HJW

This is about a group of Åbo Akademi scholars active in historical Jesus research. The group has been known as the Åbo Akademi Historical Jesus Workshop. At the start of year 2015 the group’s name changed from “Workshop” to “Research group”. Thus, HJW is now HJR. I will so far preserve the old links on this site. Here is the institutional web page of the group.

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“HJW” comes from Historical Jesus Workshop. This is a research group I established at the Åbo Akademi University fall 2006. It originally consisted of doctoral students writing their theses on the historical Jesus. They had began to emerge in the theological faculty of the university, its department of exegetics. At start, I organized seminars where they could discuss each other’s topics and focus on the questions of historical Jesus research better than would have been possible in a wider circle of people. Gradually, we took on some further activities which included editing popularizing volumes on Jesus. One collaborative work in particular, titled A.D. 30 (a book about the death of Jesus), gained wide attention and interest in Finland. We were interviewed prime time in national TV and radio channels, newspapers etc.

While the HJW is mainly a national project, it also has international dimensions by the scholarly work of the group members and via the Nordic Jesus symposia. Cf. the institutional page at HJW (Åbo Akademi).