ANTIBES  , a seaport

town in the French department of the Alpes-Maritimes (formerly in that of the Var, but transferred after the Alpes-Maritimes department was formed in 1860 out of the county of Nice) . Pop . (1906) of the town, 5730; of the commune, 11,753 . It is 122 m. by rail S.W. of Nice, and is situated on the E. side of the Garoupe peninsula . It was formerly fortified, but all the ramparts (save the Fort Carne, built by Vauban) have now been demolished, and a new town is rising on their site . There is a tolerable harbour, with a ;considerable fishing industry . The principal exports are dried fruits, salt fish I and oil . Much perfume distilling is done here, as the surrounding regnabit quern non sperant . The roots of this eschatological fancy are to be sought perhaps still deeper in a purely mythological and speculative expectation of a battle at the end of days between God and the devil, which has no reference whatever to historical occurrences . This idea has its original source in the apocalypses of Iran, for these are based upon the conflict between Ahura-Mazda (Auramazda, Ormazd) and Angro-Mainyush (Ahriman) and its consummation at the end of the world . This Iranian dualism is proved to have penetrated into the late Jewish eschatology from the beginning of the tst century before Christ, and did so probably still earlier . Thus the opposition between God and the devil already plays a part in the Jewish groundwork of the Testaments of the Patriarchs, which was perhaps composed at the end of the period of the Maccabees .

In this the name of the devil appears, besides the usual

form ( Qaravas, &ajioXos), especially as Belial (Beliar, probably, from Ps. xviii . 4, where the rivers of Belial are spoken of, originally a god of the under-world), a name which also plays a part in the Antichrist tradition . In the Ascension of Moses we already hear, at the beginning of the description of the latter time (x . I): " And then will God's rule be made manifest over all his creatures, then will the devilhave an end " (cf . Matt. xii . 28; Luke xi . 2o; John xii . 31, xiv . 3o, xvi . 11).1 This conception of the strife of God with the devil was further interwoven, before its introduction into the Antichrist myth, with another idea of different origin, namely, the myth derived from the Babylonian religion, of the battle of the supreme God (Marduk) with the dragon of chaos (Tiamat), originally a myth of the origin of things which, later perhaps, was changed into an eschatological one, again under Iranian influence .2 Thus it comes that the devil, the opponent of God, appears in the end often also in the form of a terrible dragon-monster; this appears most clearly in Rev. xii . Now it is possible that the whole conception of Antichrist has its final roots in this already complicated myth, that the form of the mighty adversary of God is but the equivalent in human form of the devil or of the dragon of chaos . In any case, however, this myth has exercised a formative influence on the conception of Antichrist .

For only thus can we explain how his figure acquires numerous superhuman and ghostly traits, which cannot be explained by any particular historical phenomenon on which it may have been based . Thus the figure of

Antiochus IV. has already become superhuman, when in Dan. viii. to, it is said that the little horn " waxed great, even to the host of heaven; and cast down some of the host and of the stars to the ground." Similarly Pompey, in the second psalm of Solomon, is obviously represented as the dragon of chaos, and his figure exalted into myth . Without this assumption of a continual infusion of mythological conceptions, we cannot understand the figure of Antichrist . Finally, it must be mentioned that Antichrist receives, at least in the later sources, the name originally proper to the devil himself .3 From the Jews, Christianity took over the idea . It is present quite unaltered in certain passages, specifically traceable to Judaism, e.g . (Rev. xi.) . " The Beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit " and, surrounded by a mighty host of nations, slays the " two witnesses " in Jerusalem, is the entirely super-human Jewish conception of Antichrist . Even if the beast (ch. xiii.), which rises from the sea at the summons of the devil, be interpreted as the Roman empire, and, specially, as any particular Roman ruler, yet the original form of the malevolent tyrant of the latter time is completely preserved . A fundamental change of the whole idea from the specifically Christian point of view, then, is signified by the conclusion of ch. ii. of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians.' There can, of course, be no doubt as to the identity of the " man of sin, See further, Bousset, Religion des Judentums, ed. ii. pp . 289 &c., 381 &c., 585 &c . 2 See Gunkel, Schopfung and Chaos (1893) . 2 It is, of course, uncertain whether this phenomenon already occurs in 2 Cor. vi .

15, since here Belial might still be Satan; cf. however, Ascensio Jesaiae iv . 2 &c . ; Sibyll. iii . 63 &c., ii . 167 &c . ' It is not necessary to decide whether the epistle is by St

Paul or by a pupil of Paul, although the former seems to the present writer to be by far the more probable, in spite of the brilliant attack on the genuineness of the epistle by Wrede in Texte and Ilbersetzungen, N.F. ix . 2 . 5 Cf . 2 Thess. ii . 8: the Targum also. in its comment on the passage of Isaiah, applies " the wicked " to Antichrist . country pro luces an abundance of flowers . Antibes is the ancient Antipolis .

It is said to have been founded before the Christian era (perhaps about 340 B.c.) by colonists from

Marseilles, and is mentioned by Strabo . It was the seat of a bishopric from the 5th century to 1244, when the see was transferred to Grasse . (W . A . B .