ESCHATOLOGY. 201 ESCHATOLOGY. picture has unquestionably been retouched by Christian hands. A ng the Semitic nations, none has probably contributed more largely to the ( imon stock of later eschatological material than the people of ancient Babylonia. Their creation myth and astrology, based on careful observations of the celestial bodies, furnished events to be expected and foretold when times and seasons might be looked for. Nevertheless, Buch of their literary remains as have been discovered and examined do not permit us to determine what the Baby lonians themselves thought of the world's future. It is among peoples to some extent dependent upon their civilization that we find the Marduk-Tiamat myth transferred from the beginning to the end of the world, and the millennial periods of the world's course elaborated. In early Israel the 'Day of Yahweh' was a day of battle deciding the for- tunes of a people. If the masses looked forward to it as a day of deliverance and victory, men like Amos and Hosea, Isaiah and Micah, Zeph- aniah and Jeremiah feared that, the moral con- ditions being what they were, the advance of Assyria would bring destruction, complete or well-nigh complete, to Israel and Judah. They were prophets of doom. To one of the greatest among them, Jeremiah, this solemn forecast of coming judgment was the criterion of true proph- ethood. In later times, the books containing their oracles were interpolated with prophecies of coining prosperity, which neither reflect their moral attitude nor are in harmony with their historic circumstances. But they are themselves significant signs of the expansion of eschatolog- ical hopes. The establishment of the Achieme- nian Empire aroused among the Jews expecta- tions of a return from Babylon, the restoration of the Temple, and improved social conditions, as Isaiah xl.-xlviii. indicates. During the numer- ous insurrections that marked the beginning of the reign of Darius Hystaspes, Haggai and Zechariah fanned the hopes of Judean independence under a descendant of the old Davidic house, the present Governor of Juda-a. Zerubbabel (q.v.): anil Jeremiah (xxx.. xxxi.) apparently shows that this hope still lived after the death of Zerub- babel and found new nourishment in the great conflict between Persia and Greece. Alexander's phenomenal career, widening the horizons of men, inspired in Judaea, as elsewhere, serious thoughts eoncerning the destiny of nations. But the strongest impulses to eschatological speculation were furnished by the religious persecution under Antiochus IV. Epiphanes, and the Maceabean revolt. The book of Daniel, written B.C. 165, voices the hope that the kingdom of the world will be given to the saints of the Most High — i.e. the Jewish people. Its celestial representative, probably Michael, after the destruction of the beast representing the Greek kingdom, comes with the clouds and receives the empire of the world. There is no Messiah in this apocalypse. The first distinct appearance of this deliverer and king is in the Psalms of Solomon, written soon after the conquest of Palestine by Pompev, in r,.c. 63. (See Messiah.) During the century that lay between the Maccabean uprising and the final loss of independence to the Romans, the eschatological hopes centred upon the Asmonrean princes, by whom the conquest of the world was expected, as many a psalm in the Psalter testi- fies. The longing for a descendant of the Davidic line who would break the Roman yoke, establish the empire of the dews, and rule as a righteous king over the subject nations, grew Strong enough in the first century of our era to cause the rebel lion that in A.n. 70 led to the destruction of Jerusalem. When Jesus proclaimed the coming of the kingdom of heaven, it is natural then Eon that, in spite of His disavowal, lie should be understood by some to be a claimant to the king- ship of the .lews. Attracted by Mis wonderful personality, from love of Him and faith in the prophetic word. His disciples were filled with the conviction that lie would return a- the Messiah upon the clouds of heaven. Apocalyptic writings, such as Fourth Ezra (see EsDBAS, Books OF), Enoch xxxvii.-lxxi. (sec ENOCH, Book of), and the Jewish originals utilized and expanded in .Matthew xxiv. (.Mark xiii., Luke xxi.) and the Revelation of John, show that even in circles where the hopes of the future did not attach themselves to the personality of Jesus, the Messianic idea grew more and more transcendent. It is not probable, however, that the final judg- ment and the raising of the dead were ever con- ceived by an adherent of the Jewish faith as functions of the Messiah. While on many points the eschatological ideas of the early Church were far from being fixed, it seems to have been quite generally believed that the end of the world was approaching; that it would he heralded by an- gelic trumpet-blasts and ushered in by the de- scent of Jesus as the Messiah from heaven to establish His kingdom; that the living saints would then be translated and the dead in Christ raised to reign with Him for a thousand years; and that after tile final conflict with evil the list judgment would be held, the present world would be destroyed by fire, and there would be a new heaven and a new earth in which righteous- ness should dwell. As Christianity spread, through missionary activity or military eon- quests, the kingdom of God was identified with the Church, the doctrine of the millennium was largely abandoned, and eschatology occupied it- self chiefly with the future of the individual in heaven, purgatory, or hell. The great creeds of Christendom, however, affirmed the belief in a return of the Son of God to judge the quick and the dead, and a resurrection of the just and the unjust. There does not seem to be sufficient docu- mentary evidence to support the general assump- tion that about the year a.d. 1000 there was a widespread belief in the impending end of the world. But the famous hymn, Dies irse, dies ilia Solvet sjeclum in favilla, Teste David cum Sibylla, leaves no doubt either as to the eschatological mood of mediaeval Christianity or as regards the source whence it was nourished. And of this there is testimony in the numerous apoca lypses that grew up. It is natural that the bibli- cal language concerning the millennium in Revela- tion xx. and the destruction of the world by fire in II. Peter should have occupied many mind-. The more radical religious movement of the Renaissance period was strongly impregnated wilh eschatological thought. In the Baptist and anti-Trinitarian churches ardent expectations of the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth went hand in hand with the rejection of sacramental magic, devil, and hell, and practical attempts at founding a new social order, with
