Sept 18, 2008
"Beer Brewing Techniques in the Ancient Near East"
Presenter: Kathleen Mineck, University of Chicago
7:30 PM
October 16, 2008
HFMA: "Art of Ceremony: Regalia of Native Oregon"
Presenter: Rebbeca Dobkins, Willamette University
7 PM
October 23, 2008
"Cyrene: a World Heritage site in the 21st century"
Presenter: Susan Kane, Oberlin College
Dinner Location: Wilson Room, Goudy Commons
Lecture Location: Tokyo International University of America, Kaneko Commons
7:30 PM
October 30, 2008
Norton Lecture: End of an Empire: "Archaeology and the Collapse of Urartu"
Paul Zimansky, State University of New York, Stony Brook
7:30 PM
January 29-31, 2009
A Symposium on Ancient Biography and the Gospels
Presenters: Bart D. Ehrman and Adela Collins and Ron Hock and Lane McGaughy
The relationship of the early Christian Gospels to the ancient biographical genre is a significant topic because recent work on the historical Jesus and the composition of the Gospels at the end of the first century implies a shift in how this relationship is understood. The conventional view, perhaps encouraged by Christian apologetics, is that the Gospels are a unique literary genre and not directly influenced by or derived from the biographical genre of the ancient world. According to this conventional view, the Gospels are narrativized forms of the Pauline kerygma with extended introductions. Supporters of this view argue that, since the aim of the Evangelists is to proclaim the death and resurrection of Jesus as the (only) means of human salvation, the literary form in which that proclamation is narrated must be a unique Christian invention. But the application of redaction and literary criticism to the Gospels since the 1970s has implicitly challenged this claim that the Gospels are a unique literary form, both in terms of the aims of the authors of the Gospels and the extensive formal similarities between the Gospels and other ancient biographies of religious and philosophical sages and reformers. The overturning of the conventional view has taken place without much fanfare, as contemporary scholars, shaped by newer redactional and literary studies of the Gospels, have simply asserted that the Evangelists composed the Gospels under the influence of the Greco-Roman biographical tradition.
More detailed information from each speaker to follow.
Co-sponsored with the Department of Religious Studies and the Willamette Journal of the Liberal Arts
Please visit the Salem Chapter AIA website for the co-sponsored event list.