In his fourth contribution tracing what he calls the cultic process in early Christianity and Judaism, Meissner traces the origins of Jewish belief in a messiah to the formation of divergent subgroups or cults which were in opposition to the prevailing belief system. As in his previous work, he relies on his conception of the paranoid process in individuals to explain the incorporation of powerful psychological motivations in the messianic beliefs. His evidence derives from the Old Testament, the apocrypha, and the pseudepigrapha. He offers historical analysis for a period from approximately 135 A.D. to 500 A.D. He sees the cultic process and thus messianism arising in the context of Jewish national loss and the wish for restitution.