Renowned international progressive biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan is visiting Sydney in September to deliver a series of lectures and one major public address.
The “Common Dreams on the Road” event, jointly sponsored by a cooperative of progressive groups in and around Sydney and assisted by the Progressive Christian Network of Victoria, includes nine lectures over three days, September 4 to 6, 10.30 am to 4.30 pm at Pitt Street Uniting Church.
The lectures on “The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus” are based on the book of the same title, published by HarperOne, San Francisco.
Themes include Biblical Traditions and Jesus’ Parable, Jesus’ Parables and God’s Kingdom, and God’s Kingdom in Gospel Mega-Parables.
Dom Crossan will also give a major public address exploring a Christian theology of the Bible at 7 pm on September 7 at Pitt Street Uniting Church: “Is God Violent? How to Read the Christian Bible and Still be a Christian”.
John Dominic Crossan
John Dominic Crossan was born in Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, Ireland, in1934. He was educated in Ireland and the United States, received a Doctorate of Divinity from Maynooth College, Ireland, in 1959, and did post-doctoral research at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome from 1959 to 1961 and at the École Biblique in Jerusalem from 1965 to 1967.
He was a member of a 13th-century Roman Catholic religious order, the Servites (Ordo Servorum Mariae), from 1950 to 1969 and an ordained priest from 1957 to 1969.
He joined DePaul University, Chicago, in 1969 and remained there until 1995. He is now a Professor Emeritus in its Department of Religious Studies.
He was Co-Chair of the Jesus Seminar from 1985 to 1996 as it met in twice-annual meetings to debate the historicity of the life of Jesus in the gospels. He was Chair of the Parables Seminar in 1972-76, Editor of Semeia, an Experimental Journal for Biblical Criticism in 1980-86, and Chair of the Historical Jesus Section in 1993-1998, within the Society of Biblical Literature, an international scholarly association for biblical study based in the United States.
He has received awards for scholarly excellence from the American Academy of Religion in 1989, DePaul University in 1991 and 1995, and an honorary doctorate from Stetson University, DeLand, FL, in 2003.
Marcus Borg and Dom Crossan have co-authored a series of books with HarperOne, San Francisco: The Last Week: A Day by Day Account of Jesus’s Final Week in Jerusalem (2006); The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach about the Birth of Jesus (2007); and The First Paul: Reclaiming the RadicalVisionary behind the Church’s Conservative Icon (2009).
A recent book, The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord’s Prayer, was released in September 2010. His newest book, The Power of Parable: How Fiction By Jesus Became Fiction About Jesus” was published on March 6, 2012.
Pitt Street Uniting Church is located at 264 Pitt Street, Sydney, New South Wales.
For event ticketing visit Common Dreams.
