This chapter discusses the relationship of the imagination to Christian eschatology. It gives an account of the function of eschatological imagery in the Bible, discusses the changing ways in which art and literature have engaged Christian eschatology, and concludes with an account of a distinctly eschatological imagination.

Macedonian conqueror, in both Jewish and Christian sources, was a composite and of complicated design. It was constantly created and recreated, using varied techniques and inspirations, which resulted in a number of disparate, fragmentary projections. The dominant features of these projections were selected according to the immediate need and agenda of the text in which the figure of Alexander appeared. There is a certain continuity between the development of Alexander stories and legends in the Jewish milieu and those of the Greek and Roman pagan traditions, but there are significant innovations as well. As for the Christian authors, as much as they were familiar with Classical writings on Alexander, they would also exploit the Jewish corpus of Alexander legends, some of which have no direct parallel in Greco-Roman pagan writings.

The period after Augustine saw no decline in catechesis. The writings associated with Quodvultdeus and several other anonymous sermons from North Africa in this period attest to the ongoing vibrancy of catechesis. In particular, these sermons highlight the way in which knowing God was understood in an apocalyptic age, when new threats from Vandal invasions and heretical resurgences destabilized many aspects of social life.

As Christianity continued to transition from school churches to the monepiscopate, the role of hiddenness and openness in Christian teaching become an increasingly contested issue. Three writings associated with the so-called Hippolytan school – the Traditio apostolica, the Commentarium in Canticum Canticorum, and De Christo et antichristo – shed light on the tensions between hiddenness and secrecy in baptismal instruction.

This chapter treats an apparent conundrum: if Jesus affirmed the temple’s holiness, how do we explain material that suggests he anticipated its coming demise? The argument is made that the case that such predictions reflect impressions made by Jesus himself is strong. Matthew, it is demonstrated, helps us see how such material could be integrated with a perspective that affirms the temple’s holiness. Among other key traditions, this chapter treats the accounts of Jesuss temple act as well as the charges leveled against him at his trial.

In ‘Wisdom at Qumran’, David Skelton takes stock of the Dead Sea Scrolls and shows that they, in some ways, differ from the wisdom literature of the OT. The Scrolls lack those references to Solomon that seem so characteristic to biblical wisdom, and whilst they exhibit Wisdom as a personification, she is ‘toned down’ and appears more passive than she does in, say, Proverbs 1–9. Amplified in tone are the torah-wisdom connection and apocalyptic nature of the Qumran materials, not least the well-known raz nihyeh. Skelton also discusses the importance of poverty and hymnody in the Scrolls, to conclude by drawing these many distinctives together, as well as the Hellenistic context, pedagogy, and scribal practices, in order to reconsider the notion of ‘wisdom literature’ and the scholarly consensus surrounding it.

Through analysis of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, the Psalms of Solomon, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, baruch, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch, and more this chapter argues that the eschatological or atemporal settings of wisdom and apocalyptic literature account for why these texts universally prefer "Israel" terminology. Moreover, these texts universally continue to show a striking concern for the fate of the northern tribes and expectations of a pan-Israelite restoration including all twelve tribes.

This chapter looks at a variety of early Jewish narrative texts, showing that "Israel" language is preferred in texts from the pre-exilic past or when explicitly referring to northern Israelites, while "Jew" (Ioudaios) language is avoided in these texts. The converse is true in texts set in the post-exilic past not explicitly dealing with northerners, where Ioudaios appears frequently and Israel language tends to be limited to prayer or cultic contexts. The chapter pays special attention to the book of Tobit, which tells the story of God's continued faithfulness in preserving the lineage of a faithful family from Naphtali, the first tribe to be taken into exile by Assyria. Tobit's concern for the continued existence of faithful Israelites to be included in the final restoration provides a critical witness for the continuation of pan-Israelite sentiments—and the continued distinction between Israel and Judah—well into the Second Temple period. Other books such as Judith, Jubilees, and the Letter of Aristeas further witness to the persistence of the distinction between Israel and Judah and pan-Israelite restoration eschatology.

The physical destruction of the bronze horseman did not cause it to vanish from the Ottoman imperial imagination. Key sixteenth-century Ottoman manuscripts testify to its afterlife as a curious artefact and historical marvel. Even though the bronze horseman lost its association with Justinian, it continued to be seen as an important symbol of the pre-Ottoman past. Its physical absence could even magnify its stature. In the fascinating illustrated version of the prophetic manuscript of Al-Bistami's “Translation of the key to the comprehensive prognostication,” the reader encounters the horseman among a diachronic, curated display of the city’s monumental wonders: Hagia Sophia, the obelisk of Theodosios, the serpent column, and the masonry obelisk. They shared pre-Ottoman origins, they stood in the spaces of power associated with Byzantine culture, and they exercised power over the contemporary Ottoman imagination. Justinian’s monument stood for a discursively complicated and inconvenient past. Even though its physical presence was eliminated, its memory could not be completely erased. It continued to haunt Ottoman imagination in narratives of wonders and apocalyptic scenarios, populating an unnerving landscape of a marvelous foreign past, which lurked everywhere in the great city.

This essay discusses the texts that, through their commonalities and differences, illustrate various ways in which early forms of Jesus-devotion were relating to their contexts within the Roman world and how Paul addressed particular issues that arose within those communities

The figure of Antichrist does not appear as such in Christian Scripture; it is instead constituted by the interactions of several exegetical and theological strands in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. This chapter studies the contours of that developing tradition, casting forward even into the present invocations of Antichrist in contemporary thinkers such as René Girard and Giorgio Agamben.

This chapter investigates the Latin interpretations of the last book of the Christian Bible, the Apocalypse or Revelation to John, up to the end of the ninth century, with a focus on the ways in which—and the reasons why—these interpretations (unlike later medieval and many modern readings of this book) are largely historical rather than focused on the end of the world.

Isa 24–27 is lacking many of the generic components that characterize apocalypses, but early assessments of it as such have continued to exercise influence. Eschatological imagery of widespread destruction not only is shared with other early biblical texts such as Zephaniah and Amos but also is part of a widespread ANE tradition of divine destruction of the natural order. There is no reason to suppose that images of the divine disruption of the natural order are characteristic of a late period.

Such imagery of widespread disorder was commonly used as a precursor to the reimposition of order by a righteous king. In other words, the rhetoric of chaos was a form of royal propaganda arguing that a current ruler had brought about (or would bring about) the flourishing of his land, as he was supposed to do. As for why a supposedly royal, propagandistic text does not mention the king. It has pointed out that a similar text, the Potter’s Oracle, can be empirically shown to have started out as political propaganda and to have been stripped of its original historical context so that it came to appear apocalyptic in a similar way to Isa 24–27.