–J.J.M. Roberts, the Williams Henry Green Professor Of Old Testament Literature Emeritus, to give lecture on February 27—

Princeton, NJ, February 15, 2012–Dr. J.J.M. Roberts, the William Henry Green Professor of Old Testament Literature Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary, will deliver Princeton Seminary’s annual Alexander Thompson Lecture on Monday, February 27, 2012, at 7:00 p.m. in the Main Lounge of the Mackay Campus Center, followed by a reception for the lecturer in the Private Dining Room. The title of his lecture is “Public Opinion, Royal Apologetics, and Imperial Ideology: A Political Analysis of the Portrait of David, ‘A Man After God’s Own Heart.’”

Roberts taught at Princeton Seminary for twenty-five years. Prior to that he taught in the Near Eastern Departments of the University of Toronto and The Johns Hopkins University, and in the Department of Religion at Dartmouth College. He is an internationally known scholar who has lectured abroad at universities in Israel, France, Austria, England, and Sweden, and in numerous universities in the United States. Since his retirement, Roberts served as a visiting professor at Yale, Harvard, and Dartmouth universities.

He is a graduate of Abilene Christian University, Harvard Divinity School, and Harvard University.

He has published and coedited five books—Unity and Diversity: Essays in the History, Literature, and Religion of the Ancient Near East (The Johns Hopkins Press, 1975), The Hand of the Lord: A Reappraisal of the “Ark Narrative” of 1 Samuel (The Johns Hopkins Press, 1977), Commentary on Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (Westminster John Knox Press, 1990), The Bible and the Ancient Near East: Collected Essays (Eisenbrauns, 2002), and Hebrew Inscriptions: Texts from the Biblical Period of the Monarchy with Concordance (Yale Press, 2005). He has also published more than a hundred articles and reviews on a wide variety of topics in the area of Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern backgrounds to the Old Testament, including a number of articles in the New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible.    

Roberts has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biblical Literature, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Horizons in Biblical Literature, the Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages, and Restoration Quarterly. He also served two terms as editor of the Society of Biblical Literature’s Old Testament dissertation series, and was a long-time member of the translation committee that produced the New Revised Standard Version.

He is a member of the Church of Christ where he has served churches both as an ordained minister and as an elder.

The Reverend Alexander Thompson Memorial Lecture was established to honor Alexander Thompson, a 1909 graduate of the Seminary, with the broad definition of dealing with “some aspect of the Bible.” Past lecturers have included Phyllis Trible, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Hans Wilhelm Frei, Elaine Pagels, Hans Dieter Betz, Carols Ann Newsom, Victor Furnish, and many other notable biblical scholars.

The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Communications/Publications Office at 609.497.7760 or visit www.ptsem.edu.       

Celebrating its Bicentennial in 2012, Princeton is the largest Presbyterian seminary in the country, with more than 500 students in six graduate degree programs.