(iii. ) The more clearly the atoning value of Christ's death was realized, the more completely was He seen to be the ideal Priest foreshadowed by the Levitical priesthood. His own words would form
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ISRAEL, ISRAELITE
ISRAEL, ISRAELITE
the starting-point for this conception ; He ' laid do>\Ti' His life. He 'gave' His life as a ransom (see above). The double thought of Christ as Victim and Priest is fully worked out in Hebrews on the basis of Ps 110^
(iv.) The OT contains many passages which teach that Divine purposes are accomplished through the sufl'erings of the righteous ; and in the later chapters of the Book of Isaiah the righteous portion of the nation merges into the vision of one representative Servant of Jahweh, whose preaching was to bring the whole nation, and even Gentiles, to the light, and whose suffer- ings were to have a vicarious value. This repre- sentation does not appear to have exercised any influence on the later Jewish expectations of the Messiah. The inspired utterance of John the Baptist (Jn 1=^-^) pointed towards the truth, though his hearers do not seem to have under- stood his words. The Twelve could not realize the necessity for Christ's sufferings until He had suffered, when the great truth dawned upon them (Mt 12i8-=i, Ac 3'3- ^ 4='- »). It has been suggested that the servant (5o0\os) of Lk 14'*'- may be an allusion to the same figure of prophecy.
(/) Eschatologrj. — The Jewish and Christian Messianic beliefs were closely bound up with escha- tological teaching as a whole. In the OT the ex- pectations vith regard to a hereafter consisted mainly of the aspirations of saints who felt certain that righteousness is eternal, and that God's power and dominion are infinite. This intuitive assurance that the present life with its inequalities and anomalies cannot be the whole of life, maintained itself in some minds side by side with the popular notions held by the Hebrews in common with the Babylonian and other Semitic peoples, that Sheol was a state in which man would continue to exist, but only in a shadowy, nerveless, purposeless re- production of his present personality. In apoca- lyptic literature an advance was made to some extent. The ' last things ' began to be detailed in a great variety of forms — some of them, indeed, sensuous, and marred by narrow Jewish exclusive- ness, but others more spiritual and universal ; in some the Messianic kingdom is to be on this earth, in others in a transformed heaven and earth ; in some the enemies of Israel are punished at death in Sheol or Hades, which thus becomes equivalent to Hell, while the righteous {i.e. Israel) attain to a resurrection ; in others the resurrection is uni- versal, and a prelude to a final spiritual judgment. And Christian teaching borrowed much, both from the OT and from later Jewish writings ; but it rose to a spiritual height and certainty far beyond the former, while at the same time it discarded the gross, exaggerated, and un.spiritual elements which marred the latter. Christ's own eschatological teaching centres round the Kingdom of God. He, like the OT writers, does not discuss theoretical or speculative questions, but deals with broad moral issues. His teaching 'unfolds the course of the Divine kingdom which had been the object of OT faith and the centre of OT hope. It presents that kingdom as a thing of the actual present, brought to men in and by the Teacher Himself, but also as a thing of the future which looks through all his- torical fulfilments to a completer realization— a thing, too, of gradual, unobtrusive growth, yet des- tined to be finally established by a great conclusive event' (Hastings' Z>Bi. 750"). Our Lord, as reported by the Synoptists, gave a large place to the promise of His o%vn iteturn, an objective event, the time of which was not yet revealed even to the Son. In some passages this is closely connected with a quite distinct occurrence— the destruction of Jeru- salem (Mt 24 il Mk 13 ; cf. Mt 10=3 jg:"-, Mk 8^" 91, Lk 9^'- 2V-). Connected with the Parousia, and
the cause of it, is the Final Judgjnent, which will occur at the end of the world, a judgment of indi- viduals, and of universal scope, in which Christ the Son of Man will be Himself the Judge. The Fourth Gospel, while not without indications (cf. 12*) of this final judgment, lays stress rather on a present judgment, ' fulfilling itself in a probation of character and a self- verdict which proceed now ' (3171. i2J7f.)_ "Witij the teaching of Jesus on the Parousia and Judgment is connected the doctrine of a Eesurrection. In the OT this was not a doctrine, but a vague longing of a few great minds for a deliverance from Sheol, a life superior to death. It was only gradually and at a late date that the conception became more distinct. At first it was a re-animation of Israel as a whole, but Is 26'' seems to breathe the more individual hope ; and the clearest statement is reached in Dn 12='-, the latest OT utterance on the subject. Nowhere in the OT is a resurrection thought of as extend- ing beyond the case of Israel ; but the doctrine of a resurrection of all men was gradually evolved, and had been accepted before the Christian era by the Pharisees and the mass of the people, though rejected by the Sadducees, in accordance with their principle of rejecting all traditions and accretions later than the OT. Our Lord's teaching holds a course between the two ; it is based on the great principles of the OT, but is coloured, as to some details, by the eschatology of later writings, being at the same time free from the crudeness and ex- travagances of the popular beliefs. See Mt 2223-3^ || Mk 12'8-", Lk 20='-'» ; Mt 8", Lk IS^^'- ; Mt lO^", Lk 14", Jn 5^'- =«'■ 11-'-^.