ABSTRACT
There is much contemporary interest, both academic and popular, in the afterlife or post-death existence. It was no different among Christian writers of the second and third centuries. A number of these either wrote treatises wholly devoted to the afterlife, especially of the resurrection, or dedicated significant portions of more general works to the subject. The issues addressed by them included whether there is an intermediate stage of existence between death in this life and the resurrected life, whether the possibility of a ‘gap’ in spatio-temporal existence in the transition from this life to that other has any implications for personal continuity and identity, and also what form such afterlife existence, both transitional and resurrectional, might take. Among those who wrote whole treatises on the subject or at least devoted considerable space in more general works to it – and evidence would suggest that this particular topic was more prevalent in early Christian writing than any other – were Ps-Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Athenagoras or [Ps-Athenagoras (depending on to whom one ascribes authorship of the De Resurrectione)], Origen and the author of the Valentinian (Gnostic) work the Letter to Rheginos.
