Larry Hurtado


Larry Weir Hurtado was an American New Testament scholar and historian of early Christianity. He served as Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature, and Theology at the University of Edinburgh from 1996 to 2011. Hurtado headed the School of Divinity from 2007 to 2010 and directed the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins until August 2011.

Biography

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, on December 29, 1943, Hurtado studied at Central Bible College and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. While at TEDS, he majored in New Testament studies and earned a Master of Arts in New Testament in 1967. He completed his Ph.D. in 1973 at Case Western Reserve University under Eldon Jay Epp with the dissertation Codex Washingtonianus in the Gospel of Mark: Its Textual Relationships and Scribal Characteristics.
Hurtado received his first academic appointment at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where he taught from 1975 to 1978. Before moving to Canada in 1975, he pastored a church in Skokie, Illinois. He then joined the Department of Religion at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, was promoted to full professor in 1988, and remained at the university until 1996. During this period he founded the University of Manitoba Institute for the Humanities and served as its first director from 1990 to 1992. After his appointment at the University of Edinburgh, he established the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins, which focuses on Christianity in the first three centuries.
Hurtado was elected to the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in 1984 and received the Rh Institute Award for Outstanding Contributions to Scholarship and Research in the Humanities in 1986. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2008 and served as President of the British New Testament Society from 2009 to 2012. He secured research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the British Academy, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He gave invited lectures in many universities in the UK and other countries and was a visiting fellow at Macquarie University in Australia in 2005.
The School of Divinity announced that Hurtado had died of cancer in his sleep on November 25, 2019. The University of Edinburgh created a postgraduate scholarship fund for candidates studying Christian origins in his honor. Holly J. Carey, Professor of Biblical Studies and Department Chair of Biblical Studies at Point University, wrote an obituary in his honour for Christianity Today.

Works

Books

  • As editor

  • Articles and chapters

*