In contrasting the future kingdom of God with the kingdom of the heathen powers of the world the apocalyptic writers were undoubtedly influenced by Parsism, which saw the world divided between Ahuramazda and Angro-mainyush, who battle with each other until finally the latter, at the end of the fourth period of the twelve world-millenniums, is defeated by the former after a great crisis in which the bad principle seems to win the upper hand (see Plutarch, “On Isis and Osiris,” ch. 47; Bundahis, xxxiv. 1; “Bahman Yasht,” i. 5, ii. 22 et seq. ; “S. B. E.” v. 149, 193 et seq. ; Stade, “Ueber den Einfluss, des Parsismus auf das Judenthum,” 1898, pp. 145 et seq.). The idea of four world-empires succeeding one another and represented by the four metals (Dan. ii., vii.), which also has its parallel in Parsism (“Bahman Yasht,” i. 3), and in Hindu, Greek, and Roman traditions (“Laws of Manes,” i. 71 et seq. ; Hesiod, “Works and Days,” pp. 109 et seq. ; Ovid, “Metamorphoses,” i. 89), seems to rest upon an ancient tradition which goes back to Babylonia (see Gunkel’s commentary on Genesis, 1902, p. 241). Gunkel finds in the twelve millenniums of Persian belief an astronomical world-year with four seasons, and sees the four Babylonian world-epochs reproduced in the four successive periods of Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses. The four periods occur again in Enoch, lxxxix. et seq. (see Kautzsch, “Pseudepigraphen,” p. 294) and Rev. vi. 1; also in Zech. ii. 1 (A. V. i. 18), vi.1; and Dan. viii. 22; and the four undivided animals in the vision of Abraham (Gen. xv. 9) were by the early haggadists (Johanan b. Zakkai, in Gen. R. xliv.; Apoc. Abraham, xv., xxviii.) referred to the four world-empires in an eschatological sense.