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sacrifice, and set up the abomination that maketh desolate. He comes to a sudden end, and then follows the great tribulation, and then a resurrec- tion of the dead.
It is agreed that these predictions, while partly applicable to a historical person, Antiochus Epi- phanes, do not apply to him in full. Those ii regard the book as written during his persecution, take the view that the seer anticipated the end of all things to happen immediately upon the fall of Antiochus, and that he wrote shortly before that event. It is at least clear that parts of this picture, as of so many others in the Bk. of Daniel, were used by the author of the NT Apocalypse: notably the casting down of the stars from heaven (Rey 12), and the length assigned to the reign of the wicked king (see the 42 months and the 1260 days of Rev 115: 8).
n the third Book of the Sibylline Oracles (c. B.C. 170) is a prediction that Beliar will come in the last days, ἐκ Σεβαστηνῶν, which according to Bousset means ‘of the race of Augustus’; while others, comparing the Ascension of Isaiah, inter- pret it as ‘from Samaria.’ Note that the final adversary is here no other than Satan, apparently in the form of man. To this Sib. Orac. i1., origin- ally a Jewish composition but extensively Chris- tianized, adds that Elias (alone) will come as a witness, and that Beliar will do many signs.
In 4 Hzra (5* 5) are traces, though obscured and corrupted, of the belief. We read, among a list of the signs of the end : ‘ thou shalt see the kingdom that is after the third (i.e. the power of Rome) shaken,’ * and also ‘he shall reign whom they look not for who dwell on the earth.’
In Apoc. Bar (ch. 40) is a prediction of the de- struction of the last leader of the enemies of Israel by the Messiah on Mount Sion.
In Asc. Isa. (ch. 4) are clear predictions of the advent of Antichrist, who is identified with Nero redivivus, and of his reign for the traditional period of 34 years. But this cannot safely be regarded as pre-Christian.
Trem this evidence, and from an examination of a number of patristic documents, Bousset (Der Antichrist, 1895) has concluded, and as it seems to us rightly, that there was among the Jews a fully developed legend of Antichrist—perhaps oral, but more probably written—which was accepted and amplified by Christians; and that this legend diverges from and contradicts in important points the conceptions we find in the Apocalypse. As formulated by Christians of the lst cent. its main features are—
That Antichrist would not appear before the fall of Rome; that he would then appear among the Jews, Peas himself as God, and claim to be worshipped in the temple at Jerusalem; that Elias would appear and denounce him, and be slain by him; that he would be born of the tribe of Dan: this idea being due to an interpretation of Gn 4917, Dt 33", Jer 8!’—a tradition known to the apocalyptist, who omits Dan from the list of the tribes; that his reign would last for 34 years; that the believing Jews (or all the Church) would flee into the wilderness, whither Antichrist would pursue them ; that he would then be destroyed by the Lord with the breath of His mouth (a concep- tion derived from Is 11").
It will be seen that there is here a considerable disagreement with the Apocalypse. In that book the principal beast is Rome, and there are two witnesses, not one. The first point is very im- portant: the Apocalypse is anti-Roman. The current belief expressed by St. Paul regarded
**Post tertiam turbatam’ is taken as the equivalent of an original Greek τὸν wire τὸν tpite (80. βασιλωαν) wiry. The old reading was ‘ post tertiam tubam.’
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the Roman power as a bulwark against Anti- christ.
In later times the mass of conflicting traditions about Antichrist led to the idea of a twofold Antichrist—one for the Jews and one for the world at large. This is seen with the greatest clearness in the writings of the 3rd cent. poet Commodian, especially in his Carmen Apologeticum, where Nero redivivus appears as the antichrist of the Gentiles (‘nobis Nero factus antichristus, ille Judeis’). Of the ultimate source of this belief it is not possible to speak with certainty.
Gunkel, in a recent work (Schépfung und Chios), has struck out a line of interpretation which has already been fruitful, and promises to be more so in the future. He regards the conceptions of the Apocalyptic beasts as survivals of ancient mytho- logical beliefs to which the Apocalyptie writer wave new life and meaning. The primeval dragon of the deep (Tiamat in any louie mythology), which opposed the Creator in the beginning, anc was overcome and bound by him, would, it was thought, in the last days rear up its head again and break out in a final rebellion, to be vanquished this time for ever. And it is at least a plausible— to the mind of the present writer a more than plausible—theory that beliefs of this kind belonging to the common Semitic stock, and refreshed in the recollection of the Jews during the Exile, should in their later literature once again appear in the guise of ‘ancient wisdom,’ with a new and loftier spiritual meaning read into them.