Tales from the End of Times

In the final episode of the series Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides returns to the Sibylline oracles, this time in the company of Dr Ashley Bacchi, author of the award-winning book Uncovering Jewish Creativity in Book III of the Sibylline Oracles: Gender, Intertextuality, and Politics (Brill, 2020). The focus this time is on the Alexandrian Jewish community of the Hellenistic period and their adaptation o...

In this episode, Peter Edwell and Bronwen Neil from Macquarie University discuss a range of issues connected to ancient Christian views of the end of the world and especially on the idea of the Anti-Christ. In recent times the world has witnessed a number of upheavals and predictions of calamities about to descend upon it, and in the Roman, post-Roman and Byzantine worlds, the same types of events...

In this episode, Dr Matt O’Farrell explores the Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition with Professor Zara Pogossian, expert in Medieval Armenian history and leader of the Armenia Entangled ERC project based at the University of Florence. The interview sketches a fascinating picture of late antiquity Armenia where Christianity provided the impetus for the invention of the Armenian alphabet, and witnessed...

In the third episode of our series, Prof. David Konstan presents his latest book on The Origin of Sin, comparing ancient Jewish and Christian concepts of sin with Greco-Roman ideas of error (Greek hamartia or Latin peccatum). In conversation with A/Prof. Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides, they compare the story of Prometheus with that of Adam and Eve, and also of Jesus as saviors of mankind, and they look...

In the second episode of our series Macquarie University doctoral student Jack Hanrahan-Shirley interviews Dr Andras Kraft of the University of Vienna. Jack researches heresies in the Byzantine Empire, especially the Bogomils. Andras is a well-known researcher of Byzantine Apocalypticism. Thus, we are transferred in the eastern Roman Empire from the end of the third century onwards for a fascinati...

In Episode 1, Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides and Peter Edwell discuss the Sibylline Oracles. The oracles take their name from Sibyl, an ancient Greek prophetess who predicted the advent of Alexander the Great, of the Roman Emperor Augustus, and of Constantine, the first Christian emperor. Like the famous oracle of Delphi, the Sibyl prophesized in a state of frenzy. Through Cumae, the first Greek colony...