Sponsored by the Office of the Chaplain at Bates, the Spiritual Journeys lecture series features speakers from a variety of traditions who tell the stories of their spiritual awakening and development. Speakers are invited to explore how they experience a sense of the holy in their everyday lives, how their perspectives and disciplines have shaped that sacred experience, and how they understand religion as a resource or an obstacle to the life of the soul. Speakers may also address what the political and social consequences of their spirituality.

Next in the Spiritual Journeys series will be Rabbi Elyse Goldstein, author and executive director of Kolel: A Center for Liberal Jewish Learning, Thornhill, Ontario, on Re-Visions: Seeing Torah Through A Feminist Lens from 4:30 to 6 p.m. March 11 in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall.

The public is invited to attend free of charge.

The symposium will explore the Bible from the multiple perspectives of literature, religion and history. Conference organizers Robert Allison and Mishael Caspi, Bates professors of religion, approached colleagues in most of Maine’s institutions of higher education where religion and literature are taught.

“We do have a problem nationwide, though, where biblical scholars tend to discuss their findings with each other, but the public, at large, remains absent. We haven’t had a chance to explain what we’re doing,” Allison said.

By sharing their work with the public, the assembled Maine academicians hope to demonstrate, Allison said, “a sense of our obligation as scholars to the community around us to share some of our work, and to give the public a chance to question us.”

The conference will commence at 3:30 p.m. Nov. 1 in the Benjamin Mays Center with greetings from Donald W. Harward, president of Bates, and Martha Crunkleton, dean of the faculty, followed at 4 p.m. by the keynote address, Wine, Women and Song: Female Musicianship and the Vineyard Festivals of Ancient Israel, delivered by Susan Ackerman, associate professor of religion at Dartmouth.

A specialist in ancient Near Eastern history and religion with particular focus on the relationships between Israelite religion and the religion of Israel’s neighbors, Ackerman is the author of Under Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth-Century Judah (1992) and the forthcoming Warrior, Dancer, Seductress and Queen: Women in Judges and in Biblical Israel. She received her Ph.D from Harvard.

Following Ackerman’s lecture, Caspi, visiting professor of philosophy and religion at Bates, will discuss The Narrative of Genesis 22 in Three Editions, in the Be ays Center at 5:15 p.m.

Sessions for the second and third days of the conference, Saturday, Nov. 2 and Sunday, Nov.4, will be held in the Edmund S. Muskie Archives.

The Nov. 2 schedule of presentations, beginning at 9 a.m., includes:

9:15 a.m. – Frank K. Carner, professor of English at the University of Southern Maine, on Justice, Poetic Justice and the Resolution of Biblical Plots.

10:15 a.m. – Thomas R.W. Longstaff, Crawford Family Professor of Religious Studies at Colby, on Sepphoris: The Ornament of the Galilee.

11:15 a.m. – Ann Johnston, professor of theological and religious studies at Bangor Theological Seminary, on The Isaiah Apocalypse: Vision of the Triumph of God.

2 p.m. – William Sayres, professor of literature at the University of Southern Maine, on Providence and Gratitude in ‘Persuasion’.

3 p.m. – Robert Allison, associate professor of religion at Bates and chair of Classical and Medieval Studies, on Images of light and Imagery of Ingestion: The Mysticism of the Gospel of Thomas.

4 p.m. – Burke O. Long, professor of religion at Bowdoin, on Scenery of Eternity: W.F. Albright and Ideas of ‘Holy Land’.

7 p.m. – A screening of Cecil B. DeMille’s film classic Samson and Delilah will be held in Room 204 of Carnegie Science Hall, followed by commentary and discussion led by Irena Makarushka, associate professor of religion and department chair at Bowdoin.

The conference’s closing sessions, beginning at 9 a.m. Nov. 3 include:

9:15 a.m. – John R. Wilson, professor of literature at the University of Maine, Orono, on Change the ‘The’ to ‘A’.

10.15 a.m. – Becky Kasper, professor of American religious history at St. Joseph’s College, on Old Testament History and the Problems of Biblical Theology.

To encourage dialogue, each scholarly presentation will be followed by questions from the audience. Conference programs have been distributed to area churches, synagogues and high schools.

Bates intends to host two additional symposia of Maine-area scholars in 1997, including Maine Remembers the Holocaust, in the spring, and God With the People, God and the People: An Interfaith Symposium, in the fall.