Annual Seminar on the Old in the New (a general summary and background)

These last three days I have attended the Seminar on the Use of the Old Testament in the New. This year, as in years past, it is a relatively small group of mostly expert scholars and a few students. I was blessed to have interacted with Lionel and Wendy Sproston North, Paul Ellingworth, Maurice Casey, Ruth Edwards and others, as well as the organisers: Maarten Menken and Steve Moyise. The total attendees were certainly less than twenty, but this made the seminar all the more fun. Next year the location is uncertain, as well as the dates. If you wish to attend next year, your best bet is to email Steve Moyise in December 2007 or January 2008. Though there are only about 7-8 papers read at the conference, this round two students presented. It is a good opportunity to present to a small group of very wise, but very gracious scholars.

I was able to gather small bits of information about the group’s origins. It began with A T Hanson and Max Wilcox some number of years ago and a student of Hanson’ s (Wendy Sproston North) was encouraged to attend and designated the ‘secretary’. Hanson and Wilcox passed the leadership on to Wendy and Lionel who planned the seminar for nearly twenty years until just recently. Steve and Maarten have taken over, though Wendy and Lionel still faithfully attend.

One thing I noticed was that the group is heavy on the side of older scholars. Part of the reason may be that this conference is not well advertised. I suspect that part of the reason is that many scholars are just not interested in the topic. But, I hope that in future years we will see younger scholars join this ‘guild’, so to speak, and keep the tradition alive.

Also, Steve and Maarten have been publishing a series of edited volumes on the use of particular books of the OT in the NT. So, there has been two volumes published so far – one on Isaiah in the NT, and one on the Psalms in the NT. This should not be surprising since these books are by and large the most commonly quoted and alluded to books in the NT. They have another book coming out shortly in this series on Deuteronomy. And in the works yet another volume on the Minor Prophets. I suspect (though I don’t have any confirmation) that we may see more volumes on Genesis and Exodus, or perhaps on Gen.-Exod.-Lev. together (though this is only a guess). The volumes currently available are really excellent with first rate scholarship. And, if I might say, they are not too technical and can benefit student, pastor, and scholar.