![]() The living are the righteous, who alone are admitted to citizenship in the theocracy, while the wicked are denied membership and blotted out of God's book ( Ex. The origin of the heavenly Book of Life must be sought in Babylonia, where legends speak of the Tablets of Destiny and of tablets containing the transgressions, sins, wrongdoings, curses and execrations of a person who should be "cast into the water" that is, blotted out. Instead of transferring, as is done in the Book of Enoch, the Testament of Abraham, and elsewhere, the great Judgment Day to the hereafter, the Pharisaic school taught that on the first day of each year ( Rosh Hashanah), God sits in judgment over his creatures and has the Books of Life together with the books containing the records of the righteous and the wicked. While the prevailing tendency among apocryphal writers of the Hasidean school was to give the Book of Life an eschatological meaning, the Jewish liturgy and the tradition relating to the New Year and Atonement days adhered to the ancient view, which took the Book of Life in its natural meaning, preferring, from a practical point of view, the worldliness of Judaism to the heavenliness of the Essenes. It is also mentioned in Paul's letter to the Philippians:Ĭlement also, and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the Book of Life. "And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works". "And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire" ( Rev. As described, only those whose names are written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, and have not been blotted out by the Lamb, are saved at the Last Judgment all others are doomed. The Book of Life is referred to seven times in the Book of Revelation (3:5, 13:8, 17:8, 20:12, 20:15, 21:27, 22:19), one of the books of the New Testament, attributed to John of Patmos. Similitude ii.) in Revelation 3:5, 13:8, 17:8, 20:12–15, where "two Books" are spoken of as being "opened before the throne, the Book of Life, and the Book of Death, in which latter the unrighteous are recorded together with their evil deeds, in order to be cast into the lake of fire." It is the Book of Life in which the apostles' names are "written in heaven" (Luke 10:20), or "the fellow-workers" of Paul (Phil 4:3), and "the assembly of the first-born" (Hebrews 12:23 compare I Clem. So are, according to Enoch 56:1, the righteous "written before the glory of the Great One," and, according to Enoch 108:3, the transgressors "blotted out of the Book of Life and out of the books of the holy ones." Reference is made also in The Shepherd of Hermas (Vision i. In Daniel 12:1 and Enoch 47:3 "the Ancient of Days" is described as seated upon his throne of glory with "the Book" or "the Books of Life" ("of the Living") opened before him. Also, according to Jubilees 36:10, one who contrives evil against his neighbor will be blotted out of the Book of Remembrance of men, and will not be written in the Book of Life, but in the Book of Perdition. The apocryphal Book of Jubilees speaks of two heavenly tablets or books: a Book of Life for the righteous, and a Book of Death for those that walk in the paths of impurity and are written down on the heavenly tablets as adversaries (of God). The Psalms also speaks of a book of the living: "Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous. It is with reference to the Book of Life that the holy remnant is spoken of as being written unto life in Jerusalem compare also Book of Ezekiel 9:4, where one of the six heavenly envoys "who had the scribe's inkhorn upon his loins" is told to mark the righteous for life, while the remainder of the inhabitants of Jerusalem are doomed. To be blotted out of this book signifies death. In the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Life records forever all people considered righteous before God. For this reason, extra mention is made for the Book of Life during amidah recitations during the High Holy Days, the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the day of atonement (the two High Holidays, particularly in the prayer Unetanneh Tokef). According to the Talmud, it is opened on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, as is its analog for the wicked, the Book of the Dead. In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the Book of Life ( Hebrew: ספר החיים, transliterated Sefer HaChaim Greek: βιβλίον τῆς ζωῆς Biblíon tēs Zōēs Arabic :Kitab al-Amal) is the book in which God records, or will record, the names of every person who is destined for Heaven and the world to come.
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