Biography of Professor William H. Barnes, Th.D.

Born and reared in Michigan and Wisconsin, Professor William H. Barnes received his B.A. in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1973. He spent the next seven months in Israel on a kibbutz (Israeli collective farm), working, learning modern Hebrew, and touring the country. He married the former Jan Sellew, a fellow Wisconsinite, in 1974, and they moved to the Chicago area to attend Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. With the Old Testament his first love, Professor Barnes studied there three years, and he received his M.A. in Biblical Studies in 1977. The topic of his master's thesis was the so-called "Shiloh" reference in Genesis 49:10. He taught Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic for two years at Trinity, but moved to Boston in the fall of 1979 to enter the Th.D. program at Harvard Divinity School. Harvard was and is particularly strong in textual and linguistic studies, and Professor Barnes found himself studying quite a number of classical and Semitic languages and dialects (more than a dozen, at last count). A highlight of his Harvard experience was a return visit to Israel in 1981, digging in the "City of David" excavations (biblical Jerusalem) for several weeks with the late renowned Israeli archaelogist, Yigal Shiloh. In 1986, Professor Barnes completed his doctoral dissertation on the subject of the chronology of the divided monarchy of Israel (ca. 932-586 BCE). It was published in the Harvard Semitic Monograph Series in 1991. His research interests include biblical chronology and history, as well as narrative and poetic structure and sequencing in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. (For a complete list of Professor Barnes' publications, see his Academic Homepage.)

Professor Barnes has taught Bible courses at Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God in Lakeland, Florida, as well as graduate courses for the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary (AGTS). Currently, he is the Professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at North Central University (NCU), in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Professor Barnes' wife, Jan, currently teaches sixth grade in an elementary school in the Twin Cities area. They have two children--Lisa who is working in the Lawrence, Kansas, area, and David, who is a third year student at NCU. Professor Barnes holds credentials with the Assemblies of God, and he and his family attend Emmanuel Christian Center in Spring Lake Park, Minnesota, where they are active in Adult Sunday School work.