Associate Professor Peter Bolt

Academic Director, Office of the Dean, Sydney College of Divinity

BD(Hons) (London),ThL(Hons) (ACT), DipA[Theol] (MTC), MTh (ACT), MA Hons (Macquarie), PhD (London).

Biographical Information

Associate Professor Peter G. Bolt, a graduate of Moore College, Australian College of Theology, Macquarie University, and King’s College London, is the Academic Director of the Sydney College of Divinity. Prior to taking up that position in 2016, he was Head of the Department of New Testament and Greek at Moore College, Sydney, where he served as a lecturer in New Testament, Greek, and Biblical Theology, for twenty five years. He is a member of the SCD Press editorial board, and the Editor of the Journal of Gospels and Acts Research.

Research Interests

Associate Professor Bolt is the Director of the SCD Centre for Gospels Research, reflecting his long-term teaching and publication interest in the Gospels and Acts, and in the historical Jesus. Other research interests include how the Gospels communicate their message to their readers, Biblical Theology as a hermeneutical framework, magic and demonology, the writings of the apostle Paul, eschatology, the earliest Christian missionary movement, the intersection between the New Testament and the Graeco-Roman world. He also has an interest in Soren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth. Fascinated by the role of Christianity in the establishment of New South Wales, has also published on Australasian Colonial History.

Major Publications

Associate Professor Bolt’s published books include Jesus’ Defeat of Death. Persuading Mark’s Early Readers (SNTSMS 125; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 2008); The Cross from a Distance. Atonement in Mark’s Gospel (NSBT 18; Leicester: IVP, 2004); (with Sharon Beekmann), Silencing Satan: A Handbook of Biblical Demonology (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2011); and the popular-level Living With the Underworld (Kingsford, NSW: Matthias Media, 2007); and A Light Shining in Our Darkness. Reading Matthew Today (Sydney: Acorn Press, 2014).

He is currently writing a commentary on Luke, with contracts for commentaries on Mark, 1 Timothy, Titus, and 1&2 Thessalonians. He has published numerous scholarly and popular articles and edited at least fifteen books for a range of publishers (e.g. IVP, Latimer, Australian Church Record, Matthias Media, SCD Press).