In another respect we may see an inner probability of the Pharisees and Apocalyptists having a common ancestry. The _Chassidim_, as their name implied, were intensely religiously-minded; the zeal for the Law of some was one way in which their eager yearning to do something for God could find vent; the steadfast gaze upon the world to come of others was the expression of a longing to be nearer God. Personal religion was the origin, the foundation and the summit of _Chassidism_. Now when we turn to later times we are able to see that same intense religious feeling in the Pharisees and in the Apocalyptists; the expression of that feeling has, it is true, become exaggerated in each case; but whether it is the somewhat rank overgrowth of legalism of the one, or the lurid and often overdrawn pictures of the eschatological drama of the other, beneath each is to be discerned real piety. Pharisees and Apocalyptists differed in many respects, but they were alike in their zeal for God which they inherited from their common ancestry. We are to see, therefore, the beginnings of the Jewish Apocalyptic Movement in the teaching and literary activity of devout _Chassidim_, or better, Apocalyptists, who laboured in the earlier part of the second century B.C., and probably earlier. Our purpose is now first of all to consider a little the mental attitude of the Apocalyptists in general, their guiding principles, their chief aims as teachers, and their personal characteristics. Then we shall examine briefly the more outstanding doctrines of the Apocalyptic Literature. II. THE APOCALYPTISTS It will be well to draw attention at the outset to a feature in the teaching of the Apocalyptists which is at first very disconcerting, namely, their inconsistency of thought and the variableness to be found in the presentation of some of their doctrines which not infrequently involves them in contradictions. The reason of this is not to be sought simply in the fact that in the Apocalypses the hand of more than one author is to be discerned; but chiefly because the minds of individual Apocalyptists were, on the one hand, saturated with the traditional thoughts and ideas of the Old Testament, and, on the other, were eagerly absorbing the newer conceptions which the spirit of the age had brought into being. This occasioned a continual conflict of thought in their minds; there was a constant endeavour to harmonize the old and the new; and in consequence there often resulted a compromise which was illogical and contradictory.