Advent
See Parousia.
Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church
Advent
(Latin: adventus, coming)
Period of prayer and fasting in preparation for Christmas ; anniversary of the Birth or Coming of Christ, including four Sundays, the first the nearest to the feast of Saint Andrew (30 November ); it may be as early as 27 November and as late as 3 December . It is the beginning of the ecclesiastical year in the Western Church. Its early history is obscure. It was observed in Spain in the 7th century . The Divine Office and the Sunday Masses are a most devout preparation for the Christmas feast . Altar drapery and vestments are violet except on third Sunday, when rose color is used, and feasts . See also
Golden Legend
Catholic Encyclopedia
New Catholic Dictionary
Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary
Advent
(Latin ad-venio, to come to).
According to present [1907] usage, Advent is a period beginning with the Sunday nearest to the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle (30 November) and embracing four Sundays. The first Sunday may be as early as 27 November, and then Advent has twenty-eight days, or as late as 3 December, giving the season only twenty-one days.
With Advent the ecclesiastical year begins in the Western churches. During this time the faithful are admonished
to prepare themselves worthily to celebrate the anniversary of the Lord’s coming into the world as the incarnate God of love, thus to make their souls fitting abodes for the Redeemer coming in Holy Communion and through grace, and thereby to make themselves ready for His final coming as judge, at death and at the end of the world.
SYMBOLISM
To attain this object the Church has arranged the Liturgy for this season. In the official prayer, the Breviary, she calls upon her ministers, in the Invitatory for Matins, to adore “the Lord the King that is to come”, “the Lord already near”, “Him Whose glory will be seen on the morrow”. As Lessons for the first Nocturn she prescribes chapters from the prophet Isaias, who speaks in scathing terms of the ingratitude of the house of Israel, the chosen children who had forsaken and forgotten their Father; who tells of the Man of Sorrows stricken for the sins of His people; who describes accurately the passion and death of the coming Saviour and His final glory; who announces the gathering of the Gentiles to the Holy Hill. In the second Nocturn the Lessons on three Sundays are taken from the eighth homily of Pope St. Leo (440-461) on fasting and almsdeeds as a preparation for the advent of the Lord, and on one Sunday (the second) from St. Jerome’s commentary on Isaias 11:1, which text he interprets of the Blessed Virgin Mary as “the rod out of the root of Jesse”. In the hymns of the season we find praise for the coming of Christ, the Creator of the universe, as Redeemer, combined with prayer to the coming judge of the world to protect us from the enemy. Similar ideas are expressed in the antiphons for the Magnificat on the last seven days before the Vigil of the Nativity. In them, the Church calls on the Divine Wisdom to teach us the way of prudence; on the Key of David to free us from bondage; on the Rising Sun to illuminate us sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, etc. In the Masses the intention of the Church is shown in the choice of the Epistles and Gospels. In the Epistle she exhorts the faithful that, since the Redeemer is nearer, they should cast aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light; should walk honestly, as in the day, and put on the Lord Jesus Christ; she shows that the nations are called to praise the name of the Lord; she asks them to rejoice in the nearness of the Lord, so that the price of God, which surpasses all understanding, may keep their hearts and minds in Christ Jesus; she admonishes them not to pass judgment, for the Lord, when He comes, will manifest the secrets hidden in hearts. In the Gospels the Church speaks of the Lord coming in glory; of Him in, and through, Whom the prophecies are being fulfilled; of the Eternal walking in the midst of the Jews; of the voice in the desert, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord”. The Church in her Liturgy takes us in spirit back to the time before the incarnation of the Son of God, as though it were really yet to take place. Cardinal Wiseman says:
We are not dryly exhorted to profit by that blessed event, but we are daily made to sigh with the Fathers of old, “Send down the dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the Just One: let the earth be opened, and bud forth the Redeemer.” The Collects on three of the four Sundays of that season begin with the words, “Lord, raise up thy power and come” — as though we feared our iniquities would prevent His being born.
DURATION AND RITUAL
On every day of Advent the Office and Mass of the Sunday or Feria must be said, or at least a Commemoration must be made of them, no matter what grade of feast occurs. In the Divine Office the Te Deum, the joyful hymn of praise and thanksgiving, is omitted; in the Mass the Gloria in excelsis is not said. The Alleluia, however, is retained. During this time the solemnization of matrimony (Nuptial Mass and Benediction) cannot take place; which prohibition binds to the feast of Epiphany inclusively. The celebrant and sacred ministers use violet vestments. The deacon and subdeacon at Mass, in place of the dalmatics commonly used, wear folded chasubles. The subdeacon removes his during the reading of the Epistle, and the deacon exchanges his for another, or for a wider stole, worn over the left shoulder during the time between the singing of the Gospel and the Communion. An exception is made for the third Sunday (Gaudete Sunday), on which the vestments may be rose-coloured, or richer violet ones; the sacred ministers may on this Sunday wear dalmatics, which may also be used on the Vigil of the Nativity, even if it be the fourth Sunday of Advent. Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) states that black was the colour to be used during Advent, but violet had already come into use for this season at the end of the thirteenth century. Binterim says that there was also a law that pictures should be covered during Advent. Flowers and relics of Saints are not to be placed on the altars during the Office and Masses of this time, except on the third Sunday; and the same prohibition and exception exist in regard to the use of the organ. The popular idea that the four weeks of Advent symbolize the four thousand years of darkness in which the world was enveloped before the coming of Christ finds no confirmation in the Liturgy.
HISTORICAL ORIGIN
It cannot be determined with any degree of certainty when the celebration of Advent was first introduced into the Church. The preparation for the feast of the Nativity of Our Lord was not held before the feast itself existed, and of this we find no evidence before the end of the fourth century, when, according to Duchesne [Christian Worship (London, 1904), 260], it was celebrated throughout the whole Church, by some on 25 December, by others on 6 January. Of such a preparation we read in the Acts of a synod held at Saragossa in 380, whose fourth canon prescribes that from the seventeenth of December to the feast of the Epiphany no one should be permitted to absent himself from church. We have two homilies of St. Maximus, Bishop of Turin (415-466), entitled “In Adventu Domini”, but he makes no reference to a special time. The title may be the addition of a copyist. There are some homilies extant, most likely of St. Caesarius, Bishop of Arles (502-542), in which we find mention of a preparation before the birthday of Christ; still, to judge from the context, no general law on the matter seems then to have been in existence. A synod held (581) at Mâcon, in Gaul, by its ninth canon orders that from the eleventh of November to the Nativity the Sacrifice be offered according to the Lenten rite on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the week. The Gelasian Sacramentary notes five Sundays for the season; these five were reduced to four by Pope St. Gregory VII (1073-85). The collection of homilies of St. Gregory the Great (590-604) begins with a sermon for the second Sunday of Advent. In 650 Advent was celebrated in Spain with five Sundays. Several synods had made laws about fasting to be observed during this time, some beginning with the eleventh of November, others the fifteenth, and others as early as the autumnal equinox. Other synods forbade the celebration of matrimony. In the Greek Church we find no documents for the observance of Advent earlier than the eighth century. St. Theodore the Studite (d. 826), who speaks of the feasts and fasts commonly celebrated by the Greeks, makes no mention of this season. In the eighth century we find it observed not as a liturgical celebration, but as a time of fast and abstinence, from 15 November to the Nativity, which, according to Goar, was later reduced to seven days. But a council of the Ruthenians (1720) ordered the fast according to the old rule from the fifteenth of November. This is the rule with at least some of the Greeks. Similarly, the Ambrosian and the Mozarabic rites have no special liturgy for Advent, but only the fast.
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FRANCIS MERSHMAN Transcribed by Carl H. Horst
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume ICopyright © 1907 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, March 1, 1907. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Advent
(Lat. adventus, sc. Redemptoris), signifies the coming of our Savior. The name is applied to the season (four weeks in the Roman, Lutheran, and English Churches, six weeks in the Greek Church) preceding Christmas. The origin of this festival as a Church ordinance is not clear. The first notice of it as such is found in the synod of Lerida (A.D. 524), at which marriages were interdicted from the beginning of Advent until Christmas. Caesarius of Aries (A.D. 542) has two sermons on Advent, fully implying its ecclesiastical celebration at that time. The four Sundays of Advent, as observed in the Romish Church and the Church of England, were probably introduced into the calendar by Gregory the Great. It was common from an early period to speak of the coming of Christ as fourfold: his first coming in the flesh, his coming at the hour of death to receive his faithful followers (according to the expressions used by St. John), his coming at the fall of Jerusalem (Mat 24:30), and at the day of judgment. According to this fourfold view of the Advent, the gospels were chosen for the four Sundays, as was settled in the Western Church by the Homilarium of Charlemagne.
The festival of Advent is intended to accord in spirit with the object celebrated. As mankind were once called upon to prepare themselves for the personal coming of Christ, so, according to the idea that the ecclesiastical year should represent the life of the founder of the Church, Christians are exhorted during this festival to look for a spiritual advent of Christ. The time of the year, when the shortening days are hastening toward the solstice which almost coincides with the festival of the Nativity is thought to harmonize with the strain of sentiment proper during Advent. In opposition, possibly, to heathen festivals, observed by ancient Romans and Germans, which took place at the same season, the Roman Church ordained that the four weeks of Advent should be kept as a time of penitence, according to the words of Christ, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. During these weeks, therefore, public amusements; marriage festivities, and dancing are prohibited, fasts are appointed, and sombre garments used in religious ceremonies. The Protestant Church in Germany abstains from public recreations and celebrations of marriage during Advent, but fasting is not enjoined. The Church of England and Protestant Episcopal Church observe Advent, but do not prescribe fasts. Advent begins on the first Sunday after November 26, i.e. the Sunday nearest St. Andrews Day. In the sixth century, the Eastern and Western Churches (following the Nestorians) made Advent the beginning of the Church year instead of Easter. (See Bingham, Orig. Eccl. bk. 21, ch. 2, 4; Procter, On Common Prayer, p. 268.) SEE CHRISTMAS.
On the general subject of the appropriateness of the time of Christs advent, see the treatises, in Latin, of Austrin (Lond. 1835); Bock (Regiom. 1756, 1761); Faber (Kil. 1770, Jen. 1772); Hagen (Clausth. 1741); Quandt (Regiom. 1724); Ravius (Feft. 1673); Unger (Neap. 1779); Walch (Jen. 1738); Meyer (Kil. 1695); Scharbau (in his Obs. Sacr. 2, 395 sq.). On the state of the world at the time, Heilmann (Rint. 1755); Knapp (Hal. 1757). On the closing of the temple of Janus at his birth, Masson (Rotterd. 1700); and in German, Gedicke (in his Verm. Schrit, Berl. 1801, p. 188-200). SEE NATIVITY.
Advent,
In addition to what has already been given on this subject, it may be proper to add the directions of the various councils respecting the observance of the feast. A canon of the Council of Macon (A.D. 581) enjoins that from the Feast of St. Martin (Nov. 11) to the Nativity there be fasting on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of each week, and that the canons be then read; also that the sacrifices be offered in the Quadragesimal order. In the second Council of Tours (567), the fast of three days in the week is ordered for the months of September, October, and November, and from Dec. 1 to. the Nativity every day. But this is for monks oily. It seems, from all that is certainly known, that Advent took its place among. Church seasons only in the latter part of the 6th century. Once established as one of the great festivals, it was felt that its dignity demanded a season of preparation. Originally left to the discretion of the faithful, the number of days or weeks to be set apart was eventually defined by rule, and at first, it seems, in the churches of Gaul. Yet the same rule did not everywhere prevail, for the oldest Gallican sacramentary shows .three Sundays in Advent, and the Gothic-Gallican only two. But the rule that the term of preparation should be a quadragesima, to commence after the Feast of St. Martin, implies six Sundays. This rule-not enacted, but re-enforced, by the Canon of Macon (581)-obtained in other churches, as appears from the fact that the Ambrosian (or Milan) and Mozarabic (or Spanish) Ordo shows six missae implying that number of Sundays, and the same rule was observed in some of the Gallican churches. The rule-not of Advent, but of this quadragesima-is first met with in the diocese of Tours. The observance of the Quadragesima Apostolorum and Quadragesinua S. Philippi (ii the. Greek calendar Nov. 14) is enjoined upon monks by Nicephorus, patriarch of Constantinople’ (806). The Church of Rome, under Gregory, at the close of the 6th century, received the season of preparation as an ecclesiastical rule, restricted in its proper sense to the four Sundays before the Nativity, and this became the general rule for the Western Church throughout the 8th century and later. The Sacramentary of Gelasius, a Lectionary written for Charlemagne by Paul the Deacon, and other older works, all give five Sundays. This seeming discrepancy is easily explained, since the fifth Sunday before the Nativity was not considered as itself a Sunday in Advent, but as the preparation for Advent.
After the pattern of the Lenten fast, Advent was marked as a season of mourning in the public services of the Church. The custom of omitting the Gloria in Excelsis, and also: the Te Deum and Ite Missa Est, and of laying aside the dalmatic and subdeacon’s vestment, was coming into use during the 8th century. The Benedictine monks retained the Te Deum in Advent as in Lent, alleging the rule of their founder. The Alleluia also, and the sequences, as also the hymns, were omitted, but not in all churches. In some churches the Miserere (Psalm li) and other mournful psalms were added to or substituted for the ordinary psalms. For lessons, Isaiah was read all through, beginning on Advent Sunday. When that was finished, the twelve minor prophets followed, or readings from the fathers, especially the epistles of pope Leo on the incarnation and sermons of St. Augustine.
In the Greek Church the .season of preparation for the Nativity is of late introduction.- No notice of it occurs in the liturgical works of Theodore Studites, though the forty days fast of St. Philip was enjoined (upon monks) by Nicephorus. This forty days’ fast, beginning Nov. 14, is now the rule of the Greek Church. In the separated churches f. the East no trace appears, within our period, of an Advent season, unless we except the existing Nestorian or Chaldsean rule, in which the liturgical year begins with four Sundays of Annunciation before the Nativity. The Armenian Church, refusing to accept Dec. 25 as the Feast of the Nativity, and adhering to the more ancient sense of the Feast of Epiphany as including the birth of Christ, prepares for this high festival (Jan. 6) by a fast of fifty days, beginning Nov. 17.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
Advent
ADVENT.In its primary application the term is used to denote the first visible coming of Jesus into the world. His coming again at an after period is distinguished as the Second, or the Final, Coming (see Coming Again and Parousia).
The term is also employed to designate one of the ecclesiastical seasons,that immediately preceding the Festival of the Nativity,during which, in certain sections of the Church, the thoughts of believers are turned to the first appearance of their Lord in the flesh. This season includes four Sundays, commencing on the one nearest St. Andrews Day (Nov. 30) and lasting till Christmas Eve. With Advent the appointed order of Church services in renewed, and the ecclesiastical year begins.
Dealing here specially with the primary historical application, the first coming of Jesus possesses a unique significance as marking the entrance into the world of a moral force altogether unparalleled, a momentous turning-point in the religious progress of mankind. As the Son of God (Mat 10:32, Joh 3:16-17), revealing and representing God in His own person (Joh 5:30; Joh 14:9-10), whose mission it was to redeem men from sin (Mat 18:11, Luk 4:43; Luk 17:21), Jesus was to prove Himself in the truest sense the Messiah whom the Jewish people had long been expecting,a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord (Luk 2:11).
1. The foreshadowing Promise.The expectation entertained by the Jews had its roots in a promise enshrined in their earliest literature and dating from the dawn of history, that a signal deliverance from sin should be brought to the human race,the promise contained in the sentence pronounced on the tempter, that the seed of the woman should bruise his head (Gen 3:15). This blighter outlook for fallen humanity was confirmed by the assurance given to Abraham that in the line of his descendants the original promise was destined to be fulfilled (Gen 12:2-3),an assurance which was further strengthened when, under Moses, Israel was formed into a nation and entered at Sinai into covenant with Jehovah as His chosen people (Exodus 20-24). It was not, however, till Davids prosperous reign, with its recognition of ruling power held in the name of Jehovah, had passed, and when the idea of the theocratic kingship had been deeply implanted in the national consciousness, that the conception of the blessing to be looked for took definite shape. Then, as successive rulers failed and the nations fortunes became embarrassed, the splendours of Davids time, glorified by the halo which memory and distance cast around them, were projected into the future, forming a picture full of allurement and charm. It fired the imagination of the prophets amid the troubles of the later monarchy.
The promise, as thus transformed, was that of a king, or line of kings, sprung from Davids house who, endowed with transcendent gifts, and acting by special authority as the Anointed of the Lord, should reign in righteousness, introduce an era of Divine salvation for Israel, and draw all other nations round them in loyalty to Jehovahs law (Isa 2:2; Isa 11:5-9; Isa 27:1, Mic 4:1-4). This was the blossoming out of the Messianic idea.
During the period of the Exile, with the fall of the monarchy and the collapse of the expectations based upon it, the figure of the victorious and righteous king was thrown into the background; yet the prospect of a future glorious manifestation of Divine mercy, rescuing the people from their iniquities and miseries, kept its hold on susceptible minds (Isa 55:5; Isa 60:1-8). It was in this period that the distinctively spiritual character of the coming deliverance emerged into prominence. As delineated in Ezekiel and the Second Isaiah, it was to consist in an inward regeneration, wrought by penitence and the impartation of a new spirit and a new heart (Isa 65:6-7, Eze 11:18; Eze 11:20; Eze 36:25-30). In those prophecies of the Exile, Jehovah Himself is set forth as the true and ever-living King of Israel; and collective Israel, the nation regarded poetic ally as an individual, is conceived as the Anointed Servant of Jehovah, who, amid manifold afflictions, is to bear witness for Jehovah, and be the medium of accomplishing His saving purpose for mankind. On the return from the Exile the hope of salvation through a Davidic kingship revived, as is evident from the prophetic utterances of Haggai (Hag 2:22-23) and Zechariah (Zec 3:8; Zec 6:12); but in Malachis day it had again disappeared.
With the Maccabaean struggle against Antiochus Epiphanes (b.c. 167135) the Messianic idea entered on a fresh course of development. In the Book of Daniel, which dates presumably from that time, we find supernatural elements more freely introduced. The writer in vision beholds an ancient of days, seated on his throne to judge the great world-kingdoms and their rulers. Before him appears, coming with the clouds of heaven, more like unto a son of man, and to him is given ever-lasting dominion and a kingdom which small rot be destroyed (Dan 7:13-14). This dominion is passed over to the saints of the Most High, to be theirs for ever and ever (Dan 7:18; Dan 7:27). There is thus a picture of the Messianic future in which the triumph and rule of the godly over the nations are the distinguishing features.
We look in vain in the books of the Apocrypha for any expansion of these ideas. Their allusions to the Messianic hope are somewhat meagre, and do not expressly refer to the appearance of a personal Messiah. It is in the Apocalyptic literature, which sprang up in imitation of the Book of Daniel, that we find the conceptions which gave peculiar shape and colour to the Messianic expectations entertained in later times. We see there, amid the stress of national misfortunes, the prediction of the prophets interpreted and expanded in such a way as to furnish elaborately drawn out schemes of future glory. The coming of the God-sent king is depicted (Sib. Orac. iii. 652 ff.) the supernatural Son of Man, who was hidden with God before the world was created, and who, clothed with Divine attributes, will suddenly appear along with the Head of Days to execute judgment on men and angels (Similitudes of Enoch 46:1, 2, 48:2, 3). The dispersed of Israel will be restored, and the Gentiles drawn into submission (Enoch 90:30); sin and wrong will be banished (Simil. 49:2); the faithful dead will be raised to life again, and the righteous will dwell in everlasting joy (Enoch 51:1, 90:37) In the Psalter of Solomon, written under the pressure of the Roman domination (b.c. 7040), the idea of a king of the Davidic line is once more revived. The Messiah is regarded as the Son of David, the Anointed of the Lord, free from sin and endowed with miraculous powers, who will conquer, not by force of arms, but will smite the earth by the rod of His mouth (17:28f.), and bring to an end all unrighteousness (17:36).
In those Apocalyptic writings peculiar prominence is given to the spiritual content of the Messianic hope. Notwithstanding the supernatural elements they so largely introduce, they throw into strong relief the higher religious conceptions which the best of the prophets had insisted on as essentially bound up with the great period of blessing expected; while the scope of the ancient promise is widened out beyond national and temporal limitations to embrace the world and the life to come.
Meanwhile the scribes were at work, hardening the Messianic idea into scholastic form, and reducing the poetic language and bold imagery of the prophets to dogmatic statements and literal details, with the result, on the whole, of a restoration of the theocratic idea that God was to vindicate His authority as the true Sovereign of the nation, and to send His vicegerent in the line of David to establish His law and introduce the rule of righteousness under His anointed King.
Such was the form which the long-cherished hope had assumed when Jesus appeared. It was largely mixed up with expectations of political deliverance, yet the thoughts of many earnest spirits were centred mainly on the prospect of a spiritual emancipation for Israel. He came to meet the great hope by fulfilling in their ideal and spiritual significance the prophecies that had kindled and kept it alive. Leaving aside the merely earthly, time-coloured features that bulked so largely in the popular imagination, He entered the world to offer Himself as the true representative of God, in and through whom all that was eternal and most precious in the Messianic idea was destined to be realized. See art. Messiah.
2. The state of Religion at the date of Christs Advent.In many respects the way had been prepared for the appearance of Jesus and the spread of His influence as Messiah and Saviour. There were national, political, social, and other conditions existing in the world at the time, which rendered His coming and work singularly opportune (see Fulness of Time); but here we are specially concerned with the prevailing aspects of religious life in the immediate scene in which He appeared. Undoubtedly, among the Jewish people at that period religion was a dominating interest, and was based on principles far higher than any that obtained in other nations. Yet its quality was vitiated by certain serious defects. There was
(1) Its partisanship. Scribes and Pharisees on the one hand, and Sadducees on the other, stood in mutual antagonism, striving for ascendency as leaders of national religious feeling,the scribes and Pharisees combining to enforce the mass of stringent precepts which the former had elaborated to supplement the original written word; the Sadducees entirely rejecting those precepts, and contending that the Law as written was sufficient, and that the observance of the temple ordinances, its worship and sacrifices, was the central element in religion. The controversies that arose over those points of difference, and over the doctrine of the resurrection, created a fierce party spirit, bitter and bigoted on the one side, haughty and contemptuous on the other, while the smaller sect of the Essenes, with their extremist views and rigid austerity, maintained an inflexible protest against both these classes of religionists.
(2) Then there was its legalism. By their insistence on conformity to the regulations they had added to the Law as a condition of Divine favour, the scribes and Pharisees, who were the most numerous and aggressive party, converted religion itself into a matter of slavish obedience, in which the instigating motives were the hope of reward and the fear of punishment. The calculating temper thus engendered rendered the religious life a task-work of anxious scrupulosity and constraint, wanting in spontaneous action from the higher impulses of the soul; while in the case of those less sincere it introduced an element of prudential self-regard concerned only with the prospect of future benefit and safety.
(3) Closely allied to this was the externalization of piety. The Rabbinical regulations were held to be so binding, and their multiplicity was so great, that the effort to observe them inevitably involved a machine-like routine and formality. The Jew in his fulfilment of the Law found himself at every turn brought under the pressure of hard and fast exacting rules,in his food, his clothes, his daily occupations, his devotions, and the smallest acts of his life. The endeavour to yield obedience under such circumstances necessarily led to a laborious outward punctiliousness; a tendency to ostentation and spiritual pride was fostered; and many were ensnared into hypocrisy by finding they could obtain a reputation for exceptional piety by an obtrusive parade of their ceremonial performances. The most precise minuteness was observed in trifles, the tithing of mint and cummin, but in matters of greater import the principles of morality were surrendered.
These are the darker shades of the picture. Nevertheless, it is clear that a very considerable measure of religious earnestness was preserved in the nation. It was fed by the ancient Scriptures, which were regularly read in the synagogues and committed to memory in the synagogue schools. Thus in the body of the people there was kept alive a sense of the holy character and mighty doings of Jehovah; and although, owing to the decayed influence of the priesthood, the Temple itself was not a centre of spiritual life, yet the hallowed memories it recalled in the breasts of the multitudes assembled at the religious festivals were calculated to inspire the higher emotions. At all events, there is evidence enough to show that many hearts throughout the nation were imbued with a deep-seated reverence for God and a true spiritual longing for the hope of Israel. The soul of religion might be sadly crushed by legality and formalism, but it was not utterly dead. Devout men and women in varied ranks of society were holding a pure faith and leading lives of simple sincerity, vaguely dissatisfied with the bondage of legal observances and Rabbinical rules, and yearning to rise into a more spiritual atmosphere, a closer communion with the Divine mind and will. Of these Zacharias and Elisabeth (Luk 1:5-6), Anna (Luk 2:36-37), and the aged Simeon (Luk 2:25) may be taken as examples; while the numbers who responded to the living preaching of John the Baptist and became his followers are an index of the extent to which genuine piety survived in the land. It was amongst such that the spiritual preparation was found for the recognition and welcome of the promised Saviour when He appeared. The coming of Jesus brought the birth of a new spirit in religion, a spirit of fresh vitality and power; and the life of absolute devotion to righteousness which He began to live, and which He was ultimately to close in a death of sacrificing love, infused into religion an inspiring energy destined on a scale of vast magnitude to regenerate and redeem.
3. The national unrest of the period.The Jewish people, fretting under political depression, had flung themselves with impassioned eagerness on the hope that the long-desired Messiah and His kingdom must be drawing nigh. It was even thought by many that He was hidden somewhere in obscurity, only waiting for a more penitent disposition in the national mind; and so inflamed was the common imagination with these ideas, that popular excitement was easily aroused, and any bold spirit, rising in revolt against the existing state of things, could find a group of followers ready to believe in him as the one who should deliver Israel. In the broader world outside, too, the expectation of a powerful king, issuing from Judaea, who was to conquer the world, appears to have been widely spread; and the references to this given by Tacitus (Hist. v. 13) and by Suetonius (Vesp. 4) may be taken at least as an echo of views disseminated throughout the Roman Empire by the Jews of the Dispersion. When Jesus was born into the world, however, an event had transpired vastly grander than Jewish expectation at the time conceived. The day at last had dawned to which the original promise to fallen humanity pointed forward, and for which the best minds of the nation had for ages yearned; the divinely-pledged Deliverer from sin and its curse had arrived, to set up the kingdom of righteousness, love, and peace.
Literature.For a lengthened treatment of the Messianic hope and its transformations, see Riehm, Messianic Prophecy3 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] (English translation 1900); Drummond, The Jewish Messiah (1877); Stanton, The Jewish and Christian Messiah (1886); Briggs, Messianic Prophecy (1886); Orelli, OT Prophecy of the Consummation of God Kingdom (English translation ); and for a more condensed survey, Schrer, HJP [Note: JP History of the Jewish People.] ii. ii., and Schultz, OT Theol. (English translation 1898) vol. ii. For the Apocalyptic writings, see Charles editions the Book of Enoch, etc. Oa the religious condition of the Jewish nation at the date of the Advent, see Stapfer, Palestine in the Time of Christ (English translation 1886); Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, ii. v. (1883); Keim, Jesus of Nazara (English translation ), vol. i.; Wellhausea, Die Pharisaer und die Sadducer (1874); Ewald, Hist. of Israel (English translation ), vol. vi.; and Cheyne, Jewish Religious Life after the Exile.
G. MHardy.
Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels
Advent
ADVENT.See Parousia.
Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible
Advent
advent. See INCARNATION; MILLENNIUM; PAROUSIA.
Fuente: International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Advent
See Jesus, The Christ, Second Coming of; Millennium
Jesus, The Christ, Second Coming of; Millennium