The Annual Lectures

The Annual Lecture has been the highlight of the Centre’s year since its creation by Professor Andrew Lincoln in 2000.

Every year, on a summer evening at the end of May or beginning of June, the Centre brings one of the U.K.’s world-leading scholars to the University to address an audience of between 70 and 100 people on some aspect of biblical interpretation. The speakers alternate between New Testament specialists, Old Testament specialists and scholars with a theological or some other disciplinary interest in the Bible. 

The Centre has hosted the following Annual Lectures (with Professor Esler succeeding Professor Lincoln to the Portland Chair in New Testament Studies on 1^st September 2013):

2001 Professor Tom Wright, then Canon of Westminster, ‘Paul’s Gospel and Caesar’s Empire’

2002 Professor Hugh Williamson, University of Oxford, ‘Messianic Prophecy Then and Now’

2003 Professor Anthony Thiselton, University of Nottingham, ‘1 Corinthians—and Postmodernity?’

2004 Professor Christopher Seitz, University of St. Andrews, ‘Old and New—the Challenge of a Twofold Witness of Scripture’

2005 Professor Howard Marshall, University of Aberdeen, ‘Politics, the End-Times and the Language of Luke’s Gospel’

2006 Emerita Professor Frances Young, University of Birmingham, ‘Learning to Read the Scriptures by Attending to Practitioners of the Past’

2007 Professor Walter Moberly, University of Durham, ‘Cataclysm, God and the Task of Theology’

2008 Professor Paul Fiddes, ‘The Complexity of the World and the Limits of Knowledge: An Encounter Between Biblical Wisdom Literature and Modern Thought’

2009 Markus Bockmuehl, University of Oxford, ‘The Conversions of Simon Peter’

2010 Professor Robert Gordon, University of Cambridge, ‘The Royal Mandate in Genesis 1: Theology, Anthropology, Ecology’

2011 Professor David Ford, University of Cambridge, ‘Theological Interpretation of the Gospel of John: Meeting Nicodemus’

2012 Professor John Barclay, University of Durham, ‘Paul, Reciprocity and the Modern Myth of the Pure Gift’

2013 Emeritus Professor John Rogerson, University of Sheffield, on ‘Interpreting Leviticus Today’. 

2014 Professor Valentine Cunningham, University of Oxford, ‘The (Awesome) Necessity of Bible Re-Reading?’

2015 Professor Larry Hurtado, University of Edinburgh, ‘Early Christianity: A Bookish Religion’

2016 Professor John Barton, University of Oxford, ‘How to Read the Old Testament’

2017 Professor Janet Soskice, University of Cambridge, ‘The Names and the Naming of God – Have We Got It All Wrong?’

2018 Professor Chris Keith, St Mary’s University Twickenham, ‘Gospel Cannibalism and the Battle over Jesus’

2019 Dr Craig Bartholomew, Kirby Laing Centre for Christian Ethics, ‘The View from Sinai: Sinai and Public Theology’

2020 Postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

2021 Postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

2022 Professor Ben Quash, Kings College London, ‘Making (Reception) History: A Visual Commentary on Scripture’