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 Marseilles, and is mentioned by Strabo. It was the seat of a bishopric from the 5th century to 1244, when the see was transferred to Grasse. (W. A. B. C.)
ANTICHRIST (ἀντίχριστος). 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 God (Dan. xi. 36; cf. 2 Thess. ii. 4; ὀ ἀντικείμενος), 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 God to a horrible devastation (βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημὠσεως). 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 God’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 God (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 assumed 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 God 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 Angrō-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 God 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 (σατανᾶς, διάβολος), especially as Belial (Beliar, probably, from Ps. xviii. 4, where the rivers of Belial are spoken of, originally a god 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 God’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 God 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 God (Marduk) with the dragon of chaos (Tiamāt), 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 God, 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 God 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 assumption 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 passages, 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 identity of the “man of sin, the son of perdition” here described with the dominating figure of Jewish eschatology (cf. ii. 3 &c., ὁ ἄνθρωπος τῆς ἀνομίας, i.e. Beliar (?), ὁ ἀντικείμενος—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 God”). 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
- ↑ See further, Bousset, Religion des Judentums, ed. ii. pp. 289 &c., 381 &c., 585 &c.
- ↑ See Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos (1893).
- ↑ It is, of course, uncertain whether this phenomenon already occurs in 2 Cor. vi. 15, since here Belial might still be Satan; cf. however, Ascensio Jesaiae iv. 2 &c.; Sibyll. iii. 63 &c., ii. 167 &c.
- ↑ It is not necessary to decide whether the epistle is by St Paul or by a pupil of Paul, although the former seems to the present writer to be by far the more probable, in spite of the brilliant attack on the genuineness of the epistle by Wrede in Texte und Übersetzungen, N.F. ix. 2.
- ↑ Cf. 2 Thess. ii. 8; the Targum also, in its comment on the passage of Isaiah, applies “the wicked” to Antichrist.
