55. The better reading is `in tempore diei ejus. (v. 52).'
It seems scarcely necessary to complete the series of testimony by referring in detail to a book,
called `The Prophecy and Assumption of Moses,' and to what is known as the Apocalypse of
Baruch, the servant of Jeremiah. Both date from probably a somewhat later period than the
Fourth Book of Esdras, and both are fragmentary. The one distinctly anticipates the return of
the ten tribes;56 the other, in the letter to the nine and a half tribes, far beyond the Euphrates,57
with which the book closes, preserves an ominous silence on that point, or rather alludes to it in
language which so strongly reminds us of the adverse opinion expressed in the Talmud, that we
cannot help suspecting some internal connection between the two.58
56. Prophet. et Ass. Mos. iv. 7-14; vii. 20.
57. Ap. Bar. xxvii. 22.
58. In Sanh. 110 b we read, `Our Rabbis teach, that the Ten Tribes have no part in the era to come,
because it is written "The Lord drave them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great
indignation, and cast them into another land." "The Lord drave them from their land" - in the present era
- "and cast them into another land," in the era to come.' In curious agreement with this, Pseudo-Baruch
writes to the nine and a half tribes to `prepare their hearts to that which they had formerly believed,'
least they should suffer `in both eras (ab utroque soeculo),' being led captive in the one, and tormented
in the other (Apoc. Bar. lxxxiii. 8)
The writings to which we have referred have all a decidedly Hellenistic tinge of thought.59 Still
they are not the outcome of pure Hellenism. It is therefore with peculiar interest that we turn to
Philo, the great representative of that direction, to see whether he would admit an idea so purely
national and, as it might seem, exclusive. Nor are we here left in doubt. So universal was this
belief, so deep-seated the conviction, not only in the mind, but in the heart of Israel, that we
could scarcely find it more distinctly expressed than by the great Alexandrian. However low the
condition of Israel might be, he tells us,60 or however scattered the people to the ends of the
earth, the banished would, on a given sign, be set free in one day. In consistency with his
system, he traces this wondrous event to their sudden conversion to virtue, which would make
their masters ashamed to hold any longer in bondage those who were so much better than
themselves. Then, gathering as by one impulse, the dispersed would return from Hellas, from the
lands of the barbarians, from the isles, and from the continents, led by a Divine, superhuman
apparition invisible to others, and visible only to themselves. On their arrival in Palestine the
waste places and the wilderness would be inhabited, and the barren land transformed into
fruitfulness.
59. Thus, for example, the assertion that there had been individuals who fulfilled the commandments of
God, Vis. i. ch. iii. 36; the domain of reason, iv. 22; v. 9; general Messianic blessings to the world at
large, Vis. i. ch. iv. 27, 28; the idea of a law within their minds, like that of which St. Paul speaks in the
case of the heathen, Vis. iii. ch. vi. 45-47 (ed. Fritzsche, p. 609). These are only instances, and we refer
besides to the general cast of the reasoning.
60. De Execrat. ed. Frcf. pp. 936, 937.
Whatever shades of difference, then, we may note in the expression of these views, all anticipate