Professor of New Testament
Yankton College, B.A., 1981
Harvard University, M.T.S., 1983
Claremont Graduate School, M.A., Ph.D., 1988
Joined Eden faculty, 1988
Steve’s teaching and writing focus on the New Testament and Christian origins. “I am particularly drawn to those aspects of our origins that are least understood — the mysteries and unresolved questions of how Christianity began.”Steve hopes to inspire in his students this same sort of curiosity.
“I try to get students to pay attention to those aspects of the text that they least understand. In these gaps of understanding, there usually lurks a whole new way of seeing the text. New worlds of understanding are opened up.”
Steve has authored and co-authored several books, including The God of Jesus: The Historical Jesus and the Search for Meaning (1998), and most recently Beyond the Passion: Rethinking the Death and Life of Jesus (2004). In his work Steve combines an unflinching critical honestly about the past with a concern to create a future church grounded in a theology that moves believers to acts of love and justice in a world desperate for both.
Steve holds membership in the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the North American Patristics Society. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Biblical Literature, is Contributing Editor of the Bible Review, and a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar.
In his spare time, Steve likes to spend time with his wife, Deb, and their two young children. He is also an avid, “though not very successful,” fly-fisherman.