James Dunn

Who is James Dunn?

James D. G. "Jimmy" Dunn is a leading British New Testament scholar who was for many years the Lightfoot Professor of Divinity in the Department of Theology at the University of Durham, now Emeritus Lightfoot Professor. He has worked broadly within the Protestant tradition.

Dunn has an MA and BD from the University of Glasgow and a PhD and DD from the University of Cambridge. For 2002, Dunn was the President of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, the leading international body for New Testament study. Only three other British scholars had been made President in the preceding 25 years. In 2006 he became a Fellow of the British Academy.

In 2005 a festschrift was published dedicated to Dunn, comprising articles by 27 New Testament scholars, examining early Christian communities and their beliefs about the Holy Spirit.

Dunn is especially associated with the New Perspective on Paul, along with N. T. Wright and E. P. Sanders. He is credited with coining this phrase during his 1982 Manson Memorial Lecture, although he himself admitted that it was Wright who already used the term in his 1978 Tyndale Lecture, where Dunn was sitting on the front row.