By Paul F. South, NOBTS Communications
NEW OLREANS – Two of the world’s best-known religious scholars will dialog at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary on a question that has sparked debate for some 2,000 years: What did Jesus really teach?
John Dominic Crossan and Ben Witherington III will be the featured speakers at the 2010 Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum, Feb. 26 and 27 at Leavell Chapel.
The event marks the seminary’s sixth Greer-Heard Point-Counterpoint Forum. The Forum is designed to provide a venue in which a respected evangelical scholar and a respected non-evangelical scholar discuss critical issues in religion, science, philosophy, or culture.
“Too often, public discourse on the sort of issues that Greer-Heard deals with is shrill in tone and piecemeal in content,” said Robert Stewart, Ph.D, who occupies the Greer-Heard chair of Faith and Culture and of the seminary’s Institute for Christian Apologetics. “Our goal therefore is to give these issues legitimate expression and to do so in a public forum on a level playing field.”
Crossan, Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, is the former co-chairman of the Jesus Seminar. Regarded internationally as one of the most influential contemporary New Testament scholars, Crossan is the author of more than 20 books on the historical Jesus, early Christianity and the historical Paul.
He has lectured to lay and scholarly audiences on five continents and is a frequent radio and television guest in discussions of religious issues, and appeared at the 2005 Greer-Heard Forum with Bishop N.T. Wright in a dialogue on the resurrection of Jesus.
Witherington is the Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky., and is on the doctoral faculty of St. Andrews University in Scotland. A graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Witherington went on to earn a Master of Divinity from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a doctorate from the University of Durham in England.
Considered one of the world’s top evangelical scholars, Witherington is an elected member of the prestigious Society for New Testament Studies (SNTS). He has written more than 30 books, as well as for a variety of church and scholarly publications.
On the forum’s second day, leading scholars will present papers related to the message of Jesus. They include:
• Darrell L. Bock, Research Professor of New Testament Studies, Professor of Spiritual Development and Culture at Dallas Theological Seminary:
• Craig A. Evans, Payzant Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Acadia Divinity College of Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada;
• Amy-Jill Levine, Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Graduate Department of Religion and Program in Jewish Studies;
• Alan F. Segal, Professor of Religion and Ingeborg Rennert Professor of Jewish Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University in Manhattan.
Also during the weekend, Craig L. Blomberg, Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Denver Seminary will be the keynote speaker at the Southwest Regional Meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, hosted by NOBTS.