The Life of Jesus. Ernest Renan

4: Esther vi. 13, vii. 10, viii. 7, 11–17, ix. 1–22; and in the apocryphal parts, ix. 10, 11, xiv. 13, and following, xvi. 20, 24.]

      [Footnote 5: Eccl. i. 11, ii. 16, 18–24, iii. 19–22, iv. 8, 15, 16, v. 17, 18, vi. 3, 6, viii. 15, ix. 9, 10.]

      A gigantic dream haunted for centuries the Jewish people, constantly renewing its youth in its decrepitude. A stranger to the theory of individual recompense, which Greece diffused under the name of the immortality of the soul, Judea concentrated all its power of love and desire upon the national future. She thought she possessed divine promises of a boundless future; and as the bitter reality, from the ninth century before our era, gave more and more the dominion of the world to physical force, and brutally crushed these aspirations, she took refuge in the union of the most impossible ideas, and attempted the strangest gyrations. Before the captivity, when all the earthly hopes of the nation had become weakened by the separation of the northern tribes, they dreamt of the restoration of the house of David, the reconciliation of the two divisions of the people, and the triumph of theocracy and the worship of Jehovah over idolatry. At the epoch of the captivity, a poet, full of harmony, saw the splendor of a future Jerusalem, of which the peoples and the distant isles should be tributaries, under colors so charming, that one might say a glimpse of the visions of Jesus had reached him at a distance of six centuries.[1]

      [Footnote 1: Isaiah lx. &c.]

      The victory of Cyrus seemed at one time to realize all that had been hoped. The grave disciples of the Avesta and the adorers of Jehovah believed themselves brothers. Persia had begun by banishing the multiple dévas, and by transforming them into demons (divs), to draw from the old Arian imaginations (essentially naturalistic) a species of Monotheism. The prophetic tone of many of the teachings of Iran had much analogy with certain compositions of Hosea and Isaiah. Israel reposed under the Achemenidae,[1] and under Xerxes (Ahasuerus) made itself feared by the Iranians themselves. But the triumphal and often cruel entry of Greek and Roman civilization into Asia, threw it back upon its dreams. More than ever it invoked the Messiah as judge and avenger of the people. A complete renovation, a revolution which should shake the world to its very foundation, was necessary in order to satisfy the enormous thirst of vengeance excited in it by the sense of its superiority, and by the sight of its humiliation.[2]

      [Footnote 1: The whole book of Esther breathes a great attachment to this dynasty.]

      [Footnote 2: Apocryphal letter of Baruch, in Fabricius, Cod. pseud., V.T., ii. p. 147, and following.]

      If Israel had possessed the spiritualistic doctrine, which divides man in two parts—the body and the soul—and finds it quite natural that while the body decays, the soul should survive, this paroxysm of rage and of energetic protestation would have had no existence. But such a doctrine, proceeding from the Grecian philosophy, was not in the traditions of the Jewish mind. The ancient Hebrew writings contain no trace of future rewards or punishments. Whilst the idea of the solidarity of the tribe existed, it was natural that a strict retribution according to individual merits should not be thought of. So much the worse for the pious man who happened to live in an epoch of impiety; he suffered, like the rest, the public misfortunes consequent on the general irreligion. This doctrine, bequeathed by the sages of the patriarchal era, constantly produced unsustainable contradictions. Already at the time of Job it was much shaken; the old men of Teman who professed it were considered behind the age, and the young Elihu, who intervened in order to combat them, dared to utter as his first word this essentially revolutionary sentiment, "Great men are not always wise; neither do the aged understand judgment."[1] With the complications which had taken place in the world since the time of Alexander, the old Temanite and Mosaic principle became still more intolerable.[2] Never had Israel been more faithful to the Law, and yet it was subjected to the atrocious persecution of Antiochus. Only a declaimer, accustomed to repeat old phrases denuded of meaning, would dare to assert that these evils proceeded from the unfaithfulness of the people.[3] What! these victims who died for their faith, these heroic Maccabees, this mother with her seven sons, will Jehovah forget them eternally? Will he abandon them to the corruption of the grave?[4] Worldly and incredulous Sadduceeism might possibly not recoil before such a consequence, and a consummate sage, like Antigonus of Soco,[5] might indeed maintain that we must not practise virtue like a slave in expectation of a recompense, that we must be virtuous without hope. But the mass of the people could not be contented with that. Some, attaching themselves to the principle of philosophical immortality, imagined the righteous living in the memory of God, glorious forever in the remembrance of men, and judging the wicked who had persecuted them.[6] "They live in the sight of God; … they are known of God."[7] That was their reward. Others, especially the Pharisees, had recourse to the doctrine of the resurrection.[8] The righteous will live again in order to participate in the Messianic reign. They will live again in the flesh, and for a world of which they will be the kings and the judges; they will be present at the triumph of their ideas and at the humiliation of their enemies.

      [Footnote 1: Job xxxiii. 9.]

      [Footnote 2: It is nevertheless remarkable that Jesus, son of Sirach, adheres to it strictly (chap. xvii. 26–28, xxii. 10, 11, xxx. 4, and following, xli. 1, 2, xliv. 9). The author of the book of Wisdom holds quite opposite opinions (iv. 1, Greek text).]

      [Footnote 3: Esth. xiv. 6, 7 (apocr.); the apocryphal Epistle of

       Baruch (Fabricius, Cod. pseud., V.T., ii. p. 147, and following).]

      [Footnote 4: 2 Macc. vii.]

      [Footnote 5: Pirké Aboth., i. 3.]

      [Footnote 6: Wisdom, ii.-vi.; De Rationis Imperio, attributed to Josephus, 8, 13, 16, 18. Still we must remark that the author of this last treatise estimates the motive of personal recompense in a secondary degree. The primary impulse of martyrs is the pure love of the Law, the advantage which their death will procure to the people, and the glory which will attach to their name. Comp. Wisdom, iv. 1, and following; Eccl. xliv., and following; Jos., B.J., II. viii. 10, III. viii. 5.]

      [Footnote 7: Wisdom, iv. 1; De Rat. Imp., 16, 18.]

      [Footnote 8: 2 Macc., vii. 9, 14, xii. 43, 44.]

      We find among the ancient people of Israel only very indecisive traces of this fundamental dogma. The Sadducee, who did not believe it, was in reality faithful to the old Jewish doctrine; it was the Pharisee, the believer in the resurrection, who was the innovator. But in religion it is always the zealous sect which innovates, which progresses, and which has influence. Besides this, the resurrection, an idea totally different from that of the immortality of the soul, proceeded very naturally from the anterior doctrines and from the position of the people. Perhaps Persia also furnished some of its elements.[1] In any case, combining with the belief in the Messiah, and with the doctrine of a speedy renewal of all things, it formed those apocalyptic theories which, without being articles of faith (the orthodox Sanhedrim of Jerusalem does not seem to have adopted them), pervaded all imaginations, and produced an extreme fermentation from one end of the Jewish world to the other. The total absence of dogmatic rigor caused very contradictory notions to be admitted at one time, even upon so primary a point Sometimes the righteous were to await the resurrection;[2] sometimes they were to be received at the moment of death into Abraham's bosom;[3] sometimes the resurrection was to be general;[4] sometimes it was to be reserved only for the faithful;[5] sometimes it supposed a renewed earth and a new Jerusalem; sometimes it implied a previous annihilation of the universe.

      [Footnote 1: Theopompus, in Diog. Laert., Proem, 9. Boundehesch, xxxi. The traces of the doctrine of the resurrection in the Avesta are very doubtful.]

      [Footnote 2: John xi. 24.]

      [Footnote 3: Luke xvi. 22. Cf. De Rationis Imp., 13, 16, 18.]

      [Footnote 4: Dan. xii. 2.]

      [Footnote 5: 2 Macc. vii. 14.]

      Jesus, as soon as he began to think, entered into the burning atmosphere which was created in Palestine by the ideas we have just stated. These ideas were taught in no school; but they were in the very air, and his soul was early penetrated by them. Our hesitations and our doubts never reached him. On this summit of the mountain of