Dr. Jeff Childers, the Carmichael-Walling Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity in the Graduate School of Theology at ACU, has been invited to lecture in Norway in December 2014. A select group of scholars from various parts of the world will gather as guests of the Norwegian School of Theology in Oslo in a conference entitled, The Bible as Notepad. This conference focuses on the ways in which ancient Bibles were read, edited, and marked up by actual users over the centuries. In his lecture, “Divining Gospel,” Childers will present original research on a unique Syriac Bible from the sixth century that also contains a complicated fortune-telling apparatus alongside the Gospel text. Comparing Greek, Latin, Coptic, Armenian, and Georgian sources, Childers has found that there was once a very lively trade in using Gospel books as fortune-telling guides to life, until it was suppressed by church authorities and practically stamped out of existence.