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valley, 54:1, 2, or an oven of fire, 54:6, is not located, but seems to correspond to the place for the fallen angels in the first part. After the removal of the wicked rulers by the angels of punishment (cf. above p. 30), a period of peace shall be inaugurated, 53:7, and the new kingdom shall centre in Jerusalem, 56:6, 7, and it shall repel the last assault of the enemies, 56:1 sqq. The moral character of the kingdom is strictly such as could be expected from an Old Testament basis. The ruler is endowed with all the characteristics desirable ina theocratic king, whose tule is, if anything, a just one; and the ruled shall partake of great blessings, 39:4, 7; 51:5; 48:1; 58:1 sqq., etc., which shall be both physical, 45:4, 5, and ethical. The angels shall dwell with them, 39:1, also the Chosen One, 62:14, and the risen righteous shall take part, 51:2 sqq. The kingdom shall become powerful, 52:4, and all the nations shall take part in it, 57:3, and its members shall be clothed with the garments of (eternal) life, 62:16, and there shall be nothing perishable in it, 69:29, and hence the kingdom is eternal, 71:17, etc. That the above picture of the Messiah and his kingdom can be perfectly well understood from Old Testament premises, in fact, has been drawn from them exclusively, is our earnest conviction, and in this opinion we stand with Ewald, Dillmann, Anger, Langen, Schiirer, and others, while Hilgenfeld, Kuenen, Tideman, Vernes, and Drummond claim a Christian origin. But this latteris encumbered with the greatest of difficulties. Schtirer has very correctly drawn attention to the fact that a Christian would certainly not have passed over the person of the historical Christ without mentioning his death or resurrection. Drummond has felt the full weight of this difficulty, and therefore invents his curious theory of a Christian interpolation. He sees very well that the whole idea and contents of the Parables place it beyond doubt that they are a Jewish production, but he is unwilling to sacrifice his idea of a Christian Messiah. But ere the same difficulties meet him; a Christian interpolator would certainly, as little as a Christian author, ave avoided the references to Christ which we have a right, from the nature of the case and from the analogy of other interpolators, to expect. When he tries (p. 61) to excuse this by saying “that an interpolator would be careful not to depart too widely from the character of the book in which he made his insertions,” this must be regarded as entirely too flat. His foundation of sand will not bear the superstructure of theory e has built on it. Interpolators are not so delicate concerning their insertions, as many interpolations, e.g. the Christian ones in the Sibylla and the Ascensio Isaiae, conclusively show. The idea, too, of the kingdom is so peculiarly Jewish that it excludes every notion of a Christian source. The Messiah comes but once, and then to judge, and before that time he was hidden. But a Christian, who new of the historical Christ, could not ignore his first coming, and say that Christ was hidden until he should come to judge. Even had he been a Chiliast, knowing that Christ had once come, an event of prime importance to all Christians, whether orthodox or heterodox, he could not have passed over in silence the irst coming. But our author, like all Jewish writers, knows only of one coming of the Messiah, and that in glory. Everything before that time belongs to HTR, while his coming shall inaugurate the HTR, but for a Christian this latter period had already commenced with the first coming into the flesh. Then it must not be overlooked that the question concerning the relation between God and the Messiah, as to the nature of the atter, is treated in no place whatever in the Parables, while in the early church that was the question around which all interest centred. There is no phase of orthodoxy or heterodoxy in the early Christian church in which we could find a place for the Messiah of the Parables. The conclusion, then, is that it is not only improbable but even impossible to give a rational explanation of the Messianic idea here developed by accepting a Christian source, while it is perfectly intelligible from a Jewish origin, and must be attributed to such. c. Age. —In trying to determine when the Parables were written we are again restricted to internal evidences alone. The only place where an historical event could be regarded as having been before the eyes of the writer is the prophesied invasion of the Parthians and Medes in 56:5 sqq. It has been argued that the author here had in his mind the invasion of Parthians, 40-38 B.C., that consequently the book was not written until soon after that time, and that the time of composition would then fall somewhere in the reign of Herod the Great, 37-4 B.C. But the allusion here is so vague that it does not necessarily rest on an armed invasion into Palestine, but seems rather to be developed from a general idea that these nations were at that