In the remaining Pal. books the conception of God undergoes little modification. According to the author of Jubilees, Israelites are God’s children because physically descended from Jacob (178) ; but He is also the God of all (22% 30 etc.). The idea of God presented in Judith is of the narrowest
* Des Doc. Rel. des Juifs, p. 160F. | ql + Cheyne in The Expositor (1st series), xi. p. 351.
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Jewish type. God is the God of Jews only. He ranks as the greatest of national deities, who will wreak vengeance on the foes of His people. Their misfortunes are due to their having departed from the law of Moses. God hears their prayers when they ‘cast ashes upon their heads and spread out their sackcloth before the Lord’ (4"). 161° is con- ceived in a higher strain; but apparently it is borrowed, like a similar passage in Sirach, from Ps 51. The general scope of the book, as regards the relation of the story to the character of God, detracts from the value of its separate statements. God is represented as countenancing the deceit practised by Judith in order to the deliverance of her nation, and by consequence the assassination of Holofernes. This book ranks fairly high as a literary work, but we cannot justify its morality without subscribing to the maxim that the end justifies the means. It contributes nothing to the doctrine of God beyond the general impression arising from the history, and that certainly is such as to convey a conception of Him far inferior to the lofty position maintained in Sirach. The First Book of Maccabees, being wholly historical, con- tains nothing to the point. Indeed, according to the true text, the name of God does not once occur in the book. Although inserted in several passages of the AV (2?! 3°: % 4° ete.), it is absent from the Greek text. In 3!8 a few MSS do contain the word ‘God,’ but there is a preponderance of authority against the reading. While it breathes throughout a spirit of unfeigned faith in God as the defender and helper of His people (48* 12!° 16%), exhibits the deepest reverence for the Law and the temple wor- ship (12° 27"), and recognizes the overruling provi- dence of God (1° 3'8) and His unfailing support of ~ those who put their trust in Him (2°), yet the general conception of the Divine Being, so far as presented in this book, is not that of Jahweh dwelling among His people, but that of God en- throned in the distant heaven (3° 4”). In Test. Levi 3, God is designated ‘the Great Glory,’ as in Enoch 14? 1023. 2(4) Esdras, while presenting no distinctive doctrinal feature on this head, contains, besides an enumeration of the Divine attributes (78) and a summary of much OT teaching about God, the striking invocation of 8*°*°,
(2) Of the Pers.-Pal. books Bar 1-3% is perhaps the oldest. Baruch’s idea of God is simply that He is the guardian of Israel (2" 3-7), In spite of disciplinary trials, they enjoy peculiar privileges (2), To them alone has the Divine wisdom been revealed; and had they not abandoned it, they would not have been in subjection to the heathen (24 38), The Book of Tobit has a wider concep- tion of God. The writer hopefully contemplates the time when ‘all the nations shall turn to fear the Lord God truly, and shall bury their idols. And all the nations shall bless the Lord’ (14%). The Jews will be raised above all other nations, not, however, because they are Jews, as Baruch holds, but because they do the will of God. In this book we have an illustration of the post-exilic tendency to accumulate names for God. He is spoken of as ‘the Most High’ (14), ‘the Lord of heaven and earth’ (718), ‘God of our fathers’ (8°), ‘the Holy One’ (12%), ‘our Lord,’ ‘our Father’ (134), ‘the Lord of righteousness,’ ‘ the everlasting King’ (13°), ‘the Lord God’ (13"), ‘the King of heaven’ (13711), ‘the Lord of the righteous’ (Ube), ‘the great King’ (13"). Those who fear God shall be recompensed (4"); indeed the fear of God is the true standard of wealth (4%). The burden of the book’is to prove that God’s favour is reached through good works, such as fastings, the giving of alms, and the burial of the dead (12°*)). In this distinctly unbiblical position (cf. Sir 3% *, which, though pure Palestinian, comes under the excep-
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tion noted above, p. 275) we may perhaps trace the influence of Zoroastrianism. According to that system, man’s future destiny is determined by his life on earth, apart altogether from any idea of a Saviour. In the books of heaven every man is credited with his good deeds, while he is debited with his evil works. ‘ After death the soul arrives at the accountant’s bridge over which lies the way to heaven’; a balance is struck, and according as the good or evil predominates so will his future be. In the case of equality between the good and the evil, the soul is relegated to an intermediate state until the last judgment, when his fate is finally fixed. The biblical doctrine of forgiveness is foreign to the system of Zoroaster, although it teaches that in view of man’s ignorance, and his liability to be led astray by the powers of evil, Ormazd graciously resolved to send a prophet (Zoroaster himself) to point out to men the right way, and so rescue them from everlasting per- dition. Still, in the last resort, this is essen- tially salvation by works—a doctrine propounded in Tobit, but utterly alien to Holy Scripture, the teaching of which on this head has been well voiced in two lines by Tennyson— ‘For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to Thee.’ (In Memoriam).