Calvin History Colloquium featuring presentations by two of our senior history majors

Calvin history students present their honors theses and independent research projects in our annual History Student Colloquium. This year, we had two presenters:

Andrew Olson, “Jesus Across the Jordan: A Look at Jesus’s Biblical Travels in the Transjordanian Region and elsewhere East of the River Jordan”

Despite the Holy Land being often constrained to modern-day Israel, the Gospel accounts provide us four major journeys Jesus made east of the river Jordan. These journeys contain iconic miracles and parables, such as Jesus casting the demons into a flock of swine, the healing of the ten lepers of which only one returns to thank Jesus, Jesus letting little children come to him, the parable of workers in a vineyard, and others. The final journey of Jesus through the Transjordanian region of Perea can provide significant implications for the expansion of the Holy Land and call for highlighting the importance of further overtly Christian Biblical archeological research within often neglected Jordan. Independent study with Prof. Darrell Rohl.

About the speaker: Andrew Olson is a senior history and philosophy student. He discovered his love for history growing up in Hawaii surrounded by Hawaiian and World War II history, and has since developed interests in Greek and Roman antiquity. He will be attending Michigan State University College of Law in the fall.

Jianfeng Cao, “Seeking the Path into Hearts: Matteo Ricci and His ‘Directives'”

From 1582 to 1610, from Macao to Beijing, the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci spent half of his life striving for his faith in Ming China, which was then almost a virgin land for Christianity. In this strenuous pioneering work, he developed his understandings, attitudes, and principles regarding the relation between his mission work and his mission field, which were later referred to as “the directives of Matteo Ricci,” an important term during the Chinese Rites Controversy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This talk aims to describe the specific contents of these directives to the audience, and introduce the discussion about the cultural meanings of these directives in the larger context of the encounter between Europe and East Asia. Honors thesis with Prof. Doug Howard.

About the speaker: Jianfeng Cao, an international student from the lower Yangtze River region of Southern China, majors in history, classical studies, and philosophy at Calvin, and plans to enter seminary after graduation. He also holds a degree in Chinese literature, and is currently living with his wife and two kids in Grand Rapids.

Interested in studying history at Calvin? Find out more about our program here.