Its authors were members of the Hasidim, and their successors the Pharisees. It denounces kings and princes, meaning the Hasmonean dynasty and the Sadducees. It influenced New Testament doctrine, particularly as regards the Messiah, Sheol (hell), and demonology.
The book consists mainly of «parables,» which are more cosmic than those of the New Testament. There are visions of heaven and hell, of the Last Judgement, and so on; one is reminded of the first two Books of Paradise Lost where the literary quality is good, and of Blake Prophetic Books where it is inferior.
There is an expansion of Genesis VI, 2, 4, which is curious and Promethean. The angels taught men metallurgy, and were punished for revealing «eternal secrets.» They were also cannibals. The angels that had sinned became pagan gods, and their women became sirens; but at the last, they were punished with everlasting torments.
There are descriptions of heaven and hell which have considerable literary merit. The Last Judgement is performed by «the Son of Man, who hath righteousness» and who sits on the throne of His glory. Some of the gentiles, at the last, will repent and be forgiven; but most gentiles, and all hellenizing Jews, will suffer eternal damnation, for the righteous will pray for vengeance, and their prayer will be granted.
There is a section on astronomy, where we learn that the sun and moon have chariots driven by the wind, that the year consists of 364 days, that human sin causes the heavenly bodies to depart from their courses, and that only the virtuous can know astronomy. Falling stars are falling angels, and are punished by the seven archangels.
Next comes sacred history. Up to the Maccabees, this pursues the
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course known from the Bible in its earlier portions, and from history in the later parts. Then the author goes on into the future: the New Jerusalem, the conversion of the remnant of the gentiles, the resurrection of the righteous, and the Messiah.
There is a great deal about the punishment of sinners and the reward of the righteous, who never display an attitude of Christian forgiveness towards sinners. «What will ye do, ye sinners, and whither will ye flee on that day of judgement, when ye hear the voice of the prayer of the righteous?»»Sin has not been sent upon the earth, but man of himself has created it.» Sins are recorded in heaven. «Ye sinners shall be cursed for ever, and ye shall have no peace.» Sinners may be happy all their lives, and even in dying, but their souls descend into Sheol, where they shall suffer «darkness and chains and a burning flame.» But as for the righteous, «I and my Son will be united with them for ever.»
The last words of the book are: «To the faithful he will give faithfulness in the habitation of upright paths. And they shall see those who were born in darkness led into darkness, while the righteous shall be resplendent. And the sinners shall cry aloud and see them resplendent, and they indeed will go where days and seasons are prescribed for them.»
Jews, like Christians, thought much about sin, but few of them thought of themselves as sinners. This was, in the main, a Christian innovation, introduced by the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, and taught as a virtue in Christ’s denunciations of the Scribes and Pharisees. The Christians endeavoured to practise Christian humility; the Jews, in general, did not.
There are, however, important exceptions among orthodox Jews just before the time of Christ. Take, for instance, «The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,» written between 109 and 107 B.C. by a Pharisee who admired John Hyrcanus, a high priest of the Hasmonean dynasty. This book, in the form in which we have it, contains Christian interpolations, but these are all concerned with dogma. When they are excised, the ethical teaching remains closely similar to that of the Gospels. As the Rev. Dr. R. H. Charles says: «The Sermon on the Mount reflects in several instances the spirit and even reproduces the very phrases of our text: many passages in the Gospels exhibit traces of the same, and St. Paul seems to have used the book as a vade
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mecum» (op. cit., pp. 291-2). We find in this book such precepts as the following:
«Love ye one another from the heart; and if a man sin against thee, speak peaceably to him, and in thy soul hold not guile; and if he repent and confess, forgive him. But if he deny it, do not get into a passion with him, lest catching the poison from thee he take to swear. ing, and so then sin doubly. . . . And if he be shameless and persist in wrong-doing, even so forgive him from the heart, and leave to God the avenging.»
Dr. Charles is of opinion that Christ must have been acquainted with this passage. Again we find:
«Love the Lord and your neighbour.»
«Love the Lord through all your life, and one another with a true heart.»
«I loved the Lord; likewise also every man with all my heart.» These are to be compared with Matthew XXII, 37-39. There is a reprobation of all hatred in «The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs»; for instance:
«Anger is blindness, and does not suffer one to see the face of any man with truth.»
«Hatred, therefore, is evil; for it constantly mateth with lying.» The author of this book, as might be expected, holds that not only the Jews, but all the gentiles, will be saved.
Christians have learnt from the Gospels to think ill of Pharisees, yet the author of this book was a Pharisee, and he taught, as we have seen, those very ethical maxims which we think of as most distinctive of Christ’s preaching. The explanation, however, is not difficult. In the first place, he must have been, even in his own day, an exceptional Pharisee; the more usual doctrine was, no doubt, that of the Book of Enoch. In the second place, we know that all movements tend to ossify; who could infer the principles of Jefferson from those of the D.A.R.? In the third place, we know, as regards the Pharisees in particular, that their devotion to the Law, as the absolute and final truth, soon put an end to all fresh and living thought and feeling among them. As Dr. Charles says:
«When Pharisaism, breaking with the ancient ideals of its party, committed itself to political interests and movements, and concurrently therewith surrendered itself more and more wholly to the study
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of the letter of the Law, it soon ceased to offer scope for the development of such a lofty system of ethics as the Testaments [of the Patriarchs] attest, and so the true successors of the early Hasids and their teaching quitted Judaism and found their natural home in the bosom of primitive Christianity.»
After a period of rule by the High Priests, Mark Antony made his friend Herod King of the Jews. Herod was a gay adventurer, often on the verge of bankruptcy, accustomed to Roman society, and very far removed from Jewish piety. His wife was of the family of the High Priests, but he was an Idumæan, which alone would suffice to make him an object of suspicion to the Jews. He was a skilful timeserver, and deserted Antony promptly when it became evident that Octavius was going to be victorious. However, he made strenuous attempts to reconcile the Jews to his rule. He rebuilt the Temple, though in a hellenistic style, with rows of Corinthian pillars; but he placed over the main gate a large golden eagle, thereby infringing the second Commandment. When it was rumoured that he was dying, the Pharisees pulled down the eagle, but he, in revenge, caused a number of them to be put to death. He died in 4 B.C., and soon after his death the Romans abolished the kingship, putting Judea under a procurator. Pontius Pilate, who became procurator in A.D. 26, was tactless, and was soon retired.
In A.D. 66, the Jews, led by the party of the Zealots, rebelled against Rome. They were defeated, and Jerusalem was captured in A.D. 70. The Temple was destroyed, and few Jews were left in Judea.
The Jews of the Dispersion had become important centuries before this time. The Jews had been originally an almost wholly agricultural people, but they learnt trading from the Babylonians during the captivity. Many of them remained in Babylon after the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, and among these some were very rich. After the foundation of Alexandria, great numbers of Jews settled in that city; they had a special quarter assigned to them, not as a ghetto, but to keep them from danger of pollution by contact with gentiles. The Alexandrian Jews became much more hellenized than those of Judea, and forgot Hebrew. For this reason it became necessary to translate the Old Testament into Greek; the result was the Septuagint. The Pentateuch was translated in the middle of the third century B.C.;
