MILLENNIUM (Lat. a thousand years' time) designates a certain period in the history of the world, lasting for a long indebnite space (vaguely a thousand years), during which the kingdom of Messiah will, according to tradition, be visibly established on the earth. The idea originated proximately in the Messianic expectations of the Jews; but more remotely, it has been conjectured, in the Zoroastrian doctrine of the final triumph of Ormuzd over Ahriman, and was connected by the Christians with the Parousta, or Second Coming of Christ. The notion of a golden age, preserved by the converts from heathenism to Christianity, as well as the oppression and persecutions to which they were long subjected by the state authorities, were naturally calculated to develop and strengthen such hopes. The chief basis of the millenarian idea in Judaism as well as in Christianity, however, is the ardent hope for a visible divine rule upon earth, and the identification of the church with that of which it is merely a symbol. In the 1st c. of the church, millen arianism (the Greek equivalent of which, &ilium, from chilioi, a thousand, is the term employed by the fathers) was a widespread belief, to which the book of Daniel, and more particularly the pictorial predictions of the Apocalypse (chaps. xx. and xxi.), gave an apostolical authority; while certain prophetical writings, composed at the end of the 1st and the beginning of the 2d c.—such as the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, the Fourth Book of Esdras, the R,evelation of Saint Peter, etc. also the Christian Sibylline Books, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Shepherd of the Pseudo:Hermas, several Midrashim, Targums, and other works of a partly legendary character embodied in the Mir/tad—lent it a more vivid coloring, and itnagery. The unanimity which the early Christian teachers exhibit in regard to millenarianism, proves how strongly it bad laid hold of the imagina tion of the church, to which, in this early stage, immortality and future rewards were to a great extent things of this world as yet. 1\ ot only the heretic Cerinthus, but even the orthodox doctors—such as Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, Irenteus, Justin Martyr, etc.— delighted themselves with dreams of the glory and magnificence of the millennial king dom. The Sibylline Boola, for instance, hold that the earth will be cultivated through out its length and breadth, that there will be no more seas, no more winters, no more nights; everlasting wells will run honey, milk, and wine, etc., etc. Papias, in his col
lection of traditional sayings of Christ (Kuriakon Logion Evegeseis), indulges in the inost monstrous representations of the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the colossal vines and grapes of the millennial reimn. Every vine will bear 10,000 branches, every branch 10,000 shoots, every shoot 107000 sprig4 every sprig 10,000 bunches, every bunch 10,000 berries, every berry 36 times 25 gallons of wine; and if a Saint come to pluck a berry, they will all cry out: "Pluck me, 0 Saint, I arn better, and praise the Lord through me." The Talmud calculates the height of the men of the millennium to be, as before the fall, of 200--900 yards; the moon shall be, according to a prophetical dictum, like the sun: the sun shall be increased 343 times; and every Israelite will beget as many children as there were Israelites going out from Egypt-60,000. Each grape will be large enough to fill the biggest ship. Above all, however, the land of Israel will be free again, and the primitive worship restored with unheard-of splendor. " Such a chiliasm," .Neander justly remarks, could onlY " promote a fleshly eudaimonism;" and indeed ere long it called into more energetic activity the opposition of Gnostic spiritualism. According to the general opinion, which was as much Christian as Jewish, the millennium was to be preceded by great calamities, reminding us in sonic degree of the Scandinavian ragnarok (or " Twilight of the Gods"). The personification of evil appeared in Antichruit, the precursor of Christ (identified, during 1st c., with Nero), who would provoke a frightful war in the land of Ma,rog (Ezek. chaps. xxxviii. and xxxix.)against the people of Goo-, after which the Messialf—some say a double Messiah, one the son of Joseph, vanquished in the strife; the other, the victorious son of David—would appear, heralded by Elias, or Moses, or Melchizedek, or Isaiah, or Jeremiah, and would bind Satan for a thousand years, annihilate the godless heathen, or make them slaves of the believers, overturn the Roman empire, from-the ruins of which ft new order of things would spring forth, lib which the " dead in Christ " would arise, and along with the surviving saints enjoy an. incomparable felicity in the city of the "New Jerusalem," which was expected to descend literally from heaven. To the innocence which was the state of man in Para dise, there was associated, in the prevalent notions of the millennium, the finest physical and intellectual pleasures.