(a) Codified law and the written record of the patriarchal history, as well as the life and work of the lawgiver Moses (to whom the entire body of law came to be ascribed), assumed an ever greater importance. The reverence felt for the canonized Tōrah or law (the Pentateuch or so-called five books of Moses) grew even into worship. Of this spirit we find clear expression in some of the later psalms, e.g. the elaborate alphabetic Ps. cxix. and the latter portion of Ps. xix. There were various causes which combined to enhance the importance of the written Tōrah (the “instruction” par excellence communicated by God through Moses). Chief among these were (1) The conception of God as transcendent. We have taken due note of Amos, who unfolded the character of Yahweh as universal righteous sovereign; and also the sublime portrayal of His exalted nature in Isa. xl. (verse 15; cf. 22-26, and Job xxxvi. 22-xlii. 6). The intellectual influence of Greece, manifested in Alexandrian philosophy, tended to remove God still further from the human world of phenomena into that of an inaccessible transcendental abstraction. Little, therefore, was possible for the Jew save strict performance of the requirements of the Tōrah, once for all given to Moses on Sinai, and, in his approach to the awful and unknown mystery, to rely on ceremonial and ascetic performances (see Wendt’s Teaching of Jesus, i. 55 foll.). The same tendency led the pious worshippers to avoid His awful name and to substitute Adonai in their scriptures or to use in the Mishna the term “name” (shēm) or “heaven.” (2) The Maccabean conflict (165 B.C.) tended to accentuate the national sentiment of antagonism to Hellenic influence. The Ḥasīdim or pious devotees, who arose at that time, were the originators of the Pharisaic movement which was conservative as well as national, and laid stress on the strict performance of the law.
(b) Eschatology in the Judaism of the Greek period began to assume a new form. The pre-exilian prophets (especially Isaiah) spoke of the forthcoming crisis in the world’s history as a “day of the Lord.” These were usually regarded as visitations of chastisement for national sins and vindications of divine righteousness or judgments, i.e. assertions of God’s power as judge (shōphet). By the older prophets this judgment of God or “day of Yahweh” was never held to be far removed from the horizon of the present or the world in which they lived. But now as we enter the Greek period (320 B.C. and onwards) there is a gradual change from prophecy to apocalyptic. “It may be asserted in general terms that whereas prophecy foretells a definite future which has its foundation in the present, apocalyptic directs its anticipations solely and simply to the future, to a new world-period which stands sharply contrasted with the present. The classical model for all apocalyptic is to be found in Dan. vii. It is only after a great war of destruction, a day of Yahweh’s great judgment, that the dominion of God will begin” (Bousset). Ezek. xxxviii. and xxxix. clearly bear the apocalyptic character; so also Isa. xxxiv. and notably Isa. xxiv.-xxvii. Apocalyptic, as Baldensperger has shown, formed a counterpoise to the normal current of conformity to law. It arose from a spiritual movement in answer to the yearning of the heart: “O that Thou mightest rend the heavens and come down and the mountains quake at Thy presence!” (Isa. lxiv. 1 [Heb. lxiii. 19]); and it was intended to meet the craving of souls sick with waiting and disappointment. The present outlook was hopeless, but in the enlarged horizon of time as well as space the thoughts of some of the most spiritual minds in Judaism were directed to the transcendent and ultimate. The present world was corrupt and subject to Satan and the powers of darkness. This they called “the present aeon” (age). Their hopes were therefore directed to “the coming aeon.” Between the two aeons there would take place the advent of the Messiah, who would lead the struggle with evil powers which was called “the agonies of the Messiah.” This terrible intermezzo was no longer terrestrial, but was a cosmic and universal crisis in which the Messiah would emerge victorious from the final conflict with the heathen and demonic powers. This victory inaugurates the entrance of the “aeon to come,” in which the faithful Jews would enter their inheritance. In this way we perceive the transformation of the old Messianic doctrine through apocalyptic. Of apocalyptic literature we have numerous examples extending from the 2nd century B.C. to the 2nd century A.D. (See especially Charles’s Book of Enoch.)
The doctrine of the resurrection of the righteous to life in the heavenly world became engrafted on to the old doctrine of Sheōl, or the dark shadowy underworld (Hades), where life was joyless and feeble, and from which the soul might be for a brief space summoned forth by the arts of the necromancer. The most vivid portraiture of Sheōl is to be found in the exilian passage Isa. xiv. 9-20 (cf. Job x. 21-22). With this also compare the Babylonian Descent of Ishtar to Hades. The added conception of the resurrection of the righteous does not appear in the world of Jewish thought till the early Greek period in Isa. xxvi. 19. R. H. Charles thinks that in this passage the idea of resurrection is of purely Jewish and not of Mazdaan (or Zoroastrian) origin, but it is otherwise with Dan. xii. 2; see his Eschatology, Hebrew, Jewish and Christian. Corresponding to heaven, the abode of the righteous, we have Gē-henna (originally Gē-Hinnom, the scene of the Moloch rites of human sacrifice), the place of punishment after death for apostate Jews.
(c) Doctrine of Angels and of Hypostases.—In the writings of the pre-exilian period we have frequent references to supernatural personalities good and bad. It is only necessary to refer to them by name. Sebāōth, or “hosts,” attached to the name of Yahweh, denoted the heavenly retinue of stars. The seraphīm were burning serpentine forms who hovered above the enthroned Yahweh and chanted the Trisagion in Isaiah’s consecration vision (Isa. vi.). We have also constant references to “angels” (malāchīm) of God, divine messengers who represent Him and may be regarded as the manifestation of His power and presence. This especially applies to the “angel of Yahweh” or angel of His Presence [Ex. xxiii. 20, 23 (E). Note in Ex. xxxiii. 14 (J) he is called “my face” or “presence”[33] (cf. Isa. lxiii. 9)]. We also know that from earliest times Israel believed in the evil as well as good spirits. Like the Arabs they held that demons became incorporate in serpents, as in Gen. iii. The nephīlīm were a monstrous brood begotten of the intercourse of the supernatural beings called “sons of God” with the women of earth. We also read of the “evil spirit” that came upon Saul. Contact with Babylonia tended to stimulate the angelology and demonology of Israel. The Hebrew word shēd or “demon” is no more than a Babylonian loan word, and came to designate the deities of foreign peoples degraded into the position of demons.[34] Līlīth, the blood-sucking night-hag of the post-exilian Isa. xxxiv. 14, is the Babylonian Lilātu. Whether the se’īrīm or shaggy satyrs (Isa. xiii. 31; Lev. xvii. 7) and Azāzēl were of Babylonian origin it is difficult to determine. The emergence of Satan as a definite supernatural personality, the head or prince of the world of evil spirits, is entirely a phenomenon of post-exilian Judaism. He is portrayed as the arch-adversary and accuser of man. It is impossible to deny Persian influence in the development of this conception, and that the Persian Ahriman (Angromainyu), the evil personality opposed to the good, Ahura Mazda, moulded the Jewish counterpart, Satan. But in Judaism monotheistic conceptions reigned supreme, and the Satan of Jewish belief as opposed to God stops short of the dualism of Persian religion. Of this we see evidence in the multiplication of Satans in the Book of Enoch. In the Book of Jubilees he is called mastēmā. In later Judaism Sammael is the equivalent of Satan. Persian influence is also responsible for the vast multiplication of good spirits or angels, Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, &c., who play their part in apocalyptic works, such as the Book of Daniel and the Book of Enoch.
Probably the transcendent nature of the deity in the Judaism of this later period made the interposition of mediating spirits an intellectual necessity (cf. Ps. civ. 4). It also stimulated the creation of divine hypostases. First among these may be mentioned Wisdom. The roots of this conception belong to pre-exilian times, in which the “word” of divine denunciation was regarded as a quasi-material thing. (It is hurled against offending Israel, Isa. ix. 8.). In the post-exilian cosmogony it is the divine word or fiat that creates the world (Gen. i.; cf. Ps. xxxiii. 6, 9). Out of these earlier conceptions the idea of the divine wisdom (Heb. ḥokhmah) gradually arose during the Persian period. The expression “wisdom,” as it is employed in the locus classicus, Prov. viii., connotes the contents of the Divine reason—His conscious life, out of which created things emerge. This wisdom is personified. It dwelt with God (Prov. viii. 22 foll.) before the world was made. It is the companion of His throne, and by it He made the world (Prov. iii. 19, viii. 27; cf. Ps. civ. 24). It, moreover, enters into the life of the world and especially man (Prov. viii. 31). This conception of wisdom became still further hypostatized. It becomes redemptive of man. In the Wisdom of Solomon it is the sharer of God’s throne (πάρεδρος), the effulgence of the eternal light and the outflow of His glory (Wisd. vii. 25, viii. 3 foll., ix. 4, 9); “Them that love her the Lord doth love” (Ecclesiasticus iv. 14). This group of ideas culminated in the Logos of Philo, expressing the world of divine ideas which God first of all creates and which becomes the mediating and formative power between the absolute and transcendent deity and passive formless matter, transmuted thereby into a rational, ordered universe.
In later Jewish literature we meet with further examples of similar hypostases in the form of Mēmrā, Metatron, Shechinah, Holy Spirit and Bath kōl.
(d) The doctrine of pre-existence is another product of the speculative tendency of the Jewish mind. The Messiah’s pre-existent state before the creation of the world is asserted in the Book of Enoch (xlviii. 6, 7). Pre-existence is also asserted of Moses and of sacred institutions such as the New Jerusalem, the Temple, Paradise, the Tōrah, &c. (Apocal. of Baruch iv. 3-lix. 4; Assumptio Mosis i. 14, 17); Edersheim’s Life and Times of the Messiah, i. 175 and footnote 1.
11. Christ resumes the Broken Tradition of Prophetism.—The Psalms of Solomon and the synoptic Gospels (70 B.C.-A.D. 100) clearly reveal the powerful revival of Messianic hopes of a national deliverer of the seed of David. This Messianic expectation had been a fermenting leaven since the great days of Judas Maccabaeus. The conceptions of Jesus of Nazareth, however, were not the Messianic conceptions of his fellow-countrymen, but of the spiritual “son of man” destined to found a kingdom of God which was righteousness and peace. The Tōrah of Jesus was essentially prophetic and in no sense priestly or legal. The arrested prophetic movement of Jeremiah and Deutero-Isaiah reappears in John the Baptist and Jesus after an interval of more than five centuries. The new covenant of redeeming grace—the righteousness which is in the heart and not in externalities of legal observance or ceremonial—are once more proclaimed, and the exalted ideals of the suffering servant of Isa. xlix. 6 and Isa. liii. (nearly suppressed in the Targum of Jonathan) are reasserted and vindicated by the words and life of Jesus. Like Jeremiah He foretold the destruction of the temple and suffered the extreme penalties of anti-patriotism. And thus Israel’s old prophetic Tōrah was at length to achieve its victory, for after Jesus came St Paul. “Many shall come from the east and the west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. viii. 11, 12). The fetters of nationalism were to be broken, and the Hebrew religion in its essential spiritual elements was to become the heritage of all humanity.
Authorities.—1. On Semitic religion generally: Wellhausen’s Reste des arabischen Heidentums (2nd ed.) and Robertson Smith’s Religion of the Semites (2nd ed.) are chiefly to be recommended. Barton’s Semitic Origins is extremely able, but his doctrine of the derivation of male from original female deities is pushed to an extreme. Bäthgen’s Beiträge zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte (1888) is most useful, and contains valuable epigraphic material. Baudissin’s Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte (1876) is still valuable. See also Kuenen’s National Religions and Universal Religions (Hibbert lectures) and Lagrange’s Études sur les religions sémitiques (2nd ed.).
2. On Hebrew religion in particular: specially full and helpful is Kautzsch’s article “Religion of Israel” in Hastings’s D.B., extra vol.; Marti’s recent Religion des A.T. (1906) and his Geschichte der israelitischen Religion, are clear, compact and most serviceable, and the former work presents the subject in fresh and suggestive aspects. Wellhausen’s Prolegomena and Jüdische Geschichte should be read both for criticism and Hebrew history generally. Duhm’s Theologie der Propheten and Robertson Smith’s Prophets of Israel should also be consulted. Strongly to be recommended are Smend, Lehrbuch der alttestamentlichen Religionsgeschichte; Bennett, Theology of the Old Testament and Religion of the Post-Exilic Prophets; A. B. Davidson, The Theology of the Old Testament, as well as the sections devoted to “Sacralaltertümer” in the Hebräische Archäologie both of Benzinger and also of Nowack. Budde’s Die Religion des Volkes Israel bis zur Verbannung, as well as Addis’s recent Hebrew Religion (1906), is a most careful and scholarly compendium. Harper’s Introd. to his Commentary on Amos and Hosea (I. and T. Clark) contains a useful survey of the history of Hebrew religion before the 8th century. Buchanan Gray’s Divine Discipline of Israel, and A. S. Peake’s Problem of Suffering in the O.T., are suggestive. See also S. A. Cook, Religion of Ancient Palestine.