Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Descents to the Underworld -- Early Jewish Visions of Hell -- Visiting the Places of the Dead in the Extra-Canonical Apocalypses -- The Rich Man and Lazarus: The Parable and the Parallels -- The Tongue Set on Fire by Hell (James 3:6) -- The Conflict of Justice and Mercy: Attitudes to the Damned in Apocalyptic Literature -- Augustine, the 'compassionate' Christians, and the Apocalypse of Peter -- The Apocalypse of Peter: A Jewish Christian Apocalypse from the time of Bar Kokhba -- A Quotation from 4Q second Ezekiel in the Apocalypse of Peter -- Resurrection as Giving Back the Dead -- 2 Peter and the Apocalypse of Peter -- The Apocalypse of the Seven Heavens: The Latin Version -- The Four Apocalypses of the Virgin Mary -- The Ascension of Isaiah: Genre, Unity and Date -- Index of Biblical References.

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These studies 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, major and often pioneering 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. Several chapters show how specific New Testament texts are illuminated by close knowledge of this tradition of ideas and images of the hereafter.