The Jewish literature that has come down to us from this period is almost entirely religious. Just as it seemed to the orthodox Hebrew a profanation to make images of the deity, or to adorn his temples with plastic art, so it seemed to him an error to write philosophy or literature for any other ultimate purpose than to praise God and glorify the Law. There were of course many exceptions, of which the pretty story of Susannah may serve as an instance. It tells of a fair Jewess falsely accused of unchastity by two unsatisfied elders, and freed through the skillful cross-examination of witnesses by a youth named Daniel. Even this romance found its way into some editions of the Book of Daniel.
The book of Joshua son of Sirach, which we know as Ecclesiasticus, may be as late as this period; it is one of many Apocrypha—“hidden” or unauthentic compositions not accepted into the Jewish canon of the Old Testament; rich in beauty and wisdom, it did not deserve to be excluded from the company of Ecclesiastes and Job. In its twenty-fourth chapter we find again, as in the eighth chapter of Proverbs, the doctrine of the Logos or Incarnate Word: “Wisdom the first product of God, created from the beginning of the world.” Between 130 B.C. and A.D. 40 an Alexandrian Jew—or a number of Hellenistic Jews—published a Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, which sought, like Philo, to harmonize Judaism and Platonism, and called Hellenizing Jews back to the Law in prose as noble as any since Isaiah. A lesser work, the Psalms of Solomon (ca. 50 B.C.), is rich in anticipation of a Redeemer for Israel.
This hope of salvation from Rome and earthly suffering through the coming of a divine Redeemer rings through nearly all the Jewish literature of this age. Many productions took the form of apocalypses or revelations, whose aim was to make the past intelligible and forgivable by presenting it as a prelude to a triumphant future revealed to some seer by God. The Book of Daniel, written about 165 B.C. to encourage Israel against Antiochus Epiphanes, was still circulating among Jews who could not believe that Yahveh would let them long remain under pagan domination. The Book of Enoch, probably the work of several authors between 170 and 66 B.C., took the form of visions vouchsafed to the patriarch who, in Genesis (v, 24), had “walked with God.” It recounted the fall of Satan and his cohorts, the consequent intrusion of evil and suffering into human life, the redemption of mankind by a Messiah, and the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. About 150 B.C. Jewish writers began to publish Sibylline Oracles, in which various sibyls or prophetesses were represented as defending Judaism against paganism and foretelling the final victory of the Jews over their enemies.
The idea of the saving god had probably come to western Asia from Persia and Babylonia.38 In the Zoroastrian creed all history and life were represented as a war between the holy forces of light and the diabolical powers of darkness; in the end a savior would come—Shaosyant or Mithras—to judge all men and establish an everlasting reign of righteousness and peace. To many Jews the rule of Rome seemed part of the transient victory of evil. They denounced the greed, treachery, brutality, and idolatry of “gentile” civilization and the “atheistic” hedonism of an epicurean world. According to the Book of Wisdom
the ungodly said: Our life is short and tedious, and in the death of a man there is no remedy; neither was there any man known to return from the grave. . . . For the breath in our nostrils is as smoke, and a little spark in the moving of our heart; which being extinguished, our body shall be turned into ashes, and our spirit shall vanish as the soft air, and our name shall be forgotten, and our life shall pass away as the trace of a cloud, as a mist dispersed by the beams of the sun. . . . Come on, let us enjoy the good things that are present … let no flower of the spring pass us by; let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they be withered; let us leave tokens of our joyfulness in every place.39
These epicureans reason falsely, says the author; they hitch their wagon to a falling star, since pleasure is a vain and transitory thing.
For the hope of the ungodly man is as chaff swept away by the wind, and as thin hoar-frost scattered by the tempest; it passeth as the remembrance of a guest who tarrieth but a day. But the righteous shall live forever, and the care of them is with the Most High. Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom, and a diadem of beauty from the hand of the Lord.40
The reign of evil will be brought to an end, according to the apocalyptic books, either by the direct intervention of God himself or the earthly coming of his son or representative, the Messiah or Anointed One.II Had not the prophet Isaiah, a century back foretold him?
For unto us a child is born, a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called . . . the mighty God, the Prince of Peace.41
Many Jews agreed with Isaiah (XI, 1) in describing the Messiah as an earthly king who would be born of the royal house of David; others, like the authors of Enoch and Daniel, called him the Son of Man, and pictured him as coming down from heaven. The philosopher of Proverbs and the poet of the Wisdom of Solomon,42 perhaps influenced by Plato’s Ideas or the Stoic anima mundi, saw him as incarnate Wisdom, the first-begotten of God, the Word or Reason (logos) that would soon play so great a role in Philo’s philosophy. Nearly all the apocalyptic authors thought that the Messiah would triumph speedily; but Isaiah in a remarkable passage had conceived him as
despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. . . . Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows … he was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities . . . and with his stripes we are healed. The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all. . . . He was taken from prison and from judgment, and was cut off out of the land of the living. . . . He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.43
All, however, agreed that in the end the Messiah would subdue the heathen, free Israel,44 make Jerusalem his capital, and win all men to accept Yahveh and the Mosaic Law.45 Thereafter a “Good Time” would come of happiness for the whole world: all the earth would be fertile, every seed would bear a thousandfold, wine would be plentiful, poverty would disappear, all men would be healthy and virtuous, and justice, good fellowship, and peace would reign over the earth.46 Some seers thought that this joyful age would be interrupted, that the powers of darkness and evil would make a last assault upon the happy kingdom, and that the world would be consumed in chaos and conflagration. In the final “Day of God” the dead would rise and be judged by the “Ancient of Days” (Yahveh), or by the “Son of Man,” to whom absolute and everlasting dominion would then be given over a renovated world, the Kingdom of God. The wicked would be cast down headlong and speechless “into Hell,”47 but the good would be received into unending blessedness.
Essentially the movement of thought in Judea was parallel with that in the pagan theology of the time: a people that had once thought of the future in terms of its national destiny lost its trust in the state and thought of salvation in spiritual and individual terms. The mystery religions had brought this hope to many millions in Greece, the Hellenic East, and Italy; but nowhere was the hope so earnest, or its need so great, as in Judea. The poor or bereaved, the oppressed or scorned of the earth, looked for some divine redeemer of their subjection and their suffering. Soon, said the apocalypses, a savior would come, and in his triumph all just men would be lifted up, even out of the grave, into a paradise of eternal bliss. Old saints like Simeon, mystic women like Anna daughter of Phanuel, passed their lives about the Temple, fasting, waiting, praying that they might look upon the Redeemer before they died. A great expectation filled the hearts of men.