 655.2

A theology that derives everything from a single power, or principle—the omnipotent God alone—can only conceive of evil as an innovator, which could not possibly crystallize in an eternal Dualism. There is a necessary correspondence between the principle of absolute creation and the complete restoration of all things. Judaism cannot, therefore, rightly be accused of inventing and imposing on the world an eternal Hell. Such a Hell is of pagan, not of Old Testament, origin. CFF1 655.3

6. SUCCESSIVE EXILES LEAVE PERMANENT IMPRESS

It is also to be remembered that these apocalyptic inter-Testament writings, often inconsistent and contradictory, were obviously produced under the impact and impress of the thinking of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks, to whom the Jews had been subject, in succession, for centuries during their several exiles—though they still believed, theoretically, that the Old Testament was the supreme standard of faith and truth. CFF1 655.4

In these centuries, therefore, between the Maccabees and the formation of the New Testament canon, the influence of the Maccabean Age began its spread across the pages of history with a strange commingling of Jewish and then Christian elements. Thus the Sibylline Oracles were begun by pagans, continued by Jews, and finished by Christians. And the Jewish Apocalypse of Ezra was later provided with a Christian introduction and close. CFF1 656.1

And it was during this same age of the Maccabees—when the Jewish faith and polity was again under heavy attack, and the two leading parties of the Pharisees and Sadducees were developing—that this strong current of belief took shape as to the universal Innate Immortality of the soul and the consequently Eternal Torment of the wicked. This “river of opinion,” as it has been appropriately called, was so broad and deep, and now so strong, that it carried a large section of the Hellenized Jewish populace along in its current. Thus we are brought down to the first century of the Christian (or “Common”) Era. CFF1 656.2