The Rev. John Meier, professor of New Testament at Notre Dame, is one of my heroes.  Over the past few years, I’ve read each of the volumes of his indispensable A Marginal Jew, a multivolume work (still rolling out) on “the historical Jesus.”  If you want to know more about the life and times of Jesus, and what was going on in first-century Palestine (and who doesn’t?) Father Meier is your man.  Here he is in an hour-long lecture on “Jesus the Jew: But What Sort of Jew?”  Webby sleuthing led to the discovery that it’s the Eugene C. Burke, CSP Lecture on Religion and Society, at the University of California, Davis, from October 2001.  The rest of this series on Youtube is pretty impressive: David Tracy, Stanley Hauerwas, Avery Cardinal Dulles, Amy-Jill Levine, Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ.  You have some time today, right?  Check it out.

The Rev. James Martin, S.J., is a Jesuit priest, author, editor at large at America and founder of Outreach.