This accessible and enlightening history provides insights into the fascinating genre of apocalyptic literature, showing how the apocalypse encompasses far more than popular views of the last judgment and violent end of the world might suggest.
An accessible and enlightening history of the "apocalypses"--ancient Jewish and Christian works -- providing fresh insights into the fascinating genre of literature
Shows how the apocalypses were concerned not only with popular views of the last judgment and violent end of the world, but with reward and punishment after death, the heavenly temple, and the revelation of astronomical phenomena and other secrets of nature
Traces the tradition of apocalyptic writing through the Middle Ages, through to the modern era, when social movements still prophesise the world's imminent demise
Acknowledgments Chronology
1. Revelation in the Age of the Torah
2. The Book of the Watchers and Ascent to Heaven
3. The Book of Daniel and the Kingdom of the Holy Ones
4. The Heavenly Messiah
5. The Heavenly Temple, the Fate of Souls after Death, and Cosmology
6. Tours of Paradise and Hell and the Hekhalot Texts
7. Eschatology in the Byzantine Empire
8. Apocalyptic Movements in the Modern Era
Further Reading
Index