“Tiny Text, Great Benefit: John Chrysostom’s Two Homilies on Romans 16:3”
In the Bible, the last chapter of Romans is often thought to contain largely just a list of names and greetings from Paul to people he knew at Rome. Not only does today’s Common Lectionary omit it, but Christians in antiquity already looked askance at it. Why, then, did John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople, preach two separate sermons on this “pedestrian” text?
Margaret M. Mitchell, dean of the Divinity School and Shailer Mathews Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the University of Chicago, will explore this question with a free lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 26, in Sussman Theater, Olmsted Center.
The event is the 2015 installment of the Harriet Drake Kirkman-Hay Memorial Lecture, first established in 1925. It is free and open to the public.
Mitchell has published extensively on a range of topics in New Testament and early Christian writings. She recently received a Guggenheim Fellowship for her latest book project, a volume of translations of occasional sermons by John Chrysostom on Pauline passages.
The lecture is sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and Religion. For more information contact Tim Knepper at 271-2167 or tim.knepper@drake.edu.