Education
Th.D., New Testament and Early Christian Studies, Harvard University
M.Div., Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
M.A., English Literature, Stanford University
B.A., English Literature, Stanford University
Michal Beth Dinkler recently became the new Head of Timothy Dwight College at Yale. Professor Dinkler’s research lies at the intersection of New Testament and Ancient Christianity (NT/AC) and contemporary literary theory, providing a generative vantage point from which to advance scholarly discourse in multiple arenas. Treating a range of literature both within and external to the NT canon, her work consistently argues that literary theory can reshape the complex hermeneutical discussions that animate NT/AC studies and its adjacent disciplines. Professor Dinkler is the author of three books: Silent Statements: Narrative Representations of Speech and Silence in the Gospel of Luke (2013), Literary Theory and New Testament Scholarship (2019), and Influence: On Rhetoric and Biblical Interpretation (2021). Her next book, How to Do Things with Stories: Early Christian Narrative as Rhetoric, will be published soon by Cambridge University Press. Professor Dinkler’s work has also been published in chapters in multiple edited volumes and in top academic journals such as the Journal of Biblical Literature, Frontiers of Narrative Studies, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, and New Testament Studies, among others. In addition to lecturing around the world, she serves on the Steering Committees for the Society of Biblical Literature’s Book of Acts and Gospel of Luke Sections and on several editorial boards, including those of Catholic Biblical Quarterly and The Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception. Professor Dinkler is an elected member of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, a Research Fellow at Universität Regensburg, and a Research Associate at the University of Pretoria. She is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Read more
- Michal Beth Dinkler named next Head of Timothy Dwight College
- Michal Beth Dinkler: the dance of interpretation and meaning
Books
Influence: On Rhetoric and Biblical Interpretation (Brill, 2021)
Literary Theory and the New Testament (Yale University Press, 2019)
Silent Statements: Narrative Representations of Speech and Silence in the Gospel of Luke (De Gruyter, 2013)