The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1
CHAPTER EIGHT: The Bridge to the Christian Era
I. Apocalyptic Literature of Pre-Christian Time
The gap between the writing of the last book of the Old Testament and the first book of the New Testament was by no means a barren period. On the contrary, it was one of the important periods of Jewish history. It was, moreover, a fruitful period of literary activity, which is a sure sign of intellectual life. Not only were historical works and treatises of a general religious character produced, but the voices of seers and mystics were by no means extinct. PFF1 181.1
1. MESSIANIC HOPES FIND FIGURATIVE EXPRESSION
During this period Israel’s Messianic hopes found a wider circulation, and seldom were they more ardently expressed than by a great number of writers at that time. In general these writers used highly symbolic language, and often expressed their hopes through historical figures. But whatever the means used, in all these works pulsated the high expectancy of a new era. They all envisioned a glorious future age in which all frustrated hopes, and all present disappointments, would be left forever behind. Sometimes the coming of the new age was visualized as a gradual change. Sometimes it was believed that it would be ushered in by a series of catastrophes, either of local or of world-wide dimensions. And it was often believed that it would be occasioned by direct divine intervention. PFF1 181.2
This entire class of literature is termed apocalyptic. It was not simply a small eddy swirling along on the margin of the broad stream of Jewish intellectual life during the postexilic period. On the contrary, it permeated all strata of society and constituted the so-called higher theology. It furnished a necessary counterbalance to the rigid teaching of the law. These writers did not deny the validity of the law, for in general they emphasized it. But they introduced a new element and a new hope, which gave an outlet to the soul, opened new vistas before them, and provided an escape from the stern formalism of the law. This is significant. PFF1 181.3
2. EMPLOYED NAMES OF ANCIENT HEROES
We need to understand the teaching underlying these apocalyptic writings, for the ideas enshrined are, in certain respects, the fore runners of many to be expressed inn Christian apocalyptic thinking a few centuries later. Or, this might be expressed in a somewhat different way: The Christian church was, and considered herself to be—and not without some foundation the fulfillment of many of these concepts. 1 PFF1 182.1
The writers of such books, employing prophetic language and style during an age when the law ruled supreme, and when the canon was supposed to be closed, could not possibly be heard under their own names. They therefore placed their words in the mouth of some ancient hero and related the history up to their time often in metaphors and parables, in the guise of prophecy. This gave greater weight, at the time, to their predictions and to their visions of future glory. In this way the books of Enoch, the Secrets of Enoch, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Assumption of Moses, the Apocalypse of Baruch, et cetera, came into existence. Such writings are therefore called pseudepigraphal writings. The time of their composition can in most instances be easily determined by the line which separates fairly established historical events from the more general predictions. PFF1 182.2
Practically none of these pseudepigraphal writings have come down to us in their original languages, which in most cases had been Hebrew or Aramaic. But we possess translations in either Greek or Ethiopic, or in Slavonic. Often these translations have been edited, and frequently writers of different times were grouped—together under one pseudonym; therefore only by the painstaking efforts of specialists to compare the different texts or fragments of texts is it possible to reconstruct the original with any degree of certainty. PFF1 182.3
3. THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THAT PERIOD
What value is there then in noting works of such dubious origin? The answer is that these works afford a most valuable insight into one of the great transition periods of Jewish thinking, a period during which various new concepts were formed. These concepts were partly adopted, and partly rejected, by the young Christian church, and have continued to exercise the minds of theologians until the present day. PFF1 183.1
One of the most ardently discussed problems, during that and the following period, was eschatology—that is, the state of the dead, the resurrection, and all the problems connected therewith, or the doctrine of the “last things.” It was still so much in the forefront of discussion in Paul’s day that he had only to throw the point of the resurrection into a debate, and the attention would be automatically drawn away from himself. PFF1 183.2
In the sections to follow an attempt will be made to summarize, in a few sentences, the position commonly accepted on those subjects in the transition centuries between the Old and the New Testament. At the same time we are fully aware that all summarizations are usually oversimplifications, as spiritual developments and tendencies are rarely confined to clearcut periods, but usually overlap. They often have their roots in the distant past, sometimes coming to light only by stray utterances, and on the other hand, they continue to have their repercussions long after the time of their greatest effectiveness has passed. PFF1 183.3
4. OLD TESTAMENT ON BODY AND SOUL
According to the canonical Old Testament, it is quite clear that body and soul form a unit; in Genesis 2:7 we are not told that man received a living soul, but that, after God breathed into him the breath of life, man became a living soul. Often the word “soul” is used in the Old Testament with the meaning of a man, person, personality. (Genesis 12:5; 14:21; 46:27.) There is nothing to be found in the Bible of the Greek conception which splits man into two distinctive and separate parts: the mortal body and the immortal soul! 2 PFF1 183.4
It is therefore impossible to find in the Old Testament that hope for eternal life was based on the innate immortality of the soul, but rather on the resurrection as a reawakening from death as from a sleep (Daniel 12:2; Job 7:21; 14:12), a sleep of complete unconsciousness (Job 3:17-19; Ecclesiastes 9:5, 6) 3 PFF1 184.1
The Old Testament knows Sheol, the land of the shadow of death, as a place from which there is no return. (Job 10:21, 22.) There are some verses, however, which might lend themselves to another interpretation, as, for example, Psalm 9:17, which says, “The wicked shall be turned into hell [Sheol] and all the nations that forget God,” from which it could be concluded that Sheol is the dwelling place of sinners. PFF1 184.2
However, the supreme thought of the Old Testament is that God only has life everlasting; He alone can give life; and He alone can destroy, and make to live again. (Deuteronomy 32:39; Psalm 104:29, 30.) God is the sovereign master over Sheol. (Psalm 139:9.) He can reverse the decree, and can therefore also resurrect. Life in every respect depends upon the Spirit of God and upon His life-giving breath. (Job 33:4.) It is commonly recognized that the old Persian idea of the Parsee sages—that the soul lives a full and conscious life during the time in which the body dissolves into its elements, until it once more becomes the abode of the soul—is utterly foreign to the thinking of the Old Testament. Life after death comes by the resurrection, effected through the power of God; the only other possibility, in exceptional cases, is translation directly from the earthly to the heavenly state, without death, as in the cases of Enoch and Elijah. Jehovah alone is the master of death, as it is supremely expressed in Isaiah 25:8. He will swallow up death in victory, and the Lord God will wipe away tears. These ideas of future happiness came to be connected with the hope of a material rule of Israel in its promised land—a kingdom in which righteousness, peace, and love will rule, to which all nations will come for guidance. This was the hope that lived in the hearts of the pious in those times. PFF1 184.3
5. THE QUESTION OF AN INTERMEDIATE STATE
During the postexilic period, however, it became more and more clear to some of Israel’s thinkers that, after all, Israel constituted only a small part of the wide world with its mighty kingdoms. Then an earthly, national Messianic kingdom would hardly be able to transform the whole world. Therefore in some quarters this hope came to be more and more spiritualized. If the kingdom was to be that of the righteous, what, of the righteous of former times? PFF1 185.1
The Old Testament Scriptures, in which we see the acknowledged principle of the “progressive revelation” of truth, 4 had at one time mentioned the resurrection of the righteous, and later that of all mankind—the righteous rising to their eternal reward, and the wicked to their everlasting doom. In connection with these questions of the resurrection, and of reward and punishment, which agitated the people deeply in the last two centuries before Christ, the idea of an intermediate state found expression in the pseudepigraphal writings. PFF1 185.2