PSCO Presentation: 21 March, 2013

Helmut Koester (Harvard University), Ann Matter (University of Pennsylvania), Vasiliki Limberis (Temple University), and David Jorgensen (Princeton University)

Seminar

As part of our series of reflections on the past 50 years of scholarship — and the next 50 — we will consider changing perspectives on "orthodoxy" and "heresy" with panelists Helmut Koester, Ann Matter, Vasiliki Limberis, and David Jorgensen. See below for suggested readings.

Presenters:

Helmut Koester (Harvard University, Emeritus) graduated from Marburg in 1954 as Rudolph Bultmann’s last PhD student. Koester has been at Harvard since 1958, where he became John H. Morison Research Professor of Divinity and Winn Research Professor of Ecclesiastical History in 2000. From 1975 to 1999 he was editor of Harvard Theological Review, and he is co-editor and chair of the New Testament editorial board of Hermeneia, as well as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member and former President of SBL, and a member of the Societas Novi Testamenti Studiorum.

Vasiliki Limberis (Temple University) — after her college career at the University of San Francisco (1976) — earned an MTS degree at Harvard Divinity School (1979) followed by the ThD (1987), with her dissertation on "Identities and Images of the Theotokos in the Akathistos Hymn." She taught at Haverford from 1986 (when she first attended the PSCO), and thence to Temple in 1990, with promotion to full professor in 2012.

E. Ann Matter (University of Pennsylvania) is a graduate of Oberlin College (1971), and did her MA (1975), MPhil (1975), and ThD at Yale (1976). She joined the Penn Faculty in 1976, became William R. Kenan Professor of Religious Studies (2005), and served as Associate Dean for Arts & Letters (2006-2010). Recently, she became the co-editor of both The New Cambridge History of the Bible, and Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy: A Religious and Artistic Renaissance; she is also Christianity Editor of the Encyclopedia of Women in World Religions.

David Jorgensen (Princeton University) completed an MTS at Harvard Divinity School and is presently a doctoral student at Princeton University; his work centers around the unity and diversity of Christianity (1st-4th c. CE), in particular, biblical hermeneutics and exegesis, canon formation, and constructions of orthodoxy and heresy. He is completing work on his dissertation, "Treasure Hidden in a Field: Valentinian Exegesis of the Gospel of Matthew."

Video of the Session

The First Hour: Two Presentations

This video includes Bob Kraft's introductions, and the presentations of Helmut Koester and Vasiliki Limberis.

Two More Presentations

General Discussion

PSCO

Philadelphia Seminar on Christian Origins