8. Question as to the retrogression of the Mes- sianic idea during the post-Prophetic period.—Was there a break in the development of this doctrine ? Did the distinctively Messianic hope disappear with the cessation of prophecy, to be revived only with the advent of Christianity? It would be wrong to suppose that it ever became absolutely extinct. In order to this the Prophetic books of the OT must have perished, and the synagogues must have been closed. Neither of these things had happened. Even in the darkest days there yet remained some earnest souls who clung to the old faith and tried to revive it. It is, however, undeniable that the expectation of a personal Messiah went greatly down after the Prophets were silent. The hope of a bright future for Israel never wavered, yet there was a very strong disposition no longer to associate it with the raising of an ideal Davidic king to the throne. For many, the Prophetic picture of such a king had lost its first attractiveness. They had waited for him long enough, and he had not appeared. Thus among the great mass of the Jewish people there was no living faith in a personal Messiah at the time when the Apocrypha were composed. What was the reason of this retrogression? So far as we can judge, it was due to two considera- tions—(1) The hope of the Jews was a distant
302. DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE
DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE
hope. It was in books—that was all. They took for granted that there would be no great realiza- tion of it in their time, and looked upon the living realities of Divine grace as confined to the past and the future. Such want of heart manifested in regard to this great central doctrine was neces- sarily a crushing blow to the national develop- ment. (2) Their hope was a political hope. The transient glory of the Maccabzean period gave a measure of religious life, but any further deliver- ance that was longed for was rather along the same lines. ‘The speedy triimph of the Mac- cabees satisfied for a time the aspirations of the people ; and a longer period of suffering and dis- appointment was needed to develop the hope of a Messiah into a passion among the masses of the nation, and into a doctrine in the schools of the learned’ (Drummond, Jewish Messiah, p. 269). The hopes centred on the Hasmonzean_ princes were gradually seen to be delusive, and in the struggle for supremacy between a secularized hierarchy and the Pharisees or party of the Law the people took the side of the latter. Turning from all human kingship, they looked for deliver- ance to the king whom J” Himself would raise up from David’s line. That in the time of Christ this hope was generally prevalent is manifest from the Gospels. It had been abundantly proved that the kingdom of God could not perfect itself under the restrictions of an earthly State. But that stone which the builders rejected was soon to become the head of the corner in the prophetic building ; and in the person and work of Jesus as Messiah the true spiritual idea of the Divine kingdom was to arise and prevail.
vi. EscHATOLOGY. —In the OT, eschatological doctrine appears in a very undeveloped form, and, though it cannot be said to occupy a large place in the Apocrypha either, there is yet enough in these post-canonical books to show that in the period after the Exile there was a much clearer appre- hension of a future life than there had been in the earlier stages of the nation’s history. It is, however, in the Apocalyptic literature of the two centuries preceding the Christian era that the most marked development in eschatology is met with. In these works the inherent importance of the subject, connected as it was with the Mes- sianic hope, combined with the Jewish fondness for elaborate and fantastic presentation of truth to give it a foremost place.
1. The OT position.—By many scholars (Stade, Schwally, Charles) the eschatological ideas of the early Hebrews are traced to the ancestor worship of Semitic heathenism. However this may be, it is certain that in the Mosaic legislation the out- look is confined to the present sphere of existence : virtue is rewarded, and vice punished, during this life. Both in pre-Mosaie and in Mosaic times, however, the view that death does not end the conscious life of all had taken possession of the popular mind. It comes out in connexion with the translations of Enoch (Gn 5”*-) and Elijah (2 K 2"), although immortality is here conceived as a possibility only for soul and body together, previous to death, and not after it. The thought of Jehovah’s power restoring the dead through human instrumentality (1 K 17%, 2 K 4%), which is of later occurrence, also implies the thought of a future life. According to the Heb. conception, death doesnot mean absolute extinction. Although the dead person does not in any real sense live, he still subsists. He descends into Sheol, a dreary region of darkness (Job 1074), a land of silence and forgetfulness (Ps 941” 115"), the house appointed for all living (Job 30”). In this shadowy exist- ence, the dreamy counterpart of his past life, he has no fellowship with the living, whether men or