The Griset Chair in Bible and Christian Tradition was the first endowed chair at Chapman University, established in 1984 in the name of Belle Griset, whose son Francis Griset served as a Chapman Trustee for many years. This Chair was held formerly by our esteemed colleague Prof. Marvin Meyer until his untimely passing in 2012. Now as a visiting position, this Chair allows Chapman students the unique opportunity to take courses with leading biblical scholars from around the world.

  • 2019-2020 Visiting Chair
    Karen Jo Torjesen is Professor Emerita of Religion at Claremont Graduate University and a leading authority on women in early Christianity with expertise in New Testament studies, gender and religion, and transnational feminism. At CGU, she founded an MA and PhD program in Women’s Studies in Religion, and her publications include the ground-breaking book When Women Were Priests: Women’s Leadership in the Early Church and the Scandal of their Subordination in the Rise of Christianity. As an engaged scholar, Professor Torjesen’s recent work has included researching the cultural roots of HIV stigma, religion and gender in Kenya, helping to develop a Gender Research Center in Botswana, and leading a multidisciplinary team assessing the Tamar Campaign, a church and mosque-based program to combat violence against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  
  • 2018-2019 Visiting Chair
    Dale C. Allison, Jr. is Princeton Theological Seminary’s Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament.  His academic research has focused on the historical Jesus, the Gospel of Matthew, the Sayings Gospel (Q), early Jewish and Christian eschatology, inner-biblical exegesis, the history of the interpretation and application of biblical texts, and the Jewish Pseudepigrapha.  His book, Constructing Jesus, was selected as “Best Book Relating to the New Testament” for 2009-2010 by the Biblical Archeology Society.  He served for several years as the main New Testament editor for de Gruyter’s international Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception and has been on the editorial boards of New Testament Studies, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, Horizons in Biblical Theology, Journal of Biblical Literature, and Review of Biblical Literature.  On a more popular level, he has written books on the Sermon on the Mount, George Harrison, religious experience in the modern world, and death and what might lie beyond.  His book The Resurrection of Jesus: Apologetics, Polemics, History was published in 2021 and he is currently working on a book entitled The Persistence of Religious Experience.  He is an ordained elder in the PC (USA).
  • 2017-2018 Visiting Chair
    James Charlesworth is Princeton Theological Seminary’s George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature. He has authored over 400 articles or book chapters, edited or co-edited more than 100 volumes, and written some 40 monographs. He specializes in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old and New Testaments, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, Jesus research, and the Gospel of John. As director of the Seminary’s Dead Sea Scrolls Project, he has worked on the Qumran Scrolls to make available, in cooperation with more than fifty international specialists, an accurate text with apparatus criticus, an English translation, and an introduction. He has excavated at Migdal, Bethsaida, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Khirbet Beza, Qumran, and elsewhere. Charlesworth has taught at Duke University, Hebrew University and the Albright Institute, both in Jerusalem, and the University of Tübingen. He served as distinguished visiting professor at Naples University and McCarthy Professor of the Pontificia Università Gregoriana in Rome. He has two honorary doctorates, honors from more than 18 countries, and numerous medals, including the medal from Brancoveanu Monastery in Sâmbãta de Sus, the Distinguished Achievement Citation from Ohio Wesleyan University; the Comenius Medal from Charles University, Prague, and the Pentecost Medal, presented by His Beatitude, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilus III. An ordained minister in The United Methodist Church, he serves as advisor to the denomination’s World Missionary Council and preaches and lectures globally.
  • 2016-2017 Visiting Chair
    Prof. Paul N. Anderson serves as Professor of Biblical and Quaker Studies at George Fox University and as Extraordinary Professor of Religion at the North West University of Potchefstroom, South Africa. Author of over two hundred published essays and author or editor of a dozen books, Prof. Anderson is a co-founder of the John, Jesus, and History Project. His contextual introduction to the New Testament, From Crisis to Christ, offers new paradigms for biblical interpretation, and his books on John include The Christology of the Fourth Gospel, The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus, and The Riddles of the Fourth Gospel.  Several of these books are available for purchase in the lobby and he has graciously agreed to sign them after the lecture. He has also served as editor of the journal Quaker Religious Thought and is the New Testament editor of the Biblical Interpretation Series (published by E.J. Brill).
  • 2015-2016 Visiting Chair
    Prof. Lee Martin McDonald: An internationally renowned New Testament scholar, Dr. McDonald has written or edited 27 books and more than a 150 refereed articles and essays in prominent journals and major academic publications. Six of his books focus on the origins of the Bible, one of which has become a standard textbook for graduate and doctoral students in many academic institutions across the USA, Canada, and Europe. He is president emeritus of the Acadia Divinity College, the graduate school of theology at Acadia University, and dean of its faculty of theology in Nova Scotia, Canada. The past president of the Institute for Biblical Research, Dr. McDonald holds academic degrees from Harvard University and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
  • 2014-2015 Visiting Chair
    Donald A. Hagner is George Eldon Ladd Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Fuller Seminary and has had a long and distinguished career in New Testament Studies with an extensive list of publications on a wider range of topics, including acclaimed commentaries on Hebrews and Matthew and his comprehensive The New Testament: A Historical and Theological Introduction(2012). He has delivered a number of distinguished named lectures, his international reputation affirmed by the many awards he has received and the considerable time he has spent at Cambridge University as well as the University of Tubingen, the Pontifical Institute, and other universities in Sweden, France, Australia, Germany, Singapore, and Italy over the years. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester, England.