|
|
|
Paula Fredriksen, historian of ancient Christianity and
William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of the Appreciation of Scripture,
in the School of Theology at Boston University. She earned her B.A.
from Wellesley College, received a Theology Diploma from Oxford
University, and her Ph.D. from Princeton University.
A historian of ancient Christianity, Paula Fredriksen has published
in the areas of Hellenistic Judaism, Pauline studies, Christian
origins, gnosticism, conversion as a social and a psychological
phenomenon, patristic exegesis, and Augustine. Her recent study,
From Jesus to Christ, The Origins of the New Testament Images of
Christ, won the Yale University Press Governor's award for best
book. Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews received the National
Jewish Book Award for 1999. She is currently involved in a study
of Augustine's life and milieu in the years immediately preceding
the Confessions. Professor Fredriksen is a consultant to the PBS
Frontline documentary in April 1998, on the historical origins of
New Testament literature.
|
|
|
The Origins of Christianity
Wednesday-Sunday March
21-25, 2001
University of Oklahoma campus
|
In this seminar, we are searching for the historical figure
of Jesus and the origins of Christianity. As we begin our search
the person we seek stands with his back to us, facing his contemporaries,
who are the first human context for his message. It is their
response to him that is the reason why we know about Jesus in
the first place. The effort to reconstruct the historical figure
of Jesus and the origins of Christianity is difficult precisely
because of the continuing importance of Jesus as a religious
figure in our culture.
Participants examined the historical record, comparing and
contrasting the ancient evidence of the traditional Christian
texts. They also looked for correspondence of elements in Gospel
material with other historical data derived independently from
non-Gospel sources. Students also weighed and judged modern
reconstructions and tested them for anachronism and plausibility
because, before Jesus can be meaningful to us, he must have
been comprehensible to his contemporaries.
|
The Class Reading List: (These books and articles supplied
by OSLEP)
The Historical Figure of Jesus, E. P. Sanders,
Penguin, 1996.
From Jesus to Christ. The Origin of the New Testament
Images of Jesus, Paula Fredriksen, 2nd ed., Yale University
Press, 2000.
The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the
Early Christian Writings, Bart D. Ehrman, Oxford,
1999.
Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, New Revised
Standard Version translation.
Gospel Parallels, Throckmorton, ed.
Article, "Who Do You Say That I Am?"
|
|
