hy should Christians bother with an integrated reading of the Bible - Old and New Testaments together? What strategies should they use to accomplish it? Why should Jews care about whether they do so or not? How are the identities "Jew" and "Christian" to be configured, anyway? What place is to be found in this conversation for those who identify themselves as neither Christian or Jew?

The inspiration for this forum is a book by David Dawson, Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity, and a review of it by Mark Vessey, which engages the main themes of the book in energetic conversation. The dialogue established between book and review is enhanced by the fact that the book itself takes the form of a dialogue with three twentieth-century Jewish scholars of the Bible, Erich Auerbach, Hans Frei, and above all Daniel Boyarin, especially his work A Radical Jew.  

Dawson observes: "The interpretation of sacred texts is often the principal site of the tension between past and future, the preservation and the refashioning of religious identity" (p.207). Given the dialogic style of both book and response, this seems an ideal opportunity to set up a conversation to explore that tension, and its repercussions for religious identities.

Since Boyarin, happily, persists into the twenty-first century, in the Firs Part of our Forum he will come and give a response to Dawson's reading of his work. In Part Two, we shall open out the conversation, being joined by both Vessey and Rachel Havrelock: they can help us to fill the gap between the earliest Christian negotiations of Jewish tradition and those of the present day, thanks to their work with the Church Fathers and with the thinkers of the Protestant Reformation. This session will be chaired by Aryeh Kosman, whose own work on strategies of reading in Plato is fundamental for the conversation. The whole will be introduced by Catherine Conybeare.

This is, however, not just a conversation between invited participants. The questions raised by Dawson's book are of burning importance for all who identify themselves as Christian, or Jewish, or who are interested in the Judaeo-Christian tradition and in the reading of sacred texts. Part Two of the Forum, while led by Kosman, Havrelock, and Vessey, will be conducted as a round table discussion: all those in attendance are warmly encouraged to participate. And not only those physically present: this discussion will be simultaneously webcast, and electronic questions and contributions from the virtual audience are welcomed as well.

Please join us for this exciting conversation - in person or electronically - before, during, and after the time of the event. Comments and suggestions are invited: please address them to cconybea@brynmawr.edu.

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