Prof. Larry Hurtado BA MA PhD FRSE

Prof. Larry Hurtado: Professor, New Testament Language, Literature and Theology
EMAIL ICON/GRAPHIC: EMAIL ADDRESS DISPLAYED TO THE RIGHT L.Hurtado@ed.ac.uk
TELEPHONE ICON/GRAPHIC: TELEPHONE NUMBER DISPLAYED TO THE RIGHT +44 (0)131 650 8920

Introduction

Professor of New Testament Language, Literature & Theology
Director of the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins
Head of the School of Divinity

Practically anything about earliest Christianity interests me. My own abilities and competence certainly have limits, but my interests and appreciation extend much farther. In my teaching I try to give an understanding of the New Testament and the origins of Christianity, and also an unabashed excitement about the questions that characterise scholarly investigation in the field. The New Testament is a collection of early Christian writings with a fascinating and complex history to them, an invaluable body of evidence from early Christian circles. But these writings are also Holy Scripture for Christians, and the single most important collection of writings for anyone who seeks to understand the Christian tradition and come to some appreciation of the key beliefs and convictions that have shaped it. In my inaugural lecture, "New Testament Studies at the Turn of the Millennium: Questions for the Discipline," Scottish Journal of Theology 52(1999), pp. 158-78, I have tried to indicate my own approach to the field and I have sketched some major issues facing the field in this new millennium and century.

My own research has always been driven by questions: how the New Testament came to us, how the Gospels were transmitted in the early centuries, what this or that passage means, how the early Christians adapted traditions from their religious background and how they innovated, how their worship began and how it was shaped, how they accommodated Christ along with God in their devotional life, how Christian belief and practice was shaped by opposition and historical developments of the first two centuries . . . And my questions continue.

A video interview on my research on the origins of Jesus-devotion produced by St. John's College (Nottingham) is available on YouTube: How did Jesus become a God.

General (Teaching) Competence

Biblical Studies, New Testament and Christian Origins, Christian Religion of the First Two Centuries, Religious Environment of Early Christianity, Jewish Religion of the Second Temple Period.

Specialised/Research Areas:

Gospels (esp. Gospel of Mark), Apostle Paul, Early Christology, Jewish Background of the New Testament, New Testament Textual Criticism, Early Christian Manuscripts.

Additional Academic Interests:

The Bible and English Literature, Modern Theology, Jewish/ Christian Dialogue.

A fuller publication list is available.

Selected Publications

"The Women, the Tomb, and the Climax of Mark". In A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Sean Freyne. Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplements, 132. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Pp. 427-51.
"New Testament Studies in the Twentieth Century". Religion 39 (2009): 43-57.
"The Greek Fragments of the Gospel of Thomas as Artefacts: Papyrological Observations on Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1, Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 654 and Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 655." Das Thomasevangelium: Entehung - Rezeption - Theologie, eds. Jorg Frey, Enno Edzard Popkes, Jens Schroter. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2008. Pp. 19-32.
The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, October 2006. 256 pp. ISBN 0-8028-2895-7.
How on Earth did Jesus Become a God? Historical Questions about
Earliest Devotion to Jesus. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005. xii+ 234 pp. ISBN 0802828612.
"P45 and the Textual History of the Gospel of Mark". In The Earliest Gospels, The Origins and Transmission of the Earliest Christian Gospels. The Contribution of the Chester Beatty Gospel Codex P45, ed. Charles Horton. Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplements, 30 London: T&T Clark International / Continuum, 2004. Pp. 132-48
"Does Philo Help Explain Early Christianity?" In Philo und das Neue Testament, eds. Roland Deines, Karl-Wilhelm Niebuhr. Tuebingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2004. Pp. 73-92.
"Jesus' Death as Paradigmatic in the New Testament," Scottish Journal of Theology 57/4 (2004), 413-33.
Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Pp. xxii + 746.
At the Origins of Christian Worship: The Context and Character of Earliest Christian Devotion (the 1999 Didsbury Lectures). Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1999; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. Pp. xii + 138