Helmut Koester (born 1926) is a German-born American scholar of the New Testament[1] and currently Morison Research Professor of Divinity and Winn Research Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School.[2] He teaches courses at both the Divinity School and at Harvard Extension School, and was the president of the Society of Biblical Literature.[3] His Introduction to the New Testament is described as a "standard reference work."[4]
Koester studied under Rudolf Bultmann at the Philipps-University of Marburg, Germany, after being released from a POW camp there in 1945. He later became an assistant of Günther Bornkamm at the University of Heidelberg in 1954-1956. He was a visiting professor at Harvard in 1958, and became the John H. Morison Professor of Ecclesiastical History in 1963. Although now emeritus, he continues to teach at Harvard University and oversee (with Laura Nasrallah) the Harvard project Archeological Resources for the Study of the New Testament, which has been published by Fortress Press in CD-ROM format as "Cities of Paul: Images and Interpretations from the Harvard New Testament Archaeology Project."