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As part of the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning's Jewish-Christian Lecture Series, Prof. Lawrence M. Wills will present his lecture “Through-lines and Fault-lines: Gospel of John ‘Within Judaism’?” in Prof. Angela Harkins’ course "John: Gospel and Letters."

The recent trend to interpret New Testament texts “within Judaism”—Matthew, Paul, Acts, Hebrews, Revelation—has also been applied to John. Yet the Gospel of John resists this approach in that “the Jews” is very often used for the opponents, those who simply will not believe that Jesus has a direct relation to God. Scholars are now split on this issue: Does John reflect a troubled but ultimately resolvable conflict with the wider body of Jews, or does John embrace a dualism between the “true” followers of Jesus (not all followers of Jesus?) and “the Jews”? Key positions of scholars will be outlined, and a solution to this problem will be proposed.

Prof. Lawrence M. Wills is the Ethelbert Talbot Professor of Biblical Studies Emeritus at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, and adjunct lecturer at Stonehill College. He received an M.T.S. and Th.D. from Harvard Divinity School. His publications include Introduction to the Apocrypha: Jewish Books in Christian Bibles, Judith (Hermeneia), Not God’s People: Insiders and Outsiders in the Biblical World, and The Jewish Novel in the Ancient World.