The dead prophet can be called back to admonish the living. Enoch and Elijah, like Ganymede with the Greeks, being favourites of the deity,[1] and taken miraculously to him. Other passages deny the doctrine of immortality with great plainness.[2]
After the return from exile, the doctrine appears more definitely. Ezekiel and the pseudo-Isaiah[3] allude to a resurrection of the body, a notion which is perhaps of Zoroastrian origin.[4] Perhaps older than Zoroaster. But it is only a doubtful immortality that is taught in the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, though in the Wisdom of Solomon,[5] and in the fourth book of Maccabees, it is set forth with great clearness.[6] The second book of Maccabees teaches in the plainest terms the resurrection of all; the righteous to happiness, the wicked to shame.[7] They will find their former friends, and resume their old pursuits.[8] Nothing is plainer.
- ↑ See also Ps. xvii. 15, lxxiii. 24. See the mistakes of Michaelis respecting this doctrine of immortality, in his Argumenta immortalitate, … ex Mose collecta, in his Syntagma Comment. Vol. I. p. 80, et seq. See his notes or Lowth, p. 465, ed. Rosenmüller. Warburton founds his strange hypothesis on the opposite view. See on this point, Bauer, Dicta classica, Vol. II. § 56, et seq.; De Wette, ubi sup., § 113, et seq.; Lessing, Beyträgen aus der Wolfenbüttelschen Bibliothek, Vol. IV. p. 484, et seq. See the moderate and judicious remarks of Knapp, ubi sup., Vol. II. § 149. See Henkes Mag. für Religion. Philosophie, Vol. V. pt. I. p. 16, et seq., and a treatise in the Studien und Kritiken for 1830, Vu II. p. 884, et seq.
- ↑ Eccles. iii. 19-21, ix. 10. In Job xiv. 10–14, et al., Job distinctly denies the immortality which he had previously affirmed, but this shows the exquisite art of the poem. See De Wette, Introduction to O. T., Vol. II. p. 556, 557, note a. Perhaps the opinions put into Job's mouth are not those of the Author, but such only as he thought the circumstances of his hero required.
- ↑ Ezek. xxxvii.; Isa. xxvi. 19. See Gesenius in loco.
- ↑ Rhode, ubi sup., p. 494, Nork, Mythen der alten Perser, 1835, p. 148, et seq.; Priestley, ubi sup., § XXIII.; Bretschneider, ubi sup., § 58, p. 325, et seq.
- ↑ i. 15, 16, ii. 22-iii. et seq., v. 15, vi. 18. It is connected with a preëxistent state, viii. 19, 20. The 2nd Book of Esdras is quite remarkable for the view it presents of this doctrine. See ii. 23, 31, 34, 35, iv. 40, et seq., vii. 13, 27—35, 42, et seq., viii. 1, et seq. et al. But the character and date of the book prevent me from using it in the text.
- ↑ xv. 3, xvi. 25, xvii. 18, et al. de Wette, ubi sup., § 180. See the remarkable passage in 4th Esdras, which Fabricius has added from the Arabic Version Codex pseudepigraphus, ed alt. Hamb. 1741, Vol. II. p. 235, et seq. However, it may have been added by a Christian. In the Psalter of Solomon, it is said they that fear the Lord shall rise again to everlasting life. See Ch. xiv. 2, et seq., and xv. in Fabricius, ubi sup., Vol. I. p. 926, 954, et seq. I do not pretend to determine the date of this apocryphal book.
- ↑ vii. 9, 11, 14, 23, xii. 43, et seq., xv. 12, et seq.
- ↑ See in Eichhorn, ubi sup., Vol. IV. p. 653, et seq., a valuable contribution to the History of this doctrine by Frisch. He make an ingenious comparison
