recognised or submitted to throughout the world. The Jewish view seems to have been that men had fallen away from the rule of God in the days before Abraham, and that when Abraham recognised the Lord as his God, then for him—but not for others—the sovereignty of God was complete. Similarly, when Israel recognised the Lord as their God there was a nation which accepted the sovereignty of God. The time would come when all the world would make this same recognition, but the day was not yet present, and there was more than one opinion as to the probable course of events which would lead up to it.

In general the Jews believed that the universal recognition of the sovereignty of God would bring about, or would at least be coincident with, the coming of the Golden Age, so frequently spoken of by the prophets, and described with imaginative profusion in the apocalyptic writings. But it is by no means always clear whether the Golden Age was the condition or the result of the coming of the Kingdom. Would the heathen, who knew not God, be converted or be exterminated? It is not surprising if there was a tendency to confuse the recognition of the sovereignty of God with the phenomena attending it, and to speak of the Kingdom of God when the conditions of its attainment were really meant.

There were two special features in the Jewish expectation of the future recognition of the sovereignty of God which were especially liable to be confused with it in this manner. In the first place, some of the prophets had spoken of the coming of the Golden Age and the restoration of the national fortunes of Israel. Sometimes this restoration had been associated with the house of David, sometimes with the dynasty of the high priest; but frequently no such association was present, and Christian scholarship has in general greatly exaggerated the amount of evidence, especially for a Davidic king. The reason for this exaggeration is partly verbal. The custom has arisen of speaking of this Golden Age as the "Messianic" Age, which can only mean the age in which the "Messiah" will appear. "Messiah" is itself a technical term, but "Messianic" can only be applied to a person appointed by God to some high office, and to a period of history only if such a person be central in it. The really most striking feature of most of the descriptions of the Golden Age in the Old Testament and in the apocalyptic books is that there is no mention of any Messiah at all. But the later literature emphasised the coming of King Messiah, and the Jews therefore refer to this period as "the days of the Messiah." There is no evidence that this phrase was used until after the Christian era. For this reason it is a great pity that scholars, who personally, of course, know better, constantly use so misleading a term as the Messianic Age. It would be far better if it were described as the "Golden Age" or the "good time."[9]

This whole conception of the coming Golden Age was in essence peculiarly Jewish, though parallels can be found in the religion of all nations. Cognate to it was another point of view which was not originally Jewish, but had probably been taken over by the Jews from Persian thought. This was the expectation of the Age to Come, which plays so large a part in the fourth book of Ezra[10] and in the later literature. An integral part of the Persian system was the belief that the world would come to an end and be consumed by fire which would purify it from evil, after which the righteous would be raised from the dead and take part in the glorious life of a new world. A supernatural figure known as the Shaoshyant would take part in this process, and especially in the Judgement which would decide whether men should or should not pass on into the life of the Age to Come.

From the time of Daniel, if not earlier, these ideas had been absorbed by the Jews, and though belief in a resurrection was not universal it had been accepted by the Pharisees, and was probably more popular than either the ancient Jewish belief in Sheol or the imported Greek belief in the immortality of the soul, of which traces can be found in the Wisdom Literature. All this is, however, different from the ancient Jewish tradition of a Golden Age in this world, and there are plain traces in Jewish literature of the attempt to reconcile the two systems.

It was obviously possible, by dint of a comparatively small confusion of thought, to identify the Golden Age with the Age to Come, and to suppose that all the unfulfilled features of the visions of the earlier prophets would be realised in the Age to Come. In this case the figure of the Davidic king, if he happened to be part of the picture, could easily be transplanted into the Age to Come, and whereas in the earlier presentation he had the special function of destroying in a holy war the enemies of Israel, he could now have the more universal responsibility of abolishing all evil, and of acting as judge to decide who should enter into the new world.

It is on general principles entirely probable that some such accommodation of thought was effected in some Jewish circles, as it was afterwards among the Christians. But there is comparatively little evidence that such was actually the case. Especially is there very little evidence that the anointed Son of David was transmuted in this fashion. The most that can be said is that some of the many titles which were applied to the expected Davidic king were also applied to the expected supernatural judge. But identity of title does not always mean identity of person, and the general descriptions of the two figures are as a rule quite separate. It would appear that on the whole the better Jews in the time of Christ were looking for the End of the Age and the Resurrection, rather than for the restoration of the kingdom of David, but that there was a popular minority which still had hopes of the restoration of the monarchy.

The most thorough attempt to reconcile the two lines of thought is to be found in the fourth book of Ezra, which elaborates a complete combination of both systems with a clearness quite unusual in apocalyptic literature. According to this the time was approaching when the Messiah, by which is clearly meant the king of Israel, would appear, destroy all opposition, and reign for four hundred years. He and all mankind would then die. The world would come to an end and be restored to primaeval silence. Then would follow the Resurrection and Judgement, and the beginning of the Age to Come. All the features of both systems are thus combined, except that it appears that the Judgement is the act of God himself, rather than of an especially appointed representative.

The general result of reading the literature belonging to this period is to create the impression that recent scholarship has gone much further than is justifiable in the attempt to systematise Jewish thought on eschatology. It has succumbed too readily to the temptation to find system where there is none, to base a chronological development of thought on the discovery, and finally to emend the texts in its light, and sometimes in its aid. It seems extremely doubtful whether there was any "generally recognised" Jewish teaching on this subject. The belief that God would deliver his people, and that his sovereignty would be recognised throughout the world, was no doubt part of the belief of every pious Jew, but the details were vague and there was no systematic teaching on them.

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