Page:Legends of Old Testament Characters.djvu/381

XL. transactions that happen in each century.... Letters from Elijah were brought to King Joram seven years after Elijah had disappeared."

A prophecy ascribed to Elijah is preserved in the Gemara: "The world will last six thousand years; it will lie desert for two thousand years; the Messiah will reign two thousand years; but, because of our iniquities which have superabounded, the years of the Messiah have passed away."

 XL.

ISAIAH. THE Book of the Ascension of Isaiah has reached us only in an Ethiopic version, which was published along with a translation by Archbishop Laurence, Oxford, 1819. Gieseler translated the book, and gave learned prolegomena and notes, Göttingen, 1837; and Gfrörer has included it in his " Prophetæ Pseudepigraphi," Stuttgardt, 1840, pp. 1-55, with the Latin translation. It must have existed in Greek and Latin, for fragments of the Latin apocryphal book remain, and have been published by Cardinal Mai, in "Scriptorum Veterum Nova Collectio;" Romæ, 1824, t. 111. ii. 238 et seq.: and it is very evident from these that they are versions of a Greek original, and not of the Ethiopic.

Whilst Isaiah was speaking to the king Hezekiah, he suddenly stopped, and his soul was borne away by an angel. He traversed the firmament, where he saw the strife of the angels and demons, waged between the earth and the moon. He entered the six heavens and admired their glory; then he penetrated into the seventh heaven, where he saw the Holy Trinity, and there the events of futurity were revealed to him. When he returned to himself, Isaiah related to Hezekiah all that he had seen and heard, except what concerned his son Manasseh.

This is the prophecy of Isaiah concerning Antichrist: "And when that time is passed, Berial, the great angel, the prince of this world, Berial will descend from his place in the form of a man; an impious king, the murderer of his mother, a king of this world.

