There was, however, another way in which the love of hidden things and reverence for antiquity could be a<ijusted. Instead of hidden meanings in openly published books, it was possible to think or pnvate teachings, by the side of the public, committed by patriarch or prophet to the few, and handed on to the present in a secret tradition, or a hidden book. Tnis was the procedure of those Pal. Jews who were interested in the secrets of the fntnre, and in prophecy. The beginnings of the production of hiilden books along this line can be easily traced. If a prophet committed tlie record oi openly spoken predictions to the keeping
of his disciples, to await the time of their fulfilment (Is 8'°), it would not be strange if he should give them fuller knowledge for which the public was not prepared. The Bk of Dan. is represented as bavin" neen ' shut up and sealed ' by its author, until, long after its writing, the time came for its publication (Dn l'^*-*). "This may well be called ' the fundamental passage for the conception of apocrypha.'' Daniel appears as the publication of a book hitherto hidden. The justification of the claim lies in the revelation of the mysteries of Israel's future which it contains, and in the mysterious manner in which the revelation is made in Wsions, through angels. It is indeed, in part, an interpretation of the hidden sense of Jer 25" 29'° (Dn 9), but the interpretation is given by an angel. The way was prepared for Daniel by the later prophets, in whom the vision of hidden things plays an increasingly important part. Ezekiel's vision (ch. 1) became the favourite and fruitful study of Jews who loved mysteries. Zee con- tains similar material. But the chief development of apocalyptical literature followed Daniel. Great numbers of books were put forth during the cent, before and the cent, after Christ, in the name of patriarchs or prophets, as books that had been hidden. They contain esp. disclosures of the mysteries of the spirit world, of the future of Israel, and of the abode and fortunes of the dead. In one of these books the tradition is related that Ezra was inspired to dictate to his scribes the sacred books that had been burned at the destruction of Jerus. ' In forty days they wrote ninety-four books. And when the forty days were ended, the Most High spoke, saying : The earlier books that thou hast written, publish openly, and let the worthy and the unworthy read them ; but the last seventy thou shalt keep, that thou mayest deliver them to the wise of thy people ; for in them is the spring of understanding and the fountain of ■»%-isdom and the stream of knowledge' (2 Es 14"-"). In the 70 esoteric books, valued more highly by the writer than the 24 books of open scripture, we have the original conception of apocrypha. The character of these books may be accurately known from those that have survived, e.g. Enoch, Assumption of Moses (in part), the Apoc. of Baruch, and 2 Est itself. Their material is largely foreign to Isr. traditions, and was com- monly felt to be 80. Yet traditional it must, in the nature of the case, have been, and only in a very limited degree the free invention of the writers. That its source is, in an important measure, to be found in the Bab. and Pers. re- ligions, is highly probable.
If we ask in what circles of Judaism these books, or the writings or traditions that lie behind them, were current, various lines of evidence point to- ward the obscure sect of the Essenes. They possessed a secret lore and hidden books, and took oath to disclose none of their doctrines to others, and ' to preserve equally both the books of their sect and the names of the angels' (Jos. BJ n. viii. 7). In regard to the contents of their secret books we are not left wholly in the dark. Jos. says that the Essenes derived from the study of ' the writings of the ancients ' (can. ?) a knowledge of the healing properties of plants and stones (§ 6), an<l that bj' reading 'the holy books' they were able to foretell future tilings (§ 12). He also as- cribes to them an elaborate doctrine of the pre-
* Zahn, Gach. d. KT Kanoiu, t. 1S5, cf. 124 1., who, however,
does not put this observation to itfi natural uee.
t Notice the different applications given to the titles, 1 and 2 Ea, in LXX, Vnlg. and Enjr. A. Still other confusions appear in certain SISS. Misunderstanding would be avoided by calling 1 Es [ = Vulg. 3 F^ ; LXX 1 E-s] Greet Ezra, and 2 St [ = Vulg. 4 EsJ the Apocalj-pse of Ezra (i.e. properly ch. ^14), oi 4 Ezr.
APOCKYPHA
APOCRYPHA
11
existence of souls, and of the lot of good and bad Bools aft«r death (§ 11). When, therefore, we find in books like Enoch, the Assumptio Mosis, and 4 Ezr, disclosures of the secrets of nature and of history, lists of angels, descriptions of heaven and hell, and of the experiences of the soul after death, beside other Essenic marks, such as the praise of asceticism and the unfavourable estimate of the second temple, the opinion seems not unfounded that ' their secreli literature was perhaps in no small degree made use of in the Pseudepigrapha, and has through them been indirectly handed down to us' (WeUhausen). To attribute the apocalyptical literature exclusively to Essenism, however, as Jewish scholars wish to do, is without historical justification. It is true tliat a rela- tionship of Essenism with Zoroastrianism is prob- able (Lightfoot, Colossians ; Cheyne, Expository Timet, iL 202-8, 248-63 ; Bainptun Led. pp. 417-21, 445-49); and Zoroastrianism treasured secret books, some of which certain Christian Gnostics claimed to possess. It is probable also that the foreign (heathen) character of these books was felt by many, since Judaism never gave these books ofBcial sanction ; and no apocalypse after Dn was preserved in Hebrew. Nevertheless, the foreign elements here dominant reach far back into OT literature ; and, on the other hand, Essenism was much more closely related to Pharisaism than to Zoroastrianism, being, in the first place, ' only Pharisaism in the superlative' (Schiirer). If the Essenes are to be understood historically as Bira|)ly more consistent protestants against the high- priesthood of the Maccabtean princes than the Pharisees, — carrying their protest to the point of refusing sJl participation in the temple service, — then in the Hasida^ans of 1 Mac 2" V^- we have the roots of both Pharisaism and Essenism, and the Book of Dn would stand near the beginning of each. The Messianic hope is the genuinely Jewish element in the apocalypses. That this had a far larger place in tne mind of the Pharisee during the two centuries preceding the destruction of Jems, than it had after that event, — and esp. after Akiba's death, — is evident to all but Jewish scholars, who are apt to judge of the whole post- exilic period by the Talmud. The apocalyptical literature in question was, then, in all probability falued and cultivated by Pharisees, certainly by some circles of Pharisees, as well as by Essenes. Indeed, in spite of its rejection by rabbinical Judaism, germs of it survived, and afterwards came to new life, in the late Jewish Kabbala, or secret philosophy (12th cent.).