John J. Collins

John Joseph Collins (born 1946, County Tipperary) is an Irish-born American biblical scholar, the Holmes Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School. He is noted for his research in the Hebrew Bible, as well as the apocryphal works of the Second Temple period including the sectarian works found in Dead Sea Scrolls and their relation to Christian origins. Collins has published and edited over 300 scholarly works, and a number of popular level articles and books. Among his best known works are the Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora (New York: Crossroad, 1983); Daniel in the Hermeneia commentary series (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993); The Scepter and the Star. The Messiahs of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Other Ancient Literature (New York: Doubleday, 1995); and The Bible after Babel: Historical Criticism in a Postmodern Age (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2005).

Collins was born in County Tipperary, Ireland, and attended high school in a boarding school (Rockwell College) run by the Holy Ghost Fathers in Cashel, Tipperary. After high school he joined the Holy Ghost Fathers and spent nine years with the order. He was educated at University College Dublin (BA, MA) and Harvard University (PhD). He has held academic positions at a number of institutions, including the University of Notre Dame (1985–91), Harvard University and the University of Chicago (1991–2000). Collins has additional honorary degrees from University College Dublin (2009) and the University of Zurich (2015). He served as president of the Chicago Society of Biblical Research (1995–96), of the Catholic Biblical Association of America (1996–97), and of the Society of Biblical Literature (2002), and as regional president for the New England and Eastern Canada region of the Society of Biblical Literature (2008). He has also served as editor in chief of Dead Sea Discoveries, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism and the Journal of Biblical Literature. who served as the Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School from 2000 till 2019, with whom he has co-authored King and Messiah as Son of God (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008).

Selected works

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