The antediluvian patriarch Enoch inspired several ancient pseudepigraphic texts. The Book of Enoch (generally known as “1st Enoch”) is part of the Biblical canon in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition. “2nd Enoch” is an ancient text unrelated to 1st Enoch, which is sometimes called “The Secrets of Enoch.” Because the text was translated into Old Bulgarian and was widely used among the Medieval Bogomils, 2nd Enoch is sometimes known as Slavonic Enoch. The text claims to be Enoch’s record of his visit to the Ten Heavens with archangels as guides. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will review the text, consider its authorship, dating, and influence in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and today.

Whether religious or atheist, most Western people have a picture and a sense of the character of God: white robe, white beard, white man. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will trace the origin of this image and consider how it may differ from the way people envisioned God in Biblical times.

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is a controversial yet influential portrayal of Jesus’ crucifixion that held the title of highest-grossing R-rated film for 20 years. But how scripturally, historically, and theologically accurate is this depiction? In this session, John Hamer (historian) and Leandro Palacios (theologian) react to the film in real time—offering critical analysis, academic commentary, and the occasional snort and eye-roll when the script goes off the rails. There will be history, theology, and cringe.

Christians talk about “the Church” as the universal body of Christ, made up of all Christians. However, in a more practical, institutional sense, Christians are actually divided into thousands of different denominations, many of which consider their rivals heretical and even non-Christian. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will trace a brief history of Christian schism, outlining the major branches of the movement historically and in the present.

As countries around the world legalized same-sex marriage, many opponents of ending discrimination argued that the change would undermine “traditional marriage.” What is traditional marriage? John Hamer of Toronto Centre place will trace the origins of marriage customs in the western world and how the institution came to be regarded as a sacrament in Christianity.

The ideas about the afterlife in heaven and hell are deeply ingrained in modern, popular culture, based on Christian doctrines and imagery from antiquity through the Middle Ages to the present. However, this concept of the afterlife is almost entirely absent from the Old Testament. In making his covenant with Abraham, God does not promise eternal life in heaven. Rather, Abraham is blessed with prosperity, long life, and a vast posterity. In this lecture, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place briefly traces the development of our modern ideas about afterlife from its pagan origins to the present.

Abelard and Heloise are among the great scholastic philosophers of the 12th century. Their affair led to their secret marriage, which was discovered with terrible consequences for them both. Nevertheless their letters have kept the romance alive for centuries, and Abelard's philosophical ideas helped change the course Western thought.

From nuclear war and super-plagues to asteroids and alien invasions, popular culture continues to obsess about the idea of the world's destruction. We're look at the first mythological predictions of the end and see how the popularity of apocalyptic writing influenced Judaism, Christianity, and the Western world ever since.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was one of the most brilliant theologians and philosophers of the Middle Ages and all of human history. Aquinas famously believed that the existence of God could be proved by reason alone and he provided five arguments to this effect. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at each of the five arguments alongside the counter-arguments and will also consider what Aquinas’ philosophy tells us about his conception of God.

By the end of the third century, most Christian leaders adhered to the paradoxical belief that the Creator is God, Christ is God, and the Spirit is God, whiles also insisting that there is only one God. However, they continued to be bitterly divided about how to explain the paradox. While some insisted that the one God simply appeared in three different forms (Modalism), an Alexandrian theologian named Arius articulated a different formula, by which the Creator was the sole uncreated eternal God, and Christ (while divine and unique as God’s Son) was nevertheless subordinate to the Creator. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at Arius’ understanding of the Godhead and the legacy of Arianism.

Artistic expression and religion have been intertwined since prehistory. From Antiquity to the Modern era religion has provided both inspiration and patronage for artists. Paintings of animals and hunts in caves may have related to Animism: calling upon their spiritual power. Classical sculpture and painting were focussed on depicting the gods and the stories of Greek and Roman mythology. In much the same way that casting an actor for a role in a film adaptation of a book tends to overwrite a future reader’s picture of a character (e.g., try envisioning Gandalf without seeing Ian McKellen), having a statue or a picture of a god affects the way a worshipper envisions the divine. Perhaps for this reason, religious reformers at various points in history have objected to picturing the gods, or especially picturing God. Ancient Israelites forbid graven images of Yahweh, a prohibition that expanded to any depiction or even saying his name aloud. Likewise, Islam forbids depicting God (Allah) and the prohibition has expanded to depictions of God’s prophet, and in some interpretations any human or animal forms. Christians too have a complicated history with religious imagery from the Iconoclasm which divided the Byzantine Empire to the Protestant destruction of statues and imagery during the Reformation. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will explore why artwork has been such a charged issue within the religions of the West from Antiquity to the present.

Shortly after Western Christians launched external crusades that successfully (if brutally) reconquered the Holy Lands, a new perceived enemy of the faith emerged in the south of France. The Cathars were a Christian sect that rejected Trinitarian theology to embrace dualism. Catharism taught that the New Testament God was the true and good God who had created our immaterial spirits, but that these had been trapped in this material world, which was created by the evil God of the Old Testament. The most powerful pope of the Middle Ages, took the novel approach of calling an internal crusade to defeat the Cathars militarily, but it was only with the foundation of the Medieval Inquisition that the religion was finally exterminated.

Why was Charles the Great King of the Franks crowned Roman Emperor in 800 ad, over three centuries after the Empire’s fall? What about the idea of the Roman Empire was so inspiring that German kings continued to be crowned as Holy Roman Emperors for a thousand years after Charlemagne’s death?

Jesus of Nazareth famously advised “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also” and taught his followers to “love your enemies.” In the first centuries AD, Christians frequently questioned whether the role of soldier was compatible with their faith. Although the Emperor Constantine converted after winning a battle under the symbol of the cross, he delayed his baptism until his deathbed to wipe away the sins incurred as head of the Roman army. By the Middle Ages, however, Popes called upon Christian knights to attack the enemies of the faith: Muslims, pagans, Cathars, and Christian heretics alike. In the modern era, European Empires brutally conquered and colonized much of the world hand-in-hand with Christian missionaries. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at how Christianity got from point A to B and C and ask where Christians find themselves today?

What is mysticism in the Christian context, and how has it shaped this tradition from Jesus to the present? How does it compare with mysticism in other religions? Why did women’s voices become prominent in the Middle Ages and the Catholic “counter-reformation,” but mainly in mystical writings? And are the spiritual practices many churches embrace today rooted in Christian mysticism or borrowed from Buddhism and New Age spirituality?

Jesus taught his followers to love their enemies and declared “blessed are the peacemakers.” Nevertheless, Christianity has had an inconsistent relationship with war and peace, at times going so far as to sanctify wars such as the crusades as holy. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the history of pacifism and nonviolence within the Christian tradition and contrast it with justifications of Christian militancy.

The modern Jewish nationalist ideology of “Zionism” traces its origins to a movement founded by Theodor Herl in 1897. The movement evolved considerably during the 20th century in the wake of the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel in Palestine in 1948. As conflicts between Israelis, Palestinians, and their neighbors have evolved, so too have ideas about nationalism, imperialism/colonialism, rights to self-determination, and international law. The idea of Zionism is further complicated by Christians, some of whom support a “gathering of Israel” as a precursor for Armageddon and bringing about a literal end to the world. Before embarking on a trip to the West Bank of Palestine this November as a representative of Churches for Middle East Peace, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the history of “Christian Zionism” and its precursors.

Among the first commandments God gives in the Bible is “Be fruitful and multiply,” but for some reason Christianity has narrowed the definition of sin to focus almost exclusively on “sex.” Christianity’s largest denomination, the Roman Catholic Church continues to insist that clergy live entirely celibate — a lifestyle that looks increasingly like a bizarre fetish in the 21st Century. Schisms of the church have occurred over the idea of divorce. A preponderance of Christian sects have led the charge against recognizing the human rights of the LGBTQ+ communities. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at why Christians seem to be sex-obsessed and offer ideas for overcoming Christian error and bigotry.

The art of the theater died out in the West with the fall of the Roman Empire. But in the unlikely setting of Germany in the 10th century, a remarkable woman revived both comedy and drama. Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim was a secular canoness (a member of a religious community living a monastic life) who read the ancient Roman playwrights Plautus and Terrance and used them as models for her own plays. Produced for the edification and entertainment of her fellow sisters, Hrotsvitha's comedies featured the exploits of saintly heroines humiliating their lecherous pagan captors. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Palce read from Hrotsvitha's work (some of the humor is still funny today!) and look at her context and legacy.

A history of the ongoing transformation of the Latter Day Saint movement's second largest denomination. Reformers within the Latter Day Saint movement opposed to excesses like polygamy, regrouped under the leadership of Joseph Smith III after the murder of his father and laid the foundations for today's progressive Christian denomination.

Did Jesus appear first to Mary Magdalene alone—or to a group of women? Was it at the tomb, on a road, or behind locked doors? And were the disciples sent to Galilee or told to stay in Jerusalem? The Easter stories in the four gospels don’t agree—and these contradictions raise deep questions about how the resurrection was remembered and recorded. Of the four canonical gospels, three (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) follow roughly the same narrative for Jesus’ ministry and teachings, while the fourth (John) tells a rather different story. However, when all four gospels get to the passion narrative, there is considerably more overlap in events between the three synoptics and John. Nevertheless, each account is unique and each evangelist provides different (sometimes conflicting) details. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will outline the differences in the Easter stories both among the four gospels and also in accounts from “lost gospels” that were not included in the New Testament.

In John’s gospel, Jesus dies before the Passover meal; in Mark, it happens after. Judas ends his life by hanging in Matthew, but falls and bursts open in Acts. Only Mark includes a mysterious young man who runs away naked during the arrest. The Passion narratives in the New Testament offer conflicting details about the final days of Jesus—from the timing of events, to who was present, to what was said and done. In this lecture, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place explores contradictions across the four canonical gospels and considers alternative perspectives found in early Christian texts like the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Judas, and the Gospel of Mary. These differences reveal how early communities shaped the story of Jesus’ suffering, death, and burial.

The 2003 mystery novel and 2006 thriller of the same name have popularized the idea that Mary Magdalene was actually Jesus' wife and is pictured sitting next to Jesus in Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting of the Last Supper. John Hamer of Centre Place looks at what history can tell us about the historical Mary Magdalene, Jesus, and John the Beloved (the male apostle in da Vinci's painting). He also identifies the real "codes" or symbols embedded in Christian iconography and how the Da Vinci Code gets the theology of Gnostic and Orthodox Christianity backwards.

Jesus of Nazareth was hardly the only person in the ancient world who was said to be son of God (or a god), to perform miracles, and to have ascended into heaven. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will review the lives figures including Apollonius of Tyana, Alexander of Abonoteichus, Pythagoras, and others and consider the implications for how the earliest Christians may have understood Jesus as divine.

Are some sins unforgivable? In the late stages of the pagan Roman Empire, Christians were often persecuted for failing to support the state religion. However, after being arrested, most Christians at any time could escape punishment by performing a brief pagan ritual, offering incense to the genius of the emperors. Many took this option and were released. Others refused and were thrown to the lions. After the persecutions ended, the Christians whose family members and leaders had been martyred, refused to forgive those who had conveniently renounced their faith. In North Africa, the issue led to a substantial division in the church, where the purist party, the Donatists, refused to recognize sacraments performed by priests and bishops who had failed the faith. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at this history of this ancient version of “cancel culture,” including its institutional and theological implications for Christians today.

The Bible is not a single book speaking with a single voice. It is a library of books with different voices, with perspectives that are often in conflict. The Book of Ecclesiastes is a particularly interesting example. Like the Book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes is part of the Hebrew Wisdom tradition; and while both books are attributed to King Solomon, neither was actually written by him. The perspective of Ecclesiastes is highly philosophical, rejecting most human concerns (including much of traditional religion) as meaningless “vanity”: “Vanity of vanities, all is futile!” he declares. Ecclesiastes rejects the idea of afterlife, and instead suggests that human beings should focus on simple pleasures of daily life, such as eating, drinking, and taking enjoyment in their work. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the date, authorship, and perspective of Ecclesiastes, as it compares and contrasts with the rest of the Biblical tradition.

Brian Carwana, director of the Encounter World Religions Centre, presents on the history of Evangelical Christianity within the context of modernity, showing that despite its anti-liberal character, the movement has evolved to thrive in the context of modernity.

Don’t Read the Bible If You Don’t Know This

At the earliest stages of Christianity, the community was remarkable in the ancient world for the prominence of women in the movement, including in positions of leadership. New Testament texts have women acting as apostles and prophets — the two most important roles in the movement’s first generations. Extrabiblical sources confirmed that women served in the important position of “deacon” in the first and second centuries. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the evidence for women in leadership in early Christianity and how these roles were phased out as leadership passed to a hierarchy of bishops drawn from an all-male priesthood.

The Worldwide Church of God preached that Anglo-Saxons were the descendants of the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel and the Book of Mormon claims that the First Nations peoples of North America are descended from those same lost tribes. The Dowieites of Zion City, Illinois, taught that the world is flat. What happens when religions have falsifiable truth claims and discover they are false?

How did a Jewish movement led by a Jewish man with only Jewish followers quite quickly become a movement of non-Jews? In this lecture, Brian Carwana, director of the Encounter World Religions Centre, will show us how this transition in early Christianity is unique when we compare it to other religions. We will look at who Jesus was, and we will explore how and why the shift from Jerusalem to Rome occurred and how this transformation has shaped what Christianity is today.

In the first centuries after Jesus, many Christian movements flourished, each with their own scriptures, beliefs, and practices. Over time, the “proto-Orthodox” Christians succeeded in defining their teachings as correct and establishing authority, while rival groups were suppressed or forgotten.

The Roman Empire a military, political, economic, social, and spiritual crisis in the 3rd century, which led to significant transformations (which historians mark as the end of the Classical period and the transition to Late Antiquity). Although many had earlier roots, mystery religions flourished in Late Antiquity. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will review various cults including the mysteries of Eleusis, Samothrace, Mithras, and Isis. Should Christianity be considered a mystery religion and/or did it absorb practices from its ancient rivals?

Roman, Germanic, Celtic, and Norse paganism was deeply rooted in European customs, including holiday festivals. In honor of Halloween we're considering how our present-day customs echo practices in the Medieval Celtic holiday of Samhain. On Tuesday, October 30 2018 at 7:30PM EDT, our history, philosophy, & theology group explored the pagan legacies that were Christianized and ultimately secularized to form our contemporary calendar of holidays in North America.

"Here there be dragons": We'll look at how Medieval Christians understood their world from the maps they drew of it. Modern myth holds that people in the so-called "Dark Ages" believed the world was flat until Columbus proved otherwise. We'll learn about the actual Medieval worldview from a survey of dozens of Medieval maps.

Although Judaism is a monotheist religion, the Biblical book of Proverbs contains a long speech by a divine being who identifies herself as “Wisdom.” Wisdom states that “the Lord brought me forth as the first of his works” and that as he was engaging in the world’s creation, “I was constantly at his side” (Proverbs 8:22-30). In addition, the first century CE Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria identified God’s “Word” (Logos) as a separate hypostasis of God. These and other ideas about the nature of God were part of the immediate context with which early Christians understood the relationship between the ineffable Creator, God the Father, and his “only begotten Son,” Jesus Christ. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look that the understanding of divine beings like Holy Wisdom and God’s Logos within the context of Second Temple Judaism generally and will track specific ideas about these figures among the diverse factions of early Christians, including the Gnostics, Ebionites, and Proto-Orthodox communities.

A look of what the Bible does and doesn’t have to say about homosexuality. In contrast to the claims of many Evangelical Christians, the component texts of the Bible do not condemn same-sex orientation. John Hamer, Pastor of the Community of Christ Toronto Congregation looks at how verses from Sodom and Gomorrah to Leviticus to Paul are routinely misread. This lecture is part of a series of events celebrating LGBTQ+ Pride Month 2021.

Dumuzi descends to the underworld, Baal is struck down by Mot, Osiris is dismembered, and Persephone is kidnapped by Hades—each myth cycles through death and return tied to the rhythms of nature. The Easter tradition shares this symbolic landscape, yet it also departs from it in key ways. In this lecture, Leandro Palacios of Toronto Centre Place examines how the Passion and Resurrection accounts of Jesus draw on ancient motifs of dying and rising gods, while reinterpreting them within a new theological and historical framework. We will also consider why modern scholars have questioned the old category of “dying and rising gods” and how the Easter proclamation offered something distinct that resonated with early Christian communities.

In its first three centuries, Christianity spread rapidly, but at the time of Constantine’s conversion, less than 10% of the population of the Roman Empire was Christian. Three centuries later, the overwhelming majority of the Roman and post-Roman world were Christian, and adherents of the old gods (paganism) had declined to 10% or less of the population. Imperial patronage clearly changed Western history decisively. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the life of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor of Rome, and the many ways his conversion changed the Roman Empire and transformed his adopted religion, Christianity.

Justinian I, who reigned in Constantinople from 527 to 565, was probably the last Roman Emperor to natively speak Latin. He is remembered as one of the greatest emperors in history, who constructed Hagia Sophia and codified Roman law into the Corpus Juris Civilis, which became one of the most influential documents in the foundation of the Western legal tradition today. Leading the Eastern Empire in the century after the West had fallen to Germanic invaders, Justinian’s most famous legacy was his attempt to restore the glory of the Roman Empire by conquering the lost Western provinces. His generals successfully destroyed the Vandal and Ostrogothic kingdoms, reclaiming North Africa and Italy for Constantinople. But the wars were especially devastating to Italy, which returned to Roman rule not as part of its rich core, but as a poor frontier province. Ironically, much of the way of life for Romans in Italy that had been preserved under the rule of the Ostrogoths was now destroyed by Justinian. And this great cost for Rome and Italy was accompanied by no lasting gain for Constantinople, which needed to recall its troops for wars in the East, leaving the Romans in Italy to deal with a new Germanic invader, the Lombards, on their own. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the ideas of identity, continuity, and innovation in the context of the post-Roman transition in Late Antiquity, to consider whether Justinian actually destroyed Rome while trying to save it.

The Bible is the best-selling book of all time and many people, including Christians, imagine that its authors were writing with a single voice with the final canon in mind. But, of course, the Bible is actually a library of texts written in different languages over the course of centuries, that reflect the diverse contexts of its authors, most of whom never imagined that their individual book would eventually be part of a “Bible.” While it’s often assumed that the final canon was approved at the Council of Nicaea, this is not the case. In fact, canonization was a slow and haphazard process, which resulted in different lists for different branches of Christianity (Catholic, Protestant/Anglican, Orthodox, and others). John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at criteria used to create the canon and the historical development of the Bible.

Did Zoroastrianism shape the way we think about good and evil, the afterlife, and the end of the world? How much of modern Judaism and Christianity can be traced back to this tradition? The reforms of the ancient Iranian religion by the prophet Zarathustra led to the foundation of Zoroastrianism, which many religious studies scholars identify as the first “world religion.” Zarathustra focused the faith on the worship of the supreme God known in the Avestan language as Ahura Mazda (“Lord Wisdom”). Ahura Mazda is nevertheless opposed by a cosmic devil named Angra Mainyu (“Evil Spirit”), which accounts for the existence of evil in the world. This struggle is predicted to continue until the end of the world, when a savior will appear, resurrect the dead for final judgment, and establish a new world where evil has no place. While ideas like a cosmic devil, resurrection of the dead, the Apocalypse, final judgment, and an afterlife in heaven and hell were absent in Judaism in the First Temple Period, they became central to many sects of Judaism in the Second Temple Period—after the Persian conquest of Babylon allowed the Judean exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple under Persian rule. Nevertheless, dating Zoroastrian practices remains difficult due to limitations in historical sources. In this lecture, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place surveys the available evidence to assess the extent to which Zoroastrian beliefs and practices influenced the development of Jewish and Christian traditions.

Have you ever heard that Joseph was an elderly widower, and that Jesus’ siblings were actually half-brothers and sisters that were children of Joseph and his first wife? Did you know that Mary’s parents’ names were Joachim and Anna? Have you seen pictures of the nativity taking place at a stable housed inside a cave? Have you heard that after Mary gave birth to Jesus, her midwife affirmed that she was still a virgin? None of these details is in the Bible, which gives us two different (and contradictory) nativity stories in Matthew and Luke’s gospels. Instead significant sources of Christian tradition regarding Jesus’ birth along with the life of his mother Mary come from a pseudepigraphic text that ancient Christians excluded from the New Testament. During this Christmas season, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look that this non-canonical gospel, usually known as the “Protoevangelium of James” (or Pseudo-James), its contents, authorship, and influence.

Early Christianity included a wide diversity of beliefs on ideas as central as who Christ is and what is Jesus’ relationship with the Father to whom he prayed. Gnostic Christians focused their attention on personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) which they developed through elaborate philosophical mythologies. By the end of the Second Christian Century, bishops of the proto-orthodox establishment, increasingly identified Gnosticism as a deadly “heresy,” which they sought to purge from Christianity. One of the figures leading the fight was Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon from 177 until his death in 202, who wrote a book entitled “Against Heresies” that was largely focused on combating Gnosticism. In a presentation given from Lyon, France, John Hamer will look at the history and beliefs of the ancient Gnostics and consider why attacks by leaders like Irenaeus proved so effective.

The rise of atheism in modern Western societies is often treated as a rejection of religion—but what if this cultural trend is more accurately understood as part of Protestantism itself? In this live lecture, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place explores how Protestant reforms—especially the rejection of Catholic tradition, the doctrine of sola scriptura, the emphasis on rational inquiry, and the rise of literalist interpretations of scripture—created fertile ground for natural religion and Enlightenment-era deism, and ultimately for an ethical framework devoid of spiritual or supernatural elements. We will also consider how modern atheism continues to engage in dialogue with Evangelicalism—another modern expression of Protestantism—echoing the way theologically opposing movements have remained in conversation throughout Christian history.

Live video will start a few minutes before the hour listed for this event. Please note you may have to refresh the page several times until the live video appears. Like and follow our page to get notified when we go live. Zoom discussion will follow (please ask for link) All serious scholars agree that there was a historical Jesus who was executed by the Romans in the early 1st century AD. The canonical gospels give a detailed account of Jesus’ final week, from his triumphal entry into Jerusalem to overturning the money-changer’s tables, his celebration of the last supper, his betrayal by Judas, his trial, and his crucifixion. But how much of these accounts are historical? What if there were evidence that most of the story is myth? Your support makes these lectures possible. You can make a small tax deductible contribution (US and Canada) today at www.centreplace.ca. Thank you!

In this live lecture, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place examines how the Bible has been misread, mistranslated, and weaponized—often in direct contradiction to its original intent. We'll explore the real meaning behind the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, take a closer look at Leviticus and Paul, and highlight biblical stories that suggest deep, loving same-sex relationships, including David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, and Jesus and the Beloved Disciple.

The historical Jesus and his disciples were all Jewish. In his lifetime and for decades after, the followers of Jesus did not see themselves as part of a religion separate from Judaism, at most they were a sect within Judaism, like other contemporary sects including the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots. That changed in the second half of the 1st century, as individuals and communities who continued to testify of Jesus as the Messiah, the Christ, were expelled from synagogues. The groups, now calling themselves “Christians,” began to emerge as a new religion, which sought to separate itself from their former co-religionists. The New Testament’s gospels, written toward the end of the 1st century reflect this historical context (and not the context of Jesus’ lifetime). This is especially true in the Gospel of John where Jesus speaks of “the Jews” as if they were a separate group that he is not a part of. Unfortunately, the negative portrayal of Jews in the Gospel of John has informed attitudes among some Christians to this day, serving as a precedent for and a cause of Antisemitism. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will review the portrayal of Jews in the Gospel of John and its unfortunate legacies.

The Cynics were an ancient Greek philosophical school that rejected property and all social conventions to proclaim the pursuit of virtue in accordance with a simple and idealistic way of life. Popularized by Diogenes (c. 412-323 BC), by the first century AD the practice had spread, and cynic philosophers were a common sight in cities across the Greco-Roman world. Several scholars of the historical Jesus have noted similarities between Jesus’ philosophy and movement and that of contemporary cynics. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the case they make as he compares ancient cynicism with the pre-Christian Jesus movement.

Between 1946 and 1956, a remarkable set of ancient scrolls was found buried in caves at Qumran, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea in the West Bank of Palestine. These scrolls proved to be the remains of the library of a Jewish community of the Second Temple Period, which most scholars identify with the sect of the Essenes. In addition to providing scholars access to the oldest known manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, the scrolls included texts relating to the Essene community, including their apocalyptic beliefs as they anticipated the world’s end and their expectations of the Messiah. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will survey what the Dead Sea Scrolls tell us about the Essenes, and consider their relationship with the followers of Jesus and John the Baptist.

The authors of Matthew and Luke seem to have composed their gospels independently, using a text that compiled sayings of Jesus — a lost gospel scholars have dubbed “Q”. If Q existed, it was among the earliest gospels and potentially gives us our best glimpse of the historical Jesus and the movement he led. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at what we can learn about the community that produced Q from the reconstructed text of the lost sayings gospel.

Jesus and his original followers were Jews, but because the first Christians quickly went into schism with their former co-religionists, Jesus’ Jewish roots have often been obscured. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the historical Jesus and the earliest Christian groups within the context of Second Temple Judaism and contemporary Jewish sects, teachings, and practices.

We'll look at the peculiar history of the Latter Day Saint movement from its foundation through 1860. We'll look at the early history of this quintessentially American religion, founded in 1830 evolved rapidly as church members attempted to build a New Jerusalem, only to be driven from multiple settlements by irate neighbors.

Simeon Stylites spent 37 years of his life on top of a pillar near the city of Aleppo, Syria, during the 5th century AD. In a lecture from 2017, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place looks at why anyone would do such a thing in its historical context. What was the appeal of the extreme ascetic life and how did it yield the impressive "spiritual power" that allowed Simeon and his fellow ascetics to overturn and destroy reverence for the old pagan gods, whose traditions and shrines had existed for centuries and millennia?

Written sometime between the mid-1st century and early 2nd-century AD, the Didache (or “Teachings of the Twelve Apostles”) is one of the most important early Christian writings to have been left out of the New Testament Canon. The text includes some of the earliest practical rules for the emerging institution of the church but describes a decidedly primitive stage in Christian development. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will review the text and consider the community that produced it. Why was it left out of the Bible and does it have anything to teach Christians today?

As early Christians were deciding which books belonged in the New Testament of the Bible, a long, enigmatic text called “The Shepherd of Hermas,” was on many of their lists. The text is included in the Codex Sinaiticus (one of the most important early Bible manuscripts) and Irenaeus considered it to be scripture. Dating from the beginning of the Second Century, the text was written in Rome and includes a series of visions granted to Hermas, a former slave and brother of Pope Pius I, followed by a list of twelve commandments, and a series of ten parables. The text appears pre-Trinitarian and may reflect a Binitarian or Adoptionist Christology. Moreover, the author seems to argue that Christians should follow Jewish law, that works and faith are both necessary for salvation, and may be our earliest source for the idea of “the Rapture” in Christianity. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will outline this fascinating lost book of the Bible and what it adds to our understanding of the diversity among early Christians.

All modern Christian sects are descended from the early "proto-Orthodox" Christians who successfully defined their doctrines and practices as correct. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place reviews the many early Christianities that lost out, including Jewish Christians who argued for the continued relevance of Mosaic Law and Gnostic Christians who rejected the Hebrew Bible altogether.

Although the Apostle Paul argued that Christians were not required to follow the law of Moses (including circumcision and keeping kosher). However, many Christian contemporaries disagreed and groups that continued to follow Mosaic law survived for many centuries. Although their scriptures have been lost, many fragments remain. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will survey what we can know about the lost gospels of the Hebrews, the Ebionites, and the Nazoreans.

The Testaments of Three Patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (the sons of Israel), the Testaments of Moses, of Solomon, and of Adam are among the many ancient texts that were left out of the Bible. Although written by different authors in different languages over many centuries, these texts share some common traits, usually taking the form of the final words of the ancient patriarch prior to his death. In reviewing these texts, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will consider who wrote them and when, what information they contain, why testaments were a popular form, and why they were left out of the canon.

Charting 2,000 Years of Division between Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, and other Christians. There are some 2.5 billion Christians in the world, but they are divided into tens of thousands of individual denominations. What's the history behind this division? What sets Catholics off from the Orthodox, Anglicans, Protestants, and others?

Although the Book of Genesis is generally thought of as the time of the patriarchs, in many stories it is the Biblical matriarchs who win the day. Certainly, Rebekah pulls the wool over her husband Isaac’s eyes to make sure that his blessing would pass to her favorite son Jacob over Isaac’s favorite, Esau. Similarly, Eve is far more active than Adam, Sarah laughs at God, Rachel saves Jacob from her father’s wrath, Tamar outwits Judah, Hagar is visited by an angel, and in less edifying examples, Lot’s daughters have their way with him and Potiphar’s wife gets her revenge on Joseph. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place reviews the strong female characters in the Book of Genesis and their implications.

Medieval Science and Sorcery - Back before there was a difference between astrology and astronomy or alchemy and chemistry, Medieval science looked significantly different than its Modern-day heir. We’ll look at the philosophical underpinnings that Medieval thinkers inherited from Antiquity and how their ideas about the natural world worked systematically.

Exploring Muslim sources in order to understand how Islam experienced the Crusades. Can we reconstruct a less biased, more accurate picture of these "holy wars"? Can we learn lessons we can apply in 21st century world?

Christianity began as a small Jewish sect among the common people in the Galilean countryside. The religion’s first writers lacked the education and sophistication of contemporary thinkers in the much larger pagan Greco-Roman world. Around the year 170, the pagan philosopher Celsus wrote a devastating polemic against Christianity. For 70 years, Christians were silent in response, in part, as a strategy (hoping Celsus’ book would be forgotten), but also because they lacked a theologian with sufficient training to respond. That changed with the coming of Origen of Alexandria, arguably Christianity’s first native genius. Having composed Christianity’s first systematic theology in the 220s, Origen went on to write a point-by-point rebuttal of Celsus in 248. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at Origen’s background, life, thought, and influence, including his posthumous condemnation as a heretic.

How did the religion of the "Prince of Peace" triumph over the warrior gods of Asgard and Valhalla? Beginning in the 8th century AD, pagan Norsemen plundered the monasteries of the Frankish and Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. How could warrior gods like Thor and Odin lose out to Jesus?

Pope Francis, the Bishop of Rome, is today the unchallenged, supreme head of the Catholic Church, which includes about 1.3 billion baptized adherents, which is about half of the world’s Christians. But while Francis and his predecessors claim an unbroken line extending all the way back to St. Peter, Jesus’ leading apostle, the bishops of Rome have not always enjoyed unchallenged control of Christendom. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will explore the development of the institution of the Papacy, how the bishops of Rome extended their authority over their fellow bishops through ideology and political savvy, and how the Papacy ultimately defeated alternatives heads of the church: Emperors, ecumenical councils, and ultimately the political leaders of modern nation states.

At the end of the 12th century, a wealthy merchant named Peter Waldo from the city of Lyon in the Kingdom of Burgundy, commissioned local monks to translate the Bible into the vernacular Franco-Provencal language --- the first time the Bible had been translated from Latin into a common tongue spoken in the West. Waldo became fascinated with the ideas of purity and perfection and decided to follow the example of Jesus by selling his possessions to give to the poor. He then travelled around the countryside begging and preaching about the value of poverty. By 1170, Waldo had gathered a large following that became known as the “Poor of Lyon.” Waldo’s focus on Biblical examples put him at odds with ecclesiastical tradition. Waldo rejected doctrines including transubstantiation and purgatory as non-Biblical and promoted a universal priesthood instead of specialized clergy. The church reacted by condemning Waldo’s ideas at church councils, and when he refused to recant, he was excommunicated and declared a heretic. In a lecture presented from Lyon, which is now in the Republic of France, John Hamer of Centre Place will look at the life of Peter Waldo in context, and consider the Waldensians as a precursor of the later Protestant Reformation.

Philo of Alexandria was a Hellenistic Jewish theologian and a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth. Building on the works of Heraclitus and Plato, Philo interpreted the Bible allegorically and proposed that God’s Word (“Logos” in Greek) existed as an independent being—the demiurge. His writings share much in common with the Gospel of John’s portrayal of the Messiah or Christ as the Logos, an idea that prefigured the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Philo’s Alexandria—home to the great Museum and Library—was the center of Hellenistic philosophy in the Greco-Roman world. The city housed a large Jewish diaspora community, where the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, and Hellenism and Judaism were synthesized. In this lecture, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place examines the works of Philo of Alexandria in the broader context of Alexandria’s history, the Jewish diaspora, and the Greek philosophical developments of his time, as well as his possible influence on early Christianity.

How compatible is the Hebrew Bible with Greek philosophy? As interpreted by the 1st century CE Jewish Egyptian author Philo of Alexandria, the two are one and the same. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place looks at how Philo recast Moses as a philosopher king work how his allegorical interpretations presaged and influenced later Christian understandings of scripture.

Many Christians view the Bible as the source of their religion. But to interpret any text, it has always been necessary to have an intellectual framework. While Christianity was founded many centuries after Plato, Christian thinkers built upon Plato and Neoplatonism to craft their theology.

In recounting his version of the story of Jesus’ birth, the author of the gospel of Matthew tells readers “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet.” But how well do the Christmas stories in Matthew and Luke align with prophecies about the coming Messiah in the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament)? In this live streamed lecture John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will outline the prophecies cited by the evangelists and the insight they give into the creative and non-literalistic way the earliest Christians understood scripture. A Q&A will follow the lecture. Participants are encouraged to ask questions about this topic on the live chat. Tuesday, December 14, at 7 pm EST.

Can philosophy or theology prove that God exists? Anselm of Bec, a leading Medieval thinker believed he could Can philosophy or theology prove that God exists? Anselm of Bec, a leading Medieval thinker believed he could using what's known as the "ontological argument." We'll examine the ontological argument and look at its critiques contemporary and present-day.

Among the philosophers who most influenced Medieval Christian theology whose work provided the inspiration for stained glass windows in churches is an ancient thinker who was not the person he pretended to be. Dionysius the Areopagite was a minor character in the Book of Acts. In the 5th century, a Christian Neoplatonist impersonated Dionysius as a way to give his philosophical writings the aura of apostolic authority. He was further confused with the patron saint of Paris, a completely different Dionysius or “Denis,” who had been bishop of Paris in the 3rd century. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will untangle the histories of the different Dionysiuses and explain the scope and influence of Pseudo-Dionysius’ works.

Although the Fourth Gospel of the Christian New Testament is traditionally attributed to John, the beloved disciple of Jesus, the text was actually composed by multiple authors. There is no indication that any of these were named John nor that John is the name of the anonymous “beloved disciple” described in the text. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place examines the evidence that a document that some scholars call the "Signs Gospel" is at the heart of the present-day canonical Gospel of John.

The world’s religions have complex and often troubling relationships with the institution of slavery. Although some Christians fought for abolition of the slave trade based on their faith, others used the Bible to justify keeping other humans as property. The Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam arose in an era of slave societies. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at their long, complex, and often unfortunate relationships with the institution.

During the Reformation, Martin Luther and Protestant Christians argued that everyone should be able to read the Bible in his or her own language. When they went back to the Hebrew texts of the Old Testament, they realized that the Latin Christian Bible included a number of books that Jews did not consider scripture. The Reformers stripped these books from the canon, calling them the “Apocrypha” or hidden books. We'll take a look at these books that the Reformers hid away and consider why they made it into the early Christian canon and not the Jewish canon.

How did faith healing and reported miracles work in Antiquity and the Middle Ages? Modern Western medicine has become very effective at healing injury and curing illness, but its history of effectiveness is very recent. Previously, those with chronic conditions had little alternative than hope of miracles (and physical magic). John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place looks at the history of belief in miracle healing in Ancient and Medieval times, the role it played in society, and its legacies today.

In the Biblical story, when Moses returns from Mt Sinai to find the Israelites worshiping a golden calf, he smashes the original tablets of the Ten Commandments. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will smash several misconceptions about these famous legal precepts, beginning with the actual list (there are actually three versions preserved in the Bible) and how they are numbered. The Apostle Paul taught that Christians should not follow Mosaic Law because Christ had fulfilled the Old Covenant and established a New Covenant. Nevertheless, Christian focus on the Ten Commandments continues to provoke confusion about the status of Old Testament law in Christianity.

The New Testament’s fourth gospel, attributed to John, differs in themes, tone, theology, and essential details from the other three synoptic gospels. However, many of its themes are found in the Bible’s three epistles of John and the Book of Revelation (which was composed by an author named John). Together these books are called “Johannine literature” because of their association with the name John. While modern scholars have rejected the traditional idea that all these texts were written by the same figure, the historical apostle John, many propose that they emerged out of an early Christian “Johannine community.” John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at what is known about the historical John, survey the Johannine literature, and sketch out what the Johannine community might have looked like.

How was the Bible viewed and used before the invention of the printing press changed history? Five billion copies of the Bible have been printed, making it the best-selling and most influential book of all time. Today the Bible is seen as the backbone of Christian practice. Christians own Bibles and often read and study the text in their own language. And for Protestants, the Bible is the “sole source” of religious authority. But this wasn’t always the case. How did Christians use and view the Bible before the invention of the printing press, when it was read primarily by clerics in languages like Latin that only the educated knew? We’ll explore how the changes of modernity and how Protestant lenses have distorted the way Christians viewed scripture in Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Of books included in the canon of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, the Book of Daniel was the last to be written. By putting visions into the words of characters who lived centuries earlier, the book's authors were able to "predict" events that had already occurred in order to give credibility to additional predictions about the immediate future. Will look at the consequences of the inclusion of this kind of literary prophecy for adherents of Abrahamic faiths who have read such predictions literally.

The Book of Daniel is the source of some of the Old Testament’s most lasting prophetic visions: A statue with a head made of gold, breast and arms made of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron mixed with clay that is toppled by a stone cut without hands. A vision of successive beasts that appear from the sea. The vision of one like a “son of man” appearing in the clouds. The book’s protagonist Daniel, a Jewish noble living in exile at the royal court at Babylon in the 6th century bce, interprets the visions to predict the future. These predictions are uncannily accurate up until the year 167 bce, when they suddenly become wildly inaccurate. As scholars have now show, this is because the text was not written by Daniel or anyone who knew him, but by an apocalyptic prophet writing between 167 and 164 bce, whose accurate “predictions” recount events of the past and whose proved a complete failure at predicting the actual future. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the Book of Daniel as a textbook example of what happens in religion when prophecy fails.

In this live lecture, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will extract and evaluate the ethical teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, as distinct from his overtly religious teachings and the Christian understanding of Jesus as the Christ. While prophets in the Biblical tradition attempted to persuade by invoking divine authority, “thus says the Lord,” Jesus more frequently taught by analogy and example, similar to the methods of contemporary sages and philosophers. As we distill Jesus’ ethics, we will compare them with other ethical systems of the era.

Why did paganism lose out to Christianity in ancient Rome and what pagan practices survived? Only a tiny fraction of Romans were Christian when the Emperor Constantine converted. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place looks at why the old religions failed to meet the challenge of the new faith.

Who were the Gnostics? What secret knowledge did they keep? Why did they die out? In Christianity’s first centuries, a powerful challenge to leaders of the emerging orthodoxy came from the Gnostics. “Gnostic” means “having knowledge” and these groups believed they had secret, esoteric information about life’s meaning. What were the secrets kept by the Gnostics and why did their sect eventually die out?

Many religious fundamentalists read the Bible literally, insisting that its stories occurred historically as written. While some take this to the logical extreme forcing them to reject science in favor of alternative theories like young Earth creationism others look for naturalistic explanations to preserve a literalistic historicist reading of the text. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the modern development of these interpretative lenses and will consider how such readings radically distort the original stories and rob them of any meaning.

Many early Christians believed that all matter is evil, and the spirit-realm is good. There was no “sin” just “ignorance”, and the key to eternal life was found through “gnosis” — knowledge that was kept hidden from the masses. We’ll look at their many gospels and other texts that combine ideas Christian, Jewish, and Greek ideas which Orthodox Christians left out of the Bible.

An early Christian group believed that Jesus had revealed secret knowledge about the meaning of life, the nature of God, and the universe. They became known as the Gnostics (meaning "having knowledge.) Gnosticism posed a powerful challenge to what would eventually become Christian orthodoxy. In this lecture, we will explore how the Gnostics imagined Jesus and what set their beliefs apart.

In this lecture, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place explores how Mary Magdalene was portrayed by Gnostic and other early Christian communities outside the emerging orthodoxy. In texts like the Gospel of Mary, the Dialogue of the Savior, and the Gospel of Thomas, Mary is depicted as a bearer of secret knowledge and a spiritual interlocutor who challenges the authority of male apostles. These writings reflect alternative theological frameworks in which salvation came through inner revelation rather than institutional authority.

Of all the gospels left out of the New Testament canon, the Gospel of Thomas may be the most important. Some scholars argue that this collection of the sayings of Jesus preserves an independent witness of the historical Jesus. Others believe the text is dependent on the New Testament and contaminated by the ideas of Gnostic Christianity. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place gives an overview of Thomas and compares the text’s sayings with those in the four canonical gospels.

Scholars had long argued that the authors of Matthew and Luke used a lost gospel of Jesus’ sayings known as “Q,” in addition to using Mark’s gospel as a source. One argument against the existence of Q was that no such “sayings gospels” were known. That changed with the rediscovery of the sayings Gospel of Thomas at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. The Gospel of Thomas, like the hypothetical Q, contains few narrative elements and consists almost entirely of a list of teachings attributed to Jesus. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will compare Thomas and Q to consider overlaps and relationships of the sayings each text preserves.

After the nativity stories in Matthew and Luke, the canonical gospels have precious little to say about the life of Jesus between his birth and the beginning of his public ministry as an adult. The infancy gospel of James and the infancy gospel of Thomas (not to be confused with the more important sayings gospel of Thomas) attempted to fill in some of the details with mixed results. Although both texts were left out of the New Testament, their narratives have had a significant influence on Christian tradition and doctrine and episodes from these apocryphal sources even found their way into the Quran. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will review both texts in light of our sources for these “lost years” of Jesus’ life.

The Great Schism: Greek East vs Latin West. A look at the breakdown in the relationship between the churches of Rome and Constantinople, which included petty personality conflicts, diverging political interests, and a few fundamental disagreements. We'll also look at how and why the rift has never been healed despite repeated attempts for the past 1,000 years.

What can we know about the historical apostles? How have historians separated Christian traditions about Jesus’ apostles from the actual historical figures? For example, what actual evidence exists to back up the tradition that Simon Peter eventually moved to Rome where he became the city’s first bishop (and first pope)? What is an “apostle”? If there were only Twelve apostles, why is Paul called an apostle, when he was never one of the Twelve? John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the legends and traditions later Christians shared about the apostles and will outline what can be known about the actual historical figures.

What can we know about the historical Jesus of Nazareth? How and why does the life of the historic figure differ from competing (and contradictory) accounts in the New Testament? What can other sources tell us, including non-Christian accounts as well as gospels left out of the canon? John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will outline an overview of what can and cannot be known about the historical Jesus and will talk about the difference between the portrait painted by academic history, the portraits painted by scripture, and the experience of the divine Christ as understood by Christians.

Hell looms large in many Christians' beliefs about the afterlife, but the idea isn't found in the Old Testament. God doesn't warn Adam and Eve that the consequences of sin include confinement to hell. Moses and the prophets don't threaten the children of Israel with hellfire. Why not? Because the idea of hell had not yet been invented or brought into Judaism. We'll look at the origins of the idea.

Christianity’s rise to become the world’s most populous religion largely hinges on a pivotal moment in history: the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine. Had Constantine’s imperial heirs not patronized the church, co-opting it as Rome’s state religion, history would have been very different. One last pagan Emperor did attempt to reverse the trend, stripping the church of imperial patronage, while promoting the worship of the old gods: Julian, the nephew of Constantine. In this live lecture, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the reign of Julian (remembered by Christians as “the Apostate”) and the reasons why he failed in his attempt to defeat Christianity.

The “Life of Adam and Eve” is an ancient expansion of the Genesis story after the first man and woman were driven out of Eden. Although the original (likely written in Hebrew) is lost, variations of the text survive in Latin, Greek, Armenian, and Slavonic --- showing its wide popularity. The biblical story of the Fall of the first humans and its effect has intrigued Jews, Christians, and Muslims from Antiquity to the present. Although it was not included in the Bible, the “Life of Adam and Eve” added biographical details and influenced later literary works as diverse as the Quran and Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will give an overview of the text, consider its provenance and date, and look at its role in literature and theology related to the Adam and Eve story.

Monty Python’s “The Life of Brian” is an irreverent, hilarious spoof of the life of Jesus. Nevertheless, in some ways the movie better understands the historical context of Roman-occupied Jerusalem in the 30s AD than some Christian apologetic films. As a light-hearted lecture for our Christmas season, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at what Monty Python got right and wrong about the historical Jesus.

A look at the lost text many scholars believe is our earliest witness of the historical Jesus. Live video will start a few minutes before the hour listed for this event. Please note you may have to refresh the page several times until the live video appears. Like and follow our page to get notified when we go live. Zoom discussion will follow (please ask for link) The content shared between the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke) means that they share a direct literary relationship. The most commonly accepted hypothesis states that Mark was written first and the authors of Matthew and Luke used Mark to write their own accounts. However, for this to be true, they must have also shared an additional gospel, now lost, which scholars call “Q”. What’s the evidence for Q? If it existed, who wrote it and what can it tell us about the historical Jesus?

According to the Bible, as of the 8th century bc, the twelve tribes of Israel were divided into two, unequal kingdoms: the southern Kingdom of Judah, consisting of just two tribes (Judah and Benjamin), and the much more powerful, northern Kingdom of Israel, consisting of ten tribes (Ephraim, Manasseh, Reuben, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, and most of Levi). When the northern kingdom was conquered around the year 722 bc by the Assyrian Empire, much of its nobility and propertied classes were deported to the Assyrian heartland, never to return. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the history of the so-called “Lost Ten Tribes” as well as many of the claims, legends, and fantasies about their whereabouts today.

In 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights of King Henry II of England. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place looks at this famous martyrdom within the broader context of the battle of church vs. state in Medieval England and beyond.

When Anglo-Saxon poets translated Genesis into the Old Saxon language, the reworked the text to include themes common to warrior epics like Beowulf. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place gives an overview of the text and discusses whether it was the inspiration for John Milton's great English epic, "Paradise Lost."

The Papal monarchy is an institution with ancient roots. Presently the head of the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican City State, prior to the Protestant Reformation, the Papacy was previously the head of the entire Western (Latin) church and ruled directly over a much larger Papal State. Prior to the Eastern Orthodox schism, the Papacy often made good its claim to be the head of the entire Christian world — claims with historic precedents dating back to at least the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The Papacy claims roots that go back even further to authority given by the historic Jesus to the historic Peter. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will review the basis for these claims and the historical evidence for the earliest Christian communities in Rome.

What do decorated trees, Santa Claus, reindeer, mistletoe, and eggnog have do with the birth of Jesus? Nowhere in the Bible is Jesus’ birthday given as December 25th. However, the Romans did celebrate that date, not as the birthday of the Son of God, but as the birthday of their sun god. We’ll look at the pagan origins of common Christmas traditions. The Pagan Roots of Christmas.

Popularized by the Medieval philosopher and theologian William of Occam, the idea that simplest solution is better than more complex explanations (the principle of parsimony) has become an important tool in the scientific method, leading to great advances in the physical sciences. However, the simplest explanation is not always the most accurate explanation in fields like the humanities and history. In this lecture, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place considers the philosophical basis for Occam's Razor as well as some of its consequences in the development of Western philosophy and theology.

The origins, activities, tragedies, myths, and legacies of this infamous institution. "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!" is a hilarious Monty Python sketch that proves the adage that comedy = tragedy + time. In its time in early modern Spain, the Inquisition was infamous for its activities against Spanish Jews, Muslims, Christian converts from both groups, as well as heretics, Protestants, and other perceived enemies of the Spanish crown. There is no doubt the the persecution, expulsions, torture, trial and execution of members of these groups resulted in horrific tragedy and suffering. But we will also look at the extent to which some of the reported atrocities of the Inquisition may have been exaggerated by Protestants as part of a program of anti-Catholic polemics.

In the Roman Empire, Stoicism was more than philosophy—it was a way of life embraced by emperors, slaves, and sages alike. At the same time, the teachings of Jesus offered a radically different vision of justice, humility, and spiritual integrity. Yet in some respects, Stoic and Christian moral teachings converged. In this lecture, John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place explores the possible influence of Stoicism on early Christianity and considers how the figure of Jesus might be understood as a teacher of Stoic virtue within the framework of Second Temple Judaism.

"Messiah" is arguably the most iconic work of sacred music in English language. Handel compiled the biblical story of Jesus from birth to resurrection, including passages from Isaiah, the Gospels, the Book of Revelation, and more. As we approach the Christmas season, Leandro Palacios and Michael Karpowicz of Toronto Centre Place look into the music, the libretto, and the composer, to fully appreciate this masterpiece which continues to be recorded and performed all over the world today. Be ready to sing along!

The story of Galileo’s trial and the banning of his work by the Pope has become a staple of the “History of Science” narrative. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will review at the actual history of the trial and trace the way a Protestant polemic against Catholicism came to be repurposed as a secular myth.

The myth of Pope Joan and the real scandals of the medieval Church that led to the Gregorian Reform. According to a popular tale, a clever woman once secretly ascended St. Peter's throne and ruled as "Pope Joan." While this tale is a myth, the Medieval papacy devolved into even more interesting scandals which set the stage for the Gregorian Reform movement. We will look at the low point of Europe's oldest monarchy and its amazing rebound in the later Middle Ages.

In 1204, crusaders on route to the Holy Land sacked the city of Constantinople. The great capital of the Byzantine Empire was weakened and set on a path which led to its eventual fall to the Ottoman Turks while the schism between Eastern and Western Christianity was solidified. What went wrong? The Crusades are generally seen as a misguided outcome of Medieval Western Christian religious enthusiasm with few positive, lasting results. But even within the context of the times, the Fourth Crusade has stood out as a particularly dark chapter. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the context of Fourth Crusade, its events, and its legacies.

During the later 14th Century, Western Christianity was divided on the question of who was the legitimate successor to St. Peter: the Pope in Rome or the Pope in Avignon? An ecumenical council was called in Pisa to settle the question, which deposed both rivals and appointed a new Pope. However, neither pope recognized the council's authority and thus from 1378 onward, Western Christianity had three Popes: one in Rome, one in Avignon, and one in Pisa. We'll look at this interesting history but also talk about the background ideas of authority, divine monarchy vs. representative councils, and the division of church and state.

Transubstantiation is the doctrine of the Catholic Church which teaches that the substance of the bread in the sacrament of communion is changed into the substance of the Body of Christ (and the substance of the wine into the substance of the Blood of Christ). Nevertheless the “outward characteristics” of the bread and the wine (the “eucharistic species”) remain unaltered --- which means that “transubstantiation” is not the same as “transmaterializion.” The theological term “substance” is also critical to the Christian idea of the Trinity, where three distinct “persons” of God are said to be “consubstantial” as the One. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the development of these theological terms and propositions and consider what Catholics and other Christians mean when they talk about the “Body of Christ.

The evidence suggesting Paul's anti-gay writings might be based on his own same-sex attraction. Paul's enemies questioned his practice of working with male missionary companions and made veiled charges that these relationships were sexual. Meanwhile, in his own writings, Paul spent more time contemplating the idea of same-sex attraction than anyone else in the Bible.

The Protestant Reformation is arguably the most important event in the history of the West. The upheaval affected not only religion but rather reshaped how people conceived of everything from politics to ordinary life. In this talk, Brian Carwana, from Encounter World Religions, explores the far-reaching impact of this tectonic shift and why today, all of us living in the West are to greater or lesser degrees, children of the Reformation.

Surveys find that nearly 7 in 10 adults in the US believe in angels. But what are angels supposed to be? What is the difference between angels, demons, genies, and ghosts? Why do cherubs look like the Roman pagan god Cupid? John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will explore early Biblical understandings of angels, evolution and elaboration of the idea in extra-Biblical apocalypses like the Book of Enoch, and later theological formulations by Christian philosophers including Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.

Why did Medieval Christian knights at the end of the 11th century march some 2,500 miles from France (and elsewhere in the Latin West) to Jerusalem and how were they able to conquer and create viable states in the Middle East? John Hamer of Toronto Centre place will look at the historical context of the First Crusade and its logistics and consider how Christian religious practices including the Peace of God, Truce of God, and pilgrimage resulted in indiscriminate massacres. How did the First Crusade succeed and why did the Crusades ultimately fail?

Although he could not define the term “pornography,” US Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart famously declared “I know it when I see it.” Likewise, many of us think we know what religion is, but it turns out that we are not working from a meaningful definition. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will show how Western ideas about “religion” are fully rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition and have little relation to the experiences of non-Western cultures.

When the earliest Biblical texts were being composed at the end of the First Temple Period, the Ark of the Covenant was a sacred relic housed in the sanctuary of the Jerusalem Temple. The Ark played a central role in the Biblical narrative beginning with the Exodus story where it was housed in the tent, or tabernacle, that functioned as a mobile temple that the Israelites carried with them as they wandered in the wilderness. After the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BCE, nothing more is heard about the Ark. The exiles returned and built the Second Temple in the Persian Period, but the new structure had no Ark. What happened to the Ark and why was it important? Is there any chance it still exists? If the stories of the Exodus and of David and Solomon are myths, what is the actual history of the Ark? John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will explore these questions and more.

Christian theologians present God as a Trinity of three persons. However, many people associate the word “God” with the first person alone, the Father. This can lead to the heretical view of Jesus Christ as a superhuman figure separate from God, and the Spirit as some kind of ethereal, impersonal force or energy. Yet, Christianity affirms that the Spirit is a person and is God. So, who or what is the Holy Spirit?

Since the Council of Nicaea, 1700 years ago this year, the overwhelming majority of Christians have understood God through the lens of the Trinity: the doctrine that this is only One God, but that God consists of three “Persons.” And while each of the Persons is God, the persons are not the same as each other. Thus, when Jesus prays to the Heavenly Father, these are distinct Persons communicating: Jesus is not the Heavenly Father, even though the Heavenly Father is God and Jesus is also God. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the development of the concept of the Trinity, and will attempt to explain its paradox without falling into heresies like Modalism.

Many fundamentalist Christians anticipate that the world will end in their lifetime and they look for particular signs listed in the Book of Revelation. And it turns out that this has been true for almost a thousand years. As each generation’s belief has been proved false, the next generation simply updates the calculus and reads the signs in their own times. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will outline the actual context of the Book of Revelation, how it was meant to be understood by the generation for whom it was written, and how apocalypticists have come to so thoroughly misunderstand the text.

In the wake of the fire in Notre Dame cathedral, John Hamer of Centre Place puts Gothic architecture into its Medieval context. Modern people use the word “Gothic” to describe a kind of architecture from the Middle Ages, even though it has nothing to do with the barbarian Goths. When the architecture was new nine centuries ago, it was called “modern” and it represented something very new. Although people of the Modern Era disparaged their immediate predecessors with terms like “Medieval” and “Gothic,” the Middle Ages were anything but backward. In fact, they anticipated the Modern Era which followed.

Jesus left no writings that survive. None of the gospels was written by an eyewitness. All of our earliest texts that record the sayings of Jesus do not do so in the language he spoke (Aramaic) but are instead written in Greek. Although there is a convention in red-letter Bibles to print all the sayings attributed to Jesus in red, Biblical scholars agree that many of these sayings found in the New Testament were never spoken by the historical Jesus. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will review the tools of literary criticism that scholars use to evaluate the sayings of Jesus to consider which are most likely to be authentic and which are least likely.

After Jesus’ crucifixion, his movement in Jerusalem was led for many decades by his brother James the Just. His historicity is confirmed by the Jewish Roman historian Josephus who records a version of James’ execution at the hands of local Jewish authorities. The Apostle Paul met James (and came into conflict with him) as the two presented different visions for the emerging Christian church. Although historians largely agree that the Epistle of James was not written by the historical James, it shares the perspective of James’ community. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at what we can know about the historical brother of Jesus and the communities that looked to him for leadership.

In the gospel accounts, Jesus’ ministry begins with his baptism by a figure named John the Baptist, whose own disciples continued to revere him after his execution. Many historians have argued that the historical Jesus was originally a disciple of John the Baptist. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at what is known about the historical John, his practice of baptism, and his legacy in both Christianity and also Mandaeism (a small, ancient religion which may trace its origin to John’s disciples).

Many scholars argue that the ancient Israelite King David is the first character in the Bible who can be confirmed as a historical person. The Bible includes a wide variety of stories about David, from the young shepherd boy who defeats the giant Philistine Goliath, to a Robin-Hood-type leader of a group of righteous bandits, to the king who brings the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and makes the “City of David” his capital, to a king who loses his way in old age falling prey to court intrigues. Numerous poems from the “Book of Psalms” are traditionally attributed to David. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place looks at what we can know about the historical David and reviews the Biblical and legendary material about him.

According to the gospels, Jesus of Nazareth was born during the reign of Herod the Great, King of Judea. Herod was a great builder who reconstructed the Jerusalem Temple where Jesus taught as well as fortresses including Masada. Who was Herod and how did he acquire his throne? John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the history Herodian dynasty and its predecessor, the Hasmoneans and their short-lived, independent Jewish kingdom, placing them into the context of the larger Hellenistic and Roman worlds.

In one of the most dramatic miracles performed in the scriptures, Jesus raised his friend Lazarus from the dead four days after his entombment. However, the story occurs only in the gospel of John (11:1-44), where Lazarus is presented as the brother of Mary and Martha of Bethany. The gospel of Luke (10:38-42) tells a famous story about Mary and Martha but does not mention their connection to Lazarus. Instead, Jesus tells a parable about a beggar named Lazarus and a rich man experiencing rewards and punishment in the afterlife (Luke 16:19-31). Indeed, nowhere else is Lazarus or his miraculous resurrection mentioned in the New Testament. Who was Lazarus? What happened to him after his resurrection? Why does such an important figure fall out of John’s narrative? Why is it not mentioned in any other source? John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will survey the many theories about the Lazarus narrative.

The gospels cite Mary Magdalene as either the first of Jesus’ followers to testify of his resurrection or as part of a group of women followers who were the first. The gospel of Luke lists her among the wealthy women who provided material support to Jesus and his disciples and states that Jesus had cast seven demons out of her. In the gospel of John, she is among the women who witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion. Several Christian communities, including the Gnostics, looked to Mary Magdalene as an authority greater than many of Jesus’ male apostles. She is included in several apocryphal texts including the Gospel of Thomas, the Dialogue of the Savior, and her own Gospel of Mary. Already in Antiquity, she was conflated with other gospel characters, including the unnamed “sinful woman” who anoints Jesus’ feet in Luke 7:36-50, given rise to the false tradition that she had been a prostitute. More recently, because of fictional accounts like The DaVinci Code and modern frauds like the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, the completely baseless idea that she was Jesus’ wife has become popular. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will revisit the various accounts of Jesus’ most famous female follower, to discern what can be known about the historical Mary Magdalene and will survey her many, diverse legacies.

Jesus’ mother is present in all four of the canonical gospels and legends about her life were elaborated in apocryphal and pseudepigraphal works. Venerated as a saint, over time her cult evolved to fill the gap left by the Christian understanding of God for the divine feminine. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will consider what we can know about the historical Mary and will review the evolution of her mythology.

One of the few details of the life of the historical Jesus that nearly all historians agree on is that he was crucified during the administration of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. Who was Pilate and what do we know of his administration? John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will cover the sources and details of Pilate’s life within the context of contemporary Roman government and history.

The Gospel of Matthew tells us that "magi" from the East brought gifts to the infant Jesus following a mysterious star. Western Christianity commemorates this event with the feast of Epiphany, on January 6. What do we know about these wise men? Where did they come? Were they kings or Zoroastrian priests? Is there any evidence of a new star? We'll look at all these and other questions to reveal the meaning of this story from a mythological and theological view point.

Christian tradition assigned the name of “John” to the New Testament’s fourth gospel, but the text itself does not claim to be written by him. Obvious seams in the text between the end of chapter 20 (an original ending to the gospel) and chapter 21 (which was added on) show that the text is the product of multiple authors. One of those authors claims that a source for the gospel is the testimony of one of Jesus’ beloved disciples. But although the “beloved disciple” is a significant character in the gospel, the authors deliberately do not give his name. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will explore the fourth gospel to determine what the text can tell us about its authors and the community that produced it. What else can we know about the Johannine community and how do they relate to the historical John (Jesus’ disciple) and other early Christians who share the name John?

The four canonical gospels are attributed to Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. Matthew and John are among the Twelve Apostles. Mark was a companion of Peter and Luke a companion of Paul. Nevertheless, none of the texts gives any indication that these characters are their actual authors. In fact, the texts originally circulated anonymously and were only assigned their present names by later copyists. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the origins of the traditional designations, why none is likely to be an accurate identification, and what we can know from the texts themselves about the anonymous evangelists.

A majority of Americans believe in angels, but what are they? Where did the idea of angels come from? John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place looks at the history of angels in the Western tradition. He will also take a deep dive into the way Medieval philosopher discussed angels. Although ridiculed by later thinkers in the Enlightenment for pondering abstruse questions like “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin,” Medieval thinkers actually used the idea of "angels" in thought experiments about philosophical questions like free will and determinism that are still relevant today.

The Jewish Roman historian and military commander Flavius Josephus was a prolific author, who wrote accounts of the First Roman-Jewish War alongside a larger history of Judaism. Born Yosef Ben Matityahu in the Roman province of Judea at Jerusalem, he was initially a general in the Jewish revolt before switching sides and serving the Roman military commander Vespasian. Yosef claimed that Jewish messianic prophecies predicted that Vespasian would become Emperor. And when Vespasian seized the throne, he patronized Yosef who took the name Flavius Josephus (after Vespasian’s clan name). Josephus is our single most important source for the history of Judea in the First Century AD (the time of Jesus), but his own bias and agenda require his works to be read with care. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will review Josephus’ works and will highlight some of the most important takeaways.

Although Paul of Tarsus never met the historical Jesus, his vision of the risen Christ convinced him to change his life’s course, become an apostle, and devote the rest of his life preaching the “good news” of the resurrection. Not everyone in the growing movement was pleased by this development and Paul records coming into serious conflict with Jesus’ actual disciples, Peter, James, and John. Paul’s insistence that Christians should not follow Jewish law was at the center of the argument and during the conflict, Paul’s opponents questioned whether he had authority to plant churches. At the end of his career, Paul despaired that many of his own churches in the Eastern Mediterranean seemed to have converted to follow the interpretation of his opponents, causing him to plan a retreat to Spain to start anew. Despite these setbacks, only a few decades later, Paul’s teachings on the law became doctrine for a majority of Christians and his writings were revered as scripture. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will trace the conflict among early Christians and consider why Paul’s churches ultimately won.

Christians look to Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah or the Christ, the anointed one foretold by Jewish scripture as the universal savior. Although two of the gospels tell stories of his birth in the town of Bethlehem in Judea, one of the details of his life that upon which historians agree is that Jesus was from the village of Nazareth in the district of Galilee. John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place will look at the history of Galilee and how it differed from Judea in the 1st century AD, considering how Jesus’ context as a Galilean informed his ministry and the movement he founded.

John Hamer of Toronto Centre Place examines the latest trends in secularization, the rise of the religiously unaffiliated — including the “Nones” and the “Spiritual-but-not-religious” — shifting demographics and fertility, religious switching, migration, and growth in the Global South to ask: Will Christianity survive the 21st century?

Female perspectives of medieval mysticism through the writings of Julian of Norwich & Margery Kempe. In the years after the Black Death decimated Europe, many turned to mysticism to understand life’s questions. In an age where few women were afforded an education, we have the rare survival of two books written in Middle English by female authors: Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. Although they have very different backgrounds and perspectives, both women became Christian mystics. We’ll look at their works and what they tell us about the lives and ideas of women and mystics in the Middle Ages.