which death together
with all that is evil and unclean is created by Ahriman, the evil
principle, and will suffer annihilation with him, as soon as the good
principle, Ahura Mazda, has achieved the final victory. Then Soshiosh "the
Savior," the descendant of Zoroaster, will begin his kingdom of eternal
life for the righteous, coincident with the awakening of the dead.(957)
Pharisaic Judaism, however, gave the hope of resurrection a deeper moral
and religious meaning. The proofs, or rather analogies from nature, of the
seeds springing from the earth in a new form, of men awakening from sleep
in the morning, or of the original creation, are shared by the rabbis and
the New Testament writers with the Persians. On the other hand, proofs
based on the prophetic hope for the future are purely national. So also
are those proofs based on the Biblical passage that the God of the fathers
had sworn to the Patriarchs to give them the Promised Land.(958) Likewise
the reference to the wondrous resurrections related in the history of
Elijah and Elisha offers no proof of a universal resurrection. A striking
point and one which deepens the idea of retribution is the simile of the
Lame and the Blind(959) employed by Jehuda ha Nasi in a dialogue with the
Emperor Antoninus. The latter had said that at the last judgment both soul
and body might deny all guilt. The body may say: "The soul alone has
sinned, for since it has parted from me, I have lain motionless as a
stone." And the soul, on its part, may reply: "It must be the body that
sinned, for since I have parted from it I soar about in the air free as a
bird." To this Jehuda ha Nasi answered: "A king once possessed a garden
with splendid fig-trees, and appointed as watchmen in it a blind man and a
lame man. Then the lame man spoke to the blind man, 'I see fine figs up
there; take me upon your shoulders, and I shall pick them, and we can
enjoy them together.' They did so, and when the king entered the garden,
the figs were gone. But when they were held to account for it, the lame
man said, 'How could I have taken them, since I cannot walk?' And the
blind man said, 'And I cannot see.' Then the king had the lame man placed
upon the shoulders of the blind man and judged them both together. In like
manner will God treat the body and the soul, as it is said:(960) 'He
calleth to the heavens above--that is, the heavenly element, the soul--and
to the earth beneath--the earthly body--and places them