Renowned New Testament scholar delivers Prevatte Lectures

     Internationally known scholar and lecturer Richard B. Hays, chair of the Biblical Division at Duke Divinity School, delivered Campbell University’s annual Prevatte Lecture Series, Oct. 23-24, at Taylor Hall of Religion and Memorial Baptist Church in Buies Creek. Hays’ lectures, “Reading the Old Testament through the Eyes of the Gospel Writers,” examined the ways in which the Gospels use the Old Testament to construct a picture of the significance of Jesus.
     “If we read scripture from the New Testament, we are missing part of the picture by not looking at it in the context of the Old Testament,” said Hays. “When gospels are read in isolation of each other, we don’t really understand what we’re reading. The Bible should be read as one flowing document, from front to back and from back to front,” he said.
     Hays used the example of Jesus’ act of removing the money-changers from the temple, reported in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 6, and repeated in the Gospel of John. He demonstrated how the Gospel writers used allusions to Old Testament texts such as Isaiah 56, Jeremiah 7 and Psalm 69.
     "I don’t think the Old Testament can simply be reduced to prophesies,” Hays said, “but must be understood in historical context—one (testament) should shed light upon the other.”
     Hays also interprets John’s positioning of the story of Jesus in the temple at the beginning of his Gospel as a means of emphasizing that Jesus himself takes over the role of the temple as the place where God is rightly to be worshipped and where the presence of God is manifest.
     “By placing that story near the beginning of the Gospel, John gives us a clue which he then develops in all sorts of ways through the rest of the story—that Jesus is the one, the embodiment and presence of God,” he said.
     In other sessions of the Prevatte Lectures, Hays discussed the Gospel writers as teachers of how to interpret the Old Testament and the theme of the liberation of Israel in Luke and Acts.

Richard B. Hays

     Chair of the Biblical Division at Duke Divinity School, Richard B. Hays is internationally recognized for his work on the letters of Paul and on New Testament ethics. He is the author of the book “The Moral Vision of the New Testament Community, Cross, New Creation,” which was selected by “Christianity Today” as one of the 100 most important religious books of the 20th century. His most recent books are “The Art of Reading Scripture,” co-edited with Ellen Davis, and “The Conversion of the Imagination.” Hays has lectured widely in North America, England, Europe, Israel, Australia and New Zealand. He has preached in settings ranging from rural Oklahoma to London’s Westminster Abbey. He presently serves as convenor of a research group on the identity of Jesus, an initiative sponsored by the Center of Theological Inquiry at Princeton.

Prevatte Lectures

     The purpose of the Prevatte Biblical Studies Lectures is to further the mission of Campbell University Divinity School by bringing outstanding biblical scholars to the university. The lectureship was endowed by the late E.J. “Jimmy” and Amaretta Prevatte of Southport, N.C.
 

Photo Copy: Dr. Richard B. Hays, chair of the Biblical Division at Duke Divinity School.