angelology and demonology of Israel. The Hebrew word shed or 26 demon " is no more than a Babylonian loan word, and came to designate the deities of foreign peoples degraded into the position of demons. Lilith, the blood-sucking night-hag of the post-exilian Isa. xxxiv. 14, is the Babylonian Lilātu. Whether the se'irim or shaggy satyrs (Isa. xiii. 31; Lev. xvii. 7) and Azazel were of Babylonian origin it is difficult to determine. The emergence of Satan as a definite supernatural personality, the head or prince of the world of evil spirits, is entirely a phenomenon of post-exilian Judaism. He is portrayed as the archadversary and accuser of man. It is impossible to deny Persian influence in the development of this conception, and that the Persian Ahriman (Angromainyu), the evil personality opposed to the good, Ahura Mazda, moulded the Jewish counterpart, Satan. But in Judaism monotheistic conceptions reigned supreme, and the Satan of Jewish belief as opposed to God stops short of the dualism of Persian religion. Of this we see evidence in the multiplication of Satans in the Book of Enoch. In the Book of Jubilees he is called mastēmā. In later Judaism Sammael is the equivalent of Satan. Persian influence is also responsible for the vast multiplication of good spirits or angels, Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, &c., who play their part in apocalyptic works, such as the Book of Daniel and the Book of Enoch.

Probably the transcendent nature of the deity in the Judaism of this later period made the interposition of mediating spirits an intellectual necessity (cf. Ps. civ. 4). It also stimulated the creation of divine hypostases. First among these may be mentioned Wisdom. The roots of this conception belong to pre-exilian times, in which the "word "of divine denunciation was regarded as a quasi-material thing. (It is hurled against offending Israel, Isa. ix. 8.) In the post-exilian cosmogony it is the divine word or fiat that creates the world (Gen. i.; cf. Ps. xxxiii. 6, 9). Out of these earlier conceptions the idea of the divine wisdom (Heb. hokhmah) gradually arose during the Persian period. The expression" wisdom," as it is employed in the locus classicus, Prov. viii., connotes the contents of the Divine reason-His conscious life, out of which created things emerge. This wisdom is personified. It dwelt with God (Prov. viii. 22 foll.) before the world was made. It is the companion of His throne, and by it He made the world (Prov. iii. 19, viii. 27; cf. Ps. civ. 24). It, morcover, enters into the life of the world and especially man (Prov. viii. 31). This conception of wisdom became still further hypostatized. It becomes redemptive of man. In the Wisdom of Solomon it is the sharer of God's throne (wάpedpos), the cffulgence of the eternal light and the outflow of His glory (Wisd. vii. 25, viii. 3 foll., ix. 4, 9); "Them that love her the Lord doth love" (Ecclesiasticus iv. 14). This group of ideas culminated in the Logos of Philo, expressing the world of divine ideas which God first of all creates and which becomes the mediating and formative power between the absolute and transcendent deity and passive formless matter, transmuted thereby into a rational, ordered universe.

In later Jewish literature we meet with further examples of similar hypostases in the form of Mëmrā, Metatron, Shechinah, Holy Spirit and Bath kōl.

(d) The doctrine of pre-existence is another product of the speculative tendency of the Jewish mind. The Messiah's preexistent state before the creation of the world is asserted in the Book of Enoch (xlviii. 6, 7). Pre-existence is also asserted of Moses and of sacred institutions such as the New Jerusalem, the Temple, Paradise, the Torah, &c. (Apocal. of Baruch iv. 3-lix. 4; Assumptio Mosis i. 14, 17) Edersheim's Life and Times of the Messiah, i. 175 and footnote 1.

11. Christ resumes the Broken Tradition of Prophetism.-The Psalms of Solomon and the synoptic Gospels (70 B.C.-A.D. 100) clearly reveal the powerful revival of Messianic hopes of a national deliverer of the seed of David. This Messianic expectation had been a fermenting leaven since the great days of Judas Maccabaeus. The conceptions of Jesus of Nazareth, however, were not the Messianic conceptions of his fellow-countrymen, but 'Deut. xxxii. 17: Ps. cvi. 37. Baal Zebub of the Philistine Ekron became the Beelzebub who was equivalent to Satan.

of the spiritual "son of man" destined to found a kingdom of God which was righteousness and peace. The Torah of Jesus was essentially prophetic and in no sense priestly or legal. The arrested prophetic movement of Jeremiah and Deutero-Isaiah reappears in John the Baptist and Jesus after an interval of more than five centuries. The new covenant of redeeming grace-the righteousness which is in the heart and not in externalities of legal observance or ceremonial-are once more proclaimed, and the exalted ideals of the suffering servant of Isa. xlix. 6 and Isa. liii. (nearly suppressed in the Targum of Jonathan) are reasserted and vindicated by the words and life of Jesus. Like Jeremiah He foretold the destruction of the temple and suffered the extreme penalties of anti-patriotism. And thus Israel's old prophetic Torah was at length to achieve its victory, for after Jesus came St Paul. "Many shall come from the east and the west and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. viii. 11, 12). The fetters of nationalism were to be broken, and the Hebrew religion in its essential spiritual elements was to become the heritage of all humanity.

AUTHORITIES.-1. On Semitic religion generally: Wellhausen's Reste des arabischen Heidentums (2nd ed.) and Robertson Smith's Religion of the Semites (2nd ed.) are chiefly to be recommended. Barton's Semitic Origins is extremely able, but his doctrine of the derivation of male from original female deities is pushed to an extreme. Bathgen's Beiträge zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte (1888) is most useful, and contains valuable epigraphic material. Baudissin's Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte (1876) is still valuable. See also Kuenen's National Religions and Universal Religions (Hibbert lectures) and Lagrange's Études sur les religions sémitiques (2nd ed.). 2. On Hebrew religion in particular: specially full and helpful is Kautzsch's article "Religion of Israel "in Hastings's D.B., extra vol.; Marti's recent Religion des A.T. (1906) and his Geschichte der israclitischen Religion, are clear, compact and most serviceable, and the former work presents the subject in fresh and suggestive aspects. Wellhausen's Prolegomena and Jüdische Geschichte should be read both for criticism and Hebrew history generally. Duhm's Theologie der Propheten and Robertson Smith's Prophets of Israel should also be consulted. Strongly to be recommended are Smend, Lehrbuch der alttestamentlichen Religionsgeschichte; Bennett, Theology of the Old Testament and Religion of the Post-Exilic Prophets; A. B. Davidson, The Theology of the Old Testament, as well as the sections devoted to "Sacralaltertümer" in the Hebraische Archaologie both of Benzinger and also of Nowack. Budde's Die Religion des Volkes Israel bis zur Verbannung, as well as Addis's recent Hebrew Religion (1906), is a most careful and scholarly compendium. Harper's Introd. to his Commentary on Amos and Hosea (1. and T. Clark) contains a useful survey of the history of Hebrew religion before the 8th century. Buchanan Gray's Divine Discipline of Israel, and A. S. Peake's Problem of Suffering in the O.T., are sugges tive. See also S. A. Cook, Religion of Ancient Palestine.

3. On the history of Judaism till the time of Christ, Schürer's Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Christi (3rd ed.), vol. ii. and in part vol. iii., are indispensable. Bousset's Religion des Judentums (2nd ed.), and Volz, Die judische Eschatologie von Daniel bis Akiba, are highly to be commended. Weber's Judische Theologie is a useful compendium of the theology of later Judaism.

4. On the special department of eschatology the standard works are R. H. Charles, Eschatology, Hebrew, Jewish and Christian, and Schwally, Das Leben nach dem Tode, as well as Gressmann's suggestive work Der Ursprung der israelitisch-jüdischen Eschatologie, which contains, however, much that is speculative. On apocalyptic generally the introductions to Charles's Book of Enoch, Apocalypse of Baruch, Ascension of Isaiah and Book of Jubilees, should be carefully noted. See also ESCHATOLOGY.

5. On the religion of Babylonia, Jastrow's work is the standard one. Zimmern's Heft ii. in K.A.T. (3rd ed.) is specially important to the Old Testament student. See also W. Schrank, Babylonische Sunriten. (O. Č. W.)

HEBREWS, EPISTLE TO THE, one of the books of the New Testament. In the oldest MSS. it bears no other title than " To Hebrews." This brief heading embraces all that on which Christian tradition from the end of the 2nd century was unanimous; and it says no more than that the readers addressed were Christians of Jewish extraction. This would be no sufficient address for an epistolary writing (xiii. 22) directed to a definite circle of readers, to whose history repeated reference is made, and with whom the author had personal relations (xiii. 19, 23). Probably, then, the original and limited address, or rather salutation, was never copied when this treatise in letter form, like the epistle to the Romans, passed into the wider circulation which

The following plan of the epistle may help to make apparent the writer's theory of Christianity as distinct from Judaism, which is related to it as "shadow to reality:

Thesis: The finality of the form of religion mediated in God's Son, i. 1-4.

i. The supreme excellence of the Son's Person (i. 5-iii. 6), as compared with (a) angels, (b) Moses.

Practical exhortation, iii. 7-iv. 13, leading up to: ii. The corresponding efficacy of the Son's High-priesthood (iv. 14-ix.). (1) The Son has the qualifications of all priesthood, especially sympathy. Exhortation, raising the reader's thought to the height of the topic reached (v. 11-vi. 20). (2) The Son as absolute high priest, in an order transcending the Aaronic (vii.) and relative to a Tabernacle of ministry and a Covenant higher than the Mosaic in point of reality and finality (viii., ix.). (3) His Sacrifice, then, is definitive in its effects (reredeluxe), and supersedes all others (x. I-18).

iii. Appropriation of the benefits of the Son's high-priesthood, by steadfast faith, the paramount duty (x. 19-xii.). More personal epilogue (xiií.).

As lack of insight lay at the root of their troubles, it was not enough simply to enjoin the moral fidelity to conviction which is three parts of faith to the writer, who has but little sense of the mystical side of faith, so marked in Paul. There was need of a positive theory based on real insight, in order to inspire faith for more strenuous conflict with the influences tending to produce the apostasy from Christ, and so from "the living God," which already threatened some of them (iii. 12). Such " apostasy was not a formal abjuring of Jesus as Messiah, but the subtler lapse involved in ceasing to rely on relation to Him for daily moral and religious needs, summed up in purity of conscience and peace before God (x. 19-23, xiii. 20 f.). This "falling aside " (vi. 5, cf. xii. 12 f.), rather than conscious turning back," is what is implied in the repeated exhortations which show the intensely practical spirit of the whole argument. These exhortations are directed chiefly against the dullness of spirit which hinders progressive moral insight into the genius of the New Covenant (v. 11-vi. 8), and which, in its blindness to the full work of Jesus, amounts to counting His blood as devoid of divine efficacy to consecrate the life (x. 26, 29), and so to a personal "crucifying anew of the Son of God (vi. 6). The antidote to such "profane " negligence (ii. 1, 3, xii. 12 f., 15-17) is an earnestness animated by a fully-assured hope, and sustained by a "faith" marked by patient waiting (μaкpovμla) for the inheritance guaranteed by divine promise (x. 11 f.). The outward expression of such a spirit is "bold confession," a glorying in that Hope, and mutual encouragement therein (iii. 6, 12 f.); while the sign of its decay is neglect to assemble | together for mutual stimulus, as if it were not worth the odium and opposition from fellow Jews called forth by a marked Christian confession (x. 23-25, xii. 3)—a very different estimate of the new bond from that shown by readiness in days gone by to suffer for it (x. 32 ff.). Their special danger, then, the sin which deceived (iii. 13) the more easily that it represented the line of least resistance (perhaps the best paraphrase of evrepioraros àμapria in xii. 1), was the exact opposite of "faith" as the author uses it, especially in the chapter devoted to its illustration by Old Testament examples. His readers needed most the moral heroism of fidelity to the Unseen, which made men "despise shame" due to aught that sinners in their unbelief might do to them (xii. 2-11, xiii. 5 f.)—and of which Jesus Himself was at once the example and the inspiration. To quicken this by awakening deeper insight into the real objects of "faith," as these bore on their actual life, he develops his high argument on the lines already indicated.

Their situation was so dangerous just because it combined inward debility and outward pressure, both tending to the same result, viz. practical disuse of the distinctively Christian means of grace, as compared with those recognized by Judaism, and

the Cross to cease (xiii. 13, cf. xi. 26). This might, indeed, relieve the external strain of the contest (àyŵv xii. 1), which had become well-nigh intolerable to them. But the practical surrender of what was distinctive in their new faith meant a theoretic surrender of the value once placed on that element, when it was matter of a living religious experience far in advance of what Judaism had given them (vi. 4 ff., x: 26-29). This twofold infidelity, in thought and deed, God, the "living" God of progress from the "shadow" to the substance, would require at their hands (x. 30 f., xii. 22-29). For it meant turning away from an appeal that had been known as "heavenly," for something inferior and earthly (xii. 25); from a call sanctioned by the incomparable authority of Him in whom it had reached men, a greater than Moses and all media of the Old Covenant, even the Son of God. Thus the key of the whole exhortation is struck in the opening words, which contrast the piccemeal revelation " to the fathers" in the past, with the complete and final revelation to themselves in the last stage of the existing order of the world's history, in a Son of transcendent dignity (i. 1 ff., cf. ii. 1 ff., x. 28 f., xii. 18 ff.). This goes to the root of their difficulty, ambiguity as to the relation of the old and the new elements in Judaeo-Christian piety, so that there was constant danger of the old overshadowing the new, since national Judaism remained hostile. At a stroke the author separates the new from the old, as belonging to a new "covenant" or order of God's revealed will. It is a confusion, resulting in loss, not in gain, as regards spiritual power, to try to combine the two types of piety, as his readers were more and more apt to do. There is no use, religiously, in falling back upon the old forms, in order to avoid the social penalties of a sectarian position within Judaism, when the secret of religious "perfection" or maturity (vi. 1, cf. the frequent use of the kindred verb) lies elsewhere. Hence the moral of his whole argument as to the two covenants, though it is formulated only incidentally amid final detailed counsels (xiii. 13 f.) is to leave Judaism, and adopt a frankly Christian standing, on the same footing with their non-Jewish brethren in the local church. For this the time was now ripe; and in it lay the true path of safety-eternal safety as before God, whatever man might say or do (xiii. 5 f.). The obscure section, xiii. 9 f., is to be taken as "only a symptom of the general retrogression of religious energy (Jülicher), and not as bearing directly on the main danger of these "Hebrews." The "foods" in question probably refer neither to temple sacrifices nor to the Levitical laws of clean and unclean foods, nor yet to ascetic scruples (as in Rom. xiv., Col. ii. 20 ff.), but rather to some form of the idea, found also among the Essenes, that food might so be partaken of as to have the value of a sacrifice (see verse 15 foll.) and thus ensure divine favour. Over against this view, which might well grow up among the Jews of the Dispersion as a sort of substitute for the possibility of offering sacrifices in the Temple-but which would be a lame addition to the Christianity of their own former leaders (xiii. 7 f.)-the author first points his readers to its refutation from experience, and then to the fact that the Christian's “altar " or sacrifice (i.e. the supreme sin-offering) is of the kind which the Law itself forbids to be associated with " eating." If Christians wish to offer any special sacrifice to God, let it be that of grateful praise or deeds of beneficence (15 f.).

In trying further to define the readers addressed in the epistle, one must note the stress laid on suffering as part of the divinely appointed discipline of sonship (ii. 10, v. 8, xii. 7 f.), and the way in which the analogy in this respect between Jesus, as Messianic Son, and those united to Him by faith, is set in relief. He is not only the inspiring example for heroic faith in the face of opposition due to unbelievers (xii. 3 ff.), but also the mediator qualified by his very experience of suffering to sympathize with His tried followers, and so to afford them moral aid (ii. 17 f., v. 8 f., cf. iv. 15). This means that suffering for Christianity, at least in respect of possessions (xiii. 5 f., cf. x. 34) and social standing, was imminent for those addressed: and it seems as if they were mostly men of wealth and position (xiii. 1-6

vi. 10 f., x. 34), who would feel this sort of trial acutely (cf. Jas. i. 10). Such men would also possess a superior mental culture (cf. v. 11 f.), capable of appreciating the form of an epistle "far too learned for the average Christian" (Jülicher), yet for which its author apologizes to them as inadequate (xiii. 22). It was now long since they themselves had suffered seriously for their faith (x. 32 f.); but others had recently been harassed even to the point of imprisonment (xiii. 3); and the writer's very impatience to hurry to their side implies that the crisis was both sudden and urgent. The finished form of the epistle's argument is sometimes urged to prove that it was not originally an epistle at all, written more or less on the spur of the moment, but a literary composition, half treatise and half homily, to which its author-as an afterthought-gave the suggestion of being a Pauline epistle by adding the personal matter in ch. xiii. (so W. Wrede, Das literarische Rätsel des Hebräerbriefs, 1906, pp. 70-73). The latter part of this theory fails to explain why the Pauline origin was not made more obvious, e.g. in an opening address. But even the first part of it overlooks the probability that our author was here only fusing into a fresh form materials often used before in his oral ministry of Christian instruction.

Many attempts have been made to identify the home of the Hellenistic Christians addressed in this epistle. For Alexandria little can be urged save a certain strain of " Alexandrine " idealism and allegorism, mingling with the more Palestinian realism which marks the references to Christ's sufferings, as well as the eschatology, and recalling many a passage in Philo. But Alexandrinism was a mode of thought diffused throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, and the divergences from Philo's spirit are as notable as the affinities (cf. Milligan, ut infra, 203 fï.). For Rome there is more to be said, in view of the references to Timothy and to "them of Italy" (xiii. 23 f.); and the theory has found many supporters. It usually contemplates a special Jewish-Christian house-church (so Zahn), like those which Paul salutes at the end of Romans, e.g. that meeting in the house of Prisca and Aquila (xvi. 5); and Harnack has gone so far as to suggest that they, and especially Prisca, actually wrote our epistle. There is, however, really little that points to Rome in particular, and a good deal that points away from it. The words in xii. 4, 'Not yet unto blood have ye resisted," would ill suit Rome after the Neronian "bath of blood" in A.D. 64 (as is usually held), save at a date too late to suit the reference to Timothy. Nor does early currency in Rome prove that the epistle was written to Rome, any more than do the words "they of Italy salute you." This clause must in fact be read in the light of the reference to Timothy, which suggests that he had been in prison in Rome and was about to return, possibly in the writer's company, to the region which was apparently the headquarters of both. Now this in Timothy's case, as far as we can trace his steps, was Ephesus; and it is natural to ask whether it will not suit all the conditions of the problem. It suits those of the readers,' as analysed above; and it has the merit of suggesting to us as author the very person of all those described in the New Testament who seems most capable of the task, Apollos, the learned Alexandrian (Acts xviii. 24 ff.), connected with Ephesus and with Paul and his circle (cf. 1 Cor. xvi. 12), yet having his own distinctive manner of presenting the Gospel (1 Cor. iv. 6). That Apollos visited Italy at any rate once during Paul's imprisonment in Rome is a reasonable inference from Titus iil. 13 (see PAUL); and if so, it is quite natural that he should be there again about the time of Paul's martyrdom. With that event it is again natural to connect Timothy's imprisonment, his release from which our author records in closing; while the news of Jewish success in Paul's case would enhance any tendency among Asian Jewish Christians to shirk "boldness" of confession (x. 23, 35, 38 f.), in fear of i.e. a house-church of upper-class Jewish Christians, not fully in touch with the attitude even of their own past and present "leaders" (xiii. 7, 17), as distinct from the local church generally (xiii. 24). The Gospel had reached them, as also the writer himself (cf. Acts xviii. 25), through certain hearers of the Lord (ii. 3), not secessarily apostles.

further aggression from their compatriots. On the chronology adopted in the article PAUL, this would yield as probable date for the epistle A.D. 61-62. The place of writing would be some spot in Italy ("they of Italy salute you") outside Rome, probably a port of embarkation for Asia, such as Brundisium.

Be this as it may, the epistle is of great historical importance, as reflecting a crisis inevitable in the development of the JewishChristian consciousness, when a definite choice between the old and the new form of Israel's religion had to be made, both for internal and external reasons. It seems to follow directly on the situation implied by the appeal of James to Israel in dispersion, in view of Messiah's winnowing-fan in their midst (i. 1-4, ii. 1-7, v. 1-6, and especially v. 7-11). It may well be the immediate antecedent of that revealed in 1 Peter, an epistle which perhaps shows traces of its influence (e.g. in i. 2, sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ," cf. Heb. ix. 13 f., x. 22, xii. 24). It is also of high interest theologically, as exhibiting, along with affinities to several types of New Testament teaching (see STEPHEN), a type all its own, and one which has had much influence on later Christian thought (cf. Milligan, ut infra, ch. ix.). Indeed, it shares with Romans the right to be styled "the first treatise of Christian theology."

Literature. The older literature may be seen in the great work of F. Bleck, Der Brief an die Hebräer (1828-1840), still a valuable storehouse of material, while Bleek's later views are to be found in a posthumous work (Elberfeld, 1868); also in Franz Delitzsch's Commentary (Edinburgh, 1868). The more recent literature is given in G. Milligan, The Theology of the Epistle of the Hebrews (1899), a useful summary of all bearing on the epistle, and in the large New ings's Dict. of the Bible, the Encycl. Biblica and T. Zahn's article in Testament Introductions and Biblical Theologies. See also HastHauck's Realencyklopädie, (J. V. B.)

HEBRIDES, THE, or WESTERN ISLES, a group of islands off the west coast of Scotland. They are situated between 55° 35′ and 58° 30' N. and 5° 26′ and 8° 40′ W. Formerly the term was held to embrace not only all the islands off the Scottish western coast, including the islands in the Firth of Clyde, but also the peninsula of Kintyre, the Isle of Man and the Isle of Rathlin, off the coast of Antrim. They have been broadly classified into the Outer Hebrides and the Inner Hebrides, the Minch and Little Minch dividing the one group from the other. Geologically, they have also been differentiated as the Gneiss Islands and the Trap Islands. The Outer Hebrides being almost entirely composed of gneiss the epithet suitably serves them, but, strictly speaking, only the more northerly of the Inner Hebrides may be distinguished as Trap Islands. The chief islands of the Outer Hebrides are Lewis-with-Harris (or Long Island), North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist, Barra, the Shiants, St Kilda and the Flannan Isles, or Seven Hunters, an uninhabited group, about 20 m. N.W. of Gallon Head in Lewis. Of these the Lewis portion of Long Island, the Shiants and the Flannan belong to the county of Ross and Cromarty, and the remainder to Inverness-shire. The total length of this group, from Barra Head to the Butt of Lewis, is 130 m., the breadth varying from less than 1 m. to 30 m. The Inner Hebrides are much more scattered and principally include Skye, Small Isles (Canna, Sanday, Rum, Eigg and Muck), Coll, Tyree, Lismore, Mull, Ulva, Staffa, Iona, Kerrera, the Slate Islands (Seil, Easdale, Luing, Shuna, Torsay), Colonsay, Oronsay, Scarba, Jura, Islay and Gigha. Of these Skye and Small Isles belong to Inverness-shire, and the rest to Argyllshire. The Hebridean islands exceed 500 in number, of which one-fifth are inhabited. Of the inhabited islands 11 belong to Ross and Cromarty, 47 to Inverness-shire, and 44 to Argyllshire, but of this total of 102 islands, one-third have a population of only 10 souls, or fewer, each. The population of the Hebrides in 1901 numbered 78,947 (or 28 to the sq. m.), of whom 41,031 were females, who thus exceeded the males by 10%, and 22,733 spoke Gaelic only and 47,666 Gaelic and English. The most populous island is Lewis-with-Harris (32,160), and next to it are Skye (13,883), Islay (6857) and Mull (4334).

Of the total area of 1,800,000 acres, or 2812 sq. m., only one-ninth is cultivated, most of the surface being moorland and mountain. The annual rainfall, particularly in the Inner