In July, 2006 I traveled to St. Andrews, Scotland to attend the St. Andrews Conference on Hebrews & Theology . I was fortunate to be able to have my wife, Suann, accompany me.

It was quite a trip getting there, though I think everything went pretty well -- considering. We left the Dayton airport in the late afternoon and arrived at the Newark, NJ airport. I was a little worried when we got on the plane and I discovered that my aisle seat armrest was fixed. Being a big guy, I count on having an aisle seat where I can lift the outside armrest and sort of spill over into the aisle. I was going to be crammed in between two armrests for the 6 - 7 hour flight to Glasgow. Everyone around us was eyeing an empty row of seats nearby. Suann kept nudging me, wanting me to say something to the flight attendant. I kept quiet and remained patient. Finally they seemed like they were getting ready to get going. The flight attendants were standing near us and were obviously getting ready to make some seat changes. I kept waiting. The flight attendant then looked straight at me and asked me if I would like to move and then had Suann and I move to the empty row. What a relief!

Our next challenge in Glasgow was finding the right bus to take us to Queen Street Station. We asked at an information booth and were able to purchase our bus ticket there including the return. Pretty soon we were on the right bus and heading to the central part of Glasgow. At Queen Street Station we purchased our train tickets (with returns). This train station was the terminus for the rail line and was a large indoor station. We managed to find the right platform and found a nice place to sit. We watched the countryside as we made our way to Edinburgh. We had a difficult time trying to figure out how to get from one car to the next. We saw people doing it, so we knew it oculd be done. I walked up to the door and the door automatically opened. There I was standing in between the two cars, but the next door would not open. I pushed on the door a little, waved my arms, and tried to pull them open. Nothing worked. We tried a second time and still couldn't figure it out. Finally we watched someone go through and noticed what he did. We discovered that above the second door is a little inset button that you have to push -- no sign around it anywhere!

An hour later we were getting off at the Hay Market station and then finding the right platform to get on the next train. That train was very full and we had to stand with our luggage by the space with the bike rack for the next hour.

St. Andrews doesn't have a train station, so we had to get off at Euchars. The way to get from the platform to the road is like an entrance to a ride at an amusement park. You go up the ramp on one side, switchback, over the tracks, down the ramp, switchback, and there you have it. In a few minutes our bus pulled up that would take us to St. Andrews. Meanwhile we were treated -- or subjected, depending on your point of view -- to an airshow of low-flying military jets -- couldn't tell, of course, whose jets they were. We have no idea if there was in fact an airshow going on or if Euchars was being liberated.

Finally we reached St. Andrews. This was the only time we messed up: We went one stop too far and had to walk back a little way. We had to find a building called the Gateway. It was designated by a circle on our campus map. I should have gone with my first instincts, because it actually was the round building we had seen from the bus. We had about an hour to wait before check-in time. This was going to be my first experience ordering food in Scotland. The best I can figure out, you choose fillings for your sandwich from the pots of mush. I didn't recognize most things and couldn't understand the Scottish accent of the person helping me. I thought something looked like chicken salad, so I asked for that. I don't really remember what I got, only that saying something is "salad" means they put lettuce and stuff in your sandwich. This was also my first encounter with using the credit card scanners. Apparently they use pin numbers with their credit cards. They slide the card in, punch in their pin numbers, and that's it. Every time I tried to use a credit card, the clerk would have a moment of trying to remember how to handle international credit cards.

We found our way across the campus to New Hall, the conference center building. I should say that this was a part of St. Andrews University campus that was on the outskirts of the city (a small city, by the way). I had been immediately disappointed by the modern buildings. I hadn't come all the way across the ocean to spend a week at an area that looked like Muncie, Indiana. Turns out that these were classroom buildings like physics and computer science. The old buildings of St. Marys, that house the theology department, were downtown, and I never actually found them though I'm sure we walked by them.

We picked up the registration materials and got our room key. The room was nice, but it was small. Like going to any other country, one has to figure out how things are down. We had brought our voltage converter and didn't really have too much of a problem with that. We had already been on a trip to England, so we knew what to expect. We were surprised to find that the bed had a bottom sheet but no top sheet. The bed covering was a duvet. Later we would overhear someone else talking about it. He thought it was like a comforter that someone else would have had close to their body. They are able to pull the insides out and wash the covering just like sheets. Suann asked for a top sheet and they just left us extra sheets asking for more information so they could make the bed the way we wanted. The shower was a bit different and took a few minutes to figure out.

The worst part about Scotland was that there was no air conditioning or fans anywhere (we did eventually go into a bookstore in Glasgow that had air conditioning). It took several days before we figured out how to get our window to swing out all the way. We learned that Scotland was experiencing a heat wave, temperatures in the mid to high 70s during the day. But it was also extremely humid, since St. Andrews is located on the North Sea. Most days I had to take a shower in the afternoon if we went for a walk.

The food was very good, and during most meals I enjoyed talking with other conference attenders. During one meal, Richard Hays happened to sit across from me. He took time to tell me about his move from Yale to Duke. When I described the argument of my dissertation on Hebrews, he seemed to agree heartily with what I was saying. We met a couple who had come from New Zealand, and several times enjoyed conversing with them. I had a number of other interesting conversations. Many times we ended up in the lift (elevator) with people from the conference and exchanged pleasantries. This included brief exchanges with such notables as Howard Marshall, Morna Hooker, and Harold Attridge.

There were others that I particularly enjoyed conversing with during the break times during the conference. I was very pleased to have several conversations with James Thompson from Abilene Christian University. I had read his book on Hebrews, The Beginnings of Christian Philosophy, when writing my dissertation. I had also been reading his new book, Pastoral Ministry according to Paul: A Biblical Vision.

I discovered that I was known to a number of people. Some talked to me about my dissertation work on comparison in Hebrews. This was an analysis of the rhetorical device called synkrisis in which two qualitatively similar items are compared in order to show the excellence of one over the other. This view of the rhetoric of Hebrews leads us to interpret the text, not as a theological argument using rabbinical hermeneutics and midrash, but as a hortatory device for encouraging people to think of what God has done in the past and what greater thing God has done in God's son, Jesus. It's not an anti-Jewish argument, but a pro-Jesus argument. The focus is on the exhortation to continue on in faithfulness and obedience, not a tract against lapsing back into a former life in Jewish legalism, as it's traditionally been understood.

This point was made quite eloquently in Richard Hay's keynote address. I look forward to its publication, because to me it was a watershed moment. His paper was related to the issue of Christian supersessionism, the idea that Christianity was superceding Judaism as spiritual Israel, and that Hebrews is our best witness to what the church ramped up in the ensuing centuries.

We got more of the traditional reading of Hebrews the next in a paper by Howard Marshall (an evangelical favorite New Testament commentator and theologian). The title of his paper was telling: He titled it "Soteriology in Hebrews." It suggests to me the method he used, which was to take Christian soteriology (theology about salvation) and then show where it appears in Hebrews. My current interest in the distinctiveness of various streams of early Christianity would have preferred to hear a paper "Soteriology of Hebrews," a synthesis of what Hebrews itself describes as salvation.

One of the interesting discussions that occurred at the conference was first raised, I think, in Howard Marshall's paper -- the issue of gentiles in Hebrews. He comments in a footnote, "Significantly, perhaps, the Letter makes no reference anywhere to Gentiles." But then he writes about Heb. 6:1ff, "Here we have, incidentally, a surprising parallel to 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 where the Gentiles turn from idols to serve the living and true God. The Author thus provides us here with the Jewish equivalent to Gentile conversion." The two verses under question are "6:1 Therefore let us go on toward perfection, leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ, and not laying again the foundation: repentance from dead works and faith toward God, 2 instruction about baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment." The assumption has been that "dead works" refers to Jewish observance of the Law. But a common way Jews used language of dead works is to describe idolatry. For instance, Wisdom 13:10 "But miserable, with their hopes set on dead things, are those who give the name "gods" to the works of human hands, gold and silver fashioned with skill, and likenesses of animals, or a useless stone, the work of an ancient hand" (See Wisdom 14:11-30; 15:15; also Acts 7:41). The language of Hebrews 6:1-2 reads more like what gentiles would experience as converts to Jewish Christianity: turn from idols, give allegiance to the one true and living God, learn about the various Jewish practices of washing (note the plural of "baptisms," which Howard Marshall actually wrote with a parenthesis around the "s"), the practice of laying on hands for blessing, and the common pharasaic tenets of resurrection and eternal judgment. In a later session, Carl Moser (Eastern University) asked about gentiles in Hebrews and from all appearances people had no objections to the lack of reference to gentiles. [Yes, I should have said something.] In the break time I asked several people about their thinking about the gentile issue. James Thompson, for instance, said he had no problem with the audience of Hebrews being gentile proselytes to a kind of Jewish Christianity within a Hellenized Jewish context.

There were many good papers -- and some not so good. Carl Moser has an interesting thesis that Hebrews was written from Jerusalem as a warning to Jerusalem Christians to "get out of dodge," as one person described it. I was looking forward to the paper by Loveday Alexander, but she had to leave to attend a funeral -- the presentation of her paper by an American male just didn't do the British authorship justice. I was a bit lost in Morna Hooker's argument that the context of Hebrews is the synagogue oppressing the Jewish Christians, even to the extent of property loss, imprisonment, and physical attack (Heb. 10:32-34). The next day she seemed to disavow her comments when questioned by Richard Hays. Somewhere, something was lost in translation -- from British English to American English.

Another odd exchanged occurred regarding the identification of the name Jesus inherited (Heb. 1:4). Richard Baukham insisted that it was plainly obvious to him, and he couldn't understand why no one else could see it, that the name Jesus would inherit as son is the name of his father, so it must be Lord (meaning the divine name, Yahweh). I can't remember if this was the discussion that carried on in the last session or not. John Webster, a theologian from Aberdeen, had given a theological paper about Hebrews. That way of talking about Hebrews can be a bit foreign to New Testament exegetes and historians. Somewhere in there were hotly debated topics like divine impassability and immutability.

At the end of every paper, there was time for discussion. It was interesting to watch as the same four or five people would always have a comment or question. The custom seems to be, say something complimentary (or in some cases fawning) about the giving of the paper and then to ask the question. In most cases I enjoyed the question and answer period, but sometimes I wished some who would always have to say something would remain seated. One person in particular comes to mind. He seemed not to ask questions but to suggest an idea of his and ask the person what he/she thought of his idea. I had briefly met him in the cafeteria; he saw my name tag, that it said Earlham, commented "I know where that is," and then walked away.

We had been expecting that there was to be a rail strike on the day people were to be leaving the conference. Thankfully it was somehow averted. We managed to find the right bus stop to get on the bus and get to the Euchars train station. I was completely engaged with talking to some conference attenders during our hour wait. The trains from Euchars to Edinburgh and from Edinburgh to Glasgow were full. We ended up standing nearly the whole distance, except for the short distance we sat in reserved seats until we were kicked out.

We stayed Saturday and Sunday at the Buchanan Hotel in downtown Glasgow near the train station. Our third-floor windows, which we had to keep fully open to get some breeze, looked out over the pedestrian thoroughfare. On Saturday it was packed with shoppers and noises of street performers wafted into our room, including the sound of bagpipes. In any other city I would have been miserable, but I thoroughly enjoyed the sounds and sights of Glasgow. On Sunday we walked to the Glasgow Friends Meeting. We were welcomed cordially and had a couple of people sit with us after meeting and talk about ESR, Friends in the States, and Friends in the UK. We then walked an equal distance further to visit the newly renovated Kelvingrove Museum. From there we could see the awe-inspring towers of Glasgow University peaking out over the tops of trees.

Our return trip was rather uneventful. It was embarrassing not to be able to understand the airport person asking us about whether we had packed our own bags. He was nice enough about it, and said that he was in fact speaking English. Suann had an easier time than I. I kept looking to her as if she were my interpreter.

I'm very grateful for the opportunity to have attended this conference and to have visited Scotland. I'm encouraged that my line of research is accepted by others, for the most part, and that I have something to contribute to the field. I hope that my present work will continue to develop and that I will have opportunties for publishing and presenting my findings.