Notes on Contributors
Richard S. Briggs
is Lecturer in Old Testament and Director of Biblical Studies at Cranmer Hall, St John’s College, Durham University, in England. His Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham was published as Words in Action: Speech Act Theory and Biblical Interpretation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2001); and his other books include The Virtuous Reader: Old Testament Narrative and Interpretive Virtue (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010) and Theological Hermeneutics and the Book of Numbers as Christian Scripture (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2018). He is also an associate ordained minister in the Church of England.
Richard A. Burridge
is Professor of Biblical Interpretation at King’s College London, where he recently stepped down from being Dean after twenty-five years, 1994–2019. Originally a classicist, his doctoral research on the biographical genre of the gospels produced a major sea-change in gospel interpretation, for which he was honored by Pope Francis with the 2013 Ratzinger Prize (the only non-Catholic to receive this award). His book, Imitating Jesus: An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007) was shortlisted for the Michael Ramsey Prize, and he writes on biblical ethics, from apartheid to contemporary debates about sexuality, violence, money and the value of human life. He is also Canon Theologian for Salisbury Diocese.
Charles H. Cosgrove
is Professor of Early Christian Literature and Director of the Ph.D. Program at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (Evanston, Illinois). His publications include An Ancient Christian Hymn with Musical Notation: Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1786: Text and Commentary (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011); Cross-Cultural Paul: Journeys to Others, Journeys to Ourselves, with Herold Weiss and K. K. Yeo (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005); The Meanings We Choose: Hermeneutical Ethics, Indeterminacy and the Conflict of Interpretations (editor and contributor) (London/New York: T. & T. Clark International [Continuum], 2004); Appealing to Scripture in Moral Debate: Five Hermeneutical Rules. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002); Elusive Israel: The Puzzle of Election in Romans (Nashville: Westminster John Knox, 1997); The Cross and the Spirit: A Study in the Argument and Theology of Galatians (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988).
Eryl W. Davies
is Emeritus Professor and former Head of the School of Philosophy and Religion at Bangor University. His previous publications include Prophecy and Ethics: Isaiah and the Ethical Traditions of Israel (Sheffield, JSOT, 1981); Numbers: The New Century Bible Commentary (London: Marshall Pickering, 1995); The Dissenting Reader: Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003); The Immoral Bible: Approaches to Biblical Ethics (London: T. & T. Clark, 2010); Numbers: The Road to Freedom (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2015).
Christian Frevel
is Professor of Hebrew Bible at the Ruhr-University Bochum. He was formerly Professor for Biblical Theology at the University of Cologne (1998–2004). Since 2014 he is also Extraordinary Professor at the Department of Old Testament at the University of Pretoria (South Africa). His latest publications include Geschichte Israels, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2018), Klagelieder (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2018), and Im Lesen Verstehen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2017). His main fields of research are the Book of Numbers, the History of Ancient Israel, Material Culture and Iconography, and Biblical Anthropology.
John Goldingay
is David Allan Hubbard Professor of Old Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, and Priest-in-charge of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, Pasadena. He was formerly Principal of St. John’s Theological College, Nottingham, England. He is the author of commentaries on Psalms, Isaiah, and Daniel, a three-volume Old Testament Theology, a Biblical Theology, and a series of paperback commentaries called “The Old Testament for Everyone”; he is currently completing a paperback on “Old Testament Ethics for Everyone.” He was married to Ann, who died in 2009; they had two sons, Steven and Mark. He is now married to Kathleen.
Jacqueline N. Grey
is Dean of Theology and Professor of Biblical Studies at Alphacrucis College, Australia. Her research interests include pentecostal hermeneutics, feminist readings of the Old Testament, and Isaiah. She is a past President of the Society for Pentecostal Studies (2017). Publications include Three’s A Crowd: Pentecostalism, Hermeneutics and the Old Testament (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011) as well as various articles and book chapters. She is also a Research Fellow at the University of South Africa and the Centre for Pentecostal Theology (TN, USA).
David P. Gushee
Mercer University; M.Div., Th.M., Ph.D. (Union Theological Seminary, New York). Distinguished University Professor and Director of the Center for Theology and Public Life, Mercer University. He is the author or editor of over twenty books, and past president of both the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Christian Ethics.
David G. Horrell
is Professor of New Testament Studies and Director of the Centre for Biblical Studies at the University of Exeter, UK. His recent publications include Becoming Christian: Essays on 1 Peter and the Making of Christian Identity (London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), The Bible and the Environment (London/New York: Routledge, 2014), Solidarity and Difference: A Contemporary Reading of Paul’s Ethics, 2nd ed. (London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2015), and—with Cherryl Hunt and Christopher Southgate—Greening Paul: Rereading the Apostle in an Age of Ecological Crisis (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2010).
Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn
is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Regent College, Vancouver. Her research focuses on the epistle of James and the General Epistles, but includes Second Temple literature, Old Testament in the New, and New Testament ethics. She is co-author of the James Zondervan Exegetical Commentary, and has published a large number of journal articles and book essays.
Brian J. Matz
is Professor of the History of Christianity and CSJ Endowed Chair of Catholic Thought at Fontbonne University (St. Louis, Missouri, USA). His publications include Introducing Protestant Social Ethics: Foundations in Scripture, History and Practice (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), Gregory of Nazianzus (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016) and Patristic Social Thought and Catholic Social Thought: Some Models for a Dialogue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014).
Volker Rabens
is Professor of Biblical Theology at the YMCA University of Applied Sciences in Kassel, Germany, and Extraordinary Associate Professor of the Faculty of Theology at North-West University, South Africa. His publications include The Holy Spirit and Ethics in Paul: Transformation and Empowering for Religious-Ethical Life, 2nd ed. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014), and—ed. with I. H. Marshall and C. Bennema—The Spirit and Christ in the New Testament and Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012). Next to ethics, his main fields of research are Pauline and Johannine studies as well as ancient anthropology and pneumatology.
Jan van der Watt
is Professor emeritus of New Testament at Radboud University, specializing in Johannine Literature. Further areas of research include the ethics of John, methodology and genre studies, and the socio-historical background of the New Testament. His many publications include Reading the New Testament from an Ethical Perspective: A Comprehensive Approach (forthcoming), Eschatology of the New Testament and Some Related Documents (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), and Family of the King: Dynamics of Metaphor in the Gospel according to John (Leiden: Brill, 2000).
Oda Wischmeyer
is Professor emerita for New Testament and Early Jewish Studies at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (Dr h.c. University of Lund). Her publications include Die Kultur des Buches Jesus Sirach (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1995); Liebe als Agape: Das frühchristliche Konzept und der moderne Diskurs (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015).
Her main fields of research are Early Jewish literature, the Letters of Paul, the Gospel of Mark, the Epistle of James, Ancient Jewish and Early Christian ethics, New Testament hermeneutics, history of Biblical interpretation.
Markus Zehnder
(M.Div, Ph.D., and Habilitation at the Theological Faculty of the University of Basel) grew up in Switzerland and is an ordained minister of the Reformed Church of Basel. After the completion of his doctorate, he pursued postdoctoral studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at Harvard University. He has held teaching positions in Switzerland, Germany, Norway, and Belgium. His current main teaching position is at Talbot School of Theology (California); he also teaches at the ETF Leuven and is Professor II at Ansgar Theological Seminary. He has published on several topics in the field of Old Testament ethics, especially questions relating to homosexuality, migration, and violence. Further areas of research include messianic expectations in the Hebrew Bible, blessing and curse, and the literary relationship between the biblical law collections.
Ruben Zimmermann
is Professor of New Testament and Ethics at the Faculty of Protestant Theology at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz and Research Associate of the department of Old and New Testament at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein/SA. His primary areas of research include the four Gospels, in particular parables and miracle stories, the Synoptic Problem and the Gospel of John, as well as hermeneutical and methodological issues related to the study of the Bible within an interdisciplinary context. He is the founder and co-leader of the Mainz Research Centre for “Ethics in Antiquity and Christianity” (e/αc). Zimmermann, who is also an ordained pastor of the German Lutheran-United Church, is asking how biblical texts and ethics can inspire contemporary ethical discourse.