Revd Dr John Nolland, BSc, ThL, BD, PhD

 

A bit about me

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I am a former long-time faculty member at Trinity, now retired. I grew up in Australia. I came into ministry from a science background and was in parish ministry in a deprived area of Sydney. My doctoral work in Cambridge confirmed a love for the Gospels and took me to my first academic post at Regent College, Vancouver, where I was also heavily involved in leading an independent church. During my time in Bristol, I have also served as Vice Principal and Academic Dean at Trinity and as Visiting Professor at the University of Bristol.

I am passionate about discipleship: Christians living transformed lives that make them visibly different from their neighbours and church life that is a corporate version of the same. This is a multi-dimensional matter, but one of the important matters here is knowledge of and confidence in biblical and Kingdom values.

Experience is a great teacher: in an earlier stage of my life I was significantly formed by the challenges of taking care of a seriously brain-damaged wife for many years while raising a young child; into my second marriage I brought an eight-year-old son, and came to appreciate the huge challenge my wife was taking on as step-parent.

My wife, Lisa, is an activist heavily involved in research and advocacy, primarily in the realm of issues of sexuality. Our daughter is finishing a degree at St Andrews and our son is married and living in beautiful Vienna.

My research interests

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I have invested most in the Gospels, and I contributed the Luke volumes to the Word Biblical Commentary Series (1989, 1993) and the Matthew volume to the New International Greek Testament Commentary Series (2005).

More recently my scholarly focus has broadened and to some degree re-focused, with investment in NT ethics, OT sacrifices (it connects!) and the Gospel of John, along with NT Greek syntax.

But my interests are broad and I ponder issues and supervise research on a wide front.

How to get in touch with me

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Email me on john.nolland@trinitycollegebristol.ac.uk

Some highlights of my work

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2015  ‘Sin, Purity and the חטּאת offering’, Vetus Testamentum (forthcoming).

2015  ‘Does the Cultic ‫ אשׁם‬ Make Reparation to God?’ Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 92, 87-110.

2014  ‘In search of undocumented uses of Greek connectives: the case of a causal kai’, Estudios Bíblicos 72, pp. 237-56.

2013  ‘Preaching the Ethics of Jesus’, in Ian Paul and David Wenham (eds.) ‘We Proclaim the Word of Life’: preaching the New Testament today  (Leicester/Downers Grove, IL: IVP).

2013  ‘Blessing and Woe’ and ‘Sabbath’, in J.B. Green, J.K. Brown, N. Perrin (eds.), Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (2nd edition; Nottingham/Downers Grove, IL: IVP), pp. 88-90, 820-823.

2011  ‘Luke and Acts’, in T. Holmén and S. E. Porter (eds.), The Handbook of the Study of the Historical Jesus (Leiden: Brill), 3, pp. 1901-31.

2011  ‘The Thought of John 1:3c-4’, Tyndale Bulletin 62, pp. 295-311.

2010  ‘The Times of the Nations and a Prophetic Pattern in Luke 21’, in Thomas R. Hatina (ed.), Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels. Volume 3: The Gospel of Luke (London: T & T Clark International), pp. 133-47.

2009  ‘Sexual Ethics and the Jesus of the Gospels’, Anvil 26, pp. 21-30.

2008 ‘The King as Shepherd: the Role of Deutero-Zechariah in Matthew’, in Thomas R. Hatina (ed.),  Biblical Interpretation in Early Christian Gospels. Volume 2: The Gospel of Matthew (London: T & T Clark International), pp. 133-46.

2008  Built upon the Rock: Studies in the Gospel of Matthew, ed. D. M. Gurtner and J. Nolland (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans) (co-edited and contributed two chapters).