It is difficult to say how far the Sadducees or the ruling house of Zadok shared in the Messianic hope of the people (see Sadducees). It was the class of the Ḥasidim and their successors, the Essenes, who made a special study of the prophetical writings in order to learn the future destiny of Israel and mankind (Dan. ix. 2; Josephus, “B. J.” ii. 8, §§ 6, 12; idem, “Ant.” xiii. 5, § 9, where the term εἱμαρμένη is to be taken eschatologically). While announcing the coming events in visions and apocalyptic writings concealed from the multitude (see Apocalyptic Literature), they based their calculations upon unfulfilled prophecies such as Jeremiah’s seventy years (Jer. xxv. 11, xxix. 10), and accordingly tried to fix “the end of days” (Dan. ix. 25 et seg.; Enoch, lxxxix. 59). The Talmud reproachingly calls these men, who frequently brought disappointment and wo upon the people, “mahshebe ḳezim” (calculators of the [Messianic] ends: Sanh. 97b; comp. 92b, 99a; Ket. 111a; Shab. 138b; ‘Eduy. ii. 9-10; for the expression , see Dan. xii. 4, 13; Assumptio Mosis, i. 18, xii. 4; II Esd. iii. 14; Syriac Apoc. Baruch, xxvii. 15; Matt. xiii. 39, xxiv. 3). It can not be denied, however, that these Ḥasidean or apocalyptic writers took a sublime view of the entire history of the world in dividing it into great worldepochs counted either after empires or millenniums, and in seeing its consummation in the establishment of “the kingdom of the Lord,” called also, in order to avoid the use of the Sacred Name, (“the kingdom of heaven”). This prophetic goal of human history at once lent to all struggle and suffering of the people of God a higher meaning and purpose, and from this point of view new comfort was offered to the saints in their trials. This is the idea underlying the contrast between the “kingdoms of the powers of the earth” and “the kingdom of God” which is to be delivered over at the end of time to the saints, the people of Israel (Dan. ii. 44; vii. 14, 27). It is, however, utterly erroneous to assert, as do Schürer (“Geschichte,” ii. 504 et seq.) and Bousset (” Religion des Judenthums,” pp. 202 et seq.), that this kingdom of God meant a political triumph of the Jewish people and the annihilation of all other nations. As may be learned from Tobit xiii. 11 et seq., xiv. 6, quoted by Schürer (l.c. ii. 507), and from the ancient New-Year’s liturgy (see also ‘Alenu), “the conversion of all creatures to become one single band to do, God’s will” is the foremost object of Israel’s Messianic hope; only the removal of “the kingdom of violence” must precede the establishment of God’s kingdom. This hope for the coming of the kingdom of God is expressed also in the Ḳaddish (comp. Lord’s Prayer) and in the eleventh benediction of the “Shemoneh ‘Esreh,” whereas the destruction of the kingdom of wickedness first found expression in the added (nineteenth) benediction (afterward directed chiefly against obnoxious informers and heretics; see Liturgy), and was in the Hellenistic propaganda literature, the Sibyllines (iii. 47, 767 et al.), emphasized especially with a view to the conversion of the heathen.