ndividual
responsibility.(947) Only in accordance with the Deuteronomic law which
says: "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither
shall the children be put to death for the fathers; every man shall be put
to death for his own sin,"(948) did the religious consciousness rebel
against the thought that a later generation should suffer for the sins of
its ancestors, and hence the popular adage arose, "The fathers have eaten
sour grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge."(949) It is
the prophet Ezekiel who refutes once and for all the idea of a guilt
transmitted to children and consequently of hereditary sin and punishment,
insisting on the doctrine that personal responsibility alone determines
divine retribution.(950) But here a new element affects divine
retribution. God's long-suffering and mercy do not desire the immediate
punishment, the death of the sinner. He should be given time to return to
a better mode of life.(951)

But the great enigma of human destiny, which vexes the author of the
seventy-third Psalm and that of the book of Job, still presses for a
better solution. It is true that the popular belief and popular legends
which are preserved in post-Biblical writings as well, insisted on a
justice which requites "measure for measure."(952) Still insight into
actual life does not confirm the teaching of the popular philosophy that
the "righteous will be requited in the earth" and that "evil pursueth
sinners."(953) The unshakeable belief in the justice of God had to find
another solution for life's antinomies, and was forced to reach out for
another world in which the divine righteousness would find its complete
realization.

3. Biblical Judaism with few exceptions recognized only the present world
and the subterranean world of shadows, a view preserved in its essentials
by Ben Sira and the Sadducees, who were subsequently declared heretics. In
contrast to them Pharisaic or Rabbinic Judaism teaches a resurrection
after death for a life of eternal bliss or eternal torment, according as
the divine judgment finds one righteous and another wicked. We may leave
aside the consideration that the first impulse toward a Jewish belief in
resurrection came from the non-fulfillment of the national hope, wherefore
it was always bound up with the soil of the Holy Land, as will be seen in
Chapter LIV. The fact remains that the divine judgment to follow upon
resurrection was consistently regarde