For history is a drama which has its acts and logical development, its denouement and catharsis. But this conception of history as tragedy was foreign to the Hellenic consciousness. Its origins must be sought rather in the consciousness and spirit of ancient Israel. It was the Jews who contributed the concept of historical to world history, thereby discharging, in my opinion, the essence of their specific mission. They were the first to conceive the world as historical fulfilment in contradistinction to the cyclic process of the Greeks. For the ancient Hebrews the idea of fulfilment was always closely allied to that of Messianism.

A comparison between the Jewish religion and that of other pre-Christian pagan peoples confirms the contention that Jewish history represented the revelation of God in the historical destiny of humanity, while that of other pagan peoples represented the revelation of God in nature. This distinction between the foundations of the Jewish and the pagan Aryan religions helps us to establish the historical character of the Jewish people.

Jewish religion is permeated with the messianic idea which is, indeed, its pivot. Israel lived in expectation of the Day of Judgment when it would abandon the sorrowful historical destiny which was the lot of its people, to enter upon a sort of all-illuminating world era. The messianic idea is the determining factor in the historical drama of the Jewish people. The expectation of the future Messiah and the passionate longing for His coming gave rise to that dualism in the Jewish religious consciousness which bound the destiny of the Jewish people to that of mankind. This dualism of the messianic consciousness aspired towards an historical progression and fulfilment.

Jewish religion is permeated with the messianic idea which is, indeed, its pivot. Israel lived in expectation of the Day of Judgment when it would abandon the sorrowful historical destiny which was the lot of its people, to enter upon a sort of all-illuminating world era. The messianic idea is the determining factor in the historical drama of the Jewish people. …

The Jewish spirit constitutes a distinct racial type; and it preserved in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the fundamental peculiarities of the spirit of ancient Israel. The destiny of the latter continues to be reflected in the different stages of the historical life and destiny of contemporary Jews. Their spirit, although based upon that of the Ancient Hebrews, evolves in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a distorted and perverted form of Messianism, that which expects the coming of another Messiah following the repudiation of the true one. It is still animated by the aspiration towards the future, by the stubborn and persistent demand that the future should bring with it an all-resolving principle, an all-resolving truth and justice on earth, in the name of which the Jewish people is prepared to declare war on all historical traditions, sacraments and associations.