Two Have Fallen: A Third Has Arisen

Just got word from Char at Westar that Art Dewey is not going to make our Jesus Seminar on the Road due to a surgery. He will be fine. Art Dewey had replaced Charles Hedrick who had to step out for health concerns. Both are doing well.

And now a third brave scholar will attempt the arduous trek to Elizabethton. He is young. His hair is red. He has Viking blood. He will attempt where two have fallen before him. He is:

Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee

Milton C. Moreland is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Rhodes College specializing in archaeology and the origins of Christianity. He has M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in New Testament and Christian Origins from the Claremont Graduate University and an undergraduate degree in Ancient History from the University of Memphis.

Since 1993, he has served as a Senior Staff member and field archaeologist at the Sepphoris excavation in Galilee. He has also traveled and led student groups to Greece, Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Italy and Germany.

Moreland is Co-Director of the Program in Archaeology at Rhodes and also directs the Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies. In both capacities he leads research projects to sites extending from the historical plantations of west Tennessee to the Roman towns of ancient Palestine. His special interest is how archaeology has shaped our present reconstructions of past societies, and the theories that archaeologists use to interpret their data. He has also co-directed a project on the “James Ossuary” that has sought to explain the scholarly, commercial, and religious aspects of the recent phenomena related to this burial box and the media coverage it received.

Moreland has written widely on the setting of Galilee in the first century, and on the first Christians in Galilee and Jerusalem. He the Managing Editor of The Critical Edition of Q (2000), The Sayings Gospel Q in Greek and English (2002), and he edited and contributed to Between Text and Artifact: Integrating Archaeology in Biblical Studies Teaching (2003).

We are thrilled to have Milton pick up the scepter and join us next weekend. It will be the same schedule, but Milton will offer his own insights and expertise as a scholar of Christian origins. Here is his page at Rhodes College in Memphis.