TOKYO (UCAN) -- Participants at the first-ever international Bible forum in Japan said they learned much by listening to leading biblical scholars from around the world.

More than 2,000 people took part in the international Bible Forum that the Japan Bible Society (JBS) held May 3-5 in Tokyo.

The forum featured 29 lectures by more than 20 speakers from Japan and abroad. JBS director Hiroshi Omiya organized the event to mark the recent establishment of the society's translation section.

The chairman of the forum, Jesuit Father Chung Mo Koo, said no such forum had been held previously in Japan.

"An unexpectedly large number of people coming from different Churches attended. And many non-Christian people who are interested in the Bible also came," Father Koo said. He noted that participants and speakers included people involved in diverse fields such as Scripture, homiletics, pastoral work and spirituality.

One of the participants, Sister Yoshie Fujioka of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Nagasaki, found the event inspiring. "Being able to listen to the foremost biblical scholars in the world brought home to me the great richness and depth of biblical expressions," she remarked. "I wish to convey this experience to my students," added the nun, who said she teaches European history at Junshin Catholic University in Nagasaki.

Among speakers at the forum were Emanuel Tov, lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and editor-in-chief of the publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Dominican Father Adrian Schenker, professor emeritus at the University of Fribourg, in Switzerland. Father Schenker is president of the editorial committee of Biblia Hebraica Quinta, the fifth edition of a scholarly version of the Hebrew Bible with extensive annotations on the transmission and translation of the text.

John Dominic Crossan, an expert on the historical Jesus and professor emeritus of religious studies at DePaul University in Chicago, the United States, delivered the first lecture of the forum, on the topic Jesus and the 'Kingdom of God' Movement.

The core of Jesus' "Kingdom of God" movement, he explained, was healing and shared meals in a grassroots community. Jesus finally went to Jerusalem as a double protest against the Roman imperial rulers and their Jewish religious collaborators, he maintained. The sacrificial death of Jesus, he continued, was a gift to humanity that enabled people to form, maintain and restore human relationships.

In his second lecture, Crossman discussed the egalitarianism and justice Saint Paul presents when speaking about the resurrection of Jesus.

Father Schenker explained the Biblia Hebraica project.

After the lecture, he told a reporter from Katorikku Shimbun, the national Catholic weekly newspaper: "After being invited to the forum, I was looking forward to meeting Japanese Christians and observing Church life and biblical scholarship here. It is wonderful to see so many people together at this forum."

Father Masahide Haresaku, parish priest of Koenji church in Tokyo, spoke on The Church that Proclaims the Gospel, while Sister Kazuko Watanabe of the Sisters of Notre Dame of Namur, chairperson of the board of trustees of Notre Dame Seishin College, spoke on The Bible and Myself -- Good News.

Professor Tsuneaki Kato of the homiletics department of Tokyo Christian University also gave a talk.

The Bible society plans to publish the texts of the forum lectures in July.

Established in 1937, the society is the local chapter of the Protestant-based International Bible Society, which publishes Bible translations in numerous languages. Japanese translations of the Bible include Catholic, Protestant and ecumenical versions. The first modern Japanese translations date to the 19th century.

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