Report on British NT Conference (part I)

I just returned from Aberdeen after a few days of conference-ing for the British New Testament Conference.  This is usually a highlight of my year and this year I was not disappointed.

Aberdeen itself is nice, and the university is very impressive.  Since I am leaving the UK in a few days for good, I am glad to have gotten to see Aberdeen.  Our host, especially Andrew Clarke, was witty, polite, and very helpful.

The papers overall were OK – nothing ground-breaking or too controversial.  I involved myself in the Hermeneutics seminar – one with such generally low attendence that I will not be surprised if it does not make it another year as a group.  Incidentally, I presented a paper in this group.  The feedback was good and I was pressed to think about things I have not had to work through before.

Also, the plenary sessions (there are normally three) were not showstoppers, but David Parker’s lecture on textual criticism was very entertaining.  He argued that people like Bart Ehrman who try to detect the theological motivations of scribes are a bit off-base because when we inspect the actual responsibilities of a scribe (in terms of workload, attention to margins, space, design, artwork, planning, etc…), could they really be bothered to be paying attention to the theological flow of what they were transcribing?  Parker is not against hypothesizing about intentional changes, but he trumpeted the cause for more historically-informed considerations of what it would take for such an armchair-theologian scribe to fiddle with the text, having analyzed its ideology and theological directions himself.  Someone else had brought up the question – can we be certain that the scribes of the first few centuries were even Christians?  Parker said this is indeterminable apart from evidence of the variants themselves.  In any case, his was a very helpful paper to all NT scholars and a reminder of how important textual work is.

During the annual business meeting, it was announced that Larry Hurtado will take over as president of the society, as Andrew Lincoln’s term has ended.  Larry will do an excellent job, I think.  One of the more memorable moments was the request that we observe a minute-of-silence in honor of Graham Stanton who passed away recently.  Lincoln reminded us that Stanton (along with Jimmy Dunn) was a founding member of the British NT society and conference, and was particularly insistent that students be involved (as opposed to SNTS).  Thank you Graham!

The accomodations and facilities were much better than I expected.  The meals were really delicious (on conference standards).  I have never had Bailey’s cheesecake before!

More reporting to come on the best books to buy and also more on my own experience presenting and participating.