merit. (3) The Book of the Dead—a guide-book for the departed on his long journey in the unseen world to the abode of the Eastern Religions. blessed—shows the attention the Egyptian religion gave to the state of the dead. (4) Although the Babylonian religion presents a very gloomy view of the world of the dead, it is not without a few faint glimpses of a hope that a few mortals at least may gain deliverance from the dread doom. (5) A characteristic feature of Indian thought is the transmigration of the soul from one mode of life to another, the physical condition of each being determined by the moral and religious character of the preceding. But deliverance from this cycle of existences, which is conceived as misery, is promised by means of speculation and asceticism. Denying the continuance of the soul, Buddhism affirmed a continuity of moral consequences (Karma), each successive life being determined by the total moral result of the preceding life. Its doctrine of salvation was a guide to, if not absolute non-existence, yet cessation of all consciousness of existence (Nirvana). Later Buddhism has, however, a doctrine of many heavens and hells. (6) In Zoroastrianism not only was continuance of life recognized, but a strict retribution was taught. Heaven and hell were very clearly distinguished, and each soul according to its works passed to the one or to the other. But this faith did not concern itself only with the future lot of the individual soul. It was also interested in the close of the world’s history, and taught a decisive, final victory of Ormuzd over Ahriman, of the forces of good over the forces of evil. It is not at all improbable that Jewish eschatology in its later developments was powerfully influenced by the Persian faith. (7) Mahommedanism reproduces and exaggerates the lower features of popular Jewish and Christian eschatology (see the separate articles on these religions).
In the Old Testament we can trace the gradual development of an ever more definite doctrine of “the final condition of man and the world.” This is regarded as the last stage in a moral process, a redemptive purpose of God. The eschatology of the Old Testament is thus closely Old Testament. connected with, but not limited by, Messianic hope, as there are eschatological teachings that are not Messianic. As the Old Testament revelation is concerned primarily with the elect nation, and only secondarily (in the later writings) with the individual persons composing it, we follow the order of importance as well as of time in dealing first with the people. The universalism which marks the promise to the seed of the woman (Gen. iii. 15) appears also in the blessing of Noah (ix. 25). In the promise to Abraham (xii. 3) this universal good is directly related to God’s particular purpose for His chosen people; so also in the blessing of Jacob (xlix.) and of Moses (Deut. xxxiii.). David’s last words (2 Sam. xxiii.) blend together his desire that his family should retain the kingship, and his aspiration for a kingdom of righteousness on earth. The conception of the “Day of the Lord” is frequent and prominent in the prophets, and the sense given to the phrase by the people and by the prophets throws into bold relief the contrast between popular beliefs and the prophetic faith. The people simply expected deliverance from their miseries and burdens by the intervention of Yahweh, because He had chosen Israel for His people. The prophets had an ethical conception of Yahweh; the sin of His own people and of other nations called for His intervention in judgment as the moral ruler of the world. But judgment they conceived as preparing for redemption. The day of the Lord is always an eschatological conception, as the term is applied to the final and universal judgment, and not to any less decisive intervention of God in the course of human history. In the pre-exilic prophets the judgment of God is “primarily on Israel, although it also embraces the nations”; during the Exile and at the Restoration the judgment is represented as falling on the nations while redemption is being wrought for God’s people; after the Restoration the people of God is again threatened, but still the warning of judgment is mainly directed towards the nations and deliverance is promised to Israel. As the manifestation of God in grace as well as judgment, the day of the Lord will bring joy to Israel and even to the world. As a day of judgment it is accompanied by terrible convulsions of nature (not to be taken figuratively, but probably intended literally by the prophets in accordance with their view of the absolute subordination of nature to the divine purpose for man). It ushers in the Messianic age. While the moral issues are finally determined by this day, yet the world of the Messianic age is painted with the colours of the prophet’s own surroundings. Israel is restored to its own land, and to it the other nations are brought into subjugation, by force or persuasion. The contributions of the Old Testament to Christian eschatology embrace these features: “(1) The manifestation or advent of God; (2) the universal judgment; (3) behind the judgment the coming of the perfect kingdom of the Lord, when all Israel shall be saved and when the nations shall be partakers of their salvation; and (4) the finality and eternity of this condition, that which constitutes the blessedness of the saved people being the Presence of God in the midst of them—this last point corresponding to the Christian idea of heaven” (A. B. Davidson, in Hastings’s Bible Dictionary, i. p. 738). This hope is for the people on this earth though transfigured.
To the individual it would seem at first only old age is promised (Is. lxv. 20; Zech. viii. 4), but the abolition of death itself is also declared (Is. xxv. 8). The resurrection, which appears at first as a revival of the dead nation (Hos. vi. 2; Ez. xxxvii. 12–14), is afterwards promised for the pious individuals (Is. xxvi. 19), so that they too may share in the national restoration. Only in Daniel xii. 2 is taught a resurrection of the wicked “to shame and everlasting contempt” as well as of the righteous to “everlasting life.” It was only at the Exile, when the nation ceased to be, that the worth of the individual came to be recognized, and the hopes given to the nation were claimed for the individual. In dealing with the individual eschatology we must carefully distinguish the popular ideas regarding death and the hereafter which Israel shared with the other Semitic peoples, from the intuitions, inferences, aspirations evoked in the pious by the divine revelation itself. The former have not the moral significance or the religious value of the latter. The starting-point of the development was the common belief that the dead continued to exist in an unsubstantial mode of life, but cut off from fellowship with God and man; but faith left this far behind. Sheol is the common abode of the righteous and the ungodly: life there is shadowy and feeble, but seems to continue in a wavering and dim reflection features of this life. As the present life is, however, determined by moral issues, and as death does not change man’s relation to God, moral considerations could not be absolutely excluded from the future life. A forward step had to be taken. Pious men, in fellowship with God, when they faced the fact of death, were led either to challenge its right, or to give a new meaning to it. Either there was a protest against death itself, and a demand for immortality (Ps. xvi. 9-11), or death was conceived as something different for the saint and for the sinner; fellowship with God would not and could not be interrupted (Ps. xlix. 14, 15, lxxiii. 17-28). The vision of God is anticipated after death’s sleep (Ps. xvii. 15; Job xix. 25-27). This belief in individual immortality is expressed poetically and obscurely: it is later than the eschatology of the people. It assumes the moral distinction of the righteous and the ungodly, and seeks a solution for the problem of the lack of harmony of present character and condition. Its deepest motive, however, is religious. The soul once in fellowship with God cannot even by death be separated from God. The individual hoped that he would live to share the nation’s good, and thus the two streams of Old Testament eschatology at last flow together.
It is in the apocryphal and apocalyptic literature of Judaism that the fullest development of eschatology can be traced. Four words may serve to express the difference of the doctrine of these writings and the teaching of the Old Testament. Eschatology was universalized (God was Apocryphal and Apocalyptic books. recognized as the creator and moral governor of all the world), individualized (God’s judgment was directed, not to nations in a future age, but to individuals in a future life),
