The supernaturalistic view of the Old Testament[103] agrees with Gressmann in his individualistic interpretation of such passages as Is. liii, but differs from him in that it attributes objective validity to the representation thus obtained. According to the supernaturalistic view, Israel was from the beginning the people of the Promise. The Promise at first was not fully defined in the minds of all the people. But even at the beginning there were glorious revelations, and the revelations became plainer and plainer as time went on. The various elements in the Promise were not indeed kept carefully distinct, and their logical connections were not revealed. But even long before the Exile there was not only a promise of blessing to David's line, with occasional mention of an individual king, but also a promise of a Redeemer and King who should far exceed the limits of humanity. Thus God had sustained His people through the centuries with a blessed hope, which was finally fulfilled, in all its aspects, by the Lord Jesus Christ. [103] See Beecher, _The Prophets and the Promise_, 1905. Discussion of these various views would exceed the limits of the present investigation. All that can here be done is to present briefly the Messianic expectations of the later period, in which Paul lived. But were those expectations widely prevalent? Was the doctrine of a coming Messiah firmly established among the Jews of the time of Paul? The answer to these questions might seem to be perfectly plain. The common impression is that the Judaism of the first century was devoted to nothing if not to the hope of a king who was to deliver God's people from the oppression of her enemies. This impression is derived from the New Testament. Somewhat different is the impression which might be derived from the Jewish sources if they were taken alone. The expectation of a Messiah hardly appears at all in the Apocrypha, and even in the Pseudepigrapha it appears by no means in all of the books. Even when the thought of the future age is most prominent, that age does not by any means appear in inevitable connection with a personal Messiah. On the contrary, God Himself, not His instrument the Messiah, is often represented as ushering in the new era when Israel should be blessed.