From our colleagues in Israel …

Dr. Schuler will deliver a plenary lecture at the upcoming meeting of the Society of LCMS Theological Professors at Concordia Wisconsin on 23 May.

Prospectus: This paper explores the formation of Christian identity at the site as has been revealed in recent excavations. The paper highlights the role of church construction in supplanting paganism, the reverence of the sacred dead within the city in contrast to pagan and Jewish practices, the novel practice of religious community in an urban context, and the import of baptism and the eucharist in the move toward Chalcedonian Christianity. Evidence of residual pagan practices in Christian contexts illustrates the fluid and incomplete nature of that identity formation.

On Saturday, 14 April, Dr. Mark Schuler will deliver a lecture on “The End of Christianity at Hippos: the Sixth to the Eighth Centuries” at Macalestar College in St. Paul as part of a conference on Byzantium and Early Islam: Exploring the Late Antique Transition. Other speakers at the conference include Andy Overman, Gideon Avni, Walid Atrash, Stephen Shoemaker, Alan Walmsley, Gaby Mazor, and Vanessa Rousseau.

In my lecture, I will overview the various Christian churches at Sussita and posit a description of the community in the sixth century CE.