Professor Carpenter's Lecture.

Professor J. Estlin Carpenter gave the ninth lecture last night in his course on the history of ideas of a future life. The subject for the evening was "Phases of Thought in Israel."

It would be difficult, Professor Carpenter said, to give in one lecture a complete account of the rise of ideas among the Hebrews from the animistic level of the earliest period to the lofty conceptions which marked their highest development. This growth was stimulated from various sources, chiefly Persian and Greek. It was controlled by certain passionate religious convictions which were transformed under deep national and personal experiences.

At the outset there were two incongruous conceptions about the state of the dead. One was that they were powerful. This belief brought with it a corresponding cultus of the dead. On the other hand was the conception of the dead as "the weak," or "languid." The idea of the tomb in which the members of a family were buried, grew to the larger idea of sheol or the underworld, a place of dark, gloomy depths. Several passages in the Bible indicate the belief that earthly distinctions were carried into the other world.

The cause of the advance of Hebrew ideas from the animistic level was the prophetic Yahwism. The Babylonian captivity was the moral victory of prophecy. It had a very beneficial effect on religion, for it separated the people from the accustomed ritual, and increased their spirituality. Thus new influences came to bear upon the Jews at a time when they were best prepared to receive them. Here the conception of Yahweh began to rise. In Ezekiel the rescue of Israel from her troubles is portrayed by the well-known and splendid figure of the resurrection of the bones. This figure was never fully realized. The time of the return from captivity was one of sadness, and it was only when the vicissitudes of life aroused the national consciousness that the idea got life. In Isaiah, chapters 24-27, there are many problems and obscure allusions, but the conception reached is a still higher one. Israel is regarded no longer as a guilty nation, but as a righteous one under oppression. The prophet describes the removal of the veil of death and sorrow and the glorious entry of every race into a new creation. In a subsequent chapter the abolition of death is suggested and in another prayer is made for the resurrection of the dead. A similarity of ethical conceptions suggests the possibility of Persian influence at this period of Hebrew thought. The Persian supremacy was followed by Syrian overlordship which produced a demand for moral readjustment hereafter through resurrection.

With the period of Greek influence came the rise of Apocalyptic literature. It brought an element of the idea of eternity but did not work it out in a system of philosophy. The body was considered the seat of personality and hence it was thought that there could be no reward or penalty without the ultimate union of soul and body.

The rabbinical theology demanded bodily resurrection on the ground that the body participates in all action, good or bad. The complete idea of the immortality of the soul was finally worked out by the Jews of the Greek culture.