Judaism

CHAPTER VII

ES­CHA­TOL­OGY

That the soul has a life of its own af­ter death was a firm­ly fixed idea in Ju­daism, though, ex­cept in the works of philoso­phers and in the lib­er­al the­ol­ogy of mod­ern Ju­daism, the gross­er con­cep­tion of a bod­ily Res­ur­rec­tion was pre­dom­inant over the pure­ly spir­itu­al idea of Im­mor­tal­ity. Cu­ri­ous­ly enough, Mai­monides, who for­mu­lat­ed the be­lief in Res­ur­rec­tion as a dog­ma of the Syn­agogue, him­self held that the world to come is al­to­geth­er free from ma­te­ri­al fac­tors. At a much ear­li­er pe­ri­od (in the third cen­tu­ry) Rab had said (Ber. 17 a): ‘Not as this world is the world to come. In the world to come there is no eat­ing or drink­ing, no sex­ual in­ter­course, no barter, no en­vy, ha­tred, or con­tention. But the righ­teous sit with their crowns on their heads, en­joy­ing the splen­dour of the Shechi­nah (the Di­vine Pres­ence).’ Com­ment­ing on this in var­ious places, Mai­monides em­phat­ical­ly as­serts the spir­itu­al­ity of the fu­ture life. In his _Sir­aj_ he says, with ref­er­ence to the ut­ter­ance of Rab just quot­ed: ‘By the re­mark of the Sages “with their crowns on their heads” is meant the preser­va­tion of the soul in the in­tel­lec­tu­al sphere, and the merg­ing of the two in­to one…. By their re­mark “en­joy­ing the splen­dour of the Shechi­nah” is meant that those souls will reap bliss in what they com­pre­hend of the Cre­ator, just as the An­gels en­joy fe­lic­ity in what they un­der­stand of His ex­is­tence. And so the fe­lic­ity and the fi­nal goal con­sists in reach­ing to this ex­alt­ed com­pa­ny and at­tain­ing this high pitch.’ Again, in his philo­soph­ical _Guide_ (I. xli.), Mai­monides dis­tin­guish­es three kinds of ’soul’: (1) The prin­ci­ple of an­imal­ity, (2) the prin­ci­ple of hu­man­ity, and (3) the prin­ci­ple of in­tel­lec­tu­al­ity, that part of man’s in­di­vid­ual­ity which can ex­ist in­de­pen­dent­ly of the body, and there­fore alone sur­vives death. Even more re­mark­able is the fact that Mai­monides enun­ci­ates the same opin­ion in his Code (Laws of Re­pen­tance, vi­ii. 2). For the Code dif­fers from the oth­er two of the three main works of Mai­monides in that it is less per­son­al, and ex­press­es what the au­thor con­ceives to be the gen­er­al opin­ion of Ju­daism as in­ter­pret­ed by its most au­thor­ita­tive teach­ers.

There can be no ques­tion but that this re­peat­ed in­sis­tence of Mai­monides has strong­ly af­fect­ed all sub­se­quent Jew­ish thought. To him, eter­nal bliss con­sists in per­fect spir­itu­al com­mu­nion with God. ‘He who de­sires to serve God from Love must not serve to win the fu­ture world. But he does right and es­chews wrong be­cause he is man, and owes it to his man­hood to per­fect him­self. This ef­fort brings him to the type of per­fect man, whose soul shall live in the state that be­fits it, viz. in the world to come.’ Thus the world to come is a state rather than a place.

But Mai­monides’ view was not ac­cept­ed with­out dis­pute. It was in­deed quite easy to cite Rab­binic pas­sages in which the world to come is iden­ti­fied with the bod­ily Res­ur­rec­tion. Against Mai­monides were pro­duced such Tal­mu­dic ut­ter­ances as the fol­low­ing: ‘Said Rab­bi Chiya b. Joseph, the Righ­teous shall arise clad in their gar­ments, for if a grain of wheat which is buried naked comes forth with many gar­ments, how much more shall the righ­teous arise full garbed, see­ing that they were in­terred with shrouds’ (Kethub. 111 b). Again, ‘Rab­bi Jan­nai said to his chil­dren, Bury me not in white gar­ments or in black: not in white, lest I be not held wor­thy (of heav­en) and thus may be like a bride­groom among mourn­ers (in Gehen­na); nor in black, lest if I am held wor­thy, I be like a mourn­er among bride­grooms (in heav­en). But bury me in coloured gar­ments (so that my ap­pear­ance will be part­ly in keep­ing with ei­ther fate),’ (Sab­bath, 114 a). Or fi­nal­ly: ‘They arise with their blem­ish­es, and then are healed’ (Sanh. 91 b).

The pop­ular fan­cy, in its nat­ural long­ing for a per­son­al ex­is­tence af­ter the bod­ily death, cer­tain­ly seized up­on the be­lief in Res­ur­rec­tion with avid­ity. It had its roots part­ly in the in­di­vid­ual con­scious­ness, part­ly in the com­mu­nal. For the Res­ur­rec­tion was close­ly con­nect­ed with such hopes as those ex­pressed in Ezekiel’s vi­sion of the re-​an­ima­tion of Is­rael’s dry bones (Ezek. xxxvii.). Thus pop­ular the­ol­ogy adopt­ed many ideas based on the Res­ur­rec­tion. The myth of the Leviathan hard­ly be­longs here, for, widespread as it was, it was cer­tain­ly not re­gard­ed in a ma­te­ri­al light. The Leviathan was cre­at­ed on the fifth day, and its flesh will be served as a ban­quet for the righ­teous at the ad­vent of Mes­si­ah. The me­di­ae­val po­ets found much at­trac­tion in this idea, and al­lowed their imag­ina­tion full play con­cern­ing the de­tails of the di­vine repast. Mai­monides en­tire­ly spir­itu­alised the idea, and his ex­am­ple was here de­ci­sive. The con­cep­tion of the Res­ur­rec­tion had oth­er con­se­quences. As the scene of the Res­ur­rec­tion is to be Jerusalem, there grew up a strong de­sire to be buried on the west­ern slope of Mount Olivet. In fact, many buri­al and mourn­ing cus­toms of the Syn­agogue orig­inat­ed from a be­lief in the bod­ily Res­ur­rec­tion. But even in the or­tho­dox litur­gy the di­rect ref­er­ences to it are vague and ide­alised. Two pas­sages of great beau­ty may be cit­ed. The first is tak­en from the _Au­tho­rised Dai­ly Prayer Book_ (ed. Singer, p. 5):

‘O my God, the soul which Thou gavest me is pure; Thou didst cre­ate it, Thou didst form it, Thou didst breathe it in­to me; Thou pre­ser­vest it with­in me; and Thou wilt take it from me, but wilt re­store it un­to me here­after. So long as the soul is with­in me, I will give thanks un­to Thee, O Lord my God and God of my fa­thers, Sovereign of all works, Lord of all souls! Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who re­stor­est souls un­to dead bod­ies.’ The last phrase is al­so ex­tant in an­oth­er read­ing in the Tal­mud and in some litur­gies: ‘Blessed art Thou, who re­vivest the dead,’ but the mean­ing of the two forms is iden­ti­cal. This pas­sage, be it not­ed, is an­cient, and is re­cit­ed ev­ery morn­ing at prayer. The sec­ond pas­sage is re­cit­ed even more fre­quent­ly, for it is said thrice dai­ly, and al­so forms part of the fu­ner­al ser­vice. It may be found in the Prayer Book just quot­ed on p. 44: ‘Thou, O Lord, art mighty for ev­er, Thou quick­en­est the dead, Thou art mighty to save. Thou sus­tainest the liv­ing with lov­ing-​kind­ness, quick­en­est the dead with great mer­cy, sup­port­est the falling, healest the sick, loos­est the bound, and keep­est Thy faith to them that sleep in the dust. Who is like un­to Thee, Lord of mighty acts, and who re­sem­bleth Thee, O King, who killest and quick­en­est, and caus­est sal­va­tion to spring forth? Yea faith­ful art Thou to quick­en the dead.’

The lat­er his­to­ry of the doc­trine in the Syn­agogue may be best sum­marised in the words of Dr. Kohler, whose the­olog­ical ar­ti­cles in the _Jew­ish En­cy­clo­pe­dia_ de­serve grate­ful recog­ni­tion. What fol­lows may be read at full length in that work, vol. vi. p. 567: ‘While me­di­ae­val phi­los­ophy dwelt on the in­tel­lec­tu­al, moral, or spir­itu­al na­ture of the soul to prove its im­mor­tal­ity, the Cab­bal­ists en­deav­oured to ex­plain the soul as a light from heav­en, af­ter Proverbs xx. 27, and im­mor­tal­ity as a re­turn to the ce­les­tial world of pure light. But the be­lief in the pre-​ex­is­tence of the soul led the mys­tics to the adop­tion, with all its weird no­tions and su­per­sti­tions, of the Pythagore­an sys­tem of the trans­mi­gra­tion of the soul.’ Moses Mendelssohn re­vived the Pla­ton­ic form of the doc­trine of im­mor­tal­ity. Thence­forth the dog­ma of the Res­ur­rec­tion was grad­ual­ly dis­card­ed un­til it was elim­inat­ed from the Prayer Book of the Re­form con­gre­ga­tions. Man’s fu­ture was thought of as the re­al­isa­tion of those ‘high­er ex­pec­ta­tions which are sown, as part of its very na­ture, in ev­ery hu­man soul.’ The state­ment of Gen­esis that ‘God made man in His own im­age,’ and the idea con­veyed in the text (1 Samuel xxv. 29), ‘May the soul … be bound up in the bun­dle of life with the Lord thy God,’ which as a di­vine promise and a hu­man sup­pli­ca­tion ‘filled the gen­er­ations with com­fort and hope, re­ceived a new mean­ing from this view of man’s fu­ture; and the Rab­bini­cal say­ing (Ber. 64 a): “The Righ­teous rest not, ei­ther in this or in the fu­ture world, but go from strength to strength un­til they see God in Zion,” ap­peared to of­fer an end­less vista to the hope of im­mor­tal­ity.’

But quite apart from this in­def­inite­ness of at­ti­tude as to the mean­ing of im­mor­tal­ity, it is scarce­ly pos­si­ble to speak of a Jew­ish Es­cha­tol­ogy at all. The de­vel­op­ment of an Es­cha­tol­ogy oc­curred in that sec­tion of Jew­ish opin­ion which re­mained on the fringe. It must be sought in the apoc­alyp­tic lit­er­ature, which has been pre­served in Greek. The whole sub­ject had but a small at­trac­tion for Ju­daism prop­er. Nat­ural­ly there was some cu­rios­ity and some spec­ula­tion. The Day of the Lord, with its com­bi­na­tion of Ret­ri­bu­tion and Sal­va­tion, was pic­tured in var­ious ways and with some elab­ora­tion of de­tail. Par­adise and Hell were mapped out, and the com­fort­able com­part­ments to be oc­cu­pied by the saints and the mis­er­able quar­ters of sin­ners were spec­ified with the pre­ci­sion of an Ord­nance Sur­vey. Pur­ga­to­ry was an in­sti­tu­tion not lim­it­ed to the Ro­man Catholic Church; it had a strong hold on the me­di­ae­val Jew­ish mind. The in­ter­me­di­ate state was a favourite es­cape from the the­olog­ical ne­ces­si­ty of con­demn­ing sin­ners to eter­nal pun­ish­ment. The Jew­ish heart could not suf­fer the pain of con­ceiv­ing Gehen­na in­evitable. So, one by one, those who might log­ical­ly be com­mit­ted there were res­cued on var­ious pre­texts. In the end the num­ber of the in­di­vid­ual sin­ners who were to suf­fer eter­nal tor­ture could be named on the fin­gers of one hand.

By the pre­ced­ing para­graph it is not im­plied that Jew­ish lit­er­ature in He­brew has not its full com­ple­ment of fan­cies, hor­ri­ble and beau­ti­ful, re­gard­ing heav­en and hell. But such fan­cies were nei­ther dog­mat­ic nor pop­ular. They nev­er found their way in­to the tenets of Ju­daism as for­mu­lat­ed by any au­thor­ity; they nev­er be­came a mov­ing pow­er in the life of the Jew­ish mass­es. It was the po­ets who nour­ished these lurid ideas, and po­et­ry which has done so much for the good of re­li­gion has al­so done it many a dis­ser­vice. Ju­daism, in its pro­sa­ic form, ac­cept­ed the ideas of Im­mor­tal­ity, Ret­ri­bu­tion, and so forth, but the re­al in­ter­est was in life here, not in life here­after.

We can see how the two were bridged over by the Jew­ish con­vic­tion of hu­man sol­idar­ity. For twelve months af­ter the death of a fa­ther the son re­cit­ed dai­ly the Kad­dish prayer (_Au­tho­rised Dai­ly Prayer Book_, p. 77). This was a mere Dox­ol­ogy, open­ing: ‘Mag­ni­fied and sanc­ti­fied be His great name in the world which He hath cre­at­ed ac­cord­ing to His will. May He es­tab­lish His king­dom dur­ing your life and dur­ing your days, and dur­ing the life of all the house of Is­rael, even speed­ily and at a near time, and say ye Amen.’ As to the Mes­sian­ic idea of the King­dom of God, some­thing will be said in the next chap­ter. But this Dox­ol­ogy was be­lieved ef­fi­ca­cious to save the de­part­ed soul when ut­tered by the liv­ing son. The gen­er­ations were thus bound to­geth­er, and just as the mer­its of the fa­thers could ex­ert be­nign in­flu­ence over the erring child on earth, so could the prais­es of the child move the mer­cy of God in favour of the erring fa­ther in Pur­ga­to­ry. It was a beau­ti­ful ex­pres­sion of the un­break­able chain of tra­di­tion, a tra­di­tion whose links were hu­man hearts. In such con­cep­tions, rather than in de­scrip­tive pic­tures of Par­adise and Gehen­na, is the true mind of Ju­daism to be dis­cerned.

That the first for­mal sign of grief at the death of a par­ent should be a Dox­ol­ogy will not have es­caped no­tice. God is the Righ­teous Judge. Thus, in the Es­cha­tol­ogy of Ju­daism, this idea of Judg­ment pre­dom­inates. A favourite pas­sage was the Mish­nic ut­ter­ance (sec­ond cen­tu­ry): ‘Rab­bi Eleazar said: They that are born are des­tined to die, and they that die to be brought to life again, and they that live to be judged.’ (Aboth, iv. 29). But in an­oth­er sense, too, there was judg­ment at death. The sor­row of the sur­vivors, like the de­cease of the de­part­ed, was to be con­sid­ered as God’s do­ing, and there­fore right. Hence in the very mo­ment of the death of a loved one, when grief was most poignant, the sur­vivor stood forth be­fore the con­gre­ga­tion and praised God. And so the Buri­al Ser­vice is named in He­brew ‘Zid­duk Ha-​din,’ _i.e._ ‘The Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of the Judg­ment.’ A few sen­tences in it ran thus (_Prayer Book_, p. 318): ‘The Rock, His work is per­fect…. He ruleth be­low and above, He bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up again…. Blessed be the true Judge.’ And per­haps more than all at­tempts to anal­yse be­liefs and dog­mas, the fol­low­ing prayer, re­cit­ed dur­ing the week of mourn­ing for the dead, will con­vey to the read­er the re­al at­ti­tude of Ju­daism (at least in its cen­tral va­ri­ety) to some of the ques­tions which have oc­cu­pied us in this chap­ter. The quo­ta­tion is made from p. 323 of the same Prayer Book that has been al­ready cit­ed sev­er­al times above:

‘O Lord and King, who art full of com­pas­sion, in whose hand is the soul of ev­ery liv­ing thing and the breath of all flesh, who killest and mak­est alive, who bringest down to the grave and bringest up again, re­ceive, we be­seech Thee, in Thy great lov­ing-​kind­ness, the soul of our broth­er who hath been gath­ered un­to his peo­ple. Have mer­cy up­on him, par­don all his trans­gres­sions, for there is not a righ­teous man up­on earth, who doeth good and sin­neth not. Re­mem­ber un­to him the righ­teous­ness which he wrought, and let his re­ward be with him and his rec­om­pense be­fore him. O shel­ter his soul in the shad­ow of Thy wings. Make known to Him the path of life: in Thy pres­ence is ful­ness of joy; at Thy right hand are plea­sures for ev­er­more. Vouch­safe un­to him of the abound­ing hap­pi­ness that is trea­sured up for the righ­teous, as it is writ­ten, Oh how great is Thy good­ness, which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee, which Thou hast wrought for them that trust in Thee be­fore the chil­dren of men!

‘O Lord, who healest the bro­ken-​heart­ed and bind­est up their wounds, grant Thy con­so­la­tion un­to the mourn­ers: put in­to their hearts the fear and love of Thee, that they may serve Thee with a per­fect heart, and let their lat­ter end be peace.

‘Like one whom his moth­er com­forteth, so will I com­fort you, and in Jerusalem shall ye be com­fort­ed. Thy sun shall no more go down, nei­ther shall thy moon with­draw it­self; for the Lord shall be thine ev­er­last­ing light, and the days of thy mourn­ing shall be end­ed.

‘He will de­stroy death for ev­er; and the Lord will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the re­buke of his peo­ple shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spo­ken it.’