Its hopes. shall be gathered together for punishment, where the Judgment shall be pronounced, and the just shall be severed from the bad. Until that Judgment, there is some deeper pit of fire, in which the fallen angels were to be imprisoned, reaching by subterranean channels down to the deep Dead Sea, from time to time, as it was believed, vomiting forth columns of sulphureous smoke.' And thence the seer 2 wandered on towards those eastern hills which close the horizon beyond the Jordan valley, and looked into the wild woodlands and far-reaching desert of Arabia, and his view was lost in the mountains of myrrh and frankincense and trees of all manner of foliage in some blessed land far away, overhanging the Erythræan sea. The Judgment itself is described more clearly than ever before. The Ancient of Days, more especially in this book called by the affecting name of the Lord of spirits;' convenes all the race of mankind before Him, and by His side is 'the 'Chosen,' 3 'the Son of Man,' 'whose name was known to Him 'before the birth of the sun, or of the stars; and with the severer images of Judgment are combined those figures of an inexhaustible goodness which are soon to receive an application that shall be immortal. There is near him a spring of righteousness which never fails, and round it are springs of wisdom; and all that are thirsty drink of these springs, and become full of wisdom and have their habitations with 'the righteous, the chosen, and the holy.' It is the first distinct intimation of a Deliverer who shall appear with the mingled attributes of gentleness and power, not, as in the older prophets, reigning over Israel, but as taking part in the universal judgment of mankind.3 1 Dillmann, 132. Probably Cal- lirhoë. 2 Enoch xxviii. xxix. See note at the end of Lecture XLVIII. Enoch xlvi.-xlviii. 5 There is a doubt whether the 'similitudes' which contain this re From these and like figures was furnished forth the imagery from which four at least of the Books of the Christian Scriptures have largely drawn; and one, the Epistle of St. Jude, by direct quotation of a splendid passage which is not unworthy of the impressive context to which it is transferred. Nor was there wanting a keen glance of historical insight. As in the vision of Milton's Adam, the Patriarch surveys, under the figure of a wandering flock, the fortunes of the Chosen People, down to the last trials, thinly veiled, of the contemporary Asmonean princes. 2 Yet, perhaps, even more remarkable than these germs of the religious doctrine of the last age of Judaism and the first age of Christianity are the emphatic reiterated statements in which, as the Father of Science, Enoch is led through all the Its science. spheres of the universe and taught to observe the regularity, the uniformity 3 of the laws of nature which, indeed, had not altogether escaped the older Psalmists and Prophets, but which had never before been set forth with an earnestness so exuberant and so impassioned. Had Western Christendom followed the example of the Ethiopic Church, and placed the Book of Enoch in its Canon, many a modern philosopher would have taken refuge under its authority from the attacks of ignorant alarmists, many an enlightened theologian would have drawn from its innocent speculations cogent arguments to reconcile religion and science. The physics may be childish, the conclusions erroneous. But not even in the Book of Job is the eager curiosity into all the secrets of nature more boldly encouraged, nor is there any ancient book, Gentile or Jewish, inspired by a more direct and conscious effort to resolve the whole system of the uni presentation are not of a later date (Colani, Les Espérances Messianiques, 334). But Ewald (v. 360) leaves them in this period, as well as the whole of the 3rd Sibylline Book. 5; 11 Pet. iii. 19, 20; 2 Pet. ii. 4, ? Enoch lxxxix.-xci, Enoch i. xvii.-xxxvi. xli. lvii. lviii. lxv.-lxviii. lxxi.-lxxxi. The rise of religious parties. The verse, moral, intellectual, and physical, into a unity of government, and idea, and development. II. But there was a phenomenon more certainly connected with this epoch than these doubtful tales or predictions —a phenomenon of the most fatal importance for the history of Palestine, and also of the most universal significance for the history of the coming Church. It was the appearance of religious parties and of party-spirit under the name of Pharisee, Sadducee, and Essene, first appearing under Jonathan, developed under John Hyrcanus,' leading to fierce civil war under Alexander Jannæus, and playing the chief part in the tremendous drama which marks the consummation of this period. Of the origin of the first of these three famous names there can be no doubt. The idea which had never been altogether absent from the Jewish nation, and which its peculiar local situation had fortified and justified, of a people' 'dwelling alone;' which had taken new force and fire under the stern reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah; which sprang into preternatural vigour in the Maccabæan struggle, had now reached that point at which lofty aspirations petrify into hard dogmatic form, at which patriots become partisans and saints are turned into fanatics, and the holiest names are perverted into by-words and catch-words. There was one designation of this tendency which had preceded that of Pharisee,' in the time of Judas Maccabæus, and which already showed at once the strength and the weakness of the cause. It was that of the Chasidim or, as in the Greek translation, Assideans, 'the Pious.' It was they who furnished the nucleus of the insurgents under Mattathias; it was they whose obstinate foolhardiness vexed the great soul, whose narrow selfishness cost the life, of Judas. With him all notice of the party passes from sight, but to reappear under his descendants in the Pharisee' or 'Separatist-the school or section of the 1 Jos. Ant. xiii. 5. 2 Num. xxiii. 9. 6 nation, which sometimes seemed almost to absorb the nation itself, and which placed its whole pride and privilege in its isolation from intercourse with the Gentile world. The name of Pharisee, which has acquired so sinister a sound to modern Christian ears, has been bandied to and fro by various parties to describe the characteristics of their opponents. Sometimes, as in the mouth of Milton, it has been applied 'to the scarlet Prelates, insolent to maintain traditions.' Sometimes, as with a playful critic amongst our modern poets, it has been applied to our British Dissenters.' In these contradictory comparisons there is a common element of truth in regard to the rigid separation from the outside world and the claims to superior sanctity, which have sometimes marked alike the pretensions of the hierarchy and of Puritanism. It may also be said that in their constant antagonism to the established priesthood and government of Palestine, the Pharisees, whilst Conformists' to every particular of the law, were 'Nonconformists' in their relation to the more moderate principles of the Asmonean dynasty.2 But these imperfect analogies fail to exhaust their position. They were more than a sect. They were emphatically the popular party, which had the ear of the Jewish public, whose statements won an easier hearing than was granted to any words that came from the lips of King or Priest. They were the true children3 of the age.' They were 'the religious ' world.' It was a matter both of principle and policy to multiply the external signs by which they were distinguished from the Gentile world or from those of their own countrymen who approached towards it. They styled themselves the sages' or 'the associates.' 6 6 Tassels on their dress; scrolls and small leather boxes fastened on forehead, head, and neck, inscribed with texts of the law; long prayers offered as they stood in public places; rigorous The oral tradition. abstinence; constant immersions; these were the sacramental badges by which they hedged themselves round. And in order to clothe these and all like peculiarities of practice and doctrine with a divine authority, there now entered into their teaching that strange fiction of which the first appearance is in the reign of John Hyrcanus-that all such modern peculiarities as had either silently grown up or been adopted for the defence of their system were part of an oral tradition2 which had been handed down from Moses to the Great Synagogue and thence to themselves. The maintenance of this hypothesis-so entirely without foundation, but produced as the basis alike of usages the most trivial, such as the minute regulations for observing the Sabbath and the mode of killing their food, or doctrines the most sublime, though not taught in the Pentateuch, such as the immortality of the soul-would be almost unaccountable, were it not that analogous fables have been adopted in the Christian Church, with almost as little evidence. It is hardly more surprising than the belief that all the systems of Church government, Episcopates, Patriarchates, Presbyterian Synods, or Congregational Unions, were part of the original scheme of the Founder of Christianity, and handed down either by oral traditions, or by obscure intimations, and then, s in the case of the Roman Patriarchate, embodied at a later period in official documents. The growths of the two fictions illustrate each other. Each has borne on its back a medley of truth and falsehood, institutions good and bad, which have been alternately a gain and a loss to the religious systems based upon it. In each case the best wisdom is to face the intrinsic value or worthlessness of the conclusions, and not to invest the heterogeneous mixture with an equal importance such as it could only have if the ground on which it rests were as true as it is in each case palpably false. 1 Jos. Ant. xiii. 10, 5, 6. 2 See Twisleton's article on the Sadducees in Dictionary of the Bible. |