' And the pit (Lat. " place ") of torment shall appear, and over against it sliall be the place of rest: and the furnace of hell (Lat. "Gehenna") shall be shewed, and over against it the paradise of delight. And there shall the Most High sav to the nations that are raised from the dead, See ye and understand whom ye have denied, or whom ye have not served, or whose commandments ye have despised. Look on this side and on that : here is delight and rest, and there fire and torments.'
In Ass. Mos. X. 10 occurs the passage : ' And thou wilt look from on high and see thine enemies in
Gehenna, and thou wilt recognize them and rejoice, and thou
wilt give thanks and confess thy Creator.'
Very similar passages are found in the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, chs. x., xl., and xli.
This idea is even more clearly set forth in the Apocalypse of Peter, and forms the beginning of the famous passage in which is set forth the punishment of sinners, in the manner that to later ages is most familiar in the pages of Dante, where the forms of torment bear an appropriate relation to the sins committed. The i)assage begins at § 20, and follows immediately on the description of Heaven, with these words :
'And I saw another place over against that, very dark : and it was the place of punishment : and those wlio were punished there and the punishing angels had a dark raiment like the air of the place. And some were there hanging bv the tongue: these were those who blasphemed the way of rii,^hteousness, and under them was fire burning and punishing tiiem. And there was a great lake, full of flaming mire, in which were certain men who had perverted righteousness, and tormenting angels afflicted them.'
In these verses we trace the similarity to ideas and figures we have already discovered in the Apoc. of John and elsewhere, but the further descriptions of this Inferno borrow elements from Greek and other sources, and are consideraljjy more extra- vagant than anything within the limits of the 1st century. It may, however, be only a development of tlie conceptions found in such 2nd cent, docu- ments as Jude and 2 Peter.
(/) Josephus. — An interesting Avitness to con- temporary Jewish thought in the 1st cent, is
Josephus, wlio has two references to the belief of the Pharisees in the matter of future punishment. In Ant. XVIII. i. 3 we read :
'Thej' alpn bslieve that souls have an immortal vigour in them, and ha under the earth there will be rewards or punish- ments, acci rd ng as they have lived virtuously or viciously in this life ; ai d the latter are to be detained iii an everlasting prison, but tnat the former shall have ijower to revive and live again.' Again in BJ ll. viii. 14, quoting the doctrine of the Pharisees, he claims their view to be ' that the souls o£ bad men are subject to eternal punishment.'
{g) Testament of Abraham and Pistis Sophia. — Before our survey of the literature closes, note must be taken of tM'O striking and somewhat fantastic conceptions contained in two works, which probably set forth, among their obviously later material, elements of an earlier tradition. The first is found in the Testament of Abraham, which may date in its origin from the 2nd cent, of our era, and doubtless some of its contents are from a much earlier period. In its present foi'm it appears to issue from a Jewish -Christian source, and its place of origin seems to be Egypt. Ele- ments of Egyptian thought enter into its literary form, among the most striking of which is the idea of the weighing of souls— a scene that often occurs on the Egyjjtian pagan monuments. The trial of souls is tihreefold — once before Abel, at a later time by the twelve tribes of Israel, and finally by the Lord Himself. Abraham is permitted to wit- ness the procedure of judgment, and he finds two angels seated at a table. The one on the right hand records the good deeds, and the one on the left tiie evil deeds of the soul to be tested. In front of the table stands an angel with a balance on which the souls are weighed, while another has a trumpet having within it all-consuming fire whereby the souls are tried. These more elaborate and somewhat mechanical methods form a link Avith the imagery of medi.'evalism, but also prove the manner in which Christianity was proceeding along eclectic lines, and taking to itself ideas and figures from other religions.
In the curious work known as the Pistis Sophia, probably of Valentinian, and certainly of Gnostic origin, we have a bizarre conception of the place of punishment — descril)ed as 'the outer darkness.' It is presented in the form of a huge dragon with its tail in its mouth, the circle thus formed en- girdling the Avhole earth. Within the monster are the regions of punishment — 'for there are in it twelve dungeons of horrible torment.' Each dungeon is governed by a monster-like ruler, and in tliese are punished the worst of sinners, e.g. sorcerers, blasphemers, murderers, the unclean, and those who remain in the doctrines of error. To express the awfulness of the torture, it is said that the fire of the under world is nine times hotter than that of earthly furnaces ; the fire of the great chaos nine times hotter than that of the under world ; the fire of the ' rulers ' nine times hotter than that of the great chaos ; but the fire of the dragon is seventy times more intense in its lieat than that of the 'rulers' ! In 3 Baruch, iv. and V. there is the mention of a dragon in close connexion Avith Hades, and in the latter chapter Hades is said to be his belly (cf. Hughes' notes on the passage in Charles' A2')oc. and Pseudcpirj.). We are at least reminded by such passages of the Jonah legend, and it may well be that beliind all three is a common origin. The dragon is obviously an old Semitic myth, and this particular form of it probably gives fresh significance to the Avords in Rev 20-: ' tiie dragon, the old serpent, Avhich is the Devil and Satan.'