Luke Johnson, Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the School of Theology, will provide participants in Ministers' Week 1996 with a view into his forthcoming book, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels. Johnson will deliver the Robert Denham Lecture on Monday, Jan. 8, at 7:30 p.m. in Cannon Chapel. The topic of his lecture will be "The Real Jesus: The Challenge of Current Scholarship and the Truth of the Gospels."
Johnson, a former Benedictine monk and priest, is the author of The Writings of the New Testament, Faith's Freedom, as well as commentaries on Luke, Acts, James and the pastoral epistles.
The theme of Ministers' Week 1996 is "Jesus, the Bible and the Church." The 61st annual convocation of theology school alumni and area ministers will feature a format designed to promote discussion of the recent scholarship on Jesus and the Bible. Lectures will be followed by responses from members of the theology school faculty and alumni who are serving in local church ministry.
Workshops will cover topics such as "Visions of the Church in the 21st Century: A Dialogue with Martin Luther King, Jr." and recent issues in Christian education.
Richard B. Hays will deliver The Quillian Lecture on Tuesday, Jan. 9, titled "The Jesus of History: What Can We Know and Why Should We Care" at 7:30 p.m. A professor of New Testament at Duke University Divinity School, Hays is the author of Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, The Faith of Jesus Christ, and the forthcoming New Testament Ethics. An ordained United Methodist minister, Hays has served as a pastor in West Springfield, Mass.
The following day, Teresa L. Fry, instructor of homiletics at the School of Theology, will present the A.J. and C.C. Jarrell Lecture titled "We Are in the Book: The Use of the Bible by the Marginalized" at 9 a.m. in Cannon Chapel. Fry's research focuses on the intergenerational transmission of African American spiritual values. Prior to coming to Emory, she served as associate minister at Shorter African American Methodist Episcopal Church in Denver.
Lectures and workshops are free and open to the public. For more information, call 727-6352.