Thank you, Isaac 🥹

A screenshot of the beginning of the article entitled "Nathanael, the Fig Tree, and the Retrieval of Johannine Polysemy", authored by Mateusz Kusio and coming out in the New Testament Studies. Contains the following abstract: "The article argues that the reference to the fig tree under which Jesus claims to have seen Nathanael (John 1.48) has not been satisfactorily discussed by previous critical interpreters. Instead, the tree should be understood against the backdrop of Second Temple and later Jewish and Christian exegetical discussions about what species the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil exactly was. After tracing these debates in ancient and early medieval sources, including iconography, the argument moves on to show the interpretative possibilities created by this proposal. The conclusion makes a case for understanding the Fourth Gospel as an inherently open work which invites the audience to actively participate in a variety of exegetical discourses, and whose author function builds its authority through polysemy."

Happy to see the publication of my article "Nathanael, the Fig Tree, and the Retrieval of Johannine Polysemy", available in open access in the forthcoming issue of NTS, exploring the significance of the fig tree in the story of calling of Nathanael (John 1:48).

doi.org/10.1017/S002...

- 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.

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; +

Neoplatonic philosophers challenged Christian future insight and sought to reinvent the significance of oracular texts. 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. +

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 and with its shifting imperial context. +

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. +

Poster for the CfP 'Contested Prophecies, Uncertain Futures - Christian, Jewish, and Pagan Views of the Future in Late Antiquity' @ Late Antique Encounters Conference, Ghent, 3-5 February, 2027. Images contain a 16th-century Dutch print of the Erithrean Sibyl, as well as the logos of the Ghent Centre for Late Antiquity, KU Leuven, and FWO. The text is identical to the one contained in this thread.

CfP 'Contested Prophecies, Uncertain Futures - Christian, Jewish, and Pagan Views of the Future in Late Antiquity' @ Late Antique Encounters Conference, Ghent, 3-5 February, 2027

Please send in your abstracts (<300 words) and a brief academic CV to mateusz.kusio[at]kuleuven.be by 10 May, 2026. +

Today and forever #СлаваУкраїні! 🇺🇦

2026-29 postdoc Junior Research Fellowship in Theology & Religious Studies, Trinity College, Oxford. Candidates with PhDs submitted Oct 2023-May 2026 and with no comparable prior appointment. Deadline 21 January 2026, interviews 16 March. nt4ox.link/JRF-TrinOx26

Super excited to have the new strand "Future Insight and Its Discontents in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages (200–900 CE)" accepted for next year's @imc-leeds.bsky.social! Come join us on Thursday, 9 July

Less than a week left!

REMINDER
IMC '26 CfP for a new strand

Future Insight and Its Discontents in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages (200–900 CE)

Proposals of ca. 200 words, along with a short academic bio, should be sent to Mateusz Kusio (mateusz.kusio@kuleuven.be) by 15 September, 2025.

Draft cover for "Commodianus: Introduction, Text, Translation, Commentary", edited and translated with scholarly commentary by Mateusz Kusio, fortcoming in the Oxford Early Christian Texts series with Oxford University Press

It's beginning to look a lot like the publishing process is slowly coming to an end! My edition of Commodianus hopefully out next year with OUP

Proposals of ca. 200 words, along with a short academic bio, should be sent to Mateusz Kusio (mateusz.kusio@kuleuven.be) 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. +

IMC '26 CfP for a new strand

Future Insight and Its Discontents in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages (200–900 CE)

We invite proposals for papers interrogating the methods and outcomes of acquiring future insight in the cultures of Late Antiquity and early Middle Ages. +

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? +

Very happy to announce that I have received a senior postdoctoral fellowship funded by @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social which will allow me to continue at KU Leuven on my project on the delay of the Parousia for the next three years!

Lecturer in Biblical and Early Christian Studies at The University of Manchester Explore an exciting academic career as a Lecturer in Biblical and Early Christian Studies. Don't miss out on other academic jobs. Click to apply and explore more opportunities.

Lecturer in Biblical and Early Christian Studies- The University of Manchester - Humanities - Religions and Theology - School of Arts, Languages and Cultures #skystorians 🗃️www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMQ554/l...