, are also the general conditions which gave rise to the
earliest Jewish speculations about a personal Messiah, except that, in
the case of the Messianic ideas within Judaism itself, the adoption of
specifically Greek thoughts, so far as I am able to see, cannot be made
out.

Most Jews, as Trypho testifies in Justin's Dialogue, 49, conceived the
Messiah as a man. We may indeed go a step further and say that no Jew at
bottom imagined him otherwise; for even those who attached ideas of
pre-existence to him, and gave the Messiah a supernatural background,
never advanced to speculations about assumption of the flesh,
incarnation, two natures and the like. They only transferred in specific
manner to the Messiah the old idea of pre-terrestrial existence with
God, universally current among the Jews. Before the creation of the
world the Messiah was hidden with God, and, when the time is fulfilled,
he makes his appearance. This is neither an incarnation nor a
humiliation, but he appears on earth as he exists before God, viz., as a
mighty and just king, equipped with all gifts. The writings in which
this thought appears most clearly are the Apocalypse of Enoch (Book of
Similitudes, Chap. 46-49) and the Apocalypse of Esra (Chap. 12-14).
Support to this idea, if anything more of the kind had been required,
was lent by passages like Daniel VII. 13 f. and Micah, V. 1. Nowhere do
we find in Jewish writings a conception which advances beyond the notion
that the Messiah is the man who is with God in heaven; and who will make
his appearance at his own time. We are merely entitled to say that, as
the same idea was not applied to all persons with the same certainty, it
was almost unavoidable that men's minds should have been led to
designate the Messiah as the man from heaven. This thought was adopted
by Paul (see below), but I know of no _Jewish_ writing which gave clear
expression to it.

Jesus Christ designated himself as the Messiah, and the first of his
disciples who recognised him as such were native Jews. The Jewish
conceptions of the Messiah consequently passed over into the Christian
community. But they received an impulse to important modifications from
the living impression conveyed by the person and destiny of Jesus. Three
facts were here of pre-eminent importance. First, Jesus appeared in
lowliness, and even suffered death. Secondly, he was believed to be
exalted through the resurrection to the right hand of God, and his
ret