David Bivin is co-director and co-owner (with his wife, Josa) of Jerusalem Perspective, a unique, Jerusalem-based work. David is a member of the Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research, a think tank made up of Jewish and Christian scholars dedicated to better understanding the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). In the early 1980s, before the School became a legal entity, he coined its name. For most of the years since 1985, when the School was registered in Israel as a nonprofit research institute, David served as the School’s director and chairman of its Executive Board.
A native of Cleveland, Oklahoma, U.S.A., David has lived in Israel since 1963, when he came to Jerusalem on a Rotary Foundation Fellowship to do postgraduate work at the Hebrew University. He remained at the Hebrew University until 1969 studying Jewish history and literature under professors Menahem Stern, David Flusser, Shmuel Safrai and Yechezkel Kutscher, and archaeology under professors Yigael Yadin, Yohanan Aharoni and Michael Avi-Yonah. During those six years, and for many years afterwards, he also studied privately with Jerusalem scholar-pastor Robert L. Lindsey.
During the years 1970 to 1981 David directed the Hebrew Language Division of the American Ulpan, and the Modern Hebrew Department of the Institute of Holy Land Studies (later renamed Jerusalem University College) on Mt. Zion. He is author of the video language course Aleph-Bet: A Beginner’s Introduction to Reading and Writing Hebrew, and co-author with Robert Goldfarb of Fluent Biblical and Modern Hebrew, a home-study language program.
For twelve years (1987-1999) David published Jerusalem Perspective, a print magazine that presented the life and teachings of Jesus in their original cultural and linguistic settings. In 1999 the magazine evolved into a website, http://www.jerusalemperspective.com/.
David’s latest book was published in 2005, New Light on the Difficult Words of Jesus. He has written more than one hundred scholarly and popular articles. His latest scientific article appeared in a book published by one of the world’s most prestigious academic publisher, E. J. Brill: Jesus’ Last Week: Jerusalem Studies in the Synoptic Gospels (ed. R. S. Notley, M. Turnage and B. Becker, 2005). David has presented four scholarly papers at U.S. and international meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature.
Active in Israeli life, David served as a sergeant in an Israeli army reserve infantry unit from 1974 to 1991. He is a member of Jerusalem’s Narkis Street Congregation, where he served as an elder under the pastorate of the late Dr. Lindsey. He and his wife Josa (nee Keosababian), a native Californian, met and were married at the Narkis Street Congregation in 1969. Today, the Bivins live in the village of Maoz Zion, near Jerusalem.
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