"Of old hast thou laid the foundations of the earth, And the heavens are the work of thy hands."
The ancient invocation upon the tiles of Nineveh addressed to the Mediator runs thus:--
"Great Lord of earth! King of all lands, First-begotten Son of Ea, Director of heaven and earth, Most merciful among the gods, Thou who restorest the dead to life."
We see here the reflection of a Being such as the contemporaries of Abraham in the land of the Chaldees must have looked forward to--an image of that diffused and general faith which pervaded the world in the days when the patriarch was called to be the Father of a peculiar people.
In the Zendavesta--begun about the age of Daniel--also are traces of the same Being, with prophecies of his future appearance on earth to restore the human race to peace and goodness.
In one of the Zend books we have a passage strikingly like some of the prophetic parts of Daniel. As Nebuchadnezzar saw the future history of the world under the form of an image, made of four precious metals, so Zoroaster was made to see the same under the image of a tree in which four trunks proceed from a common root. The first was a golden, the second a silver, the third a steel, and the fourth an iron one.
In the same manner as in Daniel, these trees are interpreted as successive monarchies of the earth. The last, the iron one, was to be the dominion of demons and dark powers of evil, and after it was to come the SAVIOUR, or SOSIOSCH (a _Zend_ word), who was to bring in the restitution of all things from the power of evil, and the resurrection of the dead.[4]
[4] These passages are quoted and commented on by Hilgenfeld on the _Apocalyptic Literature of the Hebrews_, and Lücke on the _Apocalypse of St. John_.
The same ideas were expressed in the Sibylline oracles. The story of the Sibyl who offered her books to Tarquin, in the early days of Rome, is known to every child who studies Roman history. From the remains of these writings, still extant, they appear to contain predictions of the world's future, much resembling those of Daniel and Isaiah. They predict the coming of a Great Deliverer of the human race, a millennium of righteousness, a resurrection of the dead, and a Day of Judgment.