[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/anderson_gary.jpg” caption=”Gary Anderson”]Beginning March 14, McMaster's Department of Religious Studies will be presenting Hooker Distinguished Visiting Professor Gary A. Anderson for a series of public lectures.

Anderson is presently professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Notre Dame University. He has taught at the University of Virginia and Harvard Divinity School, and he has been a senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Hebrew University. His awards include a Luce Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment of the Humanities.

Anderson has published widely on the Hebrew Bible, ancient Israel, and the history of Jewish and Christian biblical interpretation. His books include Sacrifices and Offerings in Ancient Israel: Studies in their Social and Political Importance (1987), A Time to Mourn, a Time to Dance:
The Expression of Grief and Joy in Israelite Religion(1991), and The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination(2001). His wide-ranging interests and expertise encompass questions of ritual practice and theological import as well as textual and historical issues. Likewise, his research on the history of interpretation spans Christian as well as Jewish traditions, canonical as well as non-canonical writings, and art as well as texts.

Anderson's lectures include the following:

“Naked but Not Ashamed: Human Sexuality in the Garden of Eden”

Tuesday, March 14, at 8:00 pm, in MDCL-1110

“On Seeing the Invisible God: the Tabernacle and the Rise of the Mystical Tradition”

Wednesday, March 15, at 8:00 p.m., Ewart Angus Centre, room 1A06

A departmental seminar will also be held on Wednesday, March 15, at 1:30 pm in UH-122 on the topic “From Israel's Burden to Israel's Debt: Metaphors for Sin and Redemption in Second Temple Judaism”.

For more information, please contact Annette Yoshiko Reed or Peter Widdicombe.