Edwin M. Yamauchi
Encyclopedia
Dr. Edwin Maseo Yamauchi (born 1937, Hilo, Hawaii) is a Japanese American
historian, Christian apologist
, editor and academic. He is Professor Emeritus of History at Miami University
, where he taught from 1969 until 2005. He is married to Kimie Honda.
but then transferred his candidacy to studying Biblical languages at Shelton College, Ringwood, New Jersey, and received his B.A. degree there. He then enrolled in Mediterranean studies for his Master of Arts
degree at Brandeis University
, and then pursued studies in Mandaean Gnostic texts as part of his Ph.D. dissertation at Brandeis University.
At Brandeis he studied under the late Cyrus H. Gordon
, and expanded his linguistic studies in ancient near eastern languages, which included Hebrew
, Aramaic
, Akkadian
, Ugaritic
, Arabic
, Syriac
, and Coptic
. In all he has immersed himself in 22 different languages. Yamauchi taught for a time at Shelton College, before becoming an Assistant Professor of history at Rutgers University
. He then received his professorial appointment at Miami University
.
Yamauchi's areas of expertise include: Ancient History, Old Testament, New Testament, Early Church History, Gnosticism, and Biblical Archaeology. He has been awarded eight fellowships, contributed chapters to several books, articles in reference works, and has published 80 essays in 37 scholarly journals. He has been a member and officer of the Institute for Biblical Research
, an organization of scholars devoted to the research of the Bible.
Yamauchi has also contributed essays to various reference works in biblical studies and Christian history, and written commentaries on the books of Ezra
and Nehemiah
in the Expositor's Bible Commentary series that was edited by Frank Gaebelein. Yamauchi contributed the notes on Ezra and Nehemiah in the NIV Study Bible.
Other areas where Yamauchi has written include the social and cultural history of first century Christianity, the relevance of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls
for New Testament studies, the primary source value of Josephus
' writings, and the role of the Magi
in both ancient Persia and in the nativity narrative of the Gospel of Matthew. Yamauchi is written several books and essays on ancient gnosticism
. He has been highly critical of scholars, such as Rudolf Bultmann
, who have used third and fourth century AD Gnostic texts as primary evidence for the existence of pre-Christian gnosticism.
In the 1970s he was a prominent critic of the late Morton Smith
's interpretation of an apocryphal text known as the Secret Gospel of Mark
. Yamauchi revisited the corpus of Smith's writings on the topics of the lost gospels and Jesus as a magician-healer in his lengthy essay on magic and miracles (1986). Yamauchi faulted Smith's work on several points. One problem Yamauchi found was Smith's anachronistic use of third, fourth and fifth century AD Greek magical papyri sources in his reinterpretation of Christ as a magus-magician. He argued that Smith's "penchant for parallels with the life of Apollonius by Philostratus" was "historically anachronistic".
. In his senior high school year Yamauchi studied at a rural school and worked at a missionary farm known as the Christian Youth Center. He is a founding member of the Oxford Bible Fellowship church in Oxford, Ohio
. He has been a supporter of the Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship throughout his career, and particularly at the campus of Miami University. He has contributed popular articles to periodicals like Christianity Today
magazine on the resurrection of Christ and in response to controversial claims made about the Dead Sea Scrolls
.
Yamauchi was featured in the widely read Christian apologetic
work The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel
. He has given presentations on the Easter
story
to such universities as Cornell
, Yale
, and Princeton
. He has also appeared in various television documentaries concerning the life of Christ.
Japanese American
are American people of Japanese heritage. Japanese Americans have historically been among the three largest Asian American communities, but in recent decades have become the sixth largest group at roughly 1,204,205, including those of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity...
historian, Christian apologist
Christian apologetics
Christian apologetics is a field of Christian theology that aims to present a rational basis for the Christian faith, defend the faith against objections, and expose the perceived flaws of other world views...
, editor and academic. He is Professor Emeritus of History at Miami University
Miami University
Miami University is a coeducational public research university located in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the 10th oldest public university in the United States and the second oldest university in Ohio, founded four years after Ohio University. In its 2012 edition, U.S...
, where he taught from 1969 until 2005. He is married to Kimie Honda.
Education and career
Yamauchi began language studies at the University of HawaiiUniversity of Hawaii
The University of Hawaii System, formally the University of Hawaii and popularly known as UH, is a public, co-educational college and university system that confers associate, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees through three university campuses, seven community college campuses, an employment...
but then transferred his candidacy to studying Biblical languages at Shelton College, Ringwood, New Jersey, and received his B.A. degree there. He then enrolled in Mediterranean studies for his Master of Arts
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
degree at Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
, and then pursued studies in Mandaean Gnostic texts as part of his Ph.D. dissertation at Brandeis University.
At Brandeis he studied under the late Cyrus H. Gordon
Cyrus H. Gordon
Cyrus Herzl Gordon , was an American scholar of Near Eastern cultures and ancient languages.-Biography:Gordon was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Lithuanian emigrant and physician Benjamin Gordon...
, and expanded his linguistic studies in ancient near eastern languages, which included Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, Aramaic
Aramaic language
Aramaic is a group of languages belonging to the Afroasiatic language phylum. The name of the language is based on the name of Aram, an ancient region in central Syria. Within this family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic family, and more specifically, is a part of the Northwest Semitic subfamily,...
, Akkadian
Akkadian language
Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...
, Ugaritic
Ugaritic language
The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Ugaritic, Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew:-Grammar:Ugaritic is an inflected language, and as a Semitic language its grammatical features are highly similar to those found in Classical Arabic and Akkadian...
, Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, Syriac
Syriac language
Syriac is a dialect of Middle Aramaic that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. Having first appeared as a script in the 1st century AD after being spoken as an unwritten language for five centuries, Classical Syriac became a major literary language throughout the Middle East from...
, and Coptic
Coptic language
Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the current stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the 1st century...
. In all he has immersed himself in 22 different languages. Yamauchi taught for a time at Shelton College, before becoming an Assistant Professor of history at Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
. He then received his professorial appointment at Miami University
Miami University
Miami University is a coeducational public research university located in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the 10th oldest public university in the United States and the second oldest university in Ohio, founded four years after Ohio University. In its 2012 edition, U.S...
.
Yamauchi's areas of expertise include: Ancient History, Old Testament, New Testament, Early Church History, Gnosticism, and Biblical Archaeology. He has been awarded eight fellowships, contributed chapters to several books, articles in reference works, and has published 80 essays in 37 scholarly journals. He has been a member and officer of the Institute for Biblical Research
Institute for Biblical Research
The Institute for Biblical Research established in 1973 is an academic scholarly organisation with the goals of "fostering the study of Scripture within an evangelical context, establishing facilities for the furtherance of biblical studies, and encouraging university and college students toward a...
, an organization of scholars devoted to the research of the Bible.
Yamauchi has also contributed essays to various reference works in biblical studies and Christian history, and written commentaries on the books of Ezra
Ezra
Ezra , also called Ezra the Scribe and Ezra the Priest in the Book of Ezra. According to the Hebrew Bible he returned from the Babylonian exile and reintroduced the Torah in Jerusalem...
and Nehemiah
Nehemiah
Nehemiah ]]," Standard Hebrew Nəḥemya, Tiberian Hebrew Nəḥemyāh) is the central figure of the Book of Nehemiah, which describes his work rebuilding Jerusalem and purifying the Jewish community. He was the son of Hachaliah, Nehemiah ]]," Standard Hebrew Nəḥemya, Tiberian Hebrew Nəḥemyāh) is the...
in the Expositor's Bible Commentary series that was edited by Frank Gaebelein. Yamauchi contributed the notes on Ezra and Nehemiah in the NIV Study Bible.
Other areas where Yamauchi has written include the social and cultural history of first century Christianity, the relevance of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Dead Sea scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents found between 1947 and 1956 on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name...
for New Testament studies, the primary source value of Josephus
Josephus
Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...
' writings, and the role of the Magi
Magi
Magi is a term, used since at least the 4th century BC, to denote a follower of Zoroaster, or rather, a follower of what the Hellenistic world associated Zoroaster with, which...
in both ancient Persia and in the nativity narrative of the Gospel of Matthew. Yamauchi is written several books and essays on ancient gnosticism
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...
. He has been highly critical of scholars, such as Rudolf Bultmann
Rudolf Bultmann
Rudolf Karl Bultmann was a German theologian of Lutheran background, who was for three decades professor of New Testament studies at the University of Marburg...
, who have used third and fourth century AD Gnostic texts as primary evidence for the existence of pre-Christian gnosticism.
In the 1970s he was a prominent critic of the late Morton Smith
Morton Smith
Morton Smith was an American professor of ancient history at Columbia University. He is best known for his controversial discovery of the Mar Saba letter, a letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria containing excerpts from a Secret Gospel of Mark, during a visit to the monastery at Mar Saba in...
's interpretation of an apocryphal text known as the Secret Gospel of Mark
Secret Gospel of Mark
The Secret Gospel of Mark is a putative non-canonical Christian gospel known exclusively from the Mar Saba letter, which describes Secret Mark as an expanded version of the canonical Gospel of Mark with some episodes elucidated, written for an initiated elite.In 1973 Morton Smith , professor of...
. Yamauchi revisited the corpus of Smith's writings on the topics of the lost gospels and Jesus as a magician-healer in his lengthy essay on magic and miracles (1986). Yamauchi faulted Smith's work on several points. One problem Yamauchi found was Smith's anachronistic use of third, fourth and fifth century AD Greek magical papyri sources in his reinterpretation of Christ as a magus-magician. He argued that Smith's "penchant for parallels with the life of Apollonius by Philostratus" was "historically anachronistic".
Religious beliefs
As a youth, Yamauchi was sent to an Episcopalian school. But, by 1952, he had begun to shift towards evangelicalismEvangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
. In his senior high school year Yamauchi studied at a rural school and worked at a missionary farm known as the Christian Youth Center. He is a founding member of the Oxford Bible Fellowship church in Oxford, Ohio
Oxford, Ohio
Oxford is a city in northwestern Butler County, Ohio, United States, in the southwestern portion of the state. It lies in Oxford Township, originally called the College Township. The population was 21,943 at the 2000 census. This college town was founded as a home for Miami University. Oxford...
. He has been a supporter of the Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship throughout his career, and particularly at the campus of Miami University. He has contributed popular articles to periodicals like Christianity Today
Christianity Today
Christianity Today is an Evangelical Christian periodical based in Carol Stream, Illinois. It is the flagship publication of its parent company Christianity Today International, claiming circulation figures of 140,000 and readership of 290,000...
magazine on the resurrection of Christ and in response to controversial claims made about the Dead Sea Scrolls
Dead Sea scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents found between 1947 and 1956 on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name...
.
Yamauchi was featured in the widely read Christian apologetic
Christian apologetics
Christian apologetics is a field of Christian theology that aims to present a rational basis for the Christian faith, defend the faith against objections, and expose the perceived flaws of other world views...
work The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel
Lee Strobel
Lee Patrick Strobel is a writer, creationist, former journalist and former megachurch pastor. He is the author of several books, including four which received ECPA Christian Book Awards and a series which addresses challenges to a Biblically inerrant view of Christianity...
. He has given presentations on the Easter
Easter
Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...
story
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
to such universities as Cornell
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
, Yale
YALE
RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...
, and Princeton
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
. He has also appeared in various television documentaries concerning the life of Christ.
Select bibliography
- Africa and Africans in Antiquity (editor; East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001; ISBN 0-87013-507-4
- Africa and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004). ISBN 0-8010-2686-5
- Archaeology and the Bible (with Donald J. Wiseman) (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979). ISBN 0-310-38341-2
- The Archaeology of New Testament Cities in Western Asia Minor (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980). ISBN 0-8010-9915-3
- "A Secret Gospel of Jesus as 'Magus'? A Review of the Recent Works of Morton Smith," Christian Scholar's Review, 4/3 (1975): 238–251.
- Chronos, Kairos, Christos: Nativity and Chronological Studies Presented to Jack Finegan (co-edited with Jerry Vardaman) (Winona Lake: Eisenbruans, 1989). ISBN 0-931464-50-1
- Composition and Cooroboration in Classical and Biblical Studies (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1966).
- "The Descent of Ishtar, The Fall of Sophia, and the Jewish Roots of Gnosticism," Tyndale BulletinTyndale BulletinThe Tyndale Bulletin is an academic journal published by Tyndale House in Cambridge....
, 29 (1978): 143–175. - Foes From The Northern Frontier (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1982). ISBN 0-8010-9918-8
- Gnostic Ethics and Mandaean Origins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970).
- Greece and Babylon (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1967).
- Harper's World of the New Testament (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981). ISBN 0-06-069708-3
- "Immanuel Velikovsky's Catastrophic History," Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, 25/4 (December 1973): 134–139.
- "Jewish Gnosticism? The Prologue of John, Mandaean Parallels and the Trimorphic Protennoia," in Studies in Gnosticism and Hellenistic Religions, R. van den Broek and M. J. Vermaseren, eds. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981): 467–497.
- "Josephus and the Scriptures" Fides et Historia, 13/1 (Fall 1980): 42–63.
- "Magic or Miracle? Diseases, Demons and Exorcisms," in Gospel Perspectives Vol. 6: The Miracles of Jesus, David Wenham and Craig Blomberg, eds. (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1986): 89–183.
- Mandaic Incantation Texts (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1967).
- Peoples of the Old Testament World, (co-edited with Alfred J. Hoerth and Gerald L. Mattingly) (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994) ISBN 0-8010-4383-2
- Persia and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990). ISBN 0-8010-9899-8
- Pre-Christian Gnosticism:A Survey of the Proposed Evidences (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1973) ISBN 0-8028-3429-9 (Revised edition, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983) ISBN 0-8010-9919-6
- "Pre-Christian Gnosticism in the Nag Hammadi Texts?" Church History, 48 (1979): 129–141.
- "The Present Status of Mandaean Studies," Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 25 (1966): 88–96.
- The Stones and The Scriptures (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1972) ISBN 0-87981-002-5
- The Story of the Church (with Robert G. Clouse and Richard V. Pierard) (Chicago: Moody Press, 2002) ISBN 0-8024-2481-3
- "Tammuz and the Bible," Journal of Biblical Literature, 84 (1965): 283–290.
- Two Kingdoms: The Church and Culture Through the Ages (with Robert G. Clouse and Richard V. Pierard) (Chicago: Moody Press, 1993). ISBN 0-8024-8590-1
Reviews
- Molefi K. Asante, "Africa and Africans in Antiquity (review)", Research in African Literatures, 34/3, (Fall 2003): pp. 178–182.
- Grant LeMarquand, Africa and the Bible, Anglican Theological Review, Fall 2005