This chapter seeks to understand a striking and extremely significant feature of rabbinic Judaism in the amoraic period, namely the resurfacing of a set of apocalyptic messianic ideas that had typified various trends of Second Temple Judaism. Many investigations of the history of Jewish messianism assemble in chronological order, beginning with the Hebrew Bible and extending through the rabbinic corpus, and maintain that such an assemblage of data constitutes a history. The messianic ideal is based on the doctrine of the Bible that David and his descendants had been chosen by God to rule over Israel until the end of time. After the failure of the Great Revolt of 66-74 CE and the catastrophe which came in its wake, utopian views come to the fore in the literature of the period. It is in the Babylonian Talmud that the most developed form of messianic speculation in rabbinic literature occurs, and there one shall encounter a re-emergence of the utopian approach.