[50] Kalisch, Comm. on Leviticus, xxv, 8, pt. ii, p. 548. [↑]
[51] In the Wisdom of Solomon, iii, 13; iv, 1, the old desire for offspring is seen to be in part superseded by the newer belief in personal immortality. [↑]
[52] Schechter, Studies in Judaism, 1896, p. 216. Compare pp. 193–94. [↑]
[53] See Supernatural Religion, 6th ed. i, 97–100, 103–21; Mosheim, Comm. on Christ. Affairs before Constantine, Vidal’s tr. i, 70; Schürer, Jewish People in the Time of Jesus, Eng. tr. Div. II, vol. iii, p. 152. [↑]
[55] Cp. Horace, 1 Sat. v, 100. [↑]
[56] Rev. A. Edersheim, History of the Jewish Nation after the Destruction of Jerusalem, 1856, p. 462, citing the Avoda Sara, a treatise directed against idolatry! Other Rabbinical views cited by Dr. Edersheim as being in comparison “sublime” are no great improvement on the above—e.g., the conception of deity as “the prototype of the high priest, and the king of kings,”—“who created everything for his own glory.” With all this in view, Dr. Edersheim thought it showed “spiritual decadence” in Philo Judæus to speak of Persian magi and Indian gymnosophists in the same laudatory tone as he used of the Essenes, and to attend “heathenish theatrical representations” (p. 372). [↑]
[57] See [Ps. xc, 2]; [Prov. viii, 22], [26]. [↑]
[58] This is seen persisting in the lore of the Neo-Platonist writer Sallustius Philosophus (4th c.), De Diis et Mundo, c. 7, though quite unscientifically held. [↑]