ABSTRACT
The double basis of democracy is projected from the past into the future in the Pharisaic and rabbinic concept of human immortality. In Israel two schools of thought developed with regard to the immortality of the soul. The School of Shammai, consisting of the conservative, priestly groups, held that immortality was limited to the righteous in Israel; while their opponents, the School of Hillel, taught that immortality can be obtained even by righteous pagans. It is probably no exaggeration to assert that the whole history of Western religion has been influenced by this emergence of the lay scholar as an authoritative expounder of the Torah. Both in Judaism, and in the religions akin to it, the authority of the hereditary priesthood was replaced by that of men called to the vocation of expounding the faith.
