Larry Hurtado is a scholar of early Christianity and Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature and Theology in The University of Edinburgh, Scotland (Professor 1996-2011). He was the Head of the School of Divinity 2007-2010, and was until August 2011[1] Director of the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins, at the University of Edinburgh.
Hurtado has made significant advances in understanding Jewish Monotheism and early Christian devotion to Jesus. He is an authority on the Gospels (esp. Gospel of Mark), the Apostle Paul, Early Christology, the Jewish Background of the New Testament, and New Testament Textual Criticism.
He is perhaps most well known for his studies on the early emergence of a devotion to Jesus expressed in beliefs about Jesus sharing God's glory, and in a "devotional pattern" in which Jesus features prominently. Hurtado has argued that this Jesus-devotion comprises a novel "mutation" in ancient Jewish monotheistic practice. In his most recent publications, he has also urged greater awareness of the historical value of earliest Christian manuscripts as key physical artifacts of early Christianity, drawing attention to such phenomena as the nomina sacra (distinctive abbreviated forms of certain Greek words, e.g., Theos, Iesous, Kyrios, Christos), the Christian preference for the codex bookform, and a number of other features.[2]
Born in Kansas City, Missouri (1943), he was educated in the USA, completing his PhD in Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, Ohio, 1973). His first academic appointment after PhD was in Regent College (Vancouver, Canada, 1975–1978). Thereafter he moved to the University of Manitoba, Department of Religion (Winnipeg, 1978–1996, promoted to full Professor in 1988). During his time there, he established the University of Manitoba Institute for the Humanities and served as initial Director 1990-1992. Shortly after his appointment in the University of Edinburgh, he established the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins, which focuses on Christianity in the first three centuries.
He was elected a member of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in 1984, and received the Rh Institute Award for Outstanding Contributions to Scholarship and Research in the Humanities (1986). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2008, and President of the British New Testament Society (2009–2012). He has won research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the British Academy, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK). He has given invited lectures in many universities in the UK and other countries, and was a Visiting Fellow in Macquarie University (2005).