Stanley E. Porter

Stanley E. Porter (born November 23, 1956) is an American-Canadian academic and New Testament scholar, specializing in the Koine Greek grammar and linguistics of the New Testament.

Porter was born in Long Beach, California, on November 23, 1956.

He studied at Point Loma College, San Diego (B.A., English), Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California (M.A., English), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois (M.A., New Testament), and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, in 1988, in both the biblical studies and linguistics departments.

He began his teaching career at Biola University, where he taught New Testament, Greek, and English, then taught at Trinity Western University.

He was also the executive editor of Sheffield Academic Press during the 1990s, and since 2008 has served as the editor-in-chief of McMaster Divinity College Press (published collaboratively with Wipf & Stock Publishers).

From 1994, he was Professor of Theology and Head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Surrey Roehampton (formerly Roehampton Institute London, now Roehampton University).

Since 2001, he has served as President, Dean, and Professor of New Testament at McMaster Divinity College (MDC) in Hamilton, Ontario.

In 2008, he founded the MDC Linguistics Circle, fashioned after the Prague Linguistics Circle (or Prague School), which meets monthly during the academic year and hosts discussions on papers by students, faculty, and guest scholars using linguistic methodology for biblical interpretation.

Porter is widely renown in biblical studies for his prolific research and publication output.

As of 2024, he has authored or co-authored more than 35 books and monographs, 120 articles in academic journals and periodicals, and 300 chapters in books or edited volumes.

In addition, he has been editor or co-editor for nearly 150 volumes.

In addition to his extensive publishing activities, Porter has served as editor, co-editor, or editorial board member for numerous book series, journals, and publishers, including:

Since 2013, he has also held the Roy A. Hope Chair in Christian Worldview at MDC.

Porter is primarily noted for his work on verbal aspect in the Koine Greek of the New Testament, as he has argued that aspect is the major semantic category in the analysis of the Greek verbal system, recognizing three aspects: perfective, imperfective and stative.

He has also argued that the Greek verb does not encode temporality but that temporality is depicted by other deictic indicators.

His linguistic framework stems from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), founded by Michael Halliday, as can be seen in his use of systemic grammar and system networks in his framework of Greek and aspect, and his use of SFL discourse analysis and register analysis (including cohesion, prominence, and thematization) for biblical interpretation.

In addition to Greek linguistics, he has also published on a wide range of other topics, including Paul, Acts, John, the Gospels, historical Jesus, papyrology and textual criticism, hermeneutics, rhetorical criticism, and matters of canon and pseudepigraphy.

Porter has contributed to a variety of topics in New Testament studies.

For example, in historical Jesus studies, he has argued for adding to the criteria of authenticity the criterion of Greek language and its context, the criterion of Greek textual variance, and the criterion of discourse features.

In Pauline studies, he has argued for the Pauline letter collection view that Paul was directly involved in collecting his letters.

In textual criticism, he has advocated using the earliest New Testament manuscript for the study of the Greek New Testament, such as Codex Sinaiticus for the entire New Testament, rather than eclectic editions that are commonly used.

He has also resurrected the argument, developing the ideas of William Ramsay, Johannes Weiss, and James Hope Moulton, that Paul had likely met Jesus before his crucifixion as a young Pharisee in Jerusalem.

In addition to his extensive publishing activities, Porter has served as editor, co-editor, or editorial board member for a number of book series, journals, and publishers (see below).

Porter was presented a Festschrift in November 2016 during the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting on the occasion of his 60th birthday: The Language and Literature of the New Testament: Essays in Honor of Stanley E. Porter’s 60th Birthday (ed. Lois K. Fuller Dow, Craig A. Evans, and Andrew W. Pitts; Biblical Interpretation Series 150; Leiden: Brill, 2017).