Classics lecture: Patrick Gray

Dr. Patrick Gray (Albert Bruce Curry Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College) will deliver a public lecture on Roman Widows and the Economics of Early Christianity. Religious communities in the Roman Empire faced many of the same problems as today, but they also experienced a range of social and cultural challenges that are not obvious to modern observers. Historians often borrow concepts from other disciplines in order to understand these day-to-day realities. This lecture surveys the demographics of widowhood in the ancient Mediterranean world and considers how the economic ramifications of these circumstances in early Christian communities can help interpreters make sense of otherwise opaque texts from the New Testament.