This chapter is an exposition of a visionary, apocalyptic perspective in Christian intellectual history of the early modern period which contrasts with a mainstream mistrust of apocalyptic claims. Discussion of Anne Hutchinson, Gerrard Winstanley, and William Blake concludes with a consideration of the centrality of such an apocalyptic perspective in the New Testament.

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.

“Wisdom Literature” is a scholarly inference from the common interest of three biblical books: ḥokmah (wisdom). They promote universal human values, lack anything specific to Israel, and convey “parental” advice. Proverbs resembles sound bites, the book of Job debates the problem of innocent suffering, and Qoheleth (the name of the author of Ecclesiastes) views life philosophically as toilsome and pointless. Two other books, Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon, resemble Proverbs while integrating Jewish traditions from law and prophecy into their teachings about wisdom. These books are mainly poetry, although a prose account frames the book of Job, Qoheleth mixes prose and poetry, and Proverbs uses prose to describe a successful seduction. Only the divine speeches in Job surpass his initial curse of his birthday, Qoheleth’s two poems about cyclical reality and declining years of life, and the description of primordial Wisdom. Within parallel utterances or cola, numerous poetic devices both tease and delight.

Apocalypticism is a worldview that developed in ancient Judaism in the Hellenistic period. It draws heavily on ancient myths, and attempts to express a sense that the world is governed by transcendent powers and that human destiny transcends the present order.

A great deal of literature attempts to reimagine, rework, revamp, retrieve – in short, retell – the Bible. The growing body of work known as “biblical reception history” is devoted to studying this phenomenon. The essay continues down this productive path: first a review of the biblical Song of Songs, noting the points most salient for understanding later retellings; next, detailing what biblical retellings are and how we might define them. Turning to the essay’s focus, there is close analyses of the novel Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (1977) and the short story “Song of Songs” by Darcey Steinke (2004) as they interact with the Bible. These stories show how biblical retellings are like a field, with some closer to the center (i.e. the Bible) than others. The essay concludes by suggesting why retellings exist in the first place.

In the laws in the first five books of the Bible, each law is a response to a specific ethical or legal problem arising in a narrative incident recounted in Genesis through 2 Kings. The closest of links exist between law and literature. This argument differs significantly from the commonly held view that legal texts were inserted into narrative texts at different historical periods to reflect changing societal circumstances. Topics covered include the origin of the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments); legal ideas of perennial interest such as individual and corporate responsibility, conflict of law with principle, and authoritative sanctioning of evil; sacred (ritual) law; the absence of certain rules; the role of the curse in controlling behavior; the contributions of Jesus and Paul to ethics and law.

Biblical and non-Biblical prophecy from the ancient Near East, in all its manifestations, is an equivalent form of divination translated through human words and gestures. Prophets do not need to be members of a guild of religious practitioners or operate within a cultic context based on learned skills. They are measured by the perceived veracity of their message and their strict adherence to the god they serve. The recording of these messages in letters or collected sayings becomes the basis for what we term “prophetic literature,” a diverse body of literary forms that at its heart demonstrates to devotees the active interest of the god(s) in human activities and endeavors. To comprehend the basic characteristics of prophetic literature in the Hebrew Bible, this study examines the social and cultural setting contributing to its development as well as the prophetic traditions that are found in documents from ancient Mesopotamia.

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.

The Bible’s Primary History – the great history of the Israelite people extending from Genesis to Second Kings – contains within it a remarkable set of ideas about government and law. The work touches on nearly all of the great themes of political theory in the modern era – the necessity of government, the problem of anarchy, the moral basis of obligation, the distinguishing features of good and bad leaders, and the analysis of optimal government structure and design. Associated with these political ideas is a remarkably insightful exploration of the basic problems of jurisprudence: the nature of law, the justifications for constitutions, and the articulation of specific legal norms in legislations and principles of customary law.

Jerusalem and Dabiq are two centers for Muslim apocalyptic events connected in both classical apocalypses, and now in the Salafi-jihadi apocalypse of the Islamic State (ISIS).

The essay explores the contribution of a literary analysis to interpretation of the canonical Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The author begins by analyzing historical tendencies to read the biographies of Jesus atomistically, before moving to describe recent narrative approaches that focus greater attention on the overarching picture of how each story is told by means of plotting, characterization, and thematic development. The body of the essay involves two close, narrative readings, the first focused on Matt 4:23-9:38, which highlights the role of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7) and the miracle chapters (Matt 8-9) in this part of the first Gospel. The second reading addresses John’s Gospel and the ways that author deploys allusions and echoes from Gen 1-2 to accent the theme of the renewal of creation in the person and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.

Milton’s command of the Bible in the original languages (Hebrew, Greek, etc.) as well as in English created the resonance of Paradise Lost, notably in such passages as the catalogue of the devils in Book One and the summary of the entire Bible in Books Eleven and Twelve. Milton focused, however, on the myth of Eve and Adam to seize upon the Bible as a whole and to emphasize that universal humanity is his subject. But Milton is free and original in how he uses the Bible, scaling up small things to giant proportions, as with Sin and Death, and downplaying or ignoring traditional Christian themes, such as the personal nature of our relation to God. Milton reads the Bible as a Christian humanist: for political ends in this world. The “paradise within” prophesied by the angel Michael at the end of Paradise Lost is the political ideal for “mankind” as a whole, for humanity, at the end of Paradise Regained.

Apocalyptic literature of the early fifth century demonstrates renewed awareness of impending catastrophe, divine judgment, and a wide variety of possibilities for sociopolitical and cosmic transformation or restoration (apokatastasis). This chapter focuses on specific cases of systems-collapse in North Africa and southern Gaul.

This chapter argues that in order to properly appreciate the complexities of Donatist eschatology, we must situate it within its fourth- and fifth-century context. When we do so, we find that Donatist apocalypticism is far more contiguous with the eschatological expectations of the Christian communities that ringed the western Mediterranean in late antiquity than previously expected, yet also capable of significant innovation in how such apocalyptic tropes were deployed.

This chapter surveys the body of ancient Gnostic apocalypses, works that differentiate God from the creator of the world and identify humanity as divine. These apocalypses are important for our understanding of Greek, Jewish, Coptic, and Manichaean literature, as well as early Islam, but a brief look at two such apocalypses—the Apocryphon of John and the Apocalypse of Paul—reminds us that their use of visionary motifs and pseudepigraphy also served diverse ends in the world of early Christianity.