Читать книгу The Destiny of the Soul - William Rounseville Alger - Страница 24

THE starting point in the Talmud on this subject is with the effects of sin upon the human race. Man was made radiant, pure, immortal, in the image of God. By sin he was obscured, defiled, burdened with mortal decay and judgment. In this representation that misery and death were an after doom brought into the world by sin, the Rabbinical authorities strikingly agree. The testimony is irresistible. We need not quote confirmations of this statement, as every scholar in this department will accept it at once. But as to what is meant precisely by the term "death," as used in such a connection, there is no little obscurity and diversity of opinion. In all probability, some of the Pharisaical fathers perhaps the majority of them conceived that, if Adam had not sinned, he and his posterity would have been physically immortal, and would either have lived forever on the earth, or have been successively transferred to the home of Jehovah over the firmament. They call the devil, who is the chief accuser in the heavenly court of justice, the angel of death, by the name of "Sammael." Rabbi Reuben says, "When Sammael saw Adam sin, he immediately sought to slay him, and went to the heavenly council and clamored for justice against him, pleading thus: 'God made this decree, "In the day thou eatest of the tree thou shalt surely die." Therefore give him to me, for he is mine, and I will kill him; to this end was I created; and give me power over all his descendants.' When the celestial Sanhedrim perceived that his petition was just, they decreed that it should be granted."1 A great many expressions of kindred tenor might easily be adduced, leaving it hardly possible to doubt as indeed we are not aware that any one does doubt that many of the Jews literally held that sin was the sole cause of bodily dissolution. But, on the other hand, there were as certainly others who did not entertain that idea, but understood and explained the terms in which it was sometimes conveyed in a different, a partially figurative, sense. Rabbi Samuel ben David writes, "Although the first Adam had not sinned, yet death would have been; for death was created on the first day." The reference here is, as Rabbi Berechias explains, to the account in Genesis where we read that "darkness was upon the face of the deep," "by which is to be understood the angel of death, who has darkened the face of man."2 The Talmudists generally believed also in the pre existence of souls in heaven, and in a spiritual body investing and fitting the soul for heaven, as the present carnal body invests and fits it for the earth. Schoettgen has collected numerous illustrations in point, of which the following may serve as specimens.3 "When the first Adam had not sinned, he was every way an angel of the Lord, perfect and spotless, and it was decreed that he should live forever like one of the celestial ministers." "The soul cannot ascend into Paradise except it be first invested with a

1 Schoettgen, Dissertatio de Hierosolyma Coelesti, cap. iii. sect. 9.

2 Schoettgen, Hora Biblica et Talmudica, in Rom. v. 12, et in Johan. iii. 19.

3 Ibid. in 2 Cor. v. 2.

clothing adapted to that world, as the present is for this world." These notions do not harmonize with the thought that man was originally destined for a physical eternity on this globe. All this difficulty disappears, we think, and the true metaphorical force often intended in the word "death" comes to view, through the following conception, occupying the minds of a portion of the Jewish Rabbins, as we are led to believe by the clews furnished in the close connection between the Pharisaic and the Zoroastrian eschatology, by similar hints in various parts of the New Testament, and by some quite explicit declarations in the Talmud itself, which we shall soon cite in a different connection. God at first intended that man should live for a time in pure blessedness on the earth, and then without pain should undergo a glorious change making him a perfect peer of the angels, and be translated to their lofty abode in his own presence; but, when he sinned, God gave him over to manifold suffering, and on the destruction of his body adjudged his naked soul to descend to a doleful imprisonment below the grave. The immortality meant for man was a timely ascent to heaven in a paradisal clothing, without dying. The doom brought on him by sin was the alteration of that desirable change of bodies and ascension to the supernal splendors, for a permanent disembodiment and a dreaded descent to the subterranean glooms. It is a Talmudical as much as it is a Pauline idea, that the triumphant power of the Messiah would restore what the unfortunate fall of Adam forfeited. Now, if we can show as we think we can, and as we shall try to do in a later part of this article that the later Jews expected the Messianic resurrection to be the prelude to an ascent into heaven, and not the beginning of a gross earthly immortality, it will powerfully confirm the theory which we have just indicated. "When," says one of the old Rabbins, "the dead in Israelitish earth are restored alive," their bodies will be "as the body of the first Adam before he sinned, and they shall all fly into the air like birds."4

At all events, whether the general Rabbinical belief was in the primitive destination of man to a heavenly or to an earthly immortality, whether the "death" decreed upon him in consequence of sin was the dissolution of the body or the wretchedness of the soul, they all agree that the banishment of souls into the realm of blackness under the grave was a part of the penalty of sin. Some of them maintained, as we think, that, had there been no sin, souls would have passed to heaven in glorified bodies; others of them maintained, as we think, that, had there been no sin, they would have lived eternally upon earth in their present bodies; but all of them agreed, it is undisputed, that in consequence of sin souls were condemned to the under world. No man would have seen the dismal realm of the sepulchre had there not been sin. The earliest Hebrew conception was that all souls went down to a common abode, to spend eternity in dark slumber or nerveless groping. This view was first modified soon after the Persian captivity, by the expectation that there would be discrimination at the resurrection which the Jews had learned to look for, when the just should rise but the wicked should be left.

The next alteration of their notions on this subject was the subdivision of the underworld into Paradise and Gehenna, a conception known among them probably as early as a century before Christ, and very prominent with them in the apostolic age. "When Rabbi

4 Schoettgen, in 1 Cor. xv. 44.

Jochanan was dying, his disciples asked him, 'Light of Israel, main pillar of the right, thou strong hammer, why dost thou weep?' He answered, 'Two paths open before me, the one leading to bliss, the other to torments; and I know not which of them will be my doom.'"5 "Paradise is separated from hell by a distance no greater than the width of a thread."6 So, in Christ's parable of Dives and Lazarus, Abraham's bosom and hell are two divisions. "There are three doors into Gehenna: one in the wilderness, where Korah and his company were swallowed; one in the sea, where Jonah descended when he 'cried out of the belly of hell;' one in Jerusalem, for the Lord says, 'My furnace is in Jerusalem.'"7 "The under world is divided into palaces, each of which is so large that it would take a man three hundred years to roam over it. There are distinct apartments where the hell punishments are inflicted. One place is so dark that its name is 'Night of Horrors."8 "In Paradise there are certain mansions for the pious from the Gentile peoples, and for those mundane kings who have done kindness to the Israelites."9 "The fire of Gehenna was kindled on the evening of the first Sabbath, and shall never be extinguished."10 The Egyptians, Persians, Hindus, and Greeks, with all of whom the Jews held relations of intercourse, had, in their popular representations of the under world of the dead, regions of peace and honor for the good, and regions of fire for the bad. The idea may have been adopted from them by the Jews, or it may have been at last developed among themselves, first by the imaginative poetical, afterwards by the literally believing, transference below of historical and local imagery and associations, such as those connected with the ingulfing of Sodom and Gomorrah in fire and sulphur, and with the loathed fires in the valley of Hinnom.