News & Events

Date: September 22

Hours: 4:30-6:00 PM

Location: Lilly Library Slocum Room

Description: Dr. Lorenzo DiTommaso, associate professor of religion at Concordia University in Montréal, presents the “Fifteen Signs of Doomsday,” a simple list of the omens expected to occur over the 15 days preceding the Day of Doom. Yet there is more to this text than its contents might initially suggest. It has a complex literary history that begins in early Judaism and Christianity and may be traced along a maze of paths into many corners of the late antique and medieval worlds. Recent research has shed new light on this history, as well as the text’s manuscript evidence, its many variants, and the great diversity of literary and other sources in which the tradition appears. The Signs of Doomsday also provides insight into some basic assumptions about the apocalyptic worldview and the social functions of omen lists, both then and now.

DiTommaso’s research centers on apocalypticism (ancient, mediaeval, and modern) and on biblical apocrypha. His next book, The Architecture of Apocalypticism, the first volume of a projected trilogy, will be published by Oxford University Press.

Free and open to the public

Contact: Please visit the http://www.indiana.edu/~medieval/ for further information