andjnr tliit i iTie pre-exil
pre-exilic prophets, on the contrary, spoke in times of national prosperity and conlidence of a coming day of J", which would be a day of judg- ment on Israel at the hand of a foreign power. The message was one of repentance and righteous- ness that the threatened judgment might be averted, the sentence recalled. The prophets pre- dicted primarily judgment, not deliverance ; the prediction was conditional, not fixed ; and the practical inference was repentance, not patience. The change of message belonged in part to the ^change of situation which the ExUe itself effected. (6) The dualistic theology. — Bousset rightly calls 4 Ezr 7™ ' The Most High has made not one world, but two,' the inner principle of the apocalypse. The sliarp contrast in which the kingdom of this world, which is the kingdom of Satan, is set over against the kingdom of God, can he partly explained as a result of tendencies within Judaism ; but it seems probable that the Persian dualistic religion must be taken into account in order to explain this strange departure from the otherwise strongly marked monotheism of Judaism (see esp. Stave, Einfluss des Parsismus auf den Judentum, 1898). In contrast to this dualistic tendency the older prophets were far more consistently, even if less theoretically and consciously, monotheistic, for they believed in the actual rule of the God of right- eousness in present world-history as well as in the coming age, in the visible and not only in the invisible realm. They therefore saw evidence of the nearness and reality of God's rule in the presence and growth of tlie power of good ; while the tendency of the apocalypse was to see in the Rowing power of evil the evidence that God's intervention. His reversal of human history, was at hand.
(c) The element of prediction. — -Unfulfilled pro- phecy is the foundation upon which the whole struc- ture of the apocalypse was built. This was both the problem and the reliance of Jewish faith and hope. What was spoken must be literally accom- plished. Of conditional prediction the apocaly])se knows nothing. The prophets' predictions of judg- ment had been fulfilled by the Exile, but tlieir predictions with reference to the return from exile had never been fulfilled by tlie actual return ; hence it must be that these hojies of the renewed land, the united tribes, the royal power and glory of Israel, were still to be realized. What the pro- phecies really meant, in view of their apparent contradiction by events, when and liow their ful- filment was to come about, it was the task of the apocalyptic scribe to discover. Ezekiel took a de- cided step towards apocalypse when, on the basis of the words of Zephaniah and Jeremiah concerning the Scythians, he predicted the final assault of Gog
and his wild hosts upon Jerusalem and their over- throw, and thus established one of the fixed elements in apocalyptical dogma (Ezk 38" 39*). Haggai and Zechariah still looked for a human explanation of the failuie of the hopes, and found it in the delay in rebuilding the temple ; Malachi, in imperfect ofl'erings and withheld tithes. Tti,^ jn pnnioj the reason is found nc longer in the fault of man but in the plan of God. The VU years are 70 wee^ of years, and the un- alterable time tor the ega~tronIy ^ust now draw- ing near. 4 Ezra reinterprets thelourth beast of Un 7 to~prove that Rome also was included in the predehtined course of history before the end could come (12"-"). Only in the Bk. of Jonah do we have a protest against the dominant apocalyptic by a surviving prophetic spirit. Here the prediction is of judgment, its aim to produce repentance, and the result the success of the preaching, with the failure of the prediction. Yet even a book written in part to prove that prediction is ethical in aim and conditional in result could be used by Jews as if its predictions were magical and inviolable (To 14*- *, B). The fault of the prophet Jonah, which the book uncovers and rebukes, was the fault of Judaism and its apocalypses. The Bk. of Jonah is a true utterance of the spirit of prophecy in unavailinor protest against tlieji9ira:vaJ«as,-the iealoiisY. and tile" rev^'n'^p f^'t^t Tfi°["''" ni'ic'igj^jj^j' iipnciljp'''' writing. Prophecy is fulfiUeiriiy every evidence in history of the rule of a righteous and merciful God, whether anticipated or not, whether for the benefit of Jews or of Gentiles. Apocalypse sees the hand of God and the vindication and glory of the seer only in a literal correspondence between predictions and events, and only in the fall of a Nineveh and the glory of Zion and Israel.
(d) Pseudonymous authorship. — It corresponds perfectly to the contrast just described that pro- phecy should be a personal and direct form of speech, the apocalypse a pseudepigraphic and mj'sterious form of writing. The prophet stood before his people and spoke in his own person. Tlie authority of his speech was in no small measure that of his personality. He spoke first and wrote afterwards, but wrote as he spoke, in the first person. When, in the Exile and after it, prophets followed who repeated what others had said, or gave expression to the common faith, and had no peculiar message, their names were unim- portant, and many of them wrote anonymously (Is 40-66, Malachi, Zee 9-14, etc.). Daniel is the tir.st example of that pseudonymous prophetic writing which characterizes the whole apocalyp- tical group. It embodies the Jewish worship of prediction. Yet the moral earnestness and reliL'ioua elevation of books like Daniel and 4 Ezra malce it ditficult for us to regard tliem as fictions, and cer- tain considerations may help us to understand how this form of v\Titing could be used by such men, although we must at best put their work far below the simplicitj' and openness of genuine propliecy. ■The fact that the apocalyptical writer was a serious student of ancient prophecies, whose sacredness he reverenced, and whose secrets he believed he could in a measure expound, suggests that he did not regard his thoughts as his own. The fixed and really ancient cliaracter of such apocalyptical tra- ditions as those of the dragon of the deep, makes conceivable such a writer's evident faith in his pre- dictions, which would be psychologically incredible if the visions were pure works of the imagination. Furthermore, — and this is an observation of great importance, — no apocalypse gives the impression of entire unity and harmony. Not only the writer's own studies of OT proi)hets, not only his own in- terpretations of apocalyptical imagery, but those of others before hiiu are at his command, and furnisi