Dr. Brent A. Strawn practically grew up at PLNU where his dad was a professor of math and computer science, and his mom served on staff and taught several courses in speech and communications. Now a professor of Old Testament at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Brent’s PLNU experience shapes him as a professor today.
Brent graduated from PLNU with a B.A. in religion with a Bible concentration in 1992. He then went on to earn his Master of Divinity and Ph.D. in biblical studies at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Emory University is a research university, so in his role as a professor, Brent divides his time between teaching courses at the masters and doctoral levels and doing research and writing in his primary area of expertise: Old Testament/Hebrew Bible studies. He first took Biblical Hebrew at PLNU as a senior, which is when he also wrote an honors thesis under the guidance of emeritus professor, Dr. Frank Carver. That thesis was over 150 pages long; while Brent wrote it, he confesses he “fell in love with the footnote.” It was Carver who first encouraged Brent to think about getting a Ph.D. someday.
Brent conducts research in several different areas. “That keeps me from getting bored,” he says. His specialities include ancient Near Eastern iconography, the Pentateuch (especially Exodus and Deuteronomy), Psalms, and Ecclesiastes.
Brent’s research ranges from specialized academic work to more practical matters. He has composed technical works on the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, for instance, but has also written a number of resources on how to better preach the biblical texts.
Brent has authored or edited numerous books. The most recent was published in March 2017: The Old Testament is Dying: A Diagnosis and Recommended Treatment. The work is a reminder of the Old Testament’s crucial place in Christian life and faith and offers ways to revitalize its role in the modern church.
Even before arriving at PLNU, Brent felt called to ministry and thought he would end up as a Nazarene pastor. His application to Princeton was done on a lark, he says. He was mostly just curious to see if he could get accepted to a few different schools. He was, and eventually chose Princeton, though he wasn’t fully aware of the quality of the Bible faculty there. Once he arrived for class, Brent quickly fell in love with the school and, in particular, his Old Testament courses. PLNU prepared him well: he had already taken Greek and Hebrew in college, and that, along with other aspects of his religion major at PLNU, gave him a leg up on many of his classmates.
A specific example of how PLNU prepared him was by introducing him to the academic study of scripture. Brent says that scholarly analysis of the Bible can occasionally disorient students encountering it for the first time because it sometimes appears to challenge one’s faith. This needn’t be the case, he says. As proof of that point, he referred to his PLNU professors who introduced him to the critical study of scripture in a way that integrates faith and scholarship.
“In a real sense, they inculcated in me a fundamentally faithful disposition towards scripture and its study that really nothing could assail. That is a remarkable gift that I will forever be thankful for,” he says.
In 2014, Brent was honored with the Alumnus of Point Loma Award and will always be part of the PLNU family.