(Mark Batluck, PhD Candidate) On the 5th of October, CSCO hosted Paula Fredriksen as she spoke on ancient Christianity and anti-Judaism. The lecture provided an excellent snapshot both of the chronology of Jewish–Christian relations and also of Christian texts that evidence or were used to fuel Christian anti-Jewish sentiment. Right-click (ctrl-click on Macs) to download the lecture below.
Paula Fredriksen, ‘Jews in the Head‘ (48min)
‘Jews in the Head‘ handout
I’m very ignorant about this. I am aware that Jesus Christ was obviously one of the Jews, apparently an essene or some minor sect and that his background was cross cultural or something – his mother was a low level Arabian princess or something rather than a Jew…which meant that normally, he would not have been a Jew but he proved to be Jewish anyways….or something. As I wrote, I am very ignorant about this even though I have done a little Internet research and read most of The Bible at least once, which isn’t much compared to a real scholar. I am aware that for the first 100 – 300 years [I’m not very precise about dates, sorry] of Christianity only Jews were even qualified to become Christians. The Catholic Encyclopedia may have more information – they are a great resource for how Christianity has dealt with cultural context changes for 2000 years. Of course Judaism was already 3000 years old when Jesus showed up, and I think I just saw something to the effect that this is year 577x on the Hebrew calendar. I think the relevance of Jewish customs, laws, ethics and their relationship to Christianity is something deserving more attention in the contemporary Christian world. OK, so luckily, we won’t have to back to sacrificing goats or rams, but maybe it would help if we ate kosher…or something.
Thanks for letting me comment despite my level of ignorance. Mainly I am a Western philosophy ‘expert’ – Master’s type, not the doctorate type.