477
ε σ,
14. Καὶ ὁ *@dvaros καὶ 6 adns ἐβλήθησαν eis τὴν λίμνην τοῦ x 1 Cor. xv. 2 δα
πυρός: xxv. 8, 4 h 4 Esd. vii [οὗτος ὁ θάνατος 7 δεύτερός ἐστιν, ἡ λίμνη τοῦ πυρός] ! 31,
+ > ε A a μα , y Cf. on 15. καὶ εἴ τις οὐχ εὑρέθη ἐν τῇ βίβλω τῆς ζωῆς yeypappevos, Luke xii. 4-5.
ἐβλήθη εἰς τὴν λίμνην τοῦ πυρός.
1ΟπΠι. ovtos ... πυρος with eight minn., Me., Arm. (Aug.), Andbav, Ῥτ., Haym. as a marginal gloss [so, 6.5., Kriiger, (Gétt. Gel. Anz., 1897, 34), von Soden, Bous- set (2), and Wellhausen (with 14a and 15)], perhaps displaced from its original posi- tion after 15, where it would suit the context (Haussleiter, 212-213), since there is
no question of the second death except for human beings.
The misplacement was
probably due to the attraction of θανατος in 14.
29) derivation of Amenthes, the Egyptian name for Hades, as ‘“‘ that which receives and gives”’. Asin Slav. En. lxv. 6 and the later Iranian Bundehesh (S. B. E. v. 123 f.), the resurrection of the body is
not mentioned, though it is probably im-~
plied (cf. En. li. 1, Ixii. 14 and Matt. xxvii. 52 f.).
Ver. 14. Death as Sin’s ally must be destroyed along with Sin, while Hades, the grim receptacle of Death’s prey (the intermediate rendezvous for the dead, except for martyrs, cf. vi. 10), naturally ceases to have any function. This was the cherished hope of early Christianity as of Judaism (Isa. xxv. 8). John’s idea of the second death is much more real- istic and severe than the Hellenic or the Philonic (cf. de Praem. et Poen. § 12, etc.)
15. In Enoch (xxxviii. 5, xviii. 9) the wicked are handed over by God to ‘the saints, before whom they burn like straw in fire and sink like lead in water. The milder spirit of the Christian pro- phet abstains from making the saints thus punish or witness the punishment of the doomed (cf. on xiv. ΙΟ). In Apoc. Pet. 25 the souls of the murdered gaze on the torture of their former persecutors, crying 6 θεὸς, δικαία σου ἡ κρίσις. These features, together with those of torturing angels (Dieterich, 60 f.) and Dantesque gradations of punishment (Dieterich,206 f.), are conspicuous by their absence from John’s Apocalypse. There is a stern simplicity about the whole de- scription, and just enough pictorial detail is given to make the passage morally suggestive. As gehenna, like paradise (4 Esd. iii. 4), was created before the world, according to rabbinic belief (Gfré- τετ, ii. 42-46), it naturally survived the collapse of the latter (ver. 11). Contrast with this passage the relentless spirit of 4 Esd. vii. 49 f. (“I will not mourn over ‘the multitude of the perishing . . . they
are set on fire and burn hotly and are quenched’’). 1 John betrays no pity for the doomed, he exhibits no callous scorn for their fate. The order of xx. 13-15 and xxi. 1 f. is the same as in the hag- gadic pseudo-Philonic De Brblic. Anti- quitatibus (after 70 A.D.) where the judg- ment (‘“reddet infernus debitum suum et perditio restituet paratecen suam, ut reddam unicuique secundum opera sua”) is followed by the renewal of all things (‘‘et exstinguetur mors et infernus claudet os suum... et erit terra alia et caelum aliud habitaculum sempi- ternum’”’).
So much for thedoomed. ‘The bliss of Saints occupies the closing vision (xxi.- xxii. 5). From the smoke and pain and heat it is a relief to pass into the clear, clean atmosphere of the eternal morning where the breath of heaven is sweet and the vast city of God sparkles like a dia- mond in the radiance of his presence. The dominant idea of the passage is that surroundings must be in keeping with character and prospects; consequently, as the old universe has been hopes lessly sullied by sin, a new order of things must be formed, once the old scene of trial and failure is swept aside. This hope of the post-exilic Judaism (cf. Isa. Ixv. 17, Ixvi. 22) was originally de rived from the Persian religion, in which the renovation of the universe was a cardinal tenet; it is strongly developed in Enoch (xci. 16, civ. 2, new heaven only) and 4 Esd. iv. 27 f. (‘*if the place where the evil is sown pass not away, there cannot come the field where the good is sown”). The expectation (cf. on Rom. viii. 28 f.) that the loss sus- tained at the fat! of Adam would now be made good, is haidly the same as thi eschatological transformation; the lattes prevailed whenever the stern exigencies of the age seemed to demand a clean sweep of the universe, and the area