The Destiny of the Soul: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future LifeAlger, William Rounseville
Religion
The Destiny of the Soul: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life
Alger, William Rounseville
Future life -- Christianity -- Bibliography; Future life -- Christianity -- History of doctrines
There are sufficient reasons for the belief that the doctrine of a
resurrection was quite early adopted from the Persians by the
Jews, not borrowed at a much later time from the Jews by the
Parsees. The conception of Ahriman, the evil serpent, bearing
death, (die Schlange Angramainyus der voll Tod ist,) is
interwrought from the first throughout the Zoroastrian scheme. In
the Hebrew records, on the contrary, such an idea appears but
incidentally, briefly, rarely, and only in the later books. The
account of the introduction of sin and death by the serpent in the
garden of Eden dates from a time subsequent to the commencement of
the Captivity. Von Bohlen, in his Introduction to the Book of
Genesis, says the narrative was drawn from the Zend Avesta.
Rosenmuller, in his commentary on the passage, says the narrator
had in view the Zoroastrian notions of the serpent Ahriman and his
deeds. Dr. Martin Haug an acute and learned writer, whose opinion
is entitled to great weight, as he is the freshest scholar
acquainted with this whole field in the light of all that others
have done thinks it certain that Zoroaster lived in a remote
antiquity, from fifteen hundred to two thousand years before
Christ. He says that Judaism after the exile and, through Judaism,
Christianity afterwards received an important influence from
Zoroastrianism,
30 Spiegel, Avesta, band i. ss. 16, 244.
31 Fargard XVIII, Spiegel's Uebersetzung, s. 236.
32 Kleuker, band ii. ss. 123, 124, 164.
an influence which, in regard to the doctrine of angels, Satan,
and the resurrection of the dead, cannot be mistaken.33 The Hebrew
theology had no demonology, no Satan, until after the residence at
Babylon. This is admitted. Well, is not the resurrection a pendant
to the doctrine of Satan? Without the idea of a Satan there would
be no idea of a retributive banishment of souls into hell, and of
course no occasion for a vindicating restoration of them thence to
their former or a superior state.
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