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On September 30, 2016, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk in his capacity of rector of the Ss Cyril and Methodius Institute of Post-Graduate Studies (CMI) and chairman of the Synodal Biblical-Theological Commission, delivered a lecture for New Testament teachers of theological schools.

The lecture was organized as part of the seminar held by the CMI from September 30 to October 3, 2016, for teachers of the New Testament.

In the beginning of his lecture, His Eminence addressed himself to the participants in the seminar with brief introductory remarks. ‘In these days, the Seventh Eastern European Symposium on the New Testament Studies is being held in Moscow. When I learnt about the holding of this Symposium, I thought it would be very appropriate to combine it with your stay in Moscow so that you could familiarize yourselves with the work of modern scholars studying the New Testament’, he said.

In the course of his lecture, the CMI rector shared with students his thoughts about the further development of New Testament studies in Russian and foreign theological schools. ‘We should work out a certain attitude to what is going on in today’s western biblical scholarship’, His Eminence noted.

The lecture dealt with ‘the search for historical Jesus’, theories of the origin of Christianity and New Testament textology. His Eminence briefly described the trends in the academic research in the last two hundred years, pointing out that very often the work of New Testament researchers is turned into a vicious circle, ‘On the one hand, the work on the text of the New Testament is often subjected to the already formulated ideological paradigms. On the other hand, these paradigms themselves are shaped not on the basis of the text but on the basis of its reading from a certain ideological perspective’.

In conclusion of his lecture, His Eminence answered questions from teachers. ‘We come to know the New Testament scholarship afresh, we take it critically and this critical reaction, being quite natural, comes from our theological schools and the academic community. I believe the next stage in this dialogue should deal with the translations of our scholars’ texts into foreign languages so that our colleagues in other countries could be introduced to our approach’, the rector concluded.

CMI Press Service

DECR Communication Service