RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Interim Interpolations
death and the second coming of Christ all souls are in a dreamless sleep (thus oblivious of the lapse of time and without moral change) from which they are simultaneously awakened for the judgment. This view was opposed in the early Church (cf. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. VI., xxxvii.). Calvin wrote in refutation of it Psychopannychia (1534), directed against the Anabaptists. Richard Whately presented it with great force and sympathy as an alternative belief, in his work On the Future State (London, 1829). It is an article of faith among the several branches of Adventists (q.v.). (6) Preservation of the spiritual element of both the saved and the unsaved during the middle state, when by a creative act of God soul and body are reunited before the judgment. This element of the personality exists in various degrees of consciousness, knowledge, and enjoyment, some sleeping, some learning, some as demons on earth, some imprisoned in the abyss or suffering in Hades for life's sins, some being evangelized. In the interval between death and the resurrection the Gospel may be accepted or finally refused by those who have not known it here below (Edward White, Life in Christ, chap, xxi., London, 1878). (7) A relatively bodiless condition in which the pious dead are in a state of privation, to be described as inwardness and spirituality and progressive development, of deepest retirement, and of withdrawal into self, and at the same time of communion with Christ (cf. H. L. Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, § 276, Edinburgh, 1866; J. J. van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, § cxlii., London, 1870; I. A. Dorner, System of Christian Doctrine, iv. 212, Edinburgh, 1880-82). (8) As to the unbelieving dead, who have not decisively rejected the Gospel, the intermediate state opens the door of repentance and spiritual life (see Eschatology; Probation, Future).
C. A. Beckwith. Bibliography: The literature of the subject is well covered under Eschatology; Hades; and Probation, Future (qq.v.). Consult further: V. U. Maywhalen, The Intermediate State, London, 1856; H. M. Luckock, The Intermediate State between Death and Judgment, ib., 1890; T. H. Stockwell, editor, Our Dead: Where are They? A Symposium, ib., 1890; A. Williamson, The Intermediate State, ib., 1891; G. S. Barrett, The Intermediate State; the Last Things, ib., 1896; C. H. H. Wright, Intermediate State and Prayers for the Dead, ib. 1900; G. T. Fechner, Little Book of Life after Death, Boston, 1904; S. C. Gayford, Life after Death, chaps, ii.-iii., Milwaukee, 1909.
INTERPOLATIONS IN THE NEW TESTA- MENT: In its rigorous sense, an interpolation is an insertion in a text or document with the object of obtaining backing or authority for the interpolator's opinion or project. This is the ordinary dictionary sense of the group of words, " interpolation, interpolate, interpolator." Definition. This is also the meaning assigned to the word by legal usage, according to which an interpolation is an insertion within a will or deed, or a molding of its text to an end distinct from the original end and aim of the text itself. The same sense is assigned to the word by diplomacy, where an interpolation is a tampering with the text of a public document by one party to it, in order to gain an advantage over the other party. Thus " interpolation " seems to imply, first, a fixed text and,
secondly, a conscious or deliberate purpose to alter or twist the meaning and intention of a text, the interpolator's aim being to slip his meaning under cover of a mind having greater authority or higher standing than his own, so securing for his own opinion or judgment a market-value above its intrinsic worth. For example, a Christian student of the second century inserted in the text of Josephus (Ant. XVIII. , iii. 3) the well-known passage regarding Jesus. His object was to make Josephus a witness to Christ. This is an interpolation in the rigorous sense.
It is doubtful, however, whether the word in this sense can be safely and correctly applied to any part of the field of text-variation in the New Testament. At least, if used at all, it Strict Sense must be used with caution. The con- Inapplic- ditions of thought have materially alable to New tered since the word came into use. Testament. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when for the first time Christians began to be seriously disturbed by textvariation (the life and work of Brian Walton and of Johann Albrecht Bengel [q.v.] yield examples), the standing view of the New Testament has regarded it as an inerrant book or collection of books written by inspired individuals. This conception seemed to involve a belief that the text, once for all delivered in apostolic autographs, should have been closed against change. It was this conception which gave rise to the furious controversies in England (nineteenth century) over the " three witnesses " passage (I John v. 7). Both the conservative and the anticonservative forces of Christendom gave the idea of interpolation great vogue. The currency of the idea depended therefore on a body of related ideas. But those ideas have been modified in order to bring them into agreement with widening and deepening knowledge of the apostolic age. Neither of the two conditions presupposed by the rigorous definition of the term interpolation can be placed within the period when the New-Testament literature was coming to the light. The conception of the inspired text as an apostolic autograph, finished, like a modern book, at the time of publication, has broken down under the pressure of historical truth. Regarding the Gospels, it is known (see Gospels) that the author of a single Gospel was quite as much corporate as individual. The text remained plastic for a considerable period. The " Gospel " was not thought of as a book, but as a living word, a spiritual climax, a majestic conviction. So long as this conception had sway, the gospel-text lay open to the formative and molding forces of the Christian consciousness. It was not till deep in the second century that this situation altogether passed away. When that happened, when the Gospel came to be thought of as a book, the text became fixed and rigid. The Church's theory of inspiration and the zeal of scholars and theologians endowed the text with powers of resistance sufficient to withstand the ceaseless tendency to mold it by interpretation.
So then the possibility of text-molding continued deep into the second century. The last twelve
Interpolations Investiture