Hasan Salah, a 13th-century exponent of the Isma'ili qiyamat doctrine, and Saint Paul the Apostle, the author of much of the New Testament, believed that during their lifetimes, a Messiah had come. The arrival of the Messiah triggered the end time; in this new time of sacredness, both authors believed that it was impossible---and even counterproductive---to gain salvation by following the traditional religious law. This thesis juxtaposes both authors' conceptions of the religious law, highlighting how each author reinterprets scripture to argue that the law simply cannot bring salvation in this new time. It then discusses how, in place of the law, both authors advocate a new, more individual soteriology structured around the Messianic figure. This thesis then discusses the seven shared structural features of both eschatologically based theologies, strengthening the corpus of evidence suggesting that Isma'ili thinkers often incorporate specifically Christian elements into their theology.

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