ntichrist" was Antiochus IV. Epiphanes,
the persecutor of the Jews, and he has impressed indelible traits upon
the conception. Since then ever-recurring characteristics of this figure
(cf. especially Dan xi. 40, &c.) are, that he would appear as a mighty
ruler at the head of gigantic armies, that he would destroy three rulers
(the three horns, Dan. vii. 8, 24), persecute the saints (vii. 25), rule
for three and a half years (vii. 25, &c.), and subject the temple of God
to a horrible devastation ([Greek: bdelugma tes eremoseos]). When the
end of the world foretold by Daniel did not take place, but the book of
Daniel retained its validity as a sacred scripture which foretold future
things, the personality of the tyrant who was God's enemy disengaged
itself from that of Antiochus IV., and became merely a figure of
prophecy, which was applied now to one and now to another historical
phenomenon. Thus for the author of the _Psalms of Solomon_ (c. 60 B.C.),
Pompey, who destroyed the independent rule of the Maccabees and stormed
Jerusalem, was the Adversary of God (cf. ii. 26, &c.); so too the tyrant
whom the _Ascension of Moses_ (c. A.D. 30) expects at the end of all
things, possesses, besides the traits of Antiochus IV., those of Herod
the Great. A further influence on the development of the eschatological
imagination of the Jews was exercised by such a figure as that of the
emperor Caligula (A.D. 37-41), who is known to have given the order,
never carried out, to erect his statue in the temple of Jerusalem. In
the little Jewish Apocalypse, the existence of which is assumed by many
scholars, which in Mark xiii. and Matt. xxiv. is combined with the words
of Christ to form the great eschatological discourse, the prophecy of
the "abomination of desolation" (Mark xiii. 14 et seq.) may have
originated in this episode of Jewish history. Later Jewish and Christian
writers of Apocalypses saw in Nero the tyrant of the end of time. The
author of the Syriac _Apocalypse of Baruch_ (or his source), cap. 36-40,
speaks in quite general terms of the last ruler of the end of time. In 4
Ezra v. 6 also is found the allusion: _regnabit quem non sperant_.

The roots of this eschatological fancy are to be sought perhaps still
deeper in a purely mythological and speculative expectation of a battle
at the end of days between God and the devil, which has no reference
whatever to historical occurrences. This idea has its original source in
the apocalyp