This longing for immortality implanted in the human soul is so represented in the legend of Paradise that the tree whose fruit bestowed upon the celestial beings the gift of eternal life—like the Greek ambrosia, “the food of the gods”—was originally intended for mankind also in the divine “Garden of Bliss.” But after man fell through sin, all access to it was denied him, in order that he might not stretch out his hand for it and thereby attain that immortality which was vouchsafed only to divine beings.(880) According to his original destiny, therefore, man should live forever; and, just as legend allows those divinely elected, like Enoch and Elijah,(881) to ascend to heaven alive, so at a later period prophecy predicts a time when God will annihilate death forever.(882) Accordingly, through the power of his divine soul man possesses a claim to immortality, to eternal life with God, the “Fountain of life.” 2. It was just this keen longing for an energetic life on earth, this mighty yearning to “walk before God in the land of the living,”(883) which made it more difficult for Judaism to brighten the “valley of the shadow of death” and to elevate the vague notion of a shadowy existence in the hereafter into a special religious teaching. Until long after the Exile the Jewish people shared the view of the entire ancient world,—both the Semitic nations, such as the Babylonians and Phœnicians, and the Aryans, such as the Greeks and Romans,—that the dead continue to exist in the shadowy realm of the nether world (_Sheol_), the land of no return (_Beliyaal_),(884) of eternal silence (_Dumah_), and oblivion (_Neshiyah_),(885) a dull, ghostly existence without clear consciousness and without any awakening to a better life. We must, however, not overlook the fact that even in these most primitive conceptions a certain imperishability is ascribed to man as marking his superiority over the animal world, which is altogether abandoned to decay. Hence the belief in the existence of the shades, the _Refaim_ in Sheol.(886) But throughout the Biblical period no ethical idea yet permeated this conception, and no attempt was made to transform the nether world into a place of divine judgment, of recompense for the good and evil deeds accomplished on earth,(887) as did the Babylonians and Egyptians. Both the prophets and the Mosaic code persist in applying their promises and threats, in fact, their entire view of retribution, to this world, nor do they indicate by a single word the belief in a judgment or a weighing of actions in the world to come.