School of Theology Faculty

Faculty Profiles

John (Jack) R. Levison

Professor of New Testament
B.A., Wheaton College, 1978; M.A., Cambridge University, 1983; Ph.D., Duke University, 1985. At SPU since 2001.

Email: jlevison@spu.edu
Phone: 206-281-2359
Office: Lower Moyer B11

Jack Levison grew up in a small tract house on Long Island, New York. He left to attend Wheaton College, where Professor of Greek Jerry Hawthorne captivated his imagination and urged him to study at Cambridge University, which Jerry had seen during the resplendent daffodil season and not when the unheated toilet seats were positively icy.

Later, at Duke University, Dr. Levison fell in love with a divinity student, Priscilla Pope, with whom he now shares a job, a home, two companionable teenagers, one ancient cat, a guinea pig, and a black lab.

When Dr. Levison is not teaching classes, tossing a ball with his kids, or drinking tea with Priscilla, he writes on Adam and Eve traditions in Judaism and Christianity. His academic heart beats fastest, though, when he writes about the Holy Spirit.

Dr. Levison just completed Filled with the Spirit, which should appear in 2009, and he founded a new book series, Ekstasis: Religious Experience From Antiquity to the Middle Ages. He received two grants to pursue this work: A Louisville Institute Summer Stipend (2008); and a Shohet Scholars Grant from the International Catacomb Society (2009–11).

Selected Publications:

• Texts in Transition: the Greek Life of Adam and Eve, Early Judaism and Its Literature, Series 16, (Scholars Press, 2000).
• Return to Babel: Global Perspectives on the Bible, edited with Priscilla Pope-Levison, (Westminster John Knox, 1999).
• The Spirit in First Century Judaism, Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums 29, (Brill, 1997; Paperback edition, 2002).
• Josephus’ Contra Apionem: Studies in Its Character and Context With a Latin Concordance to the Portion Missing in Greek, edited with Louis H. Feldman, Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums 34 (Brill, 1996).

Please view Dr. Levison’s C.V. for additional publications.

What’s New

Looking Ahead

M.A./M.Div. applications for Spring Admissions are due Feb. 15.

 

Dr. Kenda Creasy Dean will be speaking at the Palmer Lecture, May 6-7.

She will also be speaking at the Church Leaders Forum, May 6.

 

Lilly Fellows Program Summer Seminar

Annual Events

Paul T. Walls Lecture in Wesleyan Theology

Alfred S. Palmer Lectureship

Ministry in the Wesleyan Spirit Conference