Outside the OT in the apocalyptic literature we have to look for the further progress of this con- ception. The gradual moral and physical trans- formation of the world that we have noticed as an adopted feature in Isaiah appears again, during the 2nd cent. B.C., in Jub. i. 29 (above); also in iv. 26: 'ami Mount Zion (which) will be sanctified in the new creation for a sanctification of the earth ; through it will the earth be sanctified from all (its) guilt and its uncleanness throughout the generations of the world ' ; ' And the days shall begin to grow many and increase amongst those children of men till their days draw nigh to one thousand years, and to a greater number of years than (before) was the number of the days' (xxiii. 27) ; and once more in Test. Levi, xviii. 9 : ' In his [the Messiah's] priesthood shall sin come to an end, and the lawless shall cease to do evil.' It was
during the stern days of the Maccabees that the change began to make itself felt with regard to the inappropriateness of the present world as the scene of klie future Kingdom. The first trace of it meets us in 1 En. Ixxxiii.-xc, which diaries dates before 161 B.C. (cf. K. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch, Oxford, 1912, Introd., p. lii). Here the centre of the Kingdom is no longer the earthly Jerusalem, but the New Jerusalem brought down from heaven (cf. 1 En. xc. 28, 29, supra). A puri- fied city is not enough ; a new and heavenly city must take the place of the old and earthly city as the metropolis of the world-wide Messianic Kingdom. It is to be noted that this portion of tlie Book of Enoch is dated very shortly after the Book of Daniel and not long after 1 Enoch vi.-xxxvi., in neither of wliicli does the New Jerusalem yet appear. The implication in the new idea, however, was not logically carried out until during the 1st cent. B.C. There is mention in 1 En. xci. 16 of a new heaven but not of a new earth, but it is in 1 En. xxxvii.-lxxi. (94-64 B.C.) that we have for the first time the conception of a new heaven and a new earth consistently set forth. In 1 En. xlv. 4, 5 the idea is accepted in its entire significance implying the immortal blessedness of man : ' And I >\ ill cause Mine elect ones to dwell upon it : but the sinners and evil-doers shall not set foot thereon ' (cf. Is 65'°, where rather illogi- cally the wicked still live on the new earth). The author of the Parables [i.e. 1 En. xxxvii.-lxxi.) stands apart from his contemporaries in this new conception of the scene of the Messianic Kingdom and also apart from the writers of the 1st cent. A.D., with regard to the duration of the King- dom ; for while most other writers left behind the OT idea of an everlasting Kingdom and expected only a temporary one on the present earth, he holds to the eternal duration of the Kingdom, contributing the new and fruitful con- ception of a new heaven and a new earth as the scene of it. It is here, therefore, in the apocalyptic literature that we find the immediate source of the Christian hope of a new heaven and a new earth which meets us in the NT. During the first seven decades of the 1st cent. A.D., i.e. up to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, the prevalent thought was that of a temporary Alessianic Kingdom with the earth as its scene, described sometimes in a very materialistic fashion, as in S Bar. xxix. 5 : 'The earth also shall yield its fruit ten thousandfold and on each vine there shall be a thousand branches, and each branch will produce a thousand clusters, and each cluster will produce a thousand grapes, and each grape will produce a cor of wine.' The spiritual change too in the members of the Kingdom seems to be wrought in a mechanical fashion, for sin disappears suddenly rather by Divine fiat than by any gradual process, in striking contrast to what we saw in Jubilees, Isaiah, and The Testaments of the Twelve Patri- archs. The duration of the temporaiy Kingdom appears in 4 Ezr. vii. 28, 29 as 400 j-ears, but in S En. xxxii., xxxiii. as 1,000 years, to which the Christian view of the Millennium owes its origin. Even the thought of a temporary Messianic Kingdom is at times given up, especially after the destruction of Jerusalem, for the present earth is wholly unfit for the advent of the Messiah ; a renewal of the world is felt to be necessary — a renewal that will be everlasting and incorruptible (cf. 4 Ezr. vii. 75). It is in these last decades of the 1st cent. A.D., after the earthly Jerusalem has gone, that the thought of the New Jerusalem re- appears as the centre of the renewed world to which all hopes are turned, and here we encounter the writings of the NT, which contain that sub- limest of descriptions of the New Jerusalem in the
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NEW JERUSALEM
NEW JERUSALEM
Christian Apocalypse. Tlie conception of the Millennium, or the reign of Cliiist fur a thousand years on the present earth, with Jerusalem as the metropolis of this temporary ICinjjiloni, occurs onl^' in the Apocalypse (cf. Rev 20'' "), no place heing found for it elsewhere in the NT. It is a concep- tion with an exclusively Jewish hasis, hut one that opens the way for the idea of a new era of blessed- ness, not on the present earth but in a renewed world ; at the close of the Millennium the present order of things passes away — ' And I saw a j^reat white throne, and him that sat upon it, from whose face the earth and the heaven tied away ; and there was found no pl.ace for them' (Kev 20"); 'And I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away' (21 '). This is the scene of the final consummation, and the centre of it is no more the earthly .Jerusalem or a purified Jerusalem, but the New Jerusalem that comes down from heaven — from God Himself (v.-). It is the same city that the author of Hebrews, writing some time before the author of the Apocalypse, has in mind when he refers to Abraham, who 'looked for the city which hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God' (He 11'°); it is 'the heavenly Jerusalem' (12-2), ^]^^ centre of that Kingdom ' that cannot be shaken,' for ' yet once more will I make to tremble not the earth only, but also the heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those tilings that are shaken, as of things that have been made, tliat those things which are not shaken may remain ' (12-""™). Even earlier in the century St. Paul has the same thought, not yet, however, developed, of the new city, ' the Jerusalem that is above ' (Gal 4-"), and the same idea is present when he s.ays, ' Our citizenship is in heaven ' (Ph 3-°).