Scholars' Corner

When the Words Hurt: The Gospel of John, Bach's Music, and Religious Intolerance

Meet the Presenters

Paula Fredriksen is the William Goodwin Aurelio Profes-sor of the Appreciation of Scripture at Boston University. A graduate of Wellesley College, she earned a Diploma in Theology from Oxford University and her Ph.D. from Princeton University. Prior to joining the Boston Univer-sity faculty, she taught at Stanford University, University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Pittsburgh. In 1994-95 she was the Lady Davis Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Professor Fredriksen specializes in the social and intellectual history of Mediterranean Diaspora Judiasm and ancient Christianity, from the Late Second Temple period to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. In addition to her books on Augustine (Augustine on Romans) and on Jesus and Christian tradition (From Jesus to Christ:The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus), she has writ-ten extensively on conversion, apocalypticism, Paul and his interpreters, and Jewish/Gentile relations in late an-tiquity. Her most recent book, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Chris-tianity, received the 1999 National Jewish Book Award.

Michael Marissen studied music history at Calvin College and Brandeis University. He is an Associate Professor of Music at Swarthmore College and has guest taught at Oberlin and Princeton. His books include The social and religious designs of J. S. Bach's Brandenburg concertos (Princeton, 1995), Lutheranism, anti-Judaism, and Bach's St. John Passion; with an annotated literal translation of the libretto (Oxford, 1998), and, with Daniel R. Melamed, An introduction to Bach studies (Oxford, 1998). His current book project is entitled Bach on high Christology and the infancy narratives in Luke and Matthew.

Christopher M. Leighton is an ordained Presbyterian minister who has served as the Executive Director of the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies in Baltimore since its inception in 1987. Dr. Leighton is a graduate of the Princeton Theological Seminary and Columbia University where he did his doctorate in Philosophy and Education. He has studied at the Baltimore Hebrew University, the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. In addition to his work at the ICJS, he has been an Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins University and the Ecumenical Institute of Theology at St. Mary's Seminary & University. After co-editing Talk-ing About Genesis: A Resource Guide for the Bill Moyers series, he conducted a variety of educational programs which explored the challenges of reading and interpreting Genesis with public and independent high school stu-dents, individuals in retirement homes and a maximum security prison, as well as a diverse cross-section of churches and synagogues.

Tom Hall has been the Music Director of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society since 1982. Mr. Hall lectures fre-quently to professional and community organizations, including the American Choral Directors Association, the College Endowment Association, the Ewald Symposium of Sweetbriar College, and Chorus America. His publications include articles in the Baltimore Sun, Historical Perfor-mance Magazine, the Choral Journal, the American Choral Review, and Voice Magazine. He developed the popular "Scripture and Song" series at Baltimore's Beth Am Synagogue with biblical scholar Noam Zion, and he appears regularly on Baltimore public radio's Face the Music, and the Marc Steiner Show. He has been the Director of Choral Activities at Goucher College for eigh-teen years, and he has lectured and taught courses at the Peabody Conservatory, the University of Baltimore, Towson University, and the Johns Hopkins University.

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