Department of Religious Studies

Who gets to speak for God? Does the world need saving or a reboot? This course explores the range of the ways texts from the ancient Mediterranean answered these questions. We begin with prophets engaged in political spaces as imagined in the 2^nd millennium BCE community of Mari as well as within the Hebrew Bible. We’ll encounter named messianic leaders, like Cyrus of Persia, along with texts that envision the overturning of the world order: Daniel, Zechariah, and 1 Enoch. We’ll ask: what political forces inspired prophetic voices in antiquity? How do these texts imagine the structure of the cosmos, divine intervention, and humanity’s ability to change the world? 

Credits: CASE A&H

• A&H
• What are CASE requirements?