said, 'What is His name?' He answered
'Menachem.' He asked again, 'What is His father's name?' He said,
'Hezekiah.' He asked, 'From whence is He?' He replied, 'From the royal
palace of Bethlehem Judah.' The Jew then went and saw him; but when he
went again, the mother told him 'that the winds had borne the child
away.' " The Babylon Talmud further states that "Rabbi Joshua, the son of
Levi, found Elijah standing at the door of the cave of Rabbi Simeon ben
Yochai, and said to him, 'Shall I reach the world to come?' He answered,
'If the Lord will.' Rabbi Joshua, the son of Levi, said, 'I see two, but I
hear the voice of three.' He also asked, 'When will Messiah come?' Elijah
answered, 'Go and ask Himself.' Rabbi Joshua then said, 'Where does he
sit?' 'At the gate of Rome.' 'And how is he known?' 'He is sitting among
the poor and sick, and they open their wounds, and bind them up again all
at once: but he opens only one, and then he opens another, for he thinks,
Perhaps I may be wanted, and then I must not be delayed.' Rabbi Joshua
went to him, and said, 'Peace be upon thee, my Master, and my Lord.' He
answered, 'Peace be upon thee, son of Levi.' The Rabbi then asked him,
'When will my Lord come?' He answered, 'To-day' " (Ps. xcv. 7). It is said
that "the bones of those who reckon the appointed time of the Messiah must
burst asunder." Again, however, it is said that "Elias told Rabbi Judah,
the brother of the pious Rabbi Salah, that the world would not stand less
than eighty-five years of Jubilee, and in the last year of Jubilee the son
of David will come." It is further stated that there are first to be the
wars of the Dragon, and of Gog and Magog; and that God will not renew the
earth until seven thousand years are completed. The Rabbis also say that
when the Messiah comes to fulfil the prophecy of riding upon an ass (Zech.
ix. 9), the ass shall be one of "an hundred colors." As for the return of
the ten tribes to their own land, the Talmud in some places asserts it,
and in some places denies it. But it is said that in the days of the
Messiah all the Gentiles shall become proselytes to the Jewish faith. The
Rabbis are divided as to the continuance of the Messiah; some say forty
years, some seventy years, some three generations, and some say that He
will continue as long as from the creation of the world or the time of
Noah "up to the present time." Others say that the kingdom of the Messiah
will endure for thousands of yea