Fifth International East-West Symposium of New Testament Scholars held in Minsk
The symposium is the fifth in a series of conferences devoted to the development and improvement of scholarly cooperation and exchange between eastern Orthodox and western Protestant and Roman Catholic biblical scholars. The conference dealt with different approaches to Jesus Christ in eastern and western exegetical and theological traditions.
“Whereas in the Western European tradition Theology and Biblical Studies have been part of the university right from its beginnings in the Middle Ages, that has not been the case in most Eastern European countries, for instance in Russia, where these two disciplines have been located in theological academies sponsored by the Orthodox Church. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 and during communist rule in most areas of Eastern Europe, all public theological activities were banned from the universities (with East Germany as the only exception) and were limited to church funded theological academies completely isolated from the international scholarly community. Since Biblical Studies in Eastern Europe had no contact with international research and limited access to the basic tools of scholarly work, it could not develop in the way it has in other parts of the world” – organizers say.
The Fifth International East-West Symposium of New Testament Scholars was held in Minsk (Belarus), September 2 to 9, 2010. It is a project of the Eastern Europe Liaison Committee (EELC) of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas and will take place at the IBB “Johannes Rau” Minsk. The Symposium will be organized jointly by the EELC, the Institute for Theology at the Belarussian State University, and the Theological Academy of the Russian Orthodox Church in Belarus. Managing organizers are Dr Svjatoslav Rogalsky for BGU Minsk and Theological Academy, and Professor Dr Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr for EELC.
