This year’s conference will host three keynote scholars and their individual research presentations related to life after death, in addition to an engaging panel dialogue moderated by UCLA faculty.
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Christopher B. Hays
Christopher B. Hays is the D. Wilson Moore Associate Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA. His most recent book, A Covenant with Death: Death in the Iron Age II and Its Rhetorical Uses in Proto-Isaiah, was issued under a new title by Eerdmans in 2015. Dr. Hays publishes extensively on themes regarding death and the afterlife in the Hebrew Bible, and their relationship to Ancient Near Eastern mythology and literature.
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Claudia Setzer
Claudia Setzer is a Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College in Riverdale, NY. Her specialization lies in Jewish/Christian relations in the New Testament, but she has published on various topics of biblical interpretation including feminist hermeneutics. Dr. Setzer’s research on bodily resurrection is noteworthy, primarily her book Resurrection of the Body in Early Judaism and Early Christianity, Doctrine, Community, and Self-Definition (Brill, 2004).
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Matthew Suriano
Matthew Suriano is an Associate Professor in Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD, and has published on topics including Sheol and burial. Dr. Suriano’s first book, The Politics of Dead Kings: Dynastic Ancestors in the Book of Kings and Ancient Israel (Mohr Siebeck, 2010) examined descriptions of a king’s death, while his forthcoming monograph from Oxford University Press, The History of Death in the Hebrew Bible, focuses more broadly on the problem of death in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israel.