Israel, like John the Baptist, expected an incarnate angel as Messiah, not an anointed man, to whom alone orthodox tradition pointed. Jesus must have wished that this Messianic expectation of Jewish dissenters should die out, and not stand in the way of the kingdom of heaven on earth. Moreover, Jesus acknowledged that not all what prophets had foretold in connection with the Messianic times could then be fulfilled. We repeat it, Jesus cannot have uttered the words attributed to him, admitting that Elias had already come in John the Baptist, who himself denied his being Elias. Jesus referred to a future time when Israel's house would be no longer desolate, and when, united with other peoples, Israel would dwell safely in the land of promise, welcoming some prophet-we believe the promised Elias -with the words of the Psalmist : Blessed is he that cometh in the name [in the Spirit] of the Lord." Then Israel will "see," that is, discern with the spiritual eye, in what sense Jesus is the Messiah.

CHAPTER III.

STEPHEN AND PAUL.

WE believe to have proved the existence at all times in Israel of two distinct nationalities, both of which originated in the East-that of the Hebrew and that of the naturalized stranger, the stranger within the gate. With this ethnic dualism was connected a dualism of tradition, the recognized or orthodox tradition, the Massôra, of Eranian origin, with which the principal doctrines of Jesus can be connected, and the tradition of the Jewish dissenters the Essenes, the Merkâba, of Indian origin. The doctrinal differences between these two traditions in Israel centred in two doctrines on the Spirit, asserted to be innate in man by the one, whilst according to the other tradition it was absent, and had to be sent down from time to time to chosen men. Centuries before the Christian era the Essenes, representatives of Buddhist doctrines, promulgated by their secret tradition the expectation of an angel in human form, the incarnation of an Angel-Messiah.' We first connect Stephen, the Hellenist or Greekspeaking Jew, with the Essenes.

1 For the proofs, see l. c., i. 275-339.

STEPHEN THE HELLENIST AND ESSENE.

In the Acts Stephen is described as "a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, having done great wonders and miracles among the people." He was the first of those "seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom," whom the Grecians at Jerusalem had elected among themselves to be "appointed" by the apostles over the business of daily rendering assistance to their widows, whose neglect had caused "a murmuring." By these statements Luke, or the final revisers of the Acts, seem to have intended to indicate that the organization of these Grecians at Jerusalem was in no sense independent from the Christian community over which the apostles presided, and who therefore had to appoint the men elected by the Hellenists. Without the assertion that these laymen were recognized by the apostles, it would have been natural for later generations to suppose that Essenic Therapeuts of Egypt were among these Grecians. Of these Essenes near Alexandria it was known that they promulgated a not recognized religion. This supposition would have been supported by the fact that among the 180 synagogues which were at Jerusalem, according to Rabbinic tradition, one at least, that of the Alexandrians, was attended by these Jewish dissenters. Moreover, Stephen and all overseers among the Grecians at Jerusalem bore Greek names, and might be connected with the Essenic and Greek-speaking Jews of Egypt.

If Stephen was an Essene, he must have applied

to Jesus the Essenic expectation of an Angel-Messiah. The speech of Stephen mystically indicates that he did so. It was 66 with the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush" that Moses had by God been "sent to be both a ruler and a redeemer." Here, as in other passages of the Bible, the hand is the symbol of the Spirit or "name" of God, which was said by Moses to be "in" the angel.' Stephen indicates that Moses received this Spirit through the mediation of the angel, and that by this Spirit-power he led his people forth and wrought wonders and signs in Egypt, in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness forty years. That angel-it is implied-had become incarnate in Jesus, identified with the prophet like Moses whom Israel would hear. It was the angel who spoke to Moses from the burning bush and on Sinai, having received "living oracles", to give to Israel through Moses. Jesus was shown by Stephen to have been the Angel-Messiah whom the Jewish dissenters expected. We pointed out that although John the Baptist and Essene had looked forward to some Great One who would baptize with the Holy Spirit, he did not regard Jesus as he that should come, and Jesus designated the least in the kingdom of heaven as greater than John. Up to his time the Law and the prophets had only spoken of a future coming of the Spirit, and the Scribes and Pharisees had "shut up" the kingdom of heaven, neither going in themselves nor allowing others to do so. But people pressed into the kingdom when Jesus, as the

1 Exod. xxiii. 21.

bringer or messenger of the announced new and spiritual covenant, proclaimed the same as already come, the presence of the Spirit of God in man

kind.

The first martyr of the Christian Church was not one whom the apostles at Jerusalem could recognize as a disciple of Jesus. The persecution of Stephen and his companions in the faith was caused chiefly by their identifying the promised Messiah with the angel of God. The ruling Sadducees and Pharisees, looking forward to Elias, did not regard Jesus as the fulfiller of all Messianic prophecies. Yet they could not connect him with Jewish dissenters, and they were obliged to oppose Stephen's doctrine of the Angel-Messiah, not only because they disbelieved in angels and spirits, but because the Scriptures in their non-figurative interpretation did not contain a single prophecy about the Messiah as an angel. Because the twelve apostles did not recognize Stephen's Messianic doctrine, what we shall prove farther on, they were allowed to remain at Jerusalem during the great persecution which arose on Stephen's death, when his co-religionists were scattered abroad through Judæa and Samaria. In order to hide this schism in the Christian Church it had to be asserted in the Acts that the persecution was directed, not against the Jewish and Christian dissenters, but against the orthodox Christian Church at Jerusalem, although its chiefs were not scattered abroad.