Encyclopaedia Britannica Volume 2, Slice 2 Part 17

In order to put this argument clearly before the reader, a few selected implements are figured in the Plate. The group in fig. 9 contains tools and weapons of the Neolithic period such as are dug up on European soil; they are evident relics of ancient populations who used them till replaced by metal. The stone hatchets are symmetrically shaped and edged by grinding, while the cutting flakes, sc.r.a.pers, spear and arrow heads are of high finish. Direct knowledge of the tribes who made them is scanty, but implements so similar in make and design having been in use in North and South America until modern times, it may be a.s.sumed for purposes of cla.s.sification that the Neolithic peoples of the New World were at a similar barbarous level in industrial arts, social organization, moral and religious ideas. Such comparison, though needing caution and reserve, at once proved of great value to anthropology.

When, however, there came to light from the drift-gravels and limestone caves of Europe the Palaeolithic implements, of which some types are shown in the group (fig. 10), the difficult problem presented itself, what degree of general culture these rude implements belonged to. On mere inspection, their rudeness, their unsuitability for being hafted, and the absence of shaping and edging by the grindstone, mark their inferiority to the Neolithic implements. Their immensely greater antiquity was proved by their geological position and their a.s.sociation with a long extinct fauna, and they were not, like the Neoliths, recognizable as corresponding closely to the implements used by modern tribes. There was at first a tendency to consider the Palaeoliths as the work of men ruder than savages, if, indeed, their makers were to be accounted human at all. Since then, however, the problem has pa.s.sed into a more manageable state. Stone implements, more or less approaching the European Palaeolithic type, were found in Africa from Egypt southwards, where in such parts as Somaliland and Cape Colony they lie about on the ground, as though they had been the rough tools and weapons of the rude inhabitants of the land at no very distant period. The group in fig. 11 in the Plate shows the usual Somaliland types. These facts tended to remove the mystery from Palaeolithic man, though too little is known of the ruder ancient tribes of Africa to furnish a definition of the state of culture which might have co-existed with the use of Palaeolithic implements. Information to this purpose, however, can now be furnished from a more outlying region. This is Tasmania, where as in the adjacent continent of Australia, the survival of marsupial animals indicates long isolation from the rest of the world. Here, till far on into the 19th century, the Englishmen could watch the natives striking off flakes of stone, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g them to convenient shape for grasping them in the hand, and edging them by taking off successive chips on one face only. The group in fig. 12 shows ordinary Tasmanian forms, two of them being finer tools for sc.r.a.ping and grooving. (For further details reference may be made to H. Ling Roth, _The Tasmanians_, (2nd ed., 1899); R. Brough Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_ (1878), vol. ii.; _Papers and Proceedings of Royal Society of Tasmania_; and papers by the present writer in _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute_.) The Tasmanians, when they came in contact with the European explorers and settlers, were not the broken outcasts they afterwards became. They were a savage people, perhaps the lowest in culture of any known, but leading a normal, self-supporting, and not unhappy life, which had probably changed little during untold ages. The accounts, imperfect as they are, which have been preserved of their arts, beliefs and habits, thus present a picture of the arts, beliefs and habits of tribes whose place in the Stone Age was a grade lower than that of Palaeolithic man of the Quaternary period.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE

FIG. 1. FIG. 2. FIG. 3 FIG. 4. FIG. 5. FIG. 6. FIG. 7. FIG. 8. FIG. 9.

FIG 10. FIG. 11. FIG. 12.]

The Tasmanian stone implements, figured in the Plate, show their own use when it is noticed that the rude chipping forms a good hand-grip above, and an effective edge for chopping, sawing, and cutting below. But the absence of the long-shaped implements, so characteristic of the Neolithic and Palaeolithic series, and serviceable as picks, hatchets, and chisels, shows remarkable limitation in the mind of these savages, who made a broad, hand-grasped knife their tool of all work to cut, saw, and chop with. Their weapons were the wooden club or waddy notched to the grasp, and spears of sticks, often crooked but well balanced, with points sharpened by tool or fire, and sometimes jagged. No spear thrower or bow and arrow was known. The Tasmanian savages were crafty warriors and kangaroo-hunters, and the women climbed the highest trees by notching, in quest of opossums. Sh.e.l.l-fish and crabs were taken, and seals knocked on the head with clubs, but neither fish-hook nor fis.h.i.+ng-net was known, and indeed swimming fish were taboo as food. Meat and vegetable food, such as fern-root, was broiled over the fire, but boiling in a vessel was unknown. The fire was produced by the ordinary savage fire-drill. Ignorant of agriculture, with no dwellings but rough huts or breakwinds of sticks and bark, without dogs or other domestic animals, these savages, until the coming of civilized man, roamed after food within their tribal bounds. Logs and clumsy floats of bark and gra.s.s enabled them to cross water under favourable circ.u.mstances. They had clothing of skins rudely st.i.tched together with bark thread, and they were decorated with simple necklaces of kangaroo teeth, sh.e.l.ls and berries. Among their simple arts, plaiting and basket-work was one in which they approached the civilized level. The pictorial art of the Tasmanians was poor and childish, quite below that of the Palaeolithic men of Europe. The Tasmanians spoke a fairly copious agglutinating language, well marked as to parts of speech, syntax and inflexion.

Numeration was at a low level, based on counting fingers on one hand only, so that the word for man (_puggana_) stood also for the number 5.

The religion of the Tasmanians, when cleared from ideas apparently learnt from the whites, was a simple form of animism based on the shadow (_warrawa_) being the soul or spirit. The strongest belief of the natives was in the power of the ghosts of the dead, so that they carried the bones of relatives to secure themselves from harm, and they fancied the forest swarming with malignant demons. They placed weapons near the grave for the dead friend's soul to use, and drove out disease from the sick by exorcising the ghost which was supposed to have caused it. Of greater special spirits of Nature we find something vaguely mentioned.

The earliest recorders of the native social life set down such features as their previous experience of rude civilized life had made them judges of. They notice the self-denying affection of the mothers, and the hard treatment of the wives by the husbands, polygamy and the s.h.i.+fting marriage unions. But when we meet with a casual remark as to the tendency of the Tasmanians to take wives from other tribes than their own, it seems likely that they had some custom of exogamy which the foreigners did not understand. Meagre as is the information preserved of the arts, thoughts, and customs of these survivors from the lower Stone Age, it is of value as furnis.h.i.+ng even a temporary and tentative means of working out the development of culture on a basis not of conjecture but of fact.

_Conclusion._--To-day anthropology is grappling with the heavy task of systematizing the vast stores of knowledge to which the key was found by Boucher de Perthes, by Lartet, Christy and their successors. There have been recently no discoveries to rival in novelty those which followed the exploration of the bone-caves and drift-gravels, and which effected an instant revolution in all accepted theories of man's antiquity, subst.i.tuting for a chronology of centuries a vague computation of hundreds of thousands of years. The existence of man in remote geological time cannot now be questioned, but, despite much effort made in likely localities, no bones, with the exception of those of the much-discussed _Pithecanthropus_, have been found which can be regarded as definitely bridging the gulf between man and the lower creation. It seems as if anthropology had in this direction reached the limits of its discoveries. Far different are the prospects in other directions where the work of co-ordinating the material and facts collected promises to throw much light on the history of civilization. Anthropological researches undertaken all over the globe have shown the necessity of abandoning the old theory that a similarity of customs and superst.i.tions, of arts and crafts, justifies the a.s.sumption of a remote relations.h.i.+p, if not an ident.i.ty of origin, between races. It is now certain that there has ever been an inherent tendency in man, allowing for difference of climate and material surroundings, to develop culture by the same stages and in the same way. American man, for example, need not necessarily owe the minutest portion of his mental, religious, social or industrial development to remote contact with Asia or Europe, though he were proved to possess identical usages. An example in point is that of pyramid-building. No ethnical relations.h.i.+p can ever have existed between the Aztecs and the Egyptians; yet each race developed the idea of the pyramid tomb through that psychological similarity which is as much a characteristic of the species man as is his physique.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--J.C. Prichard, _Natural History of Man_ (London, 1843); T.H. Huxley, _Man's Place in Nature_ (London, 1863); and "Geographical Distribution of Chief Modifications of Mankind," in _Journal Ethnological Society_ for 1870; E.B. Tylor, _Early History of Man_ (London, 1865), _Primitive Culture_ (London, 1871), and _Anthropology_ (London, 1881); A. de Quatref.a.ges, _Histoire generale des races humaines_ (Paris, 1889), _Human Species_ (Eng. trans., 1879); Lord Avebury, _Prehistoric Times_ (1865, 6th ed. 1900) and _Origin of Civilization_ (1870, 6th ed. 1902), Theo. Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvolker_ (1859-1871), E.H. Haeckel, _Anthropogenie_ (Leipzig, 1874-1891), Eng. trans., 1879; O. Peschel, _Volkerkunde_ (Leipzig, 1874-1897); P. Topinard, _L'Anthropologie_ (Paris, 1876); _elements d'anthropologie generale_ (Paris, 1885); D.G. Brinton, _Races and Peoples_ (1890); A.H. Keane, _Ethnology_ (1896), and _Man: Past and Present_ (1899); G. Sergi, _The Mediterranean Race_ (Eng. ed., 1889); F. Ratzel, _History of Mankind_ (Eng. trans., 1897); G. de Mortillet, _Le Prehistorique_ (Paris, 1882); A.C. Haddon, _Study of Man_ (1897); J. Deniker, _The Races of Man_ (London, 1900); W.Z. Ripley, _The Races of Europe_ (1900, with long bibliography); _The Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute of Great Britain_; _Revue d'anthropologie_ (Paris); _Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie_ (Berlin). See also bibliographies under separate ethnological headings (AUSTRALIA, AFRICA, ARABS, AMERICA, &c.). (E. B. T.)

ANTHROPOMETRY (Gr. [Greek: anthropos], man, and [Greek: metron], measure), the name given by the French savant, Alphonse Bertillon (b.

1853), to a system of identification (q.v.) depending on the unchanging character of certain measurements of parts of the human frame. He found by patient inquiry that several physical features and the dimensions of certain bones or bony structures in the body remain practically constant during adult life. He concluded from this that when these measurements were made and recorded systematically every single individual would be found to be perfectly distinguishable from others. The system was soon adapted to police methods, as the immense value of being able to fix a person's ident.i.ty was fully realized, both in preventing false personation and in bringing home to any one charged with an offence his responsibility for previous wrongdoing. "Bertillonage," as it was called, became widely popular, and after its introduction into France in 1883, where it was soon credited with highly gratifying results, was applied to the administration of justice in most civilized countries.

England followed tardily, and it was not until 1894 that an investigation of the methods used and results obtained was made by a special committee sent to Paris for the purpose. It reported favourably, especially on the use of the measurements for primary cla.s.sification, but recommended also the adoption in part of a system of "finger prints"

as suggested by Francis Galton, and already practised in Bengal.

M. Bertillon selected the following five measurements as the basis of his system: (1) head length; (2) head breadth; (3) length of middle finger; (4) of left foot, and (5) of cubit or forearm from the elbow to the extremity of the middle finger. Each princ.i.p.al heading was further subdivided into three cla.s.ses of "small," "medium" and "large," and as an increased guarantee height, length of little finger, and the colour of the eye were also recorded. From this great ma.s.s of details, soon represented in Paris by the collection of some 100,000 cards, it was possible, proceeding by exhaustion, to sift and sort down the cards till a small bundle of half a dozen produced the combined facts of the measurements of the individual last sought. The whole of the information is easily contained in one cabinet of very ordinary dimensions, and most ingeniously contrived so as to make the most of the s.p.a.ce and facilitate the search. The whole of the record is independent of names, and the final identification is by means of the photograph which lies with the individual's card of measurements.

Anthropometry, however, gradually fell into disfavour, and it has been generally supplanted by the superior system of finger prints (q.v.).

Bertillonage exhibited certain defects which were first brought to light in Bengal. The objections raised were (1) the costliness of the instruments employed and their liability to get out of order; (2) the need for specially instructed measurers, men of superior education; (3) the errors that frequently crept in when carrying out the processes and were all but irremediable. Measures inaccurately taken, or wrongly read off, could seldom, if ever, be corrected, and these persistent errors defeated all chance of successful search. The process was slow, as it was necessary to repeat it three times so as to arrive at a mean result.

In Bengal measurements were already abandoned by 1897, when the finger print system was adopted throughout British India. Three years later England followed suit; and as the result of a fresh inquiry ordered by the Home Office, finger prints were alone relied upon for identification.

AUTHORITIES.--Lombroso, _Antropometria di 400 delinquenti_ (1872); Roberts, _Manual of Anthropometry_ (1878); Ferri, _Studi comparati di antropometria_ (2 vols., 1881-1882); Lombroso, _Rughe anomale speciali ai criminali_ (1890); Bertillon, _Instructions signaletiques pour l'identification anthropometrique_ (1893); Livi, _Anthropometria_ (Milan, 1900); Furst, _Indextabellen zum anthropometrischen Gebrauch_ (Jena, 1902); _Report of Home Office Committee on the Best Means of Identifying Habitual Criminals_ (1893-1894). (A. G.)

ANTHROPOMORPHISM (Gr. [Greek: anthropos], man, [Greek: morphae], form), the attribution (a) of a human body, or (b) of human qualities generally, to G.o.d or the G.o.ds. The word anthropomorphism is a modern coinage (possibly from 18th century French). The _New English Dictionary_ is misled by the 1866 reprint of Paul Bayne on Ephesians when it quotes "anthropomorphist" as 17th century English. Seventeenth century editions print "anthropomorphits," i.e. anthropomorphites, in sense (a). The older abstract term is "anthropopathy," literally "attributing human feelings," in sense (b).

Early religion, among its many objects of wors.h.i.+p, includes beasts (see ANIMAL-WORs.h.i.+P), considered, in the more refined theology of the later Greeks and Romans, as metamorphoses of the great G.o.ds. Similarly we find "therianthropic" forms--half animal, half human--in Egypt or a.s.syria-Babylonia. In contrast with these, it is considered one of the glories of the Olympian mythology of Greece that it believed in happy manlike beings (though exempt from death, and using special rarefied foods, &c.), and celebrated them in statues of the most exquisite art.

Israel shows us animal images, doubtless of a ruder sort, when Yahweh is wors.h.i.+pped in the northern kingdom under the image of a steer. (Some scholars think the t.i.tle "mighty one of Jacob," Psalm cx.x.xii., 2, 5, _et al_., [Hebrew: abir] as if from [Hebrew: avir] is really "steer"

[Hebrew: abir] "of Jacob.") But the higher religion of Israel inclined to morality more than to art, and forbade image wors.h.i.+p altogether. This prepared the way for the conception of G.o.d as an immaterial Spirit. True mythical anthropomorphisms occur in early parts of the Old Testament (e.g. Genesis iii. 8, cf. vi. 2), though in the majority of Old Testament pa.s.sages such expressions are merely verbal (e.g. Isaiah lix.

1). In the Christian Church (and again in early Mahommedanism) simple minds believed in the corporeal nature of G.o.d. Gibbon and other writers quote from John Ca.s.sian the tale of the poor monk, who, being convinced of his error, burst into tears, exclaiming, "You have taken away my G.o.d!

I have none now whom I can wors.h.i.+p!" According to a fragment of Origen (on Genesis i. 26), Melito of Sardis shared this belief. Many have thought Melito's work, [Greek: peri ensomatou theou], must have been a treatise on the Incarnation; but it is hard to think that Origen could blunder so. Epiphanius tells of Audaeus of Mesopotamia and his followers, Puritan sectaries in the 4th century, who were orthodox except for this belief and for Quartodecimanism (see EASTER).

Tertullian, who is sometimes called an anthropomorphist, stood for the Stoical doctrine, that all reality, even the divine, is in a sense material.

The reaction against anthropomorphism begins in Greek philosophy with the satirical spirit of Xenophanes (540 B.C.), who puts the case as broadly as any. The "greatest G.o.d" resembles man "neither in form nor in mind." In Judaism--unless we should refer to the prophets' polemic against images--a reaction is due to the introduction of the codified law. G.o.d seemed to grow more remote. The old sacred name Yahweh is never p.r.o.nounced; even "G.o.d" is avoided for allusive t.i.tles like "heaven" or "place." Still, amid all this, the G.o.d of Judaism remains a personal, almost a limited, being. In Philo we see Jewish scruples uniting with others drawn from Greek philosophy. For, though the quarrel with popular anthropomorphism was patched up, and the G.o.ds of the Pantheon were described by Stoics and Epicureans as manlike in form, philosophy nevertheless tended to highly abstract conceptions of supreme, or real, deity. Philo followed out the line of this tradition in teaching that G.o.d cannot be named. How much exactly he meant is disputed. The same inheritance of Greek philosophy appears in the Christian fathers, especially Origen. He names and condemns the "anthropomorphites," who ascribe a human body to G.o.d (on Romans i., _sub fin_.; Rufinus' Latin version). In Arabian philosophy the reaction sought to deny that G.o.d had any attributes. And, under the influence of Mahommedan Aristotelianism, the same paralysing speculation found entrance among the learned Jews of Spain (see MAIMONIDES).

Till modern times the philosophical reaction was not carried out with full vigour. Spinoza (_Ethics_, i. 15 and 17), representing here as elsewhere both a Jewish inheritance and a philosophical, but advancing further, sweeps away all community between G.o.d and man. So later J.G.

Fichte and Matthew Arnold ("a magnified and non-natural man"),--strangely, in view of their strong belief in an objective moral order. For the use of the _word_ "anthropomorphic," or kindred forms, in this new spirit of condemnation for all conceptions of G.o.d as manlike--sense (b) noted above--see J.J. Rousseau in _emile_ iv. (cited by Littre),--_Nous sommes pour la plupart de vrais anthropomorphites_.

Rousseau is here speaking of the language of Christian theology,--a divine Spirit: divine Persons. At the present day this usage is universal. What it means on the lips of pantheists is plain. But when theists charge one another with "anthropomorphism," in order to rebuke what they deem unduly manlike conceptions of G.o.d, they stand on slippery ground. All theism implies the a.s.sertion of kins.h.i.+p between man, especially in his moral being, and G.o.d. As a brilliant theologian, B.

Duhm, has said, physiomorphism is the enemy of Christian faith, not anthropomorphism.

The latest extension of the word, proposed in the interests of philosophy or psychology, uses it of the principle according to which man is said to interpret all things (not G.o.d merely) through himself.

Common-sense intuitionalism would deny that man does this, attributing to him immediate knowledge of reality. And idealism in all its forms would say that man, interpreting through his reason, does rightly, and reaches truth. Even here then the use of the word is not colourless. It implies blame. It is the symptom of a philosophy which confines knowledge within narrow limits, and which, when held by Christians (e.g.

Peter Browne, or H.L. Mansel), believes only in an "a.n.a.logical"

knowledge of G.o.d. (R. Ma.)

ANTI, or CAMPA, a tribe of South American Indians of Arawakan stock, inhabiting the forests of the upper Ucayali basin, east of Cuzco, on the eastern side of the Andes, south Peru. The Antis, who gave their name to the eastern province of Antisuyu, have always been notorious for ferocity and cannibalism. They are of fine physique and generally good-looking. Their dress is a robe with holes for the head and arms.

Their long hair hangs down over the shoulders, and round their necks a toucan beak or a bunch of feathers is worn as an ornament.

ANTIBES, a seaport town in the French department of the Alpes-Maritimes (formerly in that of the Var, but transferred after the Alpes-Maritimes department was formed in 1860 out of the county of Nice). Pop. (1906) of the town, 5730; of the commune, 11,753. It is 12 m. by rail S.W. of Nice, and is situated on the E. side of the Garoupe peninsula. It was formerly fortified, but all the ramparts (save the Fort Carre, built by Vauban) have now been demolished, and a new town is rising on their site. There is a tolerable harbour, with a considerable fis.h.i.+ng industry. The princ.i.p.al exports are dried fruits, salt fish and oil.

Much perfume distilling is done here, as the surrounding country produces an abundance of flowers. Antibes is the ancient Antipolis. It is said to have been founded before the Christian era (perhaps about 340 B.C.) by colonists from Ma.r.s.eilles, and is mentioned by Strabo. It was the seat of a bishopric from the 5th century to 1244, when the see was transferred to Gra.s.se. (W. A. B. C.)

ANTICHRIST ([Greek: antichristos]). The earliest mention of the name Antichrist, which was probably first coined in Christian eschatological literature, is in the Epistles of St John (I. ii. 18, 22, iv. 3; II. 7), and it has since come into universal use. The conception, paraphrased in this word, of a mighty ruler who will appear at the end of time, and whose essence will be enmity to G.o.d (Dan. xi. 36; cf. 2 Thess. ii. 4; [Greek: o antikeimenos]), is older, and traceable to Jewish eschatology.

Its origin is to be sought in the first place in the prophecy of Daniel, written at the beginning of the Maccabean period. The historical figure who served as a model for the "Antichrist" was Antiochus IV. Epiphanes, the persecutor of the Jews, and he has impressed indelible traits upon the conception. Since then ever-recurring characteristics of this figure (cf. especially Dan xi. 40, &c.) are, that he would appear as a mighty ruler at the head of gigantic armies, that he would destroy three rulers (the three horns, Dan. vii. 8, 24), persecute the saints (vii. 25), rule for three and a half years (vii. 25, &c.), and subject the temple of G.o.d to a horrible devastation ([Greek: bdelugma tes eremoseos]). When the end of the world foretold by Daniel did not take place, but the book of Daniel retained its validity as a sacred scripture which foretold future things, the personality of the tyrant who was G.o.d's enemy disengaged itself from that of Antiochus IV., and became merely a figure of prophecy, which was applied now to one and now to another historical phenomenon. Thus for the author of the _Psalms of Solomon_ (c. 60 B.C.), Pompey, who destroyed the independent rule of the Maccabees and stormed Jerusalem, was the Adversary of G.o.d (cf. ii. 26, &c.); so too the tyrant whom the _Ascension of Moses_ (c. A.D. 30) expects at the end of all things, possesses, besides the traits of Antiochus IV., those of Herod the Great. A further influence on the development of the eschatological imagination of the Jews was exercised by such a figure as that of the emperor Caligula (A.D. 37-41), who is known to have given the order, never carried out, to erect his statue in the temple of Jerusalem. In the little Jewish Apocalypse, the existence of which is a.s.sumed by many scholars, which in Mark xiii. and Matt. xxiv. is combined with the words of Christ to form the great eschatological discourse, the prophecy of the "abomination of desolation" (Mark xiii. 14 et seq.) may have originated in this episode of Jewish history. Later Jewish and Christian writers of Apocalypses saw in Nero the tyrant of the end of time. The author of the Syriac _Apocalypse of Baruch_ (or his source), cap. 36-40, speaks in quite general terms of the last ruler of the end of time. In 4 Ezra v. 6 also is found the allusion: _regnabit quem non sperant_.

The roots of this eschatological fancy are to be sought perhaps still deeper in a purely mythological and speculative expectation of a battle at the end of days between G.o.d and the devil, which has no reference whatever to historical occurrences. This idea has its original source in the apocalypses of Iran, for these are based upon the conflict between Ahura-Mazda (Auramazda, Ormazd) and Angro-Mainyush (Ahriman) and its consummation at the end of the world. This Iranian dualism is proved to have penetrated into the late Jewish eschatology from the beginning of the 1st century before Christ, and did so probably still earlier. Thus the opposition between G.o.d and the devil already plays a part in the Jewish groundwork of the _Testaments of the Patriarchs_, which was perhaps composed at the end of the period of the Maccabees. In this the name of the devil appears, besides the usual form ([Greek: satanas, diabolos]), especially as Belial (Beliar, probably, from Ps. xviii. 4, where the rivers of Belial are spoken of, originally a G.o.d of the underworld), a name which also plays a part in the Antichrist tradition.

In the _Ascension of Moses_ we already hear, at the beginning of the description of the latter time (x. 1): "And then will G.o.d's rule be made manifest over all his creatures, then will the devil have an end" (cf.

Matt. xii. 28; Luke xi. 20; John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11).[1] This conception of the strife of G.o.d with the devil was further interwoven, before its introduction into the Antichrist myth, with another idea of different origin, namely, the myth derived from the Babylonian religion, of the battle of the supreme G.o.d (Marduk) with the dragon of chaos (Tiamat), originally a myth of the origin of things which, later perhaps, was changed into an eschatological one, again under Iranian influence.[2] Thus it comes that the devil, the opponent of G.o.d, appears in the end often also in the form of a terrible dragon-monster; this appears most clearly in Rev. xii. Now it is possible that the whole conception of Antichrist has its final roots in this already complicated myth, that the form of the mighty adversary of G.o.d is but the equivalent in human form of the devil or of the dragon of chaos. In any case, however, this myth has exercised a formative influence on the conception of Antichrist. For only thus can we explain how his figure acquires numerous superhuman and ghostly traits, which cannot be explained by any particular historical phenomenon on which it may have been based. Thus the figure of Antiochus IV. has already become superhuman, when in Dan.

viii. 10, it is said that the little horn "waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground." Similarly Pompey, in the second psalm of Solomon, is obviously represented as the dragon of chaos, and his figure exalted into myth.

Without this a.s.sumption of a continual infusion of mythological conceptions, we cannot understand the figure of Antichrist. Finally, it must be mentioned that Antichrist receives, at least in the later sources, the name originally proper to the devil himself.[3]

From the Jews, Christianity took over the idea. It is present quite unaltered in certain pa.s.sages, specifically traceable to Judaism, e.g.

(Rev. xi.). "The Beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit" and, surrounded by a mighty host of nations, slays the "two witnesses" in Jerusalem, is the entirely superhuman Jewish conception of Antichrist.

Even if the beast (ch. xiii.), which rises from the sea at the summons of the devil, be interpreted as the Roman empire, and, specially, as any particular Roman ruler, yet the original form of the malevolent tyrant of the latter time is completely preserved.

A fundamental change of the whole idea from the specifically Christian point of view, then, is signified by the conclusion of ch. ii. of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians.[4] There can, of course, be no doubt as to the ident.i.ty of the "man of sin, the son of perdition" here described with the dominating figure of Jewish eschatology (cf. ii. 3 &c., [Greek: o anthropos tes anomias], i.e. Beliar (?), [Greek: o antikeimenos]--the allusion that follows to Dan xi. 36). But Antichrist here appears as a tempter, who works by signs and wonders (ii. 9) and seeks to obtain divine honours; it is further signified that this "man of sin" will obtain credence, more especially among the Jews, because they have not accepted the truth. The conception, moreover, has become almost more superhuman than ever (cf. ii. 4, "showing himself that he is G.o.d"). The destruction of the Adversary is drawn from Isaiah xi. 4, where it is said of the Messiah: "with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked."[5] The idea that Antichrist was to establish himself in the temple of Jerusalem (ii. 4) is very enigmatical, and has not yet been explained. The "abomination of desolation" has naturally had its influence upon it; possibly also the experience of the time of Caligula (see above). Remarkable also is the allusion to a power which still r.e.t.a.r.ds the revelation of Antichrist (2 Thess. ii. 6 &c., [Greek: to katechon; o katechon]), an allusion which, in the tradition of the Fathers of the church, came to be universally, and probably correctly, referred to the Roman empire. In this then consists the significant turn given by St Paul in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians to the whole conception, namely, in the subst.i.tution for the tyrant of the latter time who should persecute the Jewish people, of a pseudo-Messianic figure, who, establis.h.i.+ng himself in the temple of G.o.d, should find credence and a following precisely among the Jews. And while the originally Jewish idea led straight to the conception, set forth in Revelation, of the Roman empire or its ruler as Antichrist, here, on the contrary, it is probably the Roman empire that is the power which still r.e.t.a.r.ds the reign of Antichrist. With this, the expectation of such an event at last separates itself from any connexion with historical fact, and becomes purely ideal. In this process of transformation of the idea, which has become of importance for the history of the world, is revealed probably the genius of Paul, or at any rate, that of the young Christianity which was breaking its ties with Judaism and establis.h.i.+ng itself in the world of the Roman empire.

This version of the figure of Antichrist, who may now really for the first time be described by this name, appears to have been at once widely accepted in Christendom. The idea that the Jews would believe in Antichrist, as punishment for not having believed in the true Christ, seems to be expressed by the author of the fourth gospel (v. 43). The conception of Antichrist as a perverter of men, leads naturally to his connexion with false doctrine (1 John ii. 18, 22; iv. 3; 2 John 7). The _Teaching of the Apostles_ (xvi. 4) describes his form in the same way as 2 Thessalonians ([Greek: kai tote phainaesetai o kosmoplanos os uios theoy kai poiei saemeia kai terata]). In the late Christian Sibylline fragment (iii. 63 &c.) also, "Beliar" appears above all as a worker of wonders, this figure having possibly been influenced by that of Simon Magus. Finally the author of the Apocalypse of St John also has made use of the new conception of Antichrist as a wonder-worker and seducer, and has set his figure beside that of the "first" Beast which was for him the actual embodiment of Antichrist (xiii. II &c.). Since this second Beast could not appear along with the first as a power demanding wors.h.i.+p and directly playing the part of Antichrist, he made out of him the false prophet (xvi. 13, xix. 20, xx. 10) who seduces the inhabitants of the earth to wors.h.i.+p the first Beast, and probably interpreted this figure as applying to the Roman provincial priesthood.[6]

But this version of the idea of Antichrist, hostile to the Jews and better expressing the relation of Christianity to the Roman empire, was prevented from obtaining an absolute ascendancy in Christian tradition by the rise of the belief in the ultimate return of Nero, and by the absorption of this outcome of pagan superst.i.tion into the Jewish-Christian apocalyptic conceptions. It is known that soon after the death of Nero rumours were current that he was not dead. This report soon took the more concrete form that he had fled to the Parthians and would return thence to take vengeance on Rome. This expectation led to the appearance of several pretenders who posed as Nero; and as late as A.D. 100 many still held the belief that Nero yet lived.[7] This idea of Nero's return was in the first instance taken up by the Jewish apocalyptic writers. While the Jewish author of the fourth Sibylline book (c. A.D. 80) still only refers simply to the heathen belief, the author of the (Jewish?) original of the 17th chapter of the Apocalypse of St John expects the return of Nero with the Parthians to take vengeance on Rome, because she had shed the blood of the Saints (destruction of Jerusalem!). In the fifth Sibylline book, which, with the exception of verses 1-51, was mainly composed by a Jewish writer at the close of the first century, the return of Nero plays a great part.

Three times the author recurs to this theme, 137-154; 214-227; 361-385.

He sees in the coming again of Nero, whose figure he endows with supernatural and daemonic characteristics, a judgment of G.o.d, in whose hand the revivified Nero becomes a rod of chastis.e.m.e.nt. Later, the figure of Nero _redivivus_ became, more especially in Christian thought, entirely confused with that of Antichrist. The less it became possible, as time went on, to believe that Nero yet lived and would return as a living ruler, the greater was the tendency for his figure to develop into one wholly infernal and daemonic. The relation to the Parthians is also gradually lost sight of; and from being the adversary of Rome, Nero becomes the adversary of G.o.d and of Christ. This is the version of the expectation of Nero's second coming preserved in the form given to the prophecy, under Domitian, by the collaborator in the Apocalypse of John (xiii., xvii.). Nero is here the beast that returns from the bottomless pit, "that was, and is not, and yet is"; the head "as it were wounded to death" that lives again; the gruesome similitude of the Lamb that was slain, and his adversary in the final struggle. The number of the Beast, 666, points certainly to Nero ([Hebrew: keisar neron] = 666, or [Hebrew: keisar nero] = 616). In the little apocalypse of the _Ascensio Jesaiae_ (iii. 13b-iv. 18), which dates perhaps from the second, perhaps only from the first, decade of the third century,[8] it is said that Beliar, the king of this world, would descend from the firmament in the human form of Nero. In the same way, in _Sibyll._ v. 28-34, Nero and Antichrist are absolutely identical (mostly obscure reminiscences, _Sib._ viii. 68 &c., 140 &c., 151 &c.). Then the Nero-legend gradually fades away. But Victorinus of Pettau, who wrote during the persecution under Diocletian, still knows the relation of the Apocalypse to the legend of Nero; and Commodian, whose _Carmen Apologetic.u.m_ was perhaps not written until the beginning of the 4th century, knows two Antichrist-figures, of which he still identifies the first with Nero _redivivus_.

In proportion as the figure of Nero again ceased to dominate the imagination of the faithful, the wholly unhistorical, unpolitical and anti-Jewish conception of Antichrist, which based itself more especially on 2 Thess. ii., gained the upper hand, having usually become a.s.sociated with the description of the universal conflagration of the world which had also originated in the Iranian eschatology. On the strength of exegetical combinations, and with the a.s.sistance of various traditions, it was developed even in its details, which it thenceforth maintained practically unchanged. In this form it is in great part present in the eschatological portions of the _Adv. Haereses_ of Irenaeus, and in the _de Antichristo_ and commentary on Daniel of Hippolytus. In times of political excitement, during the following centuries, men appealed again and again to the prophecy of Antichrist. Then the foreground scenery of the prophecies was s.h.i.+fted; special prophecies, having reference to contemporary events, are pushed to the front, but in the background remains standing, with scarcely a change, the prophecy of Antichrist that is bound up with no particular time. Thus at the beginning of the _Testamentum Domini_, edited by Rahmani, there is an apocalypse, possibly of the time of Decius, though it has been worked over (Harnack, _Chronol. der altchrist. Litt._ ii. 514 &c.) In the third century, the period of Aurelia.n.u.s and Gallienus, with its wild warfare of Romans and Persians, and of Roman pretenders one with another, seems especially to have aroused the spirit of prophecy. To this period belongs the Jewish apocalypse of Elijah (ed. b.u.t.tenwieser), of which the Antichrist is possibly Odaenathus of Palmyra, while _Sibyll._ xiii., a Christian writing of this period, glorifies this very prince. It is possible that at this time also the Sibylline fragment (iii. 63 &c.) and the Christian recension of the two first Sibylline books were written.[9] To this time possibly belongs also a recension of the Coptic apocalypse of Elijah, edited by Steindorff (_Texte und Untersuchungen_, N. F. ii. 3). To the 4th century belongs, according to Kamper (_Die deutsche Kaiseridee_, 1896, p. 18) and Sackur (_Texte und Forschungen_, 1898, p. 114 &c.), the first nucleus of the "Tiburtine" Sibyl, very celebrated in the middle ages, with its prophecy of the return of Constans, and its dream, which later on exercised so much influence, that after ruling over the whole world he would go to Jerusalem and lay down his crown upon Golgotha. To the 4th century also perhaps belongs a series of apocalyptic pieces and homilies which have been handed down under the name of Ephraem. At the beginning of the Mahommedan period, then, we meet with the most influential and the most curious of these prophetic books, the _Pseudo-Methodius_,[10] which prophesied of the emperor who would awake from his sleep and conquer Islam. From the _Pseudo-Methodius_ are derived innumerable Byzantine prophecies (cf. especially Va.s.siliev, _Anecdota Graeco-Byzantina_) which follow the fortunes of the Byzantine emperors and their governments. A prophecy in verse, adorned with pictures, which is ascribed to Leo VI. the Philosopher (Migne, _Patr.

Gracca_, cvii. p. 1121 &c.), tells of the downfall of the house of the Comneni and sings of the emperor of the future who would one day awake from death and go forth from the cave in which he had lain. Thus the prophecy of the sleeping emperor of the future is very closely connected with the Antichrist tradition. There is extant a Daniel prophecy which, in the time of the Latin empire, foretells the restoration of the Greek rule.[11] In the East, too, Antichrist prophecies were extraordinarily flouris.h.i.+ng during the period of the rise of Islam and of the Crusades.

To these belong the apocalypses in Arabic, Ethiopian and perhaps also in Syrian, preserved in the so-called _Liber Clementis discipuli S. Petri_ (_Petri apostoli apocalypsis per Clementem_), the late Syrian apocalypse of Ezra (Bousset, _Antichrist_, 45 &c.), the Coptic (14th) vision of Daniel (in the appendix to Woide's edition of the _Codex Alexandrinus_; Oxford, 1799), the Ethiopian _Wisdom of the Sibyl_, which is closely related to the Tiburtine Sibyl (see Ba.s.set, _Apocryphes ethiopiennes_, x.); in the last mentioned of these sources long series of Islamic rulers are foretold before the final time of Antichrist. Jewish apocalypse also awakes to fresh developments in the Mahommedan period, and shows a close relations.h.i.+p with the Christian Antichrist literature.

One of the most interesting apocalypses is the Jewish _History of Daniel_, handed down in Persian.[12]

This whole type of prophecy reached the West above all through the _Pseudo-Methodius_, which was soon translated into Latin. Especially influential, too, in this respect was the letter which the monk Adso in 954 wrote to Queen Gerberga, _De ortu et tempere Antichristi_. The old Tiburtine Sibylla went through edition after edition, in each case being altered so as to apply to the government of the monarch who happened to be ruling at the time. Then in the West the period arrived in which eschatology, and above all the expectation of the coming of Antichrist, exercised a great influence on the world's history. This period, as is well known, was inaugurated, at the end of the 12th century, by the apocalyptic writings of the abbot Joachim of Floris. Soon the word Antichrist re-echoed from all sides in the embittered controversies of the West. The pope bestowed this t.i.tle upon the emperor, the emperor upon the pope, the Guelphs on the Ghibellines and the Ghibellines on the Guelphs. In the contests between the rival powers and courts of the period, the prophecy of Antichrist played a political part. It gave motives to art, to lyrical, epic and dramatic poetry.[13] Among the visionary Franciscans, enthusiastic adherents of Joachim's prophecies, arose above all the conviction that the pope was Antichrist, or at least his precursor. From the Franciscans, influenced by Abbot Joachim, the lines of connexion are clearly traceable with Milic of Kremsier (_Libellus de Antichristo_) and Matthias of Janow. For Wycliffe and his adherent John Purvey (probably the author of the _Commentarius in Apocalypsin ante centum annos editus_, edited in 1528 by Luther), as on the other hand for Hus, the conviction that the papacy is essentially Antichrist is absolute. Finally, if Luther advanced in his contest with the papacy with greater and greater energy, he did so because he was borne on by the conviction that the pope in Rome was Antichrist. And if in the _Augustana_. the expression of this conviction was suppressed for political reasons, in the Articles of Schmalkalden, drawn up by him, Luther propounded it in the most uncompromising fas.h.i.+on. This sentence was for him an _articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae_. To write the history of the idea of Antichrist in the last centuries of the middle ages, would be almost to write that of the middle ages themselves.