The word ‘resuscitate,’ ‘auferstehen,’ ‘réssusciter,’ does not exist either in the Greek or in the Hebrew languages, any more than did the idea itself, which the word implies. In order to express the idea of resurrection in Greek or in Hebrew, a periphrasis must be made use of – either ‘he rose from the dead,’ or ‘he awoke from the dead.’ It is thus in Matt. 14:2, where we read that Herod supposed that John the Baptist had risen from the dead; the expression is, ‘woke up from the dead.’ We find the same in the gospel according to St. Luke 16:31, in the parable of Lazarus. Christ says that even if a man rose from the dead they would not believe him. We again find, in this text, the words ‘risen from the dead.’ In the texts where the words ‘to rise’ or ‘to wake up,’ are used without the addition of the words ‘from the dead,’ they never did signify, and never can be supposed to signify, ‘resurrection.’ When Christ speaks of Himself in the above-mentioned passages, which are considered as proofs that He foretold His resurrection, He never once appends the words, ‘from the dead’.
Our idea of resurrection is so far from the Hebrews’ ideas of life that we cannot even imagine Christ could have spoken to them of resurrection and of an eternal, individual life common to all men. The idea of a future individual life has not been transmitted to us, either through the teaching of the Hebrews or through the doctrine of Christ. It made its way into the teaching of the Church from a very different source. Strange as it may sound, it must be confessed that a belief in a future individual life is the lowest and grossest conception, based only on a confusion of sleep with death, which is common to all barbarous nations. The teaching of the Hebrews, however, stood immeasurably higher than that conception.
We feel so convinced that this superstition is a very exalted one that we very seriously allege, as a proof of the superiority of our doctrine over all others, the fact that we uphold that superstition, while others, as for instance, the Chinese and the Hindus, do not. This is maintained, not only by theologians, but also by free-thinking learned historians of religion such as Tille, Max Müller, and others. Classifying the various religions, they assert that the religions that keep to that superstition are superior to those that do not. The free-thinker, Schoppenhauer, calls the Hebrew religion the most contemptible (niederträchstigste) of all, because it contains no idea (keine idee) of the immortality of the soul. And, indeed, in the Hebrew religion, neither the meaning nor the word expressive of it exists. Eternal life in the Hebrew language is ‘haieoïlom.’ The word ‘oïlom’ signifies, ‘endless, immutable.’
‘Oïlom’ likewise signifies ‘world’ – cosmos. Life in general, and especially eternal life, haieoïlom is, according to the Hebrews, proper to God alone. God is the God of life – the living God. Man, according to the Hebrew belief, is always mortal. God alone lives forever. In the five books of Moses we find the words ‘eternal life’ used twice. Once in Deuteronomy 32:39-40, God says, ‘See now that I am I, and there is no other God but Me. I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal, neither is there any who can be delivered from Me. I lift up my hand to heaven and say, I live for ever.’ In the book of Genesis 3:22, God says, ‘Behold, the man has eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and has become like one of us; and now, he might put forth his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.’ These are the only two cases in which the words ‘eternal life’ are used in the Old Testament – excepting one chapter of the apocryphal book of Daniel – and they clearly define the idea the Hebrews had both of life in general and of eternal life. Life itself, according to Jewish belief, is eternal, and it is such in God; man is always mortal – such is his nature.
The Old Testament does not tell us, as our Bible histories do, that God breathed an immortal soul into man, nor that the first man was immortal until he sinned. According to the Book of Genesis (1:26), God created man, as He did all other living creatures, male and female, and commanded them to increase and multiply. God spoke of man just as he spoke of beast. In the second chapter it is said that man learned to ‘know good and evil.’ But we are told too, that God ‘drove man out of Eden, and barred his way to the tree of life.’ Thus man did not eat of the fruit of the tree of life, and thus he did not attain the haieoïlom, i.e., eternal life, but remained mortal.
According to Jewish doctrine, man is mortal. Life for him is but a life that continues in the people, from generation to generation. Only the people, according to Jewish doctrine, can live. When God says you shall live and not die, he speaks to the people. The life breathed by God into man is but a mortal life for each individually, but it continues from generation to generation if men fulfill their covenant with God, if they keep the conditions laid down by God.
After expounding the laws, and declaring that these laws were not in heaven, but in their own hearts, Moses says (Deut. 30:15), ‘See, I now set before you life and good, death and evil, exhorting you to love God and walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, that you may live.’ And verse 19: ‘I call heaven and earth to record against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving God, obeying Him and cleaving to Him; for He is your life and the length of your days.’
The principal difference between our idea of human life and that of the Hebrews is that, according to us, our mortal life – which passes on from generation to generation – is not the true life, but a fallen one, a temporary corrupt life; while, according to the Hebrews this life is the true one, it is the highest blessing given to man, and given to him on the condition that he fulfills the will of God. From our point of view, the transition of that fallen life from generation to generation is the continuation of the curse. From the Hebrew point of view it is the highest blessing man can attain, and he attains it by fulfilling the will of God.
It is on this idea of life that Christ bases his doctrine concerning the true or eternal life, which He opposes to mortal, individual life. ‘Search the Scriptures,’ Christ says to the Hebrews (John 5:39), ‘for in them you think you have eternal life.’
A young man asks Christ (Matt. 19) what he should do to have eternal life. In answer to his question Christ says, ‘If you will enter into life’ (He does not say life eternal, but ‘life’), ‘keep the commandments.’ He says the same to the lawyers, ‘Do this, and you shall live’ (Luke 10:28); and again He says ‘live’ without adding ‘eternally.’ In both these cases Christ defines what each man should understand by the words ‘eternal life.’ In using these words He says to the Hebrews what is more than once said in their law, that fulfilling the will of God is eternal life.
Christ contrasts a temporary, personal, individual life with the eternal life, which, according to Deuteronomy, God promised to Israel, with the only difference that, according to the Hebrews, eternal life was to continue only among the chosen people of Israel, and that it was necessary, in order to attain that life, to keep the laws given by God exclusively to Israel; but, according to the doctrine of Christ, eternal life continues in the son of man, and, in order to keep it, it is necessary to fulfill the laws of Christ, which teach what the will of God is for all mankind.
It is not a life beyond the grave that Christ contrasts with individual life, but a life bound up with the present, past, and future of all mankind – the life of the ‘son of man.’
Individual life was redeemed from perdition, according to the Hebrews, only by fulfilling the will of God, expressed in the commandments given by God to Moses. It was only thus that life was not destroyed, but was to pass from generation to generation, among the chosen people of God. Individual life is saved from perdition, according to the doctrine of Christ, likewise by fulfilling the will of God, expressed in the commandments of Christ.
It is only thus that individual life does not perish, but becomes eternal in the son of man. The only difference between the two doctrines is that, according to Moses, serving God meant the serving
