The Fate of the Dead: Studies on Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Supplements to Novum Testamentum) [Hardcover]

Richard Bauckham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1998 | ISBN-10: 9004112030 | ISBN-13: 978-9004112032

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'"@ l'ividence, un excellent volume'
Simon C. Mimouni, "Revue des itudes juives, 2000.
'"seine Thesen verdienen eine ausf]hrlichere Rezeption und Diskussion.'
Jvrg Frey, "Theologische Literaturzeitung, 2001.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 425 pages
• Publisher: Brill Academic Pub (October 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9004112030
• ISBN-13: 978-9004112032
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,532,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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This review is from: The Fate of the Dead: Studies on Jewish and Christian Apocalypses (Supplements to Novum Testamentum) (Hardcover)

The fourteen studies collected in this book have been written as independent units, but many of them are closely interconnected in their subject matter. The first three chapters (1.Descents to the Underworld, 2.Early Jewish Visions of Hell and 3.Visiting the Places of the Dead in the Extra-Canonical Apocalypses) treat a particularly important theme in the apocalypses and related literature: a visit to the places of the dead which enables the visitor to reveal their character and contents to the living. Such revelations of the fate of the dead by means of otherworldly journeys are to be found in several cultural traditions of the ancient world, which parallel and in some cases must have influenced the accounts of such journeys in the Jewish and Christian apocalypses. Of special interest to me was Chapter 12 (The Apocalypse of the Seven Heavens), a full study of a short text which is extant in an incomplete Latin version.