often foretell correctly a future event,-e.g. the failure of Sennacherib's expedition against Jerusalem, or the capture of Babylon by Cyrus,-though the details by which they imaginatively represent these events as accompanied do not form part of the fulfilment, but merely constitute the drapery in which the prophet clothes what is to him the important and central idea (see, for example, Is. x. 28—34, xxiii. 15—18, xxx. 32, 33, xlvi. 1, 2)1. In the same way, Antiochus did actually meet his doom shortly, as foretold in Dan. xi. 45 b (cf. viii. 25 end, ix. 27 end), though the circumstances under which the writer pictures him as advancing towards it (xi. 40-45 a) do not correspond to what we know of the historical reality2.

2. The Resurrection. The ordinary belief of the ancient Hebrews on the subject of a future life, was that the spirit after death passed into the underworld, Sheol, the 'meeting-place,' as Job (xxx. 23) calls it, 'for all living,' good and evil alike (Gen. xxxvii. 35; Is. xiv. 8, 9, 15), where it entered upon a shadowy, half-conscious, joyless existence, not worthy of the name of 'life,' where communion with God was at an end, and where God's mercies could be neither apprehended nor acknowledged (Is. xxxviii. 18; Ps. vi. 5, xxx. 9, lxxxviii. 10-12, cxv. 17, &c.). But the darkness which thus shrouded man's hereafter did not remain in the O.T. without gleams of light; and there are three lines along which the way is prepared for the fuller revelation brought by the Gospel. There is, firstly, the limitation of the power of death set forth by the prophets, in their visions of a glorified, but yet earthly, Zion of the future: 'For as the days of a tree shall be the days of my people, and the work of their hands shall my chosen ones wear out' (Is. lxv. 22; cf. v. 20, where it is said that death at the age of 100 years will be regarded then as premature); or even its abolition altogether,

:

1 Comp. the writer's Isaiah, pp. 61, 73, 94, 106, 111-114, 146 n. 2 The idea that prophecy is 'history written beforehand' is radically false it is a survival from an age in which the prophets were not studied in the light of history, and it is a source of many and serious misunderstandings of their meaning (comp. Kirkpatrick, Doctrine of the Prophets, pp. 15-17, 194—6, 402—6, 524 f.)

'He hath swallowed up death for ever' (Is. xxv. 8). There is, secondly, the conviction uttered by particular Psalmists that their close fellowship with God implies and demands that they will themselves be personally superior to death: 'Therefore my heart is glad and my glory [i.e. my spirit] rejoiceth: my flesh also dwelleth securely. For thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol1; thou wilt not suffer thy godly one to see the pit' (Ps. xvi. 9, 10; cf. xvii. 15, xlix. 15, lxxiii. 26; Job xix. 26)2. And, thirdly, we meet with the idea of a resurrection, which, however, only takes shape gradually, and is at first a hope and not a dogma, national and not individual, and in the Old Testament, even to the end, is limited to Israel. The hope is expressed first, though dimly, in Hos. vi. 2, where it is evidently national: 'After two days he will revive us in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live before him': and the promise in Hos. xiii. 14 is national likewise3. The passage which comes next chronologically is Ezek. xxxvii., the vision of the valley of dry bones, where, by the express terms of v. II ("Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel'), the promise is limited to Israel, and where also, as Prof. Davidson points out*, what the prophet contemplates is a resurrection, not of individuals, but of the nation,—' it is a prophecy of the resurrection of the nation, whose condition is figuratively expressed by the people when they represent its bones as long scattered and dry.' In the next prophecy in which the idea occurs, the (postexilic) apocalyptic prophecy, Is. xxiv.-xxvii., there is, however, an advance, and the resurrection of individual Israelites is certainly contemplated, though rather as the object of a hope or prayer than as a fixed doctrine: the people confess that they could not effect any true deliverance themselves: 'We were with child, we writhed in pain, when we bare, it was wind, we

1 Not 'in Sheol': the hope expressed by the Psalmist is not that he will rise again, but that he will not die.

2 See further the notes on these passages in the Cambridge Bible; and the Introduction to the Psalms, pp. lxxv.-lxxviii.

3 Cf. Oehler, Theol. of the O.T., § 225.

4 In his notes on the chapter in the Cambridge Bible.

DANIEL

g

made not the land salvation, neither were inhabitants of the world brought forth'; they turned therefore to God: 'May Thy dead live! may my dead bodies arise!' and the prophet breaks in with the words of jubilant assurance: 'Awake, and sing aloud, ye that dwell in the dust; for a dew of lights [a dew charged with the light of life] is Thy dew, and the earth shall bring forth the Shades!' The dwindled and suffering nation is thus represented as replenished and strengthened by the resurrection of its deceased members. 'The doctrine of the resurrection here presented is reached through the conviction, gradually produced by the long process of revelation, that the final redemption of Israel could not be accomplished within the limits of nature. It became clear that the hopes and aspirations engendered by the Spirit in believing minds pointed forward to the great miracle here described, and thus the belief in the resurrection was firmly bound up with the indestructible hopes of the future of Israel. The idea is represented in a form which is immature in the light of the New Testament',' but it marks almost the highest development of O.T. revelation on the subject. That the hope is limited to Israel, appears both from the words of the passage itself, and also from v. 14, where it is denied of Israel's foes ('The dead live not (again), the Shades arise not').

The last passage in the O.T. in which the idea is expressed is Dan. xii. 2, 'And many of them that sleep in the dusty ground shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to reproaches and everlasting abhorrence.' Here a resurrection of the wicked is taught for the first time, as also a doctrine of future rewards and punishments: both doctrines are, however, still applied only to Israelites, and (as the word 'many' shews) not even to all of these; the writer, it seems, having in view not individuals as such, but those individuals who had in an extraordinary degree helped or hindered the advent of God's kingdom, i.e. the Jewish martyrs and apostates respectively, the great majority of the nation, who were of average character,

1 Skinner, in the Cambridge Bible, ad loc.

neither overmuch righteous nor overmuch wicked, remaining still in Sheol1. The nature of the future reward and retribution is also left indefinite, the expressions used being quite general2. It does not fall within the scope of a Commentary on Daniel to trace the development of the doctrine in subsequent times; it must suffice to point out generally how, in the century or so following the age of the Maccabees, the religious imagination of pious Jews, meditating upon the intimations of a future life contained in the Old Testament, and combining them with different prophetic representations of the future triumph of the kingdom of God, arrived at fairly definite, though not always perfectly consistent, conceptions of a resurrection, a final judgement, a place of punishment (Gehenna), Paradise, and a future life (which is more or less spiritually conceived, according to the point of view adopted by the particular writer); and how, further, by this means currency was given to certain figures and expressions, in which even our Lord and His Apostles could clothe appropriately the truths enunciated by them3.

3. Angels. The angelology of the Book of Daniel has been sufficiently explained, and compared with that of other Jewish writings of 2-1 cent. B.C., in the notes on viii. 16 and x. 13. It has there been shewn that it is only in the later books of the

1 Cf. the note ad loc., and Charles, Eschatology, p. 180. The idea that the resurrection was to be limited to Israel appears also among the later Jews; indeed, it became ultimately the accepted doctrine that it was to be limited to righteous Israelites, the wicked being either annihilated, or confined in prison-houses of perpetual torment: cf. e.g. 2 Macc. vii. 9, 14, 36; Psalms of Sol. iii. 13, 16, xiii. 9, 10, xiv. 6, 7, XV. 13-15; Apoc. of Baruch xxx.; Joseph. Ant. XVIII. i. 3 (the creed of the Pharisees); and see Charles on Enoch li. 1, Weber, Altsynag. Theol. p. 372 ff.

2 See further, on the subject of the two preceding paragraphs, Salmond's Christian Doctrine of Immortality, ed. 3 (1897), pp. 233267.

3 The writer has sketched the growth of belief in a future state, with special reference to the Book of Enoch and the Targums, in the fourth of his Sermons on subjects connected with the Old Testament (pp. 72-98); for more detailed particulars see Charles' Eschatology, Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian (1899), chaps. v.—viii.

O.T. that angels begin to receive names, and that differences of grade and function are recognized among them; in particular, also, it has been pointed out that the 'chief princes' mentioned in x. 13 are very probably the seven superior angels (or 'archangels') referred to in Tob. xii. 15 and in different parts of the Book of Enoch, and that the doctrine of patron or tutelary angels of nations, though alluded to probably in Is. xxiv. 21, appears for the first time distinctly in Daniel (x. 13, 20, 21, xi. 1, xii. 1). A few words must however be said here on the opinion that the angelology of Daniel was derived from, or at least influenced by, the religion of the ancient Persians, commonly called either (from the name of its traditional founder) Zoroastrianism, or (from the name of its supreme deity) Mazdeism. There are undoubtedly affinities between some of the doctrines of Zoroastrianism and those of Israel,—its supreme god, Ahuramazda (mentioned repeatedly by Darius Hystaspis in his inscriptions), 'the Lord, the great knower,' was, for instance, a purer and more spiritual being than many of the gods of the heathen,- -so that it is not difficult to imagine elements from the system being borrowed by the Jews; but in the case of angels, the influence, if it was exerted at all, must have been slight. The facts are these. Ahura-mazda is in the sacred canon of Zoroastrianism,-known generally as the Zend-Avesta,—the Creator of all things, but 'he is assisted in his administration of the universe by legions of beings, who are all subject to him. The most powerful among his ministers were originally naturegods, such as the sun, moon, earth, winds, water,' &c.; but there were an immense number besides. At the head of all these subordinate beings are 'six genii of a superior order, six ever-active energies, who preside under his guidance over the kingdoms and forces of nature.' These genii are called 'Amesha-spentas' (Mod. Pers. 'Amshaspands'), or 'Beneficent (lit. 'increase-giving') immortals'; and their names are Vohumanô ('good thought') presiding over cattle, Asha-vahista ('perfect holiness') presiding over fire, Khshathra-vairya ('good government') over metals, Spenta-armaiti ('meek piety') over the earth, Haurvatât (‘health') over vegetation, and Ameretât