The Antichrist Legend

[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 71-72):

On the title of the Apocalypse of Daniel it is further to be noted that Lightfoot (quoted by Zahn, 120) draws attention to a miscellaneous codex of the twelfth century in Wright's Catalogue of Syriac MSS., I. 19, which, after the deuterocanonical additions to Daniel, contains a fragment "from the Little Daniel on our Lord (?) and the End of the World." Here we may perhaps conjecture that we have a part of the Apocalypse, which again lies at the base of the rediscovered source. Zahn is further of opinion that, in accordance with a notice of Ebed Jesu (Assemani, Bibl. Orient., III. 15), Hippolytus had already commented on this apocryphal book of the Little Daniel. Professor Bonwetsch who was consulted by me on the subject, is inclined to see in the notice of "the Little [Young] Daniel and Susanna" only one and the same work―that is, the apocryphal history of Susanna and Daniel of the Old Testament. I should greatly desire to have this matter cleared up, for it would be very important to find that Hippolytus had already known and commented upon an Apocalypse of Daniel. What has been said higher up regarding Hippolytus is no longer an impossibility. The relations of the Greek Apocalypse of Daniel to the pseudo=-Methodius, and especially to the interpolated passage on the siege of Constantinople, has already been discussed (p. 51). Here may further be mentioned the interesting title of a treatise occurring in Fabricius: "The Last Vision of the Great Prophet Daniel," etc.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 72):

At the end of a further group of documents I place the apocalyptic writings, which are still extant in the Arabic, the Ethiopic (Geez), and probably also the Syriac languages under the name of Liber Clementis discipuli S. Petri ("Book of S. Peter's Disciple Clement"), or also Petri Apostoli Apocalypsis per Clementem

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 72-73):

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 73):

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 73-74):

To show that in the Arabic Apocalypse of S. Peter we have an almost identical work, the reader may consult Nicoll's Bibliothecae Bodleianae Codices Manuscr. Orient. Catalog., Oxford, 1821, II. pp. 149 et seq. Unfortunately the contents of chaps. xxxi.-xliv. are not given. In chap. xliv. we have already the mention of the Lion's son; while in chap. xlvii. the four empires are enumerated as above. The second empire is that of the Beni'l Abu, the fourth that of the Romans, of which it is said that "this shall remain till the advent of Christ." Chap. xlviii. has a description of the Beni'l Abu, the beginning of whose rule is determined by the year 923 from Alexander. A discrepancy is shown in chaps. lii. and liii., inasmuch as here the Lion's son is represented as a foe of the Christians, and a promise given of his overthrow by the archangel Michael. In chap. lxvii. we are told of "the going forth of the accursed son of Dan, who is Antichrist, and of the descent of Elias and Enoch, and that these he is to kill and perform great wonders and many marvels."

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 74):

In the second and third parts of the Ethiopic Apocalypse of S. Peter were also comprised the fragments of a "Syriac Apocalypse of Simon Peter," which are published by Bratke (pp. 468 et seq.). A comparison of the two fragments on the Antichrist here given at pp. 471 and 481 shows that in the details great changes naturally occur.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 74):

Here therefore we have in all probability an Ethiopic, an Arabic, and a Syriac rescission of the same work, the apocalyptic elements of which were composed about the time of the fall of Ommiades.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 74-75):

By a lucky chance Dillmann has given us a translation of the following fragment touching the Lion's son (p. 73 A): "I will awaken the Lion's son, and he shall slay utterly all the kings and tread them down, for I have given him the power thereunto, and therefore is the appearance of the Lion's son like that of a man who is awakened from his sleep." This stands in obvious relation to the passage quoted above (p. 54) from the book of Methodius (Part VI). But a close connection is also manifest between the Ethiopic Petrine Apocalypse and the pseudo-Methodius. It may therefore be conjectured that the pseudo-Methodius was one of the sources of the Petrine document, even though in other respects Gutschmid may be right in identifying the Byzantine ruler of pseudo-Methodius with Constantine IV.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 75):

Starting from this assumption, we shall now arrive at a solution of the puzzle to which the Syriac Apocalypse of Ezra published by Baethgen gives rise. Obviously the opening of the Apocalypse is a re-cast of the Petrine Apocalypse. In chap. iii. a Serpent appears with twelve horns on its head and nine on its tail. When this is compared with the above given particulars, it becomes evident that here the allusion is to the rule of Ommiades. Certainly the number nine does not agree with the enumeration in the Petrine Apocalypse of the second line of rulers sprung from the House of the Ommiades; but such a slight discrepancy is immaterial. An Eagle coming from the South destroys the last horns of the Serpent―that is the sway of the Abassides.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 75-76):

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 76-77):

But another interesting observation has still to be made. I hold that the description of the Lion's son in chap. vii. does not derive directly from the Petrine Apocalypse, but from an earlier one dating from the time of Heraclius, which had already formed the foundation of the Petrine and of the pseudo-Methodius. Here the account turns entirely on a fight between a Lion and a Bull, of which animal no mention had previously been made. But when we find it stated that he is the King of the Ravens (chap. vii.), it becomes clear even from the image itself that we have here a compilation. The Bull who "stirs up the East" is Chosroes, King of Persia. Chosroes marches with three armies against Heraclius; the Bull also has three horns, with which he tosses. One of his horns wages war with the young Lion (Heraclius); with another army Chosroes laid siege to Constantinople, and in pseudo-Ezra the Bull plans an evil design against the seven hills and the city of Constantinople.

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 77):

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (pages 77-78):

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 78):

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[John Reece]

The Antichrist Legend

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From The Antichrist Legend: A Chapter in Christian and Jewish Folklore (1895), by Wilhelm Bousset (page 79):

We now come to a singularly interestingly group, in which the chief documents are Commodian's Carmen Apologeticum and the Sibylline source of the eschatological details embodied in the Institutes of Lactantius. The connecting element in the writings in question is their common recognition of a twofold appearance of an Antichrist―one as a Roman emperor (the Nero redivivus), and another who appears in Jerusalem.

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