Fifteen Signs before Doomsday

[2] It may find an origin in the apocryphal Apocalypse of Thomas[3] and is found in many post-millennial manuscripts in Latin and in the vernacular.

[citation needed] The Fifteen Signs derives from the Apocalypse of Thomas, an apocryphal apocalyptic text composed in Greek (and subsequently translated in Latin) between the second and fourth century.

[citation needed] One of the earliest versions is De quindecim signis (PL XCIV.555) written in the 8th century by Pseudo-Bede.

[13] Harry Morris contends that those details could have come to Shakespeare via John Daye's A Book of Christian Prayer (1578) or the Holkham Bible (14th century).

[14] The signs also occur in the shearmen's Prophets of Antichrist, part of the fifteenth-century Chester Mystery Plays.

Illumination from the fifteenth-century Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur showing the sixth of the fifteen signs according to the Golden Legend : "All cities will collapse and all that is built, and fiery bolts of lightning will appear from sundown to sunrise".