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Running through the biblical tradition is a deep tension between what is promised, and hoped for, and what is actually experienced: that is, there is a stark discrepancy between the world as it is and the world as it should be. In this first volume of a two-volume work, which has its origins in the Speaker s Lectures he gave in Oxford, Andrew Chester sets the focus on the Hebrew Bible (the second volume will deal with the New Testament), and specifically central themes of eschatology, for example questions raised by divine threats of absolute destruction and divine promises of a paradisal age. The author also deals with death as being cut off from any relationship with God, and attempts to find hope and renewed life beyond it as well as the promise of a transformed world, and whether this can bear any relation to the real world.

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