Proposals of ca. 200 words, along with a short academic bio, should be sent to Mateusz Kusio ([email protected]) by 15 September, 2025.

– strategies of verifiability;
– strategies of coping with non-fulfilment;
– divination;
– magic and its use for ascertaining the future;
– cross-cultural and cross-regional approaches and comparisons;
– insights from gender studies and cognitive psychology. +

The (non-exhaustive) list of topics to be considered includes:
– traditional pagan oracles in late antiquity;
– perceptions of future uncertainty;
– prophecy;
– apocalypticism and eschatology;
– astrology;
– philosophical (neo-Platonic, patristic, early scholastic) discussions of mantic knowledge; +

This new session at IMC 2026 will create a space for a joint investigation of late antique and early medieval mantic techniques, prophecy, apocalypticism, astrology, magic, and the like. +

However, the need to circumscribe future uncertainty remained, creating a space for new and renewed technologies and discourses intended to offer humans future insight. +

The period in question, marked by the rise of Christianity and later Islam, saw a considerable shift in how future was conceptualised and interacted with. +

Thanks for your paper!

Thank you!

The project is jointly supervised by Professors Johan Leemans from the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies and Geert Roskam from the Faculty of Arts to whom I am immensely grateful for their support and guidance.

On the other hand, ancient Jewish literature talks about prophets, whose predictions failed, and reinterprets earlier oracles to ensure their relevance. Early Christians relied on and enriched this wider discourse in their thinking about the delay of the Parousia." +

My research will show that some of these ways were derived from the broader cultural context. Greeks and Romans had to come to terms with the fact that their oracular consultations and divinatory practices often yielded manifestly false results. +

Ancient Christian literature does not display an overwhelming anxiety about the fact that Jesus’ Second Coming (Parousia) had not occurred as predicted (although some traces of such a concern do survive). This suggests that Christians found ways of dealing with this issue. +

From the abstract: "My project, will answer the following question: how was it possible that early Christianity, founded on the belief that its key figure, Jesus of Nazareth, would soon return to earth, survived the failure of this prediction and became a major religion? +

The table of contents to pique your interest

www.brepols.net/products/IS-...