New Testament scholar Richard B. Hays will present this year's Holley-Hull lecture at Samford University Thursday, Sept. 6, at 10 a.m. in Reid Chapel. The public is invited.
Hays is the author of Moral Vision of the New Testament, which Christianity Today magazine named one of the top 100 most important religious books of the 20th century.
Professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School, Durham, N.C., Hays is considered one of the world's leading New Testament scholars. His work focuses on New Testament ethics, the Pauline epistles and early Christian interpretation of the Old Testament. He holds a master's from Yale Divinity School and a Ph.D. from Emory University.
Recently, Hays has been critical of Dan Brown's best-selling The Da Vinci Code for its controversial historical claims.
His topic at Samford will be "Standing by the Fire: Living in John's Symbolic World." He will address a Samford faculty group on Thursday afternoon and speak at Mountain Brook Baptist Church on Wednesday evening, Sept. 5.
The Samford presentation is part of the school's annual Howard L. and Martha H. Holley Lectures: New Testament Voices for a Contemporary Word in Honor of Dr. William E. Hull. Dr. Hull is Samford research professor and retired provost.