Although the work is considerably under the influence of Hellenism, the doctrine of creationism is traceable in 4 Mace. (13), where God is spoken of as giving their souls to men. The reverse is the case with Enoch, and yet trichotomy is taught in at least one passage (678). The expressions of Josephus on this subject are vague and even con- tradictory (Ant. I. i. 2, BJ VII. vill. 7). His de- scription of the soul as a part of godhead (otpa Ge00) is only his way of affirming its likeness to God, and is not to be interpreted pantheistically ; it is evidently used to emphasize the contrast be- tween the perishable material body and the im- mortal soul. He is at one with Platonic dualism in maintaining the unsuitability of the union of spirit and matter in one body, and, although he nowhere expressly adopts the view of the Essenes, it is doubtful whether he contemplates a bodily resurrection. The one point upon which he is clear is that there is a continued personal existence of the soul after death.
2. Original moral condition of man.—According to Gn 1“, man was made in the image of God. This is the positive foundation on which the later Jewish theology bases its view about the moral dignity of the human race. But, although the phrase is uniformly referred not to physical form but to mental and moral characteristics, it is not always understood in precisely the same sense. According to Sirach, man’s likeness to God con- sists in his sovereignty over the rest of creation, and in his intellectual endowments, particularly in the power to discern good and evil (178). In Wisdom this resemblance is seen not only in man’s dominion over the creatures and in his moral direction of the world (9%), but also in the fact that he was created for immortality (2%). By Philo the Divine image in man is conceived as mediated through the Logos. The reasonable soul is a transcript of the eternal Word (de Plant. Noe, 5), and it is in the rational element or vois that we are to look for the Divine image (de Mund. Opif. 93), in virtue of which man is a product, not of earth but of heaven (de Plant. Noe, 4). Strangely enough, Josephus makes no allusion to the subject.
3. The immortality of the soul.—In Wisdom the « idea of a future life is much more prominent than in the earlier OT canonical books. The old vague delineations of Sheol, and intermediate references to the realm of the shadow of death, no longer suffice for the cultured Alexandrian. Materialism is met by a clear and pointed statement of the view that the soul is immortal (2% 3!). The writer
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of 2 Mac. adopts the same standpoint (626 12%), And if in both books stress is mainly laid upon the fact of the future life of the righteous who were apparently destroyed by persecution, this does not warrant the inference that the writers deny the future existence of the wicked. 2 Mac 7 (ef. Jn 5%) lends no support to this view, and the reference to punishment after death implies the continued existence of the sinner (12%"),
Apparently, the future existence of the wicked was also accepted by orthodox Pal. Jews. The common phrase ‘destruction of the ungodly’ must be interpreted in the light of those passages in OT and Apocryphal books which have in view the eternal punishment of the wicked. By the ‘re- moval’ of the godless in Enoch 11 is meant their being handed over to the place of punishment, and not their annihilation ; cf. 22, which speaks of sinners whose ‘souls will not be slain on the day of judgment.’ ‘There are degrees of suffering in Sheol. The worst penalty appears to be “the slaying of the soul,” but even this did not imply annihilation ? (Charles ;. see this writer’s farther notes on Enoch 99" 108%). Even in the Ascension of Isaiah, which says that the destruction by fire of the ungodly will cause them to be as if they had not been created (418), absolute annihilation is not intended.
In the doctrinal position of the Sadducees as summed up in Ac 238 (cf. 42, Mt 22758-) the anthro- pological element is the most important. Their denial of angels was of little consequence compared with their denial of the resurrection. A love for Hellenistic worldliness had rendered attractive to them the idea that this life is complete in itself, that death is no mere shadow but a reality, and that a resurrection is not to be thought of. “Along with the resurrection of the body, the Sadducees naturally denied the immortality of the soul. They were pure materialists, who made no earnest attempt to reach a philosophy of the nature and life of the human spirit, and took no account of the Scripture fact that the separation of soul and body is the punishment of sin. At the opposite pole from the Sadducean doctrine was the extreme spiritualism of the Essenes, who denied the possi- bility of a resurrection, but believed in the immor- tality of the soul. They accepted the Pythagorean doctrine that the human soul is derived from the purest ether, and that its connexion with the body is accidental and necessarily temporal. Its pre- existence they regarded as a necessary consequence of immortality and the dualistic opposition between spirit and matter. The practical effect of these views was seen in a rigid bodily asceticism and in an earnest pursuit of moral ideals. Immortality and the resurrection both formed part of the creed of the Pharisees. Josephus, indeed, says they taught the transmigration of the souls of the good, and the eternal punishment of the wicked. But, so far as the former idea is concerned, this deviation is really more one of form than of substance, the only difference being that in the one case it is asserted that the material frame does not remain the same, while in the other it is held that every soul has its own particular body. It is quite after the manner of Josephus to make a Jewish doctrine as little objectionable as possible to men of other races, and this may account for his curious con- fusion of the Jewish doctrine of the resurrection with the widely prevalent pagan doctrine of the transmigration of souls. The idea of the punish- ment of the wicked was certainly not excluded from the doctrine of transmigration, although the resurrection was frequently spoken of as confined to the good. It was conceived only as a resurrec- tion to life, in which, of course, the lost had no part. What was really but a qualification of the