Abundant information, and copious, though undtscrimiiiatin^, references to authorities will be found in Schiirer, HJ P ll. ii. 126-187. Marti also {IJfuchuihte der Igra^iHUchen lUligion, pp. 270-310) is well worth consulting.
The present writer hopes to edit, towards the close of next year (1898), a critical work on Jewish Eschatology from the earliest OT times down to A.D. 100. R. H. CIIA11LE.S.
ESCHATOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
— The eschatology of the NT attaches itself in the first instance to that of the OT. The Heb. Scriptures do not contain anything like a definite or complete doctrine of the things of the end. They are the records, however, of an im- portant contribution to the faith in a future life, and that contribution was an ever-enlarging one. It had its reason in the two fundamental articles of Israel's faith — the doctrine of one God : a living, personal, righteous, gracious God, who made Him- self known to His people and entered into fellow- ship with them ; ancf the doctrine of Man as a creature different in origin and in end from other creatures, the bearer of God's image, made for communion with God, and for life in that com- munion. These great truths, unfolding their meaning more and more, and acting on the popular conceptions of Death and the Hereafter which Israel had in common with the Babylonians and other nations, led by steps of gradual advance to a clearer, more determinate, and more moral concep- tion of existence beyond the grave. The experi- ences and intuitions of saints, the visions and forecasts and inferences of faith, seen in the poetical books, combined with thoughts and words of sublime suggestion occasionally found in the historical books, and with tlie more definite teach- ing of the prophets, to further this enlargement of belief and the march towards a definite doctrine. So the popular ideas of a dark Sheof with a chill attenuated existence in its sunless deeps gave way to higher views ; the thought of the lot of the individual jiisentangled itself from that of the destiny of the community ; the belief in a moral order with judicial awards following men into the other world took shape and became increasingly distinct ; and at last the faith and the teaching of the OT rose to the great hope of a resurrection to life. This eschatology of the OT, which grew from less to more in the course of I.srael's history, remained nevertheless incomplete at its highest, and pointed to something beyond itself. The eschatology of the NT became its heir, passing iievtmd its limits and carrying its principles to their issues.
But the eschatology of the NT attaches itself also, tliough in anotlier way, to the popular faith of the Jew s of its time, and to certain develop- ments of thought and belief wliicli had taken place in the ]>eriod following tliat which i)roduce(l tlie last of the OT books. These ilevelopiiients were consiilerable. We gather what they were from the literature of Judaism which has de- scended to us, the Apoir. of the OT, to some extent tlie Rabbinical books, and most particularly the pseudepigraphic and ajiocalj'ptic writings. This literature furni.shes the key to much in tlie NT doctrine of the Last Things. It shows in what way the OT faith was retained and enlarged in harmony with its essenti.il principles ; in what way also it was materialized and sul)je<ted to changes wliich were not consistent with its true spirit ; in what directions belief became more positive ; and in what respects it became fanciful, speculative, grotesque ; how certain OT terms and ideas were modified in sense and ii|>plication, and in what mea.sure new terms and ideius were intro
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duced. The escliatology of the NT benrs the impress of these things. It cannot be understood apart from them. From much that emerged in this intervening period it stands aloof. Other things in this development, which were consistent witli the principles of the OT revelation, are reflected in it, purified of the gross, exaggerated, and unspiritual elements which mixed themselves with them.
The eschatology of the NT is not given in systematic foim, neither is it expressed in the precise and measured language of metaphysics or theology. It appears in the shape of a number of ideas which are common to the NT books, but which are presented in different aspects and con- nexions by the several writers. It is given in occasional form, in Christ's words, the discourses in the Bk. of Acts, the records of evangelists, tlie Epistles of apostles, on the promptings of circum- stance" which from time to time called forth declarations in speech or in writing on the matters of the end. It is not given in the terms of the schools nor with a view to speculative interests, but always for the purposes of life and practice, and in the language of the people. It malces free use of the figurative, parabolic, imaginative phraseology in which the Eastern mind naturally expresses itself. It never claims to give an ex- haustive disclosure or a constructive account of tlie Last Things. The message of tlie NT also being distinctively a message of hope, the eschatology is occupied mainly with the issues of the kingdom of God and tlie destiny of the righteous. It says less of the graver issues of the future of the un- righteous.