ous result of an intellectual or moral development
which arose independently of that spirit. Accordingly, a highly
important advance in the old ideas of pre-existence appeared in the
Jewish theological literature belonging to the time of the Maccabees and
the following decades. To begin with, these conceptions are now applied
to persons, which, so far as I know, was not the case before this
(individualism). Secondly, the old distinction of original and copy is
now interpreted to mean that the copy is the inferior and more
imperfect, that in the present aeon of the transient it cannot be
equivalent to the original, and that we must therefore look forward to
the time when the original itself will make its appearance, (contrast of
the material and finite and the spiritual).

With regard to the first point, we have not only to consider passages in
Apocalypses and other writings in which pre-existence is attributed to
Moses, the patriarchs, etc., (see above, p. 102), but we must, above
all, bear in mind utterances like Ps. CXXXIX. 15, 16. The individual
saint soars upward to the thought that the days of his life are in the
book of God, and that he himself was before God, whilst he was still
un-perfect. But, and this must not be overlooked, it was not merely his
spiritual part that was before God, for there is not the remotest idea
of such a distinction, but the whole man, although he is [Hebrew:
bashar] (flesh).

As regards the second point, the distinction between a heavenly and an
earthly Jerusalem, a heavenly and an earthly Temple, etc., is
sufficiently known from the Apocalypses and the New Testament. But the
important consideration is that the sacred things of earth were regarded
as objects of less value, instalments, as it were, pending the
fulfilment of the whole promise. The desecration and subsequent
destruction of sacred things must have greatly strengthened this idea.
The hope of the heavenly Jerusalem comforted men for the desecration or
loss of the earthly one. But this gave at the same time the most
powerful impulse to reflect whether it was not an essential feature of
this temporal state, that everything high and holy in it could only
appear in a meagre and inadequate form. Thus the transition to Greek
ideas was brought about. The fulness of the time had come when the old
Jewish ideas, with a slightly mythological colouring, could amalgamate
with the ideal creations of Hellenic philosophers.

These, however