Robert Henry Charles

“ When once it had taught men that the next world was God’s world, though it did so at the cost of relinquishing the present to Satan, it had achieved its real task, and the time had come for it to quit the stage of history, when Christianity appeared as the heir of this true spiritual achievement. But Christianity was no less assuredly the heir of ancient prophecy, and thus as spiritual representative of what was true in prophecy and apocalyptic ”

“ The eschatology of a nation—and the most influential portion of Jewish and Christian apocrypha are eschatological—is always the last part of their religion to experience the transforming power of new ideas and new facts.
Now the current religious literature of Judaism outside the canon was composed of apocryphal books, the bulk of which bore an apocalyptic character, and dealt with the coming of the Messianic kingdom. These naturally became the popular religious books of the rising Jewish-Christian communities, and were held by them in still higher esteem, if possible, than by the Jews. ”

“ As we have already remarked, the Council of Trent adopted the Canon of the Council of Hippo and of Augustine, declaring: 'If any one receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said books entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate . . . let him be anathema.' [8] All the Apocrypha except 1 Esdras, 4 Ezra, and the Prayer of Manasses belonging to the Apocrypha Proper were declared Canonical. ”

“ Old Testament prophecy had addressed itself to both these problems, though it was hardly conscious of the claims of the latter. It concerned itself essentially with the present, and with the future only as growing organically out of the present. It taught the absolute need of personal and national righteousness, and foretold the ultimate blessedness of the righteous nation on the present earth. ”

“ Before Him all the elders and the living creatures fell down and acknowledged that He had power to open the seven seals thereof, and their song was re-echoed by every thing alike in heaven and earth. The contrast between these two chapters and those that follow is striking in the extreme. The time of the seer's vision is one of direst need. The life and death struggle between the church and the empire has now entered on its final stage, and fear and trouble and woe are rife in the hearts of the faithful. But when the seer is exalted to heaven he sees no trace of the turmoil on earth. ”

“ The true scriptures, according to the Jewish canon (Yad. iii. 5; Toseph. Yad. ii. 3) , were those which defiled the hands of such as touched them. But other scholars, such as Zahn, Schürer, Porter, state that the secret books with which we have been dealing formed a class by themselves and were called “Genuizim” (גנוזים) , and that this name and idea passed from Judaism over into the Greek, and that ἀπόκρυφα βιβλία is a translation of ספרים גנוזים. But the Hebrew verb does not mean “to bide” but “to store away,” and is only used of things in themselves precious. ”

“ He maintained the everlasting validity of the law, he held the strictest views on circumcision, the sabbath, and the duty of shunning all intercourse with the Gentiles; he believed in angels and in a blessed immortality. In the next place he was an upholder of the Maccabean pontificate. He glorifies Levi’s successors as high-priests and civil rulers, and applies to them the title assumed by the Maccabean princes, though he does not, like the author of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, expect the Messiah to come forth from among them. ”

“ The author of Baruch declares (iv. 15, 19) : “For though Adam sinned and brought untimely death upon all, yet of those who were born from him each one of them prepared for his own soul torment to come, and again each one of them has chosen for himself glories to come . . . each one of us has been the Adam of his own soul,” Though the writer of Ezra would admit the possibility of a few Israelites attaining to salvation through the most strenuous endeavour, yet he holds that man is all but predoomed through his original evil disposition or through the fall of Adam (vii. 118) . ”

“ It was Christianity that preserved Jewish apocalyptic, when it was abandoned by Judaism as it sank into Rabbinism, and gave it a Christian character either by a forcible exegesis or by a systematic process of interpolation. Moreover, it cultivated this form of literature and made it the vehicle of its own ideas. Though apocalyptic served its purpose in the opening centuries of the Christian era, it must be confessed that in many of its aspects its office is transitory, as they belong not to the essence of Christian thought. ”

“ Fragment Hypothesis.—The previous theories have brought to light and emphasized the fact that within the Apocalypse there are passages inconsistent with the tone and character of the whole. But, notwithstanding this fact, the Apocalypse gives a strong impression of its unity. Thus apparently the only remaining theory which can account for both these phenomena is that at which we have now arrived, i.e. the fragment hypothesis. ”

“ The Ascension of Isaiah is a composite work of very great interest. In its present form it is probably not older than the latter half of the 2nd century of our era. Its various constituents, however, and of these there were three—the Martyrdom of Isaiah, the Testament of Hezekiah and the Vision of Isaiah—circulated independently as early as the 1st century. ”

“ It is hardly possible to form any classification which is not open to some objection. In any case the classification must be to some extent provisional, since scholars are still divided as to the original language, date and place of composition of some of the books which must come under our classification. [4] We may, however, discriminate (i.) the Palestinian and (ii.) the Hellenistic literature of the Old Testament, though even this distinction is open to serious objections. ”

“ Later Greek Fathers [5] rejected in various ways this conception of the Canon, but it was accepted and maintained in the West by St. Augustine. Where the Greek differed from the Hebrew Augustine held that the difference was due to Divine inspiration, and that this difference was to be regarded as a sign that in the passage in question an allegorical—not a literal—interpretation was to be looked for. Since he habitually used a Latin Bible, which embraced the Apocrypha, he appealed to the authority of these books as of the rest of the Scriptures. ”

“ After four days Holofernes, smitten with her charms, at the close of a sumptuous entertainment invites her to remain within his tent over night. No sooner is he overcome with sleep than Judith, seizing his sword, strikes off his head and gives it to her maid; both now leave the camp (as they had previously been accustomed to do, ostensibly for prayer) and return to Bethulia, where the trophy is displayed amid great rejoicings and thanksgivings. Achior now publicly professes Judaism, and at the instance of Judith the Israelites make a sudden victorious onslaught on the enemy. ”

“ Their writers were students of ancient prophecy and apocalyptical tradition, and, though they might recast and reinterpret them, they could not regard them as their own inventions. Each fresh apocalypse would in the eyes of its writer be in some degree but a fresh edition of the traditions naturally attaching themselves to great names in Israel’s past, and thus the books named respectively Enoch, Noah, Ezra would to some slight extent be not pseudonymous. ”

“ If the writer of the Fourth Gospel was the Apostle John, then the difficulties for the assumption of an apostolic authorship of the Apocalypse become well-nigh insuperable. Nay more, the difficulties attending on the assumption of a common authorship of the Gospel and Apocalypse, independently of the question of the apostolic authorship of the Gospel, are practically insuperable. ”

“ APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE. The history of the earlier usage of the term “Apocrypha” (from ἀποκρύπτειν, to hide) is not free from obscurity. We shall therefore enter at once on a short account of the origin of this literature in Judaism, of its adoption by early Christianity, of the various meanings which the term “apocryphal” assumed in the course of its history, and having so done we shall proceed to classify and deal with the books that belong to this literature. ”

“ When the divine word is thus conceived as a written message, the sole office of the prophet is to communicate what is written. Thus the human element is reduced to zero, and the conception of prophecy becomes mechanical. And as the personal element disappears in the conception of the prophetic calling, so it tends to disappear in the prophetic view of history, and the future comes to be conceived not as the organic result of the present under the divine guidance, but as mechanically determined from the beginning in the counsels of God, and arranged under artificial categories of time. ”

“ As regards the first problem the writer shows, in the first vision, that suffering and death come from sin—no less truly on the part of Israel than of all men, for God created man to be immortal; that the end is nigh, when wrongs will be righted; God’s rule will then be recognized. In the second he emphasizes the consolation to be found in the coming time, and in the third he speaks solely of the next world, and then addresses himself to the second problem. The fourth, fifth and sixth visions are eschatological. ”

“ Other books, like the Ethiopic Enoch, exhibit a series of independent sources connected more or less loosely together. Such are to be explained on the “sources hypothesis.” Others, like the Ascension of Isaiah, betray the handiwork of successive editors, and are accordingly to be explained on the “redaction hypothesis.” Now modern scholars have with varying success used in turn these three hypotheses with a view to the solution of the problems of the New Testament Apocalypse. To these we shall now address ourselves. ”

“ Didactic or Sapiential.—The Pirke Aboth, a collection of sayings of the Jewish Fathers, are preserved in the 9th Tractate of the Fourth Order of the Mishnah. They are attributed to some sixty Jewish teachers, belonging for the most part to the years A.D. 70–170, though a few of them are of a much earlier date. The book holds the same place in rabbinical literature as the Book of Proverbs in the Bible. The sayings are often admirable. Thus in iv. 1-4, “Who is wise? He that learns from every man.... Who is mighty? He that subdues his nature.... Who is rich? He that is contented with his lot.... ”

“ God reveals to Enoch the history of the creation of the earth and the seven planets and circles of the heaven and of man, the story of the fallen angels, the duration of the world through 7000 years, and its millennium of rest. xxxviii.-lxvi. Enoch returns to earth, admonishes his sons: instructs them on what he had seen in the heavens, gives them his books. Bids them not to swear at all nor to expect any intercession of the departed saints for sinners. lvi.-lxiii. Methuselah asks Enoch’s blessing before he departs, and to all his sons and their families Enoch gives fresh instruction. ”

“ Both these writers assign the Apocalypse to the reign of Domitian.
The labours of these scholars, though to the superficial student they seem to prove that everything is possible and nothing certain, have certainly thrown great light on the literary character of the Apocalypse. Though differing in detail, they tend to show that, while the book is the production of one author, all its parts are not of the same date, nor are they one and all his first-hand creation. ”

“ Apocalypse of Esdras.—This Greek production resembles the more ancient fourth book of Esdras in some respects. The prophet is perplexed about the mysteries of life, and questions God respecting them. The punishment of the wicked especially occupies his thoughts. Since they have sinned in consequence of Adam’s fall, their fate is considered worse than that of the irrational creation. The description of the tortures suffered in the infernal regions is tolerably minute. At last the prophet consents to give up his spirit to God, who has prepared for him a crown of immortality. ”

“ There is a Hebrew Book of Enoch attributed to R. Ishmael ben Elisha who lived at the close of the 1st century and the beginning of the 2nd century B.C. This book is very closely related to the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, or rather, to a large extent dependent upon it. Did Ishmael ben Elisha use the Book of the Secrets of Enoch in its Greek form, or did he find portions of it in Hebrew? At all events, extensive quotations from a Book of Enoch are found in the rabbinical literature of the middle ages, and the provenance of these has not yet been determined. ”

“ The Lamb that was slain has taken upon Himself the burden of the world's history.
In vi. we have the opening of the six seals, and the horrors of the future begin. The choice of three series of seven seals, seven trumpets and seven bowls, to form the framework in which the history of the last woes is to be given, shows the same hand that addressed the churches as seven. But between the sixth and seventh seals and the sixth and seventh trumpets the connexion is more or less disturbed by the insertion of certain interludes containing material foreign in certain aspects to the Apocalypse. ”

“ Christianity, moreover, moved by the same apocalyptic tendency as Judaism, gave birth to new Christian apocryphs, though, in the case of most of them, the subject matter was to a large extent traditional and derived from Jewish sources.
Another prolific source of apocryphal gospels, acts and apocalypses was Gnosticism. While the characteristic features of apocalyptic literature were derived from Judaism, those of Gnosticism sprang partly from Greek philosophy, partly from oriental religions. ”

“ This ethical teaching, which is indefinitely higher and purer than that of the Old Testament, is yet its true spiritual child, and helps to bridge the chasm that divides the ethics of the Old and New Testaments. [1]
In the early decades of the Christian era the text was current in two forms, which are denoted by Hα and Hβ in this article and in the edition of the text published by the Oxford University Press. “The former of these was translated not later than A.D. 50 into Greek, and this translation was used by the scholar who rendered the second Hebrew recension into Greek. ”

“ Yet, on the other hand, our author's attitude to the world reflects the temper of judaism rather than that of Christianity. He looks upon the enemies of the Christian Church with unconcealed hatred. No prayer arises within his work on their behalf, and nothing but unalloyed triumph is displayed over their doom. The Christian duty of love to those that wrong us does not seem to have impressed 'itself on our Apocalyptist.
Is the Apocalypse pseudonymous?-All the Jewish apocalypses are pseudonymous, and all the Christian with the exception of the Shepherd of H ermas. ”

“ Though the individual might perish amid the disorders of this world, he would not fail, apocalyptic taught, to attain through resurrection the recompense that was his due in the Messianic kingdom or in heaven itself. Apocalyptic thus forms the indispensable preparation for the religion of the New Testament.
iii. Form of Apocalyptic.—The form of apocalyptic is a literary form; for we cannot suppose that the writers experienced the voluminous and detailed visions we find in their books. ”

“ This was no isolated phenomenon; for in every progressive period of the history of religion we have on the one side the doctrine of God advancing in depth and fulness: on the other we have cosmological, eschatological and other survivals, which, however justifiable in earlier stages, are in unmistakable antagonism with the theistic beliefs of the time. ”

“ Some views of Author.—Our author’s views on Moses are remarkable. He writes that Moses was prepared from before the foundation of the world to be the mediator of God’s covenant with his people (i. 14, iii. 12) . During his life he was Israel’s intercessor with God (xi. 11, 17) . Praying on their behalf as a “great angel” (xi. 17) , “a sacred spirit who was worthy of the Lord manifold and incomprehensible” xi. 16) . Apparently his relation to Israel did not cease with death, as he was to be their intercessor in the spiritual world (xii. 6) . ”

“ For with the advent of Christianity prophecy had sprung anew into life, and our author distinctly declares that the words of the book are for his own generation (xxii. Io) . Hence we conclude that the grounds are lacking which would entitle our assuming a priori that the Apocalypse is pseudonymous. Was the Author the Son of Zebedee, the Apostle?-The evidence of the book is against this assumption. The Writer demands a hearing as a prophet (xxii. 6) , and in no single passage makes any claim to having been an apostle. ”