A team of LDS scholars gathered at BYU’s second annual New Testament conference to present commentary on the Gospel of Luke and The Book of Revelation on Wednesday, May 14, 2014.
“This is the second of what we hope will be an annual conference,” said session conductor Maurine Proctor.
The conference has been long in the making. The idea to create and host a New Testament conference originated from President J. Reuben Clark approximately 60 years ago.
“(I hope to) provoke in some qualified scholars the desire and determination to go over the manuscripts and furnish us a translation of the New Testament that will give us an accurate translation that shall be pregnant with the great principles of the restored gospel,” Clark said.
The conference consisted of presentations and original works from seven editors who organized the conference. Professor S. Kent Brown led the conference. “No one person put this together,” Brown said. “It was persons“
The goal associated with the gathering of these scholars is to produce a multi-volume commentary on the New Testament with a new rendition of the Greek texts of the New Testament books.
In context to the creation of the conference, and after completing one of the translation volumes, Brown shared the significance of the annual event.
“A little over a year ago we were ready to welcome the first volume on the book of Revelation,” Brown said. “We asked ourselves a question, ‘Is there a way to celebrate this?’ We thought we could put (the New Testament conference) on May 15, the anniversary of the John the Baptist visit, which would carry some meaning, and then talk a little bit about the Baptist but also other things this conference is doing.”
The presentations consisted of original work from each scholar and in-depth analysis from Brown’s book, “The Testimony of Luke.”
“The threads of Mormonism and our doctrine are linked in and through the Bible,” Proctor said. “And they both (The Bible and the Book of Mormon) talk back and forth to one another.”
For more information about this conference visit byuntc.com.
