Robert Evans

Senior Lecturer in New Testament Theology and Senior University Teaching Fellow

My interests are principally in the New Testament, its theology and ethics, and hermeneutics: the ways in which these texts were understood and applied in history and are understood and applied now.

Telephone	01244 511037
Email	r.evans@chester.ac.uk

Qualifications

BA (Lond.), MA (Lond.), MA (Cantab.), MTh (Lond.), AKC.

Overview

I started off, academically, in English Literature and Anglo-Saxon at the University of London, King’s College. I tutored in Renaissance Studies at King’s and in Anglo-Saxon at the University of Cambridge. When I shifted into Theology, I kept the focus on text, language and literature, and specialised in the New Testament. I also trained professionally as a Christian minister and as a teacher and did a few years work in Cornish and London parishes, and in an inner-London comprehensive. Then I was back at Cambridge, as Chaplain of Robinson College and tutoring for the East Anglian Ministerial Training Course. I came to Chester in the early 1990s to teach New Testament studies and to work with the ministerial partnerships that the Department was pioneering. I am also on the chaplaincy team here. My current work draws on all these experiences in a focus on New Testament theology and ethics.

Teaching

The Bible: Contents and Contexts

The Bible: Reading and Interpretation

NT Studies: Paul’s Practical Theology

NT Greek

Jesus and the Gospels

I work with the Cathedral’s canon theologian, Loveday Alexander, (and others) to host four public lectures a year as the Chester Theological Society.

Research

My principal research is in the theology and ethics of Paul in the New Testament, and in biblical hermeneutics. I am interested in the politics of biblical interpretation (what social and political values are expressed in texts and whose interests are served in the ways they have been interpreted) as well as (and connected to) the theology of the texts. My most recent project is a ‘reception history’ (an examination of how particular texts have been interpreted and applied) of words Paul uses about ‘subordinating’ yourself to others, and consequent reflection on theological hermeneutics.

I am biblical studies consultant for the British Sign Language Bible Translation Project. The pilot for this project is a translation of the Gospel of Mark.