Shailer Mathews. DAY OF JUDGMENT.— i. In the teaching of Jesus. — 1. The Day of Judgment is one of the concepts inherited by Jesus. Its origin is to be sought in the religious belief, common to practi- cally all primitive peoples, in a tribal deity who would punish the enemies of the tribe. This elemental concept gained varied forms in the de- velopment of different peoples. In some cases it was never carried over into the field of individual ethics, and in others it shared in the moral growth of its possessors. In the case of the Hebrews it is to be seen in the ' Day of .Jahweh,' which formed so large and important an element of the prophetic message. In its earliest forms the expectation of this day involved .simjjly the punishment of the enemies of Israel by Jahweh the God of the nation. As the moral content of prophetism developed, however, this punishment inflicted by Jahweh was foretold to include the punishment of t!ie Hebrew nation. Amos and the great prophets who suc- ceeded him warned a luxurious nation that it had grown guilty and degenerate, and would be de- stroyed as an indication of Jahweh's riulitcdusness (Am 25-8 39-15 510-13 64-8)_ After A111..S llir l>:iy of Jahweh never lost its religious colouring, liut. ils use was extended until it included in its scope not only wicked Israel but a wicked world (Zeph 1=-'" 2'-is 38. i4-a)j_ Ezekiel conceived of it as a day of battle in which Jahweh would conquer Israel's foes (Ezk 302"- 34« 398«--) ; but Malaehi foretold the fearful punishment of all the wicked, Jews and Gentiles alike. It was this extension of punisliment, and the increase in the number of the condemned, tliat gave particular force to the idea of the remnant which was to be saved.
Obviously the formal concept here is that of the Oriental monarch who establishes a court of jus- tice, and decrees rewards and punishment. Jahweh was never conceived of by the prophets in terms of natural law, but always in terms of this analogy. In fact it would be probably truer to say that the monarchical concept of God was not an analogy but something more. It was this concept which conditioned teaching as to punishment throughout the entire Biblical period. Subsequent to the pro- phetic era, under the influence of Persi.an dualism, there was a marked tendency to extend the range of judgment to nature as well as to men, and the God who sat upon the throne was more than a mere national deity judging the enemy of a par
ticular people. This extension of the idea is to be found in the apocalypses, which in so many ways lie behind the Judaism current in the time of
JNIessianic scheme. The Day of Judgment of Jlessianism is the prophet's Day of Jahweh given new content by the appropriation of certain ele- ments from the cosmic myths of Babylon, and new colour because of the new literary vehicle, the apocalypse. As a part of the more highly developed Messianism, it sometimes ceased to represent a single judicial act on the part of the sovereign Deity, and with something like a recur- rence to the picture of Ezekiel, came to stand for the period of struggle in which the Messiah was to overcome and punish the enemies of a righteous nation. In its new form the thought of the day became increasingly transcendental, and joined to itself the idea of hell newly derived from the older belief in Sheol. In fact it would be difiicult to understand the full force of the Day of Judgment, as it appeared both in Jewish and Christian litera- ture, without reference to the fate of the dead. In the place of a penalty consisting of national punishment, there grew up during the Greek period of Jevidsh history a tolerably elaborate belief as to punishment inflicted upon individuals after death. It is difficult to know just when this idea of hell as a place of punishment, as over against Sheol as the abode of the disembodied dead, was first brought into relation with the Day of Judgment, but by the time of the apocalyptists we find the correla- tion complete (Eth. finoch 2V- ^ iS^ 54i- = 62'=- " 9Q26. 27) Jn fact the punishment inflicted upon men is distinctly recognized as adjusted to the condi- tions of their life in Eth. Enoch 22'-".
Thus the Day of Judgment as a form of the Day of Jahweh became the central point in Messianic eschatology and the nomistic morality of Judaism. Ditt'erent teachers elaborated its details in diflerent ways, but, by the time Judaism was fairly de- veloped, the Day of Judgment was conceived of as involving the examination of the records of each individual (Dn 7'"). More or less literally, books were believed to be kept in heaven, generally by one of the seven angels, in which the deeds of men were recorded (Eth. Enoch 89" 90"-", Ascens. Isaiah 9'-'). In the final assize these books were opened and balanced, and the future of the indi- vidual was determined according to the preponder- ance of his good or evil deeds (Eth. Enoch 5P-- '^ ggsifl-. 90"- =0, Pt,-/,:c Aboth 3-\ Ascens. Isaiah 9--; cf. Lk 102«, Kev 3^ 13« 17^ 20i= 21^'). The difficulty in such a mechanical basis of judgment was to some degree mitigated by the introduction of some- thing apiiroaching the later doctrine of super- erogation, by which the merit of the patriarchs could be transferred to the Jews. This particular doctrine, however, it is difficult to trace distinctly in the days of Jesus, although later tlie transfer of merits from I lie p.il 1 i.inlis is disliiiclly recognized. From tlii-i iilr.'i ui III.' :i--,izi', in wliich sentences were f(iriii:ill\ i.;i-:-r,l l,y tin' juJ-r, ;uose the two opposing iiiiMTiils (.1 < .m.lriiiiKiliuii .-md acquittal. These two concepts are the two foci of much of the NT teaching concerning the outcome of conduct.