Bernhard Word Anderson (September 25, 1916 – December 26, 2007) was an American United Methodist

pastor A pastor (abbreviated to "Ps","Pr", "Pstr.", "Ptr." or "Psa" (both singular), or "Ps" (plural)) is the leader of a Christianity, Christian congregation who also gives advice and counsel to people from the community or congregation. In Lutherani ...

and

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

scholar A scholar is a person who is a researcher or has expertise in an academic discipline. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researcher at a university. An academic usually holds an advanced degree or a termina ...

Information

Born in

Dover, Missouri Dover is a town in Lafayette County, Missouri, and is part of the Kansas City metropolitan area within the United States. The population was 83 at the 2020 census. History Dover was platted in 1839. The community took its name from a nearby ch ...

, Anderson earned degrees from the College of the Pacific and

Pacific School of Religion The Pacific School of Religion (PSR) is a Private university, private Protestant seminary in Berkeley, California. It maintains Covenant (religion), covenantal relationships with the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, and the ...

. In 1939, he was

ordained Ordination is the process by which individuals are Consecration in Christianity, consecrated, that is, set apart and elevated from the laity class to the clergy, who are thus then authorized (usually by the religious denomination, denominationa ...

to the ministry of the (then) Methodist Church. He served

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...

churches in California, and later

Congregational Congregationalism (also Congregational Churches or Congregationalist Churches) is a Reformed Christianity, Reformed Christian (Calvinist) tradition of Protestant Christianity in which churches practice Congregationalist polity, congregational ...

churches in both Connecticut and New York. In 1945 he received the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...

, where he specialized in Old Testament studies. He received honorary degrees from the Pacific School of Religion, the University of the Pacific, and

Colgate University Colgate University is a Private university, private college in Hamilton, New York, United States. The Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college was founded in 1819 as the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York ...

. He taught at Colgate University in New York, the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC, UNC–Chapel Hill, or simply Carolina) is a public university, public research university in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States. Chartered in 1789, the university first began enrolli ...

, the Colgate Rochester Divinity School,

Drew University Drew University is a private university in Madison, New Jersey, United States. It has a wooded campus. As of fall 2020, more than 2,200 students were pursuing degrees at the university's three schools. While affiliated with the Methodism, Me ...

, (where he served as Dean of the Theological School for nine years), and finally as a Professor of Old Testament Theology at

Princeton Theological Seminary Princeton Theological Seminary (PTSem), officially The Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church, is a Private university, private seminary, school of theology in Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Establish ...

, where he was Professor of Old Testament Theology Emeritus. In retirement, he continued to teach into the early 1990s at Boston University School of Theology. He died on December 26, 2007, in

Santa Cruz, California Santa Cruz (Spanish language, Spanish for "Holy Cross") is the largest city and the county seat of Santa Cruz County, California, Santa Cruz County, in Northern California. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city population ...

Selected works

* ''Contours of Old Testament Theology'' () * ''Understanding the Old Testament'' (1957) * ''The Unfolding Drama of the Bible'' () * ''Creation Versus Chaos: The Reinterpretation of Mythical Symbolism in the Bible'' () * ''From Creation to New Creation'' () * ''Creation in the Old Testament'' (editor) () * ''The Eighth Century Prophets: Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah'' () * ''Out of the Depths: The Psalms Speak for Us Today'' () (Westminster Press, 1970) * ''The Living World of the Old Testament'' (Prentice-Hall, 1957) * ''The Place of the Book of Esther in the Christian Bible'' * ''Faith Enacted as History: Essays in Biblical Theology'' author-Will Herberg (editor-B W Anderson) (Westminster Press, 1976)

References

Sources

Obituary of Bernhard W. Anderson
in SBL Forum. 1916 births 2007 deaths Presidents of the Society of Biblical Literature 20th-century American Methodist ministers Yale Divinity School alumni Colgate University faculty Drew University faculty University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty Princeton Theological Seminary faculty Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School alumni American United Methodist clergy {{Christian-theologian-stub