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 PREFACE

This book contains the three Schweich Lectures for 1913, printed almost exactly as they were delivered last November. The only change of importance is that I have divided the third Lecture into its two constituent parts, so as to keep the specifically Christian variety of Apocalypse in a class by itself.

In the Lectures I attempted to confine myself as much as possible to what I believe to be the fundamental idea which underlies the great series of Jewish Apocalypses, viz. the idea of the imminent Judgement to Come, and further, to exhibit this Idea in connexion with what I believe to be both its true historical setting and the ultimate cause of its manifestation. That which gives the Apocalypses vitality is the great struggle between Religion and Civilization, of which the Maccabean Martyrs are the symbol. I omit the adjectives. My readers themselves, according as they view the thing, can say 'between spiritual Religion and material Civilization' or 'between fanatical Religion and enlightened Civilization,'—and they will judge the Apocalypses accordingly. But it seemed to me worth while to exhibit the Apocalypses as clearly as possible from this quite definite and particular point of view, and therefore I found it inadvisable to expand what I had said by introducing other points of view or more details into the printed form of the Lectures.

What I have added will be found in the separate Appendices. These will, I hope, explain themselves to the specialists for whom they were primarily written. They will at least serve to shew that I have not ventured to make sweeping generalisations about this department of ancient literature without making a somewhat minute study of the principal documents.

The year 1913 saw a grand edition of all the Old Testament 'Apocrypha' and 'Pseudepigrapha' brought out under the able and stimulating editorship of Dr, now Canon, R. H. Charles. Students of