John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. John Updike's first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, was published in 1959. It was followed by Rabbit, Run, the first volume of what have become known as the Rabbit books, which John Banville described as 'one of the finest literary achievements to have come out of the US since the war'. Rabbit is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990) were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other novels by John Updike include Marry Me, The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a major feature film, Memories of the Ford Administration, Brazil, In the Beauty of the Lilies and Toward the End of Time.
To demostrate that MAtthew thoroughly shares the worldview of apocalyptic eschatology (although his work is not an apocalypse), S. usefully identifies eight characteristics common to apocalyptic eschatology in Jewish and Christian texts: dualism, determinism, eschatological woes, the appearance of a savior figure, judgement, fate of the wicked, fate of the righteous, and expectation of the imminent end. The first two help form the conceptual framework of apocalyptic eschatology, and the other six are widely occuring eschatological themes. S. helpfully identifies the repeated occurence of these characteristics in Matthew, drawing many comparisons with other apocalyptic eschatological literature, notably Revelation, teh Qumran literature, and the Enochic literature. Kathleen Weber, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly