Jack Pearl Lewis (1919–2018)

Dr. Lewis was one of the founding professors of HST. He earned a Ph.D. in New Testament from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Old Testament from Hebrew Union University. Most of his academic career was spent in Old Testament studies, particularly the minor prophets, but he was also an expert in Hebrew language, archaeology of Bible lands, and the history of the English Bible.

Dr. Lewis was more than simply a brilliant and well-respected academic. He taught a Bible class and served as an elder for decades at the Church of Christ at White Station. He authored over 223 articles in scholarly and church publications and published more than twenty-five books.

Jack P. Lewis was born in Texas and attended Abilene Christian University and Sam Houston State Teachers' College. He holds Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University and Hebrew Union College. He has received numerous fellowship grants; he was Thayer Fellow at the Albright Institute of Archeological Research, Jerusalem, in 1967-68 and was Senior Fellow there in 1983-84. Now retired, Lewis taught Bible courses at Harding University and Harding University Graduate School of Religion for fifty years. He has served in local work with churches in Texas, Rhode Island, and Kentucky, and still serves as an elder of the White Station church of Christ in Memphis, Tennessee.

He has been a featured speaker for many lectureship programs at Christian colleges. A member of the editorial boards of Restoration Quarterly and of Journal of Hebraic Studies, he also edited The Last Things. He has authored more than a dozen books, including Questions You've Asked about Bible Translations, The Major Prophets, The Minor Prophets, The Interpretation of Noah and the Flood in Jewish and Christian Literature, Biblical Archaeology, Gospel of Matthew, The English Bible from KJV to NIV, Exegesis of Difficult Passages, Hebrew Wisdom and Poetry, and Leadership Questions Confronting the Church. Also, he has led tour groups to the Holy Land, the British Isles, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe.