A weekend seminar with DR. TREMPER LONGMAN III & DR. PETER  ENNS

• “How can we think of ancient mythology as the word of God?”
• “Isn’t the God of the Old Testament nasty & vengeful? He’s not like Jesus at all!”
• “The Old Testament simply can’t be trusted.”
• “Modern science has made the biblical creation stories hopelessly out-of-date.”
• “How can Christians make sense out of the Old Testament?”

Most of us have heard or said something along these lines. In this weekend seminar, Professors Tremper Longman and Peter Enns, two highly respected Old Testament scholars, will speak to some of the issues that surround reading the Hebrew Scriptures.

Designed for curious skeptics and for committed followers of Jesus—and everyone in between—this seminar is designed to give an honest and faithful look at the “problems” of the Old Testament.

Friday, October 9, 7:00 – 9:00 pm
Saturday, October 10, 9:00 am – 12 noon
Rye Free Reading Room
1061 Boston Post Road
on the village green in Rye, NY
Admission is free

Professor Tremper Longman III (BA, Ohio Wesleyan; MDiv, Westminster Seminary; PhD, Yale) is the Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA, and the author of over twenty books, including How to Read Genesis (InterVarsity) and Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation (Zondervan).

Professor Peter Enns (BA, Messiah; MDiv, Westminster; PhD, Harvard) is an in-demand scholar, writer, and speaker, who has taught for 20 years at both the graduate & undergraduate levels. His 2005 work, Inspiration & Incarnation (Baker Academic), was written to help those struggling with questions such as these.

Sponsored by TRINITY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, Rye NY
For more information, contact Trinity Church at 914.967.6247 or administrator@trinitychurch.cc. Office: 15 Elm Place, Rye, NY 10580.

Download a reproducible flyer for this event (PDF)

A few days ago I received the following email from an agnostic reader of this website. The email is copied here in its entirety, with the permission of the sender. The question is direct, profound, and has been a nagging companion of Christianity since its beginning.

Since the Hebrew Bible (that you call OT) was written by Jews for Jews, and that obviously a large number of Jews did not follow Christianity and its appropriation of the Hebrew Bible, why should we trust a Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Bible instead of a Jewish interpretation?

I take this question with utmost seriousness, as I think all Christians should. It gets at the heart of several perennial issues in Christian theology, perhaps most importantly the NT’s use of the OT, which shows us the NT authors at work in articulating their understanding of the “connection” between the gospel and Israel’s Scripture. As I see it, this is really the heart of the matter. So, to rephrase the question, “Why should the first Christians’ claims about the OT (and how the gospel connects with it) have any merit in view of the fact that Christianity did not really take hold with Jews living at the time?” To put it yet another way, “Why should the Christian appropriation of the Hebrew Bible have any persuasive power, given that a larger number of Jews—whose Bible it was—rejected it?”

Read the rest of the response >>>