How early Jews and Christians imagined the end of the age.
What “The End” Really Meant
Say “apocalypse” today and people picture the planet in flames. But that is not what early Jews meant. They expected something closer to a cosmic renewal: the end of one age of wickedness and the beginning of a renewed creation, guided by the justice of God.
This was not a fringe idea or a single doomsday script. Across the Hebrew Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a whole library of early Jewish literature, the end was imagined in strikingly different ways. Diverse messiahs, the return of the lost tribes, the resurrection of the dead, and the fate of the nations all hung in the balance.
Yet beneath the diversity ran a single story: from Eden, through Abraham’s covenant, toward a promised resolution. It was out of these specific expectations that the Jesus movement, and eventually Christianity, was born. This course traces how the end was envisioned, and why those visions still shape how the West imagines the future.
Course at a Glance
How the Course Unfolds
From the garden to the kingdom of God, these are the six themes the course moves through as it traces how early Jews and Christians imagined the age to come.
Theme I
Long before anyone spoke of “the end times,” the Hebrew Bible was already telling one continuous story, from the garden of Eden through Abraham’s covenant. Despite endless disagreement over the details, the ancients read it as a single arc bending toward a promised conclusion: the seed from which all later end-time hope would grow.
Genesis & the TorahTheme II
By the Second Temple period, many of the traditional tribes of “Israel” had not returned as the prophets promised, and the hope that they would someday, somehow return shaped how the future itself was imagined. Restoration, it turned out, meant far more than the freedom of the Jews.
8th – 6th century BCETheme III
Daniel’s visions, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the visionary literature of early Judaism. The two-ages framework, the war of light and darkness, and the conviction that history was moving toward a divinely guided turning point: not annihilation, but renewal.
c. 200 BCE – 1st century CETheme IV
There was never one messianic blueprint. Against the assumption of a single warrior-king come to crush Israel’s enemies, the course works through a strikingly diverse range of anointed figures (kings, priests, prophets, and heavenly deliverers) across the early Jewish texts.
Second Temple JudaismTheme V
Resurrection was not a comforting promise that good people go to heaven. It was born from a fierce belief in the justice of God: those denied their reward in this life must be raised to receive it. We trace how corporate, national, and even cosmic the hope of the afterlife could be.
Daniel to the ScrollsTheme VI
How the early Jesus movement grew directly out of these apocalyptic expectations, with real “aha” moments in the Dead Sea Scrolls and other key texts. Seen this way, the New Testament isn’t new at all, but a coherent species of early Judaism.
1st century CE
Your Instructor
Assistant Teaching Professor, Philosophy & Religious Studies · North Carolina State University
Jason A. Staples (PhD, UNC-Chapel Hill) is a scholar of Early Judaism and Early Christianity and Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at NC State University.
He is best known for his paradigm-shifting monographs from Cambridge University Press: Paul and the Resurrection of Israel (2024) and The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism (2021).
What This Course Offers
Jason Staples brings the visionaries, messiahs, and apocalyptic texts of early Judaism into a single sweeping story, taught live, with the chance to ask your questions in real time.
The Hebrew Bible, Daniel and 1 Enoch, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the New Testament, the actual texts in which early Jews and Christians imagined the end, read closely and in context.
Jason Staples has spent his career inside Second Temple Judaism and Christian origins. You get a specialist’s command of the period, not a survey skimmed from secondary sources.
The caves, the scrolls, and the community that copied them.
Twenty-eight live sessions, with fifteen minutes of question time after every lecture. Ask Dr. Staples directly, and watch the argument unfold in real time.
Resurrection, cosmic renewal, and the kingdom of God, the hopes that shaped both early Judaism and Christianity.
No prior background in the Bible or ancient history required. Whether you’re a believer, a skeptic, or simply curious, the story is built from the ground up, and every class is recorded for you to keep.
You Thought You Knew What the Bible Said About End Times
Common Assumption
““Apocalypse” means the end and destruction of the physical world.”
In fact
Picture the planet in flames and you’ve already misread the word. What the ancient visionaries actually expected was something else entirely, and it changes how you hear the whole New Testament.
Common Assumption
“Jews were all awaiting one militaristic warrior-king to smash their enemies.”
In fact
Reach for the lone warrior-king and you’ve met only one figure in a far more crowded field. Who else they were waiting for is where this gets surprising.
Common Assumption
“End-times hope was about individual salvation and the afterlife.”
In fact
We assume they were worried about their own souls. The texts are reaching for something much larger than the individual, and naming it reframes the entire hope.
Common Assumption
“The restoration of Israel simply meant freedom for the Jews.”
In fact
Restoration sounds simple, until you remember what Israel had actually lost. Once you do, who “the end” was really for stops being obvious.
Common Assumption
“Every gentile nation would simply be destroyed in the end.”
In fact
It seems like a foregone conclusion. The sources are stranger and far less unanimous than that, and what some of them expect for the nations may catch you off guard.
Common Assumption
“The New Testament is a brand-new kind of literature.”
In fact
It reads as something brand new. Put it back among its Jewish contemporaries, though, and it begins to look like something you’ll recognize, with consequences for how you read every page.
Everything Included with Your Registration
Fifteen minutes of live Q&A after every lecture, recorded so you can revisit the questions and Dr. Staples’s answers anytime.
Every one of the twenty-eight sessions is recorded with lifetime access, so you can attend live or catch up and rewatch whenever you like.
Download Dr. Staples’s full slide decks, ideal for review, note-taking, or sharing with a study group.
Searchable transcripts and closed captions for every lecture, perfect for quoting, deeper study, or following along if English is not your first language.
MP3 downloads of every lecture. Listen on your commute, during a walk, or whenever you’re away from a screen.
Four quizzes to test your understanding and reinforce the key ideas as you progress through the course.
A bonus introductory lecture on apocalypticism from John J. Collins, one of the world’s leading scholars of Jewish apocalyptic literature, included from his own course.
Curated discussion questions and a reading list for each lecture, for going deeper on your own or with a study group.
A full semester-length course. Finish it and you’ll receive a digital certificate of completion to commemorate your study and accomplishment.
$1 from every registration is donated to charity: water, bringing clean water to people in need.
Enjoy the course at a fraction of the cost
$1,499 Value 28 university-level lectures by a Cambridge University Press author. Comparable university seminars run $2,000–$4,000.
Regular Price $395 Early-Bird $295 Ends August 1
$395
A full university-length course in early Jewish and Christian apocalypticism.
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