ABSTRACT
The term “eschatology” encompasses a number of subjects relating in one way or another to the “last things”. It incorporates personal eschatology, including questions of immortality of the soul, resurrection (whether of the body or the spirit), final judgment, and reward in paradise/heaven or punishment in hell. Cosmic eschatology is very important in some but not all texts, with the end of the world, the messianic age, a new heavens and earth. National eschatology is also a feature of the subject, though messianism which is often a feature of national eschatology (as well as cosmic eschatology) is treated separately in the next chapter.
