January 4 – no Sunday Forum
January 11 – Apocryphal Christianity

What do the forbidden gospels have to say about Jesus and early Christianity? Are they fabrications having nothing to do with history as some scholars would have us believe? Or do they provide useful information that was lost in the canonical telling of the Jesus story? This lecture makes a strong argument that the apocryphal materials must be consulted by those interested in the history of Christianity, or we run the risk of creating an “apocryphal” Christianity based solely on the New Testament witnesses. This class will be given by Prof. April DeConick from the Department of Religious Studies at Rice University.

January 18 – The Magical Judas

One morning, Professor DeConick's student, Grant Adamson, dropped by her office carrying under his arm a catalogue published in 1964 of the ancient gems housed in the National Library of France in Paris. He had been working through gem catalogues for his own project on ancient Gnostic magic, and had come across a gem that he thought she should see. He cracked open the book and flipped to a page in the center of the catalogue. When her eyes fell on the gem, Professor DeConick nearly fell off her chair. She was gazing upon a Gnostic secret about Judas Iscariot that had been safe-guarded and then forgotten for almost two-thousand years. During this lecture, the secret will be revealed. This class will be given by Prof. April DeConick.

January 25 – The Birth of Christianity: A Jewish Story

Dr. Matthias Henze, guest curator of the exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, member of Christ the King Church and Watt J. and Lilly G. Jackson Chair in Biblical Studies at Rice University, will teach a Sunday Forum class on this exhibition which chronicles genealogy of Judaism and Christianity, and in February will offer a guided tour of the exhibit.

Last updated: 2009-01-08