see a great light shining in the temple, and so should see the glory of God: and concerning the end of the temple, that it should come to pass by means of a western nation: then the veil of the Daber should be rent into two pieces and the capitals of the two pillars taken away, and no man should know where they were, but they should be carried by angels into the wilderness, where the tabernacle was set up at first. And in them shall the Lord be known at the end, and shall enlighten them that are persecuted by the serpent, as it was from the beginning. And the Lord shall save them from darkness and the shadow of death and shall be in an holy tabernacle. This prophet prophesied much about the coming of the Lord; he died two years before the return of the people from Babylon, and was buried with honour in his own field.
Solomon of Basrah (thirteenth century) says: "The Jews stoned him in Jerusalem."
Some of the above matter has the air of being extracted from a book of prophecy; and it is more detailed by far than the accounts of some other prophets, e. g. Zephaniah and Haggai; but I cannot feel at all confident that it really does preserve pieces of the pseudepigraphs of Habakkuk.
Zephaniah
For Zephaniah we are better off. In the first place we have a definite title, Apocalypse of Sophonias, and a stichometry—600 lines. We also have an express quotation. Clement of Alexandria (Str., v. 11, 77) says: Is not this (a passage from an Epistle of Plato) like what is said by Sophonias the prophet? "And the spirit took me up and carried me into the fifth heaven, and I beheld angels that are called Lords (and their diadem was set upon them in the holy spirit, and the throne of each of them seven times brighter than the light of the sun as it shineth), dwelling in temples of salvation and singing hymns to God unspeakable, Most High." This must, one would say, be an extract
