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218 specified in the Book of Daniel of seventy weeks, which was to intervene between the building of the second temple and the times of the Messiah, which, interpreting according to the prophetic style, a day for a year, would bring the period of his appearance somewhere near the time when John the Baptist began to preach.

"So prevalent had this expectation become that it had spread beyond the holy land. Tacitus, a historian who wrote in Italy, records the fact that among many 'there was a persuasion that in the ancient books of the priesthood it was written that at this precise time the East should become mighty, and that those issuing from Judea should rule the world.' Suetonius, another Latin historian, writes 'that in the East an ancient and constant opinion prevailed that it was fated there should issue at this time from Judea those who should obtain universal dominion.'

"This confident expectation of the Jews had already caused no little political disturbance. It was this proud anticipation of universal conquest which made them so restive under the government of the Romans. That they who were destined to reign over the world — and whose King Messiah was to have the heathen for his inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession, who was to break with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel — should be in vassalage to a foreign power, was more than they could bear. Josephus relates that about the time of the birth of Christ, when Cyrenius was sent to take a census of