This course will explore the narrative and social worlds of ancient Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature, from its roots in the Mesopotamian texts and the Hebrew prophets, to their major expressions in the biblical apocalypses of Daniel and Revelation as well as the lesser known apocalyptic works and traditions found in the Jewish pseudepigrapha and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Objectives

This course’s main objective is to investigate the conceptual world of Jewish apocalypticism and its formative value for early Christian theology. Jewish apocalyptic thought, a major theological paradigm of the Second Temple period, exercised arguably an unmatched influence on early Christian authors.