Given the title “The Two Sorrows of the Kingdom of Heaven,” one might well wonder, “why are there any sorrows in heaven in the first place?” “Ní hanssa” (it is not difficult) is the formulaic Old Irish reply. And with the help of this volume, it is a fitting response. Readers will find, perhaps to their surprise, that “the two sorrows” refer to Enoch and Elijah, who, taken to heaven in the flesh, dread their inevitable long-delayed deaths when they fight against Antichrist at Doomsday. Apocrypha, or noncanonical scriptures, abound in traditions like this. Yet despite their immense popularity in Late Antiquity and across the Middle Ages, they are not as well known as they deserve to be. For this reason, the present volume does us all a great service in making accessible a wealth of Irish apocrypha focused on apocalypse and on the eschaton. Many of the texts in...
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