Biblical expert to speak at Notre Dame

The Slattery Lecture presented by Notre Dame University’s School of Philosophy and Theology in Fremantle will see Fr Justin Taylor SM from the internationally renowned École Biblique in Jerusalem speak at the university on 19 August.

Fr Taylor, a New Zealand priest, will speak on the literary novelty of the New Testament.
The Gospels treat the everyday world and ordinary people in a way that is both realistic and serious, even tragic.
Such a literary treatment is without precedent in Greek or Roman literature and constitutes a literary revolution.
For the Gospel writers’ way of rendering reality departs notably from those practised by writers in the classical tradition, who observed the rule of separation of styles.
This new aesthetic reflects a new social reality and, ultimately, belief in the incarnation of God in a person of low degree. In fact, both the choice of the real to be imitated and the means used to represent it are so novel that we must credit the evangelists either with representing the simply real or, if they are representing an imagined reality, with the invention of a wholly new technique of fiction writing that is unparalleled before the rise of the modern realistic novel.
Fr Taylor studied history at the University of Cambridge in England, where he graduated with a PhD in 1972. After teaching for several years in the Marist seminary in New Zealand, he went to Jerusalem to study at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française.
Since 1988, he has been teaching and researching at the École Biblique in the fields of New Testament and Christian origins and is currently Professor of New Testament and Vice-Director.
He is also co-director of a research seminar in New Testament at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
His lecture will be at 7.30pm, Thursday, 19 August in Foley Hall, 19 Mouat Street, Fremantle.
Those wishing to attenmd should RSVP by 12 August to  Deborah Tarrant on dtarrant2@nd.edu.au or (08) 9433 0138.