bodies, will give unto the Lord neither glory nor righteousness” (ii. 17, cp. iii. 19). In 2 (4) Esdras there is an extraordinary wealth of material regarding the future life; this is mostly confined to the “Salathiel Apocalypse” portion and the Redactor’s additions—it is therefore to these that we restrict ourselves. For clearness’ sake it will be best to deal with the subject under the three heads: (1) The Resurrection, (2) The Intermediate state, (3) The Judgement; there are some subsidiary points which will be touched upon incidentally. (1) The doctrine of the _Resurrection_ as taught in the “Salathiel Apocalypse” is not altogether consistent; it is not quite easy to understand how the writer conceived of the resurrection, for it can scarcely have been the resurrection of the body which he thought of since this is regarded as altogether corruptible; thus, in speaking of the future life of those who have kept the ways of the Most High, he says that “they shall be separated from this corruptible vessel” (vii. 88), and in the world to come “they rejoice that they have now escaped what is corruptible, and that they shall inherit that which is to come” (vii. 96); that the body is meant by “what is corruptible” is clear from verse 100, where the seer asks: “Shall time, therefore, be given unto the souls after they are separated from the bodies...?” Later in the book (ix. 36) it is said again: “We who have received the Law and sinned must perish, together with our heart, which has taken it in.” Added to this is the fact that this writer, unlike the Redactor of the book (see below), never speaks of the resurrection of the body, which one would rightly look for had he believed in this; nor is there any mention of the soul being re-united to the body; but he looks upon the body as belonging wholly to this corruptible, material world; he definitely contrasts the spiritual with the material, the two are mutually antagonistic: “How should it be possible for a mortal in a corruptible world to understand the ways of the Incorruptible?” (iv. 11). Whereas in the world to come “corruption is forgotten” (viii. 53). Yet, in spite of what has been said, it would seem that the writer must have pictured to himself a body of some kind in the world to come, for in the Intermediate state (to which we shall refer presently) he must, apparently, have believed in the existence of bodies. The conclusion one is led to is this: the writer believed that the material body became wholly annihilated at death; but that the soul, when released from it, assumed a non-material body in the Intermediate state, and that this body did not undergo any further change at the Judgement; it was non-material (it is difficult to know how else to express it; “spiritual” does not seem the right word to use in view of what is said about the body in the Intermediate state)—it was non-material, and therefore incorruptible, immortal; and for this reason no