Hungary will once again host a major Bible conference in the southern city of Szeged will, from Aug. 23, director of the conference, theology professor György Benyik, told national news agency MTI.
Benyik said the conference’s topic will be St. Paul’s epistle to Galatians, the longest letter to the apostle, which is considered by experts to be a draft of the more prominent Epistle to the Romans. The letter is based on the problems of a Christian mission that has already begun in a geographically and ethnically very complex community, largely in present-day Turkey, mentioning theoretical debates, community trends and disagreements between early Christian and Jewish diasporas.
The conference will focus on the philosophical and historical facts inherent in the text of the letter, but will also address the reception of the content of the letter in early Christian literature and the parallels between its theses reflected in Hellenistic philosophy.
The Szeged International Biblical Conference has grown into one of the largest theological conferences in Eastern Europe in the last three decades.
In addition to Hungarian and prominent foreign Bible scholars, the conference will also host lectures and publications on the main topic and related ones, although several of them are only online due to epidemiological restrictions, Benyik said.
The volume summarizing the proceedings of the previous conference, entitled “Sacrifice and Ritual”, will be published in time for this year’s meeting.
The conference will also host an award ceremony. In 2010, the organizers of the conference named an award after Joachim Gnilka, one of the most prominent contemporary authorities in New Testament research, which is given annually to researchers who have done the most for the development of Bible studies in Hungary. This year, the award will be presented to Mario Cifrák, head of the New Testament Department of Catholic Theology at the University of Zagreb.
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