he was forced to give up Ezekiel's theory of individual
retribution in the present life. ⁴² Other thinkers felt the
same difficulty, and the old doctrine that the sins of the
fathers were visited upon the children maintained itself
in Jewish thought even down to New Testament times. ⁴³

The prophetic period thus ended in negation of the
ancient beliefs in regard to the soul and in regard to
retribution. The Prophets and the Law denied the con-
scious existence of the soul after death, and Ezekiel and
his successors denied collective rewards and punishments,
but were unable to establish their theory of individual
rewards and punishments in the present life. The ancient
faith in ghost life and in tribal solidarity was gone, and
there was nothing to put in its place. In the next period
we shall see how, after the ground had been cleared of
primitive Semitic animistic conceptions of the future life
and primitive Semitic ideas of the unity of the clan, new
doctrines of immortality arose that were based upon
the righteousness of Yahweh and the need for its vindi-
cation in another world, and that were suggested by
contact, first with Persian and then with Greek thought.

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