I serve as the President of Hartford International University for Religion and Peace (HIU), a dynamic institution of higher education. At HIU we take the word “for” in our name seriously. It is an action word. We believe that religion and peace are not only intertwined but dependent upon each other.
Professionally, I am first and foremost a scholar of religion, and have made contributions to my field and won awards for some of my published work. My areas of expertise are Jewish-Christian Relations, Interreligious Dialogue, and the Hebrew Bible. I have published 11 books with academic presses like Oxford University Press, Brill, Purdue University Press, and Eisenbrauns, as well as popular presses such as Oneworld, Zondervan, Baker Academic, Eerdmans, and Abingdon. My first monograph, Chosen and Unchosen: Conceptions of Election in the Pentateuch and Jewish-Christian Interpretation, was awarded the R. B. Y. Scott Award by the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies for “outstanding book in the areas of Hebrew Bible and/or the Ancient Near East.” My uniquely tri-authored book, The Abingdon Introduction to the Bible: Understanding Jewish and Christian Scriptures, was awarded the CHOICE Magazine Outstanding Academic Title award for 2014. I have also published peer reviewed journal articles in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Horizons in Biblical Theology, and Journal of Interreligious Studies, among others. I am a member of Phi Kappa Phi.
Away from work, I am a husband, father, bodysurfer, snowboarder, hop-forward west coast IPA taster, spicy Indian food lover, and dedicated user of the Oxford comma. Perhaps more importantly, I am a fan of “the big four.” Those who know what that means, know what that means. In the 1990s I attended concerts of all four, and consider myself one of the lucky ones to have caught the Clash of the Titans tour during the summer of 1991, in Toronto.