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 pa.s.sages 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 h.e.l.l, 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 pa.s.sages, selected almost at random, will show the ideas entertained of the place, and confirm and ill.u.s.trate 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 G.o.d," not to be punished there, but as a punishment. It is true, the good and the bad alike pa.s.s 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?
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
5 Biblical Archeology, sect. 314.
denote it. Neshamah, primarily meaning breath or airy effluence, next expresses the Spirit of G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. "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 l.u.s.t." 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sert 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d, 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.
There are many pa.s.sages 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
6 Tractatus de Anima a R. Moscheh Korduero. In Kabbala Denudata.
tom. i. pars ii.
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 G.o.d." The genuine meaning of this triumphant exclamation of faith is, I know that G.o.d is the Vindicator of the upright, and that he will yet justify me before I die. A particular examination of the remaining pa.s.sages of this character with which erroneous conceptions are generally connected would show, first, that in nearly every case these pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sages as G.o.d"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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 doc.u.ments 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 pa.s.sage, 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, "G.o.d 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 pa.s.sage 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 G.o.d"s eternity." It cannot signify simply physical dissolution, because this is found as well by G.o.d"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 a.s.serts 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 pa.s.sages 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sages from him in proof and ill.u.s.tration 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
11 Mangey"s edition of Philo"s works, vol. i. p. 32.
12 Ibid. p. 38.
13 Ibid. p. 37.
14 Ibid. p. 65.
and the a.s.sumption of vice."15 "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, pa.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sages, which we have omitted as superfluous, might be cited from him to show. Man was made originally a mortal body and an immortal soul. 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 G.o.d,
15 Ibid. p. 65.
16 Ibid. p. 233.