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Richard Hays, “Retrospective Reading: The Challenges of Gospel-Shaped Hermeneutics”

In Edinburgh, Gospel of Mark, Gospels, Gunning Lectures, HB/OT, Hermeneutics, Intertextuality, John, Kerry Lee, Luke-Acts, Matthew, New Testament, NT Theology, Richard HAYS, Scripture on February 8, 2012 at 10:41 am

A report on a paper given by Richard Hays (Dean and George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament at Duke University in Durham, NC), 26 January 2012. Professor Hays is delivering this year’s Gunning Lectures at New College, University of Edinburgh, on the topic “Israel’s Scripture Through the Eyes of the Gospel Writers.” I should note that Professor Hays has let me know that he is preparing a book for publication based upon these Gunning lectures.

RBECS is also on facebook, here.

The last of Richard Hays’ lectures in the 2012 Gunning series was part overview of the previous four lectures and part return to and exploration of the somewhat troubling assertion he made in his first lecture that modern hermeneutics (speaking, for the most part, in terms of the Christian church’s life and teaching) could and perhaps should imitate that of the Gospel writers. This assertion he expounded through nine proposals.

Rather than reporting on all of the first half of Hays’ lecture, let me refer the reader to the reports already posted on Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. However, there were a few comments in this half of the lecture which were new and noteworthy. Read the rest of this entry »


Richard Hays, “The Temple of His Body: Reading Scripture with John”

In Edinburgh, Gospels, Gunning Lectures, HB/OT, Hermeneutics, Intertextuality, John, Kerry Lee, New Testament, Richard HAYS, Scripture, SEMINAR REPORTS on February 6, 2012 at 6:17 pm

A report on a paper given by Richard Hays (Dean and George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament at Duke University in Durham, NC), 24 January 2012. Professor Hays is delivering this year’s Gunning Lectures at New College, University of Edinburgh, on the topic “Israel’s Scripture Through the Eyes of the Gospel Writers.” I should note that Professor Hays has let me know that he is preparing a book for publication based upon these Gunning lectures.

RBECS is also on facebook, here.

In the penultimate Gunning lecture, Richard Hays turned his attention to the fourth Gospel where, once again, Jesus is described as “him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote” (John 2:45, RSV). The character of Jesus makes this claim, as well, saying “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me” (John 5:46, RSV). However, like the Synoptics, John does not say specifically where and how Moses and the prophets wrote about Jesus. Rather, it remains for the reader to reconstruct this.

Unlike the Synoptics, though, John’s use of the Old Testament depends on a very few allusions and citations (according to the count of Westcott and Hort, 27 direct citations in John versus 124, 70, and 109 citations in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, respectively), but these references are explored deeply over a longer stretch of the narrative, in what Hays calls sustained meditation. Read the rest of this entry »


Richard Hays, “The One Who Redeems Israel: Reading Scripture with Luke”

In Edinburgh, Gospels, Gunning Lectures, HB/OT, Intertextuality, Kerry Lee, Luke-Acts, New Testament, NT Theology, Richard HAYS, Scripture, Septuagint on January 26, 2012 at 5:40 pm

A report on a paper given by Richard Hays (Dean and George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament at Duke University in Durham, NC), 23 January 2012. Professor Hays is delivering this year’s Gunning Lectures at New College, University of Edinburgh, on the topic “Israel’s Scripture Through the Eyes of the Gospel Writers.” I should note that Professor Hays has let me know that he is preparing a book for publication based upon these Gunning lectures.

RBECS is also on facebook, here.

Continuing in his investigation of the ways the Gospels use the Old Testament, Professor Hays turned, in his fourth Gunning lecture, to the Gospel of Luke. The launching point for Hays’ discussion was Jesus’ post-resurrection interaction with the disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:13-35. Focusing on the disciples’ ironic statement “We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” as a hermeneutical key to the narrator’s understanding of Jesus’ significance, and on Jesus response which took them through “Moses and all the Prophets” explicating himself, Hays identifies redemption as a recurrent theme in Luke and asks what is it in “Moses and all the Prophets” that points to Jesus as that redeemer. Read the rest of this entry »


Richard Hays, “Torah Reconfigured: Reading Scripture with Matthew”

In Edinburgh, Gospels, Gunning Lectures, HB/OT, Hermeneutics, Intertextuality, Kerry Lee, Matthew, New Testament, NT Theology, Richard HAYS, Scripture, SEMINAR REPORTS, Septuagint on January 25, 2012 at 8:29 am

A report on a paper given by Richard Hays (Dean and George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament at Duke University in Durham, NC), 19 January 2012. Professor Hays is delivering this year’s Gunning Lectures at New College, University of Edinburgh, on the topic “Israel’s Scripture Through the Eyes of the Gospel Writers.”

RBECS is also on facebook, here

Professor Hays’ third lecture in the 2012 Gunning series focused on the Gospel of Matthew, whose use of the Old Testament has become a central feature of the scholarly characterisation of the New Testament’s overall appropriation of the Old Testament. Very often, the Gospel writers’ use of the Old Testament is understood as a series of proof-texts which show no concern for the meaning or context of the cited or alluded Old Testament reference. Professor Hays’ aim in these lectures, and especially in this one, is to challenge this view by closely reading the Gospels with special sensitivity to the unique narrative strategies of the individual writers.

The intertextual strategy of Matthew in many ways makes a striking contrast with that of Mark. Read the rest of this entry »


Mark W. Elliott, “The promise and threat of Reception, with reference to patristic interpretation of texts in Hebrews and Ephesians”

In Ephesians, Hebrews, Justin A. Mihoc, Mark W. ELLIOTT, New Testament, Patristics, Reception history, St Andrews Graduate Conference for Biblical and Early Christian Studies on January 22, 2012 at 5:28 pm

This is a report on a paper presented by Dr Mark Elliott as a keynote address at the 1st St Andrews Graduate Conference for Biblical and Early Christian Studies, 16th June 2011. The conference theme was “Authoritative Texts and Reception History”. The programme of the conference is available here. The conference facebook page can be found here.

Dr Elliott’s engaging paper offered a fresh and clear account of patristic reception analysis, by looking at two key New Testament texts and their interpretation over the first Christian centuries. In his view, the empirical application, rather than a purely linguistic-critical interpretation, does justice to the initial intention of the biblical authors.

He began by assessing the importance of the historical-critical studies of the Bible, as they can provide a fresh interpretation. Read the rest of this entry »


Richard Hays, “Unexpected Echoes: Reading Scripture with Mark”

In Edinburgh, Gospel of Mark, Gunning Lectures, HB/OT, Hermeneutics, Kerry Lee, Messianic secret, New Testament, Richard HAYS, Scripture, SEMINAR REPORTS on January 19, 2012 at 7:16 pm

A report on a paper given by Richard Hays (Dean and George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament at Duke University in Durham, NC), 17 January 2012. Professor Hays is delivering this year’s Gunning Lectures at New College, University of Edinburgh, on the topic “Israel’s Scripture Through the Eyes of the Gospel Writers.”

RBECS is also on facebook, here.

Professor Hays’ lecture series continued with a closer examination of the way allusions to Old Testament passages in the Gospel of Mark portray Jesus as mysteriously but directly embodying the presence of God, contrary to a certain tendency in New Testament scholarship to posit an early low Christology (evident in the Gospel of Mark, among other places) which evolved into a higher Christology (evident in, for example, the Gospel of John). He began with a reflection on the insufficiency of certain terms to encompass all that Mark’s Gospel asserts about Jesus. Read the rest of this entry »


Wendy Sproston-North, “The Anointing in John 12.1-8: A Tale of Two Hypotheses”

In Durham, John, Justin A. Mihoc, New Testament, SEMINAR REPORTS, Wendy SPROSTON-NORTH on January 19, 2012 at 12:47 pm

This is a report on a paper presented by Dr Wendy Sproston-North, formerly of University of Hull, at the New Testament Research Seminar, Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, 16th of January 2012. The list of forthcoming papers in the NT Research Seminars at Durham University can be found here.

In this very appealing presentation, Dr Sproston-North challenged C.H. Dodd’s idea that John 12:1-8 was composed solely based on oral sources and proposed a new hypothesis. This essay is part of a project to be published as a collection of essays revisiting Dodd’s work. The two part structure of the paper covered both Dodd’s hypothesis and the author’s critique, and also provided a verse-by-verse analysis of John 12:1-8.

In his Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel, C.H. Dodd argues that John composed his Gospel based on oral tradition and did not rely on the Synoptic authors. Read the rest of this entry »


Richard Hays, “Can the Gospels Teach Us How to Read the OT?”

In Edinburgh, Gunning Lectures, HB/OT, Kerry Lee, New Testament, Richard HAYS, Scripture, SEMINAR REPORTS on January 17, 2012 at 4:56 pm

A report on a paper given by Richard Hays (Dean and George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament at Duke University in Durham, NC), 16 January 2012. Professor Hays is delivering this year’s Gunning Lectures at New College, University of Edinburgh, on the topic “Israel’s Scripture Through the Eyes of the Gospel Writers.”

RBECS is also on facebook, here.

Professor Hays’ first presentation in his series was, in part, an introduction to the problem underlying the remainder of the lectures: it is frequently accused of the New Testament that its proclamation of Jesus rests on twisted and tendentious readings of the Hebrew Bible. The Old Testament, it is asserted, is silent about Jesus, meaning, first, that the conceptual background for the New Testament resides elsewhere than Israel’s scriptures and, second, that one cannot objectively view Christianity as being in continuity with the faith of the Old Testament. Read the rest of this entry »


Edward Adams, “Were the Pauline Churches House Churches?”

In Durham, Edward ADAMS, Galatians, Justin A. Mihoc, New Testament, Paul, Philippians, Romans, SEMINAR REPORTS on December 8, 2011 at 11:45 pm

This is a report on a paper presented by Dr Edward Adams, Senior Lecturer in New Testament Studies at King’s College London, at the New Testament Research Seminar, Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University, 5th of December 2011.

The list of forthcoming papers in the NT Research Seminars at Durham University can be found here. Like us on Facebook, here.

At the last session of the New Testament Research Seminar, Dr Edward Adams presented a very interesting and engaging paper on the identification of the early Christian meeting places. This presentation will be published as a contribution of a monograph on the same topic.

His analysis was focused on the undisputed Pauline epistles and the incidence and meaning of the phrase κατ᾽ οἶκον αὐτῶν ἐκκλησίᾳ (the church in their house). Read the rest of this entry »


N.T. Wright’s Inaugural Lecture as Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews, “Imagining the Kingdom: Mission and Theology in Early Christianity”

In David J. Larsen, N. T. WRIGHT, New Testament, NT Theology, SEMINAR REPORTS, St Andrews on October 27, 2011 at 6:18 pm

Last night I had the opportunity to listen to Professor Tom Wright (a.k.a. N.T. Wright) give his Inaugural Lecture as Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity here at the University of St Andrews. I share here my notes from the lecture. Please be aware that the following is based on rather skimpy hand-written notes, and so does not do justice to Wright’s elegant and precise handling of the English language, but I hope I have preserved the thrust of his arguments.  The speech was entitled:  ”Imagining the Kingdom: Mission and Theology in early Christianity.”

Wright begins by outlining how the four Gospels are remarkable documents that are still largely unknown to us. We are failing to understand the thrust of the Gospels. We need to apply our imagination and look beyond the boundaries of the various philosophies that guide our views.

(Wright will present a fresh thesis about the Gospels) Read the rest of this entry »