College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

1. Introduction: voices and silence in Tanakh and Christian New Testament

'Introduction: voices and silence in Tanakh and Christian New Testament', lecture 1 in Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch's Gifford lecture series on silence and Christianity

Lecture abstract

Discusses a change in emphasis between the Hebrew Scripture (the Tanakh) and what Christians made of what is arguably a minority positive strand in Judaic thinking on silence; we survey the growth of a consciousness of silence, particularly in the cosmos, in Jewish religion. We seek the voice of Jesus to be heard behind the text of the New Testament, with his distinctive use of silence and silences; the place of silence in the first Christian attempts to understand the significance of Jesus Christ, and its relationship to the formation of the Church.

Lecture video