I was able this past weekend to attend a conference at the Monsignor Jerome D. Quinn Institute of Biblical Studies at the St. Paul Seminary, School of Divinity, where I also spend a part of my working week. The conference, The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church: The Catholic Seminary Professor of Sacred Scripture and the Classroom, focused to a large degree on understanding and integrating the Pope’s recent document Verbum Domini in the interpretation of Scripture and applying its ideas to classroom teaching, particularly in seminaries, and the actual practice of biblical studies. Although centered on the teaching and interpretation of the Bible in seminaries, these papers will be valuable for teachers of the Bible at the undergraduate and high-school levels also and for anyone interested in the study of the Bible in general.

The papers were uniformly excellent and penetrating, at both an academic and spiritual level, which was much the point of the conference.  Papers were offered by Catholic biblical scholars such as Fr. James Swetnam, S.J., Peter Williamson, Mary Healy, Brant Pitre, Scott Hahn, Fr. Stephen Ryan, O.P, Fr. Andreas Hoeck, and many others. I wish I could share aspects of these papers with you now, but they are still working copies. The final copies will, however, be posted at the Quinn Institute website, and I will alert you to when that takes place. I think you will enjoy these papers and the fruit of many good minds reflecting on Verbum Domini.

John W. Martens

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John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.