Welcome to This Biblical Theology Blog

This blog exists for the glory of God, in service to the church, to promote the study and discussion of biblical theology’s history, methodology, aims, achievements, developments, direction, and points of contact with other approaches to the study of the Bible. This will be a collaborative effort, and the purpose of this post is to introduce the contributors to the blog. Other contributors will likely be added later, but for now, this is who we are:

Dr. Desi Alexander is Director of Christian Training for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, based at Union Theological College, having previously lectured for nearly 20 years in Semitic Studies at the Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. He co-edited the New Dictionary of Biblical Theology (IVP) and has recently written a book on biblical theology, From Eden to the New Jerusalem, published in the UK by IVP and coming out soon in the US from Kregel. An elder in Fitzroy Presbyterian Church, he is married to Anne, and they have two children, Jane and David.

Dr. Michael Bird is Tutor in New Testament at the Highland Theological College in Dingwall, Scotland. He is an Australian and holds a Ph.D from the University of Queensland. Michael’s research interests include the historical Jesus, the Gospel of Mark, Pauline theology, New Testament theology, and Christian origins. He is married to Naomi and they have two children and together they attend Dingwall Baptist Church.

Dr. Steve Dempster is the Stuart E. Murray Professor of Religious Studies at Atlantic Baptist University, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada, where he has taught for the last twenty-four years.  His specialty is Old Testament Studies and Biblical Hebrew. He is passionately interested in the subject areas of biblical theology and Old Testament Canon. He has written papers in both fields and has published a book on Old Testament theology, Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible. He is married to Judy Ducsharm and they have six children:  Jessica, Joanna, Nathan, Michael, Holly and Victoria.

Dr. Jim Hamilton is Associate Professor of Biblical Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, USA, having previously served as Assistant Professor of Biblical Studies at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Houston campus and as the preaching pastor at Baptist Church of the Redeemer. He is married to Jill, and they have three sons.

Posting from Ireland, Scotland (by an Australian), Canada, and the United States, we are excited about the international character of this blog, and we hope it will serve you well. We seek to know God in Christ by the power of the Spirit as revealed in the Bible.

Thanks to Justin Taylor for the idea for this blog, and we are also grateful for the trail blazed by the Evangelical Text Criticism blog. In his initial post there, P. J. Williams wrote,

I want this forum to be robust in two ways: first, it is not going to be embarrassed about believing that the Bible is true and that the Bible is made up of particular words which come from God. Secondly, it is going to be a place where we discuss textual criticism based on a familiarity with the issues involved. . . .

The blog will not generally try to justify the historic evangelical perspective that says that the inspired text of the Bible is Greek for the NT and Hebrew (or Aramaic) for the OT. Justifications may emerge within this group, but it will be more profitable to those involved if we take this as our basis.

What is said there about text criticism can be applied here about biblical theology, and we hope you will find this blog profitable.