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Audio CDs
Fall 2006
Heikki Räisänen
A Controversial Jew
Paul & His Conflicting Convictions
1 audio CD, 80 minutes, $12.50
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Recent assessments of Paul’s relationship to his Jewish heritage range wildly from a “good Jew” to someone who has abandoned his religious tradition. Finnish scholar Heikki Räisänen will explore Paul’s ambiguity towards his own heritage and his relationship to Greco-Roman culture. He will also raise the question of Paul’s role in the development of formative Christianity, asking, What difference did (and does) Paul make?
Heikki Räisänen was Professor of New Testament Exegesis at the University of Helsinki from 1975 to his retirement in 2006. His many books include Paul and the Law (1983), Marcion, Muhammad and the Mahatma (1997) and Challenges to Biblical Interpretation (2001). In Spring 2006, he received the Gad Rausing Prize of Sweden’s Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in recognition of his outstanding research on early Christian ideology.
Sex, Sin and Women
A Social History of Original Sin
Set of 4 audio CDs, app. four hours, $35.00
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Theologians like Augustine did not need to invent a new discourse to articulate the dangers of sexuality. Even before Christianity, in Roman society chastity was the quintessential virtue for women. A reputation for chastity secured a woman’s honor and established her social worth. In a culture that intended to control female sexuality, the rhetoric of sexuality as a dangerous, potent, active force was already fully elaborated. Male honor, however, was definitely not enhanced by chastity. So, when sexuality became a problem for ascetic Christianity, the rhetoric needed to be expanded to include men as well as women. Karen Torjesen will explore questions of male honor, female shame and the fall into sexuality in early Christianity.
Karen Jo Torjesen, Margo L. Goldsmith Professor of Women’s Studies and Dean, Claremont Graduate University School of Religion. A specialist in the constructions of gender and sexuality in early Christianity, Torjesen is the author of Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Structure in Origen’s Exegesis (1986) and When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity (1993).
The Social Sources of the Afterlife
Set of 4 audio CDs, app. four hours, $35.00
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In every culture, people ask the same questions about their existence, including "what happens after we die?" Alan Segal will examine the development of a concept of the afterlife in biblical religions, looking at the social utility of afterlife belief, religiously altered states of consciousness, and the development of an ideal self. He will explore first-temple Israelite religion in conjunction with its environment, the influence of Persia and Greece on second-temple Judaism, and the development of Christianity, and he will address questions of martyrdom and resurrection. In so doing, he will illuminate the intimate connections between notions of the afterlife, the societies that produced them, and the individual’s search for the ultimate meaning of life on earth.
Alan F. Segal, professor of Religion and Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. Segal has held fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, American Council of Learned Societies, National Endowment for the Humanities, Annenberg Institute, and the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation. He is the author of several books including Life After Death (2004), a selection of the History Book Club, the Book of the Month Club, and the Behavioral Science Book Club.