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276 The return of Yahweh’s Kavod, expected at the End o Days, did not take place, even though the count of days from abomination time seemed to have been correct. Was the Time of Fulfillment not yet at hand, many wondered; and it became evident that the enigmas of Daniel’s other counts, o “years” and “weeks of years” and of “Time, Times,” and so on had yet to be deciphered. Clues were the prophetic parts in the Book of Daniel that spoke of the rise and fall of future kingdoms after Babylon, Persia, and Egypt—kingdoms cryptically calle “of the south,” “of the north,” or a seafaring “Kittim”; an kingdoms that shall split off them, fight each other, “plant tabernacles of palaces between the seas”—all future enti- ties that were also cryptically represented by varied ani- mals (a ram, a goat, a lion and so on) whose offspring, called “horns,” will again split apart and fight each other. Who were those future nations, and what wars were fore- told? The Prophet Ezekiel also spoke of great battles to come, between north and south, between an unidentified Gog and an opposing Magog; and people were wondering whether the prophesied kingdoms have already appeared on the scene— Alexander’s Greece, the Seleucids, the Ptolemies. Were these the subject of the prophecies, or was it someone yet to come in the even more distant future? There was theological turmoil: Was the expectation at the Jerusalem Temple of the Kavod as a physical object a correct understanding of prophecies, or was the expected Coming only of a symbolic, of an ephemeral nature, a spir- itual Presence? What was required of the people—or was what was destined to happen will happen no matter what? The Jewish leadership split between devout and by-the- book Pharisees and the more liberal Sadducees, who were more internationally minded, recognizing the importance of a Jewish diaspora already spread from Egypt to Anatolia to Mesopotamia. In addition to these two mainstreams, small sects, sometimes organized in their own communi- ties, sprang up; the best known of them are the Essenes (of THE END OF DAYS