oints of contact between the NT and heathen iterature are extremely few,* the LXX, on the other hand, was familiar to most of the NT writers, their OT quotations being generally derived from it and not from the Heb. ; a the inflaence of several es books contained in it, notably the Bk. of Wisdom, can be discerned in a number of the Epistles, although there is not a single express quotation from any of these booksin the NT. In a few instances, also, chiefly in St. Paul’s Epistles,+ a Rabbinical style of argument has been detected ; and in the Ep. to the Heb. and the writings of St. John expressions are to be found (such as Λόγος, Παράκλητος, ᾿Αρχιερεύς, applied to Christ) showin, an affinity with the views of Philo, the chie representative of the fresh impulse which Jewish thought received from contact with Greek philo- sophy at Alexandria and elsewhere. But the most striking signs of transition to a new age are to be found, not in the OT Apocr., properly so- called, or in Rabbinical scholasticism or Hellenistic
hilosophy, but in the pseudonymous apocalyptic iterature (partly recovered within the last century), which was framed on the model of the well-known Book of Daniel, and prepared the way for its Christian counterpart, the Apocalypse of John. Whether this literature was a spirited offshoot from the main stem of Pharisaic thought, or formed part of the esoteric doctrine of the Essenes, whose strange tenets and literature are described by Philo and Josephus, although their name is never even eon in the NT, is a question which has not yet been determined. Butin Jude we find a direct quotation from one of the most important of these spocelynes works (Bk. of Enoch); and elsewhere there are a few stray quotations and allusions to circumstances not mentioned in the OT for which the writers were probably indebted to a similar source. t
More important than such Mageecic details are certain ideas and expressions in the extant remains of this apocalyptic literature, which appear to be reflected in the thought and language not only of the NT writers but also of our Lord Himself. There are Christian interpolations in these books, and their date of composition is often very uncer-
* There are three quotations from Greek poets by St. Paul (Ac 1733, 1 Co 165%, Tit 1/2), and a barely possible allusion te Platonic doctrine by our Lord (Mt 19!7 RV).
ἡ Gal 316 4222, 1 Co 95. 10 101-2,
t Lk 4%, of. Ja 517; Lk 114; Jn 7; Ac 7™, cf. Gal 319, He 93 Ac 753, 1 Co 29 104; Eph 514; 2 Ti 38; He 1197; Jude ®; 2 Ρ gu, In the case of several of these passages the sources are mentioned by Church Fathers.
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tain, but, even in those parts of them to whicha pre-Christian date may be safely assigned, there are more distinct foreshadowings than any of the OT books contain of a number of truths relating to the spiritual world which hold a more or less prominent place in the NT. Among such elements of Christian thonght are the unique personality of the Messiah (of which we have a token in the frequent occurrence in the Bk. of Enoch of the expression, ‘the Son of man,’ with a Messianic reference that goes far beyond the meaning of the words, ‘one like unto a son of man,’ in Dn 7’), the doctrine of immortality, of the resurrection (cf. Dn 12%), of a future judgment with eternal rewards and punishments, of a hierarchy of angels with manifold operations, of the agency of demons, and of predestination, together with enlarged con- ceptions of Divine providence as embracing uni- versal history, and of the Messianic promise as securing the interests of the individual as well as of the nation: all these developments being due, partly to the foreign elements of thought which the Jews imported from Babylonia and Persia, and partly to the growing hopelessness of their national position (as regarded mere mundane possi- bilities), which naturally disposed them to the study of eschatology. It was, doubtless, these an- ticipations of Christianity that gave some of these books so high a place in the estimation of the Church Fathers, who sometimes treated them as if they had been canonical ; the Bk. of Enoch, for example, being cited as γραφή in the Ep. of Bar- nabas. In other respects, however, both ethical and theological, this literature comes far short of ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’; and we have still to fall back on the mystery of the Incarnation, with its attendant doctrines of Christ’s atoning sacrifice (of which there is scarcely any trace in contem- worary Jewish thought, so absor was the nation in the formal keeping of the Law as the only means of salvation), of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men revealed in Christ, of the life and immortality secured by His resurrection from the dead, and δὲ ἐπὸ Holy Spirit imparted by Him to His Church, in order to find an adequate ex- planation of the majesty of Christ’s person and the sublimity of His teaching as depicted in the Gospels, and at the same time to account for the sure and certain hope, the humble and self-re- nouncing faith, the loving and 1 eke devotion, the pure, tender, and world-wide morality which are characteristic of the whole NT.