answer a questions

responses for each prompt must be at least a paragraph long (4 sentences, minimum, per prompt). Make sure you answer the entire prompt, including all subquestions. You may include quotations from the readings in your responses, but those don’t count toward the minimum sentence requirement and must be explained in your own words. Remember, I am looking for your understanding, your thoughts, and your engagement with the material, not just the “right answer.” See the Rubric below for more information on grading. 

Answer any two (2) of the following questions:

1. How would you describe the “hermetic tradition” based on Fisher’s essay? Do you agree with her that “the ‘occult’ and hermetic sciences were central to [many early modern Europeans’] theology and spirituality”?

2. Why would believing that the millennium was imminent have pushed Lutheran Pietists to come to America & to Philadelphia specifically?

3. What was the “philadelphian ideal”? What hopes would they have held for a place called Philadelphia? 

4. Was there anything new or distinctively American (or distinctively Philadelphian) about the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness? Were they only a transplantation of European models, onto different soil or do they tell us something about America and/or Philadelphia?

the readings are:

1-  “Pro-phesies and Revelations”: German Cabbalists in Early Pennsylvania

2- Elizabeth W. Fisher – “Prophesies and Revelations”: German Cabbalists in Early Pennsylvania