its use has almost inevitably led to the quite baseless assumption that the finality which attaches to death, judgement, heaven and hell must be characteristic also of national eschatology, and therefore to an intolerable kind of literalism in the interpretation of the imagery used by prophet and apocalypticist to describe the Day of the Lord. The situation is particularly complicated in the New Testament due to a developed belief in the afterlife being common to Jews and Christians. It is therefore