Divine Bodies, Human Questions: How Ancient Jews and Christians Imagined God
Thursday, October 15, 2026
7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Health Campus
Alumni, Community, Faculty, Staff, Students
This year's Padnos Public Engagement Lecture on Jewish Learning, held in partnership with the Jean & Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, will feature University of Michigan Professor Deborah Forger and GVSU Professor Jeremiah Cataldo in conversation exploring the themes covered in Forger's forthcoming book Divine Embodiment in Jewish and Christian Antiquity.
We hope you will join us for a lively conversation followed by a dessert reception.
Thursday, October 15 | 7-8:30pm | Devos Center for Interprofessional Health (DCIH) | GVSU Health Campus | Grand Rapids, MI
Please note: this event will not be live-streamed. For those guests unable to join us in person, a recording of the event will be made available after the fact. Please register and select the appropriate option to receive the link to the recording in the days following the event.
About Our Speaker:
- Deborah Forger is a current Fellow and incoming Assistant Professor at the Frankel Institute for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. A scholar of ancient Judaism, the New Testament, and early Christianity, her research focuses on divine embodiment, the Gospel of John, and early Jewish-Christian relations. Her first monograph, Divine Embodiment in Jewish and Christian Antiquity, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press, explores how ancient Jews and Christians imagined God as embodied and encountered the divine through their own bodies. In particular, the book situates the Gospel of Johns claim that the divine Word became flesh with the diverse traditions of Ancient Judaism. Her next book project, Weaponizing the Gospel: The Afterlives of John and the Making of Christian Antisemitism, examines the Gospel of John's role in the history and development of Christian antisemitism. An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), Forger holds degrees from Calvin College, Duke Divinity School, and the University of Michigan.
Location Information
Please register for specific location details and/or for access to the recording.
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Contact Information
Tags
frankel interfaith jewish kaufman padnos uofm
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This event was added to the calendar by Liz English (englisel@gvsu.edu) on Thursday, July 30, 2026 and was last updated on Friday, September 18, 2026 at 10:40 a.m.
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