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March 23 - "Understanding Christianity Through the History of Judaism"
Dr. Ben Wright III
Professor and Chair of Religious Studies, Lehigh University
The world in which Jesus and his earliest followers lived was a decidedly Jewish one. Since the mid-twentieth century and the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, our picture of that world has changed dramatically. Yet, that changed picture—and its impact on the way that we view Jesus of Nazareth—has not filtered down from scholarly work into the churches. What impact did the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, have on our understanding of earliest Christianity? What are the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, and what roles have they played in understanding who Jesus was and what he preached?