Dale Allison

Dale C. Allison (November 25, 1955-) is an American New Testament scholar, historian of Early Christianity, and Christian theologian who for years served as Errett M. Grable Professor of New Testament Exegesis and Early Christianity at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He is currently the Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Career

Allison received a B.A. from Wichita State University (1977) and an M.A. (1979) and a Ph.D. (1982) from Duke University. Prior to joining Princeton Theological Seminary in 2013, Allison served on the faculties of Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, Friends University in Wichita, Kansas, and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of books on early Christian eschatology, the Gospel of Matthew, the Epistle of James, the so-called Sayings Source or Q document, the historical Jesus, George Harrison, religious experience in the modern world, and the Testament of Abraham. He has been called "the premier Matthew specialist of his generation in the United States" and "North America's most complete New Testament scholar."[1] Allison has served on many editorial boards including New Testament Studies and the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus and he was for many years the main New Testament editor for the multi-volume Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception.

He is a prominent defender of the view of the historical Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet expecting the imminent end of the age, and of the "thoroughgoing eschatology" of Albert Schweitzer. His views are laid out in his books Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet and Constructing Jesus: Memory and Imagination and History (which the Biblical Archaeology Society named best book relating the New Testament for 2009-2010). His view stands over against those of the Jesus Seminar and such scholars as John Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg, whose reconstructions of Jesus are largely free of apocalyptic elements. In recent years, he has been a critic of the standard scholarly means of authenticating sayings attributed to Jesus and events concerning him, and he has proposed an alternative approach that takes into account the modern scientific work on human memory. Allison is also associated with the claims that historians of early Christianity have much to learn from cross-cultural messianism as well as from the critical study of visionary experiences both within and without religious contexts.

Publications

Selected Articles

• "The Secularizing of the Historical Jesus." Perspectives on Religious Studies 27, 2 (Summer 2000): 135-151.
• "Rejecting Violent Judgment: Luke 9:52-56 and its Relatives." Journal of Biblical Literature 121, 3 (Fall 2002): 459-478.
• "Resurrecting a Calf: The Origin of Testament of Abraham 6:5." Journal of Theological Studies 55, 1 (April 2004): 103-116.
• "The Resurrection of Jesus and Rational Apologetics." Philosophia Christi 10, 2 (2008): 315-335.
• "What I Have Learned from the History of Interpretation." Perspectives in Religious Studies 35, 3 (Fall 2008): 237-250.
• "Matthew and the History of its Interpretation." Expository Times 120, 1 (October 2008): 1-7.
• "Blessing God and Cursing People: James 3:9-10." Journal of Biblical Literature 130, 2 (Summer 2011): 397-405.
• "A Liturgical Tradition Behind the Ending of James." Journal for the Study of the New Testament 34, 1 (September 2011): 3-18.
• "Eldad and Modad." Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 21, 2 (December 2011): 99-131.