The belief in the coming of the Messiah, the treasured hope of the Jew throughout all the centuries of misery and persecution, is regarded by most Jewish thinkers as a dog ma of Judaism. Some of them, indeed, would not make this belief essential to Juda ism. They consider it merely as a branch, or corollary to others more important, but almost all agree that the belief in the coming of a Messiah is an important feature of Judaism. The nature and limitations of this dogma, however, remained unsettled, the Jewish authorities differing widely in their conception of it, according to the intellectual and material position of the people at their respective times.