e 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 {20} 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 {21} had been
abso