Lecture series: “The Bible”. Origin – Message – Impact (summer term 2003)

As far as its title is concerned, the Bible is the most famous book. But who really knows it? The public lecture series of the Faculty of Theology during the “Year of the Bible” wishes to make aware of the manifold relations in which the Bible has displayed its aura in present and past times. This goes beyond the borders settled by religions and religious denominations. The use of the Bible should be exemplarily examined both in our close related sister-religion, the Judaism, and within the milieu of the Orient, where the biblical message has to find an appropriate language under entirely different cultural and religious circumstances. The lecture series also intended to examine the religiosity of the nowadays world, where the biblical bonds are often unconsciously present or where people consciously search for new religious authorities.

The manifold effectiveness of the Bible in our contemporary context of cultures and religions has an equally manifold counterpart in our society, in the local Christian churches and in the religious education in schools. The encouragement of the Gospel and the life according to the good message are to be brought from the spirit of the Gospel into our society and to each individual. How this can occur and how this occurs was also the focus of the lecture series.

The fact that regarding considerable religious, ethical and cultural challenges, the Bible has been until nowadays a book in which it is worth searching for and finding a promising path of life, would not be possible unless the life offered by the Bible were well founded and justified. The lecture series dedicated therefore at the beginning a number of lectures to the origin, the content and the purpose of the biblical scripts. Decisive eras in the church history were also dealt with: the Early Church, when holy scripts joined for the first time into the Holy Scripture, and the Reform, when the attempt to regain the Bible as basis and norm for the Christian Church was undertaken with admirable concentration.

Should this enterprise be successful, the lecture series will contribute as academic public event in the “Year of the Bible” to enticing people in reading this book. Surprising discoveries and unimagined treasures are awaiting in it.

The lecture series began on 23.4.2003 and took place on each Wednesday – with interruption – at 6:00 p.m. (cum tempore) at the St. Nicholas University Church.