Michael D. Coogan is lecturer on Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at

Harvard Divinity School Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the academic study of religion or for leadership roles in religion, gov ...

, Director of Publications for the Harvard

Semitic Museum The Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East (HMANE, previously the Harvard Semitic Museum) is a museum founded in 1889. It moved into its present location at 6 Divinity Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1903. Description From the beginning, ...

, editor-in-chief of Oxford Biblical Studies Online, and professor emeritus of religious studies at Stonehill College. He has also taught at Fordham University, Boston College, Wellesley College, and the University of Waterloo (Ontario). Coogan has also participated in and directed archaeological excavations in Israel, Jordan, Cyprus, and Egypt, and has lectured widely.

Education and honors

Coogan was raised as Roman Catholic and for 10 years was a Jesuit. Coogan holds a doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

, 1971. In 2000, he received Stonehill's Distinguished Faculty Award in recognition of his scholarship and teaching.

Author

One of the leading biblical scholars in the United States, he is the author of ''The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures''; editor of '' The New Oxford Annotated Bible'', ''The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Books of the Bible'', and Oxford Biblical Studies Online; and a contributor to such standard reference works as ''The Encyclopedia of Religion'', ''HarperCollins Bible Dictionary'', and ''

The New Jerome Biblical Commentary ''The Jerome Biblical Commentary'' is a series of books of Biblical scholarship, whose first edition was published in 1968. It is arguably the most-used volume of Catholic scriptural commentary in the United States. The book's title is a refer ...

''. Other projects that he conceived, edited, and collaborated on include ''The Oxford Companion to the Bible'', ''The Illustrated Guide to World Religions'', and ''The Oxford History of the Biblical World''. One work is published by Twelve Books and titled '' God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says'', published in 2010. In the later, Coogan aims to expand human freedom and justice while giving secondary instruction to Christians on the proper use of the Bible. He quotes St. Paul in regard to the failure to mention the female disciples in the list of faithful who saw the Risen Christ by noting that the empty tomb story in the Gospels might be a myth and inserted later. He states, "The text is not, except perhaps in the abstract, intrinsically authoritative: it derives its authority from the community." He favors "thinking of the Bible in a more nuanced way than simply as the literal word of God" and identifies the Bible as "one foundational text in American society" which along with our Constitution must be interpreted critically. The purpose of "God and Sex" is weaved jointly with the faithful and the secular in mind.Coogan, 2010, pp. 190-195.

Appearances

* Coogan was featured in ''The Bible's Buried Secrets'' and ''Secrets of Noah's Ark'' from

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

's NOVA series. The first documentary investigated the origins of the ancient

Israelites The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan. The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele o ...

, the evolution of their belief in one God, and the creation of the Bible. * Coogan appeared in the

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documentary, ''Secrets of Noah's Ark''. * Coogan also appeared in the National Geographic Channel's documentary, "The Truth Behind the Ark."

References

Sources

* Coogan, Michael (2010) '' God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says.'' New York: Twelve. Hachette Book Group. .

External links

Oxford Biblical Studies Online
*
Michael Coogan - What I Wanna Know
Aug 13, 2011. Interview of Michael Coogan by Ryan Kohls {{DEFAULTSORT:Coogan, Michael 1942 births Living people American biblical scholars Old Testament scholars Harvard Divinity School faculty Fordham University alumni Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni