James R. Edwards
James Edwards is a native of Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he enjoyed mountaineering and skiing, and was active in Young Life. He is a graduate of Whitworth University (1967), Princeton Theological Seminary (M.Div, 1970), University of Zürich (1971), and Fuller Theological Seminary (Ph.D. 1978). He chaired the department of Religion and Philosophy at Jamestown College (1978-97), and joined the faculty at Whitworth in 1997, where he taught as Bruner-Welch Professor of Theology until 2015. He is currently Bruner-Welch Professor Emeritus of Theology. His sabbatical studies included Tübingen, Germany (1988), Tyndale House, Cambridge, England (2000), the Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton (2007), and the Geheim Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin-Dahlem, Germany (2016).
Edwards served as Minister of Students at First Presbyterian Church in Colorado Springs (1971-78). He has been a short-term translation consultant for Wycliffe Bible Translators in Colom¬bia, he was a translator with Berlin Fellowship for church visitations to former East Germany, and he has led study tours to Germany, Greece, Turkey, and Israel. He continues to speak in church, university, and conference settings. He has published numerous articles in scholarly and popular journals, and he has authored three New Testament commentaries for Community Bible Study. His published books include Romans (Baker Books, 1992), The Divine Intruder, NavPress, 2000; Wipf & Stock, 2017), The Gospel According to Mark (Pillar Commentary Series, Eerdmans, 2002), Is Jesus the Only Savior? (Eerdmans, 2005 [received Christianity Today’s book of the year award in 2006 for apologetics and evangelism]); and The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition (Eerdmans, 2009); The Gospel According to Luke (Pillar Series, Eerdmans, 2015); Between the Swastika and the Sickle. The Life, Disppearance, and Execution of Ernst Lohmeyer (Eerdmans, 2019); From Christ to Christianity. How the Jesus Movement Became the Church in Less than a Century (Baker, 2021). He is currently writing a commentary on the Book of Genesis (to be published by Eerdmans).
Jim’s wife Janie is an artist and is active in children’s and women’s ministries. They have two grown children and five grandchildren. In 2003 Jim and his son Mark climbed the Mittellegi Ridge of the Eiger in Switzerland
