Dennis R. MacDonald
Dennis R. MacDonald received his PhD from Harvard University in 1978 and has taught New Testament and Christian origins at Goshen College, the Iliff School of Theology, and the Claremont School of Theology. From 1999-2010 he served as the director of The Institute for Antiquity and Christianity at Claremont Graduate University. For the academic year of 1985-1986 he was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Divinity School, and for the spring term in 1991 he was a Visiting Scholar at Union Theological Seminary (NYC). Twice he was awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 1984-1985 he was President of the Rocky Mountain/Great Plains Region of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, and in 2005-2006 he was President of Pacific Region of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. He also has served on editorial boards, chaired program units for various professional societies, and appeared as an authority on A&E, PBS, and the History Channel.
For the most part his scholarship has been devoted to Christian apocryphal writings, the Synoptic Problem, and the influence of classical Greek literature, especially the Homeric epics, on Jewish and Christian narratives.
Among his scores of publications are The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Westminster, 1983); There Is No Male and Female: The Fate of a Dominical Saying in Paul and Gnosticism (Fortress, 1987); Christianizing Homer: “The Odyssey,” Plato, and “The Acts of Andrew” (Oxford, 1994); The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (Yale, 2000), Mimesis and Intertextuality in Antiquity and Christianity (Trinity Press International, 2001); The Acts of Andrew and the Acts of Andrew and Matthias in the City of the Cannibals (Scholars, 1990); Does the New Testament Imitate Homer? Four Cases from the Acts of the Apostles (Yale, 2003); and Two Shipwrecked Gospels: The Logoi of Jesus and Papias’s Exposition of Logia about the Lord (Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), The Gospels and Homer: Imitations of Greek Epic in Mark and Luke-Acts. Vol. 1 of The New Testament and Classical Greek Literature (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), and The Gospels and Vergil: Imitations of Euripides, Plato, and Homer in the Aeneid, Luke-Acts, and John. Vol. 2 of The New Testament and Classical Greek Literature (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). He also has nearly completed the third volume in this trilogy: John and Euripides: Imitations of the Bacchae in the Fourth Gospel. Rowman & Littlefield soon will publish a popularization of his recent research: From Greek Mythology to the Gospels: How Jesus Became an Epic Hero.
Education
A.B. – Bob Jones University
M.Div. – McCormick Theological Seminary
Ph.D. – Harvard University
Recent Publications / Achievements
The Intertextuality of the Epistles: Explorations of Theory and Practice, ed.(Sheffield Phoenix Press Ltd, 2006)
Acts of Andrew, ed. (Polebridge Press, 2005)
Does the New Testament Imitate Homer?: Four Cases from the Acts of the Apostles (Yale University Press, 2003)
Mimesis & Intertextuality in Antiquity & Christianity(Trinity Press International, 2001)
The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (Yale University Press, 2000)
Christianizing Homer: The Odyssey, Plato, and the Acts of Andrew (Oxford University Press, 1994)
The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (Westminster John Knox Pres, 1983)
Contact
Email: dennis@cst.edu