{"id":1007,"date":"2010-02-28T19:42:27","date_gmt":"2010-02-28T19:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2010\/02\/the-message-of-jesus-new-orleans-baptist-forum.html"},"modified":"2010-02-28T19:42:27","modified_gmt":"2010-02-28T19:42:27","slug":"the-message-of-jesus-new-orleans-baptist-forum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/02\/the-message-of-jesus-new-orleans-baptist-forum.html","title":{"rendered":"The Message of Jesus–New Orleans Baptist Forum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Nawlins<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

The Greer-Hurd Forum was an outstanding success this years, thanks to all the hard work of Bob Stewart pictured at the far right on the bottom row of this picture.  Excellent papers were presented by Amy Jill Levine from Vandy (on my left), and the dialogue with John Dominic Crossan (on my right in the picture) went very well.  It was respectful and considerate, and even though we strongly disagreed on some things the dialogue Friday night went well.  Further excellent papers were given by Darrell Bock (top row far right), and by Craig Evans (middle of the top row) and by Stephen Patterson the Gospel of Thomas expert (top left).  There were probably 600 or so in attendance, and the quality of both the scholarly dialogue and many of the questions from the audience was high.  And a good time was had by all.   I went to the Yes concert at the House of Blues Thursday night and we went to some fabulous  restaurants almost every night, including my favorite— Brennan’s Palace Cafe which had the painting of New Orleans famous musicians on the upstairs walls.  <\/p>\n

\"Nawlins<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

See if you can find my fellow North Carolinian Dizzie Gillespie in the picture above. <\/p>\n

\"Nawlins<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n

In this picture there are more familiar faces…. Louis Armstrong, Harry Connick Jr.  Dr. John Wynton Marsalis and more.  The crawfish etouffee and the crabmeat quiche and the pecan crusted flounder were out of this world… not to mention the white chocolate bread pudding…. more repenting from such eating is now required. <\/p>\n

I preached twice,  once in chapel at New Orleans Baptist Seminary  and once this morning at Edgewater Baptist  Church (which four years ago was Underwater Baptist Church).  New Orleans is making a remarkable comeback, and not just because of the Saints.   I also picked up dollar  bills with Drew Brees’ picture on it—- cause he is MONEY in Nawlins these days. <\/p>\n

If there were some important trends in the papers given at this conference they were that history and archaeology and understanding the social context of Jesus matter, matter enormously if you actually want to understand the man.  And it was made clearer than ever that Jesus knew how to both comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.   I will published a draft of my lecture in the next post. <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Greer-Hurd Forum was an outstanding success this years, thanks to all the hard work of Bob Stewart pictured at the far right on the bottom row of this picture.  Excellent papers were presented by Amy Jill Levine from Vandy (on my left), and the dialogue with John Dominic Crossan (on my right in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Message of Jesus-New Orleans Baptist Forum - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/02\/the-message-of-jesus-new-orleans-baptist-forum.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Message of Jesus-New Orleans Baptist Forum - 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}