Eschatos in Jewish, Hellenistic, and Early Christian Texts
A Diachronic Analysis (3rd cent. BCE – 1st cent. CE)
By (author) Stefano De Feo
Paperback (Forthcoming)
(November 2026)
ISBN: 9783161644481
6.1 x 9.13 inches
Price: $164.00
Stefano De Feo explores how ancient Jewish, Christian, and Graeco-Roman traditions used the lexeme ἔσχατος. By tracing this key Greek word across diverse sources, the author offers a fresh look at how ideas of ‘the end’ are shaped – or not – by the vocabulary that eventually became eponymous for eschatology.
Stefano De Feo offers the first comprehensive investigation of the Greek lexeme ἔσχατος in Jewish, Christian, and Graeco-Roman sources from the 3rd cent. BCE to the 1st cent. CE. He examines how this term functions within diverse philosophical and religious traditions and asks which uses may be described legitimately as “eschatological.” The author maintains that the scholarly confusion regarding the use of the category of eschatology can be reduced significantly through a broad analysis of the lexeme ἔσχατος, the very lexeme from which the modern term “eschatology” is derived. Methodologically, the author adopts a historical-critical approach integrated with insights from modern semantics. Each occurrence of the lexeme is interpreted within its literary, argumentative, and historical context, thereby avoiding the “word-concept fallacy,” the retrojection of later theological categories, and the assumption that the presence of a word necessarily signals a concept. The analysis is both diachronic and comparative: it follows the development of the lexeme across the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, Jewish apocalyptic literature, Stoic philosophical writings, Hellenistic and Roman Jewish authors, the writings of the early Christian communities, and selected pagan authors (such as, for example, Dio Chrysostom and Plutarch). By tracing the uses of ἔσχατος across several centuries and traditions, De Feo demonstrates that the “time of the end” is not reducible to a chronological endpoint but constitutes a theological and philosophical category. He thereby provides a new foundation for the interpretation of eschatological language.
INTRODUCTION
1. THE RATIONALE OF THE STUDY
2. STATE OF CURRENT RESEARCH
3. METHODOLOGICAL CAVEATS
4. RELEVANCE OF THE ANALYSIS
5. OUTLINE OF THE STUDY
PART 1. THE USE OF THE LEXEME ἜΣΧΑΤΟΣ IN THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD
1. TRANSLATION AS CREATION OF MEANINGS? THE USE OF THE LEXEME ἜΣΧΑΤΟΣ IN THE SEPTUAGINT
1.1. Between Jewish and Christian Traditions
1.2. From the Hebrew Vorlage to the LXX
1.3. The Equivalents of the Lexeme Ἔσχατος in the Hebrew Bible
1.4. The Use of the Lexeme Ἔσχατος with No Equivalent in the Hebrew Bible
1.5. A Diachronic Overview of the Occurrences of the Lexeme Ἔσχατος in the Septuagint
1.6. The Septuagint Connection Between the Lexeme Ἔσχατος and the Noun Ἡμέρα
1.7. Final Observations
2. THE USE OF THE LEXEME ἜΣΧΑΤΟΣ IN THE APOCALYPTIC TRADITIONS
2.1. The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch
2.2. The Book of Jubilees
2.3. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
2.4. The Testament of Job
2.5. The Sibylline Oracles
2.6. Final Observations
3. THE USE OF THE LEXEME ἜΣΧΑΤΟΣ IN THE HELLENISTIC PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITIONS
3.1. Between 'Teleology' and 'Eschatology': The Stoics
3.2. The Peculiar Meanings of the Lexeme Ἔσχατος in the Stoic Tradition
3.3. Final Observations
PART 2. THE USE OF THE LEXEME ἜΣΧΑΤΟΣ IN THE EARLY ROMAN IMPERIAL PERIOD
4. NO TIME FOR ESCHATOLOGY: THE USE OF ἜΣΧΑΤΟΣ IN PHILO AND JOSEPHUS
4.1. Philo of Alexandria
4.2. Josephus
4.3. Final Observations
5. THE USE OF ἜΣΧΑΤΟΣ IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
5.1. Forging Eschatological Language: The Lexeme Ἔσχατος in Paul's Letters
5.2. The Lexeme Ἔσχατος in Connection with Temporal Terms Within the New Testament
5.3. The Space of Eschatology
6. THE USE OF THE LEXEME ἜΣΧΑΤΟΣ IN EARLY CHRISTIAN TEXTS PRIOR TO THE APOLOGISTS
6.1. Didache (or The Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles)
6.2. The Ascension of Isaiah
6.3. The Epistle of Barnabas
6.4. The First and Second Letter of Clement
6.5. The Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch
6.6. The Shepherd of Hermas
6.7. Final Observations
7. THE USE OF ἜΣΧΑΤΟΣ IN THE PAGAN-RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS (1ST CENT. CE)
7.1. Dio Chrysostom
7.2. Plutarch
7.3. The Roman Stoics
7.4. Final Observations
CONCLUDING REMARKS
- By (author) Stefano De Feo
Other Titles in this Series
Teaching through Song in Antiquity
Didactic Hymnody among Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Christians
Volume 302
Peacemaking through Blood in Colossians
An Analysis of the Imagery in Its Graeco-Roman and Jewish Context
Volume 615
Lukan Joy and the Life of Discipleship
A Narrative Analysis of the Conditions That Lead to Joy According to Luke
Volume 583
Peter’s Halakhic Nightmare
The 'animal' vision of Acts 10:9-16 in Jewish and Graeco-Roman Perspective
Volume 432
Narratologie und biblische Exegese
Eine integrative Methode der Erzählanalyse und ihr Ertrag am Beispiel von Matthäus 28
Volume 285
Jesus Tradition in the Apostolic Fathers
Their Explicit Appeals to the Words of Jesus in Light of Orality Studies
Volume 311
Scribal Habits and Theological Influences in the Apocalypse
The Singular Readings of Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, and Ephraemi
Volume 218
Das Romische Imperium im Lukanischen Doppelwerk
Darstellung und Ertragspotenzial fur christliche Leser des spaten ersten Jahrhunderts
Volume 547
Early Christian Teachers
The 'Didaskaloi' from Their Origins to the Middle of the Second Century
Volume 516
Similar Books
Athanasius of Alexandria, Epistula ad episcopos Aegypti et Libyae
Old Slavonic Version and English Translation
Volume 261
Cyril of Alexandria’s Christological Exegesis
Explorations of Partitive Exegesis in the Dialogues on the Trinity
Volume 70
Epiphanies of the Divine in the Septuagint and the New Testament
Fifth International Symposium of the Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti (CJHNT), 14-17 May 2015, Nottingham
Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land
Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine
From Joseph to Jesus
The Joseph Narrative as a Compositional Template from Old Greek Esther to the Gospel of Luke
Volume 125
Paradise Lost in Transmission
The Return to Eden in the Apocalypse of Peter within Its Ethiopic and Early Christian Contexts
Punning in Odd or Elegant Constructions in Jeremiah
The Convergence of Linguistics, Rhetoric, and Textuality in the Hebrew Text of Jeremiah
Shame in the Worlds of the Hebrew Bible and Akkadian Texts
A Linguistic Study and Its Implications
Volume 33
Tabernacle, Table, Ark, and Text
Richard of Saint Victor on the Interpretation of Scripture
Volume 67
The Anglo-Norman Bible’s Books of Kings, a Critical Edition
(BL Royal 1 C III, fols 234r-274v)
Volume 37
The Biblical Tale of Judah and Tamar in Fourteenth-Century Iran
A Judeo-Persian Versified Account by Shāhīn with Scholarly Edition, Annotated Translation and Persian Transliteration
Volume 94, 951
The Body
Lived, Cultured, Adorned: Essays on Dress and the Body in the Bible and Ancient Near East in Honor of Nili S. Fox
The Compositional History of the Book of Kings
An Analysis of the Evaluative Frameworks in 1 Kings 14–2 Kings 25
The Discourse of Rites
Shaping and Reshaping the (Counter-)Priestly Rituals Conducted Outside the Tabernacle
