Faith in the Real World,
June 2, 2001, Birmingham, Alabama
Dr. Stephen J. Patterson
Stephen Patterson is Professor of New Testament
at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, where he has taught
since 1988. Dr. Patterson grew up the child of a pastor and schoolteacher
in rural South Dakota. He received a B.A. from Yankton College
in South Dakota, and holds graduate degrees from Harvard University
and the Claremont Graduate School, where he received a Ph. D.
in New Testament in 1988. In 1986 he was a Fulbright Fellow at
the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Dr. Patterson specializes
in the study of the historical Jesus, Christian origins, and the
Gospel of Thomas, an early Christian gospel not found in the New
Testament. Most recently he has written about the theological
significance of the newest phase in the quest for the historical
Jesus.
Among his books are The Q-Thomas Reader
(Polebridge, 1990; co-authored with John Kloppenborg, Marvin Meyer,
and Michael Steinhauser,. The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus
(Polebridge, 1993), and The Search for Jesus (The Smithsonian
Institution and the Biblical Archaeology Society, 1994; co-authored
with Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg), their collected lectures
delivered in 1993 at the Smithsonian Institution seminar,
Modern Scholarship Looks at the Gospels. He also contributed
to The Complete Gospels (Polebridge, 1992), The Five
Gospels (Macmillan, 1993), and The Acts of Jesus
(Harper Collins, 1998). Most recently he has published The
God of Jesus: The Historical Jesus and the Search for Meaning
(Trinity Press International, 1998) and (with James M. Robinson)
The Fifth Gospel: The Gospel of Thomas Comes of Age (Trinity
Press International, 1998). His essays and reviews have appeared
in The Journal of Biblical Literature, The Journal of
Religion, The Journal of the American Academy of Religion,
Theology Today, and The Harvard Theological Review.
Dr. Patterson is a Contributing Editor to the Bible
Review and a member of the Advisory Board for The Living Pulpit.
He is also a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar.
Pictures of Dr. Patterson's
lectures in Birmingham, June 2, 2001
