Scholarly and popular interest in apocalyptic has grown considerably in recent years and so this reliable and authoritative companion to apocalyptic literature, from its inception to the contemporary period, is certainly welcome. Colin McAllister has performed a valuable service in bringing together such a rich collection of essays, mostly by leading figures within their respective fields, and each a stimulating and perceptive contribution. Most of the book's sixteen chapters reflect its title and either provide useful introductions to apocalyptic texts themselves or their receptions, whether evident in commentary traditions or more widely within culture. Collectively the chapters provide an excellent foundation for approaching apocalyptic writings.

Following a useful introduction by McAllister, which is largely a summary of the book as a whole but also includes some engaging reflections on the relation of apocalyptic to music, John Collins provides a characteristically lucid introduction to the origins and salient features of apocalypticism in ancient Judaism and Christianity. The following two chapters provide valuable introductions to their respective subjects: the first, by Ian Paul, to the Book of Revelation, and the second, by Dylan Burns, to the Gnostic apocalypses, focusing specifically upon the Apocryphon of John and Apocalypse of Paul. Then follows a series of chapters that are largely concerned with the written reception of apocalyptic traditions, and which follow a roughly chronological sequence, beginning in the fourth century ce, with Jesse Hoover's study of Donatist exegesis of the Apocalypse, through to Brett Whalen's introduction to Joachim of Fiore in the twelfth century, by way of examinations of apocalyptic thinking in response to the crises of the fifth century, by Brian Duvick, the reception of Revelation in Latin texts of the early Middle Ages, by Anne Matter, its exegesis in the tenth century, by Francis Gumerlock, apocalyptic thought in medieval Ireland, by John Carey, and András Kraft's overview of Byzantine apocalyptic literature in Greek. A series of studies that are rather harder to characterise constitutes the rest of book. These include contributions that explore the cultural reception and influence of apocalypticism in different epochs: the Renaissance, by Ian Boxall, the Age of Reason, by Christopher Rowland, and the contemporary world, by Lorenzo DiTomasso. In addition, there are also essays that are more specifically focused on the role of apocalyptic in particular movements: American Evangelicalism, by Daniel Hummel, and Salafi-Jihadism, by David Cook. Amongst these later chapters is also Kevin Hughes's examination of the development of the Antichrist tradition in medieval Western Christian thought.

Even though the contributions are of a uniformly high quality, there are some drawbacks to the collection. Despite the title of the work, it is not clear that all the chapters are really concerned with apocalyptic literature, either directly or indirectly. This is unsurprising, as many began life as contributions to an annual symposium at the University of Colorado intended to examine the apocalyptic worldview more generally. Indeed, this concern for apocalyptic worldview is also somewhat problematic on two grounds. Firstly, it is assumed by a number of contributors that apocalyptic texts are evidence of, or generative of, a worldview, something that is not necessarily the case. A text may be composed or consumed for other reasons; for example, as Hummel rightly says, apocalypticism can be ‘a potent source of entertainment’ (p. 300). Secondly, even if there is a demonstrable link between an apocalyptic text and a worldview, the apocalyptic element of a worldview may not be especially salient or comprehensive, and commitment to it may be episodic, ephemeral, or secondary to other, competing, even contradictory, constitutive elements.

Although no book can be comprehensive, some readers might also be disappointed that there is not more here on Jewish apocalyptic literature, whether ancient, medieval or modern, and that apocalyptic in Islam is limited to Cook's excellent contribution which is largely dedicated to explicating a recent but hardly typical movement within it. Even within Christianity, those hoping to find material on Syriac, Slavonic, Armenian or Ethiopic apocalyptic texts and exegetical traditions will be largely disappointed, and there is little here that touches upon the intersection of biblical apocalyptic with non-Christian traditions, such as the Norse Vǫluspá, or its place in non-Western movements, such as that of Hong Xiuquan. Some topics of interest to the wider contemporary reader, from gender to climate change, might also have merited more concerted treatments.

DiTomasso's engaging final chapter, ‘Apocalypticism in the contemporary world’, also raises some questions. The content is far more speculative than that found in the other chapters, and the style, at times, oddly declamatory, and even, on occasion, gnomic (‘The prophet today has six billion faces, and that prophet is us' [p. 336]). His thesis that ‘apocalyptic thinking informs virtually every major aspect of life in the twenty-first century’ and that since 2001, there has been an apocalyptic shift that has caused apocalyptic ideas to move ‘from the margins to the mainstream’ (p. 316), is bold but not entirely convincing. His totalising vision leads him to make a myriad of claims about the world from which others might reasonably dissent, such as that ‘Gender, nationality, social status, and religious affiliation are less relevant in an era of avatars, aliases, and atomized populations’ (p. 336), or ‘the 2016 vote for Brexit is a parade example’ of the mainstreaming of apocalyptic (p. 321). DiTomasso's contribution also appears in tension with the important observation made by Collins near the outset of the volume, that ‘A catastrophic imagination alone is not genuinely apocalyptic’ but rather apocalypticism is characterised by ‘indomitable hope’ (p. 35).

These points aside, each chapter is a significant contribution in its own right and provides a very useful basis for anyone wishing to orientate themselves within the subjects covered. Their value in so doing is enhanced by the limited but apposite footnotes and the suggested readings that accompany each chapter. This collection is far more than the sum of its parts. No one can read it without coming away with their thinking on this much studied subject having been deepened, challenged and, on occasion, transformed.