Thessalonians ii._--The earliest form of Pauline eschatology is
essentially Jewish. He starts from the fundamental thought of Jewish
apocalyptic that the end of the world will be brought about by the
direct intervention of God when evil has reached its climax. The
manifestation of evil culminates in the Antichrist whose parusia (2
Thess. ii. 9) is the Satanic counterfeit of that of the true Messiah.
But the climax of evil is the immediate herald of its destruction; for
thereupon Christ will descend from heaven and destroy the Antichrist
(ii. 8). Nowhere in his later epistles does this forecast of the future
reappear. Rather under the influence of the great formative Christian
conceptions he parted gradually with the eschatology he had inherited
from Judaism, and entered on a progressive development, in the course of
which the heterogeneous elements were for the most part silently
dropped.

_Revelation._--Since this book is discussed separately we shall content
ourselves here with indicating a few of the conclusions now generally
accepted. The apocalypse was written about A.D. 96. Its object, like
other Jewish apocalypses, was to encourage faith under persecution; its
burden is not a call to repentance but a promise of deliverance. It is
derived from one author, who has made free use of a variety of elements,
some of which are Jewish and consort but ill with their new context. The
question of the pseudonymity of the book is still an open one.

_Apocalypse of Peter._--Till 1892 only some five or more fragments of
this book were known to exist. These are preserved in Clem. Alex. and in
Macarius Magnes (see Hilgenfeld, _N. T. extra Can._ iv. 74 sqq.; Zahn,
_Gesch. Kanons_ ii. 818-819). It is mentioned in the Muratorian Canon,
and according to Eusebius (_H.E._ vi. 14. i) was commented on by Clement
of Alexandria. In the fragment found at Akhmim there is a prediction of
the last things, and a vision of the abode and blessedness of the
righteous, and of the abode and torments of the wicked.

_Testament of Hezekiah._--This writing is fragmentary, and has been
preserved merely as a constituent of the Ascension of Isaiah. To it
belongs iii. 13b-iv. 18 of that book. It is found under the above name,
[Greek: Diatheke Ezekion], only in Cedrenus i. 120-121, who quotes
partially iv. 12. 14 and refers to iv. 15-18. For a full account see
ISAIAH, ASCENSION OF.

_Testament of Abraham._--This work in two recensions was first published