Book of life

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The Book of Life , also: Book of the Living , (Hebrew: ספר חיים Sefer Chajjim ) is in Judaism and Christianity the idea of ​​a divine directory that contains the names of all God-pleasing people who have ever lived. To differentiate is the book of life from the other books in which the deeds of men are registered, and after that on the day of judgment , or in the ten days between New Year and the Day of Atonement , the life of people is evaluated. Based on this heavenly book, various forms of record were called liber vitae in the course of the Middle Ages , in particular brotherhood books , necrologies and year books .

The Hebrew word chajjim means life on the one hand and is the plural of chaj (living, living) on the other hand , so that the two translations book of life and book of the living are conceivable for the only occurrence in the Tanach (the Old Testament of Christians ) . The Septuagint and, following it, the Vulgate and later the Luther Bible reproduced the expression as the Book of the Living , whereas all German translations commonly used today use the Book of Life - including the Luther Bible since the revision of 1984. The Greek expression in the New Testament is βίβλος τῆς ζωῆς and can only be translated as the book of life .

The biblical quotations in this article are taken from the Luther Bible of 1912.

Judaism

In the Jewish liturgy , prayers are given on the Yamim Noraim , the ten reverential days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur :

Remember us for life, Lord, who wants us to live, and write us in the book of life, for your sake, Gd, Eternal Living!

In the Tanach the Book of Life is mentioned several times, but only once with this exact expression:

Exodus 32:32 - Now forgive them their sins ! If not, erase me from your book that you have written.

Ps 40: 8 - Then I said, Behold, I am coming; in the book is written by me.

Ps 69: 28-29 - 28 Let them fall into a sin on the other that they do not come to your justice . 29 Erase them from the book of the living , so that the righteous do not write them on them.

Dan 7:10 - And from it went out a long fiery ray. A thousand times a thousand served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand hours before him. The judgment was held and the books were opened.

Dan 12: 1 - At that time the great prince Michael, who stands for your people, will rise. For it will be such a dreary time as it has not been since people have been until the same time. In that time your people will be saved, all who are written in the book.

Mal 3:16 - But the godly consoled one another in this way: The LORD sees and hears it, and a memorandum is written before him for those who fear the LORD and remember his name.

Christianity

The book of life is also taken up in the New Testament.

Phil 4: 3 - Yes, I also ask you, my faithful companion, to help them who, together with me, fought over the gospel with Clemens and the other my assistants, who are names in the book of life.

Rev 3: 5 - He who overcomes shall be put on in white clothes, and I will never erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess his name before my Father and his angels .

Rev 17: 8 - The beast that you saw was and is not and will come again from the abyss and will go into damnation , and those who dwell on earth (whose names are not written in the book of Life from the beginning of the world) when they see the animal that it has been and is not, although it is.

Rev 20: 12-15 - 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is that of Life. And the dead were judged according to what was written in the books, according to their works. 13 And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and they were judged , each one according to his works. 14 And death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire . This is the second death , the lake of fire. 15 And if anyone was found not written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire.

Rev 22:19 - And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will do away with his part from the book of life and from the holy city and from what is written in this book.

The hymn Dies Irae speaks of the Book of Life:

Liber scriptus proferetur,
in quo totum continetur,
unde mundus judicetur.
Judex ergo cum sedebit,
quidquid latet apparebit,
nil inultum remanebit.
The written book is brought out,
in which everything is recorded
that the world should be judged.
If the judge is now seated,
everything hidden will come to light:
nothing will go unpunished.

The idea of ​​a “book of life” also resonates with the name of the Anglo-Saxons for the comprehensive land register that the victorious Normans created after 1066 of the English landscapes: Domesday Book .

criticism

Euripides contradicts the idea that records should be kept of human deeds :

Do you believe that the crimes against the gods
swing on wings, and that further someone has to record them
there in Zeus' writing
board , And Zeus, looking at them, speaks right to people ?
Not even the whole sky would be big enough to grasp the sins of
men if Zeus wrote them down there , nor he too, to survey them and to assign each his punishment . No! The punishment is here if you just want to see.


(Euripides, in Johannes Stobaios , Eclogæ, I, c.4, 14)

See also

literature

  • Leo Koep: The heavenly book in antiquity and Christianity. A study of the history of religion on early Christian imagery. Bonn 1952 (Theophaneia 8).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David H. Stern: Commentary on the Jewish New Testament, Vol. 3. Holzgerlingen 1996, ISBN 978-3-7751-2592-5 , pp. 280-281.
  2. ↑ Rev 3,5  Lut