gunlshment (2421. H). x;, ,t the coming day of J" includes a eavcnly judgment over these sjuritual ijowcrs of the world- kingdoms. Is seen also in Is 84<- », Ps 82. 58 (?). Both in Is 2421, of. •» », and in a4* ^ earthquake phenomena are the manifest •ign of this judgment upon angel beings. That Pemion eschat- ology infiuenced Jewish at this point is quite beyond serious question. (See csp. Stave, ParKinmiu. p. 145 ff.). There we and the conc^-ption of a struggle between good ond evil spirit powers, be* oining especially severe at the end when the Satanic leader, Angra Mainyu, assails the al>ode of Ahura Mazda, the
good god. He Is overthrown, either by the gwl himself or by ie Parsoe Messiah, Soshyos, and is held in imprisonment for a time before ho is destroyed. The resurrection and the creation of the new heaven and earth are additional elements in the Parsoe eschatology parallel to the Jewish. The Idea of the fall of Satan from heaven through an ambitious att'^mpt to be like God is u«cd ooellcally in application to the (all of Babylon in It 14l»-l>, witn evident allusion to a myth deftcriblng the failure
of the morning star to mount the eastern sky. See also Secrets of Enoch 29*- », and cf. Enoch 6S-»-6.
The Bk. of Daniel introduces a further element, the essential embodiment of the demonic power of evil in a man (Antioclius rv,). This human, not simply national, incarnation of the power of Satan may have had'an important history in Jewish thought before it comes to light in the earlv Christian ex- pectation of Antichrist (2 Th 2-i-i2, 1 Jn 2is, A.i. 16, etc,; cf, Apoc. Bar 401-2). Bousset (Der AntichrLst, ISOi'j) has made probable the Jewish origin of this conception aa an outgrowth or modification of the Babylonian dragon myth, probably originating with Daniel,
Another Ime of development connects itself with Gn 6i-S, and is found in combination mth some of those already traced in Enoch 1-36. 83-90. The points of contact with Rev. here are close enough to deserve a more careful scrutiny.
The Book of Enoch (ch, fiff,) contains an account — probably the blending of two accounts — of the fall of angels from heaven, on the basis of Gn 61-^, and of the binding of their leader (Azazel or Serajaza) by one of the four archangels in darkness beneath rocks or under the hills of the eartli, with his associates. At the last judgment they are to be takt^n thence and cast into the abyss of fire (lO*-^- 9-13). if they had not been bound, man would have perished from tlie earth (10?), But though the greater powers of evil are chained, lesser powers, the evil spirits, half human, proceeding from their sons, the giants, continue, and to them disease and ail sorts of evil are ascribed. In the dream vision of chs. 83-90 the same conception is found. Here we read of the fall of a star from heaven and then of other stars (8Ci- 8), and of the violent deeds of tlieir sons. Then one of the four great angels binds in an abyss the first star that fell, and his followers likewise (88' 3). This is before the Flood. During the whole period of human history these fallen angels lie bound in the earth ; but the evils under which Israel groaned are due to the misdeeds of the 'seventy shepheids.' These are angel representatives of the kingdoms to which the Jews were in sub- jection from the Exile onwards (895^*r), who transgress their com- mission as chosteners of Israel. At the last ju<igment the stars that first fell are brought before God, then the seventv shep- herds, and all are cast into the same abyss of fire (l)U'-i '•^, so 100^). Into a like abyss, but not the same one, apostate Israelites were cast (QO'^). Then the old house (Jerusalem) was taken away, and the new house was brought, and erected by God (9727-29). Certain points of likeness between this apocalypse and Rev. are evident: the two sorts of angelic powers of evil, Satan and his angels accounting for the evil of the world in general, and angels of the nations explaining the particular and present sufferings of the Jews. But the binthng of Satan in the abyss is at the beginning of human hist on*, not at the beginning of the Messianic reign. The idea that evil angels are confined under the earth may well have been an inference from the phenomena of earthquake and volcano, cf. e.g. Enoch (i7*'^; The some conception, depending on Enoch, though with varia- tions, is found in later parts of Enoch (391- 2» 5416 C7-G9), in Bk. of Jub., ch. 5, Secrets of Enoch IS? (cf. chs. 7. 13. 29), Jude 8, 2 P 2*, In Enoch 18ll-21i0the fallen and imprisoned angels are seven stars that transgressed the commandment of God by not rising at the a]ipointe(i time ; and though ch. 19 declares them to be the angels of Gn 61-3, one suspects a different origin, namely, in planets or meteors. The possibility of Greek intluence on the eschatology of Enoch is not to be denied (Dicterich. Xehjia, 1893).
Comparing the eschatology of Kev 12-22 with these earlier or and Jewish conceptions, we are struck most of all by the free union of elements of an originally diverse origin. Ch. 12 stands nearest to the Babylonian myth, even though one hesitate to adopt Gunkel's bold reconstruction. The dragon is a water beast (v,i6). He is cast out of heaven with his host by Micliael, in a war wiiich can have been nothing but an effort to dispossess Ood. But his fall here follows the birth and ascension of Slessiah ; and by this change of order which appears to have been due to our John himself, what was a hist'iry of the world became a history of Christianity, and the fundamental victory over evil, upon which hope rests, was not that cffe<'ted by God at creation, but that achieved by Christ through His resurrec- tion. In 91-11 the allusions to the demonic powers, with Apollyon at their head, who are confined in the abyss, seem to rest on a wholly different conception.