HADEES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
The word Hadees occurs but eleven times in
the New Testament, and is translated Hell ten times, and grave once. The
word is from a, not, and eulo, to see, and means concealed, invisible. It
has exactly the same meaning as Sheol, literally the grave, or death, and
figuratively destruction, downfall, calamity, or punishment in this world,
with no intimation whatever of torment or punishment beyond the grave.
Such is the meaning in every passage in the Old Testament containing the
word Sheol or Hadees, whether translated Hell, grave or pit. Such is the
invariable meaning of Hadees in the New Testament. Says the "Emphatic
Diaglott:" "To translate Hadees by the word Hell as it is done ten times
out of eleven in the New Testament, is very improper, unless it has the
Saxon meaning of helan, to cover, attached to it. The primitive
signification of Hell, only denoting what was secret or concealed,
perfectly corresponds with the Greek term Hadees and its equivalent Sheol,
but the theological definition given to it at the present day by no means
expresses it."
The Greek Septuagint, which our Lord used
when he read or quoted from the Old Testament, gives Hadees as the exact
equivalent of the Hebrew Sheol, and when the Savior, or his apostles, use
the word, they must mean the same as it meant in the Old Testament. When
Hadees is used in the New Testament, we must understand it just as we do (Sheol
or Hadees) in the Old Testament.
Dr. Campbell well says: * * "In my judgment,
it ought never in Scripture to be rendered Hell, at least, in the sense
wherein that word is now universally understood by Christians.
In the Old Testament, the corresponding word
is Sheol, which signifies the state of the dead in general without regard
to the goodness or badness of the persons, their happiness or misery. In
translating that word, the seventy have almost invariably used Hadees. * *
It is very plain, that neither in the Septuagint version of the Old
Testament, nor in the New, does the word Hadees convey the meaning which
the present English word Hell, in the Christian usage, always conveys to
our minds."-Diss. Vi., pp. 180-1.
Donnegan defines it thus: "Invisible, not
manifest, concealed, dark, uncertain."-Lex. p. 19.
Le Clere affirms that "neither Hadees nor
Sheol ever signifies in the Sacred Scripture the abode of evil spirits,
but only the sepulchre, or the state of the dead."
It must not be forgotten that contact with
the heathen had corrupted the opinions of the Jews, at the time of our
Savior, from the simplicity of Moses, and that by receiving the traditions
and fables of paganism, they had made void the word of God. They had
accepted Hadees as the best Greek word to convey their idea of Sheol, but
without investing it at first with the heathen notions of the classic
Hadees, as they afterwards did. What these ideas were, the classic authors
inform us. "The Jews had acquired at Babylon a great number of Oriental
notions, and their theological opinions had undergone great changes by
this intercourse. We find in Ecclesiastes and the Wisdom of Solomon, and
the later prophets, notions unknown to the Jews before the Babylonian
captivity, which are manifestly derived from the Orientals. Thus, God
represented under the image of light, and the principle of evil under that
of darkness; the history of good and bad angels; paradise and Hell, etc.,
are doctrines of which the origin, or at least the positive determination,
can only be referred to the Oriental philosophy." (Milman's Gibbon ch. 21.
of it, or the heathen and "evangelical" descriptions of Hell are wholly
false.)
Dr. Thayer in his "Origin and History," says:
"The process is easily understood. About three hundred and thirty years
before Christ, Alexander the Great had subjected to his rule the whole of
Western Asia, including Judea, and also the kingdom of Egypt. Soon after
he founded Alexandria, which speedily became a great commercial
metropolis, and drew into itself a large multitude of Jews, who were
always eager to improve the opportunities of traffic and trade. A few
years later, Ptolemy Soter took Jerusalem, and carried off one hundred
thousand of them into Egypt. Here, of course, they were in daily contact
with Egyptians and Greeks, and gradually began to adopt their
philosophical and religious opinions, or to modify their own in harmony
with them."
"To what side soever they turned," says the
Universalist Expositor, "the Jews came in contact with Greeks and with
Greek philosophy, under one modification or another. It was round them and
among them; for small bodies of that people were scattered through their
own territories, as well as through the surrounding provinces. It
insinuated itself very slowly at first; but stealing upon them from every
quarter, and operating from age to age, it mingled at length in all their
views, and by the year 150 before Christ, had wrought a visible change in
their notions and habits of thought."
We must either reject these imported ideas,
as heathen inventions, or we must admit that the heathen, centuries before
Christ, discovered that of which Moses had no idea. In other words either
uninspired men announced the future fate of sinners centuries before
inspired men knew anything
At the time of Christ's advent Jew and Pagan
held Hadees to be a place of torment after death, to endure forever.
"The prevalent and distinguishing opinion
was, that the soul survived the body, that vicious souls would suffer an
everlasting imprisonment in Hadees, and that the souls of the virtuous
would both be happy there and in process of time obtain the privilege of
transmigrating into other bodies." * * * (Campbell's Four Gospels, Diss.
6, Pt. 2, & 19.) Of the Pharisees, Josephus says: "They also believe that
souls have an immortal vigor in them, and that, under the earth, there
will be rewards and punishments, according as they lived virtuously or
viciously in this life; and the latter are to be detained in an
everlasting prison, but that the former shall have power to revive and
live again." (Antiquites, B. 18, Ch. 1, 3. Whiston's Tr.")
These doctrines are not found in the Old
Testament. They are of heathen origin. Did Jesus endorse them? Let us
consult all the texts in which he employed the heathen word Hadees.
Matt. 11: 23 and Luke 10: 15: "And thou,
Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to Hell."
"And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to
heaven, shalt be thrust down to Hell." Of course, a city never went to a
place of torment after death. The word is used here just as it is in Isa.
14, where Babylon is said to be brought down to Sheol or Hadees, to denote
debasement, overthrow, a prediction fulfilled to the letter. Dr. Clarke's
interpretation is correct: "The word here means a state of the utmost woe,
and ruin, and desolation, to which these impenitent cities should be
reduced. This prediction of our Lord was literally fulfilled; for, in the
wars between the Romans and Jews, these cities were totally destroyed; so
that no traces are now found of Bethsaida, Chorazin or Capernaum."
That Hadees is the kingdom of death, and not
a place of torment, after death, is evident from the language of Acts 2:
27: "Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hell: neither wilt thou suffer thy
holy one to see corruption." Verse 31: "His soul was not left in Hell,
neither his flesh did see corruption," that is his spirit did not remain
in the state of the dead, until his body decayed. No one supposes that
Jesus went to a realm of torment when he died. Jacob wished to go down to
Hadees to his son mourning, so Jesus went to Hadees, the under-world, the
grave. The Apostle's Creed conveys the same idea, when it speaks of Jesus
as descending into Hell. He died, but his soul was not left in the realms
of death, is the meaning.
Matt. 14: 18 "And I say also unto thee, That
thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates
of Hell shall not prevail against it." The word is here used as an emblem
of destruction. "The gates of Hadees" means the powers of destruction. It
is the Savior's manner of saying that his church cannot be destroyed.
Rev. 6: 8: "And I looked, and behold a pale
horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill
with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the
earth." All the details of this description demonstrates that the Hell is
on earth, and not in the future world.
The word also occurs in Rev 1: 18: "I am he
that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forevermore, Amen; and
have the keys of Hell and of death." To understand this passage literally,
with the popular view of Hell added, would be to represent Jesus as the
Devil's gate keeper. If Hell is a realm of torment, and the devil is its
king, and Jesus keeps the keys, what is he but the devil's janitor, or
turnkey? The idea is that Jesus defies death and the grave, evil,
destruction, and all that is denoted either literally or figuratively by
Hadees, the under-world. Its gates open to him.
Cannon Farrar in Excursus II, "Eternal Hope,"
observes: "Hell has entirely changed its old harmless sense of 'the dim
under-world,' and that, meaning as it how does, to myriads of readers, 'a
place of endless torment by material fire into which all impenitent souls
pass forever after death,'-it conveys meanings which are not to be found
in any word of the Old or New Testament for which it is presented as an
equivalent. In our Lord's language Capernaum was to be thrust down, not
'to Hell,' but to the silence and desolation of the grave (Hadees); the
promise that 'the gates of Hadees' should not prevail against the church
is perhaps a distinct implication of her triumph even beyond death in the
souls of men for whom he died; Dives uplifts his eyes not 'in Hell,' but
in the intermediate Hadees where he rests till the resurrection to a
judgment, in which signs are not wanting that his soul may have been
meanwhile ennobled and purified."
I Cor. 15: 55: "O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?" This is parallel to Hos. 14: 14, where the
destruction of Hadees is prophesied. Whatever Hadees means, it is not to
endure forever. It is destined to be destroyed. It cannot be endless
torment. That its inhabitants are to be delivered from its dominion, is
seen from Rev. 20: 13: "And Death and Hell delivered up the dead that were
in them." This harmonizes with the declaration of David, that he had been
delivered from it already. (Ps. 30: 3; II Sam. 22: 5,6). It does not
retain its victims always, and hence, whatever it may mean, it does not
denote endless imprisonment. Hence the next verse reads, "And death and
Hell were cast into the lake of fire." Can a more striking description of
utter destruction be given than this? Of course the language is all
figurative, and not literal. Hell here denotes evil and its consequences.
It is in this world, it opposes truth and human happiness, but it is to
meet with a destruction so complete that only a se of fire can indicate
the character of its destruction.
Says Prof. Stuart: "The king of Hadees, and
Hadees itself, i.e., the region or domains of death, are represented as
cast into the burning lake. The general judgment being now come, mortality
having now been brought to a close, the tyrant death, and his domains
along with him, are represented as cast into the burning lake, as objects
of abhorrence and of indignation. They are no more to exercise any power
over the human race." Ex. Es. p. 133. 'And it came to pass, that the
beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom; the rich
man also died, and was buried; and in Hell (Hadees) he lifted up his eyes,
being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom."
Luke 16: 22, 23. If this is a literal history, as is sometimes claimed, of
the after-death experiences of two persons, then the good are carried
about in Abraham's bosom; and the wicked are actually roasted in fire, and
cry for water to cool their parched tongues. If these are figurative, then
Abraham, Lazarus, Dives and the gulf and every part of the account are
features of a picture, an allegory, as much as the fire and Abraham's
bosom. If it be history, then the good are obliged to hear the appeals of
the damned for that help which they cannot bestow! They are so near
together as to be able to converse across the gulf, not wide but deep. It
was this opinion that caused Jonathan Edwards to teach that the sight of
the agonies of the damned enhances the joys of the blest!
1. The story is not fact but fiction: in
other words, a parable. This is denied by some Christians who ask, Does
not our Savior say: "There was a certain rich man?" etc. True, but all his
parables begin in the same way, "A certain rich man had two sons,: and the
like.
In Judges 9, we read, "The trees went forth,
on a time, to anoint a king over them, and they said to the olive tree,
reign thou over us." This language is positive, and yet it describes
something that never could have occurred. All fables, parables, and other
fictitious accounts which are related to illustrate important truths, have
this positive form, to give force, point, life-likeness to the lessons
that they inculcate.
Dr. Whitby says: "That this is only a parable
and not a real history of what was actually done, is evident from the
circumstances of it, namely, the rich man lifting up his eyes in Hell and
seeing Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, his discourse with Abraham, his
complaint of being tormented in flames, and his desire that Lazarus might
be sent to cool his tongue, and if all this be confessedly parable, why
should the rest be accounted history?" Lightfoot and Hammond make the same
general comments, and Wakefield remarks, "To them who regard the narrative
a reality it must stand as an unanswerable argument for the purgatory of
the papists."
It occurs at the end of a chain of parables.
The Savior had been illustrating several principles by familiar
allegories, or parables. He had exhibited the unjustifiable murmurings of
the Pharisees, in the stories of the Lost Sheep and of the Lost Piece of
Silver, and the parable commencing the sixteenth chapter was directed to
the Scribes and Pharisees, that class of Jews being represented by the
Unjust Steward. They had been unfaithful and their Lord would shortly
dismiss them. The account says: "And the Pharisees also, who were
covetous, heard all these things, and they derided him," showing,
unequivocally, that the force and power of his references were felt.
He continued to illustrate his doctrines and
gave to them a marked cogency by his striking and beautiful stories. He
then struck into this parable designing not to relate an actual incident
but to exhibit certain truths by means of a story. It is clearly absurd to
say that he launched immediately from the figurative mode of instruction
in which he had all along been indulging, into a literal exhibition of the
eternal world, and without any notice of his changed mode of expression,
actually raised the vail that separates this life from the future! He was
not accustomed to teach in that way.
And this brings us to another proof that this
is a parable. The Jews have a book, written during the Babylonish
Captivity, entitled Gemara Babylonicum, containing doctrines entertained
by Pagans concerning the future state not recognized by the followers of
Moses. This story is founded on heathen views. They were not obtained from
the Bible, for the Old Testament contains nothing resembling them. They
were among those traditions which our Savior condemned when he told the
Scribes and Pharisees, "Ye make the word of God of none effect through
your traditions," and when he said to his disciples, "Beware of the
leaven, or doctrine of the Pharisees."
Our Savior seized the imagery of this story,
not to endorse its truth, but just as we now relate any other fable. He
related it as found in the Gemara, not for the story's sake, but to convey
a moral to his hearers; and the Scribes and Pharisees to whom he addressed
this and the five preceding stories, felt- as we shall see-the force of
its application to them.
Says Dr. Geo. Campbell: "The Jews did not,
indeed, adopt the pagan fables, on this subject, nor did they express
themselves entirely, in the same manner; but the general train of thinking
in both came pretty much to coincide. The Greek Hadees they found well
adapted to express the Hebrew Sheol. This they came to conceive as
including different sorts of habitations, for ghosts of different
characters." Now as nothing resembling this parable is found in the Old
Testament where did the Jews obtain it, if not from the heathen?
The commentator, Macknight, Scotch
Presbyterian, says truly: "It must be acknowledged that our Lord's
descriptions are not drawn from the writings of the Old Testament, but
have a remarkable affinity to the descriptions which the Grecian poets
have given. They represent the abodes of the blest as lying contiguous to
the region of the damned, and separated only by a great impassable gulf in
such sort that the ghosts could talk to one another from its opposite
banks. If from these resemblances it is thought the parable is formed on
the Grecian mythology, it will not at all follow that our Lord approved of
what the common people thought or spoke concerning these matters,
agreeably to the notions of Greeks. In parables, provided the doctrines
inculcated are strictly true, the terms in which they are inculcated may
be such as are most familiar to the people, and the images made use of are
such as they are best acquainted with."
But if it were a literal history, nothing
could be gained for the terrible doctrine of endless torment. It would
oblige us to believe in literal fire after death but there is not a word
to show that such fire would never go out. We have heard it claimed that
the punishment of the rich man must be endless, because there was gulf
(chasm, chasma) fixed so that those who desired to could not cross it. But
were this a literal account, it would not follow that the gulf would last
always.
For are we not assured that the time is
coming when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hiss
shall be made low?" Isa. 30: 4. When every valley is exalted what becomes
of the great gulf? And then there is exalted, what said of the duration of
the sufferings of the rich man. If the account be a history it must not
militate against the promise of "The restitution of all things spoken by
the mouth of all God's holy prophets since the world began." There is not
a word intimating that the rich man's torment was never to cease. So the
doctrine of endless misery is after all, not in the least taught here. The
most that can be claimed is that the consequences of sin extend into the
future life, and that is a doctrine that we believe just as strongly as
can any one, though we do not believe they will be endless, nor do we
believe the doctrine taught in this parable, nor in the Bible use of the
word Hell.
But allowing for a moment that this is
intended to represent a scene in the spirit world, what a representation
we have! Dives is dwelling in a world of fire in the company of lost
spirits, hardened by the depravity that must possess the residents of that
world, and yet yearning in compassion for those on earth. Not totally
depraved, not harboring evil thoughts but benevolent, humane. Instead of
being loyal to the wicked world in which he dwells as anyone bad enough to
go there should be, he actually tries to prevent migration Thither from
earth, while Lazarus is entirely indifferent to everybody but himself.
Dives seems to have more mercy and compassion than does Lazarus.
But what does the parable teach? That the
Jewish nation, and especially the Scribes and Pharisees were about to die
as a power, as a church, as a controlling influence in the world; while
the common people among them and the Gentiles outside of them were to be
exalted in the new order of things. The details of the parable show this:
"There was a certain rich man clothed in purple and fine linen." In these
first words, by describing their very costume, the Savior fixed the
attention of his hearers on the Jewish priesthood. They were emphatically
the rich men of that nation. His description of the beggar was equally
graphic. He lay at the gate of the rich, only asking to be fed by the
crumbs that fell from the table. Thus dependent were the common people,
and the Gentiles on the Scribes and Pharisees. We remember how Christ once
rebuked them for shutting up the kingdom of heaven against these. They lay
at the gate of the Jewish hierarchy. For the Gentiles were literally
restricted to the outer court of the temple. Hence in Rev. 11: 12 we read:
"But the court, which is without the temple, leave out, and measure it
not, for it is given unto the Gentiles." They could only walk the outer
court, or lie at the gate. We remember the anger of the Jews at Paul, for
allowing Greeks to enter the temple. This is the significance of the
language of the Canaanitish woman, Matt. 15: 27, who desired the Savior to
heal her daughter. The Savior, to try her faith, said: It is not meet to
cast the children's bread to the dogs." She replied, "Truth, Lord, yet the
dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their Mater's table." The prophet (Isa.
1: 6) represents the common people of Israel as "full of wounds, bruises,
and putrifying sores." The brief, graphic descriptions given by the Savior,
at once showed his hearers that he was describing those two classes, the
Jewish priesthood and nation on the one hand and the common people, Jews
and Gentiles, on the other.
The rich man died and was buried. This class
died officially, nationally and its power departed. The kingdom of God was
taken from them and conferred on others. The beggar died. The Gentiles,
publicans and sinners were translated into the kingdom of God's dear son
where is neither Jew nor Greek, but where all are one in Christ Jesus.
This is the meaning of the expression "Abraham's bosom." They accepted the
true faith and so became one with faithful Abraham. Abraham is called the
father of the faithful, and the beggar is represented to have gone to
Abraham's bosom, to denote the fact which is now history, that the common
people and Gentiles would accept Christianity and become Christian
nations, enjoying the blessing of the Christian faith.
What is meant by the torment of the rich man?
The misery of those proud men, when soon after their land was captured and
their city and temple possessed by barbarians, and they scattered like
chaff before the wind-a condition in which they have continued from that
day to this. All efforts to bless them with Christianity have proved
unavailing. At this very moment there is a great gulf fixed so that there
is no passing to and fro. And observe, the Jews do not desire the gospel.
Nor did the rich man ask to enter Abraham's bosom with Lazarus. He only
wished Lazarus to alleviate his sufferings by dipping his finger in water
and cooling his tongue. It is so with the Jews today. They do not desire
the gospel; they only ask those among whom they sojourn to tolerate them
and soften the hardships that accompany their wanderings. The Jewish
church and nation is now dead. Once they were exalted to heaven, but now
they are thrust down to Hadees, the kingdom of death, and the gulf that
yawns between them and the Gentiles shall not be abolished till the
fullness of the Gentiles shall come in, and "then Israel shall be saved."
Lightfoot says: "The main scope and design of
it seems this: to hint the destruction of the unbelieving Jews, who,
though they had Moses and the prophets, did not believe them, nay would
not believe though one (even Jesus) arose from the dead."
Our quotations are not from Universalists,
but from those who accepted the doctrine of eternal punishment, but who
were forced to confess that this parable has no reference to that subject.
The rich man or the Jews were and are in the same Hell in which David was
when he said: "The pains of Hell (Hadees) got hold on me, I found trouble
and sorrow," and "thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest Hell." Not
in endless wo in the future world, but in misery and suffering in this.
But is this a final condition? No, wherever
we locate it, it must end. Paul asks the Romans, "Have they (the Jews)
stumbled that they should fall? God forbid! but rather through their fall
salvation is come unto the Gentiles." "For I would not, brethren, that ye
should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own
conceits, that blindness is in part happened to Israel until the fullness
of the Gentiles be come in, and so all Israel shall be saved. As it is
written, There shall come out of Zion the deliverer, and shall turn away
ungodliness from Jacob; for this is my covenant with them when I shall
take away their sins." 11: 22, 25, 27.
In brief terms, then we may say that this is
a fictitious story or parable describing the fate in this world of the
Jewish and Gentile people of our Savior's times, and has not the slightest
reference to the world after death, nor to the fate of mankind in that
world.
Let the reader observe that the rich man,
being in Hadees, was in a place of temporary detention only. Whether this
be a literal story or a parable, his confinement is not to be an endless
one. This is demonstrated in a two-fold manner:
1. Death and Hadees will deliver up their
occupants. Rev. 20: 13.
2. Hadees is to be destroyed. I Cor. 15: 55;
Rev. 20: 14.
Therefore Hadees is of temporary duration.
The Rich Man was not in a place of endless torment. As Prof. Stuart
remarks: "Whatever the state of either the righteous or the wicked may be,
whilst in Hadees, that state will certainly cease, and be exchanged for
another at the general resurrection." Thus the New Testament usage agrees
exactly with the Old Testament. Primarily, literally, Hadees is death, the
grave, and figuratively, it is destruction. It is in this world, and is to
end. The last time it is referred to (Rev. 20: 14) as well as in other
instances (Hosea 13: 14; I Cor. 15: 55), its destruction is positively
announced.
So that the instances (sixty-four) in the Old
Testament and (eleven) in the New, in all seventy-five in the Bible, all
perfectly agree in representing the word Hell, derived from the Hebrew
Sheol and the Greek Hadees, as being in this world and of temporary
duration.
We now consider the word Tartarus: "For if
God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to Hell (Tartarus),
and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment."
II Peter 2: 4. The word in the Greek is Tartarus, or rather it is a very
from that noun. "Cast down to hell" should be tartarused, (tartarosas).
The Greeks held Tartarus, says Anthon, in his Classical Dictionary to be
"the fabled place of punishment in the lower world." "According to the
ideas of the Homeric and Hesiodic ages, it would seem that the world or
universe was a hollow globe, divided into two equal portions by the flat
disk of the earth. The external shell of this globe is called by the poets
brazen and iron, probably only to express its solidity. The superior
hemisphere was called Heaven, and the inferior one Tartarus. The length of
the diameter of the hollow sphere is given thus by Hesiod. It would take,
he says, nine days for an anvil to fall from Heaven to Earth; and an equal
space of time would be occupied by its fall from Earth to the bottom of
Tartarus. The luminaries which give light to gods and men, shed their
radiance through all the interior of the upper hemisphere, while that of
the inferior one was filled with eternal darkness, and its still air was
unmoved by any wind. Tartarus was regarded at this period as the prison of
the gods and not as the place of torment for wicked men; being to the
gods, what Erebus was to men, the abode of those who were driven from the
supernal world. The Titans, when conquered were shut up in it and Jupiter
menaces the gods with banishment to its murky regions. The Oceanus of
Homer encompassed the whole earth, and beyond it was a region unvisited by
the sun, and therefore shrouded in perpetual darkness, the abode of a
people whom he names Cimmerians. Here the poet of the Odyssey also places
Erebus, the realm of Pluto and Proserpina, the final dwelling place of all
the race of men, a place which the pet of the Iliad describes as lying
within the bosom of the earth. At a later period the change of religions
gradually affected Erebus, the place of the reward of the good; and
Tartarus was raised up to form the prison in which the wicked suffered the
punishment due to their crimes." Virgil illustrates this view, (Dryden's
Virgil, Encid, 6): *'Tis here, in different paths, the way divides:-- The
right to Pluto's golden palace guides, The left to that unhappy region
tends. Which to the depths of Tartarus descends- The scat of night
profound and punished fiends.
The gaping
gulf low to the centre lies, And twice as deep as earth is from the skies.
The rivals of the gods, the Titan race,
Here, singed with lightning, roll within th'unfathomed space."
Now it is not to be supposed that Peter
endorses and teaches this monstrous nonsense of paganism. If he did, then
we must accept all the absurdities that went with it, in the pagan
mythology. And if this is an item of Christian faith, why is it never
referred to, in the Old or New Testament? Why have we no descriptions of
it such as abound in classic literature?
Peter alludes to the subject just as though
it were well-known and understood by his correspondents. "If the angels
that sinned."-what angels? "were cast down to Tartarus," where is the
story related? Not in the Bible, but in a book well-known at the time,
called the Book of Enoch. It was written some time before the Christian
Era, and is often quoted by the Christian fathers. It embodies a
tradition, to which Josephus alludes, (Ant. 1: 3) of certain angels who
had fallen. (Dr. T. J. Sawyer, in Univ. Quart.) From this apocryphal book,
Peter quoted the verse referring to Tartarus Dr. Sawyer says: "Not only
the moderns are forced to this opinion, but it seems to have been
universally adopted by the ancients. 'Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria,
Origen and Hilary,' say Professor Stuart, 'all of whom refer to the book
before us, and quote from it, say nothing which goes to establish the idea
that any Christians of their day denied or doubted that a quotation was
made by the apostle Jude from the Book of Enoch. Several and in fact most
of these writers do indeed call in question the canonical rank or
authority of the Book of Enoch; but the apologies which they make for the
quotation of it in Jude, show that the quotation itself was, as a matter
of fact, generally conceded among them.' There are it is true some
individuals who still doubt whether Jude quoted the Book of Enoch; but
while as Professor Stuart suggests, this doubt is incapable of being
confirmed by any satisfactory proof, it avails nothing to deny the
quotation; for it is evident if Jude did not quote the Book of Enoch, he
did quote a tradition of no better authority." This Book of Enoch is full
of absurd legends, which no sensible man can accept.
Why did Peter quote from it? Just as men now
quote from the classics not sanctioning the truth of the quotation but to
illustrate and enforce a proposition. Nothing is more common than for
writers to quote fables: "As the tortoise said to the hare," in Aesop. "As
the sun said to the wind," etc. We have the same practice illustrated in
the Bible. Joshua, after a poetical quotation adorning his narrative,
says: "Is not this written in the Book of Jasher? Josh. 10: 13 and
Jeremiah 48: 45 says: "A fire shall come forth out of Heshbon," quoting
from an ancient poet, says Dr. Adam Clarke. Peter alludes to this ancient
legend to illustrate the certainty of retribution without any intention of
teaching the silly notions of angels falling from heaven and certainly not
meaning to sanction the then prevalent notions concerning the heathen
Tartarus. There is this alternative only: either the pagan doctrine is
true and the heathen got ahead of inspiration by ascertaining the facts
before the authors of the Bible learned it-for it was currently accepted
centuries before Christ and is certainly not taught in the Old Testament-
or Peter quotes it as Jesus refers to Mammon rhetorically to illustrate
the great fact of retribution he was inculcating. If true, how can anyone
account for the fact that it is never referred to in the Bible, before or
after this once? Besides, these angels are not to be detained always in
Tartarus, they are to be released. The language is, "delivered them into
chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment." When their judgment
comes, they emerge from duress. They only remain in Tartarus "unto
judgment." Their imprisonment is not endless so that the language gives no
proof of endless punishment even if it be a literal description.
But no one can fail to see that the apostle
employs the legend from the Book of Enoch to illustrate and enforce his
doctrine of retribution. As though he had said: "If, as is believed by
some, God spared not the angels that sinned, do not let us who sin, mortal
men, expect to escape." If this view is denied, there is no escape from
the gross doctrine of Tartarus as taught by the pagans and that, too, on
the testimony of a solitary sentence of Scripture! But whatever may be the
intent of the words, they do not teach endless torment, for the chains
referred to only last unto the judgment. |
