Part 25 (2/2)
29, 34; Mark xiii 30; Luke xiii 35, xxi 28, and following]
[Footnote 7: Matt xvi 28, xxiii 36, 39, xxiv 34; Mark viii 39; Luke ix 27, xxi 32]
[Footnote 8: Matt xvi 2-4; Luke xii 54-56]
These formal declarations preoccupied the Christian family for nearly seventy years It was believed that some of the disciples would see the day of the final revelation before dying John, in particular, was considered as being of this number;[1] many believed that he would never die Perhaps this was a later opinion suggested toward the end of the first century, by the advanced age which John seeiven rise to the belief that God wished to prolong his life indefinitely until the great day, in order to realize the words of Jesus However this may be, at his death the faith of many was shaken, and his disciples attached to the prediction of Christ a [2]
[Footnote 1: John xxi 22, 23]
[Footnote 2: John xxi 22, 23 Chapter xxi of the fourth Gospel is an addition, as is proved by the final clause of the primitive compilation, which concludes at verse 31 of chapter xx But the addition is almost contemporaneous with the publication of the Gospel itself]
At the same time that Jesus fully admitted the Apocalyptic beliefs, such as we find them in the apocryphal Jewish books, he admitted the doctrine, which is the complement, or rather the condition of them all, namely, the resurrection of the dead This doctrine, as we have already said, was still somewhat new in Israel; a number of people either did not know it, or did not believe it[1] It was the faith of the Pharisees, and of the fervent adherents of the Messianic beliefs[2] Jesus accepted it unreservedly, but always in the ined that in the resuscitated world they would eat, drink, and dom a new passover, a table, and a neine;[3] but he expressly excludes e from it The Sadducees had on this subject an apparently coarse argument, but one which was really in confory It will be rees, man survived only in his children The Mosaic code had consecrated this patriarchal theory by a strange institution, the levirate law
The Sadducees drew froainst the resurrection Jesus escaped the that in the life eternal there would no longer exist differences of sex, and that els[4] Sohteous,[5] the punish in complete annihilation[6] Oftener, however, Jesus declares that the resurrection shall bring eternal confusion to the wicked[7]
[Footnote 1: Mark ix 9; Luke xx 27, and following]
[Footnote 2: Dan xii 2, and following; 2 Macc vii entirely, xii
45, 46, xiv 46; _Acts_ xxiii 6, 8; Jos, _Ant_, XVIII i 3; _BJ_, II viii 14, III viii 5]
[Footnote 3: Matt xxvi 29; Luke xxii 30]
[Footnote 4: Matt xxii 24, and following; Luke xx 34-38; Ebionite Gospel, entitled, ”Of the Egyptians,” in Clem of Alex, _Strom_ ii
9, 13; Clem Rom, Epist ii 12]
[Footnote 5: Luke xiv 14, xx 35, 36 This is also the opinion of St
Paul: 1 _Cor_ xv 23, and following; 1 Thess iv 12, and following]
[Footnote 6: Comp 4th book of Esdras, ix 22]
[Footnote 7: Matt xxv 32, and following]
It will be seen that nothing in all these theories was absolutely new
The Gospels and the writings of the apostles scarcely contain anything as regards apocalyptic doctrines but what ht be found already in ”Daniel,”[1] ”Enoch,”[2] and the ”Sibylline Oracles,”[3] of Jewish origin Jesus accepted the ideas, which were generally received a his contemporaries He made them his basis of action, or rather one of his bases; for he had too profound an idea of his true work to establish it solely upon such fragile principles--principles so liable to be decisively refuted by facts
[Footnote 1: See especially chaps ii, vi-viii, x-xiii]
[Footnote 2: Chaps i, xiv, lii, lxii, xciii 9, and following]
[Footnote 3: Book iii 573, and following; 652, and following; 766, and following; 795, and following]
It is evident, indeed, that such a doctrine, taken by itself in a literalto exist, caused it to crueneration of man at the most was the lieneration is intelligible, but the faith of the second generation is no longer so
After the death of John, or of the last survivor, whoever he roup which had seen the master, the word of Jesus was convicted of falsehood[1] If the doctrine of Jesus had been si end of the world, it would certainly now be sleeping in oblivion What is it, then, which has saved it? The great breadth of the Gospel conceptions, which has permitted doctrines suited to very different intellectual conditions to be found under the same creed The world has not ended, as Jesus announced, and as his disciples believed But it has been renewed, and in one sense renewed as Jesus desired It is because his thought o-sided that it has been fruitful His chimera has not had the fate of so many others which have crossed the hu been introduced, thanks to a covering of fable, into the bosoht forth eternal fruits
[Footnote 1: These pangs of Christian conscience are rendered with simplicity in the second epistle attributed to St Peter, iii 8, and following]