RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Anthropomorphism Antichrist
and judgments (Enoch xc. 37). In the pseudo- Solomonic Psalms (xvii. 27-39) of the time of Pompey, and in the Fourth Book of Ezra, of the time of the Flavian emperors, it is the godless powers or the heathen nations who are overpowered by the Messiah. In the almost contemporary Apocalypse of Baruch (xl. 1-2) this passage is applied to the destruction of a last impious king by the Messiah. The conception here is not yet influenced by Christianity; and thus the expectation of a personal opponent to the Messiah is found in pre- Christian Judaism.
In the New Testament writings the thought seems to be influenced by ideas which originated in the Christian revelation. The 4. In the great struggle against sin as selfish- New Testa- ness revived the idea of a final culment. mination of the enmity against God. On the other hand, by the separation of the religious life from the national-political life, the idea is divested of its natural form and is more spiritualized. In his eschatological discourse where the abomination of desolation in the holy place is spoken of as expressive of the tribulation of the approaching end (Matt. xxiv. 15), Jesus quoted the Book of Daniel. But the Messianic son of man is here not opposed, as in Daniel, by a ruler who at the same time destroys the religious and national side of the theocracy, but by a great number of pseudo-prophets and pseudo-Messiahs (Matt. xxiv. 5), who are thought of as fanatical representatives of a Jewish natural Messianic idea. The apostle Paul, when he declares that the appearance of the man of sin, the opponent who rises against everything which contains good and God's service, will precede the coming of Christ (II Thess. ii. 3-4), no doubt also thought in the first place of a pseudo- Messiah in personal recollection of the bitter opposition to the Gospel by Judaism filled with politico- Messianic thoughts (I Thess. ii. 15). For his picture of the adversary he doubtless took some traits from the description of Antiochus Epiphanes in the Book of Daniel and that of Caligula in history, who had his image in the form of Jupiter set up in the Temple at Jerusalem. Furthermore, Paul's high conception of the superhuman virtue of Christ, is reflected in the description of his antitype. In John's Apocalypse the counterpart of the kingdom of God in the last times, besides the nations Gog and Magog, which are to march against the holy city after the completion of the millennium (Rev. xx. 8), includes also the Roman power, personified (xvii. 11) in the incendiary, matricide, and persecutor of the Christians on the imperial throne, Nero (xvii. 9 sqq.), as well as a multitude of false prophets who mislead to the cult of the world-kingdom and its rule (xiii. 11-17, xvi. 13,
™h r°' XX' 1°')' rePresenting no doubt the heathenish Roman practises of augury and necromancy, ihe last development of the idea within the New testament is found in the Epistles of John, where the thought is of an opponent to the true Christ, putting himself in his place, brought about by doctrinal necessities to characterize heretics who destroy the unity of the historical Jesus and the bearer of the revelation of God, Christ. In these
persons, according to the clear statement of the epistles (I John ii. 22; II John 7), the idea and the character of the Antichrist are realized.
In post-Christian Judaism the early national conception was enhanced. The name " Antichrist," borrowed from Christianity, does not become current until late (e.g., in Abrabanel). But in the first Christian centuries there is found in Jewish literature the notion of a 5. In Post- perpetrator of outrages upon the
Christian Jewish people in the last days. Spo-
Judaism radically, the figure of a powerful and in the woman after the manner of Cleopatra
Church, appears (Sibyllines, iii. 77, v. 18, viii. 200); oftener that of an imperial Roman anti-Messiah. In later times Antichrist was represented in Jewish theology as victor over the suffering Messiah, and was called Romulus, also Armillus. In the Christian Church of the first centuries the main types of the Biblical Antichrist reappear. Origen identified the notion in an abstract sense with that of false doctrine. Certain contemporaneous representatives of heretical teaching were called by the name, without thereby excluding the expectation of an Antichrist as a future individual (cf. Didache, xvi.). Very often the latter was thought of as a false Jewish Messiah — hence circumcised and compelling circumcision — and it was expected that he would come from the tribe of Dan and from the East. The connection of Antichrist with Nero in the Apocalypse of John was also developed by representing him as the resuscitated Nero (Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum, ii.; Jerome, on Dan, xi. 17; Augustine, De civitate Dei, xx. 13). Both conceptions were strangely fused (Victorinus, Comment, ad Apoc.) or outwardly connected with each other into the notion of a double Antichrist, a Western (Roman) and an Eastern, appearing in Jerusalem. In relation to Satan, the Antichrist was thought of as a man working his will, as his son, and even as his incarnation.
The idea receded in the Middle Ages, and when it again appeared it was mostly applied to phenomena of the present. It has often been applied to the papacy, an interpretation which was adopted by Luther (Adversus execrabilem Antichristi bullam) and other Reformers, and taken into the symbolical books of the Lutheran Church (Art. Schmal., ii. 4; Tract, de pot. Papce). On the other hand, Roman Catholics have referred the Antichrist to Luther and Protestantism. F. Sieffert.
As Bousset (Antichrist) has so convincingly shown, a tradition was evidently current in Jewish thought which underlay the teaching both of Paul and the Apocalypse concerning the Antichrist. The tradition appears to have contained the following features. The coming of Antichrist was prevented by the Roman power. When this power should fall, the Antichrist, not of foreign birth but a Jewish false Messiah, would establish himself in the temple at Jerusalem and require men to worship him. His reign would last for three and one-half years. By means of his miraculous power he would convert the world to his side. Later, his real character would be exposed; the
Antidicomarianites Antinomianism