EDUCATION: JEWISH INFLUENCE 719 hesitation between the old prophetic outlook upon the present world and the apocalyptic other-worldli- ness of the Messianic idea of that period. The same inconsistency shows itself in the description of the Messianic Age: sometimes a solid earthly happiness of the pious Jew, with fabulous blessings of children and fruitfulness of Nature (Enoch x. 17 ; Baruch xxix. 4-8), the heathen conquered in battle, and destroyed, or subjugated and laid under tribute; again all is more or less spiritualised ; the redeemed will become heavenly angels (Enoch li. 4); the gates of heaven will open before them, they will shine as the stars of heaven, rejoice like the angels, be members of the heavenly host, have peace and joy as children of the truth (Enoch civ. f.), the redeemed Jews will mount aloft upon eagles’ wings to the stars of heaven, and thence look down with scorn upon their enemies (Assumption of Moses, x.); the countenance of the pious shall then shine as the sun, and they shall be like the stars, imperishable as they, and shall behold the face of God and receive from Him praise and reward (2 Esdras vii. 97). The Messianic hope thus spiritualised and trans- ferred to the other world can scarcely be distinguished from the Hellenistic hope of immortality as we find it in the Alexandrian Book of Wisdom and in Philo: “The souls of the righteous are in God’s hand, no suffering can touch them, they are at peace... . The righteous live for ever, their recompense is of the Lord, and the Most-High careth for them” (Wisd. iii. 1; v. 15). This hope of blessedness in the other world for the soul when freed from the earthly body was borrowed by Alexandrian Judaism from the