Symposium on Gary Anderson’s Sin: A History
Gary A. AndersonUniversity of Notre Dame
Cyril O'ReganUniversity of Notre Dame
Jeffrey StackertUniversity of Chicago
In Sin: A History, Gary Anderson shows how changing conceptions of sin lay at the heart of the biblical tradition. Spanning two thousand years, the book demonstrates how sin, once conceived of as a physical burden, becomes, over time, eclipsed by economic metaphors. Transformed from a weight that an individual carried, this Jewish revolution in thought shaped the way the Christian church understood the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Gary A. Anderson is the Hesburgh Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He holds a PhD from Harvard University. An expert in all aspects of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible theology and history, Anderson’s research focuses on the reception of the Bible in early Judaism and Christianity, the book of Genesis, the Pentateuch, and the book of Tobit. He has won numerous awards including grants from the American Philosophical Society, Lilly Endowment, and the Institute for Advanced Study at Hebrew University. He is author of the critically acclaimed Sin: A History and most recently Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition.
Cyril O’Regan is the Huisking Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University College Dublin, and master of arts, master of philosophy, and doctoral degrees from Yale University. He specializes in systematic and historical theology, with specific interests in the intersection of continental philosophy and theology, religion and literature, mystical theology, and postmodern thought. Professor O’Regan’s most recent book is Anatomy of Misremembering: Von Balthasar’s Response to Philosophical Modernity. Volume 1: Hegel. Earlier books include The Heterodox Hegel, Gnostic Return in Modernity, and Gnostic Apocalypse: Jacob Boehme's Haunted Narrative.
Jeffrey Stackert is Associate Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Chicago. His work situates the Hebrew Bible in the context of the larger ancient Near Eastern world in which it was composed. His publications include A Prophet Like Moses: Prophecy, Law, and Israelite Religion; Rewriting the Torah: Literary Revision in Deuteronomy and the Holiness Legislation, among others.
