Michael Bird | |
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Born | |
Nationality | Australian |
Occupation(s) | Vice principal and lecturer, Ridley College (Melbourne) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Queensland (Ph.D.) |
Thesis | Many will come from the East and the West: Jesus and the Origins of the Gentile Mission (2005) |
Doctoral advisor | Rick Strelan Robert L. Webb |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Theology and New Testament |
Sub-discipline | Pauline studies,Christology,patristics |
Website | patheos.com/blogs/euangelion |
Michael F. Bird (born 18 November 1974) is an Australian New Testament scholar,theologian and Anglican priest.
In his teenage years,Bird was an atheist who saw Christianity "as a way of oppressing people,a purely human construct".[ citation needed ] After becoming a Christian he was firstly a Baptist,then a Presbyterian and now an Anglican. [3] He has been called by the ecumenical media platform Eternity a "heavy hitter" in the world of New Testament scholarship and Jesus's divinity. [4]
Bird is vice principal and lecturer in theology and New Testament at Ridley College,having previously taught at the Brisbane School of Theology and Highland Theological College. [5] He studied at Malyon College and the University of Queensland. [5] He is also Distinguished Research Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University. [6]
Bird has written a number of books,including The New Testament in Its World (2019,with N. T. Wright),Evangelical Theology:A Biblical and Systematic Introduction (2013) and The Gospel of the Lord:How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus (2014). The Gospel of the Lord won the Biblical Studies section of the 2015 Christianity Today Book Awards. [7] Bird is also the author of a fantasy novel titled Iskandar:And the Immortal King of Iona. [8]
Bird is a member of the Evangelical Theological Society,the Society of Biblical Literature and Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. [5]
In November 2015,he was ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church of Australia. [9]