author
Benjamin Wisner Bacon
1860–1932
A Yale theologian and pastor, he helped bring modern literary and historical study to the New Testament in the United States. His books explore how the Gospels were shaped, read, and understood in the early church.
1 Audiobook
The Making of the New Testament
by Benjamin Wisner Bacon
About the author
Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1860, Benjamin Wisner Bacon studied at Yale College and Yale Divinity School before serving Congregational pastorates in Old Lyme, Connecticut, and Oswego, New York. He later returned to Yale, where he taught New Testament Greek and went on to serve for decades as Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation.
Bacon became known as an important American voice in biblical criticism. He wrote widely on the Gospels, the life of Jesus, and the letters and thought of Paul, with a special interest in how biblical books were composed and how their theological ideas developed.
His work helped shape the study of the New Testament in the early twentieth century by bringing careful literary analysis to questions that had often been treated mainly through theology or church tradition. He died in 1932, but his scholarship remains part of the history of modern biblical studies.