One of these beliefs, the belief in the resurrection of the dead, is almost inseparable from the Messianic hope. It is true that the Iranian creed promised the awakening of the dead at some future day, when Ahura-Mazda, the god of light, shall have conquered and destroyed his rival Angro-mainjus, the god of darkness. But the lofty and spiritual aspect it assumed in the mind of the Jewish teachers and sages is a genuine produce of Jewish inspiration, and quite unlike the sordid belief of the Persian Magi. Although the belief in the immortality of the soul existed in Israel from earliest times, as is indicated in various places in the Bible, it did not assume definite shape until this period, when, by its union with the Messianic belief in the immortality of the nation, it produced the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. The emphasis laid upon the law and its observance during the period of the Scribes, could not but deepen the consciousness of ever individual Jew, that he was the special care of God’s providence. Up to this period, God’s care had been extend to the nation as a community, living, praying, even sinning as a community, in which the individual was lost. The nation brought sacrifices to atone for the sins of the individuals, and even the thank-offerings or peace-offerings of the individual had to be brought to the Temple, the national centre.   P56

With the emphasis laid by Ezra and his associates on the observance of the minutiae of the law by the individual constituents of this society, with the institution of individual prayers and of separate houses of prayer distinct from the Temple in Jerusalem, there naturally arises a deepening of the sense of personal responsibility and importance, and of the dependence on God’s care. Believing implicitly in God’s assurance of the permanence of the nation, the appearance of the Messiah and the continuation of the national centre in the Temple in Jerusalem, the individual who suffers and dies faithful to God’s precepts and loyal to his national ideas, believes that he shall arise from death to share in its splendors. “He will not permit His pious ones to see destruction” (Ps. 16:10). Thus, through the work of the Soferim, the doctrine of resurrection, dimly existing in the consciousness of the few, became a distance and inseparable feature of the Messianic ideal. P57

After the fall of Jerusalem, however, when Jabne became the center of Jewish activities, and subsequently throughout the exile, the Messianic hope finds expression in the teachings of almost every Rabbi. Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkia, the organizer and chief of the first Sanhedrin at Jabne, told his pupils, before his death, to have a throne ready for Hezekiah, son of David, who was about to come. This shows how intense the hope was even at that early period, and how positive the leaders of the people were of its speedy realization. P92

The Talmudic conception of the person of the Messiah is, on the whole, of a man, a scion of the Davidic dynasty, Divine only in the greatness of his natural gifts, through whom the heathen nations shall be destroyed and Israel become the world-power. Rabbi Akiba was rebuked by Rabbi Jose the Galilean for “profaning the Divine presence” by teaching that the Messiah occupies a throne alongside of God. P96