ch
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 Phoenicians, 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.

3. Whether the Mosaic-prophetic writings be regarded from the standpoint
of traditional faith or of historical criticism, the limitation of their
teaching and exhortation to the present life can be considered narrowness
only by biased expounders of the "Old Testament." The Israelitish lawgiver
could not have been altogether ignorant of the Egyptian or the Babylonian
conceptions of the future world. Obviously Israel's prophets and lawgivers
deliberately avoided giving any definite expression to the common belief
in a future life after death, especially as the Canaanitish magicians and
necromancers used this popular belief to carry on their superstitious
practices, so dangerous to all moral progress.(888) The great task which
prophetic Judaism set itself was to place the entire life of men and
nations in the service of the God of justice and holiness; there was thus
no motive to extend the dominion of JHVH, the God of life, to the
underw