Science and an Incarnational Approach to the Bible

An Incarnational Model

Mesopotamian Myths and “Genre Calibration”

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Featured speaker: Dr. Peter Enns

Evangelicalism has tended to have an uneasy relationship with biblical scholarship of the last several generations. In this lecture, Prof. Enns will look at one specific example of this–the book of Genesis–and trace how the challenges to Evangelicalism began, especially with events that happened in the 19th century. It is fair to say that modern biblical scholarship on the Old Testament began with questions on Genesis that came to a head during this time and earlier. Although there are numerous self-confessed Evangelicals who are very keen to address these issues form a perspective of faith, on the whole these issues have not worked their way into a positive Evangelical understanding of Scripture.

Tuesday, 16 September 2008, at 7:00 pm. Students receive chapel credit for this talk.

Location: Hostetter Chapel Sanctuary, Messiah College, Grantham, PA. Directions and a campus map are here http://www.messiah.edu/visitors/direction.html.

A 1982 graduate of Messiah College, Dr. Peter Enns worked with mentally challenged children before earning the M. Div. at Westminster Theological Seminary. He later completed the Ph.D. (1994) from Harvard University in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, where his main focus was on Second Temple hermeneutics and his dissertation was directed by James Kugel. Dr. Enns is author or contributor to many books, including Exodus Retold: Ancient Exegesis of the Departure from Egypt in Wis 10:15-21 and 19:1-9, which was published in 1997 by the Harvard Semitic Monograph series, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (Baker, 2005) and Invitation to Genesis (Abingdon, 2006). His numerous academic interests include Old Testament theology, the New Testament’s use of the Old, wisdom literature, hermeneutics, and the intersection of biblical studies with evangelical thinking on Scripture. For additional information, including a NPR radio interview, go to http://peterennsonline.com/about/.

The Central Pennsylvania Forum for Religion and Science, based at Messiah College, has been made possible in part by a Local Societies Initiative grant (http://www.metanexus.net/lsi) of the Metanexus Institute (www.metanexus.net). For details about all Forum events, please visit http://www.messiah.edu/godandscience/ or contact Dr. Ted Davis (tdavis@messiah.edu), 717-766-2511, ext 6840.