The didactic character of Ecclesiasticus accounts for the meagre reference to this doctrine; there is belief in a Messiah who is to be purely human and of the House of David, but it is vague in the extreme. The conceptions of a Messiah were largely regulated by the historical circumstances of any given period, and during the time of Ben-Sira these were not of a nature to call forth Messianic hopes. In Tobit the Messiah is never mentioned, but the renovated Jerusalem and the ingathering of the dispersed Israelites, and also of the Gentiles, give a picture of what corresponds to the Messianic Kingdom. No other books offer teaching on the subject until we come to 1 Maccabees, where “a prophet” is looked for; in one passage he is to be of Hasmonæan lineage. In 2 Maccabees there is no reference to the Messiah, though there is to the Messianic Kingdom. The only other book is the important apocalypse 2 (4) Esdras, and here the teaching is full, and, as the book is of composite authorship, various. In the Salathiel Apocalypse (iii.-x.), the Messiah is regarded as purely human, and only in this portion are the signs which are to precede the Messianic Kingdom mentioned. In the eagle vision (xi.-xii. 29), and the vision of the man rising from the sea (xiii.), and in the Ezra legend (xiv.), the pre-existence of the Messiah is taught. The Messianic Kingdom itself is to be of limited duration, and, in the eagle vision, Gentiles as well as Jews are to enjoy it, but in the vision of the man from the sea the Gentiles are to be wholly destroyed by the Messiah, and His kingdom is only for His own people. In the Book of Wisdom there is no doctrine of the Messiah, nor is there a belief in a Messianic Kingdom in the Jewish Palestinian sense, but the traditional Jewish eschatological conceptions are utilized by the author and a glorious future is believed to be reserved for the Jews. (_f_) _The Doctrine of the Future Life._ In Ecclesiasticus the teaching on this subject is substantially of the normal Old Testament type; the corruption of the body is looked upon as the end of man, though the annihilation of the spirit as well is evidently not contemplated.