Male Bonding at the “Gospel According to Moses” Conference in Copenhagen

I’m sitting in the Copenhagen airport right now, reflecting on my experience lecturing at a conference at the Dansk Bibel-Institut. I had the chance to share my research on the plot of Genesis and to meet and bond with three amazing scholars and churchmen.

Jens and Seth during a conference break. Sorry, no picture of Yohanan.

Jens and the Copenhagen School

As I was writing my dissertation my supervisor alerted me to a Danish scholar I had overlooked and suggested I read a published dissertation called Text and History by Jens Bruun Kofoed.

One of the amazing things about Jens and his book is his context. Jens is from Copenhagen, where the work of the famous “Copenhagen school” has been discrediting the historicity of the biblical account. In his book, Jens clearly demonstrates that when read properly, the Hebrew Bible offers a reliable description of Israelite history.

What an amazing testimony of God’s providence that right in the midst of one of today’s great challenges to the reliability of Scripture God has raised up a solid evangelical scholar like Jens to confront the issue head on.
After reading his book, without even having met Jens, I felt a kind of kinship with him as an evangelical scholar in Europe dealing with issues much like the ones I was addressing.

Jens and the Gospel According to Moses Conference

Almost ten years later, in November of 2015, I attended the annual conferences of the Evangelical Theological Society and the Society of Biblical Literature where I presented a paper on “The Man-woman Shaped Hole in the Heart of Creation.” Jens was on the committee that selected my paper for presentation and he also sat in to listen. Afterwards we got together and, long story short, we became good friends and he invited me to come to visit him in Copenhagen to present at a conference he would call “The Gospel According to Moses.”

Jens and I during a break in the conference in Copenhagen.

The conference was to last two days, starting Monday, March 27 and ending the following day. I would have three hours of speaking time to talk about the plot of Genesis. In the days leading up to the conference I was looking forward to the opportunity to share my studies on the book of Genesis and get feedback from students and faculty. This was the first time I’d ever had the opportunity to share a complete summary of my work with a group of scholars.

My anticipation turned out to be well founded. The students and faculty present had great questions and some even seemed excited about the topic. I talked about the importance of understanding the story of Scripture and how the book of Genesis sets up the story. We went through the plot of Genesis and discovered how even the very first book of the Bible points to a righteous seed that will help us return to God’s blessing and presence.

I’m afraid I was so in to writing this post that I almost missed my flight. It’s now a couple weeks later as I finish this post so the thoughts are not as fresh as when I started.

Bonding with Yohanan and Seth

Having the chance to share my studies in Genesis was great but the best part of the conference was getting to know Jens and the other two speakers, Seth Postell (author of Adam as Israel) and Yohanan Stanfield. It turns out we have a lot in common. We not only share common research interests and a passion for understanding how the gospel starts way back in Genesis, but we also share a commitment to the local church. What a great blessing to learn more about these men, their families and discover a shared commitment to train leaders and plant churches in Denmark, Israel and Slovakia.