Jack Miles

Last updated
Jack Miles
Jack-miles-2016.jpg
BornJohn Russiano Miles
(1942-07-30) July 30, 1942 (age 81)
Chicago, Illinois, US
Pen nameJack
OccupationScholar
Education Xavier University;
Pontifical Gregorian University;
Hebrew University
Alma mater Harvard University
Genreswriter, editor
Notable awards Guggenheim Fellowship;
Pulitzer Prize;
MacArthur Fellowship.
Website
www.jackmiles.com

John R. Miles (born July 30, 1942) is an American author. He is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, [1] a Guggenheim Fellowship [2] and the MacArthur Fellowship. [3] His writings on religion, politics, and culture have appeared in numerous national publications, including The Atlantic Monthly , The New York Times , The Boston Globe , The Washington Post , Los Angeles Times , and Commonweal Magazine . [4]

Contents

Miles treats his biblical subjects neither as transcendent deities nor historical figures, but as literary protagonists. His first book, God: A Biography , won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography in 1996, and has been translated into sixteen languages. [5] His second book Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2002. [6] Miles is general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Religions (November 2014). [7] Miles' book God in the Qur'an was published in 2018, the third in his God in Three Classic Scriptures series. [8] Miles' next related book is Religion as We Know It: An Origin Story, (Nov. 12, 2019) which examines when religion became a distinct area of thought. [9]

Miles' most recent book is co-written with Mark C. Taylor, and is titled A Friendship in Twilight: Lockdown Conversations on Death and Life, (July 5, 2022) a series of emails exchanged during the course of the pandemic in 2020. [10]

Career

Born in Chicago, the eldest child in a Roman Catholic family, Miles was a Jesuit seminarian from 1960 to 1970, studying at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and Hebrew University in Jerusalem before completing a doctorate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages at Harvard University. [11] He is fluent in several languages, including French, Italian, German, Hebrew, and Aramaic. [12]

Over a period of more than 35 years (1975–2010), Miles has been an editor at Doubleday, the executive editor at the University of California Press, the literary (book review) editor at the Los Angeles Times, a member of the Times editorial board, and the Senior Adviser to the Getty Trust at the J. Paul Getty Museum. [13]

Miles most recently served on the faculty of the University of California, Irvine, Department of English, teaching religion. [14] Miles was the 2018-2019 Corcoran Visiting Chair in Christian-Jewish Relations at Boston College. [15]

Major works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Frost</span> American poet (1874–1963)

Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. His work was initially published in England before it was published in the United States. Known for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech, Frost frequently wrote about settings from rural life in New England in the early 20th century, using them to examine complex social and philosophical themes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Revelation</span> Communication with a deity or other supernatural entity

In religion and theology, revelation is the disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity (god) or other supernatural entity or entities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Al-Ma'idah</span> 5th chapter of the Quran

Al-Ma'idah is the fifth chapter of the Quran, containing 120 verses. Regarding the timing and contextual background of the revelation, it is a Medinan chapter, which means it is believed to have been revealed in Medina rather than Mecca.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stanley Hauerwas</span> American theologian

Stanley Martin Hauerwas is an American theologian, ethicist, and public intellectual. Hauerwas originally taught at the University of Notre Dame before moving to Duke University. Hauerwas was a longtime professor at Duke, serving as the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke Divinity School with a joint appointment at the Duke University School of Law. In the fall of 2014, he also assumed a chair in theological ethics at the University of Aberdeen. Hauerwas is considered by many to be one of the world's most influential living theologians and was named "America's Best Theologian" by Time magazine in 2001. He was also the first American theologian to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectures at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in over forty years. His work is frequently read and debated by scholars in fields outside of religion or ethics, such as political philosophy, sociology, history, and literary theory. Hauerwas has achieved notability outside of academia as a public intellectual, even appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott Hahn</span> American theologian

Scott Walker Hahn is an American Catholic theologian and Christian apologist. A former Protestant, Hahn was a Presbyterian minister who converted to Catholicism. Hahn's popular works include Rome Sweet Home and The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth. His lectures have been featured in multiple audio distributions through Lighthouse Catholic Media. Hahn is known for his research on Early Christianity during the Apostolic Age and various theoretical works concerning the early Church Fathers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marilynne Robinson</span> American novelist and essayist (born 1943)

Marilynne Summers Robinson is an American novelist and essayist. Across her writing career, Robinson has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people. Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1991 and retired in the spring of 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Garry Wills</span> American author, political philosopher and historian (born 1934)

Garry Wills is an American author, journalist, political philosopher, and historian, specializing in American history, politics, and religion, especially the history of the Catholic Church. He won a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jay Parini</span> American writer and academic (born 1948)

Jay Parini is an American writer and academic. He is known for novels, poetry, biography, screenplays and criticism. He has published novels about Leo Tolstoy, Walter Benjamin, Paul the Apostle, and Herman Melville.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas B. Edsall</span> American journalist and academic

Thomas Byrne Edsall is an American journalist and academic. He is best known for his weekly opinion column for The New York Times, Previously, he worked as a reporter for The Providence Journal and for The Baltimore Sun, and as a correspondent for The New Republic. In addition, he spent 25 years covering national politics for the Washington Post. He held the Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Chair at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism until 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugene Robinson (journalist)</span> American journalist

Eugene Harold Robinson is an American newspaper columnist and an associate editor of The Washington Post. His columns are syndicated to 262 newspapers by The Washington Post Writers Group. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009, was elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board in 2011 and served as its chair from 2017 to 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Dammen McAuliffe</span> American educator and scholar of Islam (born 1944)

Jane Dammen McAuliffe is an American educator, scholar of Islam and the inaugural director of national and international outreach at the Library of Congress.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fulton Oursler</span> American dramatist

Charles Fulton Oursler Sr. was an American journalist, playwright, editor and writer. Writing as Anthony Abbot, he was an author of mysteries and detective fiction. His son was the journalist and author Will Oursler (1913–1985).

Edmund Maybank Fuller was an American educator, editor, novelist, historian, and literary critic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Phyllis Tickle</span>

Phyllis Natalie Tickle was an American author and lecturer whose work focuses on spirituality and religion issues. After serving as a teacher, professor, and academic dean, Tickle entered the publishing industry, serving as the founding editor of the religion department at Publishers Weekly, before then becoming a popular writer. She is well known as a leading voice in the emergence church movement. She is perhaps best known for The Divine Hours series of books, published by Doubleday Press, and her book The Great Emergence- How Christianity Is Changing and Why. Tickle was a member of the Episcopal Church, where she was licensed as both a lector and a lay eucharistic minister. She has been widely quoted by many media outlets, including Newsweek, Time, Life, The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, C-SPAN, PBS, The History Channel, the BBC and VOA. It has been said that "Over the past generation, no one has written more deeply and spoken more widely about the contours of American faith and spirituality than Phyllis Tickle." A biography of Tickle, written by Jon M. Sweeney, was published in February 2018. Phyllis Tickle: A Life, has been widely reviewed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Penchansky</span>

David Penchansky is a professor in the field of Hebrew Bible. In his writing, he applies the methodology of literary criticism to the Old Testament, particularly its Wisdom Literature. Both Marxism and Deconstruction have influenced his approach.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack E. Davis</span> American historian

Jack Emerson Davis is an author and distinguished professor of history in Florida. He holds the Rothman Family Endowed Chair in the Humanities and teaches environmental history and sustainability studies at the University of Florida. In 2002-2003, he taught on a Fulbright award at the University of Jordan in Amman, Jordan.

Thomas O’Conor Sloane III was an American editor, professor, etymologist and career military officer.

Mohammad Ali Shomali is a Muslim scholar, academic, philosopher and theologian. His religious rank is Hujjat al-Islam.

Briallen Hopper is an American author, writer, columnist, and literary critic. She is the author of the Bloomsbury collection Hard to Love: Essays and Confessions (2019). Her work has been published in Vox, The Yale Review, The Washington Post, New York Magazine, and other publications. Hopper's Curbed column, "House Rules," covered topics such as mental health, culture, and community during the COVID-19 pandemic.

References