ALLUSIONS IN SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST. 



201 



But when could this Magian tradition of the coming of the 

 Saviour in the 600th } T ear of a world-millennium have arisen ? 

 May it not have been that it is an echo and an effect of that 

 wondrous journey, undertaken about the time of the 600th year 

 of tin* millennium of Zoroaster, when, guided by a star, the 

 Maui set forth to find Him Who was born King of the Jews, 

 and to lay at the feet of the Infant Saviour their princely 

 offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh ? 



" iv Ezra is an apocalyptic book ; it professes to give a fore- 

 cast of the times of the end ; it claims to be a work of the same 

 order as the book of Daniel, which book the author avowedly 

 had in his hand, and of the Johannine Revelation, with which 

 w< >rk he was clearly acquainted, though without acknowledging it ; 

 as of course such acknowledgment would have been incompatible 

 with the use of his adopted nom cle plume. We are at present 

 only concerned with the astronomical allusions in it, or it would 

 be a matter of interest to trace the points of contact and differ- 

 ence between IV Ezra, and its two great models. Nevertheless 

 the astronomical allusions will suffice for illustration. 



" St. John has seen two visions ; with his bodily eyes he has 

 seen certain phenomena in the material heavens; an eclipse of 

 the sun, an eclipse of the moon, a magnificent meteor shower, a 

 dazzling aerolite. And he has seen with his spiritual sight 

 certain spiritual happenings in the spiritual heavens. And the 

 two visions are alike ; as is the one, so is the other ; the man 

 who has seen both says so, and the simplicity of his assertion 

 carries conviction with it. He has no astronomical interest in 

 what he has seen ; he has no astronomical theories about it ; he 

 describes what he saw as it appeared to him ; and so doing, he 

 makes no astronomical mistakes. 



" Not so with the author of IV Ezra. There is no vision ; 

 he is labouring to build up a vision from that which he has read 

 of what other men have seen. He would carve the revelation 

 made to Daniel or to St. John to suit his own desires or hopes, 

 and he works in the astronomical imagery to fit a pre-conceived 

 ideal. Thus in IV Ezra v, 4-5, we read : 



But if the Most High grant thee to live, thou shalt see that which 

 is after the third kingdom to be troubled ; and the sun shall suddenly 

 shine forth in the night, and the moon in the day ; and blood shall 

 drop out of wood, and the stone shall give his voice, and the peoples 

 shall be troubled, and their goings shall be changed. 



" The writer wished to express that everything would be 



