B. TEACHING OF THE APOCRYPHA AND THE APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE.—These words occur most frequently and with most special significance in the two books of the Wisdom Literature in the Apocrypha, viz. those of Wisdom and Sirach. In the former {w occurs in several interesting con- nexions, ef. Wis 113 ‘Court not death in the error of your life’ (cf. Pr 855 and 21°); 1318 ‘for life he beseecheth that which is dead,’ where reference is made to idolatry; cf. also 14% ‘the invention of them (i.e. idols) was the corruption of life’; 16” ‘for thou hast authority over life and death, and thou leadest down to the gates of Hades, and leadest up again,’ ?
In the Book of Sirach ζωή occasionally means sustenance, e.g. 41 ‘My son, deprive not the poor of his living,’ 3421 ‘The bread of the needy is the
life of the poor.’ The general use is that of the figurative and absolute sense we have found in Pr and elsewhere, e.g. 413 ‘He that loveth her (ἐκ. 6 Wisdom) loveth life,’ cf. Pr 3:8: 6'° a faithful friend
116 LIFE AND DEATH
is a medicine of life,’ 15" ‘before men is life and death’ (cf. Dt 3019), For the special phrase πηγὴ ζωῆς, see 21 ‘The knowledge of a wise man shall be made to abound as a flood, and his counsel as a fountain of life’ (cf. Pr 13* and 14%). An instruc- tive contrast is found in 40” ‘A man that looketh unto the table of another, his life is not to be counted for a life.’ ψυχή has also one or two usages that may be noted here. Itis, of course, poeenly translated soul in the general sense of that word, as in Wis 3! ‘the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,’ but frequently comes near to its NT significance, e.g. Wis 9 ‘a corruptible body weigheth down the soul’ (cf. 2 Co 5'*), cf. 155 ‘when he is required to render back the soul (life) which waslent him.’ Two verses bring the several terms into close conjunction, Wis 15"! ‘He was ignorant of him that inspired into him an active soul (ψυχή), and breathed into him a vital spirit (πνεῦμα ζωτικόν). But he accounted our very life (ζωή) to be a plaything, and our lifetime (βίος) a gainful fair’; cf. also 16}4,
In Sirach we may note two passages: 10” ‘Who will justify him that sinneth against his own soul (ux)? and who will glorify him that dishonoureth his own life (ζωή) ?’ and 16” ‘ the soul of every living thing’ (ψυχὴν παντὸς ζῴου).
In 2 Esdras, ch. 7, there is a very important passage, mainly contained in the portion re- covered by Bensly, a translation of which is to be found in the RV. It is a vision of the last judgment, which is to be preceded by seven days of such silence as was before the Creation ; then follows the general resurrection, and the seating of the Most High in majesty as judge. The seer understands how few can stand in the judgment, and exclaims, ‘An evil heart hath grown up in us, which hath led us astray from these statutes, and hath brought us into cor- ruption and into the ways of death, hath showed us the paths of perdition, and removed us far from life ; and that not a few only, but well-nigh all that have been created’ (738). Thereafter follows a vision of the various stages through which the wicked and the righteous pass after death. The day of judgment is declared to be ‘the end of this time and the beginning of immortality’ (though et initium is omitted in the Lat. MS) (7 015), Again, in the 8th chapter the Most High declares to the seer, ‘ Unto you is paradise opened, the tree of life is planted, the time to come is prepared... weakness is done away for you, and [death] is hidden ; hell and corruption are fled into forgetful- ness . . . and in the end is showed the treasure of immortality’ (8°: 8),
In the Psalms of Solomon a few passages deal with the resurrection, e.g. 315 ‘They that fear the Lord shall rise again to lite everlasting. And their life shall be in the light of the Lord, and shall fail no more’; 1310 ‘The life of the righteous is for ever, but sinners shall be taken away for destruc- tion’; 145- 5 «The holy of the Lord shall live in him for ever; the paradise of the Lord, the trees of life, are his holy ones. The holy of the Lord shall in- herit life in gladness.’ For sinners the lot is also e¢pointed in accordance with their deeds; thus 34 “We fell, because evil was his fall, and he shall not rise again; the destruction of the sinner is for everlasting’; and 15" ‘Sinners shall perish in the day of the Lord’s judgment for ever, when God shall visit the earth in His judgment, to re- pay sinners for everlasting.’
n the Book of Enoch (chs. 38-44) occurs a pas- sage resembling the one quoted above from 2 Esdras, in which are seen in vision the celestial abodes prepared for the righteous, where they bless and magnify the Lord for ever and ever. Similar passages on the judgment are found in chs. 51. 61.