It is not at all improbable that Jewish eschatology in its later developments was powerfully influenced by the Persian faith.
The eschatology of the New Testament attaches itself not only to that of the Old Testament but also to that of contemporary Judaism, but it avoids the extravagances of the latter.
Also in eschatology, as may be expected, a change took place.
The individual hoped that he would live to share the nation's good, and thus the two streams of Old Testament eschatology at last flow together.
The primitive Christian eschatology was preserved in the West as it was not in the East, and in times of exceptional distress the expectation of Antichrist emerged again and again.