Dr. J.P. O’Connor

Associate Professor Education Ph.D. Princeton Theological Seminary M.Div. Princeton Theological Seminary B.A. Northwest University

JP O’Connor is the Associate Professor of New Testament at Northwest University. He is an alum of NU, where he completed his BA in Biblical Literature. After serving for several years at a church plant in Lakewood Washington he went on to earn his MDiv. and PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. He has taught religion and theology courses at Princeton Theological Seminary, the College of New Jersey, and, through funding from the Louisville Institute, at North Central University (Minneapolis, MN). His research and teaching interests include morality and ethics within the literary milieu of Second Temple Judaism. His published dissertation, The Moral Life according to Mark (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2022) considers the moral nature of the first life of Jesus in contrast to a longstanding scholarly consensus about Mark and “ethics.” His second book, The Last Shall Be First: Judgment according to Mark (forthcoming with Baylor University Press) considers the rhetoric of judgment in Mark’s Gospel and its interplay with justice for “the little ones.”

He loves coffee, running, playing chess, and spending time with his family. Please reach out to connect! 

Books

• The Moral Life according to Mark. Library of New Testament Studies 667. New York: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2022.
• The Last Shall Be First: Judgment according to Mark. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press (anticipated 2024).

Recent Publications

• “The Accountable God: Moral Accountability according to Mark,” in Ethics in Mark, ed. Michael Labahn and Martin Meiser. WUNT (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, [forthcoming 2023]).
• “Biblical Foundations for Creation,” in T & T Clark Encyclopedia of Christian Theology, eds. Jana Bennett, Jason Fout, and Stephen Cone (forthcoming).
• “From Imagination to Practice: Pauline Theology and Burying the Dead at Corinth,” Novum Testamentum (forthcoming)
• “‘Spiritual Blindness’ in the Bartimaeus Pericope (Mark 10:46–52): Toward Decentering Ableist Readings.” Biblical Interpretation (2023): 1–19.  
• “Void of Ethics No More: The Gospel of Mark and New Testament Ethics.” Currents in Biblical Research 20 (2022): 165­–85.
• “Moral Accountability According to Mark.” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 83.4 (2021): 599–618.
• “The Devil will Flee: James 4:7, the Jesus Tradition, and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs.” Journal of Biblical Literature 138 (2019): 883–97.     
• “Genesis 2:7 in Conversation: The Exegesis of Paul, Philo, and the Hodayot.” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft110 (2019): 84–103.   
•  “Satan and Sitis: The Significance of Clothing Changes in the Testament of Job.” Journal for the Study of Pseudepigrapha 26.4 (2017): 305–19.  

Research and Teaching Interests

Synoptic Gospels; Paul; Second Temple Judaism; New Testament Ethics; Apocalyptic Literature and Theology  

For more about his research and publications, see his CV.