Jim West

James E. West (born August 29, 1960) is an American biblioblogger. He is an adjunct lecturer in theology at the Ming Hua School of Theology, Hong Kong. He has been a scholar at the Quartz Hill School of Theology. He holds a Doctorate of Theology from the (unaccredited) Andersonville Theological Seminary of Camilla, Georgia. West also pastors the Petros Baptist Church in Tennessee.

Biblioblogging Jim West was one of the first people to blog about biblical studies, also known as biblioblogging, He was a founding member of the steering committee responsible for reviewing proposals for biblioblogging sessions at the SBL, the first of which is at Atlanta, November 2010, although he no longer serves on that committee.

Pastor

As a Baptist pastor, West has been outspoken on issues within the Baptist Church. West has rejected moves by some Baptists to observe Lent, "because for Baptists repentance can't be confined to a mere 40-day period preceded by the most intense gluttony and occupied with the setting aside of trivial pleasantries and followed by a return to the same-old, same-old". He has dismissed Nigerian Chrislam as 'the inevitable result of political correctness'.

Public debates West is also against home schooling, having introduced a pro-public school resolution to the annual Southern Baptist Convention in 2004 and several years in a row afterward.

When the Gospel of Jesus' Wife first appeared in 2012, and before the scholarly consensus that it is a forgery developed, West said "a statement on a papyrus fragment isn't proof of anything" and "without more context, both historically and archaeologically, the snippet is valueless." Jeremiah in History and Tradition (2020); Routledge; co-edited with Niels Peter Lemche. Heinrich Bullinger: An Introduction to His Life and Theology (2022), Cascade Companions; co-authored by Donald McKim. Finding Myth and History in the Bible • Scholarship, Scholars and Errors (2016), Equinox Publishing (Sheffield); co-editor. “Christ Our Captain”, An Introduction to Huldrych Zwingli (2011), Quartz Hill Publishing House. From Zwingli to Amyraut. Exploring the growth of European reformed traditions (2017), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; co-editor.