The Fate of the Dead: Studies on the Jewish and Christian Apocalypses

This text presents a collection of studies which focus on personal eschatology in the Jewish and early Christian apocalypses. The apocalyptic tradition, from its Jewish origins until the early Middle Ages, is studied as a continuous literary tradition, in which both continuity of motifs and important changes in understanding of life after death can be charted. As well as better-known apocalypses, much attention is given to those neglected apocalypses which portray human destiny after death in detail, such as the Apocalypse of Peter , the Apocalypse of the Seven Heavens , the later apocalypses of Ezra, and the four apocalypses of the Virgin Mary. Relationships with Greco-Roman eschatology are explored, and several chapters show how specific New Testament texts are illuminated by close knowledge of this tradition of ideas and images of the hereafter.