Knowing the End From the Beginning

Lester L. Grabbe is Professor Emeritus of Hebrew Bible and Early Judaism at the University of Hull. He is founder and convenor of the European Seminar in Historical Methodology. A recent book is Ancient Israel:What Do We Know and How Do We Know it? Robert D. Haak is Professor of Religion, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.

• I. Introduction; Lester L. Grabbe: Introduction and Overview; John J. Collins: Prophecy, Apocalypse and Eschatology: Reflections on the Proposals of Lester Grabbe; II. Articles; David E. Aune: Transformations of Apocalypticism in Early Christianity; Alice Ogden Bellis: The Changing Face of Babylon in Prophetic/Apocalyptic Literature: Seventh Century BCE to First Century CE and Beyond; John J. Collins: The Eschatology of Zechariah; Stephen L. Cook: Mythological Discourse in Ezekiel and Daniel and the Rise of Apocalypticism in Israel; Lester L. Grabbe: Prophetic and Apocalyptic: Time for New Definitions-and New Thinking; Martti Nissinen: Neither Prophecies nor Apocalypses: The Akkadian Literary Predictive Texts; Christopher Rowland: Apocalypse, Revelation and the New Testament; Marvin J. Sweeney: The Priesthood and the Proto-Apocalyptic Reading of Prophetic and Pentateuchal Texts; James D. Tabor: Are You the One? The Textual Dynamics of Messianic Self-Identity; III. Appendix; Lester L. Grabbe: Poets, Scribes, or Preachers? The Reality of Prophecy in the Second Temple Period

"This collection is a must read for serious students of apocalyptic literature....it does clarify several points of debate and offers the opinions of most of today's finest scholars of apocalyptic literature and its relationship to prophecy." -The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 67, 2005