I forward this CfP from the Liverpool classics list, as it will surely be of interest to some of our devotées here:
‘I am planning to organise a thematic panel devoted to Christian, Jewish, and pagan perceptions of divination, oracles, eschatology, and future insight writ large in late antiquity at the upcoming Late Antique Encounters conference in Ghent (Belgium), 3-5 February, 2027.
Late Antiquity, far from being a time of decline and anxiety, was a period of new, exciting, and competing visions and ways of studying of the future. Traditional oracular shrines sought to reinvent themselves, while private mantic practices abounded. Rabbinic Judaism decidedly turned away from the eschatological speculation of the Second Temple period, but retained a memory of it. Early Christianity developed different strategies of coming to terms with its apocalyptic heritage, canonised in some of the New Testament writings, and with its shifting imperial context. Neoplatonic philosophers challenged Christian future insight and sought to reinvent the significance of oracular texts such as the Chaldean Oracles. The rise of Islam with its own eschatological valence challenged the Mediterranean world to revisit the questions of insight into the future and of the end of the world.
Potential topics of presentations include (but are not limited to):
- Greek and Roman public and private mantic practices (oracles, prodigies, lot divinations, oneiromancy, etc.) in late antiquity;
- Jewish Rabbinic attitudes towards the future and eschatology;
- Early Christian eschatology and divinatory practices;
- Late antique approaches to divination, oracles, and the knowledge of the future;
- Eschatology in the Quran and apocalyptic reactions to the rise of Islam.
Abstracts of no more than 300 words along with an academic CV should be sent to me (mateusz.kusio@kuleuven.be) by 10 May 2026. Please do not hesitate to reach out directly with any questions.
Kind regards,
Mateusz Kusio
Postdoctoral Researcher
Research Unit History of Church and Theology
Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies
Charles Deberiotstraat 26 – box 3101
3000 Leuven
Belgium’
AncientEsotericism.org :: Network for the Study of Esotericism in Antiquity 