7:30 p.m., Monday, November 5, 2012
Fairfield University's Dolan School of Business Dining Room

Award-winning author Paula Fredriksen, a prominent religious scholar who is the Aurelio Professor of Scripture emerita at Boston University, will deliver Fairfield University's Seventh Annual Lecture in Jewish-Christian Engagement, on Monday, November 5, 2012, at 7:30 p.m.

Dr. Fredriksen, the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, will give a talk entitled, "When Christians Were Jews," that is free and open to the public. "Christianity begins with the message that history was about to end: the Kingdom of God was 'at hand,'" Dr. Fredriksen said of her talk. "Yet by the time we have our earliest evidence - Paul's letters, mid-century - the Kingdom was already late. How did the movement survive despite outliving its own foundational prophecy? And why, decades after taking this message to gentiles, was Paul convinced more than ever that ‘the Day is at hand?' "

The event - a presentation of Fairfield University's Bennett Center for Judaic Studies and the Center for Catholic Studies - will take place in the Dolan School of Business Dining Room. There is limited seating. For reservations, call the Bennett Center at (203) 254-4000, ext. 2066.

A graduate of Wellesley College, Oxford University and Princeton University, Dr. Fredriksen is a noteworthy religious historian who has published widely on the social and intellectual history of ancient Christianity, and on pagan-Jewish-Christian relations in the Graeco-Roman world. The author of "Augustine on Romans" (Scholars Press 1982) and the award-winning "From Jesus to Christ" (Yale Governors' Award for Best Book, 1988; 2000), she has also published "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" (Knopf 1999), which won a 1999 National Jewish Book Award.

Together with Adele Reinhartz, she contributed to and edited "Jesus, Judaism, and Christian Anti-Judaism: Reading the New Testament after the Holocaust" (Westminster/John Knox 2002), and has also edited and contributed to a collection of essays about Mel Gibson's controversial film, "On ‘The Passion of the Christ' " (University of California Press 2005). In "Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism" (Doubleday 2008; Yale 2010), Fredriksen traced the development of Christian anti-Judaism and explored Augustine's singular response to it. Her most recent work investigates the ways that ideas about God, humanity, and the world shift and grow during the charged period between Jesus and Augustine in "Sin: The Early History of an Idea" (Princeton 2012).

For more information about the Bennett Center for Judaic Studies, visit http://www.fairfield.edu/judaic/index.html . For more information about the Center for Catholic Studies, visit http://www.fairfield.edu/cs/index.html .

Posted On: 10-23-2012 11:10 AM

Volume: 45 Number: 92