Our guest speaker for this meeting will be Dr. James Dvorak. He serves as Vice President Academic and Professor of the New Testament at McMaster Divinity College. He holds a Ph.D. in Christian Theology from MDC, with an emphasis on Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics. However, as evidenced by his numerous publications, his interests extend beyond Linguistics to other disciplines such as social identity theory.
The topic for this meeting will be: “Linguistics and Other disciplines in the New Testament Studies.” In contemporary New Testament scholarship, scholars tend to choose one approach over another when interpreting the Scripture. For example, some address the topic from a linguistic perspective whilst others utilize different types of social-scientific criticisms such as honor-shame and social memory.
However, is there any way we can approach the text from multiple perspectives simultaneously? What are the advantages/disadvantages of adopting SSC models for linguists, and vice versa? Is this even a reasonable and possible goal?
In our upcoming guild, under the direction of Dr. Dvorak, we hope to grapple with these questions in order to better equip ourselves as bible interpreters and teachers of our age. On top of all these, for those of you who haven’t yet met our VP Academic, it will be a great opportunity to get to know him.