Messiahs: Christian and Pagan.

Messiahs: Christian and Pagan ing on the vengeance that will befall hostile nations and the sinners among men, rather than on the saving features of this kingdom.It was to be not so much a kingdom of grace as one of power vindicating national superiority.In the Apocalypse of Baruch, written in the second half of the first cen- tury A. D., the Messiah, who in the first Apocalypse is con- ceived as wholly passive, is here pictured as a warrior who slays the enemies of Israel with his own hand." Against Him all the heathen powers are arrayed under a great leader."[Ib., 327.]For the Pharisee who wrote the Similitudes of Enoch, " the blood of the martyred Pharisees cries out to Heaven, and the angels of heaven join their supplications with those of the living.He finds relief in two directions: first, in his conception of the origin of evil, and, second, in the belief in a preexistent Messiah, who will come and establish a uni- versal kingdom of righteousness, and execute judgment upon all." (Ib., 75.)Israel, oppressed from without, must have the conquest of Palestine by Pompey, in 63 B. c. [N.Schmidt, op.cit., 68.]In view of the prevalent Messianic expectation, it can not be considered pure accident that Dosithee proclaimed his messiahship among the Samaritans at almost the same time that Christ proclaimed his messiah- ship among the Jews. [Krauss, Dosithee et les Dositheens.