e Book of
the Law of Moses--the Priestly Code, brought by him from Babylon.

The Jewish last period, from Ezra's Proclamation 444 B.C. to the
completion of the Fourth Book of Ezra, about A.D. 95, is (upon the
whole) derivative. Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah were absorbed in the realities
of their own epoch-making times, and of God's universal governance of
the world past and future; Daniel now, with practically all the other
Apocalyptic writers in his train, is absorbed in those earlier
prophecies, and in ingenious speculations and precise computations as to
the how and the when of the world's ending. The Exile had given rise to
the Synagogue, and had favoured the final development and codifying of
the Mosaic law; the seventy years intermission of the Temple sacrifices
and symbolic acts had turned the worship, which had been so largely
visible, dramatic, social, into the praying, singing, reading, preaching
of extant texts, taken as direct and final rules for all thought and
action, and as incapable of additions or interpretations equal in value
to themselves. Yet thus priceless treasures of spiritual truth and light
were handed down to times again aglow with great--the greatest religious
gifts and growths; and indeed this literature itself introduced various
conceptions or images destined to form a largely fitting, and in the
circumstances attractive, garment for the profound further realities
brought by Christianity.

In the Book of Daniel (written somewhere between 163 and 165 B.C.) all
earthly events appear as already inscribed in the heavenly books (vii.
10), and the events which have still really to come consist in the
complete and speedy triumph of the Church-State Israel against King
Antiochus Epiphanes. But here we get the earliest clear proclamation of
a heightened life beyond death--though not yet for all (xii. 2). The
noble vision of the four great beasts that came up from the sea, and of
one like unto a Son of Man that came with the clouds of heaven (chap.
vii), doubtless here figures the earthly kingdoms, Babel, Media, Persia,
Greece (Alexander), and God's kingdom Israel. The Psalter appears to
have been closed as late as 140 B.C.; some Psalms doubtless date back to
701--a few perhaps to David himself, about 1000 B.C. The comminatory
Psalms, even if spoken as by representatives of God's Church and people,
we cannot now echo within our own spiritual life; any heightened
consciousness after death is frequently den