Houston,
22
March
2022
|
13:44 PM
America/Chicago

Medieval History Expert’s Intriguing B.K. Smith Lecture in History How to Read the Gospels: A Tale of Two Commentators

Summary

Attendees may choose to join this lecture via Zoom here.  Meeting ID: 945 9583 1781

Dr. Rachel Fulton BrownLearn what Europeans in the Middle Ages thought about the Gospels from renowned Medievalist, Dr. Rachel Fulton Brown, Associate Professor at the University of Chicago. Brown delivers her talk, “How to Read the Gospels: A Tale of Two Commentators,” at the annual B.K. Smith Lecture in History, at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 6, in Jones Hall.

Brown notes, “Modern Christians tend to read the Gospels as if they were an outline for a historical novel or notes for a movie script—looking for details about Jesus ‘as he really was.’ But how much does our reading of the Gospels depend on the media environment in which we encounter them, digital, printed, or manuscript, orally or in writing, by candlelight or electric light?”  

In her talk, Dr. Brown compares two of the most prolific scriptural commentators of the Catholic tradition—the 12th century Benedictine Rupert of Deutz (d. 1129) and the 17th century Jesuit Cornelius a Lapide (d. 1637)—for insight into how media affect our access to the Gospels and the expectations we bring to them as frames for access to the divine.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Parking is available for $10 in the Moran Center Parking Garage at W. Alabama and Graustark. For more information, email Dr. Thomas Behr at berht@stthom.edu.

About the B.K. Smith in History Lecture

The family and friends of the late Benjamin Kopper Smith established the B.K. Smith Lecture in History in 1957. The series has brought distinguished scholars to the UST campus to lecture and hold informal discussions with students and faculty. B.K. Smith, a welding superintendent for the Pennsylvania Railroad, came to Texas in 1920 and founded the Big Three Welding and Equipment Company, which opened a Houston office in 1925. His contributions to Houston were many, and he remained active until he died in 1948, a year after UST was founded.