NEW VIEW OF THE APOSTLE PAUL TO BE DISCUSSED IN OBERLIN COLLEGE'S HASKELL LECTURES

Gager will offer a new interpretation of this seminal figure of the Christian faith during the Haskell Lectures, a series of three public addresses titled The Apostle Paul and the Beginnings of Christian Anti-Judaism February 18, 19 and 21 at Oberlin College.

In his latest book, Revinventing Paul (Oxford University Press 2000), Gager posits that Paul has been unfairly credited with repudiating Judaism and replacing it with what we now call Christianity.

The speaker is the William H. Danforth Professor of Religion at Princeton. Well known for his studies of Judaism, Christianity and the Graeco-Roman religions in the Mediterranean world of Late Antiquity, he also is the author of Kingdom and Community: The Social World of Early Christianity, a landmark study of the rise of Christianity seen in light of theories of religious development and social context; The Origins of Anti-Semitism; Attitudes Toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity; and Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World.

Gager is a 2000/01 Fellow of the Institute for Advanced studies at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, Master of Forbes College, an undergraduate residential college at Princeton, and a member of the steering committee for a special working group on "The Social World of Early Christianity" in the American Academy of Religion.

A graduate of Yale University, he received the B.D. from Yale Divinity School and the Ph.D. from Harvard University. He served on the faculty of Haverford College before joining Princeton and was a visiting professor at Herbrew University where he held a Fullbright Fellowship, and at the École Pratique des Hautes Étude, 5ème Section (Sciences Religieuses) in Paris.