March 17, 2015
For Immediate Release
By Joan C. McKinney, news and publications coordinator
CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. - Campbellsville University is hosting sessions on the St. John's Bible, the first fully handwritten and illuminated Bible in over 500 years in sessions Monday, March 23.
Led by Dr. Tracy Hartman, Daniel O. Aleshire professor of homiletics and practical theology at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond (BTSR), there will be three sessions all of which are open to the public free of charge.
Hartman will speak at 6:30 p.m. until 8 p.m. in room 15 of the Administration Building, 104 University Drive, Campbellsville, and the public is invited. She will also speak at two classes from 10 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. in the Ransdell Chapel classroom at 401 N. Hoskins Ave., and in Druien Hall 4 at 100 University Drive, from 2 p.m. until 2:50 p.m. These are classes, but they are also open to the public.
Completed in 2011, this monumental manuscript, each of seven volumes spanning 2 feet tall by 3 feet wide when opened, has been shared with the world. The Vatican, St. Martin-in-the Fields and the Mayo Clinic house copies but none have been to Kentucky until this year.
Dr. John Hurtgen, dean of the School of Theology, said, “The Baptist Theological Seminary of Richmond is in the last months of their presentation of the St. John's Bible and wanted to bring this powerful and beautiful volume of the Gospels and Acts to groups outside Virginia.
“To see and hear what Christians saw and heard in the earliest centuries of the church-someone reading from a handwritten and hand-illustrated Bible-is a spiritual experience in itself.
Hartman teaches preaching and directs the seminary's Supervised Ministry and Doctor of Ministry programs. She is the author of Letting the Other Speak: Proclaiming the Stories of Biblical Women and co-author of New Proclamation Commentary. She also contributed to the Feasting on the Word and Feasting on the Gospels commentary series.
Hartman served as preacher and preaching instructor for the First Annual Pastor's Conference and as preacher and lecturer for the First Annual Lay Women's Conference at Baptist Theological Seminary at Zimbabwe. She is active in Baptist life and has served as staff member and interim pastor to several Virginia churches. She enjoys preaching throughout the region.
She has a bachelor of arts from Carson-Newman College, her master of divinity from BTSR and a Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education.
Campbellsville University is a widely acclaimed Kentucky-based Christian university with more than 3,500 students offering 63 undergraduate options, 17 master's degrees, five postgraduate areas and eight pre-professional programs. The website for complete information is campbellsville.edu.