The basis of the book is the provocative thesis that the idea of progress results from the uneasy eighteenth-century union of elements of millennial and utopian thought. Professor Olson traces changes in the major elements of millennialism since the days of Hebrew exile in Babylon, of utopianism since Plato's reflects on the ideal republic, and of progress since the unlikely merger of these very different world-views in eighteenth-century Europe.

Forced to re-examine the history of their people's relationship with God, the exiled Hebrews produced various interpretations of their past and probably future. The notions of a saving